We fought for over an hour, but the enemies just kept coming. Over ten thousand Grilk lay dead outside the city walls, only a hundred or so even managing to touch the wall before dying, but it seemed that the longer we fought, the more of them that were sent to fight us.
Lorn Tarn had blown through most of his mana with flashy area of effect spells in the beginning, burning hundreds to death in seconds with fireballs, shredding them with wind blades, or burning out their nervous systems by blanketing an area in lightning. It was an impressive display, but despite personally killing over three thousand Grilk and over a thousand of their pets, he was running out of mana. For the last ten minutes he had been using single target or the occasional small area spells to deal with small groups of less than ten.
The rest of our forces were doing no better. Half of the humans on the wall were dead. The mages were down to throwing low power mana bullets at individuals as their bodies slowly regenerated nanites or drew in nanites from the environment. The soldiers had used up all of their Earth ammunition and had all switched to using their rail pistols. I saw several mercenaries with Market screens open as they tried to figure out which weapon and ammunition combination they could afford. Lord Tarn’s forces had thrown out their bows and traditional weapons when they ran out of ammunition and bought rail pistols, seeing how good they were performing in battle and how cheap they were to operate, even though they’d never used a gun before.
‘Vera, how many enemies are left?’ I asked. Surely they were running low.
‘Fort Solinan’s sensors show two thousand three hundred non sapients, twenty seven thousand Grilk, thirteen thousand Solin, one hundred and seventy Jotun and an Alf on the opposing side.’
‘What’s a Solin?’ I asked. I ignored the fact that an Alf had joined the enemy against us. They may have been a slave or a willing participant. And every race had its criminal element.
A small green humanoid, 1.25 to 1.5 meters tall appeared in the edge of my vision, shifting through the various individual forms it might take. It had green or grey skin, fangs, pointed ears, proportionally huge head, and a chiseled physique. All were nude, and all of them carried a melee weapon of some form, from knives to swords to hatchets to axes, and a few clubs and spikes. I sent the information to Olivia, including their species name and numbers as I had Vera listen into the call in case Olivia had questions.
‘Goblins?’ she asked.
‘Pretty much.’ I responded.
‘Maybe I’ve seen too much anime, but they aren’t going to...you know, if they catch any of the women in the fort?’
‘They reproduce asexually, and therefore have no sexual predilections of any kind.’ responded Vera, catching the subtext. ‘Though they may break all of your bones and flay you alive until your heart gives out from the pain and stress.’
‘That almost sounds worse.’
‘Well, they worship an evil god named Abaddon, who takes pleasure in the pain and suffering of others, even non sapients. They work as low cost mercenaries for anyone willing to hire them, even criminal organizations, in order to cover basic living expenses while engaging in the torture of their enemies that they see as an act of worship.’
‘The Demon of Wrath, Abaddon? Why do they have to be Demon worshipers?’
‘Freedom of Religion for sapient beings is a fundamental tenant of the rules of the System’s interaction with sapient beings.’
‘I think that was a rhetorical question, Vera.’ I said.
Both I and Olivia fired on the incoming enemies without thinking, killing another dozen enemies. At this point the battle was pretty much a twisted, endless version of Galaga.
‘So, know any weaknesses of theirs we can exploit?’ Olivia asked Vera.
‘Not really. They don’t wear any armor, so you don’t need to use very powerful weapons, but other than that you should avoid them. In terms of your Paradigm, even the weakest of them have a strength in the thirties.’
‘How did they get so strong at that size?’ I asked. Most of my soldiers didn’t even have a strength in that range.
‘Their bodies naturally produce Niirik. In fact, they were the original source of the drug, as the System learned about niirik when the System was introduced to their homeworld.’
‘I think I’ll stick to the synthetic stuff, instead of harvesting it from the corpses of those we kill.’
‘A common moral decision.’
‘Still, doesn’t sound like a good way to win a war.’ Olivia added. ‘Surely the GCA could find better mercs.’
‘It isn’t about winning the war. It’s about demoralizing the enemy so that they surrender. Right now, the GCA wants the human race to surrender so that they can be enslaved. Humanity, however, has so far presented a near universal will to fight back. So they hired Solin to break that will.’
