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“I SUGGEST YOU GRAB my head before we crash land. The landing itself could crush me if not protected, and then all this effort would have been a waste. You alone cannot save the Doomsayers or Ronin factions. You need me and the data I will provide to the Doomsayers to finish off the weapons they need and to destroy the ÆTAS servers.”
I lean forwards and take the servitor’s head in my hand. I verify that I’m buckled in appropriately for the crash landing.
The escape pod aligns as powerful nozzle-jets turn its fusion reactor to face the ground. One second before collision, the fusion reactor spits out a gust of energy to trump the collision. The counter-explosion decelerates the escape pod to a nonlethal speed. The pod tumbles and churns, and then we come to a complete stop.
I hear heavy thuds and more explosions around me.
“More escape pods are crash landing on Ahmurai’s vessel,” explains Iris, “and surely the scout team who comes to find us. I suggest you move as fast as possible.”
“Where to?”
“Nowhere specifically. You need to survive long enough for someone to rescue us. This is actually the riskier portion of our escape. Success is not guaranteed.”
I pull the lever on the escape route and the door is expelled outwards with a pulse of pressurized gas. The atmosphere surrounds me with breathable air.
I step out and stare above me. I’m in a section of land—of the thousands in this vessel/world—where the forest is thick and full of bush. Animals are abroad, but much of the land has been torched and excavated. I look around and see many exploration drilling vehicles and one powerful heavy-duty excavating mech that is similar to the terraformer in both size and purpose. While the mTOR class mech is for terraforming and creation, the dTOR is for demolition and excavation.
“I see multiple cohorts of mechs landing in every direction!” says the head in my hand.
The star rotating around this world in roto translatory motion whizzes by above us. It’s suddenly night, dawn, mid-day, dusk, and then night again as the speeding star moves at astronomical speed.
“This vessel/weapon unfolded into two parallel giant rods that consumed the previous rotating star to generate the sterilizing pulse that destroyed sectors H-X and then terraformed. The star you see was acquired by the vessel/world. Research shows it is a manufactured star, a star-sized plasma ball that is big enough and with enough hydrogen to sustain fusion at its core. I would think a place designed like this one should have some sort of ducts and tunnels for repairs and maintenance. Wouldn’t you agree?” says Iris.
I am suddenly hopeful. “That would make a lot of sense!”
“Well, perhaps you should find an entrance and run underground to avoid being found!”
The search parties have deployed drones. I see the giant Pathfinder drones overhead scanning the area. FistShips fly above my head in formation.
“This is why your bio-DAT is disabled from wireless communications. You would be found very quickly if it weren’t for my diligent planning,” says the head in my hands.
“Shut up. Let’s find an escape route.”
I run to an excavation point near a pyramid. Tantalum carbide, this is the material that forges Ahmurai’s pyramids and armor, what made it so resilient to destruction. But it’s not immune. The pyramid before me has been chewed up by the drilling mech before me, a titan of amazing power using plasma torches to cut through the thickest of materials. It looks slow and cumbersome compared to the versatile and quick Torragami.
Many servitors are working the area, automatons carrying dirt and stones to polish the excavation and save the valuable relics. Valued highly, apparently, by the ÆTAS. By those treacherous Celestials called Primordials who are also the Omega Cohort. Those higher ups I have to kill, purge, and dismantle.
I avoid the automatons as best as possible. Even automatons like these could announce my position. In my new body, I am quick, stealthy, and very, very fast.
“You should summon your natural armor. At any moment, you could be surprised by a firefight,” she says.
“How...” with a simple thought, I can feel a surge of static like energy all around my skin. Within seconds, I am swamped from toe to neck in the thick armor. I do not wish the facial armor yet.
I hear the heavy trot of warriors in full armor running in formation. I don’t think they’ve found me. They must have tracked every single escape pod and deployed a scouting unit to explore each. That’s millions of teams worth of resources. There must have been clusters of escape pods, so they are concentrating forces on certain clusters.
It occurs to me that these soldiers must also have the new Homo iluminatus body, which means they must also have heightened senses.
I am lit up by a Gorecannon. The distance saves my head from exploding from the volley of particles. I duck and dive, roll and jump, and run for it.
I am very fast on my naturally armored feet, but also very vulnerable. I summon my facial armor. My face is suddenly covered in the thick material. I panic as my eyelids close shut with the natural armor, but I can still see! Normal visible light may not make it through the material, but infrared and ultraviolet waves do! I can see, and very clearly. Color is not available, but shades of ultraviolet and infrared light do as my advanced retina projects the perceived electromagnetism to my visual cortex.
Pathfinder drones are large spearhead-shaped drones with powerful fusion-powered nozzle-jets attached to them, which allows them exemplary movement and acrobatic ability in most mediums, including air under the influence of a gravity well. The spearhead-shaped drone above me suddenly blasts the field around me with light. My infrared-perceiving vision captures a pulse of infrared echoes. It has shot an echo-radar probe!
