-Matthew Reaper P.O.V.-
I kept my awareness as open as possible throughout the city to keep tabs on the ongoing siege. Nothing had happened that the team leaders and our defenses couldn’t handle, a welcome sign for the future. Given that I hadn’t had the slightest need to approach the offensive lines, I’d returned to my Headquarters where the rest of our logistical support personnel were. For the most part, everyone was able to operate things remotely, and some smaller hubs throughout the city helped to coordinate the squads on the ground, or support the various divisions of Legionnaires with strategic data.
Still, I wasn’t especially concerned at this time. The Reavers themselves hadn’t contacted back about the strange reading on radar as of yet, but they should have been making contact at any moment.
‘Not that I can help with that at all from here,’ I clicked my tongue at that, knowing that our missile systems and long range artillery would be the only realistic options to intervene.
Though, I did briefly entertain the idea of using the orbital weapons, but that would be an option of extreme destruction, not something to use if we could help it. The sheer collateral damage of using a mass driver was not something I could justify using so close to New Damond.
A communication came in then, dividing my attention further. I opened it up and couldn’t help but smile at who was reaching out.
“Alice, Richard,” I greeted, “what can I help you with?”
The two of them were fully outfitted in their gear, now updated and modified to be fully enclosed power armors, albeit both of a lighter variety. Most people had updated to such a baseline, though with Alice and Richard, their personal war-suits bore their signature styles and armaments. Alice still utilized a bow, but had also come to utilize automated weapons that stuck out from behind her, often of a penetrative variety. The opposite was true of Richard, whose suit had bulked up somewhat and was now a walking chemical factory, capable of destroying wide swaths of territory with chem throwers and gaseous attacks.
Knowing that we were currently under wartime, Richard cut straight to the point with an urgency in his voice, “Half of our biotics in Sunvilla just peeled off and headed in your direction.”
I frowned at that, “that… but why?”
The pair exchanged helpless glances. It wasn’t that we were asking why the biotics were coming here, but rather why they bothered. They were weaker by far than the Centaur, and even as far as meatshields would go, they would hardly be able to absorb any of our considerable firepower.
“Well, at least that helps us.” Alice noted thoughtfully, “We just wanted to let you know just in case something came up.”
I hummed aloud, briefly reaching out my senses to other locations. Argedwall, Gilramore, and Basilisk’s territory each had relays that I could utilize to tap into their own surveillance equipment.
Unable to keep from frowning at what I saw, I commented, “Looks like we’ll have more company then.”
Each location, save for about halfway up in Basilisk’s territory, suddenly experienced half of their swarms leaving at a sprint. I couldn’t fathom what the point would be, considering that extra bodies wasn’t the answer to breaking through our defenses. It would take them all hours to get here in significant numbers. No small part of me considered this a hidden boon for our allies; such a reduction would undoubtedly dramatically reduce the risk of being overrun no matter their levels of preparation, and our lines would hold against these additional types just as well.
“Thanks for the heads up.” I nodded to them, “I appreci-” Just as I was about to continue, the Reaver’s made contact with their target. I jolted in my seat as I saw the living fortress ahead of the Reaver squadron, looking more alien than almost any creature I’d seen so far.
“Gotta go.” I abruptly cut the transmission, putting my full focus on the massive organism. Dozens of Reavers struck, probing defenses and trying to slow down the biotic. Distantly, I could feel the Obelisks attempting to analyze this particular creature, recording it’s information in a distant database and cross checking it with others that had been encountered.
A cold feeling seemed to run down my neck at the sight of the thing though, my instincts telling me that this wasn’t something I wanted anywhere near the city. Almost automatically, I extended my awareness through the Reaper net, tapping into defenses that had been as of yet inactive. Layers of energy barriers sprang up in the interior layers of the city, multiples concentrated around the underground bunkers that were responsible for housing Legion families and other noncombatants during emergencies. These barriers consumed ludicrous amounts of power, but we could keep them going for around a week straight at full power.
Full power, of course, being exactly what I pushed them to with utmost urgency. At the same time, several buildings powered up emergency robots, though only to standby. If something happened, they’d be able to automatically care for the areas around them, a sort of night-instantaneous response system in the entire city.
