Keeping himself alive in an alien city was a fairly trivial activity. Eyeball could do that all day; for weeks, even, or maybe months, with the supplies he had. He had magic, his precognition, and abilities that, compared to most natives of the Andromeda galaxy, were excessive.
Keeping attention away from a starship being fixed for a couple hours? Just a bit more difficult. Fortunately… he could gather a bit of assistance.
Looking at the Pale One he’d made from one of the tank crew, then at the other two, he smiled… and shot both of them with the Pale Gun.
“Head out. Avoid others as much as possible. Find as many facilities your host bodies have access to as you can and shut off the gravity compensation.”
The first one, its nervous system already firmly enslaved by the munition, marched off steadily… while the other two were, initially, struggling as their bodies fought the control tendrils burrowing their way through the flesh… and ultimately obeyed as well, heading in two different directions.
He looked around at the perimeter around the city; two rings of massive spikes. Undoubtedly armored, durable, and of course, doubly redundant; not only did the city have a backup, but most individual buildings as well, from what he could see.
Once he got a bit of a safety net in place, taking out a few of them would cause a panic. So… time to build that safety net.
He hopped onto the Embassy near the pointed tip of the pyramid, gripping the dull tip, his feet sliding on the smooth surface; metal, fortunately. He triggered the magnets normally used for zero-G with a mental command, and surveyed the area, looking for…. There we go.
After the initial rushed capture attempt, they were getting more serious. To the north, tanks were forming up; at least six of them already there, more headed that way. To the south…. Dozens of Shivan soldiers in their elegant white armor were gathering…
Sometime soon; minutes, at most; they would be charging in with overwhelming force. Not enough to take him… but enough the Embassy and the starship would be damaged in the process. So. Lets prevent that, yes?
He deactivated the magnets, aiming at the group of tanks… and leapt through the air; giving a push with his false arm to get a bit more speed… as he landed next to an open hatch, seconds later, amidst the panic and shouting of dozens of soldiers; mostly unarmored tank crew; raising side-arms to aim at him even the tanks starting to raise their weapons…
He leaned into the open hatch of the first tank… and fired twice, sending the two crew inside into agonizing spasms. He fired the last shell in the revolver into another Shivan, before hopping inside the hatch of one of the other tanks… reloading as the men inside suddenly realized their peril.
Not early enough to stop him from finishing, and putting another shell in each of them… but fast enough to have drawn weapons, and end up leaving them on the floor of the tank.
He smiled. Two would probably work.
He set the Pale Gun back in its holster, and focused for a moment… aiming Titanslayer out the hatch at the closest tank other than the one he’d already seeded with controllers… a single shot. Another tank out of action.
The other three tanks were starting to pull away, the crew, and the handful of armored soldiers, all sprinting for cover, as Eyeball stepped out… leveling the Semi-automatic on each tank as they came into view… leaving the clearing; possibly a parking lot, or some sort of open concert area; filled with the wreckage of destroyed tanks within seconds. He glanced at the two Pale-One occupied tanks.
“Seal the hatches, and start patrolling around the Embassy. Shoot any Shivan soldiers you see using the tank’s weaponry.”
His HUD gave an indicator that this function, at least, was working properly. Each Controller had its own fairly limited AI, and ability to take orders; normally, Ascension would have them working together with smooth precision, and could use a Pale One as anything from a factory worker to a guard; but the control he could exert was far more limited.
If the tanks were too complicated, and required some sort of significant skill and training to operate, the Pale Ones would probably do an absolutely terrible job at it. But… it was a treaded tank, operating on smooth, wide open terrain. It should do fine, right?
Best not think about that. It felt right, so it would probably work out.
As the tanks started moving, in what would become a slow circle of the building; he grunted for a moment. “Have the second one delay by thirty seconds. Don’t patrol together. Keep as much area in view as possible.”
He looked around. There were other tanks in the area. They would have competent, skilled operators, and needed to be dealt with… one of the ones he’d seen from the top of the pyramid had been…. Ahh. There.
He needed a bit more force for this one. He focused on the tank, as it came around the bend; re-shaping the runes, focusing. Generating enough force wasn’t usually the problem; most of the time the problem was using too much, and slamming himself, or whatever object he was using, into a nearby surface with more force than could be survived.
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This time… that was actually the goal.
With a few seconds of careful aim, during which the tank brought a main gun to bear in his direction… he knew exactly when they were going to fire, and smiled. Two birds, and all that.
He stepped a meter and a half to the right…. And just as the tank was about to fire… gave it a little ‘push’.
Behind him… a tank munition; some sort of actual solid shell built to take out heavily armored targets… slammed into one of the gravity compensator pylons on the city perimeter. There was a visible distortion in the air, as the top of it twisted… and about a third of it started to fall towards the ground….
Even as the tank itself was used as a projectile, slamming into one of the other pylons on the opposite side. It wasn’t broken… but rather bent, an enormous, visible, indent where the tank had impacted, and a visible crackle of some sort of energy passing back and forth along the bend.
