《TriThenar Space [Base Building and Army Losing]》 Chapter 1 Last Day on the Job Bioforms 0/0 aka, biomass used vs biomass available Powered Armor 0/0 aka occupied and functional human equipment vs total equipment Lost Machina Artefacts 0/0 aka functional and armed protochronian technology vs total protochronian artefacts I peek over the lip of my rudy trench, inhaling boiling air from my suit¡¯s rebreather. Of course those last shots hit my air supply too. My HUD adjusts the amount of life support left, numbers spinning as four autocannons pivot towards my groin. ¡°Got a leak here, lettin'' out emergency air¡ªbetter grab a top-up, mate, quick as ya can!¡± Says the suit in its distinctly incorrect Australian accent. Of course it had to be an aussie. Just what I need. *click click click* echoes through the trench as firing pins slam against empty champers. Long since dry of bullets. ¡°Can it you stupid bot. Can¡¯t you tell the pilot¡¯s already dead?¡± I snap, giving its servoes a power-armor enhanced kick. Steel snaps under my boot, hydraulic fluid sprays across the groin and stomach of my armor, as if the dead pilot¡¯s soul lingers, wishing to mock his murderer. I glance down at the cyborg, was the pilot even male? Impossible to guess after the augmentation they¡¯d undergone to become a juggernaut. Bile rises in my throat at the thought of having myself cut apart and fused into the battle mech. Absolutely disgusting. My helmet chirps at me, automatically opening the channel to my ¡®squadmate¡¯. ¡°Phfina? Awre you awight?¡± Asks a lisping voice too young to be on the battlefield. Especially this battlefield. ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I wince, trying not to let the pain show. ¡°Suit is buggered. Ah, can you check that bunker for a spare?¡± I manage to say, struggling to keep my voice even as I duck beneath the edge and face my only remaining ally. She¡¯s picking her way through the trench, heading towards a tunnel entrance. It''s some kind of ammo depot or bunker. The girl¡¯s suit is identical to mine, eight feet tall, made from layers of composite armor to deflect multiple hits from any angle. Except for the pilot. Given her handicap of being three and a half feet tall, I''m impressed she can move at all in that thing, albeit in a stiff legged waddle. We really should have used something other than artillery shells as stilts, they¡¯re too rigid. Seems like they¡¯re tripping the suit¡¯s crush limiters. All the pesky little bits of software that keep the powered armor from actuating its limbs beyond what is humanly possible; and turning us into jelly along the way. Things I wouldn¡¯t have to worry about in her place¡­ Logic whispers an answer to my problems. I¡¯m the one fighting for us, it¡¯s only right for me to take the working armor. Kerrigan would last whole minutes in my busted suit before it cooked her alive. Disgust overloads me, hating that I even considered the thought! ¡°Otay Phfina.¡± Is Kerrigan¡¯s response, oblivious to my vile machinations. Nausea hits me harder than bullets. A one two combo with her innocence that hammers my ribs. She trusts me completely, if I asked she wouldn¡¯t hesitate to swap suits. Might even ask if the air was supposed to burn as she handed me the only good rebreather. A tear rolls down my cheek. No, This is my battlefield, I won¡¯t lose myself. We will live or die together. They might have taken Earth away from us, but we¡¯re still human! A blind scanner ping ripples through the trench, bouncing off our armors before I can duck or hide. In seconds those radio waves will tell someone exactly where we are. Probably enter us into their network of targeting computers and send an artillery shell at our predicted locations. ¡°Kerrigan! Run!¡± I shout, checking the rounds in my flechette pistol. But I already know the answer. The pistol¡¯s electronic readout displays 0/100. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Kerrigan¡¯s shuffle turns into a frantic straight-legged waddle, flailing as the suit compensates for a kid pilot. I don¡¯t want the last thing she hears to be my shouting. So I activate the com once more. ¡°Thanks Kerrigan. Be quick now.¡± I gasp, doing my best to keep the pain to myself. No reason to make a child half my age worry about my bullet wounds. Besides, I already rubbed some dirt into them, nothing more I can do now. My armor, slick with hydraulic fluid slips off the Juggernaut, sending me cartwheeling over autocannons and empty missile racks. Their dry clicking chases me into the mud twenty feet below. Suit dampeners cushion the blow, only sending fire through the bullet holes in my side and shoulder. I need to get into the bunker before artillery or some curious little killbot shows up. The battlefield above the trenches is entering a lul, most factions seem to have their power cells sabotaged and are struggling to find replacements that don¡¯t fuse their circuits. Courtesy of yours truly. A fact only the Novan Technomancy of Steel is aware of. I think. I really hope so¡­ Which is why I¡¯m hiding on what I thought was their last soldier, praying the next Technomancer wave won¡¯t come, or will be another bulletless juggernaut. Anything more than an unsuspecting soft dick will be the death of me. Flashing lights warn of my left reactor overheating, going super critical. Normally I could shunt spare coolant from my right to even out the load, but it¡¯s nonfunctional from the five autocannon bullets inside it. Minutes of air left, enemies incoming, and busted armor. Sorry Kerrigan, this is as far as I go. My hud blinks red. A new warning appears. ¡°Oi, big one¡¯s on the way¡ªgrab your dingo an¡¯ kiss that bitch goodbye!¡± Says the suit. ¡°Of every accent in the universe, why did it have to be Australian!¡± The sounds of screaming artillery shells and laser fire cease abruptly as the few survivors of this pocket war receive the same warning. Except the Tulvarians who continue their war-hooting. For spacefaring iguanas I would have expected more intelligence from them, or at least vocalizations that are distinguishable from a dozen bovines in heat. A thin line of black appears in the atmosphere above me. No reading on the HUD means the missile is out of my suit¡¯s scanner range, yet visible. An infantryman¡¯s way of saying ¡®InterContinental Ballistic Missile¡¯. I swallow, trying to work spit back into my mouth. The missile is falling straight down, plummeting on an angle of attack that is close to ninety degrees, indicating an orbital launch. Probably one of the warships who are here on ¡®observational¡¯ duties. ¡°Please don¡¯t be a Technomancy nuke.¡± I whisper. I value my own hide quite highly, it¡¯s the best one if I can be allowed to say so. Yes, that¡¯s not saying a whole lot considering I''ve only had two bodies, but still! Nuclear annihilation is low on my list of preferred deaths. Energy batteries whine, thrumming to life for several horrible seconds. Each instant bringing the missile deeper into our atmosphere. A dozen lasers illuminate the sky. Nine go wide, vanishing into the darkness of space at .9C. Effectively the speed of light. Three beams score direct hits, one on the nose and two center mass. A blue sphere glows softly, little more than the blink of death. The missile, dropped from orbit, is shielded. No one puts shielding on an average missile. It can only be one thing. Someone broke the rules and decided to flip the table. Win the war by erasing everyone, including themselves. Galactic sanctions would be imposed, a small comfort to my soon-to-be vaporized body. Damn, two lives and I couldn¡¯t get laid in either one. Life¡¯s just not fair. A nuclear flash illuminates my world. Colored electric green by the instant sun over me, tattling on the treaty breaker. Why would the Technomancy drop a nuke on little ole me? They''d broken the only rule -tenuous as it might be- during this battle royale. More confusing still, they relied upon the solarium mines native to this world more than any other faction! Why poison the well? Now the nuclear radiation would be absorbed into the mines, irradiating anything that attempted to harvest them for the next millenia, if not two. Worse, the solarium would operate at one tenth efficiency until the radioactive particulates worked themselves out of the crystal lattice, a galaxy spanning death knell. My faceplate glass polarizes to a hard mirror finish, deflecting nuclear light for all its worth. I¡¯m too close. Soon the shockwave will hit. Motors whine, slamming the opaque ¡°Hazardous Environmental Litigating Protections¡± over my faceplate. The HELP system is designed to ricochet bullets and horny exes, like a steel shutter slamming closed. The highest level of protection possible for an armored trooper. I sigh, surprised to still be alive. ¡°NUCLEAR DETONATION DETECTED!¡± ¡°FIND COVER!¡± ¡°Yeah yeah, thanks a lot. Never would have seen that without you.¡± I say, chinning the faceplate to silence the alarm. All goes white. Chapter 2 Thirty six hours prior to nuclear launch I freeze, wishing my eyes are deceiving me. Eyelids actuate, blinking several times in unseeing disbelief. This can¡¯t be possible. It just can¡¯t! I pinch my arm pain mute against the dullness of my soul. There is no avoiding it, not with that trashy octopus tattoo and its small blue rings on his neck. I¡¯ve always hated that tattoo. Worse, I hate it more when Ashley¡¯s perfectly manicured nails cover it. She¡¯s even wearing our ¡®best friends forever¡¯ necklace, a half of a broken heart. How fitting. There is no mistaking the two people I know best in this world, nor are there any misinterpretations of what they¡¯re doing on top of each other. Clothes are on, but that doesn¡¯t hinder Ashley¡¯s gyrations. The slut is riding my boyfriend, while his tongue is playing hockey with her tonsils. On a purely cognitive level I¡¯m impressed at her flexibility. My mind¡¯s pitiful attempt to shut out the trauma and process something. It doesn¡¯t work. My mouth hits the floor still not open as wide as theirs ¡ªoh gawd, where are their tongues going?!¨C alongside the cookies I baked. It took me all night to bake those lil buggers, most of that time spent shaping them into protoss pylons and cute banelings! And now they¡¯re crumbs. The sound of tupperware bouncing does nothing to disturb my roommate or my boyfriend, if anything, it encourages deeper passions. I want to puke, to disappear from sight, to cease existing. Fly into the sun and vanish from disgust. Throw myself down the six flights of stairs I just climbed to deliver my affection and tell Baz I was finally ready. At least I hadn¡¯t given him that. Like he would give a damn. Ashley will be his whore before I can reach our apartment. I want to scream ¡®go fuck yourselves¡¯ but fear that will only make it a reality. My thoughts repeat down the stairwell, across campus, and into my dorm room. The one I share with Ashley the whore and two other girls. Our apartment consists of four total rooms, a kitchen and common area, the bathroom, and our two bedrooms, one of which I share with Ashley. Making us the closest of roommates. ¡°Oh for fuuuuckkkssake!¡± I cry, burying my head in my pillow and screaming. How am I going to look her in the eye? I need to get out of here, finals are over, they finished last week and the only reason I¡¯m not on a lake retreat with mom and dad is cause my now EX-boyfriend Baz wanted to spend time with me. The asshole. ¡°Hey, is that Athena?¡± Says a voice in the next room. ¡°Sounds like she forgot the sugar in those cookies¡­¡± ¡°Again? Bummer, they were so cute. Should have had Ashley help her. She just loves baking.¡± A door squeaks open, and one of my neutral roommates knocks twice on my open door, more to announce herself than to ask permission. ¡°Hey Thena, some guy from the college offices hand delivered this letter for you, it¡¯s all official looking and like, addressed specifically to you dude.¡± I know it¡¯s Savannah, the Cali girl. She¡¯s a sweet blonde, but I want none of her cutesy freckles or dude-bro-ness today. ¡°I¡¯m not a dude.¡± I snap. ¡°Sorry, its like, gender neutral.¡± She says, entering my room and placing the letter on the nightstand I share with the whore. Why would you do this to me Ashley? And with Baz! Of all the people WHY YOUR BROTHER?! NO! She is the last thing I ever want to think or hear about again. There is a two week break between final exams and the next semester starting. Plenty of time for me to get out of this whorehouse and find a new apartment! Maybe the letter is an invitation to the Dean¡¯s list or something. Summer semester is weird, students take one class at a time but its everyday for a few weeks. They call it learning by immersion. A style that didn¡¯t work well for me. Fall and winter terms I passed all my classes with flying colors. Shaking hands grasp the letter, going clammy. I¡¯m trembling so badly that fingers slip and tear the letter right down its center. The college¡¯s fancy seal is ruined, so much for showing this to mom. ¡°Christ Athena, can¡¯t you even open a letter?¡± I grumble, tears already welling in my eyes. If I start crying now, I won¡¯t be able to stop before Ash-Whorely gets home. Hatred steadies my hands, allowing me to piece two letter halves together. ¡ª Notice of Academic Probation Dear Athena Finley This letter serves as an official notification regarding your current academic standing with [University Name]. Our records indicate that your cumulative GPA of .5; has fallen below the minimum threshold required for satisfactory academic performance as outlined in the College of Engineering¡¯s guidelines. As such, you have been placed on academic probation, effective immediately, until such time that your GPA exceeds a 2.0 and you are, once again, on track for graduation. Until such time as your GPA improves, all scholarships are suspended. Academic probation is a structured period during which you are expected to improve your academic standing to meet the necessary requirements for continued enrollment in your program. During this probationary period, you will need to adhere to specific guidelines designed to support your academic progress and ensure your success in the program. Failure to meet the minimum standards listed below by the end of this period may result in further academic action, including but not limited to suspension or dismissal from the university. You are required to meet with the [enter colleges name]¡¯s dean to discuss potential improvements. We strongly encourage you to consult with your academic advisor to develop a comprehensive plan for improvement. This may include recommended study resources, academic support services, and a suggested course load adjustment to better support your academic goals. Our institution remains committed to helping you achieve success, and there are numerous resources available to assist you during this probationary period¡­ ¡ª ¡°What¡­ the¡­ FUCK!¡± They were putting me on academic probation for failing summer school? These cunts didn¡¯t even have the decency to fill out a form right! Who were they to ruin my life? I throw the letter and scream into my pillow. Pent up tears find an exit through my nose, snot leaking as emotions break through. How could this be happening? The scores from my finals aren¡¯t even back yet! And I thought I did great! ¡­ Shit¡­ You never do as well as you think on finals. I must have flunked all of them. But this is only the summer term! Sure I failed my underwater basketweaving class over the summer, but that doesn¡¯t count. It was a summer elective class meant to help me move in and socialize¡­ How are they punishing me when I got straight As last year! Well, until Baz slid into my life with that cute aussie accent. AH! Why are they coming for me now? Fukfukfuckfuckitycuckfucksucking! How long I cried is a secret only my pillow knows, but my eyes were still wet when the bedroom lights flicked off. Across the hall I hear Savannah talking. ¡°Move to Utah you said, we don¡¯t have blackouts like Commie-fornia you said!¡± Snaps Savannah, smacking her lips like she just applied a fresh lacquer of gloss. She¡¯s plastic as all hell, but I can¡¯t help but smile at the sarcasm. ¡°Someone probably tried to run too many dildoes off the same breaker. Give it a minute.¡± Says our fourth roommate. Faint buzzing fills my head, like there is a fly around my ponytail. I reach up to swat it, only for my hand to go limp. My eyes are closed, squeezing out the last of my tears, but I can see a blue window in front of me. ¡°Great, my bae- NO! EX bae! My ex cheated on me so hard I¡¯m hallucinating.¡± ¡°Whoa. What is- ¡­ Hey Sav, did you put weed in our cheerios again-¡± ¡°No¨C I mean, I totally did, but Baz is gonna throw this wicked party¨C¡± [HELLO PEOPLE OF¨C ah hell jim, what is this planet called again?]Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. [Earth. Like it always is.] [Shit, that last one being called Eden has got me all thrown off kilter] The words are speaking into my brain directly, verbally and visually being displayed on the blue screen in English. Which does nothing to make the two voices sound less like Curly and Moe stooging up a storm. This is easily the worst trip of my life. I¡¯d rather have a schizophrenia break than listen to this geriatric bullshit. Mentally I try and dismiss the message, receiving a red flash and slight screen shake in way of refusal. ¡°Great, the two stooges now have unskippable cutscenes.¡± [HELLO PEOPLE OF EARTH! We represent your gracious overlords, the protectors of your spiral arm, and you are our planted children. I¡¯m pleased to inform you all that you¡¯ve exceeded all our expectations for a successful crop, which is excellent news for us both! Since your society will still persevere after our culling. Now I know that word has some unfriendly connotations to some of you, but our holy Singularity has devoted a great deal of resources in keeping your planet alive. We are only collecting a portion of what is owed. Think of it like taxes. We¡¯ll be drafting everyone between the ages of twelve and forty two. Roughly four billion people who will then join our honourable warriors on the frontlines.] Culling? Unfriendly connotations is right! That¡¯s what we do to parasites or extraneous bits in a computer, not living breathing people! Wait, conscription? Taxes? This can¡¯t be happening. Drafted? But, that means joining the military. Or uhm, space force. Who will we be fighting? It¡¯s all too much to process. I go limp. They can¡¯t take me if I won¡¯t get out of bed. No interstellar wars for me. I¡¯m not going to be drafted to fight an interstellar war? I reach into the nightstand and pull out my high school graduation gift. A pistol, something of an oddball that dad decided I needed. It¡¯s an older model, an FNX-9 with seventeen rounds of nine millimeter bullets in each of my three magazines. Dad said I needed protection in case boys weren¡¯t turned off by my crippling addiction to Starcraft and for once, he is right. No one is going to kidnap me. The pistol weighs my hand, slowing down my thoughts. Tempering the fire of wrath to a cold logic as we are forced to contemplate who to shoot. My apartment walls are thin, drywall and studs. This isn¡¯t a good place to fight- -Although, if the aliens take me¡­ I won¡¯t have to share a room with Whorely anymore if they take me. Guess there are worse things. Part of me embraces the concept, eager to escape the cheating siblings. Really, who cheats with their blood relative? [I see some of you are reacting poorly to this news. Arming those missiles will not prevent us from taking them. All nuclear devices will serve the Singularity well and be counted against Earth¡¯s galactic debt. So you are only harming your own future prospects by launching them. Have no fear, if you comply peacefully then we will drop off nine gates that will allow instantaneous transportation to any continent, as well as to the two gates we¡¯ve already left in orbit. Your sacrifice is the price of admission into the Holy Singularity proper. Once your back taxes are paid in full you¡¯ll be a voting member of our union and warranted all the rights of citizenship. Your entire planet will be modernized as soon as we take the mining world of Syrak-9. All taxable proceeds will then be routed through your earth. Just imagine that, a stable universal income for the entire planet. Soon you will have all the modern amenities of nanotech, holograms, and instant interstellar communication. Welcome all. Now just sit tight, we¡¯ll be teleporting all munitions, nukes- oh wow, you Chinese really went crazy with these, two hundred thousand nukes. Naughty naughty.] By the tone of his ¡®voice¡¯ Athena could envision the announcer waggling his finger. Like they were some misbehaving little child. Quite rude, but not necessarily undeserved, China only publicly admitted three thousand nukes and signed treaties promising trade concessions if they restrained themselves to that number. It was a small factoid of my nuclear engineering class, a prime example of politics ruining any integrity engineers like myself should have enjoyed. ¡°A hundred times the treaty amount. Damn China, you made out like billion dollar bandits.¡± An old saying comes to mind, mixed and mashed with two others. It¡¯s only cheating if you get caught, but in love and war there are no rules, only the winners who are left. [Cmon Haime, you¡¯re butchering the announcement!] Snapped a second voice. [Right right, oh where was I? Eh, doesn¡¯t matter. Have your gates, we¡¯ll be taking guns, bullets, nukes, four billion ish people and yada yada. You¡¯ll be mindwiped and then flashtrained to fill in our gaps. If you find any of this disturbing, be sure to report to your nearest medical professional. We give them weekend trainings specifically on recursive mindwipes! Toodles.] [HAIME! DO IT RIGHT!] [Okay, fine. Look here earthlings. I was once in your shoes and I understand how confused you must be. But the Novan Technocracy of Steel is about to seize this world. See that ¡®of Steel¡¯ part in their name, it¡¯s not for show. They¡¯ll lobotomize every last one of you, carve off your limbs so you¡¯ll fit inside whatever toaster or dildo they need to be ¡®smart¡¯. Artificial intelligences rule them completely with zero human oversight or veto power. To them, we are nothing other than wetware. We need more soldiers to hold them back, not here, but on Syrak-9. Win there and the Technocracy won¡¯t be able to fuel their ships and take this earth. Sorry.] He paused, allowing the globe a few moments to process the message. [You¡¯ve got a shit choice. If half of you don¡¯t bite the pillow and stop them, they will lobotomize you and everyone you¡¯ve ever loved-] If they started with Baz and Ashley I would not be opposed to that¡­ [-so the Singularity has received emergency orders from our military AIs and civil senate, a unanimous decision mind you, to prevent that from happening. I was drafted as well, this really isn¡¯t a bad thing, just look at me now, Captain of an interstellar colony ship complete with warp drive and teleportation. Some will die, but most of you will become generals, pilots, doctors, and more. We even have a few million slots for colonists. Flash training will give you all the skills anyone could need. It¡¯ll be like going to sleep and then waking up having gone through twelfth grade, college, and a trade school. Except you¡¯ll remember your lessons. Really great tech.] Nothing heralds the transition. Presumably Haime was beaming people into the hold while he spoke, distracting us with meaningless niceties while he plundered Earth. Two soft thumps echoed down the hall, as if Savanah dropped her bowl of laced cheerios, but I was too distracted by the instant teleportation. One second I was laying in bed, wet faced, teary eyed, academic probation letter in front of me, and the next completely naked. Slime coated my entire body in a moistness that gagged thought. I gasp, inhaling to scream, only for warm fluid to fill my lungs. No, not warm, hot, body temperature, slightly salty yet subtly sweet, like a bag of boiled saline poured into Kool-Aid. Kinda tasty in a sweaty way. Glass surrounds me, I¡¯m in a tube, naked. About to drown in whatever concoction they¡¯ve isolated me in. My nostrils flare, inhaling a second time on reflex. I prepare for the end, wishing Baz and Ashley a similar fate. An echo of the announcement rises in my mind, drafting all ages twelve to forty two. Mom is thirty eight years young. She could be here too. Damnit. Seconds pass, I inhale again, but my vision is fine. My mind works. Is this death? Had the tax collectors killed us? Why would tax collectors kill? We were the prize. It was like the IRS collecting your taxes only to put the bills through a shredder. Nothing made any sense. Then I realize waste is standard operating procedure for governments. Amongst four billion people, I¡¯m the typo. Doomed to drown. ¡ª ¡°Final jump portal launched. Geosynchronous orbit achieved.¡± Says the navigation AI, temporarily silencing all other readouts. Diodes and alerts came back in a tidal wave. Beeping, honking, hooting, and all being ignored by the two pilots. ¡°Harvest complete.