by Vowron Prime
MC stood at the rear of the craft as it took off, rotating as it rose. Several members of the Resistance stood on the raised crater platform, waving them away.
He gave them a two-finger salute right before the rear door ramp closed.
“Let’s go get ’em, tiger,” Nina said, beaming.
Nova was more reserved. She fidgeted uncomfortably under the heavy cloak she wore, her wings bound. MC gave her a bemused look. He couldn't tell if it was the cold, the anxiety over going into battle, or something else entirely that made her act that way.
The gunship rose, setting a bearing east over the Sorathean Ocean toward Thesbea.
MC’s X42 walking tank hung at the tail of the ship. The rest of the troops had to make do with ordinary armor. Granted, it was the most advanced unpowered ceramic-graphene armor they could fabricate. Even if they’d had power armor to spare, the Zevan were nowhere near experienced enough to use them. Not when they could barely handle their firearms.
The Dyn, on the other hand, certainly could. Three more M33 suits hung by their mounts. Ancient relics, while they were smaller than the X42, they were also far clumsier. They lacked onboard weapons and jump jets, but their sturdiness and ammo capacity had made them valuable assets to the UFN military.
As MC looked over the troops in their modern combat armor, he found it hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, most of these soldiers were medieval Gyris-riding, sword-wielding knights.
Sadly, he was unable to convince them to ditch the swords. But they weren’t just any swords. The ones they carried were nanomachine-enhanced graphene alloy, courtesy of the Resistance. Maybe the Zevan would actually find a use for those ridiculous things.
The team of thirty consisted of twenty-four Zevan and six Resistance fighters. Of the Zevan, eighteen were knights and six were mages. The mages wore the same armor as the knights, but they omitted the swords. It’d taken a Herculean effort to convince them to wear modern armor over their traditional robes, though they’d succeeded in the end. If there was such a thing as a modern mage, these guys were it. Lightning, fire, ice, and even one that could control the weather.
They had trained in several configurations, so if the situation called for it, they’d break up into cells of ten with MC, Krar, and Torneus leading each. Six Zevan fighters and two Dyn warriors per squad, though with MC being a one-man army, his squad included a Dyn with some leadership capability, in case he needed to take independent action.
It was all a good plan for an initial field test, but as MC knew well, no plan ever survived first contact with the enemy. He had no doubt that there would be injuries. Perhaps some life-threatening ones, but he did have hope that they’d make it back without casualties. The Resistance was simply too small to be able to afford any setbacks at this point.
Five hours later, Edana signaled their approach. ETA: thirty minutes.
“All right, boys, suit ’em up!”
The unenthused troop’s reaction time was far slower than what he’d expect out of an elite SpecOps squad, yet they all went through their practiced motions nevertheless, attaching the parachute backpacks to their combat armor.
Nina and Nova joined Edana up at the bridge, mainly to get out of the way of the soldiers as they prepped.
“Okay, this is gonna be just like you all practiced. The chutes are completely automated, so you won’t have to do jack squat apart from jumping and disconnecting upon landing. I know this is your first field jump, but you’ll all do great. I’ll be in the air to catch anyone, in case you screw up.”
His pep talk fell on deaf ears, but that was fine. They’d be plenty motivated when faced with hordes of enemies trying to devour them.
“Eye in the Sky indicates that the current situation on the ground can be summed up as FUBAR. Nesthein’s got about five thousand mutated monsters swarming their walls, and their defenses are on the cusp of total collapse.”
He paused to make some retinal motions and blink patterns. “Your combat helmets are now all patched into the live EITS vidfeed, which should now appear on your HUDs.”
Some of the Zevan shouted in surprise when their screens updated. They still hadn’t quite gotten used to modern technology.
“Based on the enemy’s locations, we’re gonna paradrop here,” he marked a red X, “while Reaver gives us aerial support to thin the numbers a bit. Once we’ve established a defensive line, I’ll ’port over to these holes in the ground. That seems to be the monsters’ point of origin. Between Reaver’s laser-guided bombs and my own abilities, we’ll seal off the entrances, buying us enough time to mop up the stragglers.”
