-Daniel’s P.O.V.-
This was an awful day.
I’m not usually one for any particular pessimism, but as a blob of lattice-work rose up in front of me from between scattered and shredded corpses, I couldn’t help but groan in annoyance.
‘That’ll be messy,’ I thought to myself even as the large bore scatter-gun contemptuously spat at the thing twice. The many faceted fungal pseudo-slime virtually exploded, spatters of acid covering my mech. The coating that had been sprayed over my machine kept the majority of the liquid from the wholesale acid-scarring that we’d dealt with in the early hours of our advance. There were, however, rivulets that still sizzled, scratch and claw marks, a few bite marks, having removed the outer coating.
Annoyed, I stepped back, “cleanup!”
As I called out, one of the support teams moved up. I knew this one by name after six hours of steadily pushing through what had become a veritable tropical jungle.
“They’re just so lovely, aren’t they?” stated Anton dryly.
“Like stepping in sewage barefoot.”
He laughed, spraying my armor quickly with pressurized water, and then gestured to another hose attached to his exo-suit, “we have more coating, wanna cover real quick?”
I considered it for a moment, “Yeah, may as well. I’ll be out here again in a few hours.”
It didn’t take long for him to finish the new coat, leaving my newly designed Main-Line shining like it’d been freshly waxed.
“Done. Oh, also, Fran said to pick up the pace if you can, our support lines are getting cramped.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” I said with exasperation, hands up and out helplessly.
He grinned, “She says that you’re falling behind Patrick.”
With a deepening groan, I turned, “alright, alright, I get it.” I shook my head, grumbling about how Fran seemed to know just how to poke my competitive spirit.
There were a grand total of four Main-Line mechs now, most of them modeled after my own, though I still had an edge with my Dreadnought class. It hadn’t come up often, but then again I did have the most powerful mech in the Legion. Even after I’d managed to get blueprints to the others, there were additions and modifications that the Obelisk allowed me to make on my own mech, specific blueprints that were allocated only to me.
“Alright, you guys ready?” I called over my shoulder, noting the scattered group of ‘ordinary’ mechs that formed a loose wedge as we pushed deeper into biotic territory.
“Think so. Just topped off ammo,” the woman ten meters to my right said, followed by similar acknowledgements from others.
And, as we had for the last six hours, we set ourselves on a path forward. However, I felt two additional power-cells come active on my machine at the barest flick of attention to them. I grinned as I felt the suit around me feel somehow lighter, and at once, more powerful. Whirring noise dialed back down to a more static level, but my movement was twice again as smooth as it had been. The qualitative difference as sub-systems that were previously unused came online was awe inspiring to me.
I moved forward, my mech powering through a tree when I hadn’t realized how far forward I would carry myself.
It crunched beneath my chassis, splintering, thundering noise that carried on as I kept forward. Around me, I could hear the other mech-users answer my advance with violent enthusiasm. We were responsible for tearing a more permanent road to Argedwall, the normal highway having been utterly overtaken by rampant growth. Power armored individuals advanced behind us, ready to shred anything that we missed. Or, more likely, the annoying cat-creatures that seemed to melt out of the remains of the wood-
A separate sounding crunch let me know that I’d found just said biotic, with my foot.
“Gross.” I said to myself, making a face at the silvery explosion from the creature. These things were really altogether too dedicated to being undetected.
I pushed forward harder, letting my mech run loose. The vulcan mounted on my right shoulder spun up, and I idly blazed a thousand rounds down range, the bullets tearing through the undergrowth with abandon, exploding, hot metal cutting down vegetation. And, by the fact that I was gaining more M.E., some biotics were also getting cut down.
With a shake of my head, I pushed forward, swinging a pair of bayonets in front of me that were otherwise the length of a short bus, though they seemed like short-swords to me. Whipping it through the greenery, I couldn’t help but feel the might of the mech around me, carving through three foot in diameter trees like twigs.
In front of me, four other biotics shambled out from behind trees. Their long, stick-lick frames made jerking, irregular movements towards me, reaching out with stabbing and raking appendages.
It was no longer the first time I’d seen them, so the horror factor of their unsettling movements and twisted, semi-woodlike apparences no longer had the same effect on me. I simply swept the blades through them, these particular biotics less capable of harming anyone with power armor and above. The fourth leapt into the air, and even before I could reach up to bat it back down, the man in power armor behind me simply let a bolt of steel fly. I noted the tree it was now stuck too, long rod of steel having punched straight through its midsection as it squirmed, only for a two smaller shafts to suddenly pierce it through its head.
I gave the man behind me a nod, and he returned it. He was a stoic sort of company, but attentive to the environment. He, also, had to deal with most of the cat-biotics since they usually ignored me in favor of easier prey. Thus far, nothing had gotten within five meters of him without his crossbow-like weapon simply punching a hole in its head.
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For another hour I stomped forward, noting the vegetation lessening, flowering plants beginning to overtake the vine and tangle-filled greenery. The Legion had been pushing hard for almost a day now, intent on reaching Argedwall and securing future transit.
Some forces had already been allocated to them, namely the Reaver’s that could easily come and go, delivering airstrikes for them.
Which I would have appreciated a few times ourselves, given that we’d run into a Carrier a few hours ago. Luckily, between our previous experiences and dramatically increased firepower, we were able to wear it down and tear it apart like a surge of ants over some misbegotten insect that got in our way.