¡± Chimes an alarm. A zephyr circulates around the cockpit, both pilots hunched over screens, monitoring cryopod readouts for any abnormalities. AI systems sort and categorize almost five billion human beings. 70% of the world was just hoovered up into space using rented teleportation systems. Angry beeping marks two hundred million people as unfit for any possible role within the Singularity. Too many trauma induced psychopaths. ¡°What did these people go through? Why are so many skitzo? Ah hell Jim, the most advanced country is the fatest. We¡¯ll have to reject most of these worthless sacks of shit.¡± Haime says, more for the sake of bitching than for conversation. ¡°Who cares, we got a billion and a half more people than projections accounted for. A billion man! With a B! We can flush the outliers from the past twelve worlds and still exceed every quota for the next two years! Don¡¯t you see it Haime, we¡¯re rich! Hallelujah!¡± Jim shouts, unbuckling his harness and moving to leave. ¡°Abandoning station already? We ain¡¯t even cashed in yet!¡± Snaps Haime, a frown slashing itself across his face. ¡°Bro, I¡¯m just so excited! Even a dead world or the federales won¡¯t break us. I can buy a new head of hair and a century of being twenty five! Gotta go inspect the cargo, see it with my own eyes, not just on sensors.¡± He gasped, feeling lightheaded under the assault of billions of credits. Red warning lights suddenly blare, bathing the cockpit in warnings. ¡°Aw what the hell!¡± Jim snaps, jumping back into his seat and checking the sensor readout. ¡°A portal opening? We launched those seconds ago! Who in their right mind jumps to an uncharted backwater-¡± More red lights appeared. Ships from twelve separate factions were already queued up, transiting through the gate in order of request and priority payments. Haime¡¯s face hangs open, staring at the first ship to emerge. ¡°Jim, if we die¨C¡± ¡°Shutup asshole! Transmit our charter before they vaporize us!¡± Jim shouts. Seconds pass as the sleek crystalline ship emerges from the disk of light. An Azhurai Conglomerate Corvette. Fast, armed to the teeth, and shielded better than most homeworlds. Oddly conical due to the main gun, a prismatic laser array capable of variable output, all the way from scrotum shaving precision to strength capable of peeling away the moon¡¯s regolith layer like one would peel an apple. ¡°Charter has been transmitted. Please leave us alone.¡± Haime prayed. Three lights begin blinking green as missile locks stop tracking the ship. ¡°Azhurai ship turning away, they acknowledge our collection duties as legal.¡± Gasped Jim. ¡°Thank the nameless!¡± Said Haime, collapsing into his chair. A single light began blinking, a com channel. Jim shut his eyes, praying for a moment before answering the com. Two minutes later he spoke. ¡°Shit. Can¡¯t get one over on the Conglomerate. They read our fine print and noticed our open charter.¡± Jim winced, struggling to read the next translation. ¡°We demand first right of refusal concerning any and all special grade merchandise we have aboard-¡± Blaring claxions erupted as twenty additional warships emerged from the portal. Swift Singularity frigates, lumbering moons the Technomancy call dreadnoughts, a swarm of bioships tethered to a single hive mind, and everything in between. Both pilots looked at each other, then got to work. Neither one wanted to catch a stray missile. ¡°Shields to full power. Broadcasting charter to everyone.¡± Said Haime. So many warships above an uncharted world meant only one thing. War. One of those factions would conquer earth, or see it burnt to ashes around them. An easy task given how many guns, bombs, and people Jim had just pilfered from missile siloes and warlords. Now safely defanged in their hold. Instead of on Earth. Without ICBMs or Nuclear weapons these humans had no chance. ¡°Damn. Waste of a good world.¡± Said Jim, maneuvering the arkship behind Luna as the ships began firing. Half at each other, and half at the surface. Chapter 3 The First War for Earth Space combat is generally a long drawn out process as ships detect each other and maneuver across the length of a star system. All that gets dumpstered when it comes to gate battles as twenty ships emerge from the same cubic kilometer of space. In such close quarters visible sensors become meaningful, armor becomes ramming tools, point defence clusters pivot into offensive missiles. Two systems human based civilizations specialize in. Singularity frigates rolled dumping munitions from every tube in a mad scatter. Smart missiles flew at maximum burn seeking targets and finding bioships. Chaff pods, counter mines, and the living ammunition of the biofleet countered with all tentacles, launching their own point defense pods in futile retaliation. ¡°Haime! We¡¯ve got Azhurai missiles headed our way!¡± Jim snapped. ¡°Shut it greenhorn. Keep thrusting.¡± Yelled Haime, watching their velocity increase before glancing at the tactical overlay. ¡°Oh thank the gods.¡± He whispered, visibly relaxing as a dozen nuclear missiles carved the space between Azhurai and Arship. Jim leapt out of his seat grasping Haime by the collar. ¡°WE ARE ABOUT TO DIE!¡± He screamed. ¡°Calm down greenie. You¡¯ve never shared space with the Azhurai have you?¡± ¡°I swear to god i¡¯ll cut your dick off if we die Haime!¡± The older man laughed, knowing there was nothing left to do. ¡°No shame in it. Azhurai shouldn¡¯t be in this spiral arm at all. Anyways, look, the conglomerate is thousands of species working together in a sort of coerced union. But all ships and munitions are built to a strict standard, has to be, otherwise munitions won¡¯t work in different ships. So they are predictable.¡± Haime tapped his neural implant, giving himself a direct slap of dopamine. If he was going to die today, he would die happy. Jim strongly considered shooting him then and there. Hand touching his pistol. The shipboard AI projected itself behind Haime, taking the form of a human woman and shook her head. She didn¡¯t need to say anything, they both knew Jim couldn¡¯t fly the ship without her support. Furious he shoved the dope addict back into his chair. ¡°Then predict us a way out!¡± Haime¡¯s face slumped in the half open smile of an addict receiving their fix.¡°Planets orbit stars, doesn¡¯t mean you can stop night from coming. Azhurai only use cloaked missiles, those are feints. Ha Conglomerate knows they¡¯ve already won, ah and sent those missiles to cover our asses. Look, there.¡± He said, pointing to the tactical projection. A tiny ship, probably the first vessel of an enterprising new species was racing towards the arkship at full thrust, no doubt hoping to hide behind a neutral vessel or land on the moon and stake their claim. Two Azhurai missiles blinked away, cloaking devices activating before beginning their burns. A second later the vessel exploded, shields flickering away as it buckled and bent in half, innards exposed to hard vacuum. Then the second missile hit vaporizing what little remained. Across the atmosphere the battle raged. Singularity point defense beams carved a bioship in half, burning through organic armor in a desperate attempt to divert its momentum. But the Collective knew the value of their ships and the value of a frigate, simple economics took control sentencing every lifeform aboard that bioship to death on the hope of ramming the frigate. A venture both parties were half successful in, as the bioship split, aft end spiraling into deep space while the prow connected amidship. Dropping its shields and puncturing armor. Bioforms would soon infest the human ship turning every hallway into a charnel field. The other factions didn¡¯t give them a chance. Nuclear warheads slagged the bioship into a jet of plasma that poured into the frigate melting the gooey human center. Gaseous steel slagged the reactor and the ship vanished as a second star was created. Of the twenty ships who first transited the gate less than half now maneuvered. Energy collected around the Azhurai prism ship lancing forth to carve three bioships from stern to aft. Jim blinked as the AI classified that single shot as ¡®point defense¡¯. A system generally considered the weakest offensively. ¡°We¡¯re dead.¡± He whispered. As if to mock him the Azhurai ship rotated one hundred and eighty degrees firing their main array to bisect a dreadnought. He was familiar with the Technocracy design, blinking dumbly as the asteroid moon and her ten million crewmen -if you could call wet cyborgs people- died, gone in a second. Then the Conglomerate vessel issued a message. As if firepower needed any commentary. ¡°Comply or be destroyed.¡± It read. Ships continued rotating, but not a single missile or battery fired. A readout of the planet accompanied the message indicating the Azhurai¡¯s plans for development. They would claim two of the surface gates, both located in Eurasia, everything else was free game. Two Singularity frigates angled for the Americas, shadowed by the Technocracy dreadnought. While the injured bioships angled for the southern tip of Africa, clearly the loser of this engagement. Half their ships were gone, easy targets for the more advanced races of a hostile galaxy. Jim and Haime lost interest after the Azhurai laid claim. Earth was going to be carved into pieces then farmed until everything of galactic value bled from the ruined husk. ¡°Poor bastards.¡± Muttered Jim. ¡°Never thought I¡¯d see another Azhurai ship. Twenty billion habitable worlds and they cold dialed this one.¡± Said Haime, shaking his head. ¡°What are the chances four perennial enemies show up the second our gate goes live? Fuck this. I¡¯m leaving. Get us through the gate before another one of the nameless¡¯ clients show up. I get the Singularity and Technomancy monitoring this galactic arm for new worlds, but having two dreadnoughts ready to jump? Collective Bioships too? Hell naw. I¡¯d rather shave my balls in lava.¡± Said Jim, standing and heading for the cryotubes. Haime wore a lazy smile on his face, drugged out of his right mind, ¡°As if you can count past ten! Ha! Azhurai own this system now. Ah, fine, I¡¯ll warm up the engines. Mmmmm, I took too much. Take care of any cargo not worth its hold space and recycle them fatties. Maybe mind wipe one or two of the sweeter things for ourselves. You know what I like.¡± Said Haime, selecting a million cryopods and sending their obese occupants into the protein recycler. ¡°You old perve.¡± Jim sneered, clearing the cockpit as the ship trembled. Emergency thrusters cooled as the main engines returned to normal operations, no longer melting internals for a little more thrust. ¡°Give me gate statuses.¡± Ordered Jim. ¡°Eight gates are unpowered, with only the primary warp gate in orbit possessing the necessary energies.¡± Answered the ship¡¯s AI program, codenamed Felicia. Jim grunted in acknowledgement. He only needed the warp gate to instantly move between systems. While faster than light travel existed on every Singularity vessel, most could only perform jumps within a solar system, and if a captain was fool enough to burn the fuel. Far cheaper to connect a few reactors and power the orbital gate. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Which provided free travel to all species on the sole condition you feed it more power than the jump required. No problem for a starship and nearly impossible for these particular earthlings. Jim winced, one way or another the Azhurai will solve that dilemma, most likely by advancing their newest captives to the point of useful slaves. Within a year they¡¯ll grow crystal mountains to protect their reactors and gate travel. Then the real conquest will begin. At least that is what the Singularity would do. Establish a beachhead with ships then power the much smaller gates for mass transit of resources offworld. ¡°Sucks to suck earthlings. Sorry but you weren¡¯t gonna survive either way. Aint no way to avoid getting fed into a recycler on Syrak-9. Not unless the heavens open and xeno-Jebus saves you. Or Kaalra thinks you¡¯re cute.¡± Says Jim, shaking his head softly before flushing a few hundred thousand morbidly obese. Massive recyclers would break them down into molecules, scrub undesirables like heavy metals, drugs both prescription and recreational, all non-human DNA ¨Cbugs or parasites¨C and then store the molecules in ready to consume bars. The fatties would never choke back another Twinky, but they would be choked back. Good riddance. A few of the women catch his eye, one has a golden ring hanging from her nipple, no tattoos though. Not good enough for Haime. ¡°You and your obsession with pierced nipples.¡± Groaned Jim, already typing commands to the ship¡¯s AI. ¡°Cycle all the skitzos to the back, rank them from least to most insane, then sort out any abnormalities.¡± ¡°Yes sir.¡± Answered Felicia. Blast doors hissed open for him, cycling as he walks. Not paying attention as the AI sealed each door before unsealing the next, it was standard protocol aboard any ship. Just another part of life in hard vacuum. Besides the stroll gave him time to flush a million of the worst basketcases. Six intervening airlocks divided the freighter, preventing any one breach from killing every soul aboard. Still, the ship was larger than imagination, hundreds of billions fit inside each section on this arkship, adding up to the sum total of one trillion cryopods. Jim smiled at the sleeping audience. Occupants hanging on his approval for life and death. About half of those were currently full, but that was alright. You never wanted to be at 100% capacity, then every technical fault or power hiccup would cut into your profits. ¡°Faults detected, unable to access one hundred and four candidates,¡± Began the ship¡¯s AI, ¡°Displaying four million, eight hundred and¨C¡± ¡°Recycle any that have less than ninety percent compatibility with flash training.¡± Interrupted Jim, hoping to save himself some work. Certain mental abnormalities would prevent the flash training from taking hold, and that would result in wig outs. People who remembered their lives on earth and their time in the tubes, as well as the flash training process. Aware of three separate lives which seemed to break people. Or maybe it was just the fact that aliens were real. Schizophrenics were the worst. No matter how thoroughly you erased them, or how many times they underwent flash training it was only a matter of time before they went postal on the same people who paid good money for these draftees. As a freelancer it was easy for Jim to collect a few extra people, but this haul would set a performance record for the galactic quadrant. He¡¯d HAVE to siphon a few million people off the top just to make this believable. Otherwise they¡¯d have a dozen Singularity AIs crawling up and down his throat; investigating every aspect of his cover story. Jim activated his neural link, the -private- one, and sent a dozen messages to interested buyers in two dozen solar systems. [Got extra merchandise, top quality, or in quantity. Need to offload quick. Discounts for purchases exceeding a million.] Jim Sent the message, smiling as buyers lined up. With the numbers they were offering him, the feds wouldn¡¯t be able to touch him. Hell, two crazy aliens were offering him planets! Most likely they were dead worlds stripped of resources, but it was the thought that mattered. He laughed. Hooting with joy for long minutes before returning to work, tablet reading millions of schizophrenics on board. All of them liabilities. ¡°Aw hell, revise ninety percent compatibility with ninety five percent. Loop in the other harvests too. Lets deliver triple-A goods and keep the wig outs to a minimum.¡± Said Jim. ¡°Ten million candidates fall below that threshold.¡± Jim pressed the button to recycle them. Seconds later a message appeared. [ERROR: Recycler is full.] ¡°Oh baby, a hold full of rations and a billion person bonus haul? Yes please, ice my birthday cake some more.¡± Said Jim, casually flushing the remaining nine million people into space. They died without ever feeling a thing. A mercy that Athena Finley would soon come to dream of. The AI dutifully aimed each person on a collision course with the nearest atmosphere, a standard practice meant to burn up on space debris. Over the next few weeks Earth would be treated to countless meteor showers as millions of their draftees returned home. Five minutes later the AI spoke again, ¡°All ten million vented, approximately two hundred thousand anomalies remaining. One urgent fault.¡± Urgent faults included many things, from someone who could not be flash trained all the way up to psionic boarding parties or a -nameless- ambassador. ¡°Teleport me.¡± Snapped Jim, reaching for his sidearm. Cool Vanadium alloy brushed against his fingers. The simplest solution to an ¡®urgent fault¡¯ was a bullet between the eyes. Energy weapons like beamers or lasers or phasers were more effective, but this was a ship. Frangible slugs were safer, poking less holes in things you didn¡¯t want to depressurize.Like the outer hull or your cargo. Loose crazies aboard a spaceship could get them all killed. Blue light flashed once, fading as he appeared in front of a woman¡¯s tube. She jerked in surprise at the arrival, feet flailing as she curled into a ball, arms covering double Ds before her shapely hips twisted, covering herself. Attractive, but not Jim¡¯s type, nor was she Haime¡¯s. That pervert spent too much time in simulations, nowadays the only thing that could provide suitable stimulation came from impossible amalgamations. Things nothing other than a customized robot could provide. Security shielding blinked into life, surrounding Jim. ¡°Is that weapon dangerous?¡± Asked Jim. ¡°Slug based, self contained chemical propellant, with expanding ammunition. Only effective against unshielded soft targets. No ability to penetrate cryotube.¡± Said Felicia. Jim let out a whoosh of air. Moving his finger off the trigger. He glanced up and down the corridor, seeing everyone else asleep in their tubes. ¡°Ha, after this payday, maybe I¡¯ll buy the jackass a few catgirlbots. At least then he¡¯ll leave the merchandise alone.¡± Jim laughed, leveling the pistol at the woman¡¯s nameplate. ¡°Athena Finley¡± appeared on it. His barrel poked the readout, opening a communication link into the cryotube. ¡®Suitability with flash training, 500% match.¡¯ It read. ¡°Five hundred? What the hell? Felicia! Run some diagnostics! Aint no way. What kind of cyber crack are you smoking¨C Ah, the brain scanner fell off.¡± Jim said, fear turning to humor as he realized the tube was suggesting cryogel was the perfect match for flash training. ¡°As if. Ha, we¡¯d clone people if that worked. Hey! Athena Finley,¡± Said Jim, tapping against the cryotube¡¯s glass, ¡°put that crown on or I¡¯m gonna flush you into deep space. You¡¯ll freeze to death mighty fast, but it¡¯ll be a painful few seconds. Bad way to go.¡± Her eyes shot wide, mouth opening as his words were translated. Jim rolled his eyes, ignoring her sudden wet screaming. So hysterical. He held up three fingers, counting down. ¡°Flushing in three, two¨C¡± Athena scrambled, hands grasping in the viscous fluid for the neurallink. It slid onto her bald head, soon inserting itself into the brainstem and linking the onboard AI directly with her consciousness. ¡°Anomaly, compatibility rising to three thousand percent.¡± ¡°Link in cryotubes until compatibility equalizes!¡± Snapped Jim, his mind working as he leered at the readouts. Three thousand percent was impossible for a baseline human. Usually indicating some kind of trauma induced schizophrenia event. Or some abnormality. Except there was a one in a million chance that kept him anchored, staying his itching fingers from disposing of Athena. Two cryopods added their onboard processing forming a three way linkage. Compatibility lowered to 1000%. A near perfect specimen. Young, intelligent but not cynical, cooperative yet independent, that left two remaining questions. Jim¡¯s tongue ran over his lips, working the spit around his mouth. ¡°Analyze ESP potential.¡± He whispered. Chapter 4 Tunnel of Greed Greed tunneled his vision. Anomalies like this are why he didn¡¯t automate the flushing. Sure, it was a waste of time 99% of the time, but that last percent made all the work worthwhile. Felicia, the ship¡¯s onboard AI was more than capable of sorting fringe cases. Instead he did it, hunting for jackpots. Eyes flicked towards his second tablet, the one Felicia was programmed to ignore. Took six months to sneak it by her, had to use a neural shunt in her mainframe, time for it to pay back that investment. Six beings were already starting a bidding war for first dibs on ¡®gifted¡¯ minds. Xenos who would pay anything for a compatible driver- probably incels who choked out their fuktoy and put the braindead body on ice, except one of the high bidders was a race Jim couldn¡¯t turn down. He swallowed, wondering how a member of the nameless caste had found him. They didn¡¯t bother dealing with mortal races at all, how did they even connect to a Singularity backed arkship like him? Shit. Guess you¡¯ll be their problem. Aint my business. Thought Jim. The nameless caste was the most technologically advanced race in the known universe, ancient beyond comprehension and the undisputed masters of the galaxy. So advanced they even held part or all of the nearby galaxies as well. If they asked for something, you served it up on a golden platter. Supposedly they were only the second species to evolve in the galaxy and borrowed heavily from the first¡¯s technological head start. More importantly they only interacted with their direct client species like the Azhurai Conglomerate¡¯s overlords, another long lived race that did their bidding. ¡°ESP compatible. Chance of self activating, 10%. Chance of reaching useful thresholds with unlimited resources, unlikely. Recommendation, clone specimen and use to incubate a higher potential psionic. Or cross pollinate with high order psionic xenos.¡± Said Felicia, speaking through his implants. He shot a message to Exec Kaalra of the nameless. Answering the ambassador¡¯s earlier request with raw scans. If he wanted her, then he could bid on her privately. The response was immediate and decisive, making Jim¡¯s eyes bug out of his skull at the number of galactic credits on screen. ¡°Bummer¡­ I¡¯ll have to settle for buying my own planet.¡± Whispered Jim, doing a victory shimmy with tablet in one hand and pistol in the other. Athena raised her eyebrow, confused why the man was dancing in front of her. Really hoping it wasn¡¯t some kind of alien mating ritual. He looked human, but was beyond psychopathy. ¡°Oh, ahem, you¡¯re an odd one. Each cull there are a few tall poppies.¡± Jim cleared his throat, holstering the pistol. ¡°What would you do to survive?¡± The question was direct, and not intended to be lewd, but it was difficult for Athena to take it any other way when she was naked and imprisoned in goo. Hell, she was practically pre-lubed at this point. A thought the AI translated into words after directly scanning her mind. ¡°I couldn¡¯t even bang my boyfriend. But I would do anything. Maybe even take that pistol after.¡± The words echoed outside the cryotube, my voice perfectly replicated by speakers. Was it even true? How far would I go to survive? Jim jerked back, surprised and blushing a bit. ¡°Ah, uhm, not what I meant¡­ Would you kill to survive?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never killed anyone. So¡­ I might try if I thought I could succeed.¡± Said the AI, once more pulling from Athena¡¯s brain. I wanted to scream, to rip the neural worm out of my mind, or take the spacesuited man¡¯s pistol and blow it out of myself! ¡°Please let me live. Don¡¯t hurt me, don¡¯t make me kill anyone-¡± Jim tapped a button, muting the thought to speech system. ¡°Whiney bitch.¡± He spent the next twelve hours running analysis and diagnostics on Athena, thoroughly mapping every millimeter of her synapses. He didn¡¯t stop there, nor did Felicia who categorized each and every mole on Athena¡¯s body. Even going so far as to transfer her to three other cryotubes and repeating the tests. Always smiling a little more as he repeated one word. As if it was an incantation that would bestow eternal life and bottomless wealth. Athena hated the word, and hated being called a ¡®chimera¡¯. Ick, it even sounded mashed together. Like moldy milk squished into sprouting potatoes, vile and poisonous. Jim never muted the external microphones, soon letting slip details she would rather not have known. ¡°Twelve half siblings, different mothers, dang, dad likes to get busy. Bummer, none have similar traits. Must be from mom¡¯s side. Aw shit, we left the mother on earth cause she¡¯s pregnant. Damn.