Five things occurred in the same second.

First, I swallow, sensor ping still echoing through my helmet.

Secondly, the four technicians spread out, slicing the pie around crate mountain. One on each side, While the heaviest tech curls around his detonator, no matter what, he holds the power to Chuck Norris our asses with twenty tons of explosives.

Third, Kerrigan’s pupils narrow to slits, taking on a purple luminescence. She’s in my arms one second, then ducking between my legs the next. I reflexively reach for her, narrowly pulling back as her tail stinger passes an inch away from my palm.

Before I can think of how close I just came to death, Ling-ling2 breaks through his tunnel into the wider world. Acrid Tulverian blood tickles his nose making mine itch in sympathetic irritation.

Fifth, a pulsating alarm appears on my HUD, an icon that sends a shudder through my body. The flash trained portion of my brain warns that it’ll be safer to pull off my mask and empty the pistol into my brain than face what is coming. Field Marshal Bazzhole deployed the Singularity’s most terrifying weaponry. Part of me is stunned that their interplanetary AI network approved this particular weapon, though the grinding attrition of Syrak-9 makes for the ideal battlefield. Of all the bloody shitholes for an army to fight through this one screams to the heavens for THAT weapon. Tight quarters mean hand to hand combat is guaranteed, while armor and personal shielding are prerequisites to survive the artillery barrages and heavy weaponry of mechanized armies.

Now I understand why Baz is a Field Marshal. Should anything go awry, he’ll be the ideal patsy. A newly appointed officer who was flash trained into command with zero prior experience or relevant skills. In other words, the perfectly explainable wig out. Who unleashed demons upon Syrak-9.

“Please, let this one be sane.” I whisper, falling prone.

I crawl through the crates, positioning the central pile of equipment between myself and the entrance.

‘Ling1, tunnel to my left, if someone comes around take em out.’

He’s already burrowed into the earth, digging a path towards the technicians. Crystal claws can really move dirt.

“Oh man, I really hope that stinger pierces armor.”

Rumbling shakes the bunker. Missile tubes clatter against each other, crates jitter up and down. Two minutes till the Juggernaut reaches me. It’ll probably turn me into pink mist, just like those Tulverians. Crates begin to fall. Knocked askance by the tremors. We have two minutes so the Juggernaut is a mile away too far too shake-

-Which is when I see it. A tunneling tank, it kinda looks like a spinning dildo through the tremorsense. Four figures reside within, a pilot and three passengers, one of which is unmistakable as the weapon. Five times heavier than the others yet occupying the same volume.

Bile pushes up my esophagus. Terror made manifest. I begin to pant, hyperventilating. My torso curls around the flechette pistol, holding it steady as a Technocracy Technician slices the pie around crate mountain. Braced as I am -with two lings to triangulate tremorsense- the man finds me ready.

One hundred needles whizz through the air in a half second. Accurate fire repeated to depletion of my magazine. Projectiles bounce harmlessly off armor incapable of penetrating the ceramic layers. Good thing the armor isn’t my target, his glass visor is. Sixty steel darts impact his visor. The first bounces off with no apparent damage. Same for the second. Then ten connect faster than my mind can process. Cracks spiderweb across the dome. Needles eleven and twelve pop it open. Triggering the HELP system. Steel shutters deploy automatically slamming forward to seal his faceplate a half second behind my sixtieth hit. Nearly forty needles enter the man’s face. Eyes pop, teeth shatter, four needles pass through his spine bending and keyholing on their way through flesh. Most importantly of all, a single needle tumbles through his vertebrae, permanently crippling the man.

All I see is a geyser of blood. Needles ricochet inside the helmet clanking and thudding in a blender. The man collapses going entirely limp. I reload, rolling hard to my left. Fire and move. Only I stop short, resting on my shoulder as the single most valuable piece of Technocracy hardware comes into view. Our number 1 highest priority capture target. A nanofactory, mostly a block of steel wrapped in composites to keep it protected–

-A faint tingle emanates from my chest, and in a blink the entire room glows with faerie light. Back to total darkness before my helmet can detect the change in light. Ping alarms erupt in my helmet. Something just scanned us.

>Praetorian Panoptes: A NANOFACTORY! I’m taking that. Shit, where am I gonna put it? Feck. uhmmmm. Oh, what the hell is that tunneling? Dude, don’t die. Wait, is that a Juggernaut? BRO!

>Terran Apollo: I’M BUSY

Chat operates fast as thought. A good thing. Otherwise I’d be dead.

A second technician leaps over crate mountain, power armor hurling him bodily into the ceiling supports with brute force adhering him to metal grating. Flechette pistol barks tearing through the two crates I was in just seconds earlier. He walks the shots into me, eight needles tearing into my arm and shoulder. Cold envelopes my arm as nerves shred. All sensation vanishes from the limb, hell, I can’t tell if the arm is still connected or not.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I’m losing blood. Training takes over, repeating drilled mantra.

Kill this one, then tourniquet the bleed.

My own pistol rises to the target, shaking as one arm fails to obey. Maybe if I’m quick the Singularity can find a prosthetic. Dirt explodes beneath my chest launching me ten feet in a cartwheel that would put me in contention for the paralympics. Metallic flooring shatters as a drill penetrates the bunker floor. A roof hatch opens and my worst fears sprout from on high. Red, black, and a dancing syandana of golden light compliment a woman’s curves. Wide hips, a hint of abs, and perky tits, like an attractive runner. Right up until I see her face. It’s smooth, featureless. An unfinished marble sculpture. She springs upwards, dual wielding pistols -if the weapons can be classified so timidly- one looks like three sawn-off shotguns duck taped together while the other is a monstrosity of gold steel that seems like it would be most at home on Blackbeard’s belt.

