Chapter 144: Onyx's Mutation

During its descent, the Hive ships were shot by ships and anti air guns considerably, The decades old, run down and sick ship was shot so much so that almost all the drones inside had been killed. All except one fragment that had been shot off the main ship and begun to freefall towards a forest, right into a particular clearing.

As the drones began getting closer to the ground, They could feel Apollo's presence on the planet thanks to the agitators, normally the drones, being male, would not get overly excited like the rest of the hive any only enjoy it if Apollo gave them pats or something similar.

However, a certain Stalker gene caste was on the planet, and before their clump of bioship hit the ground, the stalkers unique mutation took over them. The drones, incapable of extensive thoughts, began to see futures that could be theirs, they could become strong members of the hive, they could become a desire of Apollo, all they would have to do was change their gender and present a worthy body.

Under Onyx's mutagenic aura, the drones began eating at the ship fragment, as fuel to catalyse the change they were about to undertake. It had to be said that the drones, being as simple as they were, could not choose the bio-form they were going to metamorphize into and a random genetic pattern appeared into their minds.

In their frenzy, The drones had even began to unconsciously cut themselves off from the main hive, rendering them essentially a new hive, competition, something that could not stand. As the fragment crashed into the forest opening, Onyx emerged from her hole and stretched her tail out. Uncompressing, Onyx did not have long until the first 'drone' left the fragment.

The bio form looked like a warrior, but deformed. It was lopsided had legs bigger than others a scythe that it could not lift from the ground and had tentacles sprouting out of its head that were useless as the being possessed no Psionic properties.

More began to flood out of the chunk, some were pristine in appearance, others took on forms of greater hive bio forms such as free thinkers, there was even an aquatic agitator that was having a hard time keeping itself afloat in the air as the drone was struggling with its new Psionic power.

Onyx wasted no time and began killing her babies. It was her that caused there mutation, it would be her that would take them out. Still, after killing most of them, the fragment of the ship that was still there suddenly burst open, sending biomass shrapnel everywhere, killing a good few lesser mutated drones.

Onyx looked over at the thing that emerged, the thing that had forced her to stay in these woods away from her universe. The being was 14 meters tall and was an amalgam of living death. It had 6 arm appendages. Four were scythes and Two were claws.

Its thorax was covered in the thickest exo plate Onyx had ever seen in a bio-form and it supported itself on a serpentine lower body with hundreds of small legs that seemed to help its movements while it slithered. The bio-forms began blinking its 4 eyes on its head while the bulbus sack that was its cranium began to throb as it tried manifesting its Psionic power.

"I wonder which prime you took inspiration from. It has to be one of them, as I have never witnessed something so incredibly beautiful in my existence, other than Apollo." Onyx spoke to her mutation baby, who turned to face her his hostile frenzy.

Onyx would usually be at a massive disadvantage against a prime. They are after all personally created from Jewel's Psionic existence. Luckily for her however, It was a drones mind inside the monstrous bio-form in front of her and it was not used to having such a heavy and powerful body, she could beat it.

…

I was mesmerised as the hive ship few across the city. I did not look like it would crash-land here, but fragments and drop nests were falling onto the city below. The hive was not the only thing dropping however. Seeing the severity an unchecked Swarm could cause, the Spartari and the Thurx Allowed each other to drop more troops onto the planet.

The Spartari were naturally only allowed into the city they were fighting over. While the Thurx could deploy their battle droids pretty much everywhere.

Either because Spartari saw the opportunity, or they were so used to fighting multiple aliens at once, The Phalanx did not stop its assault on the defenders fortification which turned out to be a good move as the defenders had been ordered to retreat to join the rest of the forces as they were going to get flanked by the swarm otherwise.

After taking the hill, Kathrine ran over to the knight commander and yelled. "Commander, I need to get my troops out of here. This is not what they signed up for, any minute now-" Kathrine was cut off by the sound of screeching. She turned around and coming from the north of the hill, a tide of hive warriors began rushing towards the position.

The mercenaries began to position themselves to open fire, and the phalanx not to long afterwards. The first waves of the assault were getting moved down while I just stood there wincing under my helmet. 'I'm sorry sweeties.' I thought before I heard noise to my right.

Down the street we just drove the APC's down, Another horde of hive bio forms emerged, then another in the direction the planetary guard had just retreated towards. At the sight, Kathrine yelled. "Listen up, I am not getting boxed in by these insect monstrosities, start retreating south, we will fight our way slowly back to the ships and get out of here.

Knight Commander, you are free to join us instead of dying on this hill." Hearing this in his comms, the Commander stopped firing his cannon for a moment. "You go ahead lady Hyllus, we will hold them off a while longer before following your path. The Phalanx can withstand the tide a while."

Kathrine did not attempt to convince the commander further and the mercenaries slowly pulled down the hill while firing at any enemy they could. Every mercenary was now carrying as much ammo as they could while still being able to move as they made there way south while looking for a good chance to push back to the ships due west.

As they company was about to walk into a four way intersection, I raised my hand high above my head from the lead of the column to indicate a holt of movement and noise. Two streets over, I could feel the hives link communicating to two large bio-forms, freethinkers most likely. I have been around the hive enough in my life to tell where the link is without being in it myself. Searᴄh the NôvelFire(.)net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

The Freethinkers in question were trying to enter a building with a metal defence door.

I waited for the sweethearts to breach their way inside and begin to much on whatever civilians they found inside as if they saw me, I knew for a fact the whole hive would descend upon my location, killing my friends in the process.

Kathrine was also looking around the corner and got shivers at the two bio-forms. "Shit, queen guards. Luckily it seems they are preoccupied with getting into that building." As she said this. the two variants finally opened the metal doors and even from the distance we had, I could hear the screams and a few gunshots of the civilians inside as the two cuties made there way inside.

Upon seeing this, Kathrine ordered the men to continue across the street at rapid pace before the queen guards called the warriors over to help them feed.

It seemed my darling was taking the easy approach to hunting in this city and only going to the populated locations where there is a lot of noise and checking all the buildings for hidden civilians as they make for an efficient bio mass to effort ratio. As a result, the mercenaries did not have an issue for quite a while until we came across a small battalion of robots.

The Robots in question were no where near as impressive as the Deimos, they stood at around 1.5 meters tall had thin bodies, two arms, two legs and had a thin head with white lights in their visual receptors.

The Thurx command had deemed the swarm not a significant enough threat to cease their conflict with the spartari as the hive only had enough bio forms currently to attack a third of the planet as where they usually attack the whole thing with numbers that make their circuits blush.

Therefore, upon their battalion spotting us and us spotting them, they wasted no time with pointless convening and began to fire at will.