by Aer-ki Jyr
There was only two minutes left when the dropship was full, then the Bsidd squeezed onboard with Beny coming last, having to use a Jumat wave to push the crowds back off the ramp as the pilot took them into the air before trying to retract it. It slowly pulled up and sealed two inches in front of Beny’s face, then he rode up to orbit, pinned there unable to move against the backdrop of Bsidd that were so tucked up with their mandibles looking like piles of bamboo smashed together. The countdown expired on the way up, and that meant if everything had gone according to plan all the Star Force personnel would be on their way up to orbit.
Beny watched through the battlemap as the Hadarak hit the atmosphere with its minion swarm getting out of the way so they didn’t get caught in the fireball that resulted as it plowed through the sky and landed on top of one of the cities that was still mostly inhabited, killing millions in a matter of seconds, and sending out a massive earthquake pulse that killed many more in the surrounding areas as buildings collapsed hundreds of miles away, though those closer to the impact suffered a far worse fate as the crust of the planet cracked and new mountain ranges shot up around the landing site, throwing people and buildings up into the air in some cases, while others rolled with the debris down to the base of the new mountains where it all collected in a band of trash and dying people.
A icy spike of guilt shoved its way through Beny’s chest, knowing that if he’d just been a little meaner he could have saved most of those people.
But it was also true that if they had just listened to him and voluntarily come this could have ended far differently, but right now that didn’t matter to him. He was an Archon. It was his responsibility and the Vicon didn’t have enough technology or strength to interfere. He should have made them leave from day 1 in order to avoid this, but he hadn’t, and now the full realization of his mistake was vividly clear.
But even though he had to wait here and watch until the dropship made it to the transport, he wasn’t going to wallow in his emotions. He had a comm and a battlemap, so he began tagging locations on the other side of the planet away from the Hadarak that could still be evacuated, though now with minions pouring out into the atmosphere from pouches on the Hadarak while the naval versions stayed in orbit and went after the transports, he was going to have to aggressively fight the aerial and ground based ones or they’d destroy the dropships.
That made evacuating this planet whole lot more problematic, but he wasn’t going to redirect all of the transports to the other planet. Those would be the easiest evacuations to make, but he wasn’t going to do it. He was going to get some more people off this one, and as soon as the dropship landed on the transport and the ramp lowered, he rushed out across the bay through the army of Bsidd offloading and moving the evacuees and got onboard an empty dropship just lifting off. He commed it and it stalled in air, hovering over the deck a couple meters as he jumped up and grabbed the lowering ramp, not wanting to waste the 10 seconds it would take to fully lower.
He climbed onboard as the dropship made its way to the energy shield separating the bay from space, then he headed back down to an area partway around the planet from the Hadarak landing zone as he organized some proper Star Force landing zones and got both aerial cover and mech protection for them as the minion armies began to creep their way out from the Hadarak, killing everything they came across, with some being tasked specifically to go after the Star Force units coming back down to the planet.
The real fight had just begun, and Beny caught another short nap on the way down, knowing he wasn’t going to be getting any real sleep sessions in while there was a single Vicon or primitive still alive on this planet or the other one, where most of the evacuation effort was being focused. The Vicon population was now abandoning their homes en mass and heading for the nearest Star Force dropship they could find, even if it was hundreds of miles away.
They now realized the mistake they made, and what was left of the Vicon military on the first planet was mobilizing to fight the minions. They might be able to kill a few of them, but they were hopelessly outmatched. But in their position, Beny would rather go down fighting than just waiting to be killed, which was why he’d kept their military craft intact and only yanked out the pilots. It wasn’t going to matter in the grand scheme of all this, but it would matter to those few warriors that were about to die, and if they could destroy a few minions in the process, so much the better.
10
February 3, 128485
Vianfra System (Hadarak Zone)
Muon Ti Vicora
Beny dove head first towards a rock, rolling behind it as he drew four medium-scale minions his way. The rock got pelted with small energy attacks, but it was the smaller clawed minions he was worried about. They weren’t as fast as the medium ones, but if they got up on you they would trip you up and pull you down even if they couldn’t get through your armor…then the others would nick you to death with their chest-mounted weapon spouts. Each of this version had three spaced in a triangle beneath their wide, dome-shaped heads, and punching the spouts didn’t disable them. Nor did shooting them. The actual weapon tissue was buried deep inside, so the only real way to disable them was to kill the minion, and with their redundant organs you had to do a lot of damage to take them down.
Which Beny could do, but right now he wasn’t trying to kill them. Rather he was trying to draw them away from the loading dropship further to the west where a few stragglers were being rescued. Virtually all of the planet was now dead, and the Hadarak was now planted on the second planet while evacuations continued on the far side. They’d gotten more than half the population of that one out, but the transports took time to travel and return, meaning they had to wait to load them when they came back and there were still more than a billion Vicon and maybe 10 billion of the primitives over there still in jeopardy, but it was on this planet that Beny was doing the personal work of tracking down and finding the few survivors left.
