I crawl over to the new suit, wiggling into it as Kerrigan does the same. She’s agile, picking up my plasma rifle with the armor’s arms while stuffing spare rations into the suit. Like a greedy monkey.
Wait, how is she moving the arms? Is her tail doing that?
The reaper jetpack and twin reactors move over to the new suit, still running at half power. No spare reactors means that Kerrigan will be exposed to lethal radiation. For a world we aren’t allowed to irradiate, there sure is a lot of radiation. Who was dumb enough to nuke a mining world anyways? Even as the question enter’s my mind I groan, knowing Jim’s alien download will answer my question.
Annoyance tickles my heart, quashed by the surrounding noise. Nothing is moving. No artillery outside, no roaring autocannons or rolling Juggernauts. I have a moment of peace, time I can use to rearm and reassess.
Syrak-9 is a mining world now, but serves as an intergalactic punching ground. Each month a new army is dropped off on the distant continent, a place that was long ago depleted of Solarium -where I am now- to participate in wargames that boil down to, you get to mine one pound of Solarium for every acre of land you hold, but in alien units. So simple, yet so impossible. Eight factions currently hold ground with only the Singularity, Technocracy, and until today the Tulverians actively trying to gain ground while the others hide within ancient fortifications, digging deeper every day. Better to hold a hundred acres for a thousand years than to risk your future for a monopoly. Especially when there are hundreds of warships waiting in orbit, ready to add their army to the economic argument. Once a month the nameless caste grants permission for a single ship to enter orbit and secure a landing site. Of course, ship displacement is regulated so as not to pollute the skies with an endless legion of cargo freighters. Applicants must also be a warship with shields and guns, as the easiest way of eliminating one faction is to destroy the ship on approach, before it can land and deposit troops or fortifications upon the surface.
How we were portaled in begins to itch. The Singularity cheated, which the nameless must know, but they allowed it anyways. They must want us to win. I pause, that makes no sense, the nameless don’t deal with base races like humans, in fact, they barely deal with races we would consider immortal, something about the void of understanding being too distant between a nameless and others. Like trying to communicate quantum mechanics to an ant, even if it could speak your language the insect would literally die of old age before you finished your preamble, and it has no concept of science or even the necessary schooling required to understand the foundational knowledge.
Which is probably why they haven’t bothered to give us their name. No, our victory or loss didn’t factor into the nameless’ decision, something else is going on here.
“Why did they want us to die here?” I mutter aloud, running through a systems check.
New suit, new gasmask, and new flechette pistol all work, each piece of my gear replacing the old. I’m locked and loaded once more. With our damaged gear already back in Panoptes’ nanofactory for repairs. The only items I keep are the FNX and the combat knife, both tucked into my waistband.
Still, nothing is sitting right with me, like when you know you’ve missed something obvious about your opponent’s hand and haven’t figured it out yet. First a Field Marshal is appointed, then we are portaled into the front lines without guns. This sounds like a terribly implemented terraforming project rather than a war. Logic that follows the idea of spill enough blood, belch enough hydrocarbons out of missiles, and eventually nature will find a way to break the corpses into flowers. I ponder the information I have, running through all memories of Syrak-9.
With hundreds of warships in space, weapons and taxi orders are strictly regulated. Except for civilizations with armies already planetside. To keep things interesting, each existing faction is allowed one resupply a month often coinciding with each other as that will split any fire from the ground. No matter what, there will be more soldiers sent, more blood spilled, and more war for the nameless caste to observe. For there is always a nameless ship in orbit.
Speculation suggests they enjoy watching other races die, or that this world -alongside hundreds of similar mining worlds- acts as a release valve. Somewhere competing factions can use to expend their growing armies with limited collateral damage. Other cynics suggest there is no purpose in this wargame or life in general, and that the nameless are collecting intel on different faction’s armies and technology levels. But no one listens to them, because the wealth that comes from Solarium mining is well worth the enemy seeing your latest weapons.
A fact the Azhurai conglomerate takes full advantage of. Their territory hasn’t fluctuated in six hundred years, despite thousands of incursions into it. Gears turn inside my head. One of the factions detonated an EMP. Of the current competing factions, only the Tulverians would gain any advantage, but the Singularity has enough Earthling weapons to fight off the iguanas with shovels and bullets. While the other factions would have to fight through Azhurai territory to reach us.
The EMP caused silence for long minutes. Nearly a half hour of rebooting systems and replacing hardware. Or desperately scrambling to find what works. Outside the bunker artillery begins to land once more, walking closer towards the Juggernauts. Dumb rounds fired by eyeballs and gut instincts without any newfangled ballistic targeting assistance. While Juggernaut pilots shudder in their hulls, surgically attached to crippled treads, shitting ducks, only able to fire the most basic autocannons. The thought of those abominations sitting helpless as artillery crews walk shells onto them makes my heart beat a little faster.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Two Juggernauts were coming to kill me. Not one. My job is only half done.
“Ling! Go kill the nearest Juggernaut! It’s probably got guns aimed at our ramp so you’ll have to–”
The damn spinosaurus sprints headfirst out the bunker running up the wall like a meth soaked gecko, gone before I finish pronouncing kill. I’m ready to sense him die, but that is his purpose and will serve to warn Kerrigan and I.
