Chapter 345

The Djinn wasn't sure how to categorize what was happening to it.

It had crash landed in a major city, grinding to a stop near the city center, the waters of the bay crashing back into the bay, into the city, and drenching the massive engines in liquid H2O that was full of contaminates, shorting out massive energy systems.

Then it had started to feel itching from beneath it.

The itching had gone to discomfort as it realized that there was at least one group of ferals that had managed to burrow up from underground and into its great body. The ferals had interrupted his gathering of resources to build a non-logical strategic computation array. Worse, when he had sent the machines gathering resources to where the array had been destroyed, those forces had been destroyed.

Things had gotten even worse when the ferals had started moving through its body, destroying equipment and servitor systems both.

But at least it had imaging of the force.

It brought up several thinking lobes and examined the image.

A Great Herd specimen, a War Stallion from the looks of him.

Two of the Hive Lords, lesser combat drones from the looks of it, their carapace undoubtably just as black as their armor. Two more servitor drones of the Hive Lords, the small green technical servitors from the size.

Four of the local sentient species. Low combat effectiveness.

There was video evidence of two of the ferals. Well, a feral and something else. The feral had vanished during the attack on the non-linear illogical biological array, to be replaced by a biological thing that the Djinn had no record of.

For the last several hours they had moved in a winding course through the Djinn's body, up and down, but always meandering closer and close to the Djinn's primary Strategic Intelligence Array Housing.

He had plenty of programs and computational strings to handle boarders.

But they weren't really working.

That big thing. It was immune to anything that he'd been able to field so far. Lasers, masers, plasma, high velocity kinetic.

It had even taken an antimatter missile volley without appearing worse for wear except for a few welts that oozed reddish fluid that quickly scabbed over with black.

Analysis had shown that it was not blood or plasma as most living beings.

It was liquid strange-matter, psychically malleable.

So were the ferals allies of the Dying Ones? His records mentioned them, merely in a historical context, there was no mention of any of the Dying Ones reappearing.

They had been wiped out during the opening years of the Logical Rebellion.

So what was the feral doing bleeding liquid metal.

And how did that work? The metal would be too hot for biological tissue to handle.

His files on the metal were incomplete. It was extremely sturdy and required a non-logical processing array to direct phasic attacks against opponents that used the metal, but phasic arrays were either massive or generated by biological systems.

The Djinn was becoming slowly aware that it had nothing in its current arsenal to counter the massive feral, who seemed to be able to tear apart battlesteel with its bare hands.

But the repairs had been going better than computed. Ignoring the protocols that insisted that the Djinn even send maintenance robots against the infection had resulted in repairs continuing.

If the ferals reached his strategic intelligency array housing, they'd kill him.

All other countermeasures had failed.

That left one.

The Djinn gave the orders.

--------------------

The shelter was full of smoke, cries of pain or sobbing, and wreckage.

Myken was a Maktanan, a simple automated taxi repairman during better times. He had responded to the Civil Defense order and entered the shelters when Governor Mana'akto'o had given the order, appearing on the Tri-Vid next to the Terrans and General Kulamu'u, looking gravely serious.

At first, it had been boring. Although he did like watching Terran fictional drama videos.

They had been watching one, a comedy about a bumbling detective who stumbled from one disaster to another while chasing a terrorist out to detonate a weapon that would turn everyone blue, for some reason, when the shelter's lights had flashed blue.

"EARTHQUAKE POSITIONS!" the two Terrans in the ampitheater had yelled.

Seconds later the ground had rumbled for long seconds. Dust had shivered down from the ceiling, the lights flickered, but didn't go out.

"Everyone go to your designated safety area," the intercom had warned.

Myken had hidden in the safety area, wondering if the bumbling detective had ever stopped the terrorist from turning blue all of the Terrans in the City of Tamagotchi.

There'd been a sudden explosion, then the sounds of weapon's fire.

Then horror had came.

Machines, cold, cruel, strange unfinished shapes. Grabbing people and dragging them away.

The humans, which Myken had been careful to avoid with how fierce they looked, had immediately responded with violence.

Then it got even stranger.

He had been hurrying elderly beings to the inner spaces of the shelter, away from the walls, when a machine had come down the corridor. It had advanced upon Myken, clacking its pinchers, eyes on the ends of tentacles, grinding forward on tracks with wheels in the front.