¡± He tapped his tablets, cursing about leaving the system. Mom survived. She was safe¡­ With Athena¡¯s little sibling. It would have been nice to be a big sister. Weird to be in college with a new sibling, but in a way that only made the bond more special. Besides those twin nuggets of hope, Athena hated everything, from the goo in her armpits and bellybutton to the portly technician, and especially the wires crawling through her brain, occasionally poking a nerve and sending a spasm through her body. This is the worst possible way to have someone inside me. Thoughts of sex sent her into despair. Dad was a cheater. Not just any cheater, but a serial impregnator. Twelve step siblings? TWELVE? That was more seamen than you could stuff into an Ohio Class submarine! When did he even find the time? Dad was always so busy with work and church. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Dad wasn¡¯t just ¡®dad¡¯ he was ¡®Father Finley¡¯, a bishop of their church- It all clicked. The late nights he spent at church, ¡®offering comfort¡¯ or ¡®council¡¯ to the women in his flock. Why the church was mostly women, a solid ratio of seven women for every three men. More than two to one¡­ But all the women had kids. Calling each other brother and sister suddenly took on a new, less altruistic, meaning. Mother¡¯s inexplicable tears suddenly connected with Athena¡¯s heart. Every night she knew where her husband was, with his very own version of Whorely. Crap taste in men might be genetic. Athena scowled at that. Remembering how Mom cried herself to sleep while dad was out late ¡®stuck at church¡¯. More like stuck in a ho. The affairs had been going on for decades. How did Athena not know? Was I raised in a church? Or a cult? Thought Athena. She had no time to process, Jim tapped on the panel, unmuting her mind. ¡°Would you kill your dad?¡± ¡°Ew, what? You dump all this on me and demand answers?! Go ride a broomstick. The pointy end.¡± Says Felicia, reading her mind before she can speak. Jim gets the message and chuckles. ¡°Gun to your head, would you kill your father to survive? Answer carefully, it¡¯s the difference between death and giving birth every second until you die while machines keep you alive. You¡¯ll never taste anything other than a plastic tube, or feel your legs.¡± I look at him, mouth falling open in horror. I¡¯m a virgin, what the hell is he even talking about? Human¡¯s can¡¯t grow more than one kid at a time! Birth every second? Yeah right¡­ Why was he so specific? But the AI reads my mind faster than thought. ¡°Extrapolation, yes and no. In such a scenario where I had a gun to my head and a gun to my father¡¯s head, I would ask him the question-¡± The program shifted pitch to speak with Athena¡¯s voice, ¡°Dad, they say I''ll die if I don¡¯t shoot you, what should I do? Then if he answers I should save myself, I couldn¡¯t kill him. But liars can¡¯t put anyone ahead of themselves. So I would pull the trigger.¡± A long low whistle escapes Jim¡¯s lips. ¡°Good answer. Aight. I¡¯m going to make you a deal. One you¡¯ll accept. A very powerful man, no. The most powerful man in this spiral arm, wants your mind and he is paying for it. Goes by the name of Exec Kaalra. Whatever he wants, you¡¯ll give him and thank him for the privilege to serve. Now go to sleep. The flash conditioning will be a bit painful if you can¡¯t sleep through it.¡± He pauses, pulling a black chunk out of his spacesuit pressing it against the glass and twists, blue light blinks around us. All the lights go out. My pod is suddenly dark. A total void where nothing, not even the light of the adjacent tubes can enter mine. ¡°Listen here. Felicia can¡¯t hear us right now. Chimera¡¯s like you aint exactly legal to sell. What exactly Kaalra has planned for you is a mystery, but the amount he¡¯s paying means you¡¯re special. And I aint letting no one burn out your skull. So listen. I¡¯m gonna to split your mind three ways then entangle em all together. That ought to keep you running for the next few centuries. Maybe longer if you take advantage of the system and roll with it.¡± I scowled at the man, mentally telling him to fellate an elephant and die. Too bad Felicia really wasn¡¯t listening. ¡°Athena, cmon. Look, this is the best deal you¡¯ll ever get! Go along with it and I¡¯ll make sure mom knows you¡¯re safe. Fight me, and I¡¯ll drop a rock on her. Parting out pregnant ladies is messy, but profitable. Work with me here, give me every reason to keep her alive. Earth¡¯s in the shit, but the singularity took over your continent. One message to the higher ups and I¡¯ll have your whole family marked as psychically intriguing. Potential military assets. That¡¯ll keep em safe. Felicia¡¯s already made arrangements, if you cooperate, then you¡¯ll end up in three separate bodies. Tell no one about that. Chimeras are outlawed, if Kaalra finds out he¡¯ll murder you and your whole family, half siblings too. Then push Earth into the sun to be sure. Nameless like him don¡¯t know what a half measure is.¡± Fear illuminated Jim¡¯s eyes, as if the very thought of this ¡®Kaalra¡¯ terrifies him. ¡°Athena, girl, I¡¯m begging you, don¡¯t fuck with the nameless caste. All that bullshit about becoming farmers and generals of the singularity? Aint gonna happen. Except for a few dozen fringe cases like you.¡± He placed the second tablet against her tube, pressing buttons that sent a dataspike into her cortex. Directly downloading information about the modern galaxy into her mind. Earth was going to be flayed, strip mined, and raped for the next century. Unless- -I take Syrak-9. We have five years to take the game world. Called game because the nameless caste demanded their vassal states send a legion to fight and die on it each year. Earth wasn¡¯t being drafted, they were being sacrificed into a meatgrinder so other planets did not have to sacrifice their sons and daughters. ¡°Aint pretty. But you¡± Jim jabbed a finger at my chest, ¡°can win Athena Finley. Find a way. I¡¯ll keep your mother safe, buy her a nice guardian AI. State of the art with a cold fusion reactor and hidden plasma cannons. She¡¯ll never want for anything. A bot like that can do more than the dishes, just think about it, having one of the most intelligent beings in all of creation guide her through the galaxy. Do we have a deal?¡± He whispered. I want to accept, but the neural interface speaks for me in a stilted facsimile. ¡°Flash training will lobotomize me. How can I keep a promise?¡± Jim snorts. ¡°Flashtraining will wear off a cracked-head like yours. Accept it for a few days. Don¡¯t fight it, the machines push harder if you resist so fighting it will cause brain damage. Bad idea. Besides, there¡¯s no need, you¡¯ll eventually break it naturally. When you come to, do NOT talk to the doctors. Continue playing your role. Be the person you are paid to be.¡± I weigh the odds quickly. Making the right decision on the drop of a dime is a skill of mine. Maybe I acquired it playing endless tournaments of 1v1 Starcraft. A talent that serves me well here. Jim has no incentive to help me, but there are no better alternatives. I can only gain. If he does give mom a guardian AI, she¡¯ll eventually figure it out, and force it to find me, something I can facilitate by agreeing. ¡°Make the AI look like me. Otherwise she¡¯ll never be satisfied. I¡¯m the only one she can really trust, just look at dad¡­¡± Jim laughs. ¡°Ah, your old man is a piece of work! Guess that¡¯s fair. You¡¯re allowing me to retire, so I can at least give the same to your mom. Hell, I¡¯ll even clone your cells so she¡¯s really talking to you. Now, keep this secret. I¡¯m just doing my job. We never met, we never spoke, and your mom will be safe for the rest of her life. Which will be extended, I wasn¡¯t lying about the Singularity upgrading earth, we dropped off the gates. Entrepreneurs will probably dial Earth in a few months and start selling goodies at a hundred times the market value. But your mom will get the finest nanotech once I get paid. Gotta keep my word. Nanotech will clear out most diseases and ninety percent of aging related issues. Your mom will probably live past two hundred years old.¡± I hope he¡¯s not lying through that smile. Not like I can pick out a liar, not after dad¡­ What else did he lie about? Then take a deep breath and nod my head. Jim yanks the artefact free, lights return suddenly, and Jim taps the panel a few times, jets of liquid shoot into my tube, coloring the cryogel blue. The last thing I see before my eyes close. I never comprehend what Felicia and Jim do to my mind, nor why they needed multiple cryotubes to sync my brain. >Defragmentation completed. >Neural nodes networked. >Hive mind accepted. >Flashtraining commencing¡­ Chapter 5 Allies or Enemies? and Split Minds My new life flashed before my eyes, weapons instructions, a decade of twenty mile hikes that ended in live fire drills, constant wargames, simunition -a sort of non lethal projectile- games that lasted months on end. Trench warfare with and without live artillery support. Accidents took their toll, many lost the will to fight or gave up and were euthanized by our instructors. Singularity conscripts obeyed or died. All told, we started with a thousand of us ¡®clones¡¯ by the end one hundred and five of us remained. Veterans of war before we ever set foot on the battlefield. I knew it was all a dream, a product of the cryotube¡¯s flash training. But I was no longer the pilot of my own body. It moved and obeyed the whims of Sable Yurten. My new identity. I am Sable Yurten, elite conscript of the Holy Singularity. Our body is teleported once more, this time to a holding area. The cryotubes here are identical, aligned in a hexagonal shape that matches the room we now call home. Only my eyes are open. All others are still asleep, including Sable Yurten. A presence dreams within my mind, picturing a life spent beneath the earth in bunkers filled with ammunition. Dreaming and waking simultaneously is a fever dream. To combat the separate lines of thought I focus on what is around me. Cryotubes line the walls, ceiling, and floor, allowing six rows of human beings to be crammed into the tunnel. Our bodies float in gel under reduced gravity, at peace. Except for me. My heart slows, often stopping for seconds at a time. I never sleep. No, one eye is always cracked, watching armed instructors enter the room, waking my former Earthlings. Blurry outlines don clothing and gear, then seal gasmasks over faces, with only a faint red glow leaking out of their eyes. Through the glass I see a familiar woman. Attractive despite her shaved head. Light glistens off her pleasantly round dome, so similar to how she looked when we both attended earth science 102 a semester ago, and sat opposite each other. Maybe it was some effect of her African heritage, or maybe her parents had not dropped her as a kid, but the shaved head was startlingly feminine. So when Doctor Abrahms went on his rants about railguns being a thousand years out, we had front row seats to each other. I wonder where old Dr. Abrahms is now. Maybe still in the lecture hall standing at the center of the semicircular room. Alone. Robbed of any purpose by his student¡¯s abduction. Regret fills my mind, annoyed that I never learned this woman¡¯s name. Then I curse her. She¡¯s resisting the clothes, covering herself and crying. Curse her stupidity. Play along idiot! Please, don¡¯t make a scene! Medics are not your friend¨C ¨CIt''s too late. One of the proctors has stepped behind her. Pistol exits holster. An energy weapon that creates a tiny ball of plasma no larger than your pinky nail. Precise, there won¡¯t be any overpenetration. Sable¡¯s seen it before. Highly effective against soft targets. Bordering on useless in a fight against the Technocracy who favors heavy cyborgs and vehicles. My classmate¡¯s skull is a soft target, putting on a gory display as the medic provides ¡®recursive retraining.¡¯ She¡¯s learned the last lesson of her life, and has no need of further instruction. Not wanting to emulate her, I go limp in my tube. Sable¡¯s false memories guide my eye as the recruits cloth themselves. The ritual is strange really, there are hundreds of us within this corridor, yet only twelve are ever awoken. Without guns or bayonets the proctors have the upper hand, no amount of wig outs could overpower them. Yet they limit themselves to twelve people on the walkway and twelve tubes decanting. The cycle repeats ad infinitum til I realize why. Each of the twelve is a flash trained human that follows a pattern, the first likes to wear his laces tight, cinching them down so hard his feet turn white. He¡¯s nervous, those laces will have to be loosened soon. A mistake I see repeated in each squad, always by number one. Meanwhile the seventh soldier is always a woman, slender, and taller than average, she has to receive specific gear, or else the rebreather hose won¡¯t reach from her face to the air scrubber. Shaped so similarly to cali-girl Savannah. Each woman makes my heart beat faster, always wondering if this number seven is the genuine Savannah. Our drafters were thorough and have tailored every detail of our flash trainings to individuals. Yet always repeating certain patterns. Which is when I notice number eleven. Busty, not too tall, or short, painfully average really in both height and weight. A fascinating error in the otherwise thorough simulations. We¡¯re Americans, which is to say, fat as fuc. Not half starved levies who completed a hundred mile march in full kit before shipping off to this planet. Sable¡¯s memories explain it, but it¡¯s all I can do to not break into laughter at the cheap excuse. I endure the mirth silently, chuckling until my ribs are sore. Our flash training explained the weight gain as ¡®cryo sickness¡¯. Since we¡¯re asleep but in a vat of nutrients our bodies supposedly absorb everything, putting on extra weight in a necessary inconvenience that will prepare us for half rations in the future. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The excuse is so half baked I let out a real snort, triggering a blinking alarm on my cryopod. Aw crap¡­ I¡¯ve done it now. Play along,. Don¡¯t get shot. Shit, I¡¯m holding my FNX, how I kept it and not any clothes is a mystery that forever damns Jim as a letcher. One of the proctors sees my light blink. Face unreadable under their gas mask. An emotionless stare of twin rubies that sweeps the rows of people ahead of us. Her head jerks facing another proctor. Beneath all the gasmasks and flashtraining we¡¯re still human. Facing someone when we talk is a deeply ingrained habit. Not even helmet integrated radios can defy human nature. The nearest proctor points to me, and the other shrugs, counting pods. They¡¯re decanting the wall opposite me, I''m situated near the back of the room so if they continue their rotation and start at the front of my aisle then I have hours before they¡¯ll reach me. Two more squads are activated, clothed and sent to war. No guns are dispensed. Probably an anti wig-out measure. Which is when they turned around, and started opening my squad. Easier to start at the end and work their way back to front. Our cryotubes hiss open, glass parting along invisible seams. It¡¯s probably not glass at all, but I¡¯m no material engineer. Not yet at least. Most my comrades are slow to wake, allowing the proctors to open twenty four capsules at once, so one squad may arm while the other rises from the coma. I feign sleep, until the flash training rears its ugly conditioning. My body moves without instructions, I extend a hand out of the goo, and the proctors take hold of me, pulling my naked ass out. A surprisingly clean affair. In the low gravity the goo remains in the pod, somehow adhering tighter to the steel tube than my hairless body, which slurps out of the cryogel entirely clean. A quick examination shows that my eyelashes and eyebrows are gone. Creepy. Not that anyone will see under my helmet. My body dons the wargear, helmet, gasmask, then a thin layer of almost spandex, tighter, more form fitting and entirely meant for hazardous conditions. A sort of anti-radiation spanxs-suit. Then comes bra -no way am I going to war without support!-, shirt, pants, body armor for the chest, outer trousers, overjacket, gloves, boots, and the whole mess is then sealed. Like a fremen stillsuit, except meant to keep out radiation instead of keeping us in water. We¡¯ll sweat worse than boiled pigs in these, but we won¡¯t die of cancer. A tradeoff that might be meaningless. Jim¡¯s download warns me of Syrak-9, an irradiated hellscape for half the planet, where only mobile mining cities can exist. Scrapping by on merit of being the only ones stupid enough to risk their lives for the wealth of Solarium mining. Those are off limits to all soldiers as the local population. While the other half of the planet is a forest world, bioengineered plants scrub the toxic atmosphere, and cities that would be more at home in the forests of LothLorien than in space rise thousands of meters into the air. Bioengineering at its pinnacle. It helps to have a planetary shield as well. Orbital bombardments can¡¯t hit the forest cities. They say knowledge is power, but none of that knowledge helps me now. Of a thousand candidates only one hundred and five remain. I watch as my body moves, in control of nothing. This is going to be a problem! I think, watching as my body jogs out of the tuberoom and into some kind of open staging area. Steel walls rise a hundred feet into the air and far deeper below, catwalks run from our hexagonal cryotube rooms across empty space towards a glowing portal. Some kind of instant teleportation gate. To my Earthling brain it looks like one of those old stargates, the ones from the series where a twenty year old was played by a gray haired badass. Captain Kirk he was not, but the series was fun. Until I look down at my hands. Half of Earth is fighting a war after being mind wiped. Maybe Stargate was the psi op it always joked about being, preparing us for the day our world was culled. Come to think of it, the Goa''uld even used the same terminology. Creepy. I keep pace with the squad. Each catwalk passes in front of a floating disk covered in officers. All watching us, several aids move to and fro, giving reports and keeping the logistical war machine running. I¡¯m impressed. Four billion recruits have been drafted, mind wiped, flash trained, and moved across multiple galactic arms in a matter of hours, making me question the volume of war. Is four billion a daily death toll, or have we been recruited with intent. Syrak-9 is a special world. Worthy of a dedicated armada, if the nameless ever allowed such a thing. Speakers blare, repeating a simple briefing. ¡°will seek out and destroy all alien lifeforms. Syrak-9 is a solarium mining world, do not use or allow any form of irradiation. Per treaty, no orbital support is permitted, nor may you leave the continent. Violators are subject to immediate execution. Good Luck. You will seek out and destroy all alien¡­¡± That¡¯s all we hear before our turn comes. A staff officer, some kind of lieutenant armored in pocket protectors and carrying an extra pencil instead of a pistol, points to us, number one knows the order and marches into the gate. ¡°Your weapons will be on the other side.¡± Says the officer. Chapter 6 What is Trust? 0 / 0 Biomass (Selves excluded) (Harvest more biomass) My squad trusts him, I trust him. Lieutenant pencil pusher has no reason to lie. Through the gate we go bodies converting to energy and back to matter before we know what¡¯s happened. Harsh winds rip around our greatcoats, imperceptible to our focused intent. What is perceptible however, is the muddy trench and bodies. We¡¯re surrounded by a score of corpses, mostly laying in tattered shreds, as if an uncountable number of conscripts were fed into a wood chipper. This is not an armory. Nor any kind of staging ground. Memories rise, how most of the thousand Yurten recruits died replays in my mind. Friendly fire incidents, when artillery shells encountered a strong headwind and fell short, onto our positions. A survival lottery that no skill or action on your part could influence. It simply came down to getting lucky. Today, we did not get lucky. Shadows scatter around us, more than I can count. One sprints towards us, tackling seven. I see gills, claws, and bulging eyes. As if this creature is a deep sea fish in too low a pressure. As conscripts we only wear armor over our chests and a helmet to protect our vitals. The logic being those are places where a fight ending injury can occur the easiest, but they missed a spot. Our necks. The thing, whatever it is, clamps down on seven¡¯s neck. Inch long fangs pierce her coat, radiation liner, and flesh. Before I can think the FNX is in my hand, safety off. I¡¯m running. One finger taps the loaded chamber indicator telling me the weapon is fully loaded. I only need to pull the trigger. Four squadmates join the melee, yanking the creature off its feet. A knife appears, straight edged but with an S curved handle, not made for human hands. Flash training has turned these flabby Americans into hardened warriors. Each hand or foot is bent backwards leveraging digits until the creature is a shattered mess. A fifth squadmate grabs the knife plunging it into the creature''s eye. Spasms run through the piranha-like humanoid. Jaw clenches shut, severing Seven¡¯s spine. Drawing the pistol only took a half second, but that¡¯s all the time it takes to end the fight. Nine people are clustered around the two bodies knee deep in violence. The perfect target for any smart artillery. Number one, our sergeant speaks first, unphased by violence as an untrained earthling ought to be. ¡°We¡¯re clustered, spread¨C¡± Artillery vaporizes number one. Direct hit. A high explosive shell crushes the man, plowing six feet into muddy trench before the proximity fuse understands it hit something. Fire annihilates most of the squad, only tearing me in half. Memories remind me that Mom gets nothing if we don¡¯t win these wargames. We must take the planet. The pressure wave knocks me unconscious before I can feel pain, killing Sable Yurten. ¡ª >Matriarch Hygieia: OW! WHAT THE HELL! WARN ME >Executrix Alaea: Wasn¡¯t me. I¡¯m safe on this Azhurai ship. Tiny quarters though. >Executrix Alaea: I felt it too. Like getting cut in half. We must have a third >Matriarch Hygieia: had a third. feels like we are gonna die. >Matriarch Hygieia: what happens if they die? >Executrix Alaea: There is time. have location, sending my personal nanites. A moment passed between messages. Information returning to the Azhurai Conglomerate warship. >Executrix Alaea: Extensive damage. Bots need biomass to plug these holes. >Matriarch Hygieia: shit >Matriarch Hygieia: die now or tomorrow >Executrix Alaea: I don¡¯t want to die¡­ >Matriarch Hygieia: Oh man, this is gonna hurt¡­ >Matriarch Hygieia: take my hip arms >Matriarch Hygieia: wont need them til the combat drop >Matriarch Hygieia: can regrow them by then ¡ª Sable Yurten died. As people tend to do when they are killed. Her veneer of lies stripped away by unfriendly fire¨C ¨CAnd the bitches left me holding the bag. I became aware slowly, light coming back into my pupils. Legs tingle for several minutes as feeling returns, coming in a distinct wave that starts near my ribs and ripples down, through my pelvis, over my hips, into knees, calves, feet, and finally my toes. They¡¯re all weirdly cold, I look down and find blue arcs of light crawling over my ¨Conce again¨C naked lower half. Weird, how did my toenails get painted black? A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I shake the distraction, more annoyed at an emergent pattern, one I am already fed up with! What philandering jerk leaves a woman naked in the trenches? Baz-hole? The blue sparks tickle my legs, creeping entirely too close to my lady bits. ¡°Eek!¡± I swat them away, or try to. Fingers touch sparks and I get gently tased. Like licking a nine volt battery if you mixed the sensation with spicy shaving cream, thick, painfully tingly and now all over my freaking hands! I throw myself sideways, kicking and flailing until my sparkly hands land on the severed torso of twelve. Sparks leap from me to her, encircling her upper half and arcing to her legs, she was cut in half like me, not vaporized like number one. In a sort of negative flash the sparkles and body vanish. One moment they are present, the next I receive a mental alert, so similar to Jim and Haime¡¯s draft notice. [+1 Biomass] 0 / 1 Biomass ¡°What the hel¨C¡± Before I can finish the thought, text appears in my mind, so similar to the chat function in Wings of Liberty, a game I once played. It''s been years since I¡¯ve seen that style of text, mainly because I have the chat function muted. Nothing is left there except friends who haven¡¯t logged on in three years and edgy politics. Not here. Two people have been having a conversation for what looks like hours. As if they existed while I was still in my cryotube, before Jim ran his tests. >Matriarch Hygieia: tasty >Matriarch Hygieia: like radioactive pork thats oversalted and undercooked >Matriarch Hygieia: wait¡­ >Matriarch Hygieia: this doesnt taste like the biopools >Matriarch Hygieia: its not my biomass >Executrix Alaea: Wasn¡¯t me. >Matriarch Hygieia: Is our other half alive? >Executrix Alaea: Can you have three halves? Hey! Athena Finley, say hello! You know which buttons to press. >Matriarch Hygieia: dna is a double helix so this is human >Matriarch Hygieia: asshole >Matriarch Hygieia: you sent me human biomass? >Executrix Alaea: Ick. But¡­ Does it matter if you aren¡¯t human yourself? >Matriarch Hygieia: not really >Matriarch Hygieia: its the thought that counts ¡°This can¡¯t be real¡­¡± I begin to say, coming up short. My voice trails off as I stare at my toes, whatever is making the nails dark isn¡¯t polish. A permanent fashion statement that will forever ruin my favorite heels. Yet, I have larger concerns, my legs are no longer the same, already showing more muscle and less fat, although that might just be the perfect shave. I run my fingers over them, glass has more friction than these sexy bitches. I¡¯m dazed. So much has occurred I need a moment. My mouth works out my thoughts. ¡°In the past day I was cheated on, conscripted into a galactic military, cloned or something, transported across planets, and implanted with the memories of an entire life. Blown in half and rebuilt by¡­ something indistinguishable from magic. This really isn¡¯t all that strange.