Behind me I heard the twang of the crossbow go off twice, and noted two more dead ambushing cats. I shook my head, wondering not for the first time where all of these biotics were coming from.
“Advance One, go ahead and halt for now, the supply line will catch up and build another outpost here.” I heard someone say over the radio, and caught myself breathing a sigh of relief.
“Roger that, Build One, we’ll set up a perimeter and keep it warm for you.” I answered, gesturing to the others around me, noting that even the man behind me seemed to gratefully shift and stretch his now thoroughly tenderized limbs. Power armor or no, a hard march like this was still a bit rough on the body.
“Appreciate that, Advance One,” the man chuckled, and I turned my attention to the group around me.
“Alright, you know the routine, lets clear us some space.” The others called back, mechs churning the ground with their movements, carving through plants and moving the odd stone further away. Sufficiently large logs were stacked as semi-defensible walls, not that we couldn’t have blasted right through them ourselves while in a mech. Still, it would slow down basic biotics, and this would, ultimately, be more helpful for the less armored and armed support and logistics division that came in behind us.
Idly, I looked down, seeing once more the collected gunk, mud, and pulped plant mass that clung to my machine. With a shrug, I turned my attention away, looking back up to the tree line.
Movement registered on my sensors, a large form slipping through the underbrush. I frowned, noting that it was moving away. “Anybody just see that?”
The others paused, “see what?”
“Caught movement out there, something big.” I looked around slowly, “didn’t recognize it at a glance, though.”
“Did your mech record it?” The woman in another mech nearby asked.
I blinked, realizing I did have that feature. With a pause I brought it up, feeling the system respond to my thoughts.
Unfortunately, the image was nothing but a blur. I’d only just caught the tail end of its movement, having not lingered long enough for me to really catch a good look at it.
“No luck, just a blur. Seems… bipedal, at least.” I said, turning to her.
She shrugged, “well, if it ain’t coming to us, then I say we ignore it for now.”
“We have to wait for the support team anyways.” The man in power armor next to me said, stepping up onto a pile of logs that I’d been setting.
He paused, and immediately fell backwards, only for a long lashing tendril to strike the air he’d just been standing at with a loud crack.
Unhesitantly I turned, seeing a shambling pile of familiar lattice-like flesh rearing up. It was different, however, in the fact that there were several tendrils moving out from portions of its body. Honestly, these things creeped me out in the best of times, but this one was a cut above what I’d seen already. Several more lashes shot forward, frills mounted at the end of them impacting my machine before I could evade.
‘Shit, you’re a fast one.’ I grinned, ‘but are you durable?’
I brought up my shotgun, my vulcan spun up, the cannon mounted on the opposite shoulder clacked a shell into place, the hum of the railgun on my left arm came to life. A half dozen other weapon systems remained inactive.
It turned out I’d already had overkill.
The shotgun tore away the top fourth of the creature, the vulcan annihilated the other quarter. My cannon mulched the body in a percussive explosion and shredded the ground around it. The railgun shot, earth-shaking as it was, did little more than burrow several meters through solid earth in front of me.
It wasn’t a true railgun, really, but I doubted that was technology we could manage anytime soon. Already our R&D department was hitting bottlenecks in what could be done without investing heavily in more facilities. But, the point was for us to learn how to make this stuff on our own, limiting Obelisk involvement and Matter Energy consumption.
Still, given what I just witnessed, I had to say they were still doing good work.
“That was a new one,” the man rose, brushing off dust, “Gen 2, you think?”
“Maybe, if it was, it wasn’t too bad.”
“Uh… your armor.” He gestured to where I’d been struck, and I looked down, seeing a frill embedded there. With a frown, I watched as it began to grow at a visible pace. Still too slowly to be a problem, but I did note the acidic secretions it put off, still flowing off of the coating harmlessly. I flicked it off, the thing falling away and landing on the ground where it pulsed and greedily ate the material around it.
“Well, that’s creepy.” I muttered, watching it grow to the size of a regular fungaloid biotic before it stopped growing. At that point, it turned back to me, intent on throwing itself into me.
They were, as I said before, not exactly the most threatening thing around, though.
I blasted it with a shotgun before I turned and refocused on the mass of flesh from the other misshapen lump. It twitched, and I found myself sighing with annoyance.
“Legion, be advised, I have updated information on the Lattice-Fungus biotic. Strongly suggest you burn the remains, it looks like some of them can regenerate.” I pulsed out my message to the others, chaining through the lot of them.
That was something that hadn’t been relayed to us by Argedwall. Was it something they hadn’t noticed? Maybe, though they did say that as a standard they burned all biotics that didn’t disintegrate. We didn’t know, after all, if there were any possible bacterial infections that could theoretically be spread by them.
And, hopefully, a bacteria type biotic didn’t exist. Just the concept didn’t do wonders for me.
“Alright, well, I guess we’re done for the day. Tomorrow we’ll probably be making it to Argedwall at least.” I looked to the others, seeing them setting up similar defensive arrangements as support crew trickled in, setting up the rest of the way.
Fran would still be busy for a few hours yet, just another thing to complain about today.
Although, all considered, I’d just as well deal with biotics instead of people. At least I could punch a biotic if I didn’t like them.
I snorted at the thought, and then went back to patrolling and cleaning up. Soon, we’d get to see what Argedwall would be like. With any luck, maybe they’d be pretty decent at dealing with biotics. But, considering how many were out here, I had a sinking suspicion that they weren’t actually very good at it. Unless there were just that many of them out here, but that’d be preposterous.