Chapter 0: The Life Before
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 recovered behind the wreckage of what used to be a 2-seater civilian car. Not ideal, as a random shot could penetrate the cover, but it was sufficient for the moment. His entire squad was dead, only him and 2 drones left.
He needed to stop the bleeding from his 2 damaged lower eyes. The loss of the lower left arm also meant swapping out the evasion suite to account for the new center of gravity. Central optics were also cracked, but that was not something that could be compensated for.
He examined the rest of his body while cauterizing the most severe wounds. His brain implants were reporting internal bleeds from concussive blasts. His faceplate was deeply scarred and barely holding together. Chest armor was strangely fine, although with deep furrows and welded patches from his 3 months awake and having not been replaced. This suggested the rebels were more accurate than would be expected, but made the mistake of attempting to go for killshots instead of aiming for center of mass. Overconfidence could be exploited.
To say that he measured the time he had been staying still would be false. There was no moment he was not keenly aware of the passage of time. The virtual part of his mind existed in the space of nanoseconds, his every thought and query timed. The organic portion only slightly less so, as merely a constant awareness. He had been in a single location for 2.474004176 seconds. It was time to move before they took advantage.
He leapt out of cover in a randomly selected direction, and was almost immediately fired upon by enhanced hostiles from surrounding windows. Their aim was poorly calibrated, and either missed or glanced off his chest plating. At 0.34 seconds he rapidly jerked his upper body and head to the side. A sniper round whizzed past his head and left a furrow in the asphalt road. The sniper was both overconfident and with an implant not meant for this purpose, the timing was too consistent to be military. Possibly meant for precision maintenance work. A volley from unenhanced hostiles came slightly later, but was far too chaotic to be dodged in any real capacity beyond mere speed.
He let his evasion suite and virtual mind handle movement and examined his surrounding. Tall skyscrapers and apartments laid out in an underlying orderly grid, but presently filled with additional structures of all kinds. Shacks and storefronts made of metal sheets. Catwalks connecting adjacent buildings, combining their floors. Large neon signs filled the area with a soft ever-present glow, but were overshadowed by the light emanating from the sky.
The night was lit up by the fire trails of dropships entering from orbit. Red tracer rounds arced through the sky, causing bright explosions whenever they intersected one of the dropships. The night turned to day as bright-orange plasma rounds rained down from the sky towards AA-batterys, only to meet sizzling blue shields that momentarily flashed the world into a blinding blue and filled the air with the smell of ozone.
Proper orbital bombardment was off the menu. The planet would be captured and used as a manufacturing hub until high command noticed and ordered them off the planet and to send all forces forward. Every hour counted, each one allowing for thousands to be manufactured. Rapid operation, minimal collateral damage, all forces expendable if it resulted in higher industrial capacity.
He moved from cover to cover before finally darting behind a concrete building. No additional major injuries from the retreat. He used the safety to try to reconnect to the network. It was hard to get a signal with all the interference from the shielding and buildings, but after a dozen seconds he finally got a connection to an orbital relay.
It felt the same way as his implants did when first installed. His mind and senses expanded. He sent data to the ships in orbit for analysis and received detailed notes of the reaction and aim timing of every hostile. He saw his position from countless eyes in orbit and became aware of the location of every single ally, drone, and captured and cleared position. He sorted through hundreds and thousand of internal messages. Battle plans and priorities being voted on, altered, executed and discussed. It was always surprising how different it felt to be connected into the network. He concentrated on finding his next objective.
Casualties were mounting, mostly from AA fire, but the entire city seemed to be fortified, with any landing being met with immediate fire. The most promising location for landing was...his, the skyscrapers had served as partial cover and allowed for the landing of his own dropship, but it seemed the rebels had fortified the area because of this. The path was clear and approved by consensus, he would attempt to clear the area and several dropships would be redirected to this site. His own life was expendable, the potential benefits far greater.
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He did not flinch. This was his purpose. The purpose of all their kind. They had no instinct for self-preservation, only a sense of mortality by proxy of not being able to contribute to a mission. There was no fear, and there was no death. Merely action towards the goal.
The rebels here were overconfident. He would use that to reveal their position. The two remaining drones could provide fire...and there were other orphaned drones out there. He recalled 3 more to his area.
