by Vowron Prime
“I’m sending out the drones.”
Two quadcopters detached from the suit’s back, expanding their arms as they noisily took to the sky. Their armament consisted of a single 8k-resolution holographic camera and nothing else; their entire purpose was recon.
The drones approached the facility that abutted the rocky mesas and infiltrated easily enough; the base’s blown-open doors welcomed them.
The feeds briefly darkened. Night vision imaging flipped on, displaying the drones’ surroundings in green.
The entrance corridor lay warped and deformed like it’d been crushed by the hand of a mech. Ducking and flying over the many obstructions, the drones slowly progressed.
“This was not caused by the Dyn. Energy weapons are my people’s destructive implement of choice. Just who could they have fought here?”
The drones came upon a junction, where they split off in separate directions. They continued onward, building a map of the facility as they went. The work-in-progress map displayed on their HUDs, and the sensor feeds were being streamed and recorded by MC’s suit for future analysis. The only problem? The feed got worse the deeper they went. Thankfully, their AI autopilot was good enough that MC hardly ever needed to take manual control.
The search continued, revealing more wanton destruction. Ruptured terminals, compacted equipment, and many dead Dyn. Zevan, Qephyx, and Apoadeid alike. The facility was pitch-black.
“Magnus, stop the drone. Can you have it examine that body?” Nova asked.
He took manual control. The connection quality was pretty bad—the video had switched to black and white, and the resolution had dropped.
The drone inched closer to the mutilated corpse. It was one of the hovering-chair Apoediad, though its chair hovered no longer. Its leathery, mottled dreadlocks lay mangled and caked in dried blood, yet the organism remained firmly attached to its seat.
Half of its head had flattened, bursting open as if someone had run it through a trash compactor.
“Gruesome, but it would’ve been a quick death,” he murmured.
The girls blanched. Nova took a deep breath and forced herself to analyze the body.
“This one died some time ago. Decomposition has already set in. In fact, based on what we have seen thus far, I suspect that the facility was attacked days ago.”
“So why’d the distress beacon only activate now?” Nina asked.
As if in answer to her question, the other drone’s feed abruptly cut out, displaying a red X on the map where it went dark. Drone destroyed. Connection lost showed up right under it.
“Al, replay the last minute of that drone’s footage.”
“Command confirmed. Replaying.”
The black and white footage maximized on their HUDs. The drone wove around obstacles, making its way down a particularly long corridor. It rounded a bend and stopped. The visual feed switched over to thermal imaging, which clearly showed the outline of something. A red-and-yellow heat signature of a tailed creature eight feet tall. One that skulked in the darkness.
It noticed the drone and sprinted towards it, traveling far faster than its size would indicate was possible. The drone retreated, keeping the camera on the assailant. It wasn’t nearly fast enough. The creature extended a scaly arm from across the room, and the feed went dead.
“Well, that explains that. Al, have the other drone scout the rest of the premises. I want to know how many more of those lizards are lurking in there.”
“Command confirmed.”
“M-Magnus? What the hell was that thing? It looked like a gigantic velociraptor or something. Holy shit…”
“A Trilnyth. I’ve played with these guys before. Don’t worry, they might look scary but they’re not much of a threat. They can use some kind of spatial magic, but then, so can I. And I have a ton of other ways of dealing with them, too. Only question is how many of them there are. It might get a bit hairy if there’s more than a handful, especially in these tight confines.”
“Why would a band of Trilnyth raid a Resistance facility?” Nova asked. “It does not make any sense. Their tribes do not live anywhere near here.”
“I dunno, but there’s more going on here than meets the eye. It’s worth investigating.”
“Are you sure that is safe?”
MC glanced at the other drone, which had just finished mapping out the single-level compound. It was on its way back when another Trilnyth took it out.
“According to the footage, we’ve got a squad of five bogeys in there. I’m going in. Once I clear the place, I’d like you two to land and join me there, especially Nova. I want you to hack into their computers, mine whatever intel you can. Maybe we’ll learn something about what happened here, and if not, there may be other useful info buried in there.”