He had gone on many missions to disable or destroy the minion growth chambers the Hadarak had left behind, but at this point their production was snowballing and he didn’t have the troops or warships necessary to erase them. That meant he needed to spend what few resources he had on picking up the remaining people and getting them out before the minion hunting parties found them. Fortunately he had telepathy to track the survivors down and the minions did not, and some were well hidden, but he was running out of people to save and most of the dropships had to be sent to the other planet.
But he wasn’t going to give up on the last few people here, so as he distracted and drew off the minions, using his Wequay psionic to get them to pay attention to him like an Ahri charm, a few Bsidd with a pair of Protovic guards held the single dropship secure and loaded up two Vicon along with a flock of Nebrari, which were basically ostriches with four legs.
As Beny evaded and drew them off while not getting too far away from the dropship in case they needed him, he fired a few shots into one of the medium minions then jumped up over another rock on the dry landscape. When he landed on the other side he saw some poor critter huddled up underneath the backside of it, knowing that when the minions got here a few seconds later they’d kill it on the spot.
“Damn,” he said, sending a burst of telepathic ‘friendliness’ into the furry thing, then he grabbed it with one hand and ran, tucking it up against his side.
The pug-faced critter was so panicked it didn’t struggle, merely hanging there with its back legs swaying back and forth as the Archon ran and fired off shots with his free arm thanks to his wrist-mounted weaponry. He managed to take down one of the minions, but the smaller clawed ones were getting closer, not because of their speed, but because they were using group tactics and spreading out to cover multiple angles that Beny might move along if not heading in a straight line.
That meant whenever he turned he got closer to some of them, but he received a notice that the dropship was almost loaded so he continued his evasion and kept his passenger cove
red with a quick reset of his shields so the minion fire wouldn’t kill it as he started running in a straight line away from his pursuit.
The dropship finished up and took off, flying out to his position and hovering at a speed that matched his running pace, coming down on top of him and extending its boarding ramp, but not low enough to smack against the passing rocks. One of the Bsidd came down the ramp to the end, reaching out several mandibles, and Beny threw the critter towards him, using his Lachka to make sure he didn’t miss.
The Bsidd swarmed the fury thing in a cage of mandibles, and even when it bit him he didn’t let go, pulling it inside the dropship as Beny continued to run and get shot at from behind. He waited for the ramp to clear, then sprinted ahead and jumped with a boost from his anti-grav, arcing up and onto the ramp, then he slipped and fell face down, but with enough grip to grab hold and stay on.
He crawled in and the dropship ramp retracted as it began to race into the sky heading for orbit and the interplanetary trek to the destination transport that was busy loading people over the other planet. When he got a good look at his fury friend, he saw it already stunned and put into a small cage as the Bsidd tended to the bite mark on his ‘arm’.
“Check for poison, just in case,” Beny told him. “And thanks.”
“Sharp teeth,” the Bsidd said, oozing some purple blood that he swiped away before applying a regenerator. It healed him and gave a holographic readout of the damage when prompted. “No poison. Just some bacteria.”
“Good. Get him some food when he wakes up,” the Archon said, looking at the half starved critter. “Pilot, how many are left?”
“Two teams are finishing up and a third is on final scan. They haven’t found any more survivors as yet.”
“Let me know if they do,” Beny said, making his way through the crowded cargo bay to a forward personnel area with banks of seats mostly full of Vicon. He sat down in one of the empty ones and retracted his helmet, but kept an ear piece extension over the left side of his head as he leaned back and tried to get some sleep as everyone around him was still panicked, talking/mumbling, and their emotions running high. Same old, same old as far as he was concerned, and he had no interest in soothing them. They’d live and that’s what mattered, and how much sleep he got could determine whether someone else died tomorrow or the next day, so he just tuned everyone out save for his earpiece that would wake him if an alert or important update came through the comm system.
The other members of his crew dealt with the passengers and deliberately left him alone, allowing him a few hours of badly needed rest before they got to the other planet and rendezvoused with the transport as the image of the Hadarak imbedded in the planet stood out like an ugly tick on the view below. It had enough minions around it that the Star Force ships couldn’t get too close, but the Hadarak also knew that if it sent those minions against his ships they’d be lost, so the Hadarak was keeping them close until it could produce enough more to swarm attack them, and that wasn’t going to be today.
The land war, however, was continually escalating as more and more minions were grown and released, some of which gathered resources while the others were eradicators. If Beny had his few warships attack them from orbit the naval minions would be sent to intervene, so that wasn’t happening. As long as the Hadarak wasn’t interfering with the dropships, Beny wasn’t going to provoke it further and only kept a few drones hovering over the surface as backup in case his ground forces couldn’t hold off the assault waves.
Unless the Hadarak moved to the far side of the planet like it had on the other, he was going to be able to get most of the people out. The Hadarak couldn’t snowball enough minions to prevent that from its current position, but if it did move there was nothing Beny could do to stop it…and three weeks later that’s exactly what happened. It lifted off, traveled a third of the way around orbit, then came back down right on top of one of the intact cities and killed more than 40 million people in a matter of seconds upon landing, crushing them, and killing others nearby in the blast wave that resulted.
