---Phoenix---
---???????’s perspective---
---2681 Terran Calendar/32 years BF---
The lid closes, sealing me into the coffin sized space.
I take a few moments to run a final diagnostic on my four artificial limbs. All returned values are nominal.
The parts of myself that I have to worry about are those still made of flesh.
The only sign that I’ve been accelerated to a whole number percentage of the speed of light is the slight shudder that the infiltration pod’s internal inertial dampeners are not able to compensate for and the vacuum light turning from green to red, indicating it’s not safe to exit.
My suit is sealed and pressurized around my organic head and torso, so it’s not as if I would suffocate… No… I’d just harmlessly splatter against the side of those monsters’ ship!
Not yet… I don’t give a damn about my worthless life but I do give a damn about making those scum pay for what they’ve done… So I can’t die yet… not until old Auntie Terra has seen a return on every last credit she’s invested in me!
I know what I am… I know what the Phoenix Brigade is…
Little more than suicide the long way around(!)
A home for the hopeless… a promise of the opportunity for some satisfaction before death.
Is it ethical… hell no!
Am I going to take every advantage of it… hell yes!
The light turns green and, a twentieth of a second later, the lid is blasted from my pod and me a long with it.
I’m thrown a full 17ft in the air and, once I’ve judge that I don’t need to brace myself against impact with the ceiling, I turn my attention downward.
The idiot xenos still have their ugly faces turned to the 8ft long missile that just crashed into their gun deck and not at the 6’7’’’s worth of black, durasteel death that just burst from it.
None of them are close enough for me to hit on the way down but I’m able to calculate exactly which direction I need to dash when I hit the ground.
I touch down and the ten retractable claws on my synthetic legs rip through the flimsy metal of the floor as I bound toward the largest and closest xeno here.
Its chest has the consistency of butter as I plunge the durasteel claws of my flattened right hand through it, point first.
The xeno sack of shit (I’d guess to be no more than 300lb, despite looking like it should weigh more than a ton) hits the deck and I’m already decapitating the one next to it with the edge of my palm.
The next one at least has time to draw its kinetic pistol before my fist punches a six inch hole in its weak plastic chest plate.
The final two scream, uselessly, as I surge towards them on all fours then smash their heads into eachother, silencing them.
I cast around, scanning for any hostiles I missed. Finding none, I shorten my legs and lengthen my arms to suit quadrupedal locomotion better before flying from the room.
My mechanical arms and legs are well within their tolerances as their claws tear into the deck for traction.
The same can’t be said for my organic hip and shoulder joints which are screaming protest at me for subjecting them to this much strain.
“Alkawa! Tarra na!” shouts a gardenworlder in a language my helmet can’t decode for me.
Its friend looks at it instead of me, an opening that I exploit to turn its head into a splatter pattern on the wall.
The one who noticed me has a quarter of a second to scream before I kick it to the ground and sever its head with a stomp to its neck.
I continue sprinting through the halls of the flagship that’s currently locked in battle with the dreadnought I was just shot from, about half a lightminute away.
My plasmadaggers stay in the compartments in my thigh cavities.
As much as they are useful tools for cutting through thick doors and the like, they have a major drawback when used against organic matter in confined spaces; the steam they generate hampers visibility.
Plus, they're hardly more effective than just using my clawed hands!
Wherever I come across one of the monsters, I dispatch it with ruthless efficiency.
The sympathy that the rest of Terra squanders on these wastes of life is utterly infuriating to me!
But… they aren’t here… and I am!
These scum will see no sympathy from me!
I know that I’m approaching the Bridge from the map my helmet is feeding me when I round a corner and am confronted with a hastily erected barricade.
I dive back behind cover as a volley of kinetic and laser fire is levelled at me.
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The wall panel behind where I was standing is crumpled and scorched by the barrage, though, given the overall quality of xeno construction, that doesn’t necessarily mean much!
I activate a miniaturized camera in my left index finger and slide just that finger around the corner.
The feed is displayed on the inside of my helmet and allows me to examine the fortification I’m about to assault.
It’s about 50ft away, down the hall, and made of what looks like office furniture.
The lip is around 10ft from the ground with a dozen or so xeno heads and weapons poking out over the top.
It takes me 1.4 seconds to choose a route of best approach from those my helmet suggests, deactivate my fingercam and break from cover.
I tear down the hall at a speed no one could ever match using biological limbs.
I’m obviously not fast enough to dodge lasers or kinetic pulses… but I don’t actually need to be… All I need to do is move my body out of the way faster than those moronic xenos can aim their guns!
I’m still hit a few times but it doesn’t do much more than buffet my body a little and make a few scorch marks in my armor.
When I’m practically point blank, I launch my self into the air.
Even though I have more than enough power to clear the top of the barricade in this weak gravity, I intentionally aim to clip the top of it with my body, my judgment being that flimsy xeno office furniture won’t stand up to the momentum of 500lbs of man and durasteel and that the impact will likely produce a blast of shrapnel like pieces that will eliminate some of the work of putting these fuckers down.
My gamble pays off.
The one standing nearest catches a shard in the neck and falls.
Three more are hit in less vital areas that will still be partially incapacitating.
