As Eyeball stepped around the corner, he tossed a rifle to the floor. The enemy's guns were both dangerous; one of them could actually hurt Eyeball, and the other would melt his armor and cause some really nasty skin conditions. The visual of his own armor partially molten to his skin if he let himself be hosed down by that smaller plasma 'peeler' was something he'd prefer to avoid. The man himself, though...

Clearly a brick. Absolute beast of a man, who didn't need his armor to fight off an army. Probably stronger than Butcher had been when Eyeball first met him by quite a bit; this guy could tear through the walls if he needed to. Definitely needed to breathe, though; taking out the helmet would send him scrambling for another.

For Basim, the appearance was anticlimactic. He'd been expecting some other heavy-armored brute, likely engineered to survive some brutal, incredibly hot world; or just to be a monstrously capable warrior, as it was generally considered more likely. After all; there was little point in settling a 15G world, it would be impossible for a civilization on his homeworld to advance into space without outside assistance; and even back home his people were able to lift vastly more than their own weight, and endure ridiculous amounts of punishment.

What he got... was a scrawny figure in a shiny silver helmet and light combat armor. Modified, sure, but clearly it had been Republic light armor at some point, just good for small-arms fire. Basim sighed, and started to step forward, giving each six-fingered hand a quick shake before he charged the figure.

Eyeball watched him approach... and slid his combat knife from its sheath. It looked like a simple KA-BAR; but had a tungsten point and blade fused to an osmium-alloy core. When the brute tried to tackle him... he dropped down, and jammed the blade into the rear leg joint of his heavy armor; skewering it with so much force it severed the ligaments and bone, completely disconnecting his shin from his knee.

He pulled back to his feet, staring at the man... and sighed. This... was a mistake. As the man struggled to his feet with a groan of pain, he simply stepped forward; and kicked him in the side of the head, hard. The figure collapsed.

The man was actually just slightly stronger than Eyeball... because he had at least four times Eyeball's mass. Even if he lost his foresight, the man wouldn't have been a challenge. He shook his head. Hopefully there were more dangerous people around here somewhere. He let himself indulge in idle speculation for a moment. He could just tear a hole in the wall with his bare hands... or peel the armor off of this nutjob just as easily. This... he needed to re-evaluate his approach to things. Maybe get a sword, like Butcher's old machete.

One of the damaged controllers crawled closer. Eyeball glanced down at it.

~If you could create an injury near the spine, I can seize control of him. My control cables are unable to penetrate his skin, and he's strong enough to shatter his armor if I were to control that.~

Eyeball nodded; and took the knife, pressing it against the upper spine, at the exposed joint between shoulder and helmet; and the controller mounted itself to the figure's back. "Could you do me a favor and make me a sword. Something with a spike on it good for making a hole one of your controllers can reach through. Ahhh... You have the Lord of the Rings in your collection?"

~Affirmative. I stored most earth media for the trip, including a few shows that had not been officially released yet, requested by particular crew.~

"The bad guys had this sword looked like a giant cleaver in one, with a big spike at the end. Something like that, but osmium, reinforced as you can get it." He started walking through the ship, studying it. The heavy was the only one that had given Ascension's machines any problem; but he wasn't unique. Some of the species were effectively low-grade speedsters to the last here, others various levels of inhuman regenerative capacity or durability; and 'the Swarm' had some races with more exotic abilities like telekinesis or fire-breathing, and even a few that, like humanity, had a variety of random mutations. Heck, the third life-stage of these locals were sort-of fire-breathers, according to the data.

When he reached the engineering section, he looked at the exposed stars; the hull was open to vacuum on both ends. "Any other orbital threats?"

~There are a few other heavies on one of the cargo vessels which has a secondary reactor it could in theory redirect for engine purposes; I could take it out with anti-ship weapons, but with the ship drifting, I'm hesitant to do so. There are six adults, four male, two female, and various children; it seems to be a family-owned vessel.~

Eyeball stared out into the void. "Children. A family-owned vessel. Any others like that here?"