I continued firing on the enemy for the next ten minutes before my arm was getting sore from holding it up to aim. Seeing that the enemy wasn’t getting any closer to the wall, and that the Solin wouldn’t be in range for another ten minutes, I sat down to take a break. I brought up my market screen and shipped in a ham sandwich and some french fries from the free restaurant in town and started eating.
“You’re going to eat now?” Asked Lord Tarn, standing beside me, continuing his fire on the enemy.
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“Thirteen thousand Solin will be here in ten minutes. I wanted to be well rested when they get here.”
“That many?” he asked, then stopped firing and sat down beside me, laying down his mostly empty staff. “Mind if I try some of that fried root vegetable?”
“Sure, have as much as you want.” I handed him the basket of fires. “In fact, try some of this.” I bought a bottle of ketchup along with another basket of fries and handed him the ketchup.
After trying it he nodded. “These aren’t that bad, especially with this sauce. While they are properly salted, they are a bit under-cooked and greasy for my taste, but I can see why you bought them.”
“They’re called french fries. Several of the restaurants in my town make them, and you can order them from there if you are willing to pay the energy to teleport them in.”
“I may need to try that.” He dipped another fry in ketchup and put it in his mouth.
After I finished eating I stretched. “Well, they’ll be here soon. Good luck.”
Tarn nodded, setting down his mostly eaten basket of fries. “You too.” He picked up his staff and started firing again.
Less than a minute later, the Grilk all but stopped coming as thousands of Goblins and over one hundred Jotun sprinted at the walls. I opened automatic fire on them, and Tarn started firing medium radius area effect spells again. They came at us faster than they could be mowed down. Soon they were trying to climb the walls. The electric wires that the fort had wrapped around the outside as a deterrent for wild animals were turned on at maximum power, and, although it killed hundreds of invaders, every one that grabbed a wire managed to damage the grid somewhat.
Soon, gaps appeared in the wire mesh and they started climbing without impediment, often times using their weapons to overcome the silicon grease that had been smeared near the top of the wall. It only took a few minutes before they reached the top and, though the soldiers tried to shoot any that made it over, there were soon too many topping the wall to stop all of them.
We started hearing the screams of our people as limbs were lost and bowels were split open. The Solin all had looks of glee on their faces as they used their clubs to cave in the skulls of anyone they could catch, civilian or combatant. Even the civilians joined in on the combat at that point, though their weapons tended to be inferior to what we had. They only managed to kill an equal number of Solin compared to those the Solin killed.
“I’m going to go clean out the town!” I shouted at Tarn and he nodded as I jumped off the wall. I ran at a group of Solin that were removing the fingers of one of the Alf women in town. Now I understood why they had no children here.
I fired a round into the heads of each of them and they collapsed. I didn’t have any medical abilities to treat the wounds of others, and though I was sure I could make one, I didn’t have the time. I ignored the woman who was wrapping a cloth around her hand to stop the bleeding and picked up a sword one of the goblins were carrying, as melee weapons couldn’t really be locked to a user, and kept running. I vaulted debris and slid under wagons as more Solin took shots to their heads, ending their rampage.
That’s when I heard a crash, and saw a Jotun fall through the wall. Several others were shoulder checking the wall elsewhere, and soon the Solin and what Grilk were left were flooding through the holes the Jotun had made. The few fighters we had left still fought, but one by one they started going down. As I fired into the nearest opening, hoping to stop the enemies pouring in, I saw Tarn, who was surrounded and on the ground, launch a wave of earthen spikes around himself, spearing the enemy. Before he could prepare another spell, though, a Jotun ran up and kicked him like a football, driving him backwards by five meters into the outer wall. He looked like he had several broken bones, and I thought the enemy was about to finish him off before he disappeared. Of course he had prepared an emergency teleport. He probably had a safe room somewhere that was stocked with food, water, and medical supplies. That’s why I built Sanctuary after all, though I built it for my non-combatant people too.
As the sounds of screaming filled the air from all of the humans and Alf that had been left alive long enough to be tortured, I saw Di firing her rail pistol at a group of Solin. Several of them were hit, but only a few of them were killed or knocked unconscious as they stalked towards her. She was a terrible shot, after all. I would need to take her to the shooting range when this was over.
