by Aer-ki Jyr
That didn’t matter to the maulers, who pulled out their blades and rammed them back in again, piercing hole after hole that saw rivers of neon gray goo seep out. It didn’t flow like a liquid, but dripped in globs that covered the maulers’ blades, making them appear like lightsabers as they continued stabbing away at the enemy without any regard for their own survival.
Suddenly the mauler on the left blew apart from an unseen weapon impact as the minion beside the one they were attacking turned and removed one of the gnats from its fellow living tank. The thick, hard biological armor on the maulers didn’t appear to even slow the enemy weapons down, but the minions were vulnerable to the blades and that was all that mattered. There would be more maulers to replace these three, so all the remaining two focused on was causing more damage, with each blade thrust doing the equivalent of 50+ vichsam shots.
For whatever reason the minions were more resistant to energy fire than physical force, hence the lizards pushing mauler units against them. The standard variants had done their job to get this trio to the minions without them getting sniped down first, despite most of the standards dying in the process, with the other few remaining drawing fire that would have gone to the maulers.
The second one got hit by another side shot, with each minion apparently not being able to shoot near its own legs. That was a weakness that they were covering for with overlapping fire, but if the lizards could isolate a minion then the maulers would own it.
That wasn’t for this one to worry about, for all it was doing and thinking was jab, withdraw, and jab again. Covered with the glowing blood it continued to do so until the minion’s leg finally gave out and it tipped over…but it caught itself from falling and moved into a tripod stance, with the limp leg hanging loosely between the other three.
The mauler sensed this and jumped from that leg to one of the sturdy ones, but before he could sink his blades in his chest was hit by a tiny, blurry energy packet that looked like little more than a wisp of wind, but it passed through and into his chest, causing little damage. Somewhere after entry that bit of energy altered into a vicious explosion, popping the mauler from the inside out and throwing one of its now severed arms out to the side where the forearm blade actually stuck into another minion’s torso like a piece of shrapnel.
That minion ignored it and kept on firing, even as more mauler trios were being escorted up into hacking range and tearing away at its legs.
Back on the wider plains of the tunnel metallic counterparts to the minions moved about along with the lizards, with the small, fleshy troops trying not to get stepped on by the bipedal giants. Most stood 4 meters tall and had two large arms with weapons mounted in the forearms, but they didn’t move like mechs or tanks. They moved like biologicals, the product of more than a million years of refinement in hardware and software, capable of operating without remote control but at the moment having that luxury since the Hamoriti’s jamming field was not within range.
The tank minions were no match for a vassal one on one, with their gix being stopped by intricate energy matrix that the Ancients had left behind instructions for with the Oracles. The Trinx version wasn’t as powerful, but it reduced the normally penetrative energy packets cold, and with only a small hit to shield strength. That gave them incredible longevity against the minions, though when the shields did finally go down the armor beneath them would breach after three consecutive hits in the same place.
The fourth would get through, then pop inside and wreck the interior of the vassals. Some would continue to operate while others would be taken out of the fight with one penetration. Regardless, the vassals were killing dozens, if not hundreds of minions each. Trouble was there were only a handful of them with this Li’vorkrachnika army, with the majority of the vassals being taken to the other side of the planet to engage the minions within range of the Hamoriti’s telepathy, to which they were immune.
Never the less, the few vassals were soaking up an inordinate amount of weaponsfire, allowing many more of the tiny infantry to get to their targets while also firing on and killing some of the tank minions themselves. They couldn’t one shot a minion, but came close with their klixon cannons. They were also a bit of tech left behind by the Ancients, and were an energy weapon that took on physical properties, applying kinetic damage on impact. That allowed a very high shot count without having to rely on ammunition rounds that would require replacement after limited engagements.
It took two or three hits square on the rounded body of the minions to take them down, and with a klixon in each arm with a cycling rate of .73 seconds the vassals could literally mow down the minions if given a chance. The problem was that, like the Li’vorkrachnika, the minions operated in a swarm mentality. So far the fighting hadn’t gotten out of hand, due to the limited number of minions being produced and the previous vassals having trimmed their numbers handily, but they were savaging the Li’vorkrachnika who, to no end, kept throwing more bodies at them in order to do even the slightest bits of damage.
Eventually one of the infantry pushes got a det pack to a minion, blowing a leg off and killing six maulers that were nearby in the process. That minion didn’t go down, rather moving to a tripod stance like so many of the others, but the nearest vassal turned and pumped two fairly long shots into the now stationary target. It didn’t explode, but rather got the innards scrambled by the entry wounds that failed to penetrate through and blow out the other side.
Gutted, but with the fleshy debris contained within, the minion’s legs went slack and it fell to the ground, one less biological turret for the allied infantry to deal with.
The Trinx controller who had altered the automated attack program to hit the wounded minion made a note that the Li’vorkrachnika needed to attach their explosives directly to the main body of the minions and not the legs, then he sent the message to his commander and continued to tweak the ongoing battle on his display where needed from orbit.
