Even from here, Halberd could feel it.
It hung from the dropship's wall, contained within a nullifier cube and suspended by enough microfiber wire to hold a small bridge up. Still, regardless of its container's dampening effects, Halberd could feel the creature within calling to him.
Release me, the Eidolon's voice rang within his mind.
"Not now, Sirius. Soon." the stout Acolyte Caste reassured the being. The cube quivered briefly in exasperation. The guards shifted nervously, but Halberd reassured them that all was well and the creature was just excited. In the back of his mind, he knew it wasn't good; a restless Eidolon was often just as dangerous to its allies as its enemies. If it decided to really cause trouble, it could probably take the ship down even while contained, not even mentioning what it could do if it went rogue after release. There was a reason the Combine normally let the creatures flit around as they pleased on their homeworld.
The ship shook as it dropped from its parent craft, then accelerated forward. Halberd stumbled backwards, getting within a meter of the cube. From this close, it was like all the hemolymph in his body was being pulled towards it, and he could feel another within his mind, skimming through his thoughts. He quickly moved away before the creature could try to use its mind-bending powers on him. He could sense the Eidolon's emotions too; its mind was consumed by pride and indignation, enraged at being imprisoned here and separated from its home by such inferior beings.
Halberd could only hope that they move quickly, before the creature decided that attempting to escape was worth the effort.
The planet loomed below, a mostly-uninhabited rocky outerworld given sudden strategic importance in this new war. What was its name--Qestr? Quto? Something like that. Now, it had become necessary, at least to the High Judge, to make a show of force, to tell the upstart humans that they couldn't get away with their barbarism. That was the reason that Halberd was here instead of back on Poslush studying what made the creature beside him, that could kill them all with a thought, tick.
The turbulence picked up again. They were entering the atmosphere. Halberd and the guards held onto the benches to steady themselves. This would be an in-and-out mission, dropping off the Eidolon, fleeing back to the mothership, then letting the collection teams handle the survivors and recontain the entity.
"We're approaching drop altitude!" the pilot yelled. Halberd readied himself, and advised the guards to do the same. It was always terrible when these things were released. Not only that, but the creature's demands were becoming more urgent.
Release. Me.
"Just a little more time, Sirius."
No. Release. Now.
Halberd's heart jumped into his throat, but he tried to retain his composure. Calmly, he advised the pilot that if they did not drop the Eidolon immediately, they would have bigger problems than the invaders.
Halberd. You are commanded. Release me.
For a terrifying moment, Halberd blanked, and came back to reality with his hand hovering above the cube's control panel, one digit about to press the lock.
"Sirius! You will not treat me in this way! I am not your plaything!" Halberd shouted at the cube. The cube shouted back.
Release! Me!
"Drop altitude!" the pilot said, the dropship's rear door popping open to reveal the clouds passing by rapidly.
"You want to leave, Sirius!? Then go!" Halberd screamed, hitting the lock button so hard that it nearly broke. Instantly, one side of the cube blasted open and Halberd's head was split by a terrible pain as the Eidolon fired itself out with a long, overjoyed psychic scream. The loading door snapped closed behind it and the dropship pulled up, its inhabitants eager to rid themselves of the insufferable weapon.
---
Colonel Kaede Suzuki pulled her boot out of the knee-deep mud, groaning as it practically sucked her back in on the next step. Looking around her, her fellow soldiers weren't doing much better. In keeping with the theme of endless mud, CAST's star-charters had already decided to call the planet Rasputitsa, and the mud was quite important to the planet too. From the observations that the Bactria made prior to dropping on the planet, Rasputitsa's plant life relied heavily on wet, semi-liquid ground for reproduction and nutrient uptake, effectively turning the entire planet into a gigantic bog.
Kaede chuckled to herself at a joke she thought of, that the Americans would handle this planet for them if only it was a little bit older and the massive peat deposits that undoubtedly existed here turned into coal and oil. It was a dumb joke; America, like every Earth nation, had abandoned hydrocarbon power during the Scorch of the 2040s, when the combination of the Fifth Industrial Revolution, the collapse of several Middle-Eastern and Arabian governments, and the simultaneous tapping-out of the Southwestern US and Caucasus oil fields drove gas prices to nearly $40 a gallon.
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"Hey!" someone called out. Kaede looked over at them to see a soldier pointing up at a passing aircraft of some sort. Judging by its slim, arrowhead-shaped body, as opposed to the angular bulk of a human shuttle, it wasn't friendly.
"Namura, take it down." Kaede ordered. Namura, a newer man, took a step forward, shouldering a missile launcher almost as long as he was. A few breathtaking seconds passed as it locked on. Then, "I have good tone! Firing!"
