by Aer-ki Jyr
Suddenly his battlemap lit up with proximity warnings in the direction of the distant Protovic outpost, indicating that there were enemy ground troops approaching.
Figured. Bring in the warship overhead and flood them with a wave of infantry for double trouble. Oh well, at least now he’d have something to shoot at.
The Bsidd soldier variant pulled out one of his rifles and took up a better sniping position as those around him were doing likewise just as the first little green bastards appeared running up the center of the canyon out in the open…by the hundreds. They flooded out around the feet of the furthest mech that was shooting at the cruiser, then the eight-armed ‘Docite’ wheeled around and punched two of them into the ground, mashing them to their deaths as point defense weapons on the other arms began chewing the lizards apart by the dozens.
Infantry weapons began to spew tiny blue plasma streaks and sammy sniper bursts from both sides of the canyon, taking down more of the lizard infantry that was only armored with a light protective vest that had never done well against Star Force weapons. It might block a shot, or half of one nowadays, reducing damage done but not preserving them as proper armor would, so they went down easily, with many more coming up from behind those falling to replace them.
With the locations of the Bsidd infantry noted, the flood of lizards fanned out towards the sidewalls and Klakten knew it was go time. He kept firing as he lit his six plasma rods covering the end of some of his appendages and launched himself out of cover along with a few of the others. He ran four steps, shooting one lizard in the head before poking another with one of his glowing limbs. The blue tip discharged, blowing a hole into its head before he swung the same rod to the side and discharged from another segment into the arm of a second lizard.
With six rods to work with he was hacking through the lizards with ease while still shooting some with his rifle, throwing down so much firepower that they didn’t have a chance and the other Bsidd were no different. Unless the lizards could get enough hits to get through both his shields and his armor they weren’t going to be able to stop them, though there was an ammo limit on his plasma rods and rifles, but they’d taken that into consideration before they’d mounted this assault and had plenty of backup ammunition for the latter.
Just then a huge pink blast landed to his left, vaporizing one of the Bsidd there and at least a dozen lizards along with it. The superheated air pushed out and knocked Klakten off balance while leveling the lighter lizards. With horror flooding through him he stood up and kept fighting, using the momentary opportunity to jab the lizards closest to him that were on the ground and starting to jump back up onto their feet after scrambling for dropped weapons.
Just then another huge mass appeared underneath the lizard cruiser, with the Bsidd drone disc sliding in over top of the mechs and into the gap, providing them cover while firing at point blank range into the now shieldless underside of the enemy ship. Several huge bangs sounds, though the infantry couldn’t see what was happening from their vantage point and the fact that they were too busy fighting to look, but those that could steal a glance like Klakten did saw the lizard cruiser drop from the sky and land on the drone…with the drone responding and pushing back and to the side to dump the now dead hulk over the ridgeline so it wouldn’t fall on the troops below.
As it did a flurry of behatis and even a skeet zipped in underneath it and began strafing the lizard infantry with Klakten breathing a sigh of relief as he and the other Beta returned to fighting without the worry of being killed in a single shot from above.
“Admiral, where did that cruiser come from?” Mike asked as he pulled up out of a strafing run, having killed dozens of the lizards on that single pass now that they’d exposed themselves to rush his ground troops.
“Battlemap replay indicates it originated in one of the canyons beneath a camouflage canopy. Probably a forward operating base put into play during the initial invasion, which was why we didn’t detect it with our orbital scans.”
“Damn it. If there are others out there find them.”
“Already working on it. At the moment the skies are clear near your position. Not even any wisps in play.”
“If they can hide a cruiser they can hide a hangar,” Mike said warily. “This is exactly why not being able to talk to your ally sucks. How many infantry did we lose?”
“18 transponders are gone and two mechs are down. Both mechwarriors are intact.”
Mike bit his lip. “Score one for the bad guys. Status of the outpost?”
“Holding, but barely. The other attack groups are swarming them while this one slows you down.”