I split my awareness again and again, feeling cybernetic limbs reach to various systems all around. Some buildings, the lab, revealed large metallic plates that shielded them. Other buildings, like the Academy, outright sank into the ground with shuddering groans of the earth. This process had long been completed in the outer areas of the city, but we wanted to keep these locations easily accessible for personnel until it was necessary to shelter.
Luckily, most were unmanned now, such as the academy. HQ, though, was not unmanned. However, I could feel the veritable rivers of nanomachines and metal plates quickly fortifying the outsides of the building. We would be safe from most attacks at range, which was the only thing that I was worried about.
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‘Alright, that should be enough.’ I let out a relieved breath as the final of the defenses settled. Energy barriers and physical shells protected every vital structure around us, layered to protect people as well as possible. External cameras still fed me the view of the outside world, given that the entire building was swallowed in a pure black shell. Additional lights flicked on, screens on the walls unnecessarily showing me the views I could already see in my own mind.
I brought my attention back to the Reavers fully, watching as colorful ichor, utterly unlike the normal silver that a biotic would bleed, flowed from the immense creature. I frowned at that, uncertain at what that might mean for the biology of the creature.
Granted, Gen 4’s appeared to be like that. They were each different, strange in the way that they didn’t behave like an ordinary biotic would. No longer merely analogous of life, each one had flesh and blood unlike the twisted mockeries of other, lesser Tiers.
Which made the sense of wariness I had make perfect sense. Gen 4’s were forces of nature, capable of widespread destruction that could reshape entire continents in their image. South America came to mind, devastated as it still was.
It was at that moment that the biotics movements changed. I could see through the many different eyes of the Reavers what happened, the rapid precipitation of heat within the living fortress's body.
Even so, I wasn’t prepared for what happened in the next moments.
A stalk with the black spherical object stretched out of the main body beneath it, several tens of meters in diameter. In a bright flash, it struck, and in the next second I no longer paid any attention to what was happening over the ocean.
Every sensor in the city screamed in my mind, shield after shield collapsing almost instantly after absorbing an immense amount of destruction. Within cyberspace, I tried to buy time to think and see what was happening, but the beam weapon moved at the speed of light. No matter how much I could slow my perception of time it wouldn’t be enough.
Pain surged through my mind as cyber connections vanished instantly, recoiling with snapping feedback all across the city. The cameras outside blacked out, unable to adjust to the sudden brightness within the city. A titanic explosion erupted, shattering something not far from HQ. The shockwave crashed into the barriers of the building, heat immediately surging from the outer layers. Emergency barriers spawned one after the other, formed directly from the nanomachines as local life-saving protocols went into effect. They swept over people, cocooning them even as explosively expanding foam flooded the floors around them.
The same was true of me, and for a rare moment I felt terror grip my heart. All of this happened in the span of milliseconds, far too quick for anyone that wasn’t myself or an artificial sentience to comprehend what happened.
Even so, I wasn’t sure I even understood.
What I was aware of was the fact that the external barriers over the windows superheated and a few critical gaps appeared at the same time. The nanomachines surged over these gaps, but it wouldn’t have mattered for something of flesh and blood.
Fire bloomed throughout the floors, air combusting instantly around nanomachine cocoons as the blast of heat raked anything not nailed down through open space with the force of a hurricane. I grit my teeth, imagining the fire-retardant foam being sucked out of the building and being replaced as quickly as the machines in the building could manage. Even throughout this, I felt the temperature in the center of the city climb, hot enough to melt steel a hundred meters away from the blast site. I could feel shields come back online, weaker, but managing to contain the inferno to the center of the city.
That, unfortunately, also included Reaper HQ.
‘Everyone in here is going to die at this rate.’ I felt my stomach drop. Every cocoon was heating up, rapidly, in spite of the nanomachines doing their best to rotate their numbers. In minutes they would bake alive, save for those in the center of the building.