Beny had known it was coming, but there was literally nothing he could do to stop it or lure it away. He was the highest ranking Archon here, and he was nowhere close to obtaining Essence skills. He had nothing to attract its attention, and his few ships could only scratch it with weaponsfire, assuming the minions let them get that close.
When the Hadarak landed the minions followed, then spread out around the surrounding areas hunting down the larger populations that made for easy targets. Beny deployed what drones he had left to fight them as the Vicon rushed away from the impact zone in whatever vehicles they had, or even on foot, leaving behind all the primitive races that couldn’t flee on their own, or didn’t know what to do and just ran around in a panic before being found and killed. And the ones in pet cages or corrals didn’t even have that luxury.
Beny wanted to die every time he saw that, but he knew he was the only hope some of them had for surviving, so he stuffed his emotions deep down inside him as he fought day in and day out to pull as many people as he could off the planet over the following 9 months. Then, one day, he didn’t have anyone left to save. Both planets had been completely eradicated of sufficiently advanced lifeforms, as far as the Hadarak were concerned.
The Frieza-level Archon didn’t accept that, and kept running scouting missions over both planets looking for and finding a few small survivors the size of fat mice, but no more Vicon or any large primitives as the number of minions continued to grow and spread, eliminating even the smallest of the remaining critters and leaving only the plant life behind.
Beny stayed behind with a single transport for another week, then finally abandoned the system in a single warship as the transport headed off to another location as the Archon got orders to head to a different system. He had 3 and a half weeks of downtime to rest and train, something he hadn’t had in well over a year. His body had deteriorated so much he hadn’t fully realized it, and once his mind actually had time to think he started to break down. All the emotions he’d stuffed away came back to the surface and he relived the horrors he’d witnessed…all of which wouldn’t have occurred if he hadn’t screwed up.
The trip to his new mission wasn’t one he wanted to repeat, and though he wasn’t fully recovered, not by a long shot, his emotional state had steadied and he knew that more people needed help. Surrendering to despair helped no one, so when he rendezvoused with another scout ship that had been learning the locals’ language, he stepped back into a situation nearly identical to the former. It was a different system with different races. Two this time that could talk, and many more that could not spread over three planets, one of which was completely wild with no cities.
Three days later the first of the transports he had assigned to him began to arrive and Beny, still haunted by the horrors he’d allowed to be inflicted on the Vianfra System, traveled down to the capitol city of the Shimonga and addressed them directly. They hadn’t fired on his ships, though they had slightly better technology than the Vicon did, but his landing zone was surrounded by their military as one of their leaders met him in an open courtyard just beyond where his dropship landed.
“We offer greetings,” the short, pudgy Shimonga said through gill-like flaps that served as his mouth.
“Hello, my name is Beny. I have come to take you away from this world before it can be destroyed. I will take volunteers first, but I will not allow any of you to remain and die. The Hadarak are coming, and I do not know how long you have to live, so I will waste no time,” he said, producing a hologram of the events that had occurred at Vianfra so the representative and those nearby soldiers could see.
“This is what is going to happen here, and it is happening across the inner sections of the galaxy. We are rescuing as many people as we can and moving them to safe zones. That is why I have been sent here. To rescue you before the Hadarak arrive.”
“You wish us to leave our home?”
“If
you do not, you will die here. We cannot stop the Hadarak. All we can do is move you out of their path.”
“Move us to where?”
“Another planet far from here.”
“That is unacceptable. Surely these Hadarak can be reasoned with.”
“Are you blind?” Beny yelled, pointing at the holograms that were running as if in real time. “This is not a dispute. They are destroying all life in the galaxy. There is no discussion, no debate. They won’t even talk to us. We are beneath them. Only those as large as they are will they talk to, and we have asked through those others to speak to them on our behalf. The Hadarak have declared we must all die. There is nothing to be reasoned, negotiated, or requested. They do not care. They are going to kill you all, and every other planet full of people in the galaxy. Until we can find a way to stop them, we have to move you away, far away, and we have to start moving you now before they arrive.”
“You are a stranger here and clearly do not understand our ways. A decision such as this must be debated in the Articum and approved by the Sicate, but before that we must verify what you have said and that you are indeed seeking to help us. You cannot expect us to take you at your word and abandon our homes on a whim simply because you have superior technology to us? Surely your race must have rules and procedures? A respect for sovereignty?”
“There is no time for any of that. If the Hadarak gets here before we have finished the evacuation, people will die. I want all your people who volunteer to go first assembled at the landing zones by the end of the day. The rest of you can debate while we get them out.”
“No one is leaving without the permission of the Articum! You have no authority here, outsider. You can make your case to the leaders of our planet, but it is they who will deci…” the Shimonga said, cut off mid-word as Beny shot him with a single stun blast from pointblank range, then caught his body before it could fall to the ground.