Eyeball focused on the shuttle controls, watching the landing site, as the two drones stood, calmly, braced against the walls; and a group of six Pale Ones braced against the doors; in the unlikely event enemies were able to open fire the moment they landed and opened the hatch without Eyeball spotting it in time, they could take the shots. As the timer dwindled, and he began to be able to make out individual trees, one of the two drones raised a limb. "Hold. Divert landing coordinates. Sending to console."

Eyeball blinked... glancing at the directions. A small clearing in the forest several kilometers away from where they'd ordered the enemy to land. "...I trust there's a good reason?" He started to divert course before finishing the question; undoubtedly, the enemy was planning an ambush and the machine had a plan. Though... He frowned. Comm signals were being jammed. By Ascension, not the enemy; his helmet was perfectly clear, but the shuttle comms were broken.

The six pale ones withdrew from the back hatch; and Ascension withdrew a controller, a familiar small box, silver rather than the usual orange, dangling tiny tentacles that normally burrow into flesh; opening the case, making a few smaller adjustments with tiny, precise fingers. He couldn't see just what the machine was doing; but as he landed the shuttle, he could see a gaunt, brown-skinned figure; looking to be at least eight feet tall if it were standing; laying prone on the forest floor, just... twitching and shaking, wearing ragged grey clothing; a sort-of t-shirt that dangled down past the thighs.

The moment he settled down, the machine leapt from the ship, running towards the prone figure; as the other drone turned to Eyeball. "The enemy is utilizing a slave control system to try to force a group of non-Republic warriors to attack us in conjunction with a substantial ground force. These implants automatically disable the slaves if a control signal is not received, to ensure they cannot simply disable the transmitter. I am jamming the signal, disabling the slaves, and am about to disable the implants in the first of them. Apologies for the lack of notice; I discovered the situation less than two minutes ago, and have been programming the controller to perform the needed operation since then."

He popped his neck, rising to his feet. "That's... crazy. Their own version of Pale Ones? Absolutely free them. They can go stay on the 8AD while they recover from surgery. Great catch, Ascension."

The machine had dropped atop the brown figure, placing the controller against it's flesh... and removed it. For a few seconds the figure lay there, and Eyeball grew concerned that maybe the surgery was a failure; until it rose to it's feet, looking around the forest... and focusing on the machine. It let out a long string of chitters and screeches; faster than Eyeball's translator interpreted, with Ascension responding in time. To Eyeball, it sounded like a long garbled mass of nonsense. A translation appeared on his screen as a block of text; but the creature and the controller were gone by the time he had read the first sentence running off at a truly ridiculous speed.

~I am free. How. Why? I have been tormented and trained to fight for years now. You do not look like the sky-demons. The sky-demons told me to disarm whoever was in the ship and bring them in or disable them.~*Note: Sky-demons is apparently the Jernal word for Marrick. Replacing in future translations.*

~I am Ascension, and myself and my friend are here to kill as many of the Marrick as we can before we leave, after stealing anything of value. They are monsters doing evil on this and many other worlds, and we aim to end them and their masters.~

~You have several of the Marrick with you. They do not look well.~

~We did to them what they did to you; they have been implanted and are now puppets, forced to fight your former masters.~

~Can you help me free the others? Return us home?~

~This box will free any of the others you place it against by disabling their implants. I can make more if you damage this one, and we can remove the implants entirely, given time. Your home is lost; the Marrick have destroyed it. None there yet live. They still drop rocks and fire projectiles down onto it's ruined remains in fear of your people somehow surviving, long after the last one died.~

~I will free my companions. There are ones I would like to experience this same slavery I have. I will return.~

The translation ended there. Eyeball blinked, looking at Ascension. "....Jernal. The speedsters from that world you said they were bombarding, just a couple of light-years away. Just... how fast are they?"

Ascension raised an empty hand. "Suffiicient for the job; they have a sprint speed in excess of five hundred miles per hour, and reflexes roughly twenty to thirty times as fast as a typical human, twenty-three to thirty-six times as fast as a Marrick.. perhaps three to five times as fast as your own. The Republic ground troops require specialized equipment, typically field generators, to fight individuals like them, creating wide areas of impact that prevent excessive speed; essentially much larger-scale versions of a Shroud grenade. Even with them, battling a creature which can accurately make shots as quickly as any weapon it holds can fire is problematic. Their standard doctrine is to deploy field generators to cover a withdrawal, then bombard the location from orbit."

Eyeball looked at the footprints of the creature, then out into the forest. "...Wait. What?"

He ran the numbers through his head; fortunately his helmet displayed the recent conversation. "...Are my reflexes that amped up compared to what they used to be?"

The machine withdrew a rifle from it's back. "You had above-average reflexes before. Your mutation augmented them somewhat. I suspect they are not as good as they were on the 'Reflex' substance, but you now react at least seven times as quickly as a typical human. I recommend we move to the original landing site, and kill any Republic forces we encounter. I am uncertain of what the Jernal will do, but they may assist us. If so, I suspect we will simply be cleaning blood from the craft before taking them back to orbit."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

***

Administrator Choof sat in the main office of the bunker, watching the display nervously. The enemy must have known about his project somehow; all communications had been jammed within seconds of them leaving the gate; his precious experiments were now likely scattered across the forest. He didn't care about the creatures themselves; they were inferior, tier-three creatures, whose very existence was heretical, good only to be used until they died out.

But the time invested... such a horrible waste. And if the enemy knew about them, they likely knew even more; there must be some traitor inside the labs passing them information, perhaps others on his staff.

