Doom and gloom!
An entire race and culture being…. eaten?
As if they’re disgracefully but effectively being erased
from the pages of history.
A bit to convenient don’t ya think?
On the bright side, when things can’t get any worse
it can only get better!… right? 
Teb
In the words of Bill Cosby, “Don’t ever challenge WORSE!”
Let’s see, stuck on a Tin Can that’s out of control watching the outpost being destroyed knowing you made the decision to come here instead of going to the home planet that was barely in your range anyway. Now the ship is disabled, though possibly fixable, but you have wasted the fuel you will need to get home anyway. It does kinda look like WORSE will have to pull out some stops on this one doesn’t it?
How does it rain in space?
EVERYONE CRIES A LOT.
…well, that explains why they never got an answer to their distress calls.
Sadness…is my only feeling when I see that pic…
Nice, I see a Sathanas Juggernaught. Ah FreeSpace 1 + 2, those where good times.
So the planet itself is eaten… sorry no third edition for you, guys!
But lets see… destroying a mass center by diffusing the mass and then transporting it away will “rock the rocks” of this system quite heavily. Not to forget our ship has still the movement vector from the moment it’s thrust was silenced. They might collide with something… or… be catapulted into space by swing by effect… maybe by violently releasing mass from the cargo, be it massive, liquid or gasoid, they can even change their vector thus taking small influence on their course. Lokhar might even come up with something combustible to be burned in the thrusters.
But in the moment I fear there will be some distraction while they go bug-hunting on board.
Be it one or the other way, the new entry into the book of grudges has to wait for a while.
Probably not the entire, ENTIRE planet. Just all the organic bits, all the atmosphere, some of the more useful metals, and more choice minerals.
If these creatures are organic in nature like they appear, once they have consumed all the organic portions of the planet, they would probably stop eating the planet once they have complementary load of non-organic bits. It would be a HUGE energy sink if the organism carted away more than they need. It would be like the equilivent of us carrying around several tons of iron just because we have iron in our blood. To keep the analogy going, it is far more effecient to carry just a some iron supplements just in case and pick up more at the next stop.
Look at the panel. Already the stars are shining through.
That is not the glow of perfectly straight shafts that are perfectly in alignment with the sun. Why would the aliens bother with perfectly straight shafts that are tens of thousands of miles long and in perfect alignment to let shafts of light through? Then why would they do it atleast 38 more times?
That is the glow from aliens eating everything of value. Notice that you see a similar glow in the green swarm in space. (Though those glows in space could just be stars being shifted to green). And barring that they are the lights from dwarven outposts.
I personally would love word of god on this. If those aliens are indeed consuming everything on the planet right down to its core, that is is several magnitudes of advancement over that of one that is just eating everything living. Our poor dwarves are not facing not the Zerg or Aliens (with a capital A) but something like the Replicators from Stargate.
I wouldn’t expect an orbital or in-system refinery, but who knows?
I am wondering what kind of story you are building towards here. If all the dwarves are getting eaten then it is kind of hard to have “dwarves in space” theme. Or are you going to shift to a “last of their race” or “dwarves among normal humans” theme here? While I would still read, I was looking forward to learning more about the “dwarves in space” society you had built.
If they can get the engines fixed ASAP they could try a slingshot maneuver. Of course that would mean accelerating into the gravity well through the horde of marauding space bugs and not able to maneuver much without throwing off their trajectory. Calculated right, they would be traveling the direction they want to go at a much higher velocity. They might have a few bug impacts but they already need to have a bug hunt anyway.
Poor squats
I’ve just got it, you’re depicting the actual consumption of Squa–