Allison looked around at her assembled ground troops.   Content she could be confident in what she’d selected she pulled one of the heavy bolter assault rifles out of its housing on the armory rack that was unlocked.  It looked almost comical to see the girl in a school uniform in between twenty goliath power armor lifting up one of their primary weapons.  The ship shook as it entered the atmosphere.  The cloak was gone and had been replaced by shields which were heating up during its rapid descent.  She could hear weapons fire hitting the hull of the ship.  Likely plasma artillery from the larger Sal’nash and spikes from the warrior drones.  Allison called out through the ground assault channel.


    “We will be under fire immediately, hover tanks I want you to sanitize the LZ with anti-personal and focus your particle beams on the plasma artillery-air support otherwise we’ll lose drop ships when our reinforcements arrive.  The rest of you wait for the go signal.  Take cover behind the tanks and armored vehicles.  Do not let the spikes pierce your flesh.  Do not trust that your armor will protect you.  Take cover and be methodical.  Silverfang is already on the surface and is feeding us intelligence.  Our job is simple.  Keep the Sal’nash occupied and away from the civilians until the main bulk of our forces arrive.”


    She called out.


    “Who are we?”


    Her ground forces yelled back.


    “Bugstompers!”


    She called out.


    “What’s our motto?”


    Her troops yelled back.


    “Adapt and overcome! Destroy our enemies!”


    Allison grabbed onto some webbing on one of the walls as the ship landed.  It was a rough one.  She ordered the ramp lowered.


    “Make them pay for all the lives they’ve taken, boys and girls!   Dinner at the captain’s table for the first five of you that get me fifty confirmed bug kills! Go! Go! Go!”


    Allison walked behind one of the hover tanks between four goliath’s.  The tank’s particle beams were not super effective against the swarm of smaller bugs, but they were devastating when targeting the larger plasma artillery bugs that would be the main defense against her incoming reinforcements.  Several Sal’nash spines whizzed by Allison’s head when she peaked out.


    She mused as Battlelord she should have been in C&C directing her troops.  It’s where her leadership would want her, along with her parents.  She also saw the value in being here with her vastly outnumbered first wave of ground troops to inspire them.  The Silwrath and therefore the League of Sentient Races didn’t want some high general sitting in a cozy command room somewhere directing them from a distance.  They respected strength, bravery and glory-seekers.  She was a Battlelord because she got things done.  Sure, she might only kill a few Sal’nash today but her troops would fight ten times as hard with her on the battlefield.  It wasn’t her nanite weapon that changed the course of Ratoa, it was her presence because she used things like nanite weapons.


    Their landing zone was a smoldering wasteland.  The Phoenix had rained plasma down with the phalanx turrets as she descended.  They were still vastly outnumbered, twenty to one.  Slowly but surely, they pushed forward.  Silverfang was reporting things were not going to plan as the Sal’nash were getting very close to the city.  She saw one of the goliath’s had a massive anti-material projectile sniper rifle.  She spoke on her ground force’s channel.


    “We’re going to get really popular soon.  Pull back, circle phalanx formation protect our flanks.”


    She knew what she needed to find on the battlefield.  Her study of ancient Sal’nash battles and her experience on Yellowstone told her there was always multiple brain bugs in an invasion force.  Cut those off the Sal’nash ran wild.  She didn’t want them all dead; She needed the Sal’nash focused.  Focused on her.  She looked at the soldier with the massive rifle.


    “Can I borrow your rifle?”


    The woman in the goliath power armor suit looked Allison up and down.


    “Yes ma’am.”


    She offered it to Allison who took it after using her precious blood vitality to boost her strength.  She climbed up on top of the hover tank she was using as cover and knelt down.  She scanned the battlefield until she found the tell-tale big head as she’d decided to call them.  Killing one of those always seemed to get Sal’nash attention in the worst way possible.  She aimed and fired.  The brain bug’s big head exploded in a mist of yellow.  The nearby Sal’nash drones all looked at the source of the bullet.  Allison whistled and yelled in Qual’sa.


    “Yo! Chitin heads.  It’s me Battlelord Allison Wanjala, you want me so badly come and get me!”


    She jumped down as thousands of spikes flew towards her.  Many implanting themselves in the hovertank.  She offered the sniper rifle to the soldier and rubbed her shoulder.  Nutina spoke over comms.


    “What did you say to them? It sure got their attention.”


    Allison shrugged.


    “I insinuated Silwrath were prettier and smarter than them.”