But Namura never got the chance to destroy the aircraft, because just as he pulled the trigger, the dropship emitted a sudden, blinding glare. Namura and Kaede both turned away by instinct, the missile going flying off into the distance and blowing itself up. Kaede's first thought was some kind of ultra-intense anti-projectile flare, but if that was the case, why did it only drop one? Holding her hand up to cover the source, she looked in its general direction as the dropship flew back into the skies from whence it came. Slowly, but surely, the light faded to a comfortable point, and Kaede could look at it directly.
Briefly, Kaede mistook it for some kind of angel or spirit. It looked human enough, nude, floating hundreds of meters in the air. Surrounding it was a ring of radiant gold energy, clustering around its head like a halo. However, when it turned its gaze on Kaede, she could feel its hatred, its eagerness to unmake. If this was an angel, then God wasn't as benevolent as the churches said.
A single heart-stopping moment passed. Then, a single gunshot sparked a volley.
Kaede was instantly all but deafened by a hail of gunfire directed at the creature to no effect. The entity simply floated there, the bullets passing through it as though it weren't real. When everyone came to their senses and stopped shooting, it looked Kaede straight in the eyes and changed its form.
It was like it had grabbed Kaede by the throat. She choked back a sob of fear. "Mom...?"
There she was, the worst woman in the world, right there in the flesh. Then, the being spoke, its words echoing in reverse, white noise coalescing into a coherent message.
A demonstration of my power. Surrender.
Whatever point this thing was trying to make, it wouldn't get the satisfaction. Her wits about her once again, she was far angrier than before. "Look, you polymorphic bastard! You do not get away with doing that, do you hear me!? I said, do you hear--"
You need further convincing. Here.
Suddenly, Kaede was alone in a field of bodies. Namura's head rolled towards her, glass-eyed, blood drip-drip-dripping from his nose, his eyes, his mouth. She could feel the psychic aftershocks still resonating through her mind, the sound of a mind on cooldown after inducing some thirty brain aneurysms at once.
Shell-shocked beyond belief, all Kaede could manage was a stuttering "Wha...?"
Remember me, Kai? I still own you.
It was her mother's voice. So many memories flooding back, so many bodies under her command, it was all too much to take. Kaede simply crumpled before the image of her mother dearest, darkness closing in around her not as a strangling specter, but as a protective barrier against the hurt of the world.
---
Another day, another disaster. That's how it seemed to be going. First, the attack on Novoarkhangelsk, then the walkout from CAST, and now a small invasion force deployed to Rasputitsa was destroyed down to a man. What little, fragmentary footage existed of the encounter was shaky and almost unusable, but universally depicted combat with a singular entity that appeared to manipulate the forces of reality itself.
The prospects of fighting a literal demigod weren't good, so President John Herald would have to sweeten the deal. He took a deep breath, collected himself, then went out for a second time in front of the United Nations.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to inform you regarding recent developments, namely the CAST walkout, as it is deemed by the media. Our intelligence suggests that, contrary to their stated intents of peace and coexistence, the People's Republic of China, along with its allies, has hostile intent regarding the Poslush Combine. I will take a quote from the esteemed Li Zheng in saying that, while their intent is reasonable, in the defense of their homeland, their decision to leave the Coalition is no less rash. In splitting the war effort, they have made the ongoing hostilities significantly harder not only for themselves, but for CAST and the Poslush Combine.
"Thus, in order to preempt any other attempts at factionalism or splintering within our alliance, I am reminding all current member nations of CAST that under Section Two of Article Five of the Coalition Treaty, all attempts to negotiate a separate peace, leave the alliance, or defect to the other side during times of war are considered as complicity with the enemy and will be punished as such.
"Moreover, the public needs to hear this, before subversives within our nations can spread their defeatist and collaborationist sentiments: this is no normal war. There are no disputed borders with the Poslushi that we know of. We believe they know nothing of our ideology or government, and we know nothing of theirs as well. However, we do have reason to believe that they are not going to stop when they have claimed the outerworlds. At best, ladies and gentlemen, this is a war of conquest, and they will not stop until all independent human civilization has been chained and broken beneath their boots. And, I dread to say it, at worst, this is a war of extermination, and they will not rest until every last man, woman, and child of this species in the universe has been killed by savage and brutal means.
"The United States of America, along with its allies, will do anything and everything that it can to not only defend the borders of itself and other CAST nations, but to make the Poslush Combine see reason and negotiate a peace in hopes of future trade, understanding, and prosperity. If such a goal proves impossible, then we resolve ourselves to persecute this war until there is no longer a Poslush government to resist us, and we can instill within them our values of peace, justice, and liberty. We will prove ourselves not to be broken under threat of force as easily as those who came before us, and we will show these invaders that mankind is not a force to be trifled with!"
President Herald spun on his heel and left the stage amid a round of applause. Rather pointedly, roughly half of the UN's member states were missing entirely, making the approval seem more than a little bit facetious. Herald waited for his bodyguards to catch up to him, then personally opened the doors to a crowd of reporters and journalists. Hopefully, he could charm them like the people inside pretended to be.