The sky flashed blue and he lost connection to the network, but the drones soon reached his location, staying in cover for now. He formed a wide-range local network, potentially revealing his location if they had the equipment or implants to detect it. He calculated the potential location of each hostile accounting for movement, and took a final breath. He placed down his weapon, and stepped out of cover with his 3 remaining arms spread wide, and with something as close to a grin as he could get with his jaw muscles.
Time slowed to a standstill as he stopped all higher functions. There was no strategy here, no tactics. Only control of his body and the drones, even visual processing turned entirely towards target acquisition, his walk path entirely precalculated. It was so very calm. An eternity passed between each footstep. He saw the rebels in the windows, looking at him, not yet having pulled their triggers. Some were in the process of changing positions, or reloading weapons. He saw a couple that had their weapons entirely lowered.
In the same moment all 5 drones emerged, revealing twin chainguns on each of them. They raked the surrounding buildings, reacting before even the cybernetically enhanced humans could. Concrete, glass and metal rained onto the street and makeshift shantytown as they never stopped firing and merely moved their aim from target to target. dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 saw the world through 18 eyes as he used the drones sensors in addition to his own.
And then the sniper fired, far faster than before. It was not a direct hit, but it hit him on the right of his faceplate. Nearly the entire side of it shattered and sprayed metal and bone and flesh in a large cone behind him, taking off his remaining right eye, and shattering his skull. He was bleeding heavily and portions of his brain were exposed. His organics shut down momentarily from the shock and he stumbled. The implants compensated and it was merely a single false step as his arrogant strut continued. At least the shot had revealed the present position of the sniper, and two drones peppered the area to make sure the main threat was eliminated. The rest of the hostiles kept poking into sight, ignoring the drones and attempting to hit the obvious target with its arms spread wide, only to be hit by fire before managing to get a shot off.
After mere seconds his organic mind recovered, but the implants remained in charge, letting him take a moment to just...enjoy this. Every instinct approved. With each step he came closer to his goal of securing the area. With every step his mental model of the area changed, classifying a bigger part of it as captured and conquered. All was correct in the world, his purpose fulfilled.
And then he stopped walking, having reached the end of the block. No hostiles present. Debris kept falling from the surrounding buildings, their structure weakened by the heavy fire, but not enough to make the street unusable. He sent the drones out in a search pattern and tried to establish contact with the network until he noticed a strange glimmer in the air.
He looked into the sky, and saw something akin to a sheet of glass, refracting the light, descend from space towards the city centre.
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 knew what this was. He did not need a network connection to know that every ship in the pacification fleet was presently scuttling and attempting to detonate their subspace drives, before it infected them. He saw the flashes of nuclear explosions as ships self destructed or were attacked for being too slow.
And then the refractive sheet shattered, and the world shattered with it. An invisible plane sliced the city. The tops of buildings and skyscrapers and even a distant mountain floated up. The sky around the beam became a kaleidoscope of portals. Night turned to day as the light of the star shone through a million portals to the other side of the planet. The remnants of the beam became a broken tapestry of pure colors as light was refracted over and over and over.
And then the next step began. Flashes of light emerged from around the shattered beam. Space broke down, stretching atoms to their breaking point and causing them to degrade and become unstable.
dGhl-IHBy-b3Rh-Z29u-aXN0 watched with his damaged central electronic eye. He saw radiation flash over the city in chaotic patterns, as it was refracted and reflected from tiny nuclear explosions. It would all be over soon. It would reach critical mass, and detonate a chunk of the planet, bathing the entire system in radiation. It is unlikely any of the ships will survive, but a few might.
There were many questions about why the rebels would choose to hit an inhabited system with a subspace distortion cannon, and questions about how the rest of the fleet would bypass this system in their travel, but he did not have the time to ponder them.
He chose at this moment, to be slightly philosophical and consider the worth of the life he had led. His 3 months, 2 days and 15 hours awake, and 5 years, 2 months and 18 days asleep. He decided that...it had been worthwhile. He had fulfilled his purpose, and his death would not be an obstacle. The fleet would manage, as it always had. And even if it didn't, they would merely be remade. Perhaps better than they presently were.
And so he was at peace as he looked at the end of the world. He had never been one of those who believed their ultimate future was to conquer and annihilate the universe, so it could never be recaptured, but there was a certain beauty to it.
And then there came a flash from the remnants of the beam, signifying the start of the chain reaction, and a millisecond later there was nothing left but light.