“Distractions, distractions. What’s the status of that drone?”
“Mostly intact.”
“Send it to the outpost to distract them.”
“There are still anti-air batteries in play,” the Admiral warned him.
“I know. We’re going to lose it. Do a lot of damage and buy the Protovic some time with it…and make sure it crash lands on those bastards.”
“Should we target the batteries themselves?”
“No, go for the troops. We’ll get the batteries from the ground.”
“Dispatching now.”
Mike cut the comm and wheeled his skeet around, zipping over the treetops and reversing course as he spotted the glint of something lizard in the sidewalls and intended to slag it before heading over the ridgeline and sneaking his way forward as close as he could to the mobile anti-warship phaser batteries set up near the outpost perimeter, another new trick the lizards had come up with in recent years. They also had plenty of point defense anti-air that would take him down if he got within sight of them, but he needed to poach what troops he could and buy his ground troops some time to get up to the Protovic and save them before they were overrun.
8
April 12, 2826
Aphat System
Jmry
Mike sat on a Protovic rooftop, taking the first bit of rest he’d had in over 36 hours of fighting. The city he was currently in had been hit by the lizards with overwhelming force, enough to defeat the local defenses and pull in numerous Protovic army units from the surrounding area in a hasty defense. Even then they couldn’t hold until Mike had rushed a few Bsidd units over, along with himself, to give them an added boost while everyone else he’d brought down to the planet was tied up in assaults elsewhere.
Even with Mike and the 240 Bsidd they should have lost the city, but they hadn’t given up and fought round the clock as more Protovic reinforcements gradually arrived and, in most cases, were utterly destroyed by the lizards. Mike hadn’t had his troops try and hold a secure location, for that would have been to the lizards’ advantage. Instead he let the locals try that pointless approach while he and the Bsidd roamed in hunter teams not interested in protecting infrastructure but in killing the enemy.
And they’d had to kill a lot of them before the city was at peace again. He hadn’t looked at any of the official estimates that were routinely compiled by the crews in orbit monitoring everything happening on the planet, but personally he guessed there had been at least a quarter million lizards, and as usual they had fought to the last man rather than retreat, doing what damage they could before they died.
And they’d done a lot. The streets were full of lizard corpses, but along with them were the fading glows of the Protovic, both soldiers and civilians. Lots of civilians had been caught unawares here and been mowed down. He’d had to jump over lots of them when on foot, but fortunately he’d come in with a jump pack and had done most of his long range movement over the rooftops and away from the gore.
There had been no trouble from the locals when they’d arrived. In fact they’d seemed overwhelmingly supportive and grateful…too much so in a few cases where a hidden civilian would run out and tackle one of the lizards near the Bsidd in an effort to help them and more than likely get themselves killed in the effort. Mike had caught one and used his Ikrid to make him stay put while
he jumped in and fought a group of 30+ lizards in what probably looked like an unwinnable battle, but to the heavily armored, psionically laden Archon it was a piece of cake and he didn’t need help, let alone from an unarmed, unarmored civilian.
It was morning again, a few hours in, and the glows from the dead Protovic had mostly dissipated by now. Their bioluminescence would linger a while after they were killed, eventually fading down to white skin that had a scaly texture to it. That made the corpses looked even more disturbing, but at least they were no longer glowing like beacons marking the site of an atrocity. Many had been buried beneath piles of lizard corpses with only small holes that left glowing indicators of where they’d initially fallen before the snowstorm of dead enemies had covered them.
The Protovic had hover tanks that could float over the streets and buildings so only the infantry had been forced to trample the dead and blood slicks that had been accumulating. The smell had been getting constantly worse, but Mike had seen a collection team start to remove the bodies and clean the streets before he’d parked himself here so he expected the city to start to right itself, though he kept his helmet on to diminish the scent of the dead.