Powerful halogen beams shine over me. An instant later, the land is torn to shreds by incoming light fire. Small fist-sized missiles strike the ground I’d just left, pushing me onwards and threatening to destabilize me. I do my best to hold on to the servitor head where Iris is installed. Small-caliber bullets hit me in the back. I am pushed forward, roll, and continue running. I have just proven to myself that the natural armor is good enough to block small-caliber ammo. However, I doubt it will prevent a DrillCore from piercing me.
I see Torragamis close in as they land aggressively near my position. DrillCore ammo cracks the air above me. I jump and dive, roll, and go down an excavation tunnel and sprint as fast as I can. I am followed closely overhead by the Pathfinder drones who continue to shoot small-caliber ammo. They’re not causing damage, but they are surely keeping me pinned and transmitting my current location.
I go deeper and deeper into the tunnels, fighting my way past automated servitors who wish to block my way through. Dead-end. I seek another path to escape but find none. SHIT!
I run back up the tunnel, just in time to jump out into the open forest and thick bush. The air around me is ripped by DrillCore ammo and incoming missiles.
“Iris! Any ideas?!”
“At this point, I would suggest you use the dTOR Excavator Mech! Its armor would be thick enough to sustain heavy damage while you find a way to get us out of here. The success rate at this point is less than 5.5%. Good luck.”
“Did you ever have the sense to discuss your evac options with Ferfasser when you struck the bargain!” I yell.
“I could not, I’m afraid. It all would come down to the actual position we landed in, and the location of your brethren upon coming to rescue me.”
“Wait...so Ferfasser knew my brothers would go into all-out war?”
“But of course. I predicted it with a high degree of probability. With you captured and Cien-gi slaughtered, there was a high chance of vengeance. And now that you and I are part of the bargain, even more a reason to attack and try to rescue us,” explains Iris.
“So my brothers are in on this?”
“As far as I’m concerned, yes. You should concentrate on fleeing, Argo.”
A flash. I dodge a Hellblade that nearly decapitates me. Were it not for my swiftness, I’d be dead. I go low and sweep with my legs, hitting heavy armored legs. The soldier holds his ground. I then roll on the ground, quick enough to miss the descending blow. The Devastar soldier stumbles as my quick escape makes him lose his balance. I get up and jump on his back. I grip his helmet with all my might with my free hand and yank upwards with a jumping motion. I twist one way, twist another and break the link that binds the helmet to the armor. I then feel his spine crumble. As he falls, I jump off his shoulders and rip his head off. The squirting blood bathes me. I land on the falling body with both the head of Iris and that of the decapitated soldier, one in each hand.
A Gorecannon tears the fallen Devastar to shreds. I roll fast enough to miss the incoming shot. The swift movement makes me lose grip on the servitor head with Iris installed. I get up, and throw the Devastar’s head at another Devastar soldier, hitting him square in the face and fracturing the visor. Gives me enough time to roll and pick up the sword from the Devastar that I just killed. I roll again and pick up the servitor head.
I grip the Hellblade and turn in on with a thought, a mechanism that comes to me naturally by sensing the wireless features of the blade. The effect is fortifying. It is like a drug.
As soon as I become a swordsman, the music of destruction awakens my spirit, which is dancing from the interior of my fetid and digitally reconstructed soul up to the exterior to manifest itself in death incarnate. That I am. I am the Doom Commander, a once silly name for a now serious problem. I am back from the dead.
The microscopic argon plasma film on the blade burns incandescent. I wield it with punitive mastery.
I move like a storm, erupting like the undertaker. The Devastar soldiers in full gear are now too slow for me in natural armor only. The first soldier falls as his legs are cut from under him. Blood erupts vigorously from the wounds as the fallen Devastar smashes into a puddle of his own blood. The damage is sealed by cauterizing enzymes. I have no time to slay him, so continue my swirling motion to propel me out of Gorecannon fire. DrillCore ammo from amateur Torragami pummels ten Devastar soldiers. I see the swell before the DrillCore explodes within their tissues and sends up a shower of flesh and armor.
I continue onwards and dip the Hellblade into a soldier’s visor, I extinguish his life with one swift motion. Another one falls after my power blade vivisects him from crotch to neck with extreme violence.
I love this blade. If I could only engrave the words “never forget” on it, I would make it my new official blade. Maybe I can.
A heavy ballistic missile hits near me, and four soldiers go out in pieces. I am damaged by the concussive force but manage to make it ever closer to the dTOR.
Pterodactyl bombers fly low, dropping heavy bombs on the dTOR mech. It is barely damaged!