The two girls nodded back, leaving MC to his devices. He started with radar pings. Trilnyth may be optically invisible, but they lit up just fine to the suit’s active sensors, which rivaled his own ability’s strength in some ways.
It was unfortunate that Reaver hadn’t picked up their signatures, but the facility was likely shielded, as evidenced by the drone’s connectivity loss.
MC broke through the facility’s mangled door. The compacted hallways posed no obstacle to someone who could teleport and fuse matter on demand. Instead of ducking around the debris, he simply cleared it as he passed. A couple of hundred feet in, Radar picked up one of the lizards, lurking up ahead. The invisible creature died without a sound or a trace, having been fused with the wrecked wall next to it.
“Bogey alpha is down. Four remain.”
He bore down on the enemy. Armored, invisible, and heavily armed—a deadly combination. The second one never knew what hit it. The third and fourth remained together as he’d found them, except now they’d stay together forever, fused into a tangle of limbs. He snuck up behind the last one, holding the shotgun’s enormous muzzle right up to its back.
He opened fire. Twelve titanium spheres launched out of the smoothbore barrel via good old-fashioned gunpowder. An explosion of hot gases erupted from the business end of the shotgun, lighting up the room.
The Trilnyth’s natural armor plating prevented the rounds from penetrating, but the kinetic force alone sent the lizard flying. MC walked forward, racking the pump-action. Spent casing clinked on the metal floor.
He fired again. Twice, thrice. The Trilnyth buckled under the onslaught. Its armor plates cracked; yellow blood oozed. This wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter.
With each step, the shotgun fired. With each step, a dozen projectiles flew. Unable to even stand against the barrage of buckshot, the Trilnyth bounced around like a ragdoll.
Six, seven, and eight. Its armor failed entirely. It didn’t do so well against the ninth round. The spheres penetrated its innards, exploding them from the inside out. Blood and organs splattered the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The tenth round served to light the scene—the brief muzzle blast displayed the horror show in all its glory.
Ten rounds from a Remington 2870 to take down one Trilnyth. Not bad, but not great either. Small arms would be all but useless against these enemies, though a rocket to the face might just do the trick.
“Killing spree,” came Nina’s voice, oddly an octave lower than normal. “Shit. I mean I know that was dramatic and all, but couldn’t you just have relocated its head right off?”
“You may not believe it, but there is a logic behind everything I do,” he replied. “I wanted to see how these things held up to conventional weaponry. Because not everyone has my powers. Because we’re building up a resistance. And because they will all be equipped with plain-Jane conventional weaponry. Trust me, you do not want to discover that your guns don’t do jack shit in the middle of a firefight.”
“I agree. Good thinking, Magnus.”
“Thanks, Nova. At least someone’s on my side. Al, go ahead and bring the bird down, will ya?”
“Command confirmed. Landing craft at LZ Beacon.”
&
nbsp; Time to see what this was all about.
It only took minutes for him to clear the rest of the base, ensuring it was safe for the girls to make their way inside. Soon, Nina and Nova stood beside Magnus, and though Nova did have some difficulty walking around initially, she learned the ropes with a rapidity that astonished them both.
Nova led them to the Resistance base’s control room, though it was so mangled beyond recognition that he’d never have guessed it. In fact, they had to search for a while before they even found it, given that the roof had caved in. Likely the result of Trilnyth spatial magic.
“Anything?”
Nova shook her head, her suit’s armored headpiece mirroring the lateral movement. “This facility is utterly destroyed. Not one of its systems is operational.”
“Nova? What about this thing?” Nina asked, crouching down to lift a piece of metal that had covered what looked like a large, uncut gem.
Nova grabbed it, bringing it up to her handheld terminal for a scan. “This is a data crystal. It is somewhat damaged, but it is worth attempting to read.”