He scanned the troop’s avatars displayed on his HUD.
“Any questions?”
The Zevan knights had given him the most concern during their training regimen over the past few weeks, so he’d taken several occasions to speak to each one, assuring them that he was not, in fact, a god. That the tools and technologies being given to the knights would be vital to their survival. It was about all he could do. The rest was in their hands.
“Remember, guys: focus on the objective at hand. The tech? It’s there to help you, not to fluster you. If you find yourselves fumbling in the middle of a fight, fall back to what you know. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Yes, Executor!”
The jump sirens blared and the cabin lighting switched to a strobing red.
“ETA: five minutes. Assume jump positions,” Edana announced.
MC stepped into his X42 powered armor. The HUD lit up with a succession of green diagnostic lights. The suit was ready. He was ready.
The troops lined up single file. The rear ramp opened, revealing rolling misty clouds and a whole lot of wind. Reaver’s cabin rattled and shook. Moments later, Edana gave them the green light.
“JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!”
The Zevan knight at the front took a hesitant step towards the edge. At that rate, the gunship would run out of fuel before the idiot actually jumped.
“You heard the lady!” MC said as he lifted the soldier and unceremoniously hurled him out the back of the ship.
“Okay! So who’s next?”
To his great disappointment, there were no more takers; the remaining troops had no issues motivating themselves to jump. The gunship emptied in seconds.
MC spun around and walked backward off the rear ramp.
“Thanks for the lift, girls. Rain death from above.”
He took one final step and jumped. Operation Archangel’s Descent was a go.
Forty-Two
Thirty emerald-and-black parachutes descended upon the rolling hills of Thesbean countryside. Thirty harbingers of destruction who brought a promise of total annihilation, looking every bit like elites about to wreak havoc upon their hapless foes.
They weren’t quite elites, but at least they looked the part.
Floating on an Energy Platform with the X42’s cape billowing in the wind, MC observed his troops as they fell towards the city they were tasked to defend. Nesthein’s situation didn’t look good at all. The thirty-foot-tall stone walls were already crumbling in many places. Its archers struggled to fend off the endless hordes of mutated beasts from the south.
And the cape? Nina’s crazy idea. Black, with emerald accents like the rest of their uniforms—Nina said it’d add some dramatic flair. That it did, and it didn’t get in the way either. MC begrudgingly agreed to keep it, despite reservations over looking like a ridiculously up-armored superhero.
The city itself was impressive. Similar in size to Dervegen, its walls traced a perfect five-pointed star. He’d never before seen such a configuration. An overly complex design for what appeared to be little gain, but who was he to comment on medieval architecture?
MC teleported down a thousand feet at a time to catch up with his falling team.
With the auto-deploying parachutes, it’d take a miracle for anyone to mess that up, but well, he’d never underestimated human—or Zevan—talent for stupid. The
team had yet to encounter issues, but the wind buffeting spread them apart just a bit farther than he’d have liked. The platoon was on track to land within a three-hundred-yard circle of each other.
Not bad for their first deployment.
Except when the ground was literally crawling over with hostiles. Getting stranded by yourself was a death sentence. Perhaps not for the Dyn elites, but the Zevan? He wouldn’t be surprised if he lost a few.
Instead of letting that unfortunate situation unfold, MC teleported near the falling soldiers and relocated them one by one, placing them closer to their buddies so that everyone landed within a few feet of each other. Sure, he could’ve just relocated them onto the ground, but he wouldn’t dare deprive them of such a golden learning opportunity.
They landed like black wraiths, though entirely unlike what one would expect from an elite unit. Several failed to detach their parachutes properly, toppling end over end, ensnared in their ropes. Not an especially surprising result, but for a split second, MC had hoped that they’d all detach, roll, and come up with guns blazing.
Well, there’s always next time.