The Barbarus commander, my brother Mortimer, has realized what I’m up to. Thus, the bombings on the large excavator mech. The dTOR behemoth barely sways as destruction rains upon it. The next escalation is a nuke. Better get in there before this place goes ablaze.
FistShips descend in formation. I am chased by heavy fire, and then several missiles strike true. The Excavator Mech is knocked down from the sheer force of the blast.
I get up. Two Torragami jump and land near the fallen behemoth. I hide under its large body and crawl under its strong armor grazing against dirt and gravel.
I find the hatch and get in. I seal it behind me with manual mechanisms. The orbital bombardment commences. They really want me dead.
“Now what?! I’ve never driven one of these!”
“You’ll have to hack its nervous system! Get to the cockpit!” yells the metal head, Iris.
I dash through the tunnels. The mech being flat on the ground makes for easy movement moving horizontally on a vertically designed mech with many floors on it. I get to the cockpit.
“You see that panel? Rip it open!”
I yank the whole thing off. “That was excessive! Never mind! See the glowing red light? Disconnect the cables, the red and the blue, and connect them to the service terminals on the back of my head!” I can’t believe there are still cables in use. I would have thought our technology was...without cables. Goes to show how little I know about our tech.
“The back of your head is sealed!”
“Well...rip it open then,” says Iris with calm.
I dig a finger into the service terminal bay on the back of the head of the servitor head and yank off the cover. Cables zip out with a fizzle of sparks.
“Find the terminal that reads ‘core signaling’ and wire the cables red and black to the blue and yellow! The red to yellow and the black to red!”
“Wait! Have you done this before?”
“Indeed.”
“Done,” I say.
“Next step: see that glowing blue light down in that panel?”
“Yes!”
“Destroy it. It will render the mech terminal incapable of quantum comms, so the ÆTAS can’t disable us remotely. Do it! Now!”
I follow the instructions as given. I torch the blue-light’s panel with the Hellblade. As soon as the wires are connected, all lights within the mech environment go out.
“Excellent. Initiating activation sequence,” says Iris. Her eyes are no longer blue. I wonder if I damaged her by opening the terminal on the back of the head.
“Get to the pilot seat. Now!” her voice is now coming from the speakers in the mech. “This mech is not usually manually piloted, but it has an overdrive holo-command suite in case the mech malfunctions.”
I crawl across the floor of the fallen mech to the pilot seat—the once horizontal floor is actually a wall given the mech has fallen on its back. I climb on and find the seat very small for a soldier of my size. The seat breaks as I sit on it, but the base holds. I introduce my hand to the holo-commands of the manual overdrive. A tactical holo appears around me, representing the panoramic view that the mech has through its sensors. This is by far inferior to the overpowering experience when you become a Torragami and fuse with its nervous system, but this will do. I have a chance to mete out some damage and survive long enough for extraction.
I start moving my hands within the holo-command projection around my body, orchestrating the mech’s movements. I am not used to this type of mech controls. From the outside, I’m sure it looks like the mech is having a seizure because of its strange, jerky movements. After several seconds of testing the controls, I feel like I have a certain level of control over it. I am able to stand up. I stumble on the seat and have to release movements temporarily to avoid rolling off the seat. I return my attention to the holo-command and immerse myself in the experience as best I can.
I move my giant arms—the mech’s arms—and intuitively use the plasma torch to try out the multitoothed drilling tools on my left arm. My chest is a saw tooth and rock-crunching surface. I get to work.
I am being pummeled heavily by incoming fire. My movements are slow and deliberate. The Torragami enemy easily evade my attack with the plasma torch. The Torragami goes OverCore, unsheathes its powered-up katana, and begins hacking at my legs.
A gargantuan detonation sends a rippling pulse through me, and then the Torragami becomes dust. I am thrown to the floor and feel the heat rising dangerously. A nuke has blasted on top of us. The ÆTAS has decided that I am not to escape by any means. There are no windows here, so no brilliant white light to damage my retina. I’m sure that I won’t be able to sustain another nuke, not at this rate. My systems are heavily damaged, and the multidrill tool on my left arm has stopped working. The tactical holo pulses in and out of functionality.
“You have a fusion engine that powers fusion jets on your back. You could lift off if you wish,” says Iris.
I intuitively find the nozzle jets and lift off by turning them on. As I lift into the air, I see no end to Ahmurai’s vessel, meaning I must be smack in the middle of this world/vessel.
I am knocked out of the air by a volley of twenty missiles that hit me square in the chest. The dTOR mech falls from a height of twenty meters. The force of the fall knocks me out of the seat. I break a femur in the process. The pain is searing. Deadly radiation pierces the thick hull of the Excavator Mech.
I get back on the seat, power up the mech, and start walking again. Anywhere, somewhere. I move as fast as I can, crunching over the vegetation. I am swarmed over by FistShips. Heavy fire tears off a leg. The mech falls.