Lights in the city flickered for a moment, before the crackle stopped.
One of the other approaching tanks should be…. Huh. Should’ve been coming around the bend any time now.
The general pyramid shape of the structures left enormous sight-lines, letting him see vast distances in this pre-fabricated city… and he could see the only other tank he’d spotted from the roof, currently running away.
He chuckled. That was one way to buy some time.
He headed back towards the embassy at a casual walk… the two green-armored guards were at the front once more, warily watching the tank currently sweeping around the front of the building… and the one he’d spoken to earlier glanced at it for a moment. “...Well. I suppose you’re probably serious about using magic to get us into space?”
“Yup. Enough room on that ship to evacuate the whole Embassy?”
“Everyone but us soldiers. We volunteered for this, and will go down fighting when you leave. Most of the ‘diplomats’ here are engineers studying the project to break this world into multiple, smaller ones. Quite a bit of training and expertise that their homeworlds could use. We just shoot things.”
The armored helmet focused off in the distance at something one of the tanks was firing at; likely a police officer, as the actual soldiers were in the other direction. “Any idea why the Shivans broke things off?”
Hmm. Not enough capacity for everyone? That probably meant they’d have limited options when they left, as well. “Why they started, no idea. What they did…. They had a scheme going to seize control of Confederate fleets. They were abducting key leadership personnel in the guise of ‘meetings’… until they ran into one who was too tough for them. When they tried to capture Ascension’s leader… she killed her captors, and then the Shivan Emperor.”
The guard slowly turned back to face him. “...Their Emperor is dead. That’s…. Gonna be bad.”
Eyeball nodded. “Yup. Whoever the new heir is is gonna be pissed that a bunch of their family is dead.”
“Well, yes. But also… the Emperors are an almost religious figure to them, and their whole plan, to make an eternally prosperous Shivan species, and the superiority of the Shivan people… honestly, this could be a problem. We might be talking about war… for generations to come.”
“...I’m not sure there’s going to be a Shivan Empire for generations to come.”
He’d expected more of a response. There were more soldiers. Cops. Civilians. What he’d done had been fairly dramatic, yes. But… there were millions of people in this city. They wouldn’t give up after just two incidents, would they?
He noticed… smoke. In the distance. Something was on fire. Had one of the Pale Ones…. No. More smoke. From dozens of places now.
“...The hell is going on?”
The guard blinked… and set a hand to his helmet. “Uhhh… according to the security feeds we’re getting… some sort of riot. We’re… we were getting the local news channels as well, but… does your suit have Confederacy-compatible protocols?”
Eyeball nodded… and after a moment, an image of a news report popped up… showing two Shivans brutally beating each other using what seemed to be recording equipment… the camera view going slightly off-kilter… and then a third Shivan,
That… was odd. Were those news reporters? The clothing looked… fancy. He didn’t know Shivan fashion, of course, but the wild shades of purple and orange certainly didn’t match the subdued, greytone clothing he saw in most of them.
“...Why are they killing each other?”
~Have another recorded message, sweetheart. So, the fastest acting of the various plagues I sent… and one you yourself are a carrier of… should have kicked in by now. And don’t worry, it does nothing to non-descendents. This recording will trigger when you ask some variation of ‘why are they fighting’. Its going to effect every Descendent species on the planet eventually, but it’ll hit the Shivans in just a few hours.~
He blinked. This was… a bio-weapon?
The two who had been on video were now both dead… and the third, wearing the more subdued, grey clothing… was pointing at someone off-screen, shouting… before he started running.
~All of these miserable miscreations are programmed at a genetic level to view other races as inferior, their own as the best, and to try to elevate themselves above the others. It takes different forms in the end, thanks to cultural training, but they all have a deep-seated drive to dominate… and right now, you’re seeing what happens when the coding for that is subtly altered… the programming that once applied to what you would call ‘Tier 4’ species, ones that were very clearly not at all related to themselves… now applies to their own kind.~
This… the Shivans had Confederate allies who weren’t related to them at all. This had to be something else, she had to have amplified rage, or… something.
Whatever it was… he could hear screaming, now. Fires were spreading. People were leaving buildings… and the tanks had started to fire.
~I’m sure you went to the nearest city to try to get a ship offworld. I’d recommend leaving. They’ll be trying to kill you, too. Get out of town safely… someone will be by for you once I’m sure this is going to hit the entire Republic, and the Confederacy besides.~
A Shivan wearing torn, bloody clothing; pale flesh, heavily burned; came suddenly charging towards them from a nearby building; Eyeball didn’t bother raising his weapon; the guard shot the man in the torso, sending him tumbling.
He could see more of them, in the distance. Thousands more. Right now, they were focused on each other; there was a crowd visibly tearing at each other less than a kilometer away.
There would be more. This place had millions… this… was going to be difficult.