His HUD briefly lit up, showing the mentioned craft; first a light cargo freighter not unlike the one the 8AD was pretending to be; modified and reinforced, with notes that it had a secondary power generator inside to keep its gravity at a steady 15G; and that the ship had one gun still aimed at it, in case the power was shifted to engines.

The second... was a pleasure craft, containing, apparently, a wealthy Tier-0 Marrick, his wife, and children, with various tier-2 and tier-3 crew. "...Huh. Alright. Rules of engagement. Tier zero and one become Pale Ones, aside from the kids. For the rest, combatants get controlled, non-combatants get to be prisoners we'll leave behind. I'll talk to the heavies personally."

He made a few gestures, the HUD shifting until he had an outgoing channel; hailing the freighter. After a moment, a display popped up; showing a tall, lean, definitely female figure with pale grey skin, three eyes, wearing a vacuum suit, standing on the bridge of a starship. A similar figure, only male, walked through the view momentarily. ~We are a peaceful freighter, and have no intention of entering combat. We strictly have personal weapons and armor on-board, and offer our surrender; just leave us be, we were just bringing rations and maintenance supplies to trade for silk and local foodstuffs.~

Eyeball nodded slightly; before remembering that they couldn't see him, he was using the helmet to transmit. "Gonna be honest here, until you said that last bit I was planning on just letting you go clean. The natives here are sentient, civilized, intelligent beings, and the products you were here to trade for are the result of some of the most vile, monstrous behavior I've ever encountered. Still. Since my companion tells me you have children on board, I'll show a certain level of mercy. Dump your cargo and vacate the area on maneuvering thrusters. I know you've got a secondary reactor; so long as you don't keep your cargo or power your engines or shields, you'll be left alive and intact."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The woman glared at the screen angrily. ~We're just traders! We have no part of whatever the Republic is doing to the animals here.~

"Obey or be fired upon." Eyeball gestured; and the signal cut. "Lovely. No other likely threats?"

~The station itself is secured, though I have discovered several sections that are not subject to outside surveillance, and cannot identify the containing threat level. Expendable Pale Ones are surveying them now. The corvette-class military vessels; assault shuttles primarily; have managed to avoid fire in large part. If you wish to take over targeting briefly, you can likely handle the survivors before your excursion to the planet.~

A nod; Eyeball stretched out his arms. A Pale One had entered the chamber; a rough patch over the hole in his vacuum-suit where the controller had penetrated his flesh; and was beginning to use a cutting tool to remove wall panels. The battle not even minutes over, and Ascension already starting to disassemble things for when they left. He could see the Marrick's face; clearly confused, agonized, with no idea what he was doing or why; but then turned back to the void.

An overlay appeared over the space in front of him; showing the corvettes currently moving in lower orbit, evading fire; a few clearly trying to move to put the planet between them and the newly arrive hostile. Eyeball focused; the planet was less than a light-second away; he was surprised Ascension hadn't already taken them all out... but then, these were small craft, moving quickly; and it did take half a second for the beam to arrive, so if the ships kept dancing around... they must have unusually good reflexes, the locals didn't have any AI worth mentioning to do that.

He picked the ones trying to get around the planet's curve first; a single abrupt strike nailing each of them, the particle beams hitting them one by one; the others began to move even more frantically, clearly aware of the fate of their comrades, as the count steadily dropped. Eight. Seven. Six. Abruptly, the six survivors stopped moving; he held his hand over the button for a moment. "...They surrendering?"

~Affirmative. They are requesting permission to land and disembark crew.~

Eyeball stared at the display for a moment. "Tell them all to gather.... here." He tapped a spot a few kilometers from one of the hives. "If they leave the vehicles intact, they'll be allowed to walk away, without weapons. And get ready to fake an emergency at that one; we'll see if we can get the guards from the other hives to come here. How do they normally move between hives and the starport?"

