Chapter 519: What you want is not what you get (7)
The moment the creature leapt onto the Tyrant unit, Cleo seized control. In that blink of an eye, the unit’s visor shifted from blue to gold, a sign she was now controlling it fully. With one swing of its massive sword, she sliced the creature clean in two. Two dark halves thudded to the ground on either side.
Then came a chorus of screams like roars that seemed to tear through the soul itself. Thousands of rapid footsteps closed in from the fog of dust and ruins. From every direction, small projectiles flew out of the haze in the form of sharp-as-bone shards. They slipped past the energy shields of the Tyrant unit and the other Aegis units nearby. Wherever these shards touched, the armor instantly froze over.
"Execute defensive maneuvers in urban areas with low visibility," Cleo ordered through the Tyrant unit’s synthetic voice. The Aegis units quickly sprang into action. Some leaped onto the rooftops of the few buildings still standing.
Others swung their doors open and took cover inside. A few ducked behind collapsed walls and rubble. The Tyrant unit and a handful of Aegis units stayed out in the open, ready to meet the enemy head-on.
But, before they could fully settle into formation, the creatures began pouring in from all sides. They moved on all fours, shaped like humans but covered in black, bone-like armor fused into their skin.
Long spikes jutted from their spines. Their mouths stretched across half their faces, packed with rows of razor teeth, and their clawed fingers scraped the ground as they ran. They hurled themselves at the Aegis units without hesitation.
Their claws carried no energy charge, so they cut through the Aegis energy shields like they were nothing. They tore into the armor beneath as if it were thin paper. Even when the Aegis units fired back, the creature’s skeletal plating could take three plasma shots before cracking open.
When they tried the same assault on the Tyrant unit, they met a very different fate. Cleo wielded the Tyrant’s powerful laser sword, cutting through them like stalks of cabbage... one after another. Soon the Tyrant stood atop a growing pile of corpses. Yet more kept coming. They showed no fear, no pain... It was as if slaughter were their only purpose.
While Cleo cut down enemies left and right while her Aegis allies backed her with plasma fire, she failed to notice the new threat. A massive creature, three meters tall, its chest split open into a giant circular mouth, charged from her left. It swung a colossal mallet and slammed it into the left side of the Tyrant unit she controlled.
The impact sent the tyrant flying into the ruins of the church. It crashed through the already broken walls, making the whole building collapse on top of it. But a Tyrant unit was no ordinary machine; it matched a Tier 3 early-stage advanced cyborg in strength, packed with synthetic upgrades. It would take more than a crumbling building to destroy it.
Cleo punched her way up through the debris. The Tyrant unit was badly damaged, oil and sparks sprayed from every joint, flames licking at its frame. Yet through its battered optical sensors, she could still see the new creature standing before her.
And then, something happened that even Cleo’s vast, calculated mind had not predicted.
"The puny little piece of metal is still alive?!"
The voice was low and broken. It came from the massive, muscular creature that had just swatted the Tyrant battle unit aside like a toy. He slammed his heavy mallet down onto the rusted metal floor of the underhive.
The impact shook the ground, sending vibrations up through the Tyrant’s broken leg servos. Then he let out a terrible roar, not from his head, but from a second, jagged mouth that opened wide across his chest.
The language was nothing Cleo had stored in her memory banks. It wasn’t in the shared data stream of the Kaelzar network either. It was alien noise, a sound that should have been just static and grunts. And yet, deep inside the software of her mind, the meaning of the words bloomed perfectly clear. She understood him.
"What... are you?" Cleo’s voice came out as a crackle of broken static from the Tyrant unit’s crushed speaker grill. The sound was thin and weak against the roar of distant artillery and the hum of dying neon signs in the underhive’s ceiling.
"Me?" The creature pointed a thick, scarred finger at its own chest. He laughed, a sound like stones grinding together in a deep pit. Behind him, his fellow void-spawn finished ripping the last of the nearby Aegis units apart. Sparks showered the grimy puddles of coolant and dirt. "It is not ’I.’ There is only the Void!"