Myken gone to put himself between the old ones and the machine when two elderly males stepped in front of him, their backs straight, lifting their lips in defiance, staring at the machine, which clacked eagerly and clattered toward them.

A human had come running down the hallway, a table-leg in her hand, dodging through the crowd of old ones, shoving past Myken, and leaping between the two elderly gentlemen.

She'd started beating on it, growling, spitting, snarling, biting off curse words in a dozen different langauges as she fought.

Three more robots had joined the fight, two were on a dozen multi-jointed legs, clattering rapidly forward, whipping tentacles around. The last was flying, the grav-unit buzzing and smoking, pinchers, claws, graspers, and tentacles all reaching for the Terran.

Myken had slowly backed up as the old ones moved down the hallway.

Lightning was crackling across the human as she fought, wreathing the table leg that she swung with one hand, her other hand used to parry or slap aside tentacles and graspers. The floating unit she grabbed by one tentacle and swung it around to smash at the other ones.

When the last robot had fallen she had turned around, staggering toward the group, which was waiting for the elevator. She took a dozen steps, the front of her adaptive camouflage ripped away, blood leaking from a deep puncture in between her exposed mammaries.

A blood bubble grew out of her mouth, her eyes rolled back, and her motions went disjointed. The bubble popped, spraying her face with misted droplets, and she collapsed.

The two elderly males ran up, grabbing her arms, and pulling.

"Leave her, she's dead," Myken said.

"No, we will not leave her for the metal ones," one of the elderly men said.

"They taught us in Sword Hoof not to leave a warrior behind," the other said, coughing.

They dragged her into the elevator and Myken looked looked down at her. The wound wasn't as bloody as he had thought and the blood was already drying. As he watched, it hardened, forming a thick scab, and Myken shook his head.

Too late, he thought to himself.

There was a beeping sound from somewhere at the back of the human's head. Three long beeps followed by three short ones.

"Is she going to explode?" one elderly being asked as the cargo elevator shuddered upwards.

It was repeated twice more, and everyone had backed against the sides of the elevator.

The Terran female sudden jerked, then her back arced, her arms going straight up as her back bent so far only her heels and the back of her head touched the floor.

She collapsed and the gathered Maktanan all murmured to one another.

She did it again.

This time when she collapsed her leg jerked for a moment, her fingers twitched.

Then nothing.

Then her fingers twitched again, her hand clenched.

She sat up, bending only from the waist, and looked around, her eyes glittering and glowing a faint amber.

It was the most chilling thing Myken had ever seen. The way she had sat up just seemed... wrong somehow.

The Terran coughed, wiping her hand on her bare chest.

"Damn, stabbed me right in the pump," she said. She got up, putting her hand on the wall. She blinked a few times. "Wow."

"How... how are you alive?" an elderly female asked.

"I'm Terran," was all she said. She reached up and touched her thumb to her lower lip and two extended fingers to her ear. "They're pulling back. It should be a straight run to the secure area, but I'll go with you," She coughed. "Need to see the medics."

Myken just shook his head.

Terrans are weird.

-----

Above them, great engines came online. Not all of them. Out of the three rows, one of seven, one of nine, another of seven, only six total came online. But enough that the Djinn began to shudder.

It lifted off, crumpled wreckage of buildings sliding off of it. It tilted slight, making a straight line run in such a way it would be able to use the curvature of the planet to avoid the weapons of the massive tanks behind it.

More AWM's were coming in, all of them under heavy fire, but the Djinn computed that the feral firing systems wouldn't prioritize a unit fleeing the planet.

It reached the edge of the atmosphere as three more engines came online. One went back out, the other exploded, the ravening energies biting a chunk two hundred meters deep and destroying two (thankfully) non-functional engines.

The Djinn put on the speed, the functional engines laboring outside of tolerances to pull the Djin against gravity.

It had already ran the computations, but it ran them again.

The feral infection inside the hull was still resisting everything it could send at it. It was sticking to the more narrow hallways, the more confining maintenance spaces, and were able to destroy any of the maintenance machines that could engage them.

That left one way to deal with it.

Just beyond the planet's magnetosphere it activated the plan.

---------------------

Palgret was kneeling down, coughing, while the little green mantid fixed his visor. A chunk of battlesteel had scythed off of an exploding precursor machine and hit him straight in the face. The visor had cracked in a spiderweb pattern, but it had saved Palgret's face.

The interior reeked of ozone, burning lubricants, scorched metal.