That suggestion was immediately considered by the fleet controllers and found to be sound, so they sent it over to the Li’vorkrachnika commander who likewise sent the information to the troops en route to the subsurface battles. Soon the new tactic made its way to the front as the uninformed troops died out and the new ones came in to replace them. The Trinx watched as their primitive allies adapted quickly, with the explosive satchels being given to the mauler variants who then ran underneath the minions and used their excessive musculature to jump up and jab their forearm blades into the underbelly, fixing them in place.
With the explosives pinned between the mauler’s and the minion’s bodies, it detonated the pack while holding it tight to the enemy flesh. The explosion ripped the mauler apart in a poof of green and tore through the underside of the minion, pushing it up a meter into the air from the concussion wave and landing it back on its legs that remained stiff for half a second as a waterfall of neon gray innards fell to the ground beneath it just ahead of the collapsing corpse.
The Li’vorkrachnika had just found their own one hit kill.
Slowly, with a mix of tactics and horrific sacrifice the Trinx’s primitive ally and the vassals pushed through the minion defenders and into the craters where their growing infrastructure was located. Each of their buildings was also biological, so when all of the defenders had been eliminated the vassals ordered the Li’vorkrachnika to pull back as they moved in and started pulverizing the buildings one at a time until there was nothing left but glowing, fleshy paste.
According to the Oracles there were certain structures that could spawn new ones, while others could regenerate themselves so long as key sections remained intact. With that being programmed into the vassals each of the robotic warriors continually scanned the biological debris and targeted those clusters, popping them like bonus points in a video game, until there were none left to regrow from.
One crater after another the vassals visited and wiped out, all the while the Li’vorkrachnika were spreading out searching for more enemies and occa
sionally stumbling across a fixed weapons platform, whether it be a freestanding turret or weapons mounted onto some of the structures. Those they either took out with det packs or one of the vassals would come around and eliminate the threat for them.
In the cases where no det packs were available or a vassal wasn’t nearby, the standard variants and maulers would rush the defensive emplacements, nicking them to death with bits of damage and often having to climb over their own dead to do it.
The Trinx controllers were surprised at the ferocity of their new ally, for up until now they’d only witnessed their navy in action. While a bit disturbing, it was also a welcome sight for how effectively they took down their targets. Committed as they were to victory, the Trinx appreciated having an ally that was equally so and unafraid to make necessary sacrifices.
And when you were as primitive as the Li’vorkrachnika were, you couldn’t make any gains without sacrifice. These bloodthirsty savages reveled in it, with no thoughts aside from winning the battle. They could always produce more troops to replace those that were lost, and given the minions vulnerability to physical weapons the Li’vorkrachnika were actually proving to be useful on their own merits even without vassal support.
That was good, for the Trinx could not stop the Hamoriti from spreading its minions underground on its own. They didn’t have nearly enough vassals for that, but they did have enough to augment their ally’s forces in the areas where the Hamoriti was not located, even if they couldn’t prevent the beast from seeding more directly around it.
Naval bombardment was highly preferred to this type of subsurface ground warfare, but with the Li’vorkrachnika willing to do whatever was required of them it looked like there might still be a way to halt the Hamoriti’s advance…though the cost involved was increasing rapidly.
8
May 21, 2729
Kilma System (Hamoriti location)
Nesmi
Situated high above the planet were six remote probes in orbit, each positioned so as to give the Chamra sight on the entirety of the surface simultaneously. The probes were passive sensors, very detailed but designed to operate in secrecy and equipped with camouflage systems to keep their existence from the Hamoriti, though whether or not the measures would be functional against the monster was anyone’s guess.
A Trinx and Sety fleet were both situated in various orbits around the planet, most up high and well outside what they knew the Hamoriti’s range to be, but the cyborgs were not so reckless. After several years of ‘containment’ on the part of the Trinx and their Li’vorkrachnika allies the cyborgs had decided to risk sending a single ship into the system to allow them to monitor events as they took place. That ship now sat near the system’s star, getting direct feeds from the probes so it wouldn’t have to risk sitting in orbit.
Thus far the Hamoriti had spent most of its time below ground, which had prompted the Trinx and Sety to move their fleets in closer. So far as the cyborgs could tell, the Sety hadn’t fired a single shot since they arrived. Their small fleet simply sat, watched, and waited for an opportunity to strike the minions when they weren’t protected by the Hamoriti itself. So far that hadn’t occurred, for all of the minions currently on the planet were subsurface and the Sety weren’t about to set foot on the planet, knowing how the Hamoriti could move around at will.
The Trinx were down there, with their vassals at least, and were aiding the Li’vorkrachnika as they shipped in millions of troops from other star systems to use as disposable weapons to hunt down and destroy the minions. The cyborgs had to admit that thus far the strategy was working, but there were at present seven different engagements taking place beneath the planet’s surface as the Hamoriti kept spawning minions in new locations. The strike teams had found some of them rather late, with them having grown to significant numbers, but they’d managed to successfully beat them down each time to date.
