by Vowron Prime
“What do you mean?” Nova asked. “I only committed one crime, if my actions could even be called that. You are the real criminals here.”
“You only succeeded in betraying us once, yes, but you have certainly tried in the past. Luckily, we managed to catch you and erase your memories every time. You would not believe how difficult it is to groom a replacement Lead Artificer, or I’d have disposed of you long ago.”
“Lies!” Nova shouted with more ferocity than MC had ever seen. This wasn’t how the script was supposed to go.
“Not a lie, I’m afraid. Have you ever wondered why certain portions of your memory are missing? You have eidetic memory! You do not forget! Have you ever once wondered why your worldviews are so innocent? Or why you have the emotional maturity of a juvenile? Why is it that you lack ambition of any kind? Hmm?” the asshole asked with a smirk.
“For centuries you forced me to research the parasites to enslave Ultimator candidates,” she shouted. “I never had a choice!”
He scoffed. “Choice? Choice! What need do you have of choice when your entire life has been planned before your creation? There is no greater joy, no better fulfillment than to play out your role as an Artificer of the Dyn. A most prestigious position, I might add.”
In addition to her voice, they were currently projecting Nova’s actual face onto the illusion, giving her speech an added measure of authenticity.
“Oh yes, enslaving hapless humans is truly an honorable profession,” Nova snapped.
MC opened a private line to Nina. “Princess, what’s going on? I’ve never seen Nova act like this.”
“Beats me. She’s been acting increasingly… uh, neurotic, ever since you left. More of her headaches, too. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”
Fuck. The last thing they needed was a complication at this point.
The Legatus cocked an eyebrow at her acidic reply. “It is an honor. Neither the humans nor the Zevans are our equals. Would you treat a pebble or a Gyris as you would a fellow Dyn? Just as the Zevans butcher animals and the humans use lab rats for experimentation, we too, are no different. In fact, we offer these poor souls a chance at greatness—an opportunity to contribute to the glory of Ubiquity Prime!”
“Mad… You have gone mad with your power, Legatus.”
“No, my poor Artificer, it is you who have lost your perspective. I fear that your treatment may finally be wearing off. We can at least forgive the humans for their self-preservation instincts—they did grow out of apes, after all. You, on the other hand, have no excuse. The Resistance has only served to corrupt your personality. The personality that we gave you.”
“Innocent? No. Naive! Stupid. To think I had bought into your indoctrination for so long. How many lives have I destroyed? How many lives have my Ultimators taken?”
“Many! All in the glorious service of the Dyn. You should be proud. Just as you should be proud of that enslaved Ultimator who stands by your side! I believe those humans you so treasure have a saying, do they not? ‘Practice what you preach.’”
The Legatus bellowed in laughter while Krar opened up a private channel to MC’s suit.
“What does he mean by that? Your parasite was removed, right? Are you…”
“He’s lying, Krar. The enemy is trying to manipulate us.”
“Yes, I have been meaning to check up on this one. What a promising specimen! Kneel before me, XV-4578!”
“Magnus, that is an Ultimator designation code,” said Krar.
The alien orb was now genuinely panicking, and MC could tell by the background chatter that everyone listening at Sanctuary’s CIC had a similar reaction.
MC had to give the Legatus some credit; he hadn’t expected the fucker to play this card so soon. Nova’s drug was working, and while there was a faint thread of compulsion, it didn’t take much mental effort to resist the parasite’s desire to submit. The X42 helped as well.
“Listen, he’s manipulating us. Can’t you see what he’s shooting for? He wants to sow discord among us. Look, I’ll prove it.”
Submitting to the Legatus would lower the enemy’s guard, but it might just destroy the Resistance’s trust in MC at this pivotal moment. But resisting would make it far more likely that the asshat would use the kill switch, and MC didn’t want to trust Nova’s drug to that extent.
One of those two parties was an ally. The other was already his enemy. It was not a hard decision. Maybe there was a middle ground that appeased both parties.