¡± I say aloud, scrambling into the pants left behind by number twelve. Hey, I don¡¯t like graverobbing at all, but I ain''t running around a planet without pants on! Besides, twelve¡¯s body is gone, no blood or viscera remains, leaving guilt free pants behind. Boots too. Ambient radiation will give me cancer inside of an hour, best armor up. Somehow my pistol survived along with the magazines. A small miracle. I will make it home. This war feels so lost, hopeless even. Fifteen seconds is how quickly my entire squad survived, from the first man through the gate to the last casualty. Why they sent humans here and not sealed tanks and mechs is a strategic error I struggle to comprehend. So stupid. Earth has tanks! Jim said those were taken, so why not use them? Through my helmet I hear whistling. More artillery. I can still recall the sensation of being blown in half. Panic ignites my feet. I duck and run, sprinting through the muddy trenches in search of safety or cover. There¡¯s none. Someone built this trench to be a highway. Thirty feet deep with logs and metal grating to line them. A sort of reinforcement that limits how deep your average fatass would sink into the mud, a Technomancy tactic so their war machines can keep on warring without getting stuck. Useless in keeping an infantryman¡¯s boots dry. I¡¯m exposed here. Dirt trenching alone isn¡¯t enough to protect from bombardment, standard singularity training says bunkers should be placed every quarter mile at a minimum. While the Technomancy standard is looser at a mile or two. A shell lands in front of me, burying itself in the wet dirt before exploding. Dirt rises in a split second, sending a concussion wave that kicks me in the face. My helmet takes the brunt, and I''m grateful for the integrated gas mask. Quality gear, built to function after a direct hit. Which I¡¯ve taken two of. Together they manage to keep my head intact as the wind forcibly exits my lungs, ears pop. Silence follows. Were it not for the twin glass circles my eyes would be gone as well. Concussed. I lay in the mud for several seconds, wheezing as my entire body reels in pain. Like I¡¯ve been tenderized by a dozen Rock Johnsons. Or a dildo factory, but I repeat myself. No one comes to save me, there are no weapons here, only the odd chat window. I drag myself onto my feet, wobbling down the trench in what feels like a sprint; hoping to find a bunker where I can get my bearings and link up with Singularity forces. Praetorian Panoptes is right, I know the buttons. The window isn¡¯t really a window, it''s a borderless square in the bottom right hand corner of my vision. >Executrix Alaea: Ouch! Please don¡¯t die, Earth needs you. Mom needs you. Can¡¯t heal you again. >Matriarch Hygieia: I¡¯ll kill you if you die! >Matriarch Hygieia: Stay alive! >Matriarch Hygieia: Hide in a hole if you have to!!!!!! Mentally I press enter, flicking my pinky to open chat. >Human Athena: artillery strike. I¡¯m alive. ouch. >Matriarch Hygieia: what the hell¡­ HUMAN? >Matriarch Hygieia: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH >Executrix Alaea: Ignore her. Shes uh¡­ I don¡¯t know how to say this, not human anymore? Having a hard time adjusting. Kinda zergy, but don¡¯t worry about that. >Human Athena: Is that why my toenails are black? Did you make me half zergy? >Matriarch Hygieia: HA! serves you right. Chapter 7 Pain 0 / 1 Biomass Pain rakes my body. Fire running through my being. Bones must be broken due to the shockwaves. I can still feel aftershocks. No, that makes no sense. Earthquakes have aftershocks not artillery shells¨C ¨CWhich means the shaking is more shells. Someone is bombarding the trench en masse, peppering it with dumb artillery shells after a smart shell killed a whole squad. I need to get under cover. Flash training drives me onwards, clawing my feet back and forcing me down the trench, limping on my left foot, must have twisted it. Zerg are tough, guess I¡¯m still human. Like my name. I really dislike that moniker but chewing the fat in chat comes after running for your life. >Human Apollo: I¡¯m alone, in a trench war with terminators. Fuck this shit. Teleport out? Give me a shield? Or a gun? These jackoffs didn¡¯t even give me a combat shovel! A moment passes, the only feedback being the metal mesh beneath my half tied boots. One glance at the walls tells a story of wood stacked below layers of steel mesh and additional supports. This trench is old, with a lasagna of fortifications layered atop each other. Humans have been fighting over this dirt for centuries, attacking, destroying, rebuilding in a perpetual cycle. With a couple of odd layers marking times when secondary antagonists -aliens- swept the field. Judging by the heavy treadmarks pressed into the mud I guess this is Technomancy territory. That checks out with the flash training, as trenches this wide are hard to defend with infantry and light vehicles. Standard policy for Singularity trenches is tight and narrow ten feet at most, we only use infantry and all terrain equipment so mud doesn¡¯t stop us. I pray no artillery shells are whistling my way, but I''m deaf. Not like I can do anything if I hear the shells coming. In a way, that¡¯s relaxing. >Executrix Alaea: Already tried to beam you up. Can¡¯t. The equipment I have is a glorified microwave. Instant teleportation but not for anything the -nameless- are aware of. Or us three. Surprised my nanites warped to you. >Human Athena: Xeno-voldemort is gonna get me killed? Really? >Human Athena: Fuck off with that bullshit! >Executrix Alaea: I swear I would if I could! Might be a security lock out¡­ Athenao, we are no longer human. These names weren¡¯t picked by us and my ship does not have a human habitable atmosphere. Even if you could get beamed up, your lungs would catch on fire and melt. Same for Hygieia. >Human Athena: I¡¯m going to die if you don¡¯t help me. >Matriarch Hygieia: Survive bitch. >Matriarch Hygieia: Hey, send me more biomass and i can make some bioforms >Matriarch Hygieia: hive ship is organic so i got wiggle room >Matriarch Hygieia: send and receive a bit without being noticed >Matriarch Hygieia: takes time. but I¡¯m safe >Matriarch Hygieia: safe enough ¡°AAAAAHHH! What do you expect me to do? Hide in a hole and poop bodies?¡± I shout, the sound muffled by my gasmask. A bend in the trench slows me, apprehension about turning the corner. My FNX isn¡¯t going to dent a Techno-tank or knock out Azhurai shielding. Slowing down only makes me vulnerable to getting shot in the back. I''m gonna be lucky or dead. Steeled, I walk forward like I''m the limping bombed out Queen of Trenchlandia.I glance back at the pile of comrades, just in time to see dozens of electric pink iguanas jump into the trench. Tulverians, aliens with laser rifles and blast armor over half their otherwise exposed scales. Filthy xenos. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. With plasma rifles. For a second I¡¯m tempted to try my luck, but only a second. One pistol versus a full squad of enemies? Even Clint Eastwood¡¯s .44 magnum would run dry. I jog forward, ankle bringing tears to my eyes as pain sledgehammers my leg. Around the bend I run, hoping the crocodilianoids are sated by eating other earthlings. On second thought, I hope we taste like shit. The last thing I need is iguanas thinking I''m a snakey-snack. The trench in front of me lies empty the very thing I¡¯ve been looking for. A black maw, the entrance to an underground bunker. Twenty feet wide and nearly thirty feet tall the orifice dares me to advance. Such an entrance is never constructed by Singularity forces, it¡¯s too exposed. Any half-competent rocketeer could drop a nuke through this gaping hole from ten clicks away. At night! Of all alien races Jim informed me of, only heavy warmachines like Technocracy Juggernauts would need this. I cup my ears, forgetting that I''m deaf. Mud trembles as shells land above the trench, my options here suck. ¡°Get lucky or die.¡± I say, jogging along the trench wall to the bunker¡¯s mouth. I pass an exit ramp, a place in the trench wall that¡¯s been bulldozed so tanks can enter and exit. On a whim I jog up it, hoping to find cover in the contested land outside the trenches rather than run into a bunker praying it''s abandoned. There is an old saying back on Earth. Speak of the devil and he shall appear. No sooner have I stuck my head above the ramp than twelve Juggernauts rise above their own trenches belching clouds of black smoke as they launch hundreds of missiles. A volley so comprehensive that chemtrails blot out the sun. Energy batteries whine and fire, detonating dozens of missiles. A futile waste of power. Thousands of the missile fleet strike home sending a shockwave that even my deaf ears can register. Twelve Juggernauts is an armored division, Singularity protocol states we should call in an orbital bombardment or sacrifice ten thousand infantrymen to clog up their treads. They call that a ¡®mobility kill¡¯, since the tank will be a sitting duck until space assets or special anti-armor weapons can be brought to bear. Real guns. I NEED to hide, turning to limp down the ramp, reaching the bottom simultaneously with three Tulverians. Mouths stained red. Laser rifles armed, charged, and at the ready. The leader sees me, skull crest rising, gun aiming at my chest, mouth opening to¨C -He blinks. Pupil shifting towards the bunker. I feel the rumble more than hear it. Thudding into my chest like a massage chair dialed up to ¡®beat them silly with hammers then ask for a big tip¡¯. Thousands of slugs rupture the trio, turning them into pink mist before I can blink. One second they are there, the next they aren¡¯t. ¡°Cute magic trick.¡± I mutter, smiling darkly. My brain registers the response as abnormal. But ignore it, wondering how much blood I lost today. Adrenaline should be spiking now, but my glands seem to be empty. Exhaustion hits. I slump against the trench wall, sitting down. Then collapsing onto my butt. A Juggernaut, three stories of branching gun barrels, sensors, and armor plating rolls into view, turning away from me and rolling up the far ramp. Dozens, possibly hundreds of individual guns are welded or bracketted to the Juggernaut in a massive tree of firepower. As if someone made an American christmas tree of AR-15¡¯s then bolted it to a remote controlled Killdozer. Rear facing autocannons aim at me, tracking as the juggernaut rises above the trench¡¯s lip. For some inexplicable reason it doesn¡¯t fire. Maybe because I¡¯m no threat to it. But Sage has seen Juggernauts fire their guns just to feel recoil, some vestigial reflex from its human pilot. There is only one, located at center mass of the steel box. Five feet above the solarium reactor. So maybe this one is out of bullets? It''s an autocannon type, armed with scores of individual guns all pulling from individual magazines. Either way, it turns to join the other twelve Juggernauts, firing a handful of missiles to support their advance. I¡¯m left there. Alone. Waiting for the end. Until Alaea¡¯s words reach me. We can¡¯t die here. Earth dies unless we win. They took four billion of us. If only one in thirty of us survive, we¡¯ll still have enough to drown thousands of Juggernauts under our bodies. It¡¯s time to win. Not bitch out and F10 + S. Cold logic knows I¡¯m not firing on all cylinders so it analogizes life with Starcraft 2. This is a damn cannon rush and I¡¯m an itty bitty SCV, But unlike in the game, I can armor up and become a Warhound. Before I can talk sense into my ramblings feet carry me into the bunker, jumping over wires left near the entrance. Nightvision activates automatically, illuminating the bunker¡¯s interior with twin green beams. ¡°Nightvision, dial to minimum.¡± Chapter 8 Tech Marines before Warhounds 1 / 1 Biomass The eye beams dim to wire thick beams, almost nothing, still too much light. A Juggernaut has sensor suites, and their technicians are infamous for replacing organic eyeballs with wider spectrum scanners. I may as well be driving through Walmart on an electric scooter with a dozen air horns blaring. Except today I rolled all sixes. Walmart is empty. No one is present. In fact, all lights are off and most the equipment is gone. This isn¡¯t a real bunker, just an ammo cache. ¡°Thank god.¡± I mutter. Stacks of rockets with red and yellow hazard striping on the nosecones rise into the air. High explosive warheads. Too large for a human to move or carry. Hundreds of empty crates line the walls and floor, autocannon ammo of various calibers, all empty. I quickly scrounge through the bunker, finding a flechette pistol and two thousand rounds. Which really sounds like a lot until you realize the ¡®pistol¡¯ is the size of a briefcase, not really a pistol at all. Instead it''s a miniaturized railgun that fires steel spikes -sewing needles- with fins duck taped on. Highly efficient on space and ammo, but worthless against armor. Which is probably why the Technocracy loves these pieces of shit. No disgruntled tech can damage their precious machines. But hey, it¡¯ll go bang. I won¡¯t get sodomized by the first rat who looks my way. Or the damn iguanas! Relief sends me into a fit of cackles, stroking the steel pistol as I close my eyes and laugh, taking a few steps towards a row of steel near the back. I¡¯m in space, talking to voices in my head, on an alien world, and I just found a railgun. ¡°Is this real life?¡± This moment doesn¡¯t feel real. Cackles fill the silent bunker echoing as artillery and missiles explode across the world. I¡¯m one person, against an entire world of assholes. What can I do? My cracked lenses fog up. ¡°I need a new helmet.¡± I say aloud, cutting off my laughter. The words return me to a normal place. Tickling the flashtraining¡¯s desire to complete my mission. That¡¯s right, the mission was to get a weapon and fight back. Cmon girl! Work the problem. ¡°Alright. Stay alive. I can kill any Tulverians now. But they can kill me. Find armor. Juggernauts can kill any armor, so find a bigger gun, kill all Juggernauts. Easy. Just like teching up to thors.¡± I say. Once again I turn towards crate mountain. In the dark it looks like a vehicle of some kind, but there are piles of gear and crates of odds and ends keeping it concealed. My foot snags on something soft, cartwheeling me face first into a pile of lukewarm fabric. Flash training did an excellent job of desensitizing me to war life, but the pile of earthlings in gasmasks sends a shiver down my spine. This isn¡¯t right. We shouldn¡¯t be here. Buuuutttt, the pile is kinda bouncy¡­ A great place for a nap if I weren¡¯t fresh from the cryotubes. Without thinking I swap my helmet for an unshattered one, careful to transfer all data and setting between the two. Its easy, helmets are designed to be scavengable so the transfer is nothing more than tapping them together in the correct orientation. Cognitively I know something inside me has cracked. Some ancient mechanism to prevent emotional trauma from killing me. I¡¯ll probably pay for it with a life of PTSD, but for now I open my chat log. >Human Athena: I have biomass. Let me know when you¡¯re ready. I stare at the words I''ve mentally typed, surprised at how easy it was. Then inhale before sending. Survive, beat back the Technocracy and save earth. Maybe then I can get laid. Simple as. Well, and maybe punch Bazzhole in the cock-er spaniel. I wonder if he was drafted too¡­? Whorely is probably knocked up and back on earth. From her brother no less! Ick. Maybe I should be grateful to them, if not for their cheating I¡¯d be pining for them both, wishing with all my heart they were with me now. Lying distractions likely to get me killed.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. >Matriarch Hygieia: send 100 kilos cant hide more in >Matriarch Hygieia: cant hide more I touch the bodies, mentally tagging them for Alaea¡¯s teleporter. It¡¯s absurdly easy on my end. I need physical contact but after that I just look at the item and mentally think ¡®mark¡¯, then they appear with a faint outline overlaid. Out of stubbornness I try to mark myself. Nothing whatsoever occurs. The first body vanishes, then after a delay the second goes after. I hesitate a moment, but only one, before stripping them of everything, my inner and outer layers are made whole once more. Then to top it off this squad was at least given weapons. One glance tells a sordid history with the sharpened shovel, red oxides coat one edge, something I hope is rust, but I know better than to try and remove it. One is holding a slender blade, something I once saw Baz call a ¡®Fairbain-sykes fighting knife¡¯ whatever that is. Beating someone to death is low on my list of desirable outcomes, but Sable Yurten is capable of the deed. Once in training the instructors brought us cloned technocracy soldiers and made us stab them to death as a team building exercise. The single worst day for wig outs. ¡°Does flash training make you schitzo? Or just bring it out? Whatever, I need a real gun. Something along the lines of a dragoon¡¯s phase disruptor cannon or a Technocracy pulsed ion accelerator. And¡­ armor.¡± I say aloud, searching through Technomancy crates. Most are locked with keypads. Not all that durable but that¡¯s not the point. Keypad locks are merely the warning stickers for those who know. If I try to force the crates open then an explosive charge will detonate, ruining whatever is within the crate and my face for good measure. ¡°Man, flash training is super useful. I¡¯d be dead without it. If I ever get back to earth¡­ NO, WHEN I get back to Earth I need to steal that tech. We¡¯d be able to catch up earth scientists overnight!¡± I say, rummaging through unlocked crates. Missiles and gauss rounds are what I find, all munitions for the rolling buildings they call Juggernauts. No way can I use these, even with power armor I can¡¯t carry or launch such high caliber projectiles. Outside the artillery barrage redoubles. Shells following the Juggernaut¡¯s path. One artillery hit won¡¯t knock out Juggernaut, since artillery comes from the top the treads are relatively safe too. But arty could destroy enough guns to make it combat ineffective, forcing a retreat or giving infantry squads a chance to hit them with focused laser fire and anti tank warheads. A few dozen of those nasty bitches is enough to knock out anything unshielded. >Matriarch Hygieia: crap i need an immediate teleport! >Matriarch Hygieia: Eugenic Hitler is counting babies! >Matriarch Hygieia: Feck! >Matriarch Hygieia: make one zergling and the census bureau shows up I stare at the text, giggling at whatever a ¡®eugenic hitler¡¯ is. What a term. Almost sounds like a cranky Abathur, the geneticist from Starcraft who engineered hundreds of beneficial mutations within the zerg swarm. Though he could never quite overcome their greatest weakness, lemon juice. >Executrix Alaea: Zergling? NO. Not on my ship. Thena? Want a puppy? >Human Athena: A puppyling? THAT¡¯S what you call a WARRIOR? Feck it. I don¡¯t have a choice. Send it. It¡¯ll listen to me right? >Matriarch Hygieia: Only one way to find out. I¡¯ll tell em to play nice. >Executrix Alaea: say something if they misbehave. I note how Alaea switched from the singular to the plural. What exactly has she been cooking? >Human Athena: yes maam! Two blue ripples appear in space time, almost like a protoss warp in animation, but way faster and less sparkly. Both creatures materialize in seconds. Spines run down their quadruped backs, talons digging into the bunker¡¯s floor as they scent the air. Elongated snouts full of teeth slip open. Like a wolf¡¯s maw, if said wolf had two rows of shark teeth and sabertoothed canines protruding above and below their jaw. ¡°Sit!¡± I say, forgetting that I''m wearing a sealed gas mask. No way they can hear me- -Both creatures sit, leaning back onto their haunches. Spinal ridges elongate slightly unsheathing four bone spikes with some kind of pressurized fluid contained within. These quadrupeds are anything but zerglings. Chapter 9 I am Hygeiai (Very different) ¨CTwenty hours before nuclear detonation- My last human memory was of me, naked in a tube filled with goo. Then Jim, the tax collector who plundered four billion people for the Singularity¡¯s war machine, pressed a button and I felt no more. I could hear him talking but all sensation left my body and soon even his voice began to diminish. Volume falling gradually until silence. I wasn¡¯t in the cryotube any longer. At least that solved my academic probation problem. So I¡¯ll call this a win. A thought stabbed my heart. Was the college even there? Ages 12 - 45 encompassed all college students and half the staff. Going back to Earth alone wasn¡¯t enough. I needed transports and starships to ferry survivors. If I wasn¡¯t already dead. Hours, years, or seconds passed, with my consciousness existing in total oblivion. I would say floating but there was no sensation, no impulses, no desires whatsoever. Apathetic in totality. Who cared if Baz cheated on me? I caught the leeches red handed. No longer could they siphon away my life, money, time, emotions. They were gone and I was free. Now if only I could find a cutie on Syrak-9¡­ ¡°Maybe I should settle for a cat.¡± I wanted to smile, deep within the wrinkles of my brain new connections began to form leaving me with a question I could not contemplate. Who was I? My memories were Apollo¡¯s, old corridors I re-explored as space ticked onward. Baz, Ashley, mom, dad, Savannah. They were all present. In hindsight, it was hard to miss Dad¡¯s cheating, harder still to miss the signs Baz showed. Always spending a bit too much time alone with Ashley. Always arriving at my apartment an hour before I got home. I sigh, hoping death would find the siblings and I would never again have to see those four people. Savannah though, I have questions for her. She must have known. Unfortunately, I¡¯ll probably die in this sensationless cryotube. It would have been nice to meet my youngest sibling, or start a family with someone I love. But that¡¯ll never happen now- Darkness suddenly filled my world, the sort of darkness that you see with closed eyes. Not total black but the sort of darkness that swirls and waves and beats. Sensation returns. Warm humid air blowing across my face. Sound comes next, creatures move, some hooved, some clawed. Grunts and squawks rattle around my head until I hear Jim speaking. Jim, that damn publican. ¡°Sorry about that, you¡¯d think with how often we work together I¡¯d eventually learn all your quirks but no job is ever the same. There ya go, all brainwaves rising. She¡¯s coming too. Might be awake already so be conscious of that. Oh, give her some time to adjust from a human being to¨C¡± There is a pause, Jim is probably gesturing towards me. ¡°Whatever you put her in will take some adjusting. Don¡¯t drop the whole Collective on her head at once. That being said, I have high hopes for this particular mind. Very high hopes. Let me know how she pans out for ya. Anyways, congrats on your own personal Matriarch. It¡¯s been a pleasure doing business with the collective.¡± A raspy voice answers, somehow moist and bitey, as if the speaker has a mouth with too many teeth or multiple jaws. Maybe even a split jaw. I exhale, thinking how ugly such a creature would be, as my own jaw splits into four jaws. I cock my head, neck feeling more weight than it has ever supported before and feeling lighter, stronger. Something feels wrong, actually scratch that. EVERYTHING feels wrong. Taste returns, and three tongues explore my mouth, categorizing each tooth with an ¡®ouch¡¯ factor. Or approximately how deeply each of these sawblades prick my tongues. ¡°Ah, the last piece falls into our puzzle. Jimmy, today you may have saved the galaxy. Our orders come from the highest authority and require this one.¡± Rasps out the voice my body recognizes. ¡°Saved the galaxy? Ha, saved my wallet more like. I appreciate the notion but I¡¯m no savior riding in on a white knight. Just glad to be of service. Now if you¡¯ll excuse me, I¡¯ve got a few more drop offs to make, unless I can interest you in a hold full of biomass.