    Nutina laughed.  Silverfang reported that all Sal’nash forces they could observe were now converging on the Phoenix and her troops.  Command and Control echoed the same, only they advised it was every single Sal’nash on the planet and the last living super-hive.  Allison braced herself.  Things were about to get interesting in that, well we’re fucked sort of way.  She spoke on troop-wide comms again.


    “Remember this is what we want.  If they’re coming after us, they’re not going after civilians.  Phoenix lay down suppressing fire with the plasma turrets. Stay tight protect each other.  Our armored vehicles are our shell and we’re the claws and teeth.  Do not kill the big heads, we want the Sal’nash focused on us. Let’s make em’ bleed!”


    When she finished giving her orders, her troops unleashed every manner of death they had at hand.  Sal’nash were dying by the hundreds.  They held strong for several minutes, but the flanks were starting to collapse.  There were just too many Sal’nash.  They had pulled out larger Sal’nash.  Each was twenty feet tall.  They were basically organic mecha.  One was closing to take out the hovertank on their left flank.  The hovertank was blasting it with everything it had but the accuracy of its fire was off.  Two of the goliaths that had been surrounding her were down.  She grabbed one of their vibroswords and pushed blood vitality to her muscles and enhanced her speed.  She wasn’t going all out but she needed to do something to turn the tide.  She lept on top of the nearest hovertank and then ran across the tops of her armored vehicles and finally on to the last hovertank then she jumped high raising the blade up aiming for the giant Sal’nash battle bug’s head.  Her strike was true and she slid down it using her vibroblade to cause drag.  She landed on her feet as the giant collapsed killing a veritable swarm of lesser drones.


    Allison dropped the sword and rushed behind cover.  Her actions had reinvigorated her troops, but she had also taken three spines.  Two would kill her… at least for a while.  She could not afford to go down yet.  She pulled out each of the spines trying to minimize her poison exposure.  She tapped her comm.


    “Leshy, I need ten doses, and I need them now.”


    Leshy hesitated, Allison didn’t have time.


    “You transport them to me now.  I’ve taken three spines, I’m already dead.  I cannot go down until reinforcements arrive.  We are losing this battle.”


    She was losing consciousness.  One of her troops kneeled down.


    “Battlelord!  Medic!”


    Allison waved him towards the pack of injectors that just materialized.


    “Both in my ceratioids now, that’s an order soldier you inject every last drop!”


    He grabbed the injectors and stabbed her.  Allison screamed as her body burnt away the poison and her injuries healed instantly.  Then she snarled and stood up.  She tossed the soldier aside then she lunged onto the battlefield and let loose.  She started tearing Sal’nash apart with her bare hands, fangs and anything else she could find to harm them.  By the time she was seeing anything but red she had drained her fourth super drone of all its blood and left a pile of corpses so deep she’d doubled what her troops had managed up until that point.  Dhampir’s only real limitation was blood vitality, their mortal body and how powerful the vampire that spawned them was.  For Allison on ten doses of the serum that meant she could move as fast as the ten thousand year old Isis who if she chose, could annihilate entire armies with superspeed before they even realized they were dying.  Unfortunately, Sal’nash were more numerous than most historical human armies and also more durable.


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    As the last super drone fell, she stood there in her shredded school uniform with dozens of Sal’nish spines sticking out of her.  She was bleeding from numerous wounds.  However, she was flushed with blood from her numerous kills and the serum was still going.  She glared at the next wave as she pulled spikes out of herself two at a time.  She screamed and instead of waiting for the Sal’nash to come to her, she charged them.  She had her hand around her first target’s neck when the ground shook and the rear ranks of the Sal’nash exploded into gushes of yellow blood.    She heard the sonic boom afterwords.


    She looked up and orbital strikes along with bombing runs from Zeus bombers were tearing through the Sal’nash ranks.  Drop ships were creating contrails in the sky as their hulls cooled in the lower atmosphere.  Her first wave was eager to prove themselves worthy of the Battlelord.  Allison pulled a spike out of herself as a Sal’nash hit her with a last desperate attempt to end her.  She collapsed to her knees, and she watched her forces advance.  Pinning the Sal’nash into a kill box.  She smiled and her hands fell to her side.  She felt a familiar warmth about her.  She looked up and it was Seraph again.  Wrapping her wing around Allison.  Allison was very lightheaded as the venom started to burn through her veins.


    “You said you weren’t going to save me again.”


    Seraph looked Allison over with an appraising eye.


    “I am not.  I do not interfere with mortal affairs.  It is not my purpose.”