~Each hive has a variety of transport craft for both goods and its security personnel. None capable of reaching orbit, but all capable of atmospheric flight, ranging from a few hundred kilometers per hour to just below eight hundred.~

He smiled. "And which one has the man in charge of the lot inside it?"

~None. He's at the starport.~

***

Ground Commander Chiils'ath looked at his displays, frowning. Some swarm vessel, masquerading as a Republic transport, had arrived, shot up the fleet, and taken out every single space-capable vessel on the planet; the only survivors had ignored orders and surrendered. The only positive side of all of this was that the enemy had decided to come down and retrieve the spacecraft the crew had left behind; a single Republic military shuttle; modified but mostly standard-issue to those carried by Republic starships; was dropping from orbit, heading for that location.

If he could get his troops there in time, without the forces in orbit noticing... he could possibly take a few hostages and salvage things. He didn't need to find a way to take out that ship in orbit; just to survive for a few days until backup arrived. One of those shuttles could only hold a couple dozen standard-sized troops at most if they were packed in like cargo, so if he landed a thousand of his local security to mob them, it wouldn't matter how heavily armed or armored they were; especially since he had not just a handful of Assault troops in the mix, but even a squad of Jernal slaves in the lab; just they on their own might be enough to make short work of any landing party.

He tapped his comms. "Administrator. I assume you're aware of our predicament?"

After a few moments, the green-robed figure of Administrator Choof appeared on his screen; the familiar face of an ancient Marrick, hundreds of years old, the pale skin stretched so tightly over his skull it looked as if the eyes shouldn't be able to close, purple blood vessels beginning to show through the thinning membranes. ~I am surprised you would contact me, but of course. We've lost orbit, and may very well be killed at any moment. I've been moving my technicians into the bunker, though of course we have no way to know how much damage they're willing to do.~

"The enemy is deploying a ground team to seize some light spacecraft whose crew surrendered. They were promised to be allowed to leave alive so long as they didn't damage the ships. I've got troops moving in under cover from the nearest hives, and am going to try to take some hostages. We'll outnumber their ground team at least twenty to one... but there's no guarantee we'll get any captives. If, on the other hand, we were to deploy your Jernal..."

The Administrator nodded at the display, immediately seeing opportunity; a few hostages might not win the day, but stowing a few captured swarmlings in the starport might keep the enemy from blowing it up; letting them keep at least one location safe. ~Of course. Unless the enemy are similarly capable, they should be able to disarm them before they even realize what's going on. I will issue their command codes to you immediately, on one condition.~

"What is it? This is an emergency, not a time for trading favors, administrator."

~Under no circumstances allow anyone with EMP devices in the area. These creatures are smart enough to recognize them, and would likely utilize them to end their own lives before your troops even knew what was going on.~

He blinked. "I... thought you had them under control?"

~If we hit the button, or the life signs of one of our lab people go red, they are put through a pain greater than anything you could imagine by the implants. If they killed us all and escaped, which they are fully capable of doing, they would die in terrible agony over the course of weeks; that, to them, would feel like years. They know it; we demonstrated it on one of the disobedient ones. We've been training them for years with simple stimulus-response conditioning, but they are still intelligent beings who think and react far faster than we can. It even works by having a signal we need to send constantly to stop the implants from activating; the last time a facility tried to do this by having the implants respond when a transmission was received, the test subjects destroyed all the transmitters before they could go off.... and it had to be destroyed from orbit to cleanse the rogue subjects.~

Chiil'sath stared at his screen for a moment, reconsidering. But... no. They'd been trained for years to obey, and however smart they might be, they were still just animals. Animals that, from their own perspective, had been subject to centuries worth of obedience training. It should be fine. "I'll have the EMP devices ordered dropped; it's too late not to pack them, troops are already moving. The enemy is landing within minutes. If we're going to do this, it needs to be now."

The administrator laughed. ~Excellent! The first trial under genuine combat conditions! This should prove remarkable. I'll release four of the subjects as soon as I finish instructing them properly. Send me an image of the landing craft, and they'll be out momentarily.~