¡± Says Jim. ¡°We haven¡¯t the conveyance. Nor the drop pods to convey additional biomass. Thank you Jimmy.¡± Says the bitey rasper. His voice irritates me, so similar to an old acquaintance. Savannah once brought home a boy with a split tongue, said he was great at kissing but not much else. Is that what I''ve become? A good kisser? I can¡¯t feel my arms yet, but feeling is slowly creeping down my torso, I waggle my shoulders, discovering that my front assets have moved rearwards. Oh no. Someone¡¯s turned me into a blow up doll, and they¡¯re an ass guy. Why take away my tits! Then the feeling reaches my ribs. My chest isn¡¯t just reduced, it¡¯s totally flat, now covered in a smooth carapace. Hands regain feeling, these aren''t human limbs, thin muscular, and once more armored with chitin. More flexible too, I reach back to explore my backside, claws tip tapping across where my glutes should be and finding a dorsal crest running down my spine, skin that keeps spikes protected. Venomous spikes, to kill predators. Or large prey. In a pinch I can rip them out and use them as javelins. On reflex my mouth begins to water, two of my four jaws clicking in front of my face. No, they aren¡¯t jaws. I have mandibles, like an ant but sharp enough to shave and thick enough to crush a refrigerator. Or a person. I know because this body remembers tearing technomancy engineers apart, invading their world, tunneling beneath their cities and eradicating all human machines. More memories split my skull, flooding me with thoughts of who this body once was. A matriarch of the Endless Collective, a sort of experimental warlord within an organic army. Experimental? Then it hits like a wrecking ball. The mental blocks. The Endless only push forward, we conquer, never looking behind, never seeking our creators. It bores into my consciousness like a thousand fire ants, digging long tears of blood down my cheeks. I weep. Losing sensation as I once again fall into sleep. Hours later I awake. Though it could be minutes for all I know. Green light fills my bedroom. Except the bedroom is a green pool of bioluminescent fluid, which tastes surprisingly delicious. Slightly sweet, with just enough salt to compliment the wondrously savory chunks of meat. Texture is underrated when it comes to food. There is something uniquely satisfying about sinking two jaws into a piece of meat and sheering it. Flesh resisting just enough to know it was once a formidable foe, before fangs touch their opposites, cleaving flesh. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I¡¯m eating my enemies. Was not expecting this today¡­ My eyes finally open, exiting the pool I somehow slept in, fully submerged. Which is how I realize this body isn¡¯t remotely humanoid. More legs than I can count propel me out of the pool, not quite centipede, but more than six. Each limb bearing six joints. More flexibility than a slinky. Green liquid flows off my lower half, revealing an even greater change. As a Matriarch it is my duty and honor to bear the next generations of warriors and earn the name of Endless. Four wombs are visible on my back, with creatures growing in each of them. Spawned from the biopool and my own genetic material with guidance from the Marquis of Survival, Zazathur. I¡¯m pregnant. With quadruplets. ¡°How did this even happen? I¡¯m a virgin!¡± I grumble, the alien mouth mauling speech. If I have to carry something to term, getting laid is the smallest possible compensation! This is wrong! What the hell! Memories chide me, this body is a Matriarch, I¡¯ve carried thousands of children in my perpetual war, and will bear many more. Four visible uteri are only the tip, I have twelve. All of which are occupied. Worse, I¡¯m capable of selectively editing genetic material then kick starting replication. In short, I can fuck myself in a totally literal sense. My memories have no personality, instead they offer up information that should be relevant. There are no male Matriarchs. No need. ¡°Jim. What the hell.¡± I whisper, exploring my new body. The closest thing imaginable to this is a Drider or Centaur from Dungeons & Dragons, a game Bazzhole and Whorley convinced me to play. It really wasn¡¯t my thing, I had decided to play a shy rogue, the quiet type, while Ashley went with a moonlighting Bard so she could romance the NPCs. A game she soon aimed at Baz. How could I have missed that? Just how long were they going behind my back? Sorrow translates into fear, and three prehensile stingers push out of sheathes on my rear abdomen, where a spider might keep their spinnerets, albeit those do not glisten with lethal venoms. Dorsal crest contracts, pushing more spines out of skin sheathes, each an envenomed blade I can forcefully eject towards enemies. Kinda like intentionally sharting death at mach speeds. This body is actually pretty great. Potent, larger than a horse, or bull¡­ No, those creatures are too small to compare, I¡¯m more of a zerg Queen, the HOTS variant not the flying eyeball with buck teeth. Except I have four shoulders connected to my torso. Two are small things, positioned where the human half of a centaur¡¯s would be. Consequently pushing the other two arms down to my waist where the insectoid thorax with wombs meets my torso. There my arms rest, folded. Like a praying mantis with spear tips and serrated edges. I extend one, wincing as my human mind rewrites itself to this body. It¡¯s as if my pinky finger is suddenly a complete arm and the limb shoots out, punching a six foot slash into the wall. Mental chastisement grabs my neck, choking the life out of my brain. ¡°WHY HARM ME?¡± It demands. ¡°Eck- so- sorry! Accident!¡± I gasp, all dozen of my limbs jerking awkwardly. The force releases my body. I¡¯m not sure if it intended to toss me, but the release flips me backwards sending me splashing into the biopool. Worker drones, creatures similar to ants appear and seal the gash in the ship, ignoring me. Alive for five minutes and already pissed off the mayor, or uh, shipmind. Okay, lets not do that again. I think, slowly working through each muscle, stinger, limb, and inch of the new me. Which is when I see the first message. >Executrix Alaea: Felt like someone just tried to strangle me. Is someone there? I¡¯m Athena¡­ I close my eyes, but the text remains. Weird, but I¡¯m not doing anything other than zerg yoga right now, may as well respond. >Matriarch Hygieia: I¡¯m Athena¡­ Sorta. Last thing I remember was being pulled out of my body. >Executrix Alaea: Matriarch Hygieia? Like, Hygieia Athena? Weird reference. But if you¡¯re not human anymore¡­ Eh, makes as much sense as my new body, or this damn crystal ball. >Matriarch Hygieia: I¡¯m not even close to human. Like a pregnant zerg queen. More armor, and twelve wombs I have to fuk myself. >Executrix Alaea: Lol. wtf. That¡¯s gross, not funny. Blue light appears around me, a field of psychic power that pops in the same millisecond it forms. Or my senses are too slow to capture lightning. >Executrix Alaea: WTF! I thought you were joking¡­ Girl, I''m so sorry. >Matriarch Hygieia: Relax, this body doesn¡¯t seem to have a pity circuit. I make warriors. Simple as. We spend hours talking, each subtly testing the other, suggesting false memories only for the other to correct us. There is no doubt, we are one being. I pass the time weaving genetic strands together, incubating life not seen in this galaxy. The Endless collective isn¡¯t quite endless, having only assimilated quintillions of different genomes. But somehow they still haven¡¯t created bioforms directly equal to zerglings. A correction I begin to make immediately. The only hesitation comes from having to- uhm¡­ produce them myself. No way in hell is my coochie pumping out ten million lings so I develop compromises. Favoring quality over quantity at every turn and making 100% sure the progeny will need time outside of me to develop fully. A compromise few other Matriarchs seem willing to make. My first brood is done in an hour, dropped in a green egg which they tear asunder with crystalline claws, fancy, but it was one of twelve mutations for claws and I chose the one that cut the deepest. Okay, maybe I just liked to bling out my zerglings. Can you really blame a girl? Another hour passes and the Shipmind orders my doglings away for examinations. I have no wish to be critiqued, but this is standard procedure for the collective. Shipmind is always watching, monitoring ten thousand variables as it hurtles through the galactic darkness, monitoring every drop of biomass and molecule of gas aboard our bioship. With so many variables some shortcuts become commonplace, like tracking bioforms as a whole and not their ingested biomass. An oversight I exploit fully. Gradually inflating my exterior and absorbing more materials to continue my manipulations within the teeny tiny amount of wiggle room. Jim warned me not to reveal my nature. So I won¡¯t risk meeting what spacefaring bugs would call a ¡®medic¡¯. They¡¯d probably chop me up and retire me into a pool of acid. All other biomass is tied up, devoted to the cause. I swallow uncomfortably, hoping they didn¡¯t take my doglings off to be recycled. We¡¯ll be landing soon. On a world that would love nothing more than to kill every last member of the Collective. Two lings won¡¯t be enough to protect me. I¡¯ll need more creatures and set to making them. Our mission is clear, a world with a forested half, beautiful and taller than Lothlorien, and the other half an irradiated husk. Dead, but we must fight to acquire Solarium. A rare mineral only found in the galactic core, deeper than ships can traverse without being crushed or torn apart by the infinite gravity of a supermassive black hole. This world must have once been a rogue planet, somehow transiting the galactic core and being bombarded with the mineral hundreds of billions of years ago, before Earth was even dust. Oh, that¡¯s right. Earth, that¡¯s home. I must take over this planet to save home. That is my deal with Jim. The price of mom¡¯s safety. Chapter 10 Not Zerglings! And certainly not Kerrigan. 1 / 1 Biomass -12 hours before nuclear detonation- Hygieia¡¯s twins obey my order. No freaking way can they hear me through the gasmask¡­ That¡¯s just not possible without my external speakers activated. Is this a telepathic link? If it is, then I¡¯m like a hive mind¡¯s stepchild. This needs testing. I mentally order one to hold out its paw, like a golden retriever might be trained to shake. It does so, even lolling its tongue out the side of his mouth. Despite their fangs and spines and chitinous skin, they¡¯re kinda cute. Like a mutated puppy. Although, you probably would get into trouble if you took them to the local dog park. In the same way you¡¯d get in trouble for taking a velociraptor to a children¡¯s petting zoo and calling it a friendly turkey. ¡°Do not harm me.¡± I order, trying to keep the nerves out of my voice. Then I swallow, thinking of the next order. In sync, both creatures ¨Cthey aren¡¯t really zerglings¨C begin to wag their tails, proof positive of my total control. >Human Athena: They¡¯re like dogs. I can control them with thoughts. Even as I type, I''m looking at ¡®Human Athena¡¯ and frowning, mentally changing it to fit our growing menagerie. >Terran Thena: :) >Matriarch Hygieia: cheeky bitch My nickname should set us apart, and I want to remind the other girls of our final goal, not just that I won our racial coin toss. Spread out, search this bunker, I¡¯m looking for powered armor and portable guns uhm¡­ Tell me if you find anything like that. I command, sending the two ¡®zerglings¡¯ into the bunker¡¯s darkness, flashing their bone tails. Like a whip that ends in a bulbous stinger so similar to a scorpion¡¯s. Neither replies, and I instantly understand why. We¡¯re linked, what they can see I am aware of. As if their senses are directly uploaded into my memory to access at my leisure. ¡°Hive minds are something else¡­¡± I mutter, shivering as we search. I can see why we called them zerglings, they¡¯re longer, lankier, probably nine feet long -if you count the tail stinger- and their spines rise above our chests. Wait, I¡¯m the only human body left. My chest. I frown, watching the not-zerglings hunt. They are purely quadrupeds, possessing no back arms or hooves or facial horns, so the term is factually wrong. But calling them spinosaurus puppies, extra stingy edition, doesn¡¯t have the same ring as zergling. It¡¯s inaccurate, but a shorthand that tells all three of myselves exactly what we¡¯re talking about. In the bunker¡¯s total darkness they spread out, sniffing crates, missile racks, dirt, and moving slowly, feet staying low to the ground, almost shuffling forward. Sensory perception enters my mind, we¡¯re linked together, not really seeing through each other¡¯s eyes, but conscious of information only they can see or sense. Somehow they¡¯re able to detect miniscule movements through the earth, a sort of tremor sense. That¡¯s so freaking cool! Together we listen, half-seeing, half-hearing the artillery shells land near Juggernauts. One has been knocked out entirely, flipped upside down and blown to bits. Mommy needs whatever weapon did that! Noting that location on my helmet¡¯s built in map function. ¡®For later investigation¡¯. I paws to appreciate how absurdly awesome these boys are. Together we listen, half-seeing, half-hearing the artillery shells land near Juggernauts. One has been knocked out entirely, flipped upside down and blown in half. I want whatever weapon did that! So I activate my new helmet¡¯s internal functions, leaving a GPS tag on that location for later investigation. Then the radio kicks on. Making me jump out of my skin. I jerk the trigger to the needle pistol holding it down for a half second and sending fifty rounds into the ceiling. One of the zerglings glanced back at me, as if to ask ¡®what the hell?¡¯. ¡°Sorry.¡± I hiss, ducking behind some crates for cover. I don¡¯t make it. A familiar voice halts me midstride. Unmistakable in the lonely darkness. Baz, the traitor, speaks in my com channel. ¡°Brave soldiers of the most cherished Singularity, today marks the last day Technocracy heathens shall pollute this world! Thanks to our reinforcements from Earth we are advancing on every front, forward! To VICTORY!¡± Says our Field Marshal. I choke, dumbfounded. Bazzhole was drafted too. Except they made him a general, and not just any general, the Field marshal. The highest ranking military officer. What complete and total bullshit! Syrak-9 shouldn¡¯t even have a Field Marshal! They command a billion soldiers, not a few thousand. Why promote him to a rank that shouldn¡¯t exist? One frigate can carry a few thousand soldiers, even with multiple resupplies we can¡¯t have more than ten thousand personnel on Syrak-9. A colonel should be our highest officer, why the hell do we have a Field Marshal? ¡°What the hell! That¡¯s like running a lemonade stand on Tuesday and getting appointed as Secretary of Commerce Wednesday! How?! Why?!¡± Distant impacts fade as the Juggernauts split up, six head back, wounded or empty. Repulsed by advancing Singularity forces, great news for them. Potentially fatal for me. At least one Juggernaut is heading for us. My heart thunders, but even that is picked up by the zerglings marking it as unique amongst our four heartbeats. Four? There are only three of us. ¡°Find the fourth!¡± I hiss, coiling my body around the flechette ¡®pistol¡¯. Calling this porker a pistol is something only a cyborg could do. While it has a smooth rear plate for unarmored humans to use, the thing is an awkward brick, meant to be carried and used one handed by power-armor encased Technocracy engineers as a weapon of last resort. Like a P90 SMG that¡¯s made of stainless steel and twenty pounds heavier. We don¡¯t have time to search. Nor do we have time to run. Tremorsense paints a picture within my mind. The Juggernaut¡¯s not alone. A support crew of four technicians are jogging across no man¡¯s land to us, one is far heavier than the others. Boots carving ruts into the mud. I pray he¡¯s carrying wrenches and not a heavy weapon¡­ Except, what if he is carrying a rocket launcher? One tech is far easier to kill than the Juggernaut. My mind races, trying to decipher a battleplan. My micro-railgun can¡¯t take out a Juggernaut, probably can¡¯t even damage its sensors but technicians do not wear heavy armor. That is not their job and the Novan Technocracy does not waste resources making tools better at jobs they are not intended to perform. My flechettes won¡¯t pierce armor, but twenty or so will certainly break through the transparent polymers used in their helmets. Cool, twenty headshots. Frick. I need distractors and cover. No matter what, it all starts with the fourth heartbeat. Zerglings walk to the source, not needing light to find the beating heart. God, they would be a terrifying opponent to face. Able to hunt in pitch black. Stolen story; please report. >Matriarch Hygieia: You okay? The chat message makes me jump, sending another burst of flechettes into the wall. One zergling looks at me, teeth barred, entirely unentertained by my game of peekaboo. ¡°Sorry!¡± I snap, unsure why I''m apologizing to the spiky killer. >Terran Thena: Yeah, smart doglings. Like¡­ creepy smart. Idk if we¡¯d love golden retrievers if they could read our minds like these boys do. >Matriarch Hygieia: as if dogs arent already smarter than the terminally online >Matriarch Hygieia: they get to live the NEET life >Matriarch Hygieia: free food free rent and we literally fight over who gets to raise their babies >Matriarch Hygieia: dogs are already smarter They reach a quadruple sized crate that is sealed under some kind of foil. For lack of a better term its shrink wrapped in metal with the exterior shape maintained by round studs, like a square ribcage- -Or a cage. An airtight cage. My looted Singularity helmet reminds me that I¡¯ve only found human soldiers here. Earth conscripts. I sprint forward, pistol falling; shovel rising. One thrust rips into the vacuum sealing, unleashing a hiss as pressure equalizes. ¡°Rip open the cage!¡± Both zerglings leap, their front paws tearing through the steel bars in two swipes. Steel rods shoot into the cage and bounce out towards me. Flaying steel faster than I can think. Another swipe and they could eviscerate the contents. ¡°Stop! Don¡¯t hurt what¡¯s inside!¡± They obey, retreating a pace so I can assess the damage. Inside are a stack of human bodies. Some are white skinned turning blue around the orifices. Long dead. While others leak blood. Fresher¡­ Scraping through the blood my shovel finds it spongy, or in other words, coagulated and at least a day old. Gasmask filters out any scents but Sable Yurten¡¯s flash training was comprehensive, and I can infer the stench these corpses would exude from prior experiences. No wonder it was sealed. Shovel connects with a steel bar thicker than my thumb. Probably an inch thick. seeing it bent beneath the dogling¡¯s paws. Crap, that much strength could damage power armor! Warriors is the right name for these zerglings. Their claws tore through inch thick steel on the first pass. A hand touches my throat, activating the helmet¡¯s external speakers. ¡°Hello, is anyone alive in there? Speak up or I¡¯ll have to leave you behind. Juggernauts are incoming.¡± Zergling hackles rise, and for an instant I wonder if they can launch those back spines. Probably not¡­ But I¡¯m sure Eugenic Hitler would approve of that improvement. Which gives me pause, not sure how I feel about having ¡®Eugenic Hitler¡¯ as my cheerleader. Or what the term means. Once upon a time the name might have evoked fear, overusage turned it generic and now is as terrifying as Baddy Mcbadface. Crunching comes from inside the cage, chasing away dictators with gory squelches. Movement through the bodies. Tremorsense from the zerglings has somehow integrated completely into my own cognition. Together we triangulate the source, finding a heartbeat moving inside the pile. Like a giant birthday cake with a stripper inside, except way, WAY, grosser and hopefully with a different kind of happy ending¡­ I could really use a friend right now. Might keep me sane. I see a Singularity helmeted head bob up and down so I lunge forward fingers hook beneath steel, dragging them out of the heap. Head, arms, torso, pelvis and one leg come free. This body is stiff and totally cold. A zergling sniffs at the stump and before I realize what he intends, his jaw unhinges. Rows of teeth unfold and clamp onto exposed thigh, biting through skin, muscle and bone in a single chomp. ¡°Cmon!¡± I snap. The zergling swallows, human femur snapping twice as the monster¡¯s throat breaks down the meat. I nearly shit myself. The femur is a human¡¯s largest and thickest bone, yet not-a-zergling snapped it twice. Ignorant to my thundering heart, the ling gets back on task. He darts forward and drags another corpse out of the cage. Or tries to. The corpse snags on something, probably the shredded bars but the zergling keeps pulling like a dog toy. It all happens so quickly, one second Spot the zergling is pulling, the next he is covered in blood, having ripped the body in half. A display that makes his eyes sparkle and stinger wag. He looks at me, expecting dog treats or some nonsense. ¡°Bro¡­¡± I mutter, unable to say anything that won¡¯t insult my protector. He gulps down chunks of flesh, but gets back on task darting forward to drag another corpse from the cage. Or tries to. The corpse snags on something, probably the shredded bars but the zergling keeps pulling like a dog toy. It all happens so quickly, one second spot the zergling is pulling, the next he is covered in blood, having ripped the body in half. A display that makes his eyes sparkle, he looks at me, expecting dog treats or some nonsense. ¡°Bro¡­¡± I mutter, unable to say anything that won¡¯t insult my protector. Silence is broken like a wishbone, the other creature dragging another body out and opening a hole in the pile of bodies. I blink. Dumbfounded at what I¡¯m seeing. There is a girl, not a teen, a child. No way is she twelve years old. The little gremlin looks to be eight years old at most. More disturbingly, she¡¯s nude. Thrice concerningly, she is sitting in a sort of craven pocket, as if someone blended all the corpses within reach of her. A manacle around her neck, two inches thick and three inches tall, totally encircling her spine while providing anchor points for a quartet of chains. Each of which is bolted to the cage¡¯s floor. Her purple eyes stare into mine, piercing the green lenses of my nightvision. She inhales deeply. Gasping for air. Pupils dilate as lungs fill with oxygen, restarting her aerobic functions. How is she still alive? The cage was sealed and stuffed full of bodies. ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± I say, lowering my pistol. Sable¡¯s training screams at me. Shrieking bloody murder about Technocracy experiments and traps. Any Singularity soldier would gun down this girl and wipe it from memory in a heartbeat. But I am not the flashtraining. There is a chance that this girl is an Earthling. A kidnapped child caught up in a galaxy of war. I push the training aside as if I don¡¯t already know something is seriously wrong here. Cataclysmically wrong. ¡°Whaths a name?¡± Asks the girl, lisping heavily. Her mouth moves strangely. I can¡¯t place it but the sensation of ¡®uncanny valley¡¯ creeps up my spine. Something deeply unpleasant has been done to this child, if she even is a child. Or human. Maybe Sable is right. I should gun her down right here and now, then detonate the explosives within this bunker. As if reading my mind, she slumps, glancing at both the zerglings. Side to side eye movements, in total darkness. Her purple irises contain vertical pupils, and for a brief instant her eyes reflect green light from my nightvision. This isn¡¯t a girl, it¡¯s a mutant, or a Technomancy bioweapon. ¡°A name is what we call people- uhm¡­ What we call our friends.¡± I say, snapping her eyes back onto me. ¡°Mine is Athena Finley.¡± One zergling steps towards me, shielding me. The Technomancy engineers made it into the trenches without getting blown apart. Damn, was really hoping the artillery bombardment would solve that problem. Guess we¡¯re out of smart munitions¡­ If Field Marshal Bazzhole deployed them at all. We¡¯ve got a few moments before the engineers reach us. Worse, they¡¯ve got power armor, even if I run now, I¡¯ll die. I¡¯m trapped. All thoughts of setting up an ambush with a fellow soldier vanish. This child can¡¯t hold a gun, nor would I allow it. My hand strokes the nearest zergling. Start digging! Dig a hole you and I can hide in. I order. It obeys, dashing towards a corner and excavating the dirt faster than I can think. One glance at the slashing paws keeps me from getting in the way. Those things are cutting through rocks as if they are snowballs, aint no way I am going near those. Kerrigan blinks. Alien pupils narrow slightly, surprisingly they only appear half dilated in the total darkness. So well adapted to a cage. Can this girl even see in daylight? ¡°Are you my frien?¡± The girl asks. ¡°Sure I am. Can you tell me your name?