At least the bunker was safe. Buried under ten meters of rock, the complex was still coming online, the last few lab techs rushing to get inside; but any minute now, security would seal the doors and they'd simply be waiting for backup to arrive and deal with the pirates; they could completely obliterate the starport above and leave him just fine.

He rested his palms on his desk, toying with the inactive comm panel. How would his test subjects die? Was the enemy going to execute them, put them out of their misery? Or was this going to be a case of a long, lingering death as the implants paralyzed and slowly killed them?

He frowned as he looked up. There was an abrupt air pressure change in the office. There shouldn't be.... did they just seal the main door to the bunker?

The world became pain. His arms, his legs, his entire body felt like a mass of bruises and agony. A few blurred seconds, flashing lights, darkness, the vivid purple of his own blood... and light. He was laying on his back on the forest floor. What? How... He struggled to stand, his limbs feeling as if he'd been thoroughly beaten and tossed about, his head pounding, half of his eyes swollen shut.

"Wha... where..."

He saw a brief blur. One of his lab technicians suddenly appeared, slamming into a tree, then falling to the ground, limp. His mind raced. "Wh... No... No!"

The signals were being jammed. Either the Jernal, or some other, similar race, must be involved; and there were no Republic citizens that fast. The pirates must include them. By the founders, what if these were Jernal pirates? The sort of things a pirate might do after watching his homeworld be pounded into oblivion...

He looked around the forest; the simple blue-purple leaves and vines offering no apparent hiding place. He could even see the landed assault shuttle of the pirates in a clearing not far away. He couldn't run, he couldn't call for help.. there must be a way out of this!

Another lab tech simply seemed to appear, this time slamming onto Choof himself; the two going down in a tangled pile of limbs as the administrator groaned in pain. He could recognize the techs... these were the ones who helped him train the Jernal. Oh no. These pirates must have spoken to their subjects somehow. Obviously they couldn't save them, but maybe they were going to let them see the people responsible die before they were put out of their misery?

As the last of the technicians who had worked in his lab appeared, slamming into another tree, he finally got a good look at his assailants; they were... Jernal. Wearing the same ragged grey clothing the test subjects had worn. He... wasn't sure, but those scars... that was test subject 7. "Subject seven..How!? This isn't possible! The signal's being jammed, you should be paralyzed! Or dead!"

An awful screeching noise; the native tongue of the Jernal, spoken fast enough that even those Marrick who could understand it would need to slow it down to understand. The creature made no attempt to be understood; it simply waved the handgun it had taken from one of the security guards under his nose; and vanished in a blur of movement./

He was alive.... why? What did the creatures have planned for him?

***

As Eyeball and Ascension worked their way through the forest, clearing out the surprised, confused Republic soldiers with neat, precise shots; leaving a steadily growing number of republic corpses and Pale Ones behind as they performed a slow circle of the landing site, one of the six enemy craft attempted to take off; only to be shot down immediately from one of the particle cannons in orbit, sending it tumbling through the forest in a hail of rubble and death.

The soldiers attempted to flee, or to charge at the location of gunshots, or even to the crash site to check for survivors; but their communications had fallen apart, and they were reduced to waving, hand-signals, and prying off helmets to actually speak; none of which fared them well, as the machines seemed to know exactly where the soldiers were, every failed transmission giving away their positions.

By the time they arrived at the shuttles, however, they weren't seeing many living troops; just corpses, mostly with broken spines, scattered through the woods; and rarely a soldier with broken arms and legs, lying there helplessly, moaning in pain.

Eyeball could see the Jernal swoop by now and again; at least four of them by the time they reached the downed craft. None of the surrendering crew were still alive; the Jernal didn't seem to distinguish between armed and unarmed. He nodded as they reached the first assault shuttle. "...Well. This kind of shit is why the army always hated planning to deal with Speedsters. It was always about dropping hundreds of shroud grenades and just making the whole region unfriendly."

The drone walking beside Eyeball slowly surveyed the scene. "Most of the bodies and armor suits are too badly broken to make optimal Pale Ones. I will convert those that are still usable and have them lift off to join the salvage effort."

Eyeball smiled. "Gonna get me guns big enough to take out a cruiser while its shields are still up?"

"Of course. We may still need to withdraw should the enemy force be large enough in ship count, but by the time we leave, the 8AD will be capable of destroying any single Andromedan vessel we know of with it's first volley. I would recommend we find somewhere more peaceful to lay low for a time so that I can make best use of the available materials."

"Understood. We'll find out where the real pirates around here hang out. Maybe do a bit of recruiting, do some trading, that sort of nonsense. If it's valuable, grab it, whether we can use it or not." He looked at the shuttles. ".... The Jernal should be able to handle the troops left on the planet. But there's going to be whole fleets coming, too many for us to deal with. I know we can't genuinely liberate this planet... but we need to make it as much of a pain as possible for them to retake as possible. Hopefully we can bring down the Republic before they can re-open operations... or just give them bigger things to worry about."

As steadily growing numbers of Pale Ones; all in various stages of death and dismemberment, only a handful of them still alive and aware of what was going on; entered the clearing, Eyeball watched another set of blurs... the Jernal were actually bringing more of the Marrick here. Interesting. Seemed they would be inclined to help.

Good thing, too. He had some interesting new grenades of Republic origin that he could use to kill one if he timed it just right, and thankfully with his power he could do exactly that, but without the sort of shroud grenades he used back in the day, it would be far more troublesome than it needed to be.

He blinked. Looking at the grenades at his belt, then at Ascension. "...You know. Isn't it a shame that we don't have any really goddamn big shroud grenades handy. Could you imagine what we could do if we had a planetary-scale shroud grenade? The sort of thing to make things going too fast seriously regret it on a stellar scale?"