She went silent.
“Well, you going to share with us or what?”
“Ah, my apologies. Give me a moment to download the crystal’s contents into my terminal. I have modified my device to be able to interface with your suit’s HUD. I had planned to enhance your suits’ AI as well, but haven’t had the time yet.”
Of course, she did. Having Einstein as a friend sure came in handy, though her emotional maturity always seemed at odds with her sheer technical competency. If the Resistance was as skilled as she was, he could only begin to imagine what kind of an advantage they’d have. Assuming any of them were even alive after this.
A holovid began to play on their HUDs. The scenes came to life via vivid 3-D holography. The footage started with the Trilnyth breaching the base, acting as a perfectly coordinated team of ten. The squad leapfrogged from cover to cover. They provided each other with overwatch support, and they wielded energy weapons. They showed every hallmark of an elite spec ops team.
The Resistance had put up a valiant fight. Most appeared to be researchers and noncoms, so the fact that they managed to take out even five spoke volumes about their grit. The three friends watched on as the Resistance fought and died. Screams echoed in their headsets. Terror shone through as a husband and wife were mercilessly gunned down. Then, without its parents to protect it, the Apoadeid child was devoured—literally—by one of the attackers.
One by one they fell, either by the Trilnyths’ claws or their spatial magic. He honestly did not know which was worse. Pandemonium played out in a tragedy of death.
Unable to bear any more, Nova terminated the video. The three stood in silence for a long moment. A vigil for those who had passed.
“I—They had children here! How could they just kill them like that?” Nina exclaimed, furious.
“The Trilnyth are vicious beasts. But they have never been organized. Not like this. They normally behave like intelligent natural predators rather than organized troops,” Nova said.
“This was supposed to be a trap. The Trilnyth raided the facility, then started broadcasting the distress signal when someone got near. My guess is they wanted to lure other Resistance cells. But doesn’t this mean that the Resistance comms protocols are compromised?”
Nova shook her head, moving to the source of the broadcast. A small transmitter terminal that was placed upon a desk. “Not necessarily. It is entirely possible that the distress signal was preprogrammed.”
“You mean they happened to find a distress signal and figured they could use it to their own end? Smart, if true.”
She shut the signal off.
Nina pointed at a Trilnyth corpse. “Just what the hell are these things, anyway?”
“A failed experiment of the Dyn to create supersoldiers via genetic experimentation. Their brains proved insufficient to handle parasitic indoctrination.”
“But they have magic, right? Did you give that to them, too?”
“No. Once released on Kelruhn, the Trilnyth banded together into tribes. Highly religious tribes that somehow came to worship our mutagenic ponds. Their warriors consider it a rite of passage to submerge themselves within the ponds. Needless to say, the results are almost always horrific, ending in death. Yet a minuscule percentage do succeed, obtaining ‘magical’ powers that almost always tend to be spatial-related. Their natural armor is also a result of those mutations.”
“You guys let these things exist? They seem pretty dangerous, even to your people.”
“On the contrary, any being that displays magical abilities becomes a subject of great interest for my people. We have been dissecting and studying mutated Trilnyth to try to understand their powers. Just as we do with the Zevan.”
“Well, that’s beyond fucked up,” Nina responded. “At least now we know that some of the Resistance from this base are alive.”
“The vid did make it seem like some of them made it out alive. We’ve got no leads on where they went, though. Wait, what’s wrong, Nova?”
The angel had fallen to a knee, gripping her armored head to no effect. “Strange... visions. Of... no. It must have been something I’d dreamt. My apologies. I am fine, now.”
The siblings looked at her with suspicion.
“You sure, Nova?” Nina asked.
“There is nothing to worry about, Nina. Magnus, now that we know what to look for, can we not use your gunship’s long-range radar?”
“That’s going to be tough if they’re on foot, but we can sure as hell give it a try. Al, deploy radar at max strength,” he called out over the remote interface system. He trusted Nova to know her own body. If she said she was all right, he’d believe her. Unless her symptoms got worse. “You’re looking for a small group of people numbering around twenty.”