Teleporting to an aerial vantage fifty feet above his troops, he provided overwatch support as they untangled themselves. Relocating enemies into the ground, he cleared a ring in the immediate vicinity.
Krar and the other Dyn Resistance soldiers helped get the rest back up on their feet within sixty seconds, fending off any bogeys that made it past MC’s relocation carnage.
A cacophony of gunfire erupted from their location as the Zevan brought their rail guns to bear, just a hundred feet in front of the walls of Nesthein. Mutated abominations dropped like flies. The Thesbean defenders watched their performance in awe.
“I want everyone’s AI aim assist enabled. We don’t need any hotshots here,” MC said, noticing several yellow icons on his HUD. Some of the Dyn fighters had theirs disabled. Their marksmanship was good, for sure, but disabling their aim assist was all kinds of stupid. With AI assist enabled, they wouldn’t even need to aim. They just had to hold the trigger down and the rounds would find their mark automatically, such was the density of the enemy horde.
Hellacious gunfire erupted from beyond the clouds. Reaver had joined the fray.
Having entered a circular pylon turn around their position, the gunship showered the earth with an unending onslaught of depleted uranium and certain death. The twin 40mm artillery rail guns traced arcs up and down the battlefield, several hundred yards away from his team’s position. Those areas shortly turned into a mountain of corpses.
Similar to the abominations that had chased the Resistance Dyn, these mutants also lacked self-preservation instincts. They relentlessly pushed through Reaver’s hailstorm of artillery fire, dying by the dozens. By the hundreds.
MC hailed Reaver. “Edana, carpet-bomb those corpses. They ought to burn well, wouldn’t you say?”
“Affirmative, Executor. Initiating bombing run now.”
The gunfire halted. Several soldiers looked over in confusion, but then Reaver appeared.
Phoom. Phoom. Phoom.
Jet-black projectiles launched out of Reaver’s bomb bay, falling lazily to the ground. The gunship rose, disappearing in the clouds.
For moments, there was silence. Then the ground erupted as a shock wave radiated out from ground zero. The line of corpses wrought by Reaver blew up. Some bodies flew, others melted, but they all blazed.
The mountain of deadbecame a flaming pyre.
But Reaver’s show wasn’t over. Its howitzer fired every thirty seconds. The deafening shock wave and ensuing mushroom cloud that bloomed several hundred feet into the sky annihilated hundreds and sent hundreds more flying.
Encouraged by the gunship’s divine protection, the troop’s morale soared. MC witnessed jets of azure flame and arcs of lightning roast the beasts. The mages laid down suppressing fire with their rifles even while chanting their spells, doubling their efficacy. While firearms were great at taking out individual opponents, Zevan area-of-effect magic dealt far more damage to entire groups of hostiles, and MC was surprised at how quickly they downed even the armored ones.
The heat from the magical fire was so intense that even the desensitized beasts shrieked in pain. They fled in panic and collided with each other causing even more collateral damage. And while lightning sounded ineffective against a horde, when his mages fired at one opponent, the arcs immediately branched out to other beasts next to them in a chain reaction, shocking and roasting them from the inside-out. One spell alone decimated thirty or forty enemies at once.
MC smiled evilly atop his aerial platform. Arms crossed. Cape fluttering.
“Magnus, you do realize your vidfeed is on, right?” his sister commented via comms. “You legit look like a supervillain.”
“Y’know, princess,” he replied, brushing off her comment, “the empress wasn’t messing around when she said that she’d send her elite troops. With time, they’ll be unstoppable.”
The squad had finally gotten their act together. The Zevan still fumbled and needed close monitoring, but the Dyn watched them like hawks. Or perhaps as caring teachers. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. MC only wished that the knights didn’t resort to their nanoblades so readily. Five of them were embroiled in a fierce melee with the beasts. They fared well. Very well, in fact, but their rifles would’ve gotten the job done while also keeping them out of danger.
“Krar, looks like you guys have things more or less under control on your end. I’m gonna see if I can’t cause some of my own mayhem. You think you’ll be able to hold the line for a bit?”