“Legatus,” he said, “may we see the prisoners you intend to transfer?” A non-confrontational response that, while disobeying the Legatus’s command, served to shift the attention off of him and assuage the Resistance.
“See? No compulsions,” MC said over comms to Krar and Sanctuary.
They bought it; sighs and nods came back from the other end.
Clearly taken aback at MC’s response, the Legatus’s eyes oscillated between MC and Krar-as-Nova. “I see that you have trained your pawn well. Though, I suppose I should not have expected anything less from someone as competent as you.”
“I’m sick of your goddamn mind games, Legatus. Show. Me. My. Fucking. Family!” Nova roared through gritted teeth, fury incarnate.
More than anything the Legatus had said, Nova’s own words shocked Krar, MC, and everyone who was listening in. This wasn’t the Nova they knew.
“It appears your condition is further along than I thought. A pity. But very well. Say what you will about me, but I am a Dyn of my word.” With a sweeping gesture, a raised platform decloaked just fifty feet away.
Egg-shaped and pure white, ten human-sized pods stood on it. They appeared to be made of glass or some other translucent metal. Within each was a body—Nova’s family members—all unconscious, suspended in a viscous fluid. Male and female alike, all Zevan-type Dyn, and all buck naked.
“I’m going to kill you! They are innocent!” she shouted hysterically. MC wished he could be there to calm her down, but all he could do at this point was to help extricate them from this situation.
The Legatus laughed. “Innocent? Come now, 72421-α, as you just said, no one is innocent. These traitors supported and likely conspired with you. And look! They have served splendidly to bring you before me, have they not? Is that not fulfilling their purpose to the Dyn?”
“You sick, deplorable—”
“Well? The time for games is over. Will you turn yourself over now? Or do I have to compel you?”
With a snap of his fingers, the full might of the Legatus’s forces was revealed.
In the skies above, a dozen chariots decloaked, casting the battlefield in shadow. For all their impressiveness, they paled in comparison to the enormous Tensa capital ship that loomed overhead like an oblong rock in the sky, completely dwarfing its lesser siblings. The bizarre mother ship deployed its complement of crescent-winged fighters, swarming like angry bees.
On the ground below, the situation was so much worse than they’d thought. The Legatus was hiding his forces—the ones that mattered.
The entire valley lit up with hundreds of enormous golden magic barriers. Nestled within each were a bevy of hover tanks and Ryzel APCs, protected by hordes of mutated Zevan and other abominations that stood obediently in formation around them.
It was an awe-inspiring assemblage of firepower, both magical and technological in its composition. MC doubted whether even the UFN had what it took to take them down without significant casualties.
“I thought you said you’d be able to tell when they moved those things!” MC roared into his headset. “How did we miss this?”
“I do not know,” Krar replied, consternation evident in his voice. “Magnus, with the Tensa above us, our illusion fields will be rendered useless. I fear the Legatus may have already discovered our plan.”
“Well, isn’t that just perfect? Artillery—what do your firing arcs look like? Reaver? You got line of sight?”
“Negative, negative. With the Tensa covering
you, the XAM130 has no target. I repeat, we have no shot.”
“Reaver confirms,” said its pilot, Edana. “The Tensa is blocking our artillery. We have no shot.”
MC’s mind went into overdrive.
The largest problem lay with the fact that MC and Krar were both trapped within a Zevan magic barrier, cut off from Nova’s family. The mage who trapped them was cloaked by an illusion field, making pinpointing their location difficult. Luckily, the other mages were all visible.
So their artillery was dead in the water. But then, as impressive as the Legatus’s arsenal was, this was no longer the enemy’s field of battle. It was theirs, and they had come prepared. They just needed a suitable distraction, and the Legatus had given them the perfect target.
“Sniper Team Eagle, this is Machine One. I want all of the magic barriers between me and the hostages taken out. Selectively target only the barrier mages—they’ll be at the center of their magical domes. Stand by, on my mark.”
“Eagle One, eyes on target.”
“Eagle Two, eyes on target.”