I would laugh, if not for the bright colors. There are three reasons to stand out on the battlefield, the most common is so the enemy won’t murder your medic. While the second is because you’re too stupid to realize you are a target. But the third reason tightens my sphincter.

If you’re immortal.

Most would achieve a simulacra of immortality with layers of shielding and armor, but this ‘woman’ seems to be human save for odd protrusions on her armor. It’s not Singularity standard issue like my trenchcoat is. No, her armor might actually stop a bullet, as evidenced by hundreds of tiny nicks and dents in it. Prior attempts at ending this bioweapon’s existence. Jutting prominences hint at being grown in a lab rather than forged and fitted; while humanoid affectations suggest this monster remembers her humanity differently than myself.

A bulbous thorax extends from the figure’s lower back glowing with yellow energy. Dozens of rods spray from the thorax washing over the bunker. Over me. They move through solid objects faster than light, leaving afterimages of energy as they scan. Before I blink they congregate into a half dozen solid tendrils. Linking the bioweapon with targets. One rod extends to each technocracy technician, one to ling1, and another to the distant Juggernaut.

The larger of her two pistols speaks, sending three slugs punching through a technician’s power armor. Tremorsense informs of the slugs final destination, ten feet into the dirt.

She ascends to her apex, hanging in midair for a microsecond as gravity consumes her upward acceleration and begins to drag her down. Thrusters puff, keeping her aloft. From my vantage she may as well be a destroying angel, hovering with death in both hands. The second pistol screams with recoil so intense it buoys her up. Six barrels fire at once, sending a half dozen slugs through the ceiling technician’s helmet. Rounds carve a hole through his neck all the way to his chest where a full pound of lead poisons his heart via six holes. He slumps, boots still mag locked to the ceiling. Her own foot lashes out, slashing through armor, faceplate, and spine in one energized cut. Beheading the man for good measure.

A dark thought crawls out of my bleeding arm.

Hmm, guess that’s one way to hang someone.

Second pistol empty, she drops it, mag locks pull it out of the air, anchoring it to her hip. The gunfight finally catches the heavy technician’s attention just in time for him to catch three slugs from her heavy pistol. How it shoots three slugs from one barrel is a fascinating impossibility I want to understand. I take a single step forward and slump-

-torso going numb.

“Oh, that’s right. I got shot.” I mutter, vision beginning to darken.

To my horror, those words alert the weapon. Her -deeply disconcerting- thorax pulses once emitting a wave of yellow energy. Like really, she’s a half bug, half woman, waif that doesn’t reach my chin yet has more power than a Singularity superheavy walker. Light power washes the bunker and myself.

All told, the pain of being shot wasn’t too bad, it hurt, but it hurt like a thorn pricks. Sharp pain that fades each second. In fact, I haven’t even noticed my bleeding lung. Not until the bioweapon-woman curses me. When the pulse hits, flesh regrows instantly, a miracle soon corrupted by inconceivable pain as the needles push their way through my flesh at a tortoisian pace.

Screaming fills my ears. Probably my own. Hard not to scream when eight blades razor through me, falling out of my body as constant waves of healing repair it.

Minutes pass, or seconds. I’m in way too much pain to count. Shooting too. One of the techheads managed a final salvo of flechettes, a full magazine. One hundred steel needles that bounce off the weapon’s citrine shielding. Personal energy shielding! Now that is something I would give my left nut for. Another pulse hits and my mind clears instantly. So sharply I wonder if she stabbed me with a pound of cocaine.

The weapon drops a detonator on my helmet, Tight beaming a single order to me.

“I have no heavy weapons on me so it's up to you soldier. When that Juggernaut rolls in here, destroy it. Once that’s accomplished get back to your squad.” She says, then does a standing backflip to cover twenty feet up and back into the tunneling tank. I’m not sure how, but no part of her touches the hatch, a perfect swish despite thorax, protruding armor, and weapons.

Her order is optimistic. We both know I’ll explode alongside the Juggernaut, but at least this bioweapon is kind enough to lie. Maybe kindness doesn’t factor into the decision, she may not have any comprehension of death. I try to respond and taste iron. Blood aspirates into my throat. At some point during my screaming fit the vehicle repositioned itself, and now it departs once more. Drill plows through crates into the bunker’s wall then angles downward, tunneling away.

Outside the Juggernaut stopped, halted by something. Ling1 says the weapon threw two rocks at the Juggernaut, one is still spewing white smoke and the other seems to have hit the Juggernaut and stopped it. Maybe an EMP grenade of some kind? No time to stop and think. I need to get the hell out of here before the Juggernaut reactivates. I climb to my feet, stumbling against the nanofactory.

If only we could capture this. Beam it away…

>Terran Apollo: I’m going to die, please, beam me out?

>Praetorian Panoptes: You know I can’t.

>Praetorian Panoptes: Don’t give up like a lil bitch. Not when I have a plan.

>Terran Apollo: What plan?

>Praetorian Panoptes: They make Juggernauts on world. Pull a Tychus.

Hacking coughs rip through my lungs, expunging the blood from at least one bullet, maybe two. Tychus. One word, but talking to yourself has the benefit of shorthand. It’s a good plan.