Who I find sitting against the nanofactory, helmet and chest plate open. Exposed to the radiation. A fact she seems to be unaware of. Since she’s sitting on top of the armor happily chomping away on ration packs.
“Saved you one Pawlo.” She says, her tail darting into the suit and retrieving a chocolate ration.
She’s changed. Her eyes were always purple, but now her ears poke beyond her hair, long and pointed. Like a space elf. Stranger still, her skin is now a dark olive, as if she’s a peeled apple and oxidizing before my eyes. So many questions run through my mind that I activate the suit’s scanners, giving her a full sweep. Kerrigan’s skin darkens a shade and the results nearly make me facepalm. She doesn’t show up at all, as if she has organic countermeasures to detection or is somehow absorbing my scans. That’s why Trinity didn’t kill her.
“Thanks Kerrigan.” I manage to say, kneeling in front of her, trying not to look at the plasma rifle in her armor’s hand.
After the day we’ve had, chocolate tastes amazing. Good enough I’m not bothered by the normal scents of trench warfare or the gutted engineers around us. We eat quietly. Not difficult considering my suit is the only working computer within sensor range.
>Terran Apollo: Hey, can you scan the person I’m next to? I need to know how bad her radiation poisoning is.
>Praetorian Panoptes: Someone picked up my interference. That EMP might have been for me…
>Terran Apollo: You got my suit working easily enough. Don’t worry about it.
The words trouble me as I say them, Kerrigan is going to die over the next few days as her body falls apart. Skin will fall off in patches, cells dividing in a chaotic jumble until she’s riddled with cancer. Her hair will fall out, then fingernails, probably the tip of her tail as well. I still have the flechette pistol, if it’s bad enough I might have to end her misery.
Light blinks around Kerrigan engulfing her in an instant. Once more faster than I can blink.
“What was that?” Kerrigan asks, jaw moving in a more humanlike way.
I give her another once over, noticing more than just her skin has changed. How could I have missed all these changes? She’s six inches taller, with dark scales forming over her ladyness. Smoothing everything out, almost like a mannequin.
>Praetorian Panoptes: DAMN TECHNO IDIOTS STOLE MY CAT!
The venom in Panoptes’ message makes me jump.
“Ah! Oh, nothing, it was nothing Kerrigan, I’m just checking to see if you’re hurt.” I say.
>Straingineer Zazathur: Sad, no space pussies for you.
>Terran Apollo: Can you not scream in my mind please?
>Praetorian Panoptes: Sorry. Did I just scan your Kerrigan?
>Terran Apollo: uhh… yes? How bad is it? She’s a Technocracy bioweapon… right?
>Praetorian Panoptes: NO. She’s a meditation aid. Something to help races like mine learn to manage their powers as children. Or when a new mind gets stuffed into their bodies in some kind of resurrection ritual. Your ‘Kerrigan’ was supposed to be delivered to me a week ago! Those assholes stole my service cat! Well, it’s not really a cat, kinda. More like a warmblooded tiger lizard thing. With psychic abilities.
>Terran Apollo: She doesn’t look like a catgirl… More like an elf mixed with a scorpion.
>Praetorian Panoptes: Yeah, they’re odd. But probably the best thing the Endless Collective Straingineers ever cooked up. I think we had to set a quota on how many they produce.
>Straingineer Zazathur: Wait… You are telling me I can make INFINITE KERRIGANS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
>Straingineer Zazathur: BEAM HER TO ME RIGHT NOW!
>Straingineer Zazathur: NOW!
>Straingineer Zazathur: NOW!
>Straingineer Zazathur: NOW!
-Straingineer Zazathur- has been muted.
>Praetorian Panoptes: You won’t be able to make her. Technocracy did things.
>Praetorian Panoptes: Anyways… Radiation will heighten her abilities or uhm… mental emanations. If she hasn’t started glowing yet, she will, and it’ll be a good thing. Idk what the Novassholes injected into her, but she isn’t supposed to look like that. Does she talk? I beamed out the vials of acid in her spine and skull. She won’t pop. Damn cyborgs. Shit. If she were normal I could beam her aboard and break out of this closet! Cat thieving is ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE! This ought to be a warcrime!
“Uhm wow. You’re healthier than I am Kerrigan. The suit doesn’t actually help you…”
“How will I carry all thethes- Ahem, these, snacks.” She says, tongue accidentally separating her lower jaw.
Her lisp is fading fast, only saying hello when her inhuman anatomy asserts itself.
What kind of alien cat could make a Kerrigan? I wonder, but decide to leave that thought alone.
Like our ration packs, some things should not be examined too closely. Instead we opt to salvage everything we can from this bunker.
Panoptes aids our looting of the second nanofactory, increasing our manufacturing capacity and supplies. He also beams down a replacement arm for my suit, taken directly from the Engineer. As in, the engineer whose wrist computer has the ciphers for every crate and temporal lock in this supply bunker. A skeleton key to Christmas morning.
Stacks of open crates lie looted, like a peanut farm that’s been visited by a herd of hungry elephants. We have weapons, a manufacturing base, and a half hour later Hygieia sends her ‘defective’ soldiers to me. Four plasma rifle wielding, power armor wearing, human-collective hybrids.
Finally, I’m not alone.
More importantly.
It’s time to mount a real offensive.