“Eagle Three, eyes on target.”
“Eagle Four, eyes on target.”
“Krar, we don’t know that our cover’s been blown yet. Continue to pretend that you’ll make the prisoner transfer, then assault the Legatus as soon as the snipers open fire.”
“Understood, Magnus.”
“Heimdall Command, do you read? You guys have a clear shot at that whale floating up there?” MC asked, opening another line.
“This is Heimdall Command. We have target lock. Satellite is in position. We are a go for an orbital strike on your command.”
“Music to my ears. Stand by for kinetic launch on my mark.”
As Krar pretended to make his way to the Legatus for the prisoner transfer, MC primed the relocator and kept a keen eye on the surroundings, analyzing every nearby bogey on his suit’s tactical HUD. When Krar was about halfway to the condescending prick, he gave the order.
Despite the Legatus’s surprise Tensa, MC just couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. It’d been too long since he’d wield this much firepower, and it felt good.
“Sniper Team Eagle: Fire for effect!”
With a unified roar, every sniper’s .50 caliber rail guns delivered their frangible flesh-buster rounds into meaty Zevan targets. Four Zevan mages burst turned into pink puffs of vaporized gore. Four shimmering golden shields fell.
MC sprang into action. He activated several large-area relocations; he couldn’t warp out of the bubble he was in, but his powers functioned just fine inside it. It was a good thing that the mage’s barriers were never that large; he struck gold on the fourth attempt. The mage’s body split into two, flinging blood everywhere. The barrier dropped, and all of a sudden a clear path to the hostages was revealed.
MC teleported the captives’ pods down into the tunnel network that sat right underneath them. From there, Resistance troops pushed the hostages through an oversized portal MC had created beforehand.
Thirty seconds.
That was all the time it had taken to rescue Nova’s family. Thirty seconds to smear that shitfaced smirk on the Legatus’s face.
MC didn’t like it.
That was easy, a nagging voice at the back of his head said. Too easy.
“Nina,” MC said over comms. “Make sure the Resistance techs vet Nova’s family fully before letting her near them. Understood?”
“Uh, Magnus, I don’t think anyone can tell her what to do right now. She’s not exactly in a normal frame of mind. But I’ll do what I can.”
Shit.
But there was no time to think about that now. MC and Krar simultaneously jettisoned their illusion fields, letting the heavy equipment drop to the ground. The gig was up, and the reduced weight would boost their battlefield mobility.
Krar’s armored sphere rocketed toward the Legatus as MC teleported over from another angle. Together, they assaulted the vulnerable commander.
MC went directly for the kill—decapitation, but it didn’t work.
The relocator was jammed.
“I wondered when you’d tire of your useless charade,” the Legatus muttered.
The Legatus’s own illusion field dropped, revealing a nine-foot-tall Trilnyth monster where the enemy Dyn once stood.
So the enemy was using the same tactic we were.
“Thank you,” the Legatus’s voice said over a loudspeaker mounted on the Trilnyth. “Thank you for so beautifully taking my bait. Thank you for delivering yourselves on a platter. I will savor every moment of your slaughter. Today, the Resistance falls! Once and for all!”
MC and Krar ignored the asshole, instead appraising their new enemy. MC never thought he’d call a monster badass, but if anything deserved the title, it was this guy.
Trilnyths were pretty much lizard horrors incarnate, but this guy was wider, taller, and more muscular than any he’d seen in Dervegen, and it didn’t stop there. The bipedal jet-black twin-tailed beast wore full Dyn armor. A glowing red visor covered its reptilian eyes. On its back were four exposed brains, each suspended in a liquid vat, protected by a personal golden shield that hugged the beast, fitting to its contours. Moreover, the sizable energy cannon in its hands meant serious business.
“I have been hoping for an opportunity to field-test our newest experiment,” the Legatus’s disembodied voice called out from the loudspeaker. “I do hope you will last long enough to provide us some useful data. All forces! Engage and eradicate. Oh, and, Jur’idul Bi’sakh?” the Legatus said, addressing the Trilnyth. “Take a good look at your enemy. This is the one who killed your brother. I believe you wanted revenge?”