“Go on, Magnus. Show the people of Nesthein the power of our new Resistance!”
“Count on it.”
MC teleported several hundred feet away, high into the air. He let the suit freefall to the ground, detonating the X42’s proximity explosives upon impact. When the dust settled, MC found himself alone in a sea of abominations. Losing no time, he immediately began relocating all enemies within his maximal pickup distance. Fifty yards wasn’t a whole lot, but he had several other tools that would allow him to wreak maximal havoc.
By leveraging Midar to set his destination coordinates, he relocated enormous slabs of rock nearby before fusing them right into enemies farther out. He occasionally switched it up by relocating massive spheres into the air. The wrecking balls fell and rolled across the battlefield, crushing the poor beasts in their path. Relocate, fuse, repeat. The actions looped endlessly as he fell into a trance. The motions came naturally, automatically. At some point, he began to lose sight of his surroundings. A primal joy filled his soul. A hole he never thought he had was somehow being filled. By killing. By slaughtering in droves.
Kill. He had to kill. More! It was all so simple.
He had no idea how much time passed. Strange sounds brought him of the reverie. Someone was calling for him. But who? After what felt like ages, his foggy mind began to clear.
“—gnus! Magnus? STOP! Please! I’m begging you!”
When he came to his senses, he saw only bodies. Endless fields of bodies peppered the earth, fused to one another, or fused to the very ground itself. He stood in an ocean of blood. Of gore and carnage. Not one beast lived within a two-hundred-yard radius of him.
Two hundred yards?
He coughed violently. Blood spattered against the X42’s HUD.
Operator injury detected. Administering emergency trauma support.
“Magnus, your vitals are going haywire! You’re overusing your abilities. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
The panicked voices of Nina and Nova screamed through his comms system. Krar was also patched into the call, though the alien retained his silence.
“I, uh… Sorry, I don’t know what happened there. Shit.”
“Magnus, please teleport back to the gunship. We can treat you if—”
“I said I’m fine.”
MC closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This wasn’t li
ke him. It was shameful, but at least had enough sense to realize it. “I’m sorry, princess. I’m good now, really. The mission continues as planned. The suit will patch me up well enough. I’ll hit the medbay as soon as this is over, I promise.”
He called up the relocator’s vidbubble. As he’d suspected, it had burst and was twenty percent on its way to the next level. His pickup range had expanded greatly. After so long at being stuck at fifty yards, he’d finally broken through, though the relocator’s max size limit was the same—about as big as a small apartment. If that grew substantially, maybe he’d become his own kinetic energy weapon, slinging rocks from space. Assuming he could aim them.
Surprisingly, Midar had leveled, as well. The vidbubble showed his avatar in a field full of mutated abominations. An expanding shock wave—Midar pings—radiated out in a hemisphere around him rather than the one-eighty-degree sweeps he’d been limited to before. Not a bad haul, though he wished it wasn’t accompanied by the parasite gaining even more dominance over his mind.
Scanning the area, MC found several two-hundred-yard-wide craters all around him. He must have teleported across the battlefield and relocated everything within his maximal range. Many times.
It should’ve been horrific, but it felt so right. So goddamn right. And that was even scarier. The parasite hadn’t bothered him lately, but it seemed the respite was short lived.
He opened a comms call for an all-hands broadcast. The troops’ faces appeared in neat rows at the top of his suit’s HUD.
“Phase one is complete. We are now initiating phase two. I’ll board Reaver and close the underground openings that are allowing these monsters through. Krar, you’re in command of the squad until I get back. Protect the city. Eliminate any stragglers. Understood?”
“Understood, Executor. We shall not fail you!”
MC nodded. He cut the call, teleporting up into the gunship. He stumbled up its rear ramp.
The girls weren’t joking—blood flowed from his nose and ears, forcing him to engage the suit’s autodoc to clean some of that up. Nothing that seemed life-threatening, though it’d be prudent to avoid using his abilities for the next several minutes. Just how much had he used the ability to have triggered that kind of backlash?