With that thought in mind, I overrode the basic emergency protocols. The nanomachines moved with my will, following my new programming unhesitantly as they began to quickly move people through the burning floors towards the center of the building. Every building was designed with a solid column in the center, rooms built around them. I was near one such room at the top of the building, but no one worked in these rooms commonly. They were, effectively, supreme panic rooms for personnel to use in the event of a disaster or attack.
This certainly qualified as both.
The move took only thirty seconds, the nanomachines not slowed by any debris - most had been swept through the growing gaps in the armor of the building when it was breached, pulled by suction. The fire had already begun to die down in the absence of oxygen to burn, and the metal shell of the building was already nearly sealed once more.
That biotic needed to die. The stores of nanomachines were nowhere near enough to sustain this kind of damage twice. With a shake of my head, I dragged my attention back to the last of the pods as they moved directly through what had seemed to be solid metal walls that rippled like liquid at their touch, permitting them and their passengers entry. The nanomachines themselves did not cross the barrier, some of which were glowing cherry red from the heat. Instead, they disgorged their inhabitant just past the surface of the thick walls, letting them stagger forward with their momentum. It wasn’t graceful, but there wasn’t time for anything less.
Already, many people bore severe burns on their arms and legs from the nanomachines, and collective moans of pain and shouts were heard. The process had taken only a minute from start to finish, hardly enough for most people to process without panicking.
“Everyone, remain calm,” I spoke through the local network in the building, “New Damond has suffered an attack from a Gen 4 biotic, however the damage is being handled.”
I knew that the content of my words mattered less than just hearing a calm voice amidst the turmoil. A scant few had remained calm themselves, and they quickly became pillars that others could steady themselves around. Querax, a Reaper like myself, had been on a lower level, and already he was standing straight, not looking at any particular location as I spoke.
Others, like Uthakka and Princess Arianna had ended up together on one of the higher floors. Uthakka seemed mostly unharmed, however Arianna bore burns along the length of her sinuous lower body. The nanomachines had sheltered her as best as they could, but she had much too much surface area to easily cover. Still, she barely grit her teeth as she stood up straight, already understanding the situation enough to know that panicking would get everyone nowhere.
“The emergency disaster system is already beginning to adjust, and we’ll get everyone evacuated as soon as possible. At the center of the room you’ll notice an elevator that will take you to an underground escape route where you’ll move to the nearest auxiliary structure for medical attention. After that, you’ll be directed where to go. Remain calm and wait for your turn to exit in an orderly fashion, and look to your local leadership for direction.” I spoke quickly but directly, trying to impart a stern but steadying sensation to those in this building.
Even as I did so, I couldn’t help but quiver at the sight outside of the building. The shield around the interior layer of the city was letting heat escape through the top, which rose continuously in a massive plume of smoke. Shimmering air vented even farther afield, and several city blocks were on fire. We were fortunate that the second and third layers of the inner city weren’t as badly damaged, though the second layer was almost entirely on fire. The third had been sparsely damaged, but already most of the flames were put out.
Torrential amounts of fire retardants and emergency robots worked in the second ring, but it was clear that the buildings closest to the center of the city were lost. Even the HQ would have to be rebuilt, the structural integrity of the building only held up by the nanomachines that bound the still superheated concrete and infrastructure together. The lab wasn’t as devastated as this building was, but I could tell that huge amounts of physical experiments would be ruined. If it wasn’t for the fact that the project had taken place underground, the psionic project would have been destroyed, along with all of the people who could have made it happen again.
I swallowed hard at that, but only when I turned my attention over the city again did I feel that I was missing something even more vital.
‘The Academy is secure, HQ is basically devastated, but no deaths. The Lab is, miraculously, functional enough to continue…’ deep in thought, I turned my gaze to the origin point of the destruction.
What was the biotic aiming at? The lab? No, if it were the case, it had most certainly missed. Even if it were a miss, the attack was so perfectly centered in the core of the city that I couldn’t accept that the attack was an accident.
So, what was it aiming for?
The answer left me feeling hollow.
A veritable lake of molten slag that was hot enough not merely to melt steel, but evaporate it sat in the middle of the city. An object that had been reinforced to absurd levels, said to unironically be able to withstand anything short of an act of god to destroy, was no more.
The Obelisk was gone.