This is not going as planned.
“You should exit the mech. The armor is about to give,” says Iris in a deadpan tone, but I have a sense she is sad about our defeat. Maybe it is I who added the emotion to her tone.
I run to the servitor head, disconnect her from the cables and run to the emergency escape pod. I struggle not to hit the walls of the halls as the mech topples over. I flail and tumble around like a rat inside a maze that’s being shaken by heavy forces. I finally get to the escape pod. I enter and do my best to buckle up in the small seat. I pull the red emergency ejection lever.
The escape pod is shot horizontally, not vertically, as the mech is on the floor. However, the pod being pod-shaped rolls with the force. The infernal heat immediately makes the pod a searing furnace. I begin to cook alive from within.
The pod is shot a long distance, and soon I dash into another patch of land within Ahmurai’s vessel. The radiation from the nuclear blast is blocked by whatever force field shields each patch of land in this vessel, as I had previously witnessed when I briefly explored this strange helicoidal world.
The new patch of land I’m in is a desolate forest of ice cool weather. The pod smashes against a large ice column and breaks the armored window as searing red hot metal flies through the air and burns my natural armor. Shards of thick glass fall on me, but the natural armor on my body protects me from being cut. I use the Hellblade to open an escape route on the hull of the pod and dash out. I briefly look back at dTOR mech to see a brilliance of nukes destroying it. I carry on, trying to survive utter destruction.
I run among a forest of upward-pointing icicles. My fractured femur is a nuisance at the most in this heightened state of adrenaline. The broken bone has been patched up by the cauterizing enzymes and the pain numbed by psychonarcotics, but I still need the skills of a MedPod to align the bone with the shattered part for proper healing.
I am chased by heavy fire. DrillCore ammo pierces my fractured leg. My leg goes under me as the shin is disconnected from the femur, and the torn flesh looks like the rags of old clothes. I lose blood, but the wound is soon cauterized by blood enzymes.
I crawl as fast as I can. I grab the servitor head with all my strength and try to make it to a hiding place. A Torragami lands near me, and with its giant katana cuts the surrounding icicles down, exposing me from my hiding place. Pathfinder drones hover above me, tagging me with their aiming lasers
“That was a good run, a good attempt to escape,” says Iris.
“We will both die,” I say.
“Yes.”
The Torragami’s hatch opens up. Out jumps a soldier in purple armor. A large Greek beta symbol engraved on his large breast plate shines. I count five stars on his left shoulder.
The soldier takes off his helmet and exposes a sweaty face. “Hello, brother. You are indeed like a cockroach. Difficult to kill. Out of all the intelligent beings in this universe, you would have the nerve to betray us? Why would you join the Doomsayers? That is foolish of you. In the name of Omnistar Magna Übel Blass of the Omega Co—
An energy round pierces Mortimer’s face, leaving a gaping hole where his mouth was. More energy rounds hit him, and many holes the size of a fist riddle his chest. He falls, dead.
The scenery is ablaze in light. A storm of energy rounds falls from the sky.
Seconds later, I witness an eclipse.
The twenty Torragami fall around me in a protective fashion. The explosion of twenty mechs falling at the same time causes an abrupt concussion that destroys the enemy forces that were upon me and cause me serious damage. I am severely wounded, but alive.
A Torragami sweeps down with his giant Katana and slays Mortimer’s Torragami with a single blow. The pilot descends from the Torragami that skillfully slayed Mortimer’s mech. I see the Greek symbol Fi on his chest and five stars on his left shoulder. Amongst the destruction, the Alastar Magna of the Falcon Legion takes off his helmet and points a finger to Mortimer’s cadaver.
“I Urgok, the new anointed Alastar Magna of the Falcon Legion, declare your death just and right to avenge my fallen commander. Die!” Urgok raises his arm. An RR-19 wrapped around his raised handgun goes ablaze as more energy rounds strike the still body of Mortimer on the ground. I glance at Urgok’s Torragami and note an RR-19 has been adapted to his arm. This must be Schrödinger’s work!
During the infernal firefight unfolding before me, a Torragami runs toward me, opens its hatch, yanks me off the ground, and swiftly puts me inside its cockpit.
“Prepare for extraction, my Omnistar Doom.”
Did he just call me Omnistar Doom?
The other nineteen Torragami of the X-Star in LinkSys formation clasp their magnetic link onto my own Torragami. We lift off at maximum fusion power.
“Initiate the invasion,” says Urgok. “Requesting cover fire as we extract Omnistar Doom back to the Falcon.”
“Acknowledged, my Alastar Magna Urgok. Initiating invasion. Providing cover fire. Lancing incoming nukes.”
“Iris? You there?” I cry out within the Torragami environment.
No response.