His Bsidd were waiting nearby in a couple of locations for pickup, equally exhausted but all still alive. Keeping on the move and not letting the lizards know where they were to mass against them had been a defensive decision as well. Both he and the Bsidd were chewed up with multiple dings in their armor and a few breaches. Mike even had a spot on his right arm that had gotten burned. Right now he could see the inner gel layer that had hardened over the spot and he was taking the moment to use a bit of Sesspik to goose the healing along while they were waiting for the dropships to arrive from orbit.
There weren’t a lot available, given that he’d deployed all his troops in order to make as much of a dent in the planetary invasion as possible, but it was just a matter of time until they rotated into availability and were sent down to him. He could have expedited the process and called for priority over other assignments, but since there were no longer any lizards in play here, for they’d searched the city thoroughly along with the Protovic units, there was no reason to make someone else wait when all they had to do was sit here and rest a bit.
“Archon.”
“Yes,” Mike answered the comm call from one of the Bsidd in the group behind his back to the north about 2 kilometers off.
“There’s something wrong here.”
Mike’s head came up a bit. “Wrong how?”
“The Protovic are…doing something. I think they have lizard prisoners.”
“That’s a very bad idea,” Mike said as he stood up and turned around, looking in the direction of the ID marker on his battlemap. “Where are they?”
The Bsidd answered with a waypoint another kilometer to the northwest of their position.
“Stay put, I’ll handle this,” he said as he forced his tired legs to launch him into a run across the mostly flat roof. When he got to the edge he goosed his jump pack and leapt across to the next building, continuing his run over the canyons of corpses below as he made his way directly to the virtual marker and bypassed the Bsidd evac point.
When he got close he could see a wide plaza that he’d done a considerable amount of fighting in over the previous day but gone were the corpses, replaced by a growing crowd of civilians and soldiers alike along with five pedestals that stood at least 10 meters tall. On top of them were, as the Bsidd had indicated, lizard prisoners. It looked like three each per pedestal and they were bound to central poles on the outer four platforms. The fifth was in the center and empty, with a group of Protovic walking up a circular staircase around the perimeter.
Mike leapt across to the last building on the perimeter of the plaza when that group stripped down and tied a female Protovic to the pole, with his gut suddenly telling him something was very wrong here. He stopped on the edge of the building, giving him the best vantage point as he reached out with his mind and sampled some of the thoughts in the crowd.
Some of them noticed him on the rooftop, with their reactions being one of welcome and thanks as the five pedestals suddenly lit on fire and began to burn the lizards and Protovic woman alive.
Mike immediately jumped off the building and drifted down into a gap in the crowd, at which point he began running forward bumping people out of the way. When they got the idea that he wasn’t here to observe the ritual they began blocking his path and trying to grab hold of his arms and legs, to which the mage lividly let loose a Fornax field and dropped everyone around him to the ground as he sprinted over the crumpled and twitching bodies.
When he got close enough he reached out to the lizards on the nearest pyre and hacked into their minds, dulling their senses and blocking out their pain as their bodies were rapidly disintegrating. Enemies or not, no one deserved this. The more he ran the more minds he accessed, stretching his multitasking abilities to their max to get them all while maintaining the Fornax field while he ran towards the central pedestal, making one huge jump pack-aided leapt up to it just as he felt the Protovic’s mind disappear from his grasp.
Mike landed in the column of green fire that extended some 8 meters up into the air, turning the elevated pedestal into a candle visible to all the thousands of Protovic standing around watching. Inside he saw the quickly shrinking remains of the Protovic, now stripped of flesh and with the muscle and blood boiling off the skeleton rapidly. She was dead and there was no way he could save her, likewise the lizard minds quickly slipped from his grasp as they too were killed.
Mike stood in the flames as his shields were quickly dropping in power. Before they could breach he used his Pefbar to look down inside the Pedestal and found something to telekinetically grab. He twisted the metal tube, wadding it up and choking off the fuel to the flame. It disappeared and left Mike standing next to the charred skeletal remains of the woman as the four other pyres continued to burn the lizard prisoners.