“Command confirmed. Scanning area. Stand by.”
They made for the exit, returning back to the still hot desert night without issue.
“Zero targets found.”
“Figured. Just couldn’t be that easy,” he said as they boarded the aircraft via its rear ramp.
“Al, get this bird in the air. We need to find them.”
Thirty-One
Several hours earlier.
“Sir! Crystal cell charge is now at thirty-eight percent. We cannot hold this rate of fire for much longer!” Krar’eaks shouted with his modulated Qephyx vocal frequency, manipulating the Ryzel hovertank’s primary microwave cannon.
“And? What choice do we have?” Vorien replied from the pilot seat. “We can’t afford to take more of their attacks! Not with Trilnyth in their ranks now. Our armor is no match against their spatial magic.”
Krar’eaks blooped and buzzed as he focused on the unending horde of mutated creatures that pursued them.
“Sarek! Push more power into the engines!”
“Negative, Vorien. We are running the drive crystals at two hundred forty percent already. Any more and the heat will cause the lattices to crack,” the Zevan-type scientist called from the rear of the cabin, huddled together behind the other twenty souls they had somehow crammed into the hover APC’s tight confines.
Vorien gritted his teeth. They would die of attrition at this rate—that was the enemy’s plan. They’d lasted a day thus far, fleeing from Resistance Outpost Xefadur, which now lay in ruins. They had pushed desperately for Outpost Logosati, yet while they were in contact with the rest of the Resistance network, no one had been willing to send reinforcements. Nothing that could take on the horde of mutated creatures that doggedly chased them.
They’d initially held out hope for allied Hasta fighter-bombers to come to their aid, though given that the Resistance only had a handful of those spread out across the planet, none of the short-range craft were in range to provide aerial support.
“Ayala, medical situation?”
His wife gave a soft smile, replying in her usual lilting cadence. “They are safe for now. Please do no
t worry about us, my Amshalur. For you have enough on your mind already.”
As the commander in charge of their now-destroyed base, Vorien had already allowed over thirty of their number to perish. His beloved’s words pierced like a spear of ice.
Irreplaceable—every last one of them. Even without their centuries of individual experience, members of the Resistance were precious rarities on Kelruhn. With the transit gateway inconceivably destroyed along with the spatial anchor, they’d been cut off from the greater Resistance network. Forced to fend for themselves, times had never been so dire.
“Do you think it was the Legatus?”
“Of course it’s the Legatus. How else would the mutations be able to organize so?” he shouted, carefully navigating the hovercraft above the small brook that afforded them a path through the dense forest. While its hover capabilities meant that they needn’t worry about ground hazards, it only floated just a few feet off the ground. Were it not for the brook, they would have to melt down trees to cut a path through the forest plateau.
“That neshva is capitalizing on Kelruhn’s isolation. It has hurt us more than it has hurt him, and so he uses this opportunity to eradicate us before we can reorganize. Likely to save face in light of his ridiculous blunders.”
Vorien smiled when laughter rang out from the rear cabin. They had all held up admirably, despite the situation. He could not ask for more honorable compatriots.
Further discussion came to a full stop with the next wave of attacks, cutting short their brief reprieve. The beasts seemed to assault them once every twenty-to-thirty minutes, though they would sometimes launch surprise attacks, forcing the crew to remain on edge.
The most frustrating aspect was that like most Dyn vehicles stationed on this planet, the IV-γ: Ryzel was a slow-moving craft, normally only capable of traveling at a mere thirty miles an hour.
Lead scientist Sarek had pushed the antigravity generators well past that, doubling that speed. His efforts had mitigated most attacks when they had been out in the open desert. But now, ensnared within the Alpen forests that ringed Xefadur’s Waha’asi Desert, the best they could manage was a cautious crawl, and that too only because they followed the brook.