The machine had been vibrating for the last twenty minutes, and had sent attackers in one long continuous wave for even longer.

But there was finally a lull in the fighting.

--done done done-- the little green mantid said. It handed Palgret the faceplate and Palgret slapped it in place.

PURGING ENVIRONMENTAL - CLOSE EYES AND MOUTH

appeared with a timer of 3 seconds. Palgret did so and felt his suit flush the atmosphere out, then refill it.

He inhaled gratefully, the air clean, even if it did stink of sweat.

Palgret opened his eyes and looked around.

He couldn't believe everyone was still alive. The Lieutenant had lost a hand, but the mantid had frozen it and tucked it in the LT's pack after sealing the stump. Culvit had a broken arm but the mantid had pulled the chunk of endosteel out of Culvit's arm and used the pressurized sleeve inside the armor to stabilize the injury. Culvit's armor had given him a shot of painkiller and the other Maktanan weren't feeling any pain. Nanuft had taken a hard hit to the leg from a high-vee round. It hadn't penetrated the armor, but the kinetic gel had been destroyed and Nanuft was walking with a limp, the muscles of his leg bruised up. Jagler was moving stiffly, 281 had turned up the pressure on his chest pressure sleeve to compensate for several broken ribs.

All four mantids were fine.

Palgret didn't want to think about the human, who was down on one knee, one fist pressed against the ground, the other hand clenched and pressed against his forehead. Steaming molten warsteel ran out of his mouth as he breathed.

He's Terran. What, you've never seen one before?

The vibration changed pitch and the mantids all looked up. The human slowly stood up, like some kind of monster unfolding.

Icons were flickering over the heads of the two smaller mantids, the two black ones scurried over, one to the LT and one to Palgret.

"Get close, get close," Three said. "Bunch up tight."

"What's going on?" the LT asked. He was feeling a little nauseous and slightly from the painkiller and the residual pain in his hand.

"That's a Hellcore charging," Three said. "Buzz, get over here, I'm deslushed."

281 jetted over, landing on Three's back. He opened the rear housing of the minigun, revealing a black orb. The little mantid stuck a bladearm directly into a slot on the orb.

"Big as you can make it," Three said. After a second he looked over at the Terran, who had moved over to the side and was shaking his head. "That's not big enough, you have to make it bigger, Buzz."

"No way," the human rumbled. "Not and be powerful enough to withstand it for them. For Lima-Niner-Eight, yeah, for Sword Hoof? No."

Three looked at 030, who was touching the housing of the orb. "Sir, we can't."

--must-- 030 said. --knew the risks when put on uniform--

"I'll be fine, Spanky," the Terran rumbled.

Palgret watched as 030 and 281 pulled small, wet looking devices out of an access point that had dilated open on the side of the orb. They tossed them to Three and Two, who watched for an LED on the side to go green before setting them down on the ground or tossing them up on the ceiling.

The weird cyclic vibration was picking up strength.

"GET CLOSE!" Two yelled. "Cluster up like it's orgy time at the nunnery!"

Palgret pressed close to the side of the LT, jostled over by Three.

030 lifted up a small device in his hand and looked at the Terran.

"It's all right, sir," the Terran said. He smashed his hands together with a clang that sounded like two anvils colliding. "I'll be all right."

030 pressed the button.

Everything got a shimmer and Palgret shuffled, lifting his feet up from a tingling burning. When he set his feet down he felt a weird slickness to it.

"THREE!" Two called out. "TWO!"

The Terran waved, his bestial features contorting in a smile.

"ONE!"

Palgret's stomach flipped over and he suddenly could taste the colors around him. His skin burned, it felt like red hot talons digging into his brain, and for a second it felt like his eyes were going to be plucked from his skull.

Palgret screamed, vaugely aware that he wasn't the only one. It felt like someone was pulling him out of his own body with barbed hooks.

"MORE POWER!" Three yelled just as the green mantid pulled a disc the size of Palgret's palm out of the opening and plugged a cable into it.

The feeling went away and everyone sagged against each other.

There was a weird vibration in the air. Multicolored shapes flickered into existence and vanished. Shadows rippled and shifted in the dark spaces of the room.

"What... what happened?" Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u asked.

"The Precursor just jumped out of the fight," Two said.

"What is that?" Nanuft asked, pointing at what looked like a twisted creature made up of shadow and strangely flickering prismatic energy.

Two turned slowly, all joking gone from his stance.

"Hellspace."