(Rewritten) Ch. 85 – Xenocide Act VII; Prelude

Can you see the tide of wood-bone fangs?

Can you hear the ringing peal of infantry guns?

Can you feel the banging thunder of artillery cannons?

The Butcher calls for slaughter and the battle culls His victims.

– prologue of Butchered; The Antithesis Incursion Tolls, death statistics collected and bound into a book, published 2039

***

A feral joy suffused me as I slammed death through the neural tissues of models Five and Six. But even as my mind swam in the euphoria of bomb go boom, hundreds of thought-processes flashed back and forth in the back of my head to keep pace with, and control of, the battle. Never more than a mental glance away, always there, yet perfectly unobtrusive and non-distracting.

A shard of me—more complex than most—tracked a few Fours scrambling up behind me and marked them for the Sentinel attached to my tail.  All I had to do was to pull the virtual trigger, and 20mm grenades skipped off the ground to blast their torsos to pieces.

Satisfaction welled up in me that I realized was and wasn't mine, and I sent the bud an emotional thank-you. The simple happiness that answered, learning to be more than merely mine, made me smile even as I took another Five's head.

I'd hidden the whistle of my HSRP between the crash of exploding mines and slunk my fire through the auditory hail of the high-explosive missiles above, but bit by bit, the aliens caught on and sniffed me out.

And now, the first runners drew close, hundreds of aliens stretched out behind them. I laughed as I sniped the final Six's shoulder and neck and blew up the last Five.

My body was an oiled machine and I was indomitable, every step, every twitch, exactly where I needed them. My decisions were effortless and my slaughter divine.

Little windows popped up around the edges of my vision, and showed me small packs of Threes and Fours lured away from the battlefield into tiny minefields, all placed expertly to maximize their miniature payloads. Unarmored bellies and throats took the brunt of the explosions, excavated ruinously.

I cheered as Combat Command hit the Big Red Button to rain death upon the horde rushing me, a carpet of high-explosive micro-missiles from above and between the distant trees descended in a rolling volley, drawing closer with hundreds of small detonations. Brackish water, green blood, fresh fires everywhere.

I tasted ash and soot on my lips and across my sensilla as the sudden heat kicked up a great billowing wind. I saw shreds of Antithesis plant matter thrown every which way, cooked and singed.

The realization that these temperatures would've dried out my eyes without the additional membranes—and that I could freely appreciate the chaotic mayhem delivered by my weapons because of them—had me bare my teeth with savage amusement.

"A worthy purchase, indeed," I chuckled.

Once the localized meteor storm settled, there were about fifty Threes left, along with a few Fours—and two badly burnt Eights wiggling in pain.

"Tynea, let's put a few nanite loads into the Eights. That'll take care of the threat of any future nests here."

As you wish.

A loading bar appeared at the bottom of my HUD, titled "Production: 8x 'Carrier', 8x Nanite payload - Launch: 10 seconds." The countdown ticked as the bar filled up.

I stepped forward as the first Three finally reached me, and broke its skull with the butt of the rifle. My eyes narrowed as my antennae sensed more cracking than just the bone's, however.

– Warning: Fine split in the stock's wood, melee action worsens its condition. –

Ah, you're at the limits of your endurance, huh? My fingertips slid across the hard walnut stock and found the hairline crack. A pull of the Sentinel's trigger plunged a 13mm dart with its nanite payload into the next monster, and my fingers felt the stock jumping at the split. AI-I saw it lengthen by another centimeter. Soon, the receiver would no longer be seated correctly.

A light tremble went through the ground beneath my feet and my attention jumped at it. I did promise you a fine supper, did I not? I giggled, stroking the gun. Take a break, old friend. It's not your time to go just yet.

My tail flashed forward and bashed into the shoulder of the third Three, flinging it into the open jaws of its brother alien. Mad joy was lightning in my torso as I heard splintering teeth and the popping of joints, and I was off again.

My flying spear flashed into my open hand even as my tail whipped in staccato movement to wrap the rifle's stock in silken bandages. On clawed feet, I wove around a Four's grasping tentacles as I slashed the spear through yet another Three's neck, and glittering, crystalline dust trailed in the wake of the shimmering blade. My other hand held the hunting rifle by the cozy-warm barrel as my tail stitched it to my back.

But only moments later it was secured, and as that hand shot forward to play the javelin, the Myriad launched an octuple delivery of flesh-melting nanites. I knocked one of the tiny missiles off-course. Fast as a viper, my hand caught the rocket and I tossed it high into the sky, where Tynea took over and ignited its thrusters to reorient it towards its target.

With both hands finally dancing, I laughed as I perforated the heart of the Four trying to grapple me. Spinning clockwise on my feet, I tore the blade through its body out its back, where the weapon shed the used layer like pixie dust.

Another step, another twirl to dodge a Three's lunge, and the rear blade severed the claws reaching for my head. A limbless body sailed past me and smacked into a trunk, where it flopped like a worm on the ground, still trying to get to me.

Through the Prism, I tracked the nanite missiles as they skimmed at hip height between the trees towards the Eights. I whooped as two each darted into the maw of the huge worms, and another two pairs burst against their leathery-squishy bodies, one third from either end. Within seconds, circles of black, decomposing sludge began to crawl across the humongous beasts.

