Primed.
All around me are Swarm mounds getting smaller as the prospect of something new and interesting warrants investigation. The new smell of space forged metal, mixing with drying blood and excrement. I run yes, the rush of it all demands movement, demands me to fly forward the best I can. But where? Downwind? An entire sea of bugs will soon wash over me, and the only thing I’m doing is trying to outpace the rushing tide!
And rush they do! The bugs swim around the bonfire I leave behind, not out of intelligence but by sheer number as the log jam of burning bodies creates a fork in the stream. The ones that take the path of least resistance get rewarded with a quick burst of napalm. And while normal living creatures would stop and flail in agony, these monsters in chitinous flesh keep coming even as the heat boils them alive.
It’s unnerving how much they don’t care!
A bug approaches low from the corner of my eye, so I lunge at him, smashing it under the forward momentum of my Goliath armor. Rolling to my feet in an instant I burst down, one bug, three bugs, twelve bugs in time to turn around and roast two dozen more. But that’s about it, I’m struggling against the inevitable. The explosions attract more bugs, the corpses I make attract more bugs, I attract more bugs!
I have to keep running!
But am I in hell? The fires spread across this barren valley, black hills like mountains on every side, and moving disjointed creatures move in the smoke. Some after me, some… each other? Brother, sister, living, dead, it makes no difference; eat, attack, lunge, gorge! Fill their stomachs until their wings are forced to unfold, and get driven into by another. Even as I run, I watch one blind side another, their mandibles face deep into the loser's underbelly. The taste of its brother's meat is so intoxicating that it bobs its head as it chews and rips its way inside. But even being vored doesn’t stop the loser from fighting back; smashing his assailant's head three times with its claw and cracking its armored back… but it makes no difference.
Because this is natural selection in its crudest form. The ones I cut with the sword become food to his brother, the ones I burn with the torch are feasted on by his sister. I’m chest high in death and goo, the wanderers, the curious come at me by the hundreds and soon thousands.
No escape.
I duck under the leap of a swarmling, cutting it in half as I twist away from his raining organs. I recognize hearts in the mix of flying blood and gore (funny what you notice in crisis situations), before bashing the nozzle of my II into the gaping maw of a fast approaching swarmling.
That worked?
As it tugs at the metal, I shove the barrel deeper into its mouth and swing the creature into his brothers, who take no notice of him as he is quickly trampled under the weight of the armored sea. And another swarmling I just cut in half gets beset on by his brothers as it struggles to regain some sort of balance. And the battle moves as I move, forward and away, but never far enough.
I can blame being tired, or that each step feels more like walking in muck instead of solid ground. Looking down the very dirt is soppy with the lickerish they call blood. It sizzles and pops with each release of napalm. For a second, there is a small scientific part of me that notices how easy their blood boils and wonders why they evolved that. Maybe the higher boiling point enables the liquid to be more permeable, allowing the circulatory system to move nutrients throughout the body with greater ease.
Well that is a thought, to distract me from one cockroach rearing to tear into my armor. Something I’m sure he can’t do… but going by the minor structure integrity notices so far-
I dodge the first swing with a step back, before twisting around to let the swarmling behind me lunge at my attacker. I watch them tackle and fight each other before lighting the dueling pair on fire. Even in their death throes, they managed to tear off three limbs, snap off one mandible, and give each other multiple puncture wounds.
“Toasty.”
I hazard a look ahead and realize why the swarm lives up to their name. I spent two cartridges, I was given five…
“Axe-Hand” the name of a Samson I’ve gotten to know since my 10 years of being assigned to the 122nd “why do you insist on taking an axe to a gunfight?” I remember asking him.
He looks at me and shrugs, “Sir you give me a gun that doesn’t run out of bullets, and I’ll leave my axe at home.”