¡± I spot a crate of Singularity rations in the corner, and silently order the other zergling to grab a few. I¡¯m not really hungry, but I know there is a ¡®c-bar¡¯ in each ration box. No way is it actually chocolate, but it sure tastes good. He reaches the boxes and I mark them all as targets for teleportation. We¡¯ll need food, and I don¡¯t have time to neatly pack a backpack. The Juggernaut is only minutes away. ¡°I donfh ave a name.¡± There it is, the reason behind the lisp. Her jaw looks human, but is split vertically through the chin. Like an anaconda¡¯s. Complete with extra teeth that are all slightly angled rearwards. If that weren¡¯t enough, they¡¯re sharp, like the zerglings. This is a baby bioweapon. Ha, that reminds me of a similarly purple and equally violent girl- ¡°-Kerrigan.¡± I whisper, not meaning to say the curse aloud. Unfortunately for us both, the girl child hears me. ¡°Ith at my name?¡± Asks Kerrigan. Uhhhh¡­ My immediate thought is, what the hell? NO! Don¡¯t name a child after a fictional mass murdering queen. But then I hear the sound of a juggernaut volley. Twelve SCUD missiles rip through the air and three seconds later a deep rumble tells me they¡¯ve landed. Missiles at close range mean enemies and allies are nearby. I don¡¯t have much time. So again I make a snap decision and pray lady luck doesn¡¯t bite me in the ass. ¡°Yes, your name is Kerrigan, and you¡¯re my friend. Lets get you out of that cage¡­¡± Chapter 11 Juggernaut 1 / 1 Biomass (Nibbles and Kerrigan do not count) I wish I knew the bunker was wired with explosives, but sometimes, ignorance is bliss. Hopefully this will all work out in my favor¡­ Two sayings I embodied as we freed Kerrigan. Turns out zergling teeth treat steel like a game of rock paper scissors, shredding Kerrigan¡¯s chains like wet paper. Though there was no safe way to get the collar off her throat. Besides, I have more pressing concerns. Like the Juggernaut who is breathing down our necks. One look at my internal sensors told me radiation inside the bunker was about 50 rem, light radiation poisoning after a minute of exposure. Death after twenty four hours. My helmet converted the alien unit automatically into values my tiny Earthling engineer brain could grasp or had any chance of being familiar with, one little perk of being brainwashed in a tube. Under pain of Radiation I need to get Kerrigan into radiation layers or she¡¯ll die after a few minutes in the trench. But the way she was stored, puts us in a double bind without time. Three technicians and the heavy engineer pause their march, halting for a reason my tremorsense can¡¯t identify. Thirty seconds, that¡¯s all the time I dare risk. ¡°C¡¯mere, take my hand.¡± I say, helping Kerrigan out of the cage, she is covered in disgusting ick, things I hastily smear off with assistance from the ration-kit¡¯s version of a wetwipe. Even in space, washing your hands is important. Moreso than on earth. On Earth we''ve evolved immune systems to fight off harmful bacteria or coexist with them, but in space there are all kinds of life. Macroscopic and microscopic. Alien microbes that you have zero biological defenses against could liquify your insides until you pissed brain jelly. So Kerrigan¡¯s hands come first, wet wipes clean them off and I hand her one of the C-bars. Narrowly remaining calm as the Juggernaut rolls closer. It¡¯s moving slower now, probably took damage. A small miracle. Opposite the Juggernaut¡¯s trench, at a T junction, four technicians are trading shots with a Tulverian warband. Two fall and kick, limbs missing. Victims of Tulverian energy weapons. Despite their reptilian nature, Tulvarians are highly intelligent, well okay the average Tulvarian eats rocks for fiber so they¡¯re idiots, but maybe the scientists are genetically engineered cause those quacks are on the opposite end of the bell curve making them proportionately smarter than the others are dumb. At least that¡¯s the Singularity¡¯s leading theory, since it would explain how they cooked up some of the finest energy weapons in the galaxy. Man portable and precise to a fault. Odd design track for plasma weaponry since the Tulverians generally don¡¯t wear armor and precise plasma is the galaxy¡¯s most logical answer to armor- -A dozen of them are gunned down by two flechette pistols, falling still. I feel nothing as they fall quiescent. Without motion the tremorsense has nothing to see, causing bodies to vanish as they die. It must be shock. People just died and I couldn¡¯t even feel recoil. Worse, I¡¯m relieved that we have a few more seconds. ¡°Eh, fukit.¡± I say, already envious over dead Tulvarian plasma rifles. One shot from those rifles is like a dragoon¡¯s main cannon. Able to damage all armor and even good against enemy shielding. If we can get enough of them. I¡¯ll start with one. Drooling over xeno tech is only fair turnabout, as the iguanas would be drooling over me if I died. Albeit for very different reasons. Shall I fetch them? Asks the tunneling dogling. ¡°Whafths thith?¡± Kerrigan asks. I almost ignore her question, too stunned by the zergling¡¯s request. He is fifty feet into the walls, tunneling faster than I can walk. There is no line of sight nor any possible way I could have physically heard him. Yet I had. Hive mind? Oh man, this¡¯ll take some getting used to. Yes. I think, mentally marking him as ling-ling2. A smile crosses my lips at the idiotic name. But why not. Ling1 is still bringing me ration packs -from a pile that was once taller than myself and is now only a foot tall- dropping one next to Kerrigan. ¡°What? Oh, its food. A gift for my friend.¡± I say, trying to butter up the bioweapon with chocolate. In theory this is the best plan Sable Yurten has, although there are at least four variations of Singularity bioweapons that explode when given sweets. I cross my fingers, watching Kerrigan closely. She stares at it for a second, sniffs it, frowns. Then cocks her head to the side. ¡°It¡­ doesn¡¯th smell like meath.¡± She mutters. Meat¡­ She says the word like it¡¯s nothing a common thing. But that little choice in diction confirms my worst fears. I refuse to dwell on it, forcing away the thought. ¡°Chocolate is a bean I think, and sugar comes from plants as well. If you don¡¯t like it that¡¯s fine, but give it a nibble.¡± I say pantomiming a wink at the girl. Kinda difficult considering I¡¯m in full anti radiation gear and mask. She cocks her head, not understanding the gesture. Probably grew up in a test tube of her own, with no understanding of the world or other people. At best she¡¯ll end up a sociopath. No, at best she¡¯ll enjoy chocolate! I mentally correct, wiping her down. I know there isn¡¯t time. We need to stuff her into a suit and hide in the zergling tunnel. NOW! Ling1 understands my desire and pushes some empty crates infront of the tunnel entrance so we won¡¯t be discovered. Then starts digging as well. Flashing claws leave no space for me to dig, so I''m forced to be a clipboard nanny. After two lings pass through it''s still a tight fit for Kerrigan and nearly unpassable for myself, I¡¯ll have to ditch my chestplate. Dirt moves faster than any direwolf or dog could shift it. He¡¯s stronger than any canine has a right to be. I try not to shudder. At this point it would only scare my fellow earthling. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Except the more gore I wipe off, the less human Kerrigan appears. Her bones aren¡¯t human, they¡¯re thicker and more prominent than a child¡¯s ought to be, with extra ribs and actual claws protruding from oversized hands. Fangs ¨Cher teeth cannot be called anything else¨C bite into the chocolate bar. They bake those things to be tough, turning them into a thick taffy so it travels well and can survive reentry if supply ships get shot down. But it¡¯s still full of everything a body craves. Kerrigan¡¯s eyes light up at the taste, going speechless as she looks at the bar then to me. I smile. Kids love candybars, hell, adults love candybars! And this is space candy, for extra goodness. I think¡­ A flicker of memory runs through my mind, it¡¯s Jim aboard the tax ship, ¡®recycle the fatties¡¯. Note to self, never look at the ingredient list. It¡¯ll be safer¨C ¨CMovement trips tremorsense. Engineers are moving again, they¡¯ve finished the Tulverians. It¡¯s time to go. One hand grasps the first radiation layer I can find, ready to stuff my newest friend into it when a red river flows down Kerrigan¡¯s cheek. I freeze, ducking to see where the blood is coming from. But her face is all pinched together, ¡°Are you crying?¡± I ask, baffled. Kids don¡¯t cry when you give them chocolate! What did I do wrong? Sure she¡¯s a bioweapon¡­ I really hope she isn¡¯t the kind of bioweapon that explodes when you feed it chocolate. That would be a bit too screwed up. Even for the Technomancy who view humans the way we view a computer¡¯s ram chips. Not the whole completed stick, just the individual black squares that you¡¯ve probably never thought about in your life. Nor considered their metabolic needs or if they got a little uncomfortable after playing too much candy crush. ¡°Kerrigan, say something, are you alright? Spit it out if it¡¯s that awful!¡± In way of response the ration bar disappears into her mouth. ¡°Sooo goooodth.¡± Mumbles Kerrigan, chomping her way through the entire bar. It would be way cuter if her lower jaw didn¡¯t split open, exposing a second row of teeth that sheer through the ¡®chocolate¡¯ brick like it¡¯s jello. The juxtaposition of her bleeding eyes, rows of fangs, and smile makes my heart skip several beats. This is the most pant-shittingly terrifying and kinda cute thing I¡¯ve ever beheld. A cacophony of chaos that shorts out my brain for a minute. Thoughts of moments like this with my unborn sibling emerge. What if I have a little brother? Dreams percolate around my brain. Til the Juggernaut fires. Further away than the engineers, but coming at double speed. Four minutes, and I only have a flechette pistol. Kerrigan holds out her hand, asking for another. ¡°Oh, there are more, don¡¯t eat them so fast or else you¡¯ll make yourself sick. Here, eat this while I dress you, its-¡± I glance at the package, reading -meat puree no 12-. Don¡¯t read the ingredients. I remind myself. ¡°Actually, not sure what it is. Give it a try. While I¡­ Look around. Actually, take this and hide in that tunnel. A big meanie is coming our way and he¡¯ll put you back in that cage.¡± ¡°Okay athph- aphthp- ¡­ Pfina!¡± Stutters Kerrigan, her lisp absolutely butchering my name. No sooner have I gotten her bloody legs into the rad layer does she spring out of it, claws tearing the fabric and darting through the bunker faster than a cloud, smiling broadly as she carries twenty pounds of rations in with her. Hopping into an empty crate with her purloined booty. Tail flicking as if eight year old children normally have three foot long stingers. Darker skin runs down her spine stretched over the vertebrae til termination near the exposed bone at the tip of her tail. All told, Kerrigan is a cute lil bioweapon. Designed to kill Singularity soldiers. Like me. I swallow. Unable to gun her down. Maybe she¡¯s got mind control pheromones or something, I just can¡¯t bring myself to pull the trigger. Please be an earthling. I pray. Already knowing she isn¡¯t human. Three minutes until the Juggernaut reaches us. One until the technicians arrive. Despite that Kerrigan seems energized. Happy to be in a tunnel. But Ling1 found a weapon capable of destroying the Juggernaut. I don¡¯t exactly see through their eyes, yet Ling1 has sent me a picture. A sort of text message that automatically opens and begins playing a video within my mind¡¯s eye. The entire bunker is lined with explosives. All waiting for a signal to detonate. Bricks of a Technomancy C4 equivalent are wired together in a sort of dead man¡¯s firecracker. Defuse one and the others will be pop. A chain reaction of explosions guaranteed to turn the Juggernaut missiles into secondary and tertiary detonations. Twenty thousand pounds of fiery death. Dozens of tripwires criss-cross the entrance and bunker. We should be dead. ¡°We gotta go.¡± I whisper, the sound amplified by my helmet¡¯s speakers. ¡°Otay Pfina.¡± Without a way for me to trigger the explosives remotely we will all die. Tunnels do not protect from concussive waves or pressurized air, in fact, that might channel the explosion towards us. ¡°We REALLY have to go!¡± I sweep her into my arms, barely managing to pick up the kid. Whatever lab cooked her up must have been on a heavy gravity world; a truckkun full of bricks weighs less than Kerrigan does. She¡¯s like some awful practical joke involving metal mario. We ain¡¯t going nowhere fast. My ankle screams in protest. I doubt it¡¯s broken, but certainly sprained. We need transportation. If not for their spines I¡¯d have Kerrigan ride a zergling. ¡°Crap¡­¡± I mutter aloud, looking from the tunnel entrance to the bunker¡¯s mouth. Between us and the door is a crate mountain. Another standard operational procedure, put anything that can take a bullet in a pile that obscures the front entrance. Later excavators will dig out the bunker on the sides so no amount of penetration will harm the contents within, but this is just a supply dump. Hastily dug with improvised tools. So used crates filled with dirt serve as ballistic armor. Transportation packaging piled thirty feet high. Electrical panels appear on the front of each, marking them as sensitive cargo. If you enter the wrong code or try to force them open, a booby trap will activate. The most common being an explosive, but more creative Technomancers have included viral loads, bioweaponry of a different nature. A pity really. The crates are heavy enough to be full of valuable gear, and the mountain is large enough that I know an antitank weapon is in there somewhere. But I can¡¯t risk a detonation. >Terran Thena: Hey, I¡¯m hoping you¡¯re a super smart alien. Can you hack into Technomancy lockers? >Executrix Alaea: Yes. but no. If they find out I was involved, it¡¯ll be galactically bad news. And I need time. And we have to hope those systems aren¡¯t temporally locked to Syrak¡¯s surface. >Terran Thena: I¡¯m going to die in the next two minutes. What happens to you if I die. >Executrix Alaea: ¡­ >Terran Thena: Look, my bunker is wired with bombs, I need a vehicle, or armor or hell, anything! Help? News isn¡¯t worse than death. Ling1 and Kerrigan feel it before I do. Ground rumbling, and the high pressured pops of long range railguns. I swallow, knowing I¡¯m screwed in a fight. Whomever cleared out this bunker did it well enough. No guns or usable munitions remain, only explosives and Juggernaut specific ammo. >Executrix Alaea: I¡¯ll see what we can do¡­ Hang tight. The words wrap themselves around my throat, the last thing I hear before four Technocracy armored suits jog into the bunker. Flechette pistols at the ready. One, the heavy engineer, stoops to defuse the bombs while the others halt, forming a defensive wall around their leader. That¡¯ll buy a minute, maybe two. Maybe if we hide in the crates- -A sensor ping bounces off my helmet, all four suits jerk in surprise. Facing me. Shit. Chapter 12 I am Executrix Alaea Unlike Athena or Hygieia I was cursed to never lose consciousness. Every second of Jim¡¯s briefing, every millimeter of intergalactic space we covered, I was aware of. He¡¯d sold our consciousness three times, a strange possibility that involved quantumly disentangling our neurons from their electrical impulses. A crude but proven Azhurai technique. I frown at that thought. Unsure how I know the origin, and concerned about the proven way of unscrambling chimeras. We are one such being, in truth, all humans with ESP are classified as chimeras and I admit to myself I¡¯m not sure what the term means. What about others like me? The empaths and telekinetics. Will Jim be splitting all of them as well? I reach for my waistband, where the FNX rests. But my hands are pinned in place. I blink. No longer am I in body. Crystals surround me, large floating things that begin to resonate as I behold them. Like thought activated wind-chimes tingling for their master. But¡­ I¡¯m a college kid. No one calls me master- I am not Athena Finley. Not anymore. We are one of the nameless caste. I sense the paradox of naming a race nameless. It¡¯s illogical, like Odysseus calling himself no one and just like him, I am not alone in this cave. That smallest of thoughts twists something within my mind, we are not -nameless-, the name of the race was erased from my mind. Actively removed by psionic forces beyond comprehension. A galactic prohibition on a race''s name? I shudder. How great of a mind would it take to reach into every organism across the galaxy and prohibit a name from being uttered? That makes the Zerg Overmind look like a crayon eating kindergardner. ¡°Good, you are awake.¡± Says a voice. ¡°WHO AR-¡± I begin, stopping myself as the words thunder through the world. Crystals shudder, violently counter-resonating to tame my scream. The figure slumps stepping into view. As a -nameless- he is millions of years old. Older than humanity itself, and possibly older than the dust that formed Earth. None of that keeps me from scowling, still struggling to grasp why I can¡¯t think of our race¡¯s name. Cognitively I know the word, but there is a sort of wall between my conscious brain and that word. ¡°I see. My son is well and truly dead then.¡± Says the figure. Hands go to his face, which is when I see exactly what a nameless is. More plant than animal, with no mouth or nose and precious few pieces of armor. Or fingers. We only have three on each hand. One central finger that is longer and thicker than the other and inline with our forearms, with two off axis digits, almost like two oppositional opposed thumbs. One where you would expect it and another where a pinky ought to be. Claws tip each digit, evolved for savaging interlopers. Why a plant evolved claws is a question I¡¯ll never be able to answer, but we¡¯ve got them. Unlike mouths, ears, or noses. Looking at the -nameless- face I¡¯m left to wonder how we breath or drink. Which is when I notice the eyes. Dozens of them. A memory from this body educates me in the same way muscle memory educates our movements. You generally don¡¯t remember which muscles you have to flex to drop a turd, but once you pinch off the first loaf your body remembers the correct order forever. Six clusters of eyes and eyestalks open across my ¡®head¡¯, opening to observe the world around me. I¡¯m pinned in a magnetic prison, held down by an energy field invisible to the human visible spectrum, but clear as daylight to my ultraviolet receptors. Infrared eyes observe the heat differentials in the room, stretching on their eyestalks to scan the room in a 360 degree view. The figure before me isn¡¯t -nameless- he is Exec Kaalra, Arbiter of the Orion-spur. AKA the spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy that Earth exists within. If he decided the moniker of ¡®God¡¯ with a capital G was more fitting, then it would be within his power to enforce the change. I swallow. Blinking instead. Right, I have no mouth¡­ So, like a genius I try to calm myself with a breath, and blink my subdermal eyes instead. If you¡¯ve ever wondered how a pit viper blinks its pits, wonder no more! Cause it felt like flapping earlobes over my ear holes. Beyond awkward. Kaalra stands, meeting my eyes with four of his own. They¡¯re almond shaped, set within a round ¡®head¡¯ with eyebrow ridges and ocular prominences. Humanoid in appearance though I know he has molded his face to seem more humanoid than alien. As any skilled ambassador would. Memories scratch at the wall within my id. Pounding against stone in warning. Who I am, what body I¡¯m in, all is lost in a cacophony of Kallra¡¯s eyes. ¡°Another failure..." Elbows move in a gesture that might be a shrug. Dejected, hopeless, yet unsurprised by this outcome. "Alas, you are not my daughter.¡± You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. He turns to leave, subdermal eyes opening along the back of his head. They do not perceive clearly, but I¡¯m not exactly going anywhere. ¡°SO-¡± I try to speak, shouting. Cmon, think, this is just like training. Empty your mind. Jim said we have ESP potential. Figure it out! THINK! A wiggling memory pierces the wall worming through it to slap me with technical info about my own ¡®voice¡¯. Experience tempers my eagerness and for the first time since walking in on Bazzhole and Whorely, I relax. Who would have guessed alien abductions were preferable to being cheated on. ¡°So, that¡¯s it? You¡¯re just going to leave me in stasis.¡± I whisper. My voice isn¡¯t audible in the human sense. If one were a fly on the wall they would not perceive any motion between the two figures. Not until the sounds vibrated directly into their brain on psionic waves. Kallra freezes in the doorway. Claws lingering a millimeter away from the activation crystals. Eyes open across his skull -I know it¡¯s more of a flower¡¯s bulb than any calcium based lattice, but I understand the intent. ¡°You are an ape. Think very carefully as to your next words.¡± Whispers Kaalra, in a tone I know has crushed stars. ¡°Thinking is overrated. I¡¯m not your daughter, but you¡¯ve adopted me so we¡¯re stuck with each other. Or have you evolved your way out of filial responsibility?¡± The quip was a mistake. One that shows me exactly why people avoid the -nameless-. Normally, you don¡¯t think about little things like the atomic weight of oxygen, not until every molecule ceases to move, desublimating from gas directly into solid oxygen. Pressure in the room drops to zero. A lethal pressure for humans, as zero is total vacuum. Sea Level on earth is roughly 15 psi, while the pinnacle of Mount Everest tickles 5 psi and is well known for suffocating climbers. Except I¡¯m not human. Nor do I breath via lungs. A severe drop in pressure swells my eyes, improving vision rather than boiling my blood. Other than that, no changes accompany the loss and holding my breath is possible for far longer than any human could conceive. Desublimating gaseous oxygen into solid oxygen is impressive and should stun my monkey brain into shutting the hell up and not provoking Kaalra any further. But no one has ever accused me of being the sharpest tool. I prepare to speak and realize every molecule of my body is locked down. Held more tightly than Earth in Atlas¡¯ sweaty palms. ¡°You dare-¡± Whispers Kaalra, each syllable jackhammering our crystalized space. ¡°You dare speak with her voice. One more word and I will extract your stupidity so it cannot mar her existance further.¡± If I were still human, his threat alone would have killed me. Broken every bone in my body and literally crushed the piss and shit out of me. Although which hole I excreted from would be a mystery because my body would be crushed into dimensions smaller than a needle¡¯s point. But this ship is built of sterner materials. Walls creak, the floor and ceiling recoil slightly bowing under the psychic pressure. A thousand thoughts and memories run through my mind, the summation of my life, abduction from earth, college, the betrayal of every person I''ve ever cared about, and my impending death on Syrak-9. Part of me is relieved, dying in a war has to hurt, at least Kaalra will make it snappy and quick- -Deep within my id, five voices cry out as one. No. I can¡¯t move, can¡¯t breath, can¡¯t speak. My intrinsic human abilities are gone. So I turn to the one ability that isn¡¯t human. My name is Alaea. She wished to die and abandoned this body willingly, though her memories remain, as do her meditations. Together our minds settle into one. We are Alaea. I am Alaea. Envisioning a feather made of pure oxygen bricks I dust the air between us. An electrical storm of ice and lightning erupts between us, vaporizing oxygen back into gas. Fire rolls across the room, consuming oxygen. Kaalra is engulfed in flames, as is my stasis tube. Waves of heat roll over us both. He extends a finger, pulling fire, smoke, heat, and frozen oxygen, I strain against his will, trying to avoid burning to death. Solid steel, or crystals stronger than steel, hold me in place. Another psionic duster shatters the restraints and I¡¯m free. Fire licks my skin, pleasantly warming my hide. I¡¯m not human. The thought settles into my mind. Humans do not shower in flames. Is no part of me Athena Finley? Kaalra looks at me, disgust in his eyes but there is something else there. Relief maybe? Psychic tendrils set the room to order, banishing flames and trapped oxygen in a second. The room looks perfect, as if we hadn¡¯t just walked through a pure oxygen fire seconds before. Soot covers my skin while Kaalra is spotless. He must possess a personal shield generator or psychically keep the soot from landing. My claws rub together, brushing away loose soot to find my skin unblemished. No evidence that I just survived an inferno without so much as a sunburn. ¡°Such weak intelligence. Bah, my daughter has fused stars. You are nothing. Not even the traitors who altered your world will take such a failure in. Damn shame. Oh Alaea, wish that you accept our duty, not die vainly in the prayer of vainglory.