How long that could last no one knew, but the Trinx were adamant that they had to fight in the here and now before things had a chance to escalate further. The cyborgs didn’t disagree, they just saw no endgame, and as such weren’t going to throw away their people’s lives so casually as the Trinx were.
Their ally’s sacrifices paled in comparison to what the Li’vorkrachnika were doing. The primitive barbarians deserved some measure of respect for the way they accomplished what should not have been possible even with the minor tech upgrades the Trinx had given them. They did not fight like most civilizations would, and in this rare case it seemed that they were more effective for it. Every infantry unit they sent down beneath ground was destroyed, but they kept sending them, hurting the enemy and whittling them down until they finally made the kill. And given the size of their empire and their reputed growth rates, they could keep supplying these suicide armies indefinitely.
There had been a large squabble between the Trinx and the other members of The Nine over their choice of allies and the means they were employing, as well as the price being paid to garner their aid. The Sety especially were adamant that they not give the Li’vorkrachnika tech upgrades, seeing that given the size to which the primitive race had already grown, even small additions could have a snowball effect and come back to hurt them later on. Technically the Nexus was already at war with the Li’vorkrachnika, though while they were a large threat in number they were still a minor one as far as power was concerned.
But if the Trinx gave them even a piece of their own technological capability they’d become an enemy that the Nexus would be hard pressed to deal with even if it turned its full attention toward them.
The success of the Li’vorkrachnika in helping the Trinx keep the Hamoriti from spreading its minions had made several members of The Nine hesitant to complain further, but the Sety were adamant that they could not jeopardize the future in exchange for this stalemate. Technological superiority was not something that came easily, and the weapon upgrades the Trinx had given them were the equivalent of more than a millennium of research.
That was small for a race that had been around in prominence for over a million years, and in truth many races jumped the learning curve by acquiring tech from others, either through diplomacy, trade, or conquest, but the way the Li’vorkrachnika operated was so dangerously aggressive that arming them was a mistake that the Sety did not want to make, though the Trinx were beyond their control and would not alter their course of action.
The cyborg ship had been sent to the Hamoriti location to monitor exactly what was occurring, rather than relying on either Sety or Trinx reports. It was breaking with their ‘stay clear of the Hamoriti’ protocols, but by using the probes it was deemed an acceptable risk, for even if they were destroyed the ship itself would be outside the psionic range of the beast…though exactly what the safe distance was no one knew for certain.
Tracking the Hamoriti subsurface was difficult, even from low orbit, for scanning through solid rock was nearly impossible. The Sety and Trinx were both bombarding the planet with active sensors of a type that the probes could pick up the reflections from, hence they were also able to get a point position on the beast, though nothing more. That was due to the composition of the Hamoriti and it being somewhat more dense than the rock itself, for the energy beams being used were so nonreactive to matter they could only pick up huge variations.
Ships in orbit were invisible to them, for they didn’t produce a reflection unless they had shields up. The inner core of the planet also gave back a small variation, due to the increasing density of the molten material under such heavy pressure, but the Hamoriti’s bulk was so highly concentrated with corovon that it offered enough of a ‘ping’ on the sensors for the cyborgs to see where it was at all times.
Seeing what it was doing, however, was beyond them unless it came up into the crust and other more detailed sensors came into workable range.
It was those that had been failing the Trinx as of late, for the more rock between them and the target the less effective they were. Either the Hamoriti
knew this or it was just getting lucky, for the more recent minion spawn points were deep enough to go unnoticed until they branched out through tunnels they dug themselves, heading closer to the surface. Events like this suggested that the Trinx’s hold on the Hamoriti’s progress was coming to an end sooner or later, but they stubbornly kept fighting the minions back with the never ending supply of Li’vorkrachnika available to them and, for the moment at least, seemed to be proving the Chamra and the rest of The Nine wrong.
Monitoring the activity on and in the planet was routine and boring, for the most part, but when the Hamoriti’s location began to drift towards the surface again the cyborg crew began taking notice, as did the Sety and Trinx fleets, for once it came within a few miles of the atmosphere they began moving out of planetary orbit. The Sety fleet retreated to another planet, with the bulk of the Trinx going with them and leaving only a small response task force behind.
The Li’vorkrachnika ships headed out too, pacing the main Trinx fleet that they were seemingly glued to, for they kept well away from the Sety at all times. The two races hadn’t fought before, but the Li’vorkrachnika knew the Sety were part of the Nexus and chose to give them plenty of space.
On the surface there wasn’t much left of what had once been a Li’vorkrachnika world. A few colonies had been partially rebuilt to serve as firebases for the incoming armies to cycle through as they headed below ground, but what had originally been on the surface had been eventually destroyed by the Hamoriti in one form or another, with the beast literally leaving its footprints everywhere across the planet.
When it finally reached the surface it broke through like a volcano erupting, ramming the rock out of the way and bringing a magma plume out behind it that shot out like a geyser and rained down on the surrounding area. In time that would cool and harden over, but the Hamoriti didn’t stick around for that to happen, rather, it headed straight for orbit.