I rip a female swarmling from head to egg-sack, spilling eggs large enough to hatch, out into the ground. Some of them crack on impact while others simply bounce. I take a moment to step on one, taking note of how hard they become when exposed to fresh air. The Sword of David, or SoW, sizzles with the blood of the slain. I drip sweat despite the suits best efforts to keep me cool. My vision takes a lapse as my consciousness slips for a precious moment. I feel the sudden weight of a swarmling before shrugging it off, then another swarmling, which I knock aside. And for a second, I stumble forward feeling dehydrated for the first time in my life.
Too much!
The smell alone; of the living, the dead, and the burning, it’s too much! Oh mercy, if anything was to kill me right now it would have to be whatever manages to seep through the air filter. The smell is poignant even to my soul. Of all the creatures on God’s green Earth, the cockroach is the one insect that elicits the most hatred. And now I see why as I smash one with a back hand swipe of my sword hand. It stumbles without a head but turns toward me despite having no eyes to see and claws with every limb. I shove the sword inside its mid section and let the blade rip out its side, effectively folding the creature’s carcass upon itself. I take another backhanded swipe as something approaches from behind, it’s cleaved in two with no effort, I choke on bile as its inwards spill mere inches from my face.
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But the carnage doesn’t stop and neither will I. I let a cartridge of napalm go before doing an odd one handed reload procedure that required me to hook the II between my shoulder blade and elbow, swipe a fresh cartridge and jam it in when I let the Industrial Incinerator fall. How I manage to do that while on the run I have no idea, but I burst down a group of swarmlings before they approach within 50 meters of me and twist sideways to torch a flanking party without missing a beat.
I dive and roll to send a few bugs sailing over me, experience with humanoids must have taught them to aim for the chest. Or to be more exact “experience” is more like the genetic memory of the ones that survived long enough to breed. I wonder what this experience will teach them? Probably the fear of fire. I press and swing the flamethrower into the mob, blood and liquefied guts shortly follow. I take a step and meet a swarmling, I cut it down, avoiding its claws as it twitches, and nearly step into the fury of another bug before I incinerate it out of frustration.
“Too many!” and I’m exhausting my supply of napalm. Five cartridges for an entire nest and I’m lucky they forgot to remove the Sword of David, as the standard kit would have included at least a Goliath Slayer and an AR Peacemaker.
“Think!” I look around me, but all I see is death, and death eating death, and raping death, and white little marbles promising future death. This is what I wanted, the hell that I deserved. And past this? Past this fire of my own making and the creatures inside of it, is a world without sleep. Even now, if I dare close my eyes, all I see is soulless fractured eyes staring at me in the dark, and a mouth gaping and pitiless. Bodies crowded on top of each other, powered by organic machinery that crocks and whines, and makes shck,shck, sounds as it moves. I’ll never sleep again.
But here stands me, the reaper man! Armed with lance and fire, surrounded by smoke and abominations, baked in the blood of the profane. Letting the smell dry and drip down my naval cavity, allowing me to taste a hell that I’ve very much earned.
“Enough!” Is what I want to say, the snap out of this defeated feeling. Even as I slash, and lash out, even as my adrenaline spikes until my heart beats so fast I can feel it about to explode! Even as I roar, as the monsters that roar back in challenge, I feel myself let go, and be my namesake. Embody the moniker of murderer in this haze of black and yellows, reds and oranges, chiton and metal. Yes, no point in running, just stay. Fight. They won’t flee, because they are demons, and I was sent down to destroy them.
“SO COME!” This I shout, as they collapse on me from all sides. Mandibles click and chip at steel, and both my arms are suddenly held back by the sheer force of the tide. The acrid smoke blocking the full extent of the wave until it was in my face. The Goliath alarms in protest, system checks blur remind me that integrity is good but, servo strength waning. Waning because of the sudden opposing weight from oversized insects.
I’m going to die if I’m buried again.
Well no shit.
I turn with the tide instead of against it, and use the sudden release of pressure to power a strike to the closest bugger head with an elbow. The crunch of chiton against space forged steel restored sanity, and I use that time to point the Incinerator between my legs and squeeze.