Intense pleasure warred with insane delight as I danced from monster to monster, spear whirling in my hands, the razor-sharp monomolecular edges on either end laying open green muscle and sawing bones, dusting the air with more crystalline glitter after every attack.

***

Leah was taking a page from Tinea's book as she ran large circles around the massive gathering of Antithesis, creating a whirlpool of clumping units and letting her two turrets shave away at them.

There were Threes and Fours, Fives and Sixes, a ridiculous amount of Ones uselessly dive-bombing her pod every few seconds and getting whittled down by her bank of electrolasers—usually by diverting the quills of the Fives to shred like dervishes through them—and units she hadn't personally seen before; fifty Tens. Little monkey aliens with six five-fingered arms, no legs and no head.

The weird monkeys weren't much of a threat, even with the little blades stuck to the back of their double-thumbed hands. They were the size of children, and while they could climb with amazing agility, they didn't have much strength. But their presence indicated a proper hive, of which they would be the caretakers managing the feeding pools and checking the growth sacs. And Leah was close enough that they were openly attacking her.

"Looks like the Twenty-Two rooted, huh?"

Yup! It's probably turned itself into a nest!

"Shit. That's hella annoying. I was hoping to make it move so I could ambush it with my cannons."

She'd hidden her towed cannon on top of a small hill two hundred meters away. The elevation would help it target anything around her—except something that was underground. Well, maybe it can create enough of a crater to expose the nest?

"Ypsi, how deep is the thing dug in, likely?"

Probably just a meter or two! You can still see the ruts from its legs over there!

Indeed, Leah could. There were deep, meter-wide furrows, six of them, into which the rainwater and mud had settled. She'd actually marked them on her map so she wouldn't stumble into them by accident, though she figured they wouldn't really be a problem for her four-legged egg.

A kerchak told her the pod's cannon was finished reloading its two magazines, and she whipped around her butt so the muzzle pointed at the aliens again.

For just a moment she stopped dead and braced with the pod leaning forward to cushion the coming recoil. Before the aliens, only meters away and trying to catch her, could adjust, she fired.

Her cannon belched a dense cloud of pellets from the loaded canister, and the storm of lead carved a cone through the entire gathering.

Heh, Leah grinned. What's a shotgun? This'll never get old.

She immediately picked up her four feet again and kept running. One of her turrets beeped empty, and she summoned a new magazine of two hundred rounds of plastic-tipped 7.62x39mm Hollow Point.

They weren't nearly as good as the stuff Tinea had had to offer, but they were doing just fine against the Threes and even the Fours.

Leah chewed her lips. Should I just buy that catalog, too? Waste of points once we're back together, and these are hella cheap.

Then the hot, smoking brass of the canister was ejected and splashed into the water with a sizzle, and Leah jerked sideways again for another demolishing blast.

Nah… Cannons are me.

"Hey, Ypsi, wanna unlock some twenty-plus mil ammunition? I think it's time I upgrade my turrets some, too. Let's give 'em real punch."

Okay! How about Class I Warforge Technologies Addon: Emplaced Autocannons, and Class I General Cannon Ammunition? New cannons for your turrets, and more rounds for everything!

"What's it cost?"

Two hundred and one hundred!

"And what weapons would replace my turrets?"

The robot arms of the pod are a bit little, so, um, quasi-recoilless rifles? They're a big mix of stuff that helps with recoil, and shoot partially self-propelled grenades. The general cannon ammunition catalog has the right cartridges, too!

"Oh? Sounds complicated."

Yeah! They can't fire quickly for autocannons. But they do a lot of hurt with each shot!

Leah hesitated as she jinked out of the range of a few enterprising Threes, and considered as she twitched her agile turrets to puree their brains in moments. She was kind of relying on the fast fire rate to cull those Antithesis closest to her. And she had the 75mm caliber to cut swathes through the masses already…

But she'd be shooting shells with payloads all around, not merely kinetic smallarms projectiles as she was currently doing. Decisions, decisions.

"Ypsi, how slow is slow?"

One hundred rounds per minute if you get the twenty millimeter ones! Um, half that for the thirty millimeters. They're not variable, sadly. Gotta choose!

"That's a little more than one shell per second for the twenties, which is good enough. Ypsi, let's buy two of those, okay? Do I need to get out of the pod for the mounting?"

Yes! Oh, but you can buy drones to do it for you. I think that would be safer, right now.

"Yep. What do the drones cost?"

The Class I Combat Maintenance and Refitting Drones catalog costs one hundred and fifty points. And the drone itself, um, if you only want it to help switch out the weapons, thirty points. But if you pay a bit more, it can also do stuff like storing guns you aren't using currently. Then you could, like, do combat refits! That would cost at least one hundred, but more points get you bigger drones.

"Oh, that's useful indeed," Leah nodded. "And they can't use stored weapons themselves?"

Depends on the drone! You can buy one that's armored and can equip self-defense weapons, like the rifles you'd switch out!

"A mobile weapon locker that can double as a bodyguard, huh? Yup, I like the idea, Ypsi. Buy everything, including a middle-sized and very tough drone! And hey, wanna try the thing Tynea does with the lists? That looks neat."

Okie!

Unlocked:

Total cost: 450 ptsRemaining points: 2321

Purchased:

Total cost: 640Remaining points: 1681

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