Crossfire kills as many as I do over the next few seconds until the ones left have the sense to draw their swords.
A tall one brings a screaming edge down on me but my hand shoots up to catch its wrist, uses its blade to parry the blow following from the other side, a fifth of a second after, and kill two more who happened to be standing close enough before folding the big one’s arm back on itself, impaling it on its own weapon.
Discipline breaks and the remaining ones begin scrambling to get away… None of them do…
Dropping the head of the last of the barricade force onto the ground, I shorten my arms and extend my legs, making my way through the thick clouds of steam to the door of the Bridge.
It doesn’t open for me, obviously (even xenos aren’t that stupid) but, by the method of stabbing my claws into the seal, I’m able to gain enough purchase to leverage my enormous mechanical strength to force it open.
As I do I hear a round of pulse fire and enter the room to see the second to last of the Bridge crew slumping into its chair, its head reduced to pulp.
The only xeno left in the room, who neither died on the barricade nor spared me the effort by doing the job for me, is a 15ft tall, white furred, six legged creature that looks like a giraffe.
It’s four empty hands are raised up with the palms facing me.
“We surrender, Terran! We surrender!!!” It pleads in a language that’s been decoded enough that my helmet can translate it for me “There is no need-Aaaaagh!”
It screams as I close my fist and swing a right hook into its left clavicle.
I only hit it with enough force to crack the bone and bring out a bright goldenrod color bruise but, from the way the impact buckles its body, its spindly left foreleg very clearly breaks as well!
8ft of neck pass me by as the creature falls to the ground.
When its head is around a foot above mine, my left hand shoots up to grab one of its ossicone horns.
Suspending its head level with mine, I speak “Surrender?! You want to surrender!?!?!?… Don’t make me laugh!… Did my wife get the chance to surrender?! Did my daughter?”
I’ll give this giraffe thing credit: It’s braver than most who find themselves in its position. It hasn’t evacuated it’s bowels or bladder (or equivalents) that I can see and, while it’s clearly terrified and in agony, it’s still able to answer “I… would guess not… Though I couldn’t say for certain without knowing where they served…”
“Where they served…? Where they served?!?!?!… Oh, let me tell you where they ‘served’! My wife served as a technician at Clear Smiles Dental Office!… My daughter served as a fucking KINDERGARTNER at Blue Spruce Nursery in New Aspen! Her name was Sophie! She was six! She liked to fingerpaint!… New Colorado had barely heard the War had been declared when you showed up to rain fire down on our cities…!”
“Sir… You have the wrong man… I have never been to New Colorado and did not participate in its decimation!” the giraffe thing interrupts.
“And yet HERE you stood!!!” I scream “Until moments ago you stood here, commanding a fleet fighting for the proposition that Terrans have lost our existing privileges for nothing more than being frightening to you!!! You commanded forces dedicated to the genocide of MY people! You wear this uniform… and you claim innocence!?… As far as I can see, every single xeno in this fleet is just as guilty for what happened to my home as if they did the deed themselves!!!”
“I’m only doing what I’ve been told! I would have been shot for cowardice if I had refused!” bleats the creature.
“Ah… so… you were only following orders…(?)” I hiss, causing it to obviously realize that it said the wrong thing “…the last, desperate defense of every evil being ever confronted with their crimes!” my visor retracts, revealing a burned, mutilated face “Orders did this to me!… Your orders cost me my arms, my legs, my city, my friends, my family, my LIFE!… Do you have any idea what that’s like!?”
“I… don’t…” admits the thing.
“Is that so…? Well then, allow me to give you a taste of it!” I say, my visor closing.
Dragging it by its ossicone, I stride to the panel in the center of the room. It whines protests and questions but I’m not listening.
I identify the port that I’m looking for and a cylindrical plug extends from the heel of my hand.
I jam it into the port and a moment later a computerized voice plays that my helmet is able to translate as saying “New Commander recognized.”
I look to the creature who’s command I just usurped for its reaction.
Confused is my guess…
I drag it to the bowward window and hold its head so it can see what’s about to happen.
“Computer; Target all Galactic Union ships in range!” I command.
Over the translated pleading and begging of the giraffe thing who seems now to realise its situation, I am able to discern the computer saying “Commander; that has been flagged as an action that bears significant tactical disadvan…”
“Override! Target all GU ships!!!” I interrupt.
“All ships targeted, Commander.” announces the computer, its tone neutral, while the thing that’s horn I’m holding frantically and futilely attempts to countermand me.
“FIRE!!!” I scream.
The xeno shields (the only thing that allows them to stand up to our barrages) are all concentrated forward, so their flanks are entirely exposed to their own flagship.
The thing weeps as space is illuminated with the burning ships of its comrades.
---2714 Terran Calendar/1 year AF---
My durasteel claws gouge marks into the stones beneath my feet as I watch my marks walking, 100ft below me.
Though they are heavily guarded, none of their guards are armed.
Carrying weapons on the xeno capital world is strictly against their laws.
An advantage of operating outside the law is that I can carry weapons!
‘The Terran representative to the xeno parliament and the half sister of the arch traitor will be nice little feathers in my cap!’ I think to myself, as I leap from the edge.