by Aer-ki Jyr
carrying a special pack with no gear in it whatsoever. It was the same size and
approximate shape, not to mention a bit heavy, but it made up for that drawback
in longevity. She could still run, jump and tumble with it, but the tethers
that ran down her arms and ended at her wrists connected to the base of the two
sabers she held and fed them with continuous power. Disconnect the weapons from
it and she’d get a couple hundred dead lizards and that was it.
These weren’t stun weapons, and there was only one
purpose for them…cutting apart lizards fast and efficiently with one hit kills.
It was a badly needed upgrade to their fighting arsenal, but one that didn’t
allow for taking prisoners or limited combat. In an environment like this,
close quarters with a lot of bodies all around you, it made for a very potent
weapon system when paired with an Archon mage.
Which had turned Ginsi into a killing machine.
She wasn’t fighting with troops backing her, she was
going solo, same as several other Archons in different locations. Her mission
was to probe beyond the defense lines and just rack up a body count. With her
psionics, and especially the addition of her new Jumat that Taryn had been
gracious enough to give her ahead of schedule, there was nothing the lizards
could do to stop her short of detonating a really big bomb in her face.
Her armor could take a det pack and survive it, so she
wasn’t holding back and aggressively pushed past the Bsidd postion, cutting her
way down a long corridor that eventually led to a larger promenade that was
used to haul cargo to and from various sections like a highway.
And it was filled with lizards waiting in orderly and
blocky groupings that were being dispatched piecemeal into adjacent exits that
would filter their way through to the thousands of tiny combat fields they were
engaging the Star Force troops on.
Ginsi let slip a wry grin, no longer thinking of the
lizards as people, just targets. She’d been careful to avoid thinking like that
before, but after so many engagements with them and not even a single lizard in
the history of the war ever surrendering to Star Force, she’d let go that
safety restraint. They still offered them multiple opportunities to surrender,
and would continue to do so, but in a situation like this where they were actively
fighting and they were spamming Star Force lines with millions of infantry…the
best way she could protect her Regulars was by becoming a slayer, and gruesome
as it was, Ginsi didn’t mind at all.
These were bad guys, and taking them down fast and efficiently
wasn’t a problem with these death sabers…so long as she hit killing blows. It
was either take them out or not strike, for there was no point in maiming them
or lopping off a hand just for fun. These were threats that needed to be taken
out, with pain and punishment nowhere in her mental vocabulary.
It was a very fine line to walk, mentally, but Ginsi
didn’t have trouble with it. The death sabers were definitely a weapon that
could be used to torture, but neither Star Force nor her would ever use it that
way…and that’s why it was reserved specifically for high ranking Archons. Those
who could walk that fine line between being a slayer and a butcher, and could
do so with such lethal efficiency that the lizards would have no way to stop
them.
Ginsi launched herself into the first row of the
lizards as they pulled their rifles off their backs and fired at her, swiping
both glowing white sticks through two of their chests and cutting both in half
as she passed them by, then with the help of her Pefbar she put herself into a
controlled twirl that saw another 5 of them taken out Darth Maul fashion as her
shields flared with phaser hits that suddenly began hitting friendly targets as
she redirected and dashed a different way.
Point to point she jumped/ran, slashing and making
clean kills each time while covering the artificial ground with pools of blood
that the living lizards trampled through trying to get at her. None of them
fled, all of them stayed and fought, pumping shot after shot into her shields
whenever they could get the chance. A part of that was admirable, most of it
was just stupid, but that’s what the lizard empire was and these people were
born locked into it, apparently without the will to break free…and definitely
no option to do so logistically, for even if they wanted to get away they’d
never have anywhere to go, save for those rare times they met Star Force on the
battlefield and were offered a way out.
The fact that none of them took it meant these lizards
weren’t victims, and were fully committed to a combined will and mission. Dying
for the cause didn’t concern them. Making themselves useful was their only
priority, and even if they only landed a single phaser hit against Ginsi they
were accomplishing that…though there was no way she was going to let them wear
down her defenses so far that they’d actually get a chance to kill her.
Not bothering to count, though a bit interested in
what the number had become, Ginsi continued to slay lizards and the more
concentrated groups like this that she encountered the better, for there were
billions of additional lizards on their way up the connecting columns from the
planet’s surface, and it looked like the ground war was going to be fought on
this spacebound ring long before they ever set foot on the surface.
