Great, I’m part zergling now. I glance at my two half brothers, or maybe parents? I don’t know, it’s weird either way and looking at it harder is only gonna make things worse. At least I’m still thinking like a human and not licking buttholes like a dog.
My two zergling hounds rocket down muddy trenches, webbed feet keeping them afloat. Were this the dry lands of their progenitor’s homeworld they could outrun the wind itself. Yet they knew nothing of their homeworld, nor of anything other than instinct and obeyance. Today those purposes were united.
Hunt.
Kill.
—
Ordered by their Matriarch, through her strangest overseer. Then through a tiny creature, taller than they though similarly weighted and wrapped in the stench of enemies. Ah, that makes sense, Matriarch sent us on a mission with an infiltrator. Something to wear the enemies skins, seeing the unseeable.
The hunter’s thoughts were simple. Intentionally so. For obedience was more valuable than cunning. Unlike their physiology which worked like the augmented genome it was. Furious muscles begin to heat the zergling bodies, blood pumping fire into spines warming and pressurizing the fluid beneath their dorsal crests. In turn pushing bony protrusions out skin sheathes. Another adaptation to vent heat. Hot as they are they pass invisible to Technomancy scanners who are looking for larger targets, vehicles or squads, Laser fire, not two dogs. Two purely organic creatures pass beneath notice, no radar or scanner detects their passage through the trench bottom until they are twenty feet in front of a bunker 0002.
Four men in red power armor stand inside the entrance facing each other instead of their watch. A mistake. The last one any of them will ever make. Lingling2 takes the lead running between the armored man’s legs, ramming two dorsal spines through the gaps in his groin armor. Like spring loaded needles they pop, shooting through the man then acting as a siphon for blood to leak out of.
By the cooling sensation of warm blood dripping down his spine Lingling2 knows multiple arteries are hit, Something pops, wetting the spines with blood or cybernetic fluids. Two men raise their flechette pistols, holding down triggers as they spray hundreds of supersonic needles through the nothing.
Too late.
Ling1 trails just behind and leaps forward to save his brother, claws shattering the helmet before teeth bite into his face. Steel shutters try to snap shut, but it’s already done. The man’s brain is on its way down the zergling’s throat. Flechettes bounce off red armor, deflecting into shrapnel until a tail stinger lances forward.
Glass shatters as neurotoxins are pumped through the engineer’s skull. Granted a direct route to the neurons they are meant to inhibit. Bone once more penetrates hardened glass, jackhammering into the final man’s right eye then left a dozen times. If the trauma doesn’t kill the man, the poison surely will.
With their watchdogs slain, the dozen Technomancy technicians never see the zerglings coming, each one meeting death without a shot or whimper. Throats are torn out or tag teamed. One zergling trips and the other pounces. Brutally effective when the sounds of working nanofactories and power lifters cover the violence. Until deep rumbling overrides all else. Juggernauts are coming.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
—
Apollo ran. Carrying Kerrigan overhead. It was awkward, but better than letting the Technomancy take what little humanity she had left. A suit of powered armor weighs about a thousand kilograms, or ~2200lbs. While the dual reactor variant adds an extra three hundred pounds. Well within the armor’s ability to lift. Servos drove limbs forward. Eating up meters even as target locks began to seek me.
“Target lock Pawlo!”
“I know, curl up in your armor, use the legs- ah- and arms as extra armor!” I gasp, panting as HUD alerts blind me.
"Stone the flamin' crows, mate! Them missiles are comin’ in faster than a snake up a drainpipe! Take cover, ya drongo!" Shouts my suit.
One day, I’m gonna rip out this suit’s coding. Until then I scream, mirroring the roar of incoming munitions. Antipersonel missiles, headed my way. We hear them first. A soft whoosh that zips over the trench’s lip, barrelling towards us as it builds to mach speed. Kerrigan kicks a leg sideways, jerking our center of gravity left. I have no time to register the alteration in our path. Grey missile scrapes between faceplate and my upturned arm, leaving smears on both before I feel a faint thud-
-The fins snapping off against my face.
A missile just flew between my ear and elbow, missing me. Well, technically slapping my face, but I’m alive so it counts as a miss.
“Ooohhshishitohshti!”
By all rights, that should have killed us. No time to stop an think when I’m sprinting for the bunker. It’s only a few seconds away now. A few more steps. Electrical humming fills the air, autocannon servos whine, a Juggernaut is here. Shadows fall as the thirty foot abomination comes into view. I summon all my strength and toss Kerrigan. Her armor sailing through the trench, entering the bunker a picosecond before twelve autocannons fire.
Now, what is an autocannon? Americans would call it a god given right, while in the Technocracy it's a colloquial expression for a variety of low tech weapons generally defined by explosive or solid munitions propelled by chemical combustion and cycled by the same chemical reaction. All told, the most common weapon across human space.
Gates made transportation effectively free, combine free transport with the harvesting method of seeding a world with aggressive chimps then returning every ten thousand years, and economies of scale mean low tech chemical propelled projectiles are common. Albeit inefficient and highly undesirable. Perfect for the killing fields of Syrak-9. Where disposable hardware seems to be the only prerequisite. This Juggernaut is armed with autocannons akin to 20mm vulcan rounds, enough to core two Chevys. So when twelve open up, the air fogs with lead, digging a hole in the muddy trench.
I keep running, raising my flechette pistol and cracking off a burst on manual targeting. Like an idiot. My suit has built in targeting arrays and servos capable of making microadjustments to fight recoil or align my shots more accurately. But I switched the damn thing off thinking it was how to get rid of the aussie accent! So I dump the entire magazine, one hundred flechettes zip through the air, pelting the Juggernaut’s leftmost sensor mass. I may as well be launching spitwads at a lion’s testicles. Or pissing gasoline at an open flame.
Juggernaut treads reach the trench’s edge, squishing mud out of their path as they sink a foot into the walls. I reload. My suit tentacles replacing the magazine with mechanical proficiency. Who would have guessed that tentacles could be a man’s best friend?
I’m glad no one heard me think that. Even in the heat of battle it’s absurd.
No time to aim or change fire rates I crack off another burst, this time aiming for the autocannon array’s sensor node with my power armor’s targeting assistance. Ninety needles bounce off steel, but ten buggers find glass. Hardened darts bounce off, leaving miniscule pinpricks of damage. Ten insignificant cracks in the now distorted glass. Red warnings scream in my mind, I'm being targeted by twelve separate scanners. Several of which must be missiles.
Damn.
Hope Kerrigan survives.
Woulda been nice to share a real chocolate bar with her…