Bad idea.
The Goliath systems scream in protest; heat index, system cooling, and for a split second I panic as the thought of igniting the napalm cartridges suddenly dawns on me. But no, the worst is the sound of rage from the bugs, the swarm, cries out in fury, before the most deafening explosion rocks me and nearly sends me flat on the ground, as the internal sound system warns me of the long-term risk of hearing loss.
Fuck.
The Goliath whines as I go from one knee to upright. The fire of a thousand corpses around me, sweat now blinding me more than the smoke and haze. I cough, and move. Stepping forward, gingerly but surely. I reload a third cartridge, and I ready my sword for an attack I hope doesn’t come. The pop of exoskeletons surround me, and the screeches of challenges and counter challenges makes me shudder. I shudder because I want to live. And it's my own failing that nearly cost me everything. I am war machine… for whatever thats worth. I’ve seen it before. What happened when we first tried to exterminate a Swarms nest… a battalion of Samsons eaten alive, and a DAVID being pulled from a broken Goliath-
I catch a shallow breath in time driving my elbow into the mid-section of another bug, knocking it off balance, before hammering the same fist into the face of a diving swarmling; sending it sprawling.
Focus.
I bash my head into another swarmling just as it rears up to claw at me, forcing its body to cave inward.
I’m two tons of metal!
The SoW rips through three swarmlings in one swift horizontal slash that parts mid sections, heads and legs from the body. I twist and high step to avoid being weighed down by the bugs. I wade through them with fire, and check my six with blade in hand. The barely living that I leave behind crawl desperately to their next meal before being eaten by the healthy and hungry.
Watching the cannibalism unfold, a thought occurs to me; to the Swarm, I must be another swarmling to them…
And then the thought goes away with one thrust of my SoW. The bug is skewered from the side, I lift and toss him as he screeches, his brood devours him before he meets the ground. I have to keep moving, but hell seems to have no exit. The nest is stupidly large, the mounds seem to go on and on for miles. God help me I’m going to die here.
And then I let out a jet stream of napalm, making sure to cover a wide area as the bugs come dangerously close to surrounding me before letting go of the trigger at the worst possible second. Before I can raise a hand a swarmling comes and nearly tears a gash across my overworked helm with a quick swipe of his front claws. I twist my head instinctively as the array of visual equipment blare warnings from the surprise amount of damage.Cracks impair my vision for a second as I stumble in wake of the hit. I flail the II frantically to ward off the approaching swarm while my sword hand zims and zips through empty air. I get my bearings in a breath before a swarmling latches itself onto my back. I twist and turn violent in the hopes of shaking it off, but its legs are wrapped tightly around me in full embrace.
In rage, I break three legs to no effect. It pecks and rams its head against my helmet in a vain attempt to find an opening. But that’s not entirely true; there’s a self release button around the back of the neck….
Without a second thought I leap and twist, landing on my back in a big splash as I skid. With a roll, I push myself up to my feet, thanking whatever divine providence saw fit to allow me to get up unmolested, before coming face to face with a swarming moving mouth-parts. Two pairs of mandibles click to my helm as it attempts to pull me down.
“Oh look we're kissing!” I land an uppercut with my left hand that vaults it so fast into the air that it forgets to take its mandibles with it.
Fuck this is starting to hurt.
The superman serum effects are beginning to wear off and the Goliath armor notes my decreasing, well everything, as the the sound of more bugs alerts the system.
God damn it.
I turn to see a mounds worth of swarmlings head toward me, maybe more than that as the Goliath targeting system starts to count.
“A last stand now will be kinda pathetic.”
The look around, every mound is displacing, more swarmlings find me more interesting than ever before. But, no-
There's a ridge! A god damn ridge! How did I miss that? I must have noticed it when I was falling, but just forgot. Or maybe I didn’t.
Well either way. Run!