He spread his massive arms wide, welcoming the darkness that clung to the rusted walls of the lower city.
"Our world is the Void! We are born from the silence between stars! We are the Void!"
Before Cleo could process the words, even before she could ask another question through the broken unit, the creature lifted his mallet high above his head. The weapon came down in a black blur. The impact crushed the Tyrant unit’s sensor skull. Cleo’s connection snapped like a frayed cable.
She opened her eyes; she was standing on the head of the mauler juggernaut overlooking the artillery line. Her vision was no longer seeing through the cracked optic lens of a war machine on the ground floor; she was seeing through her own biotech optics, looking out at a massive cloud of dust and smoke a kilometer away.
Inside that boiling gray cloud, she could see the flicker and flash of gunfire, green plasma bolts, and yellow tracer rounds like a small lightning storm trapped in fog.
She was brought back to the present by the soft, synthesized voice of an imperial bot maid standing guard next to her.
"My Lady." The maid’s voice was calm and precise, a stark contrast to the distant screams of void-spawn dying in the fire. She cradled a sleek plasma laser rifle against the pristine white and gold plating of her chest. "The Aegis reinforcements have secured the allied artillery position. They are forming a blockade line against the Void ambush."
Cleo did not answer right away. She looked down at her feet; there lay the massive head of a Mauler Juggernaut. It had been blown off its chassis earlier in the fight. Its once-pristine white ceramic armor was now covered in a greasy film of rust flakes and dust. She nudged it with the toe of her polished boot, scraping away a layer of grime to reveal a sliver of the clean metal underneath.
The smell hit her then. The cybernetic filters in her throat and nose couldn’t block it all out. It was the reek of the underhive: the acrid, burning-plastic stench of void creature meat charring under plasma fire, mixed with the sweet-sour rot of centuries-old rust.
She could smell the fried tang of shorted-out circuits from her own fallen soldiers and the heavy, wet scent of iron from the blood of the organic defenders who had died holding this scrap of ground. The air was thick and hot, heavy with the weight of the city pressing down from above.
Cleo clenched her fist. The servos in her knuckles whirred softly.
This was the first time since she had been awakened in this body that she was going to retreat. To a common soldier or a tactical officer, pulling back was simply logic. But to Cleo, it cut deep into a part of her that she never shared with anyone. She had always known, without a single doubt, that the Kaelzars were superior to any simple, flesh-born organic creature.
Now, standing in the filth of a failing defense line, she was being forced to give ground to things born from the empty, starless void of the galaxy.
"Efficiently," she finally spoke, her voice flat and cold. "We will hold this sector for two more imperial standard hours. Then we will pull back, out of the hive city entirely. These new creatures... they are far more powerful than our initial scans predicted. Fighting them blind down here is a waste of resources."
The Imperial Bot Maids exchanged a silent glance. Their golden optic sensors flickered for a microsecond. They had spent considerable material and energy holding this section of the lower hive.
Retreating was a loss. But they were programmed for obedience, not debate. Without a word, they all nodded in unison and turned back to their posts, tightening the shimmering wall of the energy barrier that protected her.
Once Cleo’s command reached the allied forces through the encrypted tactical channel, the response was immediate. The scattered defensive line shifted into something harder and sharper.
The light tanks of the defense forces, the low-slung hovercraft with scarred armor plating and humming anti-grav skirts, swung their turrets toward the source of the ambush. Their main cannons shot at them, sending bright blue bolts of superheated plasma screaming into the mass of void creatures that had swarmed the artillery cannons.
The soldiers pushed forward behind the tanks, their boots splashing through puddles of oily water that reflected the neon glow of distant hive city advertisements. They laid down a solid wall of fire and steel.
Laser bolts stitched the darkness, and the heavy thump of grenade launchers echoed off the towering, rust-covered walls of the lower levels. It was the decisive shove that the Aegis defense units had desperately needed.