And without heavy weapons or aircraft to counter her,
it was only going to be a question of how many she could kill and how fast.
August 18, 3104
Menchet System
(lizard core)
Tess
Paul dropped down from an opening in the ceiling, one
he’d just quietly cut with a very hot finger, and fell down into a mass of
lizards, hitting them with a Fornax field as he punched aside a couple leading
into a twirl of his death sabers. He lit them and started jumping from one area
to another and mowing down all the infantry as they desperately tried to target
him with their phaser rifles. A few hits were absorbed by his shields but they
couldn’t land even a tenth of their shots…and it wasn’t because he was messing
with their minds. Once he landed, his Fornax disappeared and he took them all
hand to hand, though dropping an Ubven field on top of them would have been
much easier.
He hadn’t done that, nor was he using any of his
psionics now that he was on the ground. He did what was necessary with blade
and muscle alone, not even engaging the powered nature of the light Archon
armor he was wearing. It was originally gold, but after nearly 8 hours of
fighting there was little of it showing beneath the blood splatters. His
shields kept most of it off, but he’d taken on such large groupings that some
of them had managed to peel that defensive layer off him a few times, resulting
in a bloodbath as the precision cuts left the lizards’ dismembered body parts
spurting blood as Paul passed through them.
>
This group was about six or seven hundred strong, but
they didn’t prove a challenge…nor did they flee. They all just stayed put and
kept shooting him, despite the fact they had no chance of stopping him. It was
mindless slaughter and the lizards were forcing it upon him, but when he got
finished with this group and was then going to be on his way back for a rest
and a new power pack something inside him snapped.
When he got to the last three lizards he slashed two
clean in half with a single move, each arm holding a blade that passed through
two lizards’ midsections and cleaving them as well as a couple of wrists in the
process. Rather than jump through them to the last lizard Paul checked up,
yanking the rifle out of the lizard’s hands and tossing it aside.
The standard variant snarled and ran to the side,
picking up another and aiming at Paul. The Archon let him fire twice, then he
also ripped it out of his grip with his telepathy.
The lizard did not run, instead scrambling around to
find another weapon in the bloody mess that was now the floor. This time Paul
wicked it away from his hands before he could get to it, then he froze the
lizard in place with a telekinetic grip around its waist.
“Why do you keep
fighting and dying?” Paul asked in lizard. “You can live. You can all live if you would just surrender. Why are you
forcing us to kill you?” he demanded, though he already knew his reasons.
After so many deaths by his own hand today his nerves were on edge, for enemies
they might be, but he did not like killing them, especially when they were this
helpless.
The lizard squirmed around, trying to wiggle out of
the Human’s invisible grasp.
“Answer me!”
Paul yelled, retracting his helmet with an energy shield still covering his
head just in case he’d missed another threat. He stared into the lizard’s pitch
black eyes with his own twinkling grey orbs. “This world holds billions of you. Do we really have to kill you all to
take it?”
The lizard snarled something in its own language that
translated as an insult but Paul didn’t let it go, nor did he kill it, he just
held it still and stared it down. Several minutes passed before he spoke again.
“Why are you
doing this?”
“I may not kill
you, but one of us will eventually,” the lizard finally answered.
“We are here to
stop you from killing everyone in the galaxy,” Paul said icily. “We don’t want your deaths.”
“Your words are
meaningless, Star Force. You will die like the rest of our enemies, no matter
how many of us it takes.”
“Do you care
nothing of being in the right?” Paul asked, sensing that he didn’t
understand the concept. “Are you certain
that we’re the enemy?”
“You kill us.
You are the enemy.”
“We only kill
you because you force us to. Surrender and you will live.”
“We will not
submit to you or anyone else. One may die, but the collective will survive.”
“You don’t care
about dying?”
The lizard didn’t answer, just trying to extricate
himself from the invisible hold, and Paul sensed that this conversation was
over, so he shoved him back a few meters and dumped him on the floor. He
tripped, with his tail catching on a corpse and flipping him over.
“Not today,”
Paul said, turning around casually and walking away. A few seconds later a
phaser hit struck the shield covering his head, but he ignored it. Several more
impacted his shields before he got to a doorway and disappeared around a
corner. A few seconds later the lizard came after him, getting another line of
sight on the Human, but before he could fire at his back both he and the weapon
were picked up off the ground and thrown back out the door.