    Allison waved the Sal’nash spike in her hand at Seraph.


    “You pretend you don’t feel anything, but you feel stuff.  I see through you. You’re a terrible liar.  If you’re not here to save me then let me die in peace.  So, I can get up sooner.”


    Allison looked at the Sal’nash spike, she was waving around and tossed it aside.  Seraph looked at the young dhampir who was barely conscious and barely making any sense or perhaps making too much sense.


    “You know your eyes give me a headache.  It is like I’m seeing too much.  Ugg, what do you want?”


    Seraph looked at the battle raging around them.


    “You sacrifice yourself over and over again for these lesser beings.  Do you derive some pleasure from it?  Has the anomaly tricked you into this?  What is your purpose?”


    Allison looked up at Seraph and blinked slowly.  This was definitely the most drunk and high she’d ever been.  Effects of the Sal’nash poison.


    “You’re like… the supreme being who knows everything and every molecule in the multiverse so why don’t you tell me?”


    Seraph brushed Allison’s bangs out of her face and swept up some blood that was trickling out of her mouth from a lung wound that had healed.  Allison pointed at Seraph’s hand.


    “See there, right there, that’s some mom shit right there.”


    Seraph looked at her hand then shook her head.


    “Nonsense. You are unknowable as is your purpose.  You are of the anomaly.  What is she planning?”


    Allison blinked up at Seraph.


    “She dead sister.  She dead and gone.  Sister, I mean Seraph… she’s gone you killed her, yesh you’d think you’d remember that.  Unless you’re really my mother and boy wouldn’t that be a trip.  You can’t be my mom, because mom is my mom.  I love mom.  I wish I was at home with mom.  She’d make me feel better, she always makes me feel better…”


    Seraph gently laid Allison down as the girls breathing stopped and her eyes glazed over.  She knelt down and closed Allison’s eyelids.  She reached out her hand and touched the girl’s cheek.  It felt cool to the touch already.  Nutina had noticed Allison’s fallen form and rushed back towards her.  She scooped up the teenager.  Seraph reached after Allison but retracted her hand and she looked at it.  The blood from the child seeped along her fingers.  She quirked her head to the side then she vanished.


    Nutina ran Allison all the way to sick bay.  She laid the girl gently on one of the medical beds.  Casualties had not been retrieved yet, so the medical bay was currently empty but ready to provide medical aid.  Leshy and Futara rushed over.  Nutina was checking Allison for any signs of life.  Her purple claws spread out over the dead battlelord’s form.


    “She slew a quarter of the Sal’nash forces herself with her bare hands.  She had so many spines in her I lost count.  You can save her, yes?  You have before.”


    Leshy sighed and pulled a vial out of stasis and put it into an injector.


    “Hold her down.  This is going to be very unpleasant for her she may respond violently.”


    Allison who was in the blissful darkness of death far away from pain and suffering was suddenly brought screaming back to the world of the living with a serum injection.  She screamed as her blood burned.  The Sal’nash poison was literally being seared out of her system.  She struggled to get up.  It took Nutina, Futara, Leshy and another two Silwrath to hold her down.  Allison was screaming herself hoarse as the serum rapidly stitched her together.  While she was dead her body had managed to fix most of the heart and muscle damage.  With this dose of the serum, she was fully healed in seconds.  The problem was she was completely exhausted.  Once she stopped struggling the group released her.  She tried to get up again.  Nutina held her down.  Allison shook her head.


    “My troops need me.”


    Nutina patted Allison’s shoulder.


    “We have pushed the Sal’nash back and have boarded the hive.  Our forces are converging on the controlling intelligence.  The second super-hive has been destroyed.  We have won this battle.  You have won this battle.  You did your duty, you inspired us.”


    Allison let her head fall back down.


    “Did you see her?”


    Nutina looked at Allison.


    “See who, Battlelord?”


    Allison waved her hand weakly.


    “The angel with black wings and platinum armor.”


    Nutina looked up at the two medical professionals, both shrugged.  Leshy touched Allison’s other shoulder.


    “You were dead briefly, hallucinations during clinical death are normal.  It is just your mind trying to make sense of what it is perceiving.  Battelord, you need to calm yourself.  You have annihilated your nanite population.  We will need to keep you in a clean quarantine field until I can program more nanites with your source code.  Just lay back and rest.”


    Leshy looked up at Nutina.


    “You have selected your forces and your leadership team well.  They are capable of directing your forces while you recover.”