¡± Said Kaalra. His speech was odd, as if translated by a middle school student. Incomplete and jilting. A second psionic impulse bursts from him, ordering the ship into the gate above Syrak-9. Engines ignite with the ship somehow duplicating itself; one physical manifestation will remain above Syrak-9 and the other transits the orbital gateway appearing above a planet I recognize as Earth. I cannot physically see beyond this stasis room, but I know the ship is moving and our position relative to the local stars. ¡°None of this is remotely possible-¡± I begin. Propelled to the cusp of lightspeed then far beyond as we transition the gate. Deep within my id a star chart updates, a primordial sense that tells me we have portalled back to Earth. I¡¯m home. As an alien daughter aboard a hostile warship. ¡°Please, leave Earth alone.¡± I whisper. ¡°Make me.¡± Answers Exec Kaalra, ¡°If you think an ape like you is capable of leaving stasis.¡± Says Kaalra, sealing the door between us. Chapter 13 Trapped like a rabbit in a mouse hole 1 / 1 Biomass 0 / 0 Mechanized Five things occurred in the same second. First, I swallow, sensor ping still echoing through my helmet. Secondly, the four technicians spread out, slicing the pie around crate mountain. One on each side, While the heaviest tech curls around his detonator, no matter what, he holds the power to Chuck Norris our asses with twenty tons of explosives. Third, Kerrigan¡¯s pupils narrow to slits, taking on a purple luminescence. She¡¯s in my arms one second, then ducking between my legs the next. I reflexively reach for her, narrowly pulling back as her tail stinger passes an inch away from my palm. Before I can think of how close I just came to death, Ling-ling2 breaks through his tunnel into the wider world. Acrid Tulverian blood tickles his nose making mine itch in sympathetic irritation. Fifth, a pulsating alarm appears on my HUD, an icon that sends a shudder through my body. The flash trained portion of my brain warns that it¡¯ll be safer to pull off my mask and empty the flechette pistol into my brain rather than face what is coming. Field Marshal Bazzhole deployed the Singularity¡¯s most terrifying weaponry. Part of me is stunned that their interplanetary AI network approved this particular weapon, though the grinding attrition of Syrak-9 makes for the ideal battlefield. Of all the bloody shitholes for an army to fight through this one screams to the heavens for THAT unpredictable weapon. Tight quarters mean hand to hand combat is guaranteed, while armor and personal shielding are prerequisites to survive the artillery barrages and heavy weaponry of mechanized armies. Now I understand why Baz is a Field Marshal. Should anything go awry, he¡¯ll be the ideal patsy. A newly appointed officer who was flash trained into command with zero prior experience or relevant skills. In other words, the perfectly explainable wig out. Who unleashed demons upon Syrak-9. ¡°Please, let this one be sane.¡± I whisper, falling prone. I crawl through the crates, positioning the central pile of equipment between myself and the entrance. ¡®Ling1, tunnel to my left, if someone comes around take em out.¡¯ He¡¯s already burrowed into the earth, digging a path towards the technicians. Crystal claws can really move dirt. ¡°Oh man, I really hope that stinger pierces armor.¡± Zerglings always beat marines in small numbers, an analogy I pray holds true here. Technicians aren''t combatants, but power armor would turn a starving toddler into a super Olympian capable of running faster and jumping higher and deadlifting more trucks than any unmodified humans. Rumbling shakes the bunker. Missile tubes clatter against each other, crates jitter up and down. Two minutes till the Juggernaut reaches us. It¡¯ll probably turn me into pink mist, just like those Tulverians. Crates begin to fall. Knocked askance by the tremors. We have two minutes so the Juggernaut is a mile away too far to shake- -Which is when I see it. A tunneling tank, it kinda looks like a spinning dildo through the tremorsense. Four figures reside within, a pilot and three passengers, one of which is unmistakable as the weapon. Five times heavier than the others yet occupying the same volume. Bile pushes up my esophagus. Terror made manifest. I begin to pant, hyperventilating. My torso curls around the flechette pistol, holding it steady as a Technocracy Technician slices the pie around crate mountain. Braced as I am -with two lings to triangulate tremorsense- the man finds me ready. One hundred needles whizz through the air in a half second. Accurate fire repeated to depletion of my magazine. Projectiles bounce harmlessly off armor, incapable of penetrating the ceramic layers. Good thing the armor isn¡¯t my target, his glass visor is. Sixty steel darts impact his visor. The first bounces off with no apparent damage. Same for the second. Then ten connect faster than my mind can process. Cracks spiderweb across the dome. Needles eleven and twelve pop it open. Triggering the HELP system. Steel shutters deploy automatically slamming forward to seal his faceplate a half second behind my sixtieth hit. Nearly forty needles enter the man¡¯s face. Eyes pop, teeth shatter, four needles pass through his spine bending and keyholing on their way through flesh. Most importantly of all, a single needle tumbles through his vertebrae, permanently crippling the man. [+1 biomass] [+1 technician power armor] All I see is a geyser of blood. Needles ricochet inside the helmet clanking and thudding in a blender. The man collapses going entirely limp. I reload, rolling hard to my left. Fire and move. Only I stop short, resting on my shoulder as the single most valuable piece of Technocracy hardware comes into view. Our number 1 highest priority capture target. A nanofactory, mostly a block of steel wrapped in composites to keep it protected¨C -A faint tingle emanates from my chest, and in a blink the entire room glows with faerie light. Back to total darkness before my helmet can detect the change in light. Ping alarms erupt in my helmet. Something just scanned us. >Executrix Alaea: A NANOFACTORY! I¡¯m taking that. Shit, where am I gonna put it? Feck. uhmmmm. Oh, what the hell is that tunneling? Dude, don¡¯t die. Wait, is that a Juggernaut? BRO! >Terran Thena: I¡¯M BUSY Chat operates fast as thought. A good thing. Otherwise I¡¯d be dead. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. A second technician, this one missing a leg, leaps over crate mountain, power armor hurling him bodily into the ceiling supports with brute force adhering him to metal grating. Flechette pistol barks tearing through the two crates I was in just seconds earlier. He walks the shots into me, eight needles tearing into my arm and shoulder. Cold envelopes my arm as nerves shred. All sensation vanishes from the limb, hell, I can¡¯t even tell if the arm is still connected or not. I¡¯m losing blood. Training takes over, repeating drilled mantra. Kill this one, then tourniquet the bleed. My own pistol rises to the target, shaking as one arm fails to obey. Maybe if I¡¯m quick the Singularity can find a prosthetic. Dirt explodes beneath my chest launching me ten feet in a cartwheel that would put me in contention for the Paralympics. Metallic flooring shatters as a drill penetrates the bunker floor. A roof hatch opens and my worst fears sprout from on high. Red, black, and a dancing syandana of golden light compliment a woman¡¯s curves. Wide hips, a hint of abs, and perky tits, like an attractive runner. Right up until I see her face. It¡¯s smooth, featureless. An unfinished marble sculpture. She springs upwards, dual wielding pistols -if the weapons can be classified so timidly- one looks like three sawn-off shotguns duck taped together while the other is a monstrosity of gold steel that seems like it would be most at home on Blackbeard¡¯s pirate belt. I would laugh, if not for the bright colors. There are three reasons to stand out on the battlefield, the most common is so the enemy won¡¯t murder your medic. While the second is because you¡¯re too stupid to realize you are a target. But the third reason tightens my sphincter. If you¡¯re immortal. Most would achieve a simulacra of immortality with layers of shielding and armor, but this ¡®woman¡¯ seems to be human save for odd protrusions on her armor. It¡¯s not Singularity standard issue like my trenchcoat is. No, her armor might actually stop a bullet, as evidenced by hundreds of tiny nicks and dents in it. Prior attempts at ending this bioweapon¡¯s existence. Jutting prominences hint at being grown in a lab rather than forged and fitted; while humanoid affectations suggest this monster remembers her humanity differently than myself. A bulbous thorax extends from the figure¡¯s lower back glowing with yellow energy. Dozens of rods spray from the thorax washing over the bunker. Over me. They move through solid objects faster than light, leaving afterimages of energy as they scan. Before I blink they congregate into a half dozen solid tendrils. Linking the bioweapon with targets. One rod extends to each technocracy technician, one to Ling1, and another to the distant Juggernaut. The larger of her two pistols speaks, sending three slugs punching through a technician¡¯s power armor. Tremorsense informs of the slugs final destination, ten feet into the dirt. She ascends to her apex, hanging in midair for a microsecond as gravity consumes her upward acceleration and begins to drag her down. Thrusters puff, keeping her aloft. From my vantage she may as well be a destroying angel, hovering with death in both hands. The second pistol screams with recoil so intense it buoys her up. Six barrels fire at once, sending a half dozen slugs through the ceiling technician¡¯s helmet. Rounds carve a hole through his neck all the way to his chest where a full pound of lead poisons his heart via six holes. He slumps, boots still mag locked to the ceiling. Her own foot lashes out, slashing through armor, faceplate, and spine in one energized cut. Beheading the man for good measure. A dark thought crawls out of my bleeding arm. Hmm, guess that¡¯s one way to hang someone. Second pistol empty, she drops it, mag locks pull it out of the air, anchoring it to her hip. The gunfight finally catches the heavy technician¡¯s attention just in time for him to catch three slugs from her heavy pistol. How it shoots three slugs from one barrel is a fascinating impossibility I want to understand, no need to understand! I take a single step forward and slump- -torso going numb. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s right. I got shot.¡± I mutter, vision beginning to darken. To my horror, those words alert the weapon. Her -deeply disconcerting- thorax pulses once emitting a wave of yellow energy. Like really, she¡¯s a half bug, half woman, waif that doesn¡¯t reach my chin yet has more power than a Singularity superheavy walker. Light-power washes the bunker and myself. All told, the pain of being shot wasn¡¯t too bad, it hurt, but it hurt like a thorn pricks. Sharp pain that fades each second. In fact, I haven¡¯t even noticed my bleeding lung. Not until the bioweapon-woman curses me. When the pulse hits, flesh regrows instantly, a miracle soon corrupted by inconceivable pain as the needles push their way through my flesh at a tortoisian pace. Thin and sharp is how to pierce armor, yet these needles are designed to bend, to warp then spin through flesh after piercing armor. It is these bent, inch long blades that are healed out of me. Screaming fills my ears. Probably my own. Hard not to scream when eight blades razor through me, falling out of my body as constant waves of healing repair it. Minutes pass, or seconds. I¡¯m in way too much pain to count. Shooting too. One of the techheads managed a final salvo of flechettes, a full magazine. One hundred steel needles that bounce off the weapon¡¯s citrine shielding. Personal energy shielding! Now that is something I would give my left tit for. Another pulse hits and my mind clears instantly. So sharply I wonder if she stabbed me with a pound of cocaine. The weapon drops a detonator on my helmet, Tight beaming a single order to me. ¡°I have no heavy weapons on me so it''s up to you soldier. When that Juggernaut rolls in here, destroy it. Once that is accomplished get back to your squad.¡± She says, then does a standing backflip to cover twenty feet up and back into the tunneling tank. I¡¯m not sure how, but no part of her touches the hatch, a perfect swish despite thorax, protruding armor, and weapons. Her order is optimistic. We both know I¡¯ll explode alongside the Juggernaut, but at least this bioweapon is kind enough to lie. Maybe kindness doesn¡¯t factor into the decision, she may not have any comprehension of death. I try to respond and taste iron. Blood aspirates into my throat. At some point during my screaming the vehicle repositioned itself, and now it departs once more. Drill plows through crates into the bunker¡¯s wall then angles downward, tunneling away. Outside the Juggernaut stopped, halted by something. Ling1 says the weapon threw two rocks at the Juggernaut, one is still spewing white smoke and the other seems to hit the Juggernaut and stopped it. Maybe an EMP grenade of some kind? No time to stop and think. I need to get the hell out of here before the Juggernaut reactivates. I climb to my feet, stumbling against the nanofactory. If only we could capture this. Beam it away¡­ >Terran Thena: I¡¯m going to die, please, beam me out? >Executrix Alaea: You know I can¡¯t. >Executrix Alaea: Don¡¯t give up like a lil bitch. Not when I have a plan. >Terran Thena: What plan? >Executrix Alaea: They make Juggernauts on world. Pull a Tychus. Hacking coughs rip through my lungs, expunging the blood from at least one bullet, maybe two. Tychus. One word, but talking to yourself has the benefit of shorthand. It¡¯s a good plan. Chapter 14 WTF is Tychus? 1 / 2 Biomass 0 / 1 Mechanized -No production capacity- The Nanofactory churns to life, light appearing within. [Manufacturing capacity obtained] >Executrix Alaea: I¡¯m in control, you have five minutes before that Juggernaut rolls over your skull. >Terran Thena: Your initials should be AS for AssHole. I have a needler and it¡¯s a gotdaamned TANK! I rip off my gasmask, coughing blood onto the floor. My hands strip my outer layers, they won¡¯t fit into the Tychus plan. Nanofactory screens illuminate then run through a thousand schematics in nanoseconds, all skimmed and beamed to Alaea. Alien is right. Advanced alien too! Mrs. EarlyAccess got the luckiest roll of us all. I shake my head once. This nanofactory should be AI hardened, able to resist hacking attempts. A thousand ideas occur to me at once and I take the most obvious and appealing course of action. >Terran Thena: Hack the Juggernaut. >Executrix Alaea: Can¡¯t. They¡¯re wetware systems. Earthling core. Hope Whorely got turned into one of them. Then we can piledrive that whore with a spaceship. I cackle at the thought. Humor fighting off the terrifying abilities of an interstellar hacker. At least, it tries too. Alaea isn¡¯t Athena anymore. But what if the reference is more like a model number. You wouldn¡¯t name a human ¡®Mount Goddess of all knowledge¡¯ so why would an alien race name my other half exactly that¡­? Logic is quick on this simple problem. She¡¯s an Artificial Intelligence. Or they plugged her mind -my mind- into some kind of computer. What can I do if part of me exists only in cyberspace? A snapping sensation fills my mind. It¡¯s Ling-ling2 trying to fetch those Tulverian Pulsers. ¡°Don¡¯t bite the gun in half you idiot!¡± He cowers, tail falling between his knees. I sigh, these lings can talk, but they aren¡¯t fully sentient. Closer to a dog¡¯s intelligence than a fully functioning human being. Or my cousin Carl, that dude is dumb enough to walk through a blizzard in his boxers. How he is still sucking air surprises me each Christmas. I gulp. There won¡¯t be another Christmas with the family. Not this year. Or next. Lingling2 whimpers softly; reminds me of dad yelling at our golden retriever. Whether he pissed on the carpet or not, everyone feels like a piece of shit. I temper my voice, these lings might be the only companions I have. Best treat them right. ¡°Hey, look its fine. Go touch another one. Don¡¯t bite it. You¡¯re doing great.¡± Juggernaut engines restart with a deep rumbling that shakes my boots. Kerrigan appears at my side, tucking herself against my bad leg. I wince, prepared to fall over as my sprained ankle gives out, only to find the leg fully healed. That Singularity weapon did more than just cure my bullet wounds. But what was the price? I wonder, hoping I don¡¯t have space cancer from the instant healing. After all, cancer is just rapid cellular regeneration. Unmoderated healing always carries an accelerated risk of cancer directly correlary to the amount of cellular tissue regrown. ¡°Is Pfina otay?¡± Asks Kerrigan. I pat her head, too busy trying to execute ¡®Tychus¡¯. Just cause I know the plan doesn¡¯t make implementation any easier. >Terran Thena: Can you use the lings as targets for teleportation? The far away ling is trying to bring me a Tulverian plasma rifle. >Executrix Alaea: Yes, and I¡¯ll do you one better. A heads up display appears in my vision, with simple controls for teleportation. Anything I''m touching can be marked, more than that, anything within ten meters of myself or a creature in our hive mind can be marked, including anything the lings are physically touching. There are other options too, like a tagging system to mark distant objects, the touch restriction is just a filter. A way to limit the options and not spam me with ten thousand buttons or alerts. Neat¨C ¨CBullets cut through smoke flying a foot over my head as the Juggernaut reactivates its weaponry. We¡¯ve got a moment or two before the Juggernaut reboots all systems. Less if the pilot is experienced enough to manually control the vehicle. Part of me prays this is a newborn Earthling. ¡°Kerrigan, if that tank comes in here I want you to run down that tunnel. Do not look back! Don¡¯t worry about me.¡± I hiss, ducking and circling to the Nanofactory¡¯s product port. Nanofactories were ubiquitous across Singularity and Technocracy armadas. A portable piece of equipment that could churn out any pre-designed hardware you could imagine, great for repairs or minor fabrication. Not so great at full system construction. Sorta like an industrial sized 3d printer, complete with customizable metal injection and rubber analogs. Power armor or motorcycles are about the maximum limit of this specific machine¡¯s dimensions. Although it might be able to expand and accommodate larger objects, like SUVs. Its capture should have me ecstatic, and it does¡­ If I could feed it materials or had any chance of protecting this bunker. ¡°Ith Pfina gonna weaff me behind?¡± Asks Kerrigan. ¡°No. I¡¯ll be right behind you. So do not stop running. Understand?¡± She nods, so trusting. I wonder if this is what the Singularity bioweapon once was, small, alone, naked, and totally exposed to violence before they had any concept of humanity. The nanofactory pauses, loading another crate of supplies. There is a moment of silence, then I hear distant rumbling. The deeply quiet booms of long range guns firing in unison. What little light entering the bunker vanishes, occluded by a tank so far advanced it would be more at home in the Korpulu sector. The Juggernaut is here. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. >Terran Thena: THOR IS HERE! I¡¯M TRAPPED! HELP! >Executrix Alaea: Working on it. Hide! With the nanofactory between me and the Juggernaut I¡¯m well hidden, plus I can see it through ling1 who¡¯s gone to ground, hiding beneath crates. Perfectly still. The Juggernaut backs up, returning the way it came for some inexplicable reason. It jerks awkwardly. Starting then stopping three times. Did the pilot reboot incorrectly? If I didn¡¯t know better I''d say he was a psychopath that plays with inverted controls and someone just swapped out his controller. >Executrix Alaea: Oh! I gotchu fam. Lights fill the bunker illuminating the space with a thousand blinking LEDs. Ling1 crawls to me, staying low. Pressing a shoulder against me in a protective squish, a way of shielding me with his body a vestigial gesture from his originating race, and almost meaningless in the face of thermal sensors. Internal movement warns us of manufacturing progressing to the final stages within. The retreating juggernaut raises itself, aligning upper missile tubes to the trench¡¯s mouth. Just in time for three Juggernauts to roll over the trench outside. Treads gore the earth, leaving indents wider than I am tall. One goes up and down the ramps, the other across missile tubes, metal screams as it tries to support the weight of the warmachine. While a third does the absurd. It locks every missile inside their launchers, then sets the rack to maximum inclination. Scores of missiles fire; combining their exhausts to help the Technotank hop thirty feet. It¡¯s like watching a ballerina fart nukes and fly, if that ballerina was two semi trucks glued together with lab grown meat and called the Killdozer ¡®daddy¡¯. Autocannons unleash hatred, spewing thousands of rounds towards human conscripts. I know they¡¯re dying. These tanks are killing other earthlings. Chink [+1 Technician power armor] Work complete the nanofactory ejects its most recent project, a suit of powered armor, painted shitbrown with gray accents. The most beautiful turd I''ve ever seen. 10/10 would shit again. Plan Tychus is simple, infiltrate the enemy¡¯s armor and shoot em in the ass. Just like the Tychus did with the Odin. An infinitely more elegant plan than blowing myself sky high to kill one lousy Juggernaut. >Terran Thena: I need two of those! >Executrix Alaea: Okay¡­ I¡¯m making five. Factory is too heavy to beam up right now. >Terran Thena: Can you make one half sized? There¡¯s a girl down here, child. >Executrix Alaea: A child? What- NO! Don¡¯t explain. Uhm. No, remote control won¡¯t let me alter designs. I¡¯ll have to get it on board. >Terran Thenao: YOU HAVE A SHIP?!?!?! >Executrix Alaea: It¡¯s not my ship. I¡¯ll be hiding the nanofactory in my closet¡­ Under my bed. Also, no human life support. Maybe no oxygen. You¡¯d probably die. Sorry. I don¡¯t have time to scream and swear at this ship shaped wrench, I¡¯m too busy jamming empty artillery shells and spare rations into the suit. At eight feet tall it¡¯s highly reminiscent of Terran Marine armor, big shoulderpads, dual reactors on the back in a sort of backpack, with the front being covered in sensors, lights, and a ton ¨Cliterally¨C of armor to counterbalance. ¡°Alright Kerrigan, hop in the armor, it¡¯ll keep you safe!¡± I say, lowering her into the suit through the neck hole. The Juggernaut outside rotates again, its missile tubes smashed flat by cosplaying as a bridge. What a maneuver. Part of me respects the enormous balls on this warmachine, and the other part of me warps two Tulverian plasma rifles aboard Alaea''s ship. They¡¯re valuable, despite having no place in ¡®Tychus¡¯. Still, missile tubes are semi disposable. I know cause there are about a thousand of them lining the bunker walls. Hydraulics hiss, the Juggernaut lowering itself once more and turning to face us. I thank god the nanofactory¡¯s completion port isn¡¯t facing the trench, though logic corrects me. This was no act of fate. No idiot would give enemies a straight shot into the factory¡¯s internals. Kerrigan¡¯s hips and shoulders slide right in, head disappearing for a second before it pops back up. A sharkish grin across her face. ¡°I know armor! Red guy showed me how to uthe this. Before he lefth me behind.¡± She says, moving the arms and legs. Visor hisses shut, how her lil arms reach any controls is an elastagirl miracle, but she is mobile and waddles behind the factory with me. We have no heavy guns, no capacity for killing tanks. Only zerglings. So I give the panic order that all zerglings receive when an overwhelming force is bearing down on them. Burrow. They obey, claws flaying steel grates in two swipes before scooping pawfuls of dirt out of the way. Treads whine, metal howls. The Juggernaut is entering the bunker, crushed tubes scraping the excavated walls. Another Juggernaut rocket jumps the trench, closer, smoke fogs the trench and bunker, drowning us in black rocket ejaculate. My mask filters it out, air tasting canned like it always does, but the zerglings wheeze, giving away our position. I rest my head against Kerrigan¡¯s armor, there¡¯s nothing left for us to do other than stay quiet. In the total silence I hear a sound that makes my heart stop. Kerrigan¡¯s radio buzz, and the orders of an angry Juggernaut. ¡°Tech, replace my tubes.¡± Echoes through her helmet. A voice I¡¯ve heard often rises from Kerrigan¡¯s throat, but it¡¯s not hers. ¡°Piss off bolt brain! Got shot to hell! Look around you man, there is a tech hanging from the ceiling! Can''t you see my squad is dead? We shoulda stayed evacuated. Now my damn suit¡¯s buggered. That¡¯s why I¡¯m making a replacement.