The lizard immediately got back up and in pursuit, but
when he got around the corner the Human was gone. A short chase followed, but
he could find no trace of the slayer that had killed everyone else in his unit
but had left him alive. Eventually he retreated, falling back to find another
lizard unit to incorporate himself with and to receive new orders. Unless he
had a mission that required solo action, there was no benefit to operating
alone. Better to pool his strength with the others, which was the only way to
take down the heavily armored enemy infantry.
Paul made his way back to friendly lines…which was
kilometers away through the interior of the ring. When he got there he bypassed
the sentries and heavy defense posts as usual, but instead of checking into one
of the relief areas onboard that held Star Force facilities, some prefab, some
custom constructions, he headed to one of the protected hangar bays and boarded
a dropship. He had it deliver him back to the nearby parked Excalibur and went straight into one of
the most remote parts on the ship.
It was in the sanctum, a little corner of it that was
reserved for high ranking Archons. There was a special meditation chamber there
that had several different themes to it, with Paul heading for the one that was
based on Dagobah.
The entrance was open, with only an energy shield
separating the artificial corridor from the interior. He stepped through hit,
having to push a bit to allow him passage, for it was keeping the dense fog
contained within the ‘natural’ environment of the little park. As soon as he
got inside he did an about face, immediately stepping back outside the energy
barrier. He hit the release for his armor and had it peel apart across his
chest, arms, and legs with the helmet disappearing behind his neck.
Walking out of the metallic scarecrow he went back
inside, this time feeling the warm fog hit his face as soon as he entered. He
stood there for a moment, breathing it in and trying to get it to wash through
his senses. When it didn’t fully work he felt a pang of panic, but locked down
on it. Dropping to a knee, his sweat soaked uniform picked up a bit of mud from
the contact as he ran through a mental reset that he’d had to do a long time
ago.
After a few minutes that worked, but it wasn’t enough.
He needed to disconnect, think outside the box as he often did here, but even
though his armor hadn’t let any of the lizard blood through to his skin he
still felt covered in gore. The bastards were making Star Force fight like they
did in order to stop them, and even though he knew that wasn’t entirely correct
there was enough of it that was true to unsettle his stomach. They were taking
planets from them, but he still felt like they were losing, in ideology anyway,
and he had to find a way around this.
But as he thought it through he came to the same
conclusions he always did…if the lizards wouldn’t surrender and they wouldn’t
stop attacking people then they had to be destroyed. Unlike other races, if
they took them prisoner anyway they�
��d just kill themselves, so there was no
indoctrination/imprisonation option with them, nor was there an option of
taking their younglings away from them. Lizards didn’t learn their cultural
core through experience, but rather through genetic knowledge placed into their
coding before they were even born.
So there were no untainted younglings to rescue.
Lizards were produced as a product from genetic seeds. They were engineered to
be this way, and even if Star Force could find a way to fix that genetic code
to undo the inhibitors it would do no good for those alive and the planets not
under their control. Star Force could create a new lizard civilization, in
theory, one day but it wouldn’t change a damn thing. The current one would
still have to be fought or destroyed, meaning that this blood bath had to
happen or these bastards would continue to conquer and destroy all the weaker
races they came across until they consumed the galaxy…or ran into the
V’kit’no’sat.
But by that time they’d have grown so large that it
almost wouldn’t matter. Not for the little guys out there. Paul and the others
had to take these bastards out now before they could kill more, but they were
forcing Star Force to make it a blood bath and something in Paul’s gut didn’t
like the feel of that. In the past he hadn’t like it either, but when they were
a greater threat it seemed appropriate given the circumstances.
Now though, these lizards honestly didn’t stand a
chance against him aside from some fluke. He could kill them so easily, in so
many ways, that there was literally no point in fighting. It was an automatic
loss for them, but they were forcing him to kill them anyway, wasting their
lives by the trillions in this war.
Paul had killed so many over the past couple years on
this ring that he had no idea how many he was personally responsible for, but
he may very well have been in 7 or 8 digit range by now. And while he wasn’t in
much danger he couldn’t say the same for his troops. They were hard to kill and
this station was confined compared to ground combat, but there were still
casualties mounting. In order to protect them he had to kill as many of the
lizards as he could, and right now he should be back down there, resting up for