    Allison sighed and nodded.  She let her eyes close.  She drifted off to sleep.  Nutina looked down at the sleeping battlelord then looked up at Futara.


    “Futara, what did she do to herself?  She was moving so fast we couldn’t even see her, and she was unstoppable but she was vicious.  She was on a rampage.  I have never seen such violence... ultraviolance.”


    Futara looked at Leshy who nodded.


    “She is her third.  She should know.”


    Futara motioned for Nutina to follow her.  As wounded were being brought in.  Futara looked at the casualties.


    “I don’t have long.  She is using a serum designed by the Commonwealth.  It lets her reach her full physical potential, but her body is not meant to handle it nor is her mind.  She asked for ten doses, and it appears she injected them all at once.  She shouldn’t use more than one a day, and the doctor just gave her another two doses to revive her.  I need to go ma’am.”


    Nutina nodded.  Futara rushed off to see what they could do to save the wounded.  Nutina’s wings dropped as more and more of their forces were brought in, there would not be enough space.  She looked at the sleeping battlelord.  The pain she’d seen in the young human’s eyes.  What had Allison suffered to make this battle a victory?


    Nutina walked to C&C and relieved the human Major that had been overseeing operations.  She leaned down and looked at the holo-display.  She marveled at these human contraptions.  While she could get topography with a screen, this was a whole new level of detail.  She brought up displays for several of the troops who were assaulting the hive that had crash landed after a failed launch attempt.  It was heavily damaged.  It looked like their hangar bays took the brunt of the damage which is why their ground forces had been spared Sal’nash air superiority.  She brought up Silverfang squad leader who was leading the Hive assault.


    “Thomas Elk, what is the status of your assault?”


    The wolf-born sent her a layout of the Hive and where he had teams deployed.


    “We’re being systematic about this, ma’am.  Pushing the remaining forces back to the center of the Hive from all parts of the ship.  Not letting any through.  We have only had light casualties so far.  We have faced little to no concentrated resistance.  Whatever Destroys the Darkness did she sure cleared the defensive forces out.”


    Nutina nodded as she flicked through the different squads.


    “Objective remains the same.  Neutralize the central intelligence hub and eradicate all Sal’nash.”


    Thomas gave a thumbs up.


    “Roger that, ma’am.”


    Nutina spoke to each area commander to get updates on progress.  There were numerous ground assaults ongoing.  She checked in with the Wendigo next.  The eminence hit his chest when he saw Nutina.


    “First Trimarch!”


    Nutina saluted him back.


    “Status report.  What’s the damage to our fleet?”


    The green Silwrath picked up a tablet.


    “We lost the Tagga and the Gatu, in addition to the five local patrol vessels.  Fifteen fighters. Total casualties four hundred and twenty-three.  The bulk of those were from the destroyed ships.  All hands were lost.  Thirty-four people were injured.  The rest were killed in action.”


    Nutina’s wings drooped.


    “And damage to our remaining craft?”


    “Minor.  Repairs are already underway.  Some defensive weapon systems.  Hull breaches in non-critical areas.  We’ll be able to get the fleet underway within the hour.  Engineering teams from the System’s Alliance ships are providing assistance.”


    The eminence looked at Nutina up and down.


    “And our ground forces, how did they fair?”


    Nutina’s wings twitched.


    “We’re still trying to get a handle on numbers.  At least forty dead, three times that number injured.”


    The eminence’s wings drooped.


    “We have paid a heavy price for this victory, sister.  What of the battlelord? Why is she not taking this report? Is she among the dead?  Last report was she’d been injured and collapsed on the battlefield.”


    Nutina shook her head.


    “No, she is in stable condition in the medical bay.  She’ll be combat ready within the hour.”


    The tension in the eminence’s wings evaporated.


    “We should discuss her exposure on the front lines.  She is a valuable asset and should not be risking herself so recklessly.”


    Nutina closed her fists and leaned on the C&C console.


    “She took a force of four hundred and held the line against a force of eight thousand.  It was not recklessness that drove the Battlelord to fight with her troops shoulder to shoulder it was necessity.  Without her tactics and her personal sacrifices in that battle we would have been wiped out.  Hundreds of thousands of non-combatants would be dead.  You should not doubt her choices.  It was not your fleet that won the battle, it was the Battlelord’s leadership.  Without her this planet would be devoid of life and we would have two super-hives and a ground assault hive roaming free.”


    The eminence’s wings drooped.  He bowed his head.


    “You are right First Trimarch.  I have spoken out of turn.  Glory to your lost.”


    Nutina ended the comm and continued coordinating.