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t make me come down there you little cun¨C¡± ¡°Oh yeah big boy? What you gonna do?¡± Says Kerrigan, using MY voice. ¡°Gonna waste your last bullets on me. Then head to the next bunker without a single round? Blow hot air out of your ports. Ah, look. I don¡¯t even have bullets for you. Quit bitching. Get rolling.¡± Chinks and chunks warn that the Juggernaut is manually operating several weapons, contemplating if he should blow us away. He doesn''t have a clear shot to either of us, but Juggernauts are not known for being stable. The type of person who can accept being surgically implanted into a tank and forced to fight until death is not your average human. "Sorry. Can''t help without a new suit." Says Kerrigan. Servoes whine to the tune of a screaming man. A sensor ping rips through the bunker. One last wail before the juggernaut turns and drives away. That was closer than shaving my vulva with straight razors. A second suit appears in front of me, chest open. Inviting me into the warm bosom of safety. I scramble up the suit, using its hands as footholds to get above. From here I can shimmy in, hips catching on the inner confines. It¡¯s not built for an unaugmented woman, let alone a fit college gal with double Ds. The Technomancy probably considers those unnecessary. Damn cyborgs must feed babies motor oil or something. I have to undo my mask and shake my hips like Shakira to get inside. All while wondering how much the Novan Techs must remove to get in and out comfortably. But at this point I¡¯m too desensitized to even shudder. Besides, the sudden feeling of being encased in protection settles my heart. Not even the steaming fumes of this world can crush my spirits now. Crush my spirits¡­ I¡¯m in armor. Before my visor shuts I look at Kerrigan, ¡°Get that Juggernaut back here, I¡¯ve got a plan.¡± Visor hisses shut. But for a second I can taste the steaming fumes of this world. Its rancid stench of cooked bodies. As if ten thousand men cut their throats and bled into one parking lot, then sat in the sun for a week it wouldn¡¯t smell half as vile. And I intend to cut one very large throat. [+1 Technician power armor] Chapter 15 Twenty six hours down 1 / 2 Biomass 1 / 3 Mechanized -Nanofactory Operational- I punch the com channel open, broadcasting on an open Technocracy line. Then freeze, uncertain how to mimic the tone Kerrigan used earlier. I can¡¯t exactly copy my own voice and her diction was a bit off. ¡°Hey, wait a second. Factory was already making suits, got a new one. You got lucky. Come back and I¡¯ll get your tubes replaced, at least then you won¡¯t be down to your last fifty bullets.¡± Says Kerrigan. She¡¯s mimicking my voice perfectly. The single most freakish way to show off her bioweapon nature. I should distance myself from her, there is no way of guessing what parts of her once childish brain remain. Or if there is even a girl left inside her reprogrammed mind. ¡°Make up your mind woman! I ought to report your instability.¡± Says the Juggernaut pilot, returning so quickly the bunker¡¯s concrete entrance sheers off two tubes. Steel plaps into the mud behind him. Twenty foot long missile tubes sink into mud like discarded ribs. Now mangled beyond recognition. I signal to Kerrigan, gesturing for her to lay down behind the factory and be silent. ¡°Damnit man! Just look at this mess!¡± I snap, taking over communications. I stomp out of the shadows, picking up a spare missile tube in one hand. The tube is some ¡®economical¡¯ alloy of steel, only a few hundred pounds. Practically nothing in this Technocracy power armor. The Juggernaut rotates in place, one tread rotating forward while its agonist moves in reverse until his rear is facing the nanofactory. We have a clear view of his most sensitive bits, and I send two orders, one to the zergling, and one to Kerrigan. >Athena: Grab all the spare rations you can Kerrigan. >Kerrigan: Yay! Chocolate meats! My throat clenches. What is Kerrigan going to become? Will she be one of those insane bioweapons who kills in seconds then orders her allies to die? An alert appears on my internal HUD, the option to warp a Tulverian plasma rifle off planet to Alaea. Good boy! I think, activating the option. Finally, I¡¯m armed and dangerous. Heart thundering as I claim the first antitank weapon. So happy that I hop aboard the Juggernaut, kicking spent missile tubes off the tank like Santa¡¯s best worker elf. Sable Yurten has replaced missile racks before, and this suit of power armor is built for engineers. Holographic instructions guide my hands as I reload two hundred tubes, dropping some of the odd caliber autocannons in favor of more missiles. Easy as LEGOs, especially since this suit even has bundles of powered graspers hidden under armor plates, allowing me to deploy them and reach things my encased fingers otherwise cannot. Tentacles have never been so handy. Like, they can really get in there deep. I recognize a few of the dropped autocannons as American made M2 machine guns, .50 BMG weapons with a little help from rollmarks like ¡®Property of United States Army¡± engraved on them. Jim must have sold gear to both sides. I¡¯m not surprised at the taxman¡¯s mercenary trend. Just exasperated. Is there anything he hasn''t touched? Another hologram counts remaining rounds for the autocannons, finding no reserves on the planet and labeling them as scrap metal. A smile crosses my face as I crush the guns on accident, taking pleasure in deformed steel. A few less guns for the Technocracy. I¡¯m not surprised in the least. At this point, I¡¯m just waiting for another betrayal. Maybe I¡¯ll win ¡®Backstabbed Bingo¡¯. Thirty minutes pass as I move roughly twenty thousand pounds of missile tubes and missiles. Oh, and we can¡¯t forget my assistant¡¯s contributions. Ling1 managed to move a dozen bricks of explosive, stashing them on or in the Juggernaut¡¯s access panels with some help from your friendly neighborhood warpgate. My new name for the teleportation system. One might ask how a zergling -with claws and no hands- opens a two inch access panel, a good question. Turns out these tentacles are great at unscrewing things while my hands are busy. There is even a cluster of tentacles under my calf armor complete with an adjustable wrench, perfect for opening access panels. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡°Hey, sorry about being a cunt. It¡¯s just that my squad ditched me then artillery nearly cut me in half just before you arrived. Worst of all, I can''t even call them assholes, something killed em first. Suit¡¯s dickered right to hell and I don¡¯t have the tools I need. Ah, guess my chips must have been damaged from the shockwaves. I¡¯ll run diagnostics and have them recalibrated when I link up at base.¡± I radio. ¡°Get that checked out before the next reload.¡± Responds the Juggernaut, absolutely zero emotion sullying his voice. I can¡¯t tell if he is pissed, furious, or just tired, in fact I have absolutely no idea what is running through that half robotic brain of his. My only hope is he bought Tychus and hasn¡¯t picked up on the deception. Job complete I seal the last access panel praying to yellow trinity that steel plates won¡¯t block the signal for spontaneous disassembly. Then he is gone, exiting the bunker and driving up the ramp. I¡¯ll need to time this perfectly, in case Kerrigan is still loyal to the Technocracy. She can¡¯t know what I¡¯ve done. Hard to imagine her cute purple eyes would stab me in the back, but it¡¯s even more difficult to imagine a world where a Technomancer builds a bioweapon without failsafes. One wrong word and her head might pop. Simultaneous with my reloading work, Lingling2 is busy gathering Tulverian gear, including helmets and ammunition bandoliers. The warp HUD makes this possible. Still, it¡¯s like driving two cars at once. The throttle is linked to both but each has its own steering wheel and gear shifter. My saving grace is how the buttons seem to press themselves if I focus on them. So fluid I have to wonder if our hive mind invented telekinesis. Allowing simultaneous usage of Singularity, Technocracy, and warp HUDs. Time rumbles through the world pounding artillery shells and the occasional dropship to smithereens. Strategic information I uncover by tapping into the Juggernaut¡¯s prediction subroutines and a connection that will be lost when I press the detonator. I look at the detonator, ready to pull the trigger then pause. Not yet, I think, locking its safety latch over the switch. Too many people have touched it and the bombs, I have no way of knowing what exactly will explode or if we got every linked brick of C4 in the bunker. Ling1 drops a brick near my feet, looking up at me like a puppy who just delivered slippers. Okay, we might have missed a few bricks. ¡°No way am I blowing my ass off early. We¡¯ll leave first then detonate.¡± Alerts appear on two helmets, torrents of information rattle around my face. Blinding me with a hundred pinpricks of information that erode my patience. I can feel pressure building behind my eyes, a migraine in the making. Okay, slow down. Work the problem. Solve one step then move to the next. Look, I¡¯m halfway there. We¡¯re in stolen armor, with a rolling sabotage as a distraction. But I¡¯m only one person¡­ My hand trembles, recalling the pain of being shot then healed. Frontlines are where people die, this cannot be where I fight. In the past hour artillery has cut me in half, nearly tore off my arm, and should have blown me sky high. I¡¯ve been stupid. Sloppy. Bumbling around a toxic world without a clue. >Terran Thena: Hey Hygieia, I have hardware but no soldiers. Help a poor girl out? >Matriarch Hygieia: send biomass Of course I¡¯ve forgotten the core part of our agreement. I feel stupider than when ¡®NOT ENOUGH MINERALS, MINE MORE MINERALS¡¯ appears on screen. It''s a simple matter for me to warp the dead technicians to Hygieia. Simple as dragging the icons and dropping them into the recycling bin. Or collecting your daily free roll in a gatcha. >Executrix Alaea: Hey Hygene, I¡¯ll give you the same HUD. I¡¯ve got my own door problems. >Terran Thena: Door problems? Damn problems? >Executrix Alaea: NO. >Matriarch Hygieia: is it clever if i thought of it too? :P >Matriarch Hygieia: I see your spare suits. >Matriarch Hygieia: will manufacture wetware >Matriarch Hygieia: estimated time to completion 1 hour >Matriarch Hygieia: product will be defective >Matriarch Hygieia: entering combat >Matriarch Hygieia: no time for better ¡°What the hell does defective mean?¡± I shout, warping out a stack of singularity helmets and rations. Kerrigan is still eating chocolate bricks, blissfully blind. Well, that¡¯s something. At least I can make one girl happy. Chapter 16 Proxy Racks #1 is Secured 1 / 6 Biomass 1 / 9 Mechanized 1 Nanofactory Lingling2 has been busy gathering Tulverian weapons and now sits inside a nest dug into the trench wall. Happily munching iguanas atop a pile of sweet alien energy weapons. Instead of magazines with projectiles the plasma rifles -I have no idea what their Tulverian manufacturer or model numbers might be, maybe Iguana Plasma Industries model Clickity Clack 102- use square bricks with rounded edges, similar to a human magazine yet entirely sealed with metal sliders protecting silver hued prods. Contact points for integrated electronics like a round counter in the scope. Or they could be batteries, without a live iguana to translate I can¡¯t even begin to guess. ¡°Feck, I can¡¯t possibly take another helmet¡­ Let alone an alien one.¡± >Terran Thena: Hey, I¡¯ve got information overload. Can you do something to link up my helmets? >Executrix Alaea: Oh, yeah, sure. Let me just run a military intelligence operation by myself. Easy. >Terran Thena: So¡­ That¡¯s a yes? It¡¯s not like you have anything better to do. >Executrix Alaea: Is it clever if all three of us think of it at the same time? AND STOP GETTING SHOT! WE CAN FEEL THAT! >Matriarch Hygieia: ditto. ty for the hud. Perfect for creating a biopool. >Terran Thena: Eat a bag of dicks. I¡¯m NOT TRYING to get shot! I¡¯ll trade places with either of you. >Executrix Alaea: Point taken. Alright here is the deal. I can link the helmets all to your warp HUD, but this is cludge AF. Makes you wish for a science vessel like the Amerigo, fully automated with enough sensors to comsat a system. Eh, the Tulvarian helmet won¡¯t link up. Not that it matters. Only a hundred odd iguanas are left. Singularity offensive killed all their outposts. Some kind of tunneling vehicle and a kickass yellow bioweapon. Fucking terrifying shit. I still can¡¯t figure out how she pulled the life out of those lizards or healed you. It¡¯s like all organs suddenly went into complete shutdown. As if all ATP was drained from their cells in a second. Something like that might actually be able to kill me. But then she healed you and did the inverse. I can¡¯t track where the repaired flesh came from or how she added blood. That weapon could literally cure every ailment on earth. ¡®Might be able to kill me.¡¯ repeats in my mind. Strange way of thinking about a tragedy but I¡¯m not sure how to respond to myself. Why would Alaea want to die? She don¡¯t sound suicidal, but I know nothing about the alien they¡¯ve become. Maybe it¡¯s some kind of Zerg queen who gives birth every minute. Ick. >Terran Thena: I can¡¯t manage all these com channels. If she, hell, let¡¯s give the yellow bioweapon a name. She heals, kills, and invigorates, so Trinity? If Trinity didn¡¯t finish off the iguanas I assume they¡¯ve got a fortress the drill tank can¡¯t reach? >Executrix Alaea: Yeah, their main landing pad and a forward outpost or two near the mountains. Without their mechs they can¡¯t take ground from the Technocracy and they were never going to take territory from the Azhurai so, by process of elimination, -pun intended- that leaves their fort. It¡¯s shielded above and below ground with some seriously impressive reactors. But¡­ I think the -nameless- will consider them defeated and cycle another contender into the wargames. Can I take the factory yet? >Terran Thena: Give me a few. Tychus worked. Jug has a very angry Greek up his trojan. >Matriarch Hygieia: haha The nanofactory brings my attention forward. I mute both human helmets so I can focus everything into the warp HUD. Unfortunately it still uses the power armor¡¯s internal speakers for announcements. Brown Technocracy armor clunks against a crate, occupied by my most mysterious ally. ¡°Hey Kerrigan, you alright?¡± ¡°Pfina¡¯s sneaky!¡± Says Kerrigan, somehow knowing to use the tight beam array instead of the radio. A critically important distinction. Tight beam is sort of like morse code beamed through a laser at another suit. Our onboard sensors can pick it up and translate it into sound easily enough, and most importantly, it¡¯s impossible to pick up unless someone targets you directly while within line of sight. Unlike radio which broadcasts in every direction and shouts ¡°Hey, come drop a bomb on me¡± around every corner on the planet. ¡°Oh, thanks. Uhm, how did you learn to operate that suit?¡± ¡°Red.¡± She says, her tone losing all mirth. Becoming the programmed robot I fear she is. ¡°He took me away and taught me loth of thingths. Thaid I couldn¡¯t see mom and dad until I wearned evewything and chased the sthinky people away.¡± I swallow, deciding to press my luck. ¡°Who are the stinky people?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t know. Red never told me.¡± ¡°Is Red your friend?¡± I pry, needing to know how much of a hold this ''Red'' has over Kerrigan. ¡°Pfina my only fwiend! Red never gave me hith name. He didn¡¯t give me tasty meaths or a name!¡± A sigh of relief escapes through clenched teeth. ¡°Thanks Kerrigan, you look pretty great in that armor. Let''s go. We need to find somewhere safe from those Juggernauts. If we head back to Singularity lines we can team up with them.¡± ¡°Otay.¡± She says. The armor moves like a second skin, grasping the thirty pound flechette pistol with one hand. Suit tentacles emerge from between armored plates, forming a sling for the weapon. Even in the heat of combat it won¡¯t be possible for me to lose it. >Terran Thena: Moving out. Factory is all yours. >Executrix Alaea: SWEET! Beaming up the nanofactory now. Oh, and the spare suits til Hygieia is ready. They¡¯ll fit in my closet. I see you¡¯re leaving, want me to blow that bunker after you reach a safe distance? >Terran Thenao: Would you be a dear? ;) >Terran Thena: Actually, wait until an artillery barrage starts. So no one knows it was me. >Executrix Alaea: Roger roger. [+3 Technician powered armor][intact] [+1 Engineer powered armor][dead occupant]The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. [+3 Technician powered armor][damaged][dead occupant] >Matriarch Hygieia: wait 30 minutes and i can put bodies in those suits >Matriarch Hygieia: ty for biomass >Matriarch Hygieia: wish i could store it on planet >Matriarch Hygieia: cant bank it up til i land ¡°Kerrigan, we need to run.¡± I order, giving both lings the command. Lingling2 erupts from his iguana nest while Ling1 rips past me. They take to the trenches like pigs in shit, sprinting through mud and really stretching out their legs. My Technician suit blares, tracking them with the option for me to deploy missile countermeasures. Cheetahs would be slower. Yet for all their impressive speed and violence Juggernauts are tougher than steel and thicker than buildings. The truth is simple albeit trite. Lings won¡¯t cut it. Not the Juggernauts we¡¯re facing today nor the Azhurai Conglomerate of tomorrow. I really should have made a missile launcher or something with the factory. Or have Hygieia cook up an Ultralisk. Actually, ultras suck. You just can¡¯t face tank a nuke in real life. What did the Zerg use for long range artillery? Broodlords and guardians, but fighters on Syrak just get shot down. Ground artillery was always worse, crap, what did I even use for ground- OH, lurkers or ravagers. >Terran Thena: I need to kill a few Juggernauts, make me a few siege tanks or Yamato cannons? >Executrix Alaea: Ha! I wish. Can only do steel and plastics without more resources. Reactors are a no go. No cloaking devices either. A siege tank would take me four weeks to make with this factory. IF I had the resources. >Terran Thena: Cmon, I need something better than these pulse rifles! It would keep me from getting shot¡­ >Executrix Alaea: -_- >Terran Thena: Anything? A marauder from wish.com? There are crates of nanofactory supplies down here; no one will know if you teleport them out and blow the bunker. . >Executrix Alaea: Sure thing, right after I invent time travel and solve galactic scarcity. >Executrix Alaea: Temporal anti-tampering locks. Can¡¯t touch them or the -nameless- will know I¡¯m helping you. So will the Technocracy who will snitch via a complaint. At best I¡¯ll lose the teleporter¡­ >Executrix Alaea: Look. With what I have on hand we can make hand grenades. >Terran Thena: How about some ravagers? Always kicked ass with those guys, especially Abathur¡¯s coop variant with the extra corrosive bile. But any hard hitting artillery will work. >Matriarch Hygieia: collective isnt zerg >Matriarch Hygieia: with a few months i can recreate the zerg roster but right now im limited >Matriarch Hygieia: they have a few artillery lifeforms take your pick 800 biomass or 500 biomass >Matriarch Hygieia: ooooorrrr 16000 biomass for a one shot guarantee >Terran Thena: Feck. >Matriarch Hygieia: underground fungal farms and the biomass you send adds up >Matriarch Hygieia: give me time and a place to work, only then can i move the world >Terran Thena: ¡­ Alright Archimedes. >Matriarch Hygieia: landing on a planet soon will have my own biopool I feel like my girlfriend just told me her orthodox parents won¡¯t be home for the weekend. Too bad it''s Tuesday. Artillery shells begin to land, chasing the Juggernaut I just rearmed. He¡¯s chosen to go above the trenches and run full throttle for a distant bunker. Brave. We run, sticking to the trench for safety. Kerrigan waddling as zerglings rush ahead. Despite the distant thunder I¡¯m at peace, savoring every second of my incoming victory. Missile exhaust clogs the trenches, black tendrils swirling at our passing like grasping ghosts. Jogging through the smoke my mind wanders, going to the only place that strategic decisions were a common occurrence. Starcraft, in those terms our squad is two marines and two lings, but each Juggernaut is most analogous to a Dominion Thor. No chance. If I had one or two more tools it would be workable. A cloaking module and I could be a ghost, walk up to the Juggernaut and shoot him in the spine or drop demo charges into access ports. Easy sabotage. But I can¡¯t. We can barely burrow. The doglings can dig, but not enough for two suits of power armor to follow them. Wind sucks through my teeth. We are totally boned. A Thor wins that match up a hundred out of a hundred times. Always ending with squished Thena and Kerrigan creme brulee. Ah, it feels impossible, but that only excites me. There has to be a solution. Trench walls loom in front of me, a T junction, left to Singularity forces, right to the Technomancy. I wait for Lingling2 to arrive from the right, already facing the safety of Earthling lines. Left we go- -What will they do to Kerrigan? I think. The answer is uncertain running the gambit between alteration into a greater bioweapon and summary execution. Salvation halts my step. We can¡¯t go left. Not as we are. But going right means fighting a dozen Juggernauts. If we¡¯re able to sneak up behind the juggernauts maybe we can hit them while they¡¯re busy tearing through Earth conscripts¡­ No, they can just reverse and crush us. Out of flash trained habit I activate the armor¡¯s full systems, integrating it with the Technomancy¡¯s friend or foe detection system. I appear on the HUD¡¯s radar system, tagged as a technician. Specifically a logistical technician trained in reloading Juggernauts. Which is when a pleasant surprise fills the HUD, I have slug and missile counts for the ten nearest Juggernauts. Ten of the supertanks are within twenty minutes of me. That''s a relief, I thought there were twelve! Holy shitballs Batman! Four are pushing into Singularity lines, facing no real resistance. Earth would employ fighter jets or tanks with depleted uranium rounds to solve the question they ask, neither of which the Singularity will use on this world. Logistical technician... Moving things from home to the battlefield. Like an SCV. But this isn¡¯t Starcraft. The objective isn¡¯t to kill the enemy buildings, it¡¯s to destroy the enemy¡ª* Another snap decision sends me back to the crossroad, sprinting towards the Technomancy¡¯s next bunker. Lingling2 skids to a stop, caterwheeling legs as I hop ten feet over him. ¡°Oh holy shit! Power armor is AWESOME!¡± I gasp, landing without breaking stride. We have to win or Earth dies. Mom dies. Piece of shit dad dies before I can cut off his balls. I need to win. Ling1 and Lingling2 blow past me, sprinting with such force that mud flies out of the trench. Thrown forty feet into the air by alien claws digging up traction. They aren¡¯t shoehorned into guard duty anymore. A new purpose fills their minds, one they have been waiting their entire lives to hear. *¡ªDestroying buildings in Starcraft is an abstraction. The assumption is that without supplies your army will run out of bullets or starve then be hunted down and destroyed in the most boring way possible, no reason to play out a forgone conclusion. As a thought example, no amount of starving broodlords can make a single broodlings, nor can they beat a landed viking who happens to have unlimited fuel and missiles. ¡°Pfina, wrong way.¡± Says Kerrigan. ¡°Change of plans, we¡¯re going to the next Technocracy bunker.¡± [Nanofactory Integration complete] appears in the center of my vision, so surprising I nearly faceplant. But shit has been popping up in that HUD all day, what with all the chats from aliens and system notifications. This one ¨Clike all others¨C fades in a few seconds. [Insufficient minerals for continued production] [Acquire more minerals] >Terran Thena: Alaea¡­ You¡¯re a cunt for adding that to our warp HUDs. >Executrix Alaea: LOL >Terran Thena: SC2 win condition vs Jugs. Our first build order. A moment passes. Sixty seconds before I see his reply. >Executrix Alaea: Makes sense, Death from Above? >Terran Thena: yes >Executrix Alaea: Need volatile compounds or organic gases >Matriarch Hygieia: organic gases >Matriarch Hygieia: hehehehehe >Matriarch Hygieia: we can siphon those EZ >Matriarch Hygieia: take what you need Our chats work at the speed of thought. There is no need for us to aim our eyes at keyboards nor press individual keys, turning text into instantaneous communication of thoughts. Looks like I¡¯m not the only one running logistics. A smile creeps across my face. I know how to win. Or at least, tip the scales enough to flip the entire Technocracy. Distant rumbling heralds a return to form from my Singularity kin. Louder than I¡¯ve heard before. As if every gun on Earth decided to fire at once.