The crowd just stood and watched, with a handful of soldiers moving towards the base of the central pedestal to get to Mike. They were outraged, he could sense, at him having interrupted their ceremony. The others just watched. They watched as people were burnt to death and no one had bothered to stop them. They had all gathered here to watch this sickness, which made them part of it.
Mike had pulled his invasion fleet off mission to come here to save these people, but now he realized they weren’t the Protovic he knew, nor were they victims in need.
They were another enemy.
With an anger flooding through him greater than he’d ever known before, Mike stepped off the pedestal and dropped to the ground just as the guards were climbing the stairs to get to him. They backtracked and joined in with others as they swarmed him, but he didn’t care. His mind was focused on the handful of Protovic that had escorted the woman up and tied her to the pole. They were nearby, with an ornately dressed one backtracking into the crowd.
Mike took down the guards around him with another Fornax field and dashed ahead, chasing the one Protovic into the crowd and picking him up from afar with his telekinesis and jerking him back through the air towards him. Mike jumped forward and hit him with one very hard punch in the chest, breaking bones and internal organs alike before he released him to drop to the ground in a crunch, then the Archon pulled out his plasma rifle and shot the Protovic in the head.
Seeing that the guards and the crowds were stunned for a moment, then a rage built in them and they all rushed him, armed or unarmed it didn’t matter, they all moved with a single impulse towards the defiler…which was just as well as far as Mike was concerned. He shot off in another direction, tracking down the other two of his primary targets and killing them quickly with his rifle before slinging it onto his back rack and letting go of his Fornax in favor of just using his armor and muscles to beat down any and every one that came after him.
The three he had killed had strapped that woman to the pole so she couldn’t escape, meaning they
deserved to die. The crowd he couldn’t say the same for though he expected the same, so while he wasn’t going to start shooting everyone in sight as a part of his mind really wanted to, he wasn’t just going to run away from this. Anyone in the crowd attacking him was declaring themselves an enemy and that was good enough for Mike. He wasn’t going to shoot them, but if they died from the beatdown he was going to lay out so be it.
So the mage held his ground and punched, kicked, and bodily rammed down every Protovic that came at him. He could feel their bones snapping and could see the blood splatters with every hit, but he didn’t feel sorry for them. Attacking a fully armored opponent with nothing but clothes on was beyond stupid, with many of these Protovic running straight into their deaths, but Mike knew and could even sense on their surface thoughts a shared insanity. They didn’t care or think about anything other than getting to him and taking down the man responsible for saving their lives, for he had gone from exalted hero to the worst of the worst as far as the Protovic were concerned, and there was only one answer to that.
And that answer was blood.
But they weren’t going to get any of his, for he was far too powerful for even the armored guards that showed up after a few minutes. Those put up more of a fight but had no chance against the Archon. Still they didn’t stop, with him being one man amongst an ever-growing sea of people beginning to flood in around him in the hopes of choking him out with too many bodies to hit. Against other opponents that would have worked, but with Mike’s psionics he could make an escape hole whenever he wanted.
Right now though he had no intention to leave. What they had done could not be let to pass, and as long as the sick bastards wanted to fight him he was going to oblige…but he wasn’t going to put his troops at risk, so in between punches and kicks he activated the comm to his local units with a simultaneous connection to the Admiral in orbit.
“I need…an…emergency evac…now. This location…first,” he said, ducking under a flying body as one of the crowd was somehow launched up and over the others at him. “Don’t worry about…me…get my troops out. The Pro…the Protovic are hostiles…no time…to explain…pull out everyone…on the planet…back to orbit…I’m last man out…and busy…don’t come to me…turtle up and aw…await evac…I’ve got asses…to kick,” he finished, turning off the comm and continuing to beat down the swarm of glowing bodies around him, for a lot of the Protovic were barely wearing any clothing.