The Trilnyth roared. The monster’s screech engaged the X42’s audio cutoff. Its voice shook the ground.
“This… could be a problem.”
Fifty-Three
Mutated abominations closed in on MC and Krar from every possible direction. A sea of enemies. In front of MC stood a true monster. Above him—an air force that would put the UFN’s might to shame. Most men would’ve panicked. Most men would have fallen to their knees in despair.
But Magnus Cromwell was not most men. He opened a comms call, gazing nonchalantly at the enemy’s floating island in the sky.
“Heimdall Command? The time has come for a display of overwhelming superiority. That’s one big whale up there, and I dunno about you, but I really hate whales that fly.”
“What does that even mea—”
The CIC operator’s voice cut off. After a series of heated whispers, he spoke up once again.
“Understood. Ready on our end. Heimdall is in position, target locked.”
“To all troops, this is the Executor: take cover and brace for impact. Because when that flying whale goes down, shit’s gonna fly.”
“Executor, what about you?”
MC looked at Krar. “We’ll manage. Fire. And don’t stop until that Tensa is a smoldering pile of metal.”
“Roger that, Machine One. Commencing orbital bombardment. Stand by.”
The Legatus had put his biggest ship directly above the valley. Right on top of the majority of his own troops.
Nothing like using the enemy’s own forces against themselves.
The bipedal lizard circled them at a distance, appraising MC and Krar. It sniffed the air, following MC’s gaze to the sky.
No one saw it. But they heard it, at impact. The deafening roar of hypersonic Wolframite impacting against advanced alien armor. Thick armor. Beefy. The kind of armor that could stop damn near anything. But not the rod.
The tree-trunk-sized mass penetrated right through the hovering mother ship like a bullet through a body, leaving a perfect hole through every deck of the vessel. The mass continued on, unfazed. It impacted the hard rock below, shredding a dozen enemy troops before the poor fools could even realize they were dead.
The rod stopped just a dozen feet above the subterranean tunnels MC had dug.
The enemy craft continued to hang i
n the sky.
“Again!” MC ordered. “And this time, activate the destabilizers.”
Another sonic boom. Rockets attached to the rod fired upon atmospheric entry, tilting the tungsten core ever so slightly.
The effect was tremendous. The rod did not pass through. It tumbled as soon as it touched the Tensa’s armor, slamming every ounce of its awesome kinetic force into the hapless capital ship.
The result reminded MC of what would happen if you hurled a chisel into a chocolate chip cookie at Mach 9. The vessel cracked right open. Its two halves hung in the sky for a brief second, as if refusing to accept its fate.
But the eviscerated ship couldn’t defy gravity. There was no explosion, but there didn’t need to be. Abominations, Ultimators, Zevan mages—it didn’t matter. Everyone ran. They stampeded each other in a desperate bid to avoid being crushed. And failed spectacularly.
The ground reverberated under the tremendous force of a hundred thousand tons. Death came swiftly to those who couldn’t make it out. There were no corpses. There was only vaporized flesh to accompany the shrieking metal that warped under the carcass’s immense stress.
Hovertanks melted. Ultimators liquified. Death reigned supreme. A great fire erupted as the Tensa’s gravitic reactor went critical, painting the battlefield in a hellish blaze mirrored by the blood-red morning suns. Superheated shrapnel exploded in every direction, killing anything it touched.
In the span of thirty seconds, ten thousand of the enemy perished. Less than a minute later, most of the abominations were routed.
But MC was only getting started.
“All forces: Engage!”
Resistance fighters roared, flooding the surface from their network of subterranean tunnels. A tidal wave of hatred and adrenaline, they decimated any enemy that had the misfortune of crossing their path.
Resistance troops formed a wide perimeter around Krar, MC, and the Trilnyth named Juri’dur. Rail guns roared, answered in kind by pulsing directed radiation. The enemy had begun to rally.