I ran at the group, firing wildly as I went. I didn’t care where I hit them as long as I didn’t hit Di. Several of them fell to the ground screaming, but they seemed to look happy because of it. Were they masochists or was this a religious thing? Either way I didn’t care as I stepped on their throats to end their cries of pleasure.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes, I…behind you.” I looked behind me to see three more Solin pop up from behind one of the trucks the mercs had parked in the fort. I fired on them, then all of the ones that replaced them, then the ones that replaced those. Di also fired, and I could tell her aim was getting better, but there were just too many enemies. I doubted that more than a hundred living humans or Alf still remained in the area, even if you counted the traitor on their side.
“Fuckin’ Terrorist piece of shit!” I heard Paul yell from nearby. He was currently using a bloody battle axe from one of the downed Solin to carve up any enemies that got near him. After carving up more than a hundred Solin, a Jotun ran at him and he charged.
‘Of course they have to be terrorists,’ I thought. ‘The human race hadn’t had enough of that twisted ideology already and now that we had started to come together regardless of religion or politics, the aliens brought more with them.’ I could only think of one time Terrorism had been used for good, and even that was debatable and a religious fable, not verified history. Though it did give me an idea. “Fine, you want terrorism, I’ll give you terrorism.”
As I fired on any enemies I saw, somehow keeping them at bay, I started a new program. It was simple. I loaded the biometric data for identifying Alfs and Humans into the program, then told it that if the nanites contacted an animal cell that wasn’t one of those, it should kill it, then continue looking for more cells. I considered naming the program “Cloud of Death” like it was some RPG spell, but given my inspiration, I had a better idea. “Save program as ‘Angel of Death’.”
“Yes, save the program.”
I then used the program, releasing all of the nanites I had left in my body into a cloud which covered the area. Soon the Solin near me started to collapse, their eyes and mouth bleeding, and pain racking their bodies. Some of the other Solin started to laugh at them, but soon they too collapsed in agony as their eyes, ears, nose, mouth, throat and lungs started to bleed from the airborne attack. Soon, the screams of pain of the enemy drowned out the screams of my allies, though they lasted only seconds as they drowned in their own blood.
I collapsed to the ground, exhausted from the battle and suddenly realizing the horror of what I just did.
I ignored the money. I had plenty. ‘Yes, I won. But at what cost?’
‘Roughly three billion two hundred million nanites and about three hundred megawatt hours of electricity.’ replied Vera. ‘There was no monetary cost for the use of Angel of Death.’
I was starting to dislike Vera. ‘Please tell me I didn’t start another plague.’ Now that I thought about it, that attack could ruin the area for the rest of time.
‘No, you didn’t create a new plague. System nanites reset to default after leaving a host if one of three things happen. One, they fulfill their purpose. Two, they run out of energy. Or three, fifteen minutes have passed and they weren’t ordered to ignore this timer. As you told them to keep looking for targets, they will all either run out of power or return to normal after fifteen minutes.’
‘Good.’ I knelt there for a while as the people that still lived ran around rendering medical assistance. I realized that this was my fault. If I hadn’t blocked my memories of the last battle I would have prepared better. I would have come up with new ways to make the military stronger and fight back, and we may have won without having to use a WMD bioweapon on the enemy. ‘How many of my memories am I missing?’ If I had done it once there was a possibility that I had done it before that.
‘I can’t give you a count. That would defeat the purpose of blocking the memories.’
‘But it wasn’t just the defense of the mines?’
Vera paused for a moment. ‘No, there were others.’
I nodded. ‘Vera, I want you to unblock all of my memories and not block any others in the future unless it is absolutely necessary. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir.’ she said and my memories came flooding back. Not just the fight at the mines, but embarrassing moments from my childhood. Failings in the bedroom. Getting dumped by my first girlfriend because of those failings. Being bullied as a child. Multiple times that I got beat up while running around the city playing super hero because I thought the System made me special. Once I figured out that Vera could block memories, I had basically become addicted to it. With all of these missing memories changing how I thought, was I even me anymore?
I got up and walked to the teleporter, unable to jump there due to only having regenerated a single point of mana since slaughtering tens of thousands. Di stopped me as I got to it and asked if she can do anything to help. I responded with a simple quote, then teleported back to town, then back to Sanctuary, where I could do something to help people instead of murder them.
Paul walked over to the teleporter. “What did he say to you?” he asked Di. “He seemed pretty upset.”
“I’m not sure. I think it’s a quote I heard before. ‘Behold, I have become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.’.”