The falling glow of green was at first a line, a wound carved through empty blackness of sky at its head and fading scar of discoloration at its tail. There were no stars this fade. Even on her world, there had least been the stars; just another thing taken as though plucked from what was and what had been by the new arrivals. Eyes followed the trail of descending green comet until it impacted against the curved barrier, and what had been sickly glow exploded into a light that blinded and seared. Red rocks of landscape discolored for that one frozen moment as the nearest spire cackled, shield straining to hold back the flare which could melt and burn and kill. Breath was held, and leg twitched. A silent, secret hope that perhaps the green would prove the stronger this day, that the power would not be in harmony, that barrier would be torn apart and those hollow, warped screams of the creatures would sing out death. But the energy dispersed. The shield remained. The land returned to its alien sheen. Her hope was the only death, and it would not be the first this day.

<”Field is holding at eighty*^&(*. They’re still probing for our artillery openings.”> The translator static caused an internal wince as the thing spoke, but she managed to supress it. Roar from below sent, as if in response, a streak of its own cackling green energy hurtling up into that starless sky. She watched as it flew through the towering spires, unhindered and unhalted, over the canyon walls and arcing into distance. The faint shimmer returned, the hole made in the barrier sealed back up for the next flash of impact as dome was tested. <”Triang*^&(* is still underway, we’ll need more impacts to get a location on their emplacements.”>

<”Continue firing. Order the artillery teams to intensify and broaden. We don’t need their guns destroyed, just make it harder for them.”> The Hathan-Commander’s face split nearly through the center as his words crawled free, hissed out and taken in by the device at her neck. Yet his voice was still one of the few which did not set her insides crawling.

<”Acknowledged.”>

The leader had spoken. The blue shell lessers slapped their limbs against the screens. A semi-circle of instruments and read-outs arranged around the central table which blipped and bleeped and drew out patterns marking the twin shield-domes, separated by the wide stretch of chasm floor. It was always hard to focus on, the way the horizontal screen seemed to have depth, like she could reach out and feel crevices and rises in the miniature land it showed. She had to remind herself even now when the creature’s gnarled limb extended and split at end that it was false, just a flatness made to look like something it was not.

<”We’ve got the Coalition/enemy penned in. Cliff walls almost entirely surrounding, and we’ve fortified the one gap at the rear, here, with two twenty-groups of our best. They’ve confirmed they’re dug in and ready. No one is getting out that way.”> He spoke clearly. Firmly. It was important to listen to, and that made it easier to listen to. The screen became larger, the details clearer. Her eyes flicked across the terrain, the details shining an unpleasant blue-turquoise hue. It was false, but it was also true. If the screen said this is what it looked like down the distant canyon floor, then that is what it would look like.

“They have weapons on the ridges. To shoot down your fliers. The canyon is wide but straight. They have guns here, and here.” She tapped against the rise in landscape, high positions with good sight down on the approach. One of the female lessers flinched away from the screen as she reached forward, and there was an internal quiver of pleasure. Fear, obvious weakness. His lessers did not control themselves; her soldiers to either side of her had not so much as twitched since arriving. “They do not think they are trapped. They deny attack from the air and sides and invite attack from the front. It will be…” The translator emitted clicks, trying to process her last thought. Processing her voice down into a hollow, guttural noise the creatures could understand. “…Costly.”

<”We both knew that would likely be the case. High-Command has little *^&(* in your species. I exposed my throat unwisely to get us this opportunity. You understand?”>

“Yes, Hathan-Commander.” She added a small lowering of her head and body to the words, a motion that the creatures always enjoyed seeing. Hathan-Commander had told her once, privately, that it was unnecessary in his presence. It was obvious that the assurance merely meant he enjoyed it more when she performed it willingly. She could feel the anger radiating off the pair of soldiers behind her at the submission, and yet they did not move. It was expected. It was good. “It will be costly. The losses are acceptable. I am proud for the chance to show your people my species’ usefulness.” If there was one benefit of the translator, it was that it did not include the trembling of fury in her voice she could not wholly supress. Her head was not quite tipped so low that she missed the change of face in Hathan-Commander, the way he peeled armor up and off scalp to rub the softer meat beneath. The other blue shelled greaters, what few she had ever been permitted to get near, always made the pleased faces when she spoke of killing their foes for them; she would try more musical words.

<”I won’t try to convince you to stay here and let your soldiers handle it on their own-“>

“Good.”

<”-But I will ask you, again, to exercise caution. You know your importance in all this. If you are killed-“>

“I will not be.” Pulling away from the display of the canyon, she righted herself. Ensured her own cuirass was on best display, the plating layered upon her like exoskeleton of darkened chrome. They had their gifts they sometimes deemed to gracefully give her kind; she had her own protections and armors at her disposal as well. “They have not fought us before. Their preparations will cost us, but be overcome. They will die, as you have ordered.”

Was there some emotion she had not caught? Again, it was not pleasure that struck Hathan-Commander’s face at her assurances, but something else. Something unpleasant. She gnashed against her inability to comprehend these creatures, even as she forced a second, shallower, bowing of head. Waiting for the dismissal, and the permission to leave before she upset him further. It came quickly.

<”Once your forces are moving, we’ll drop half our shields and hit them with everything we have. It should prevent them from opening their dome for their heavier guns. The rest, you will need to deal with yourself. Good luck, Svera.”> He always butchered her name. But unlike the rest of their heads and Commanders and shelled leaders, he always tried anyways. Small clicking escaped her before she stepped back and turned, striding away from the map table and semi-circle of consoles, towards the lower reaches of the dome.

Her soldiers were at her side all but immediately, fixing looks on the menials who lumbered up and down rocky rise to command circle. She switched the translator at her neck off. The last thing she wanted at this moment was trying to piece together more from the scattered, muttered, whispered words spoken by these creatures. It would mean complaints and anger from her ‘handlers’ when she made it back alive; they reminded her at every chance the technology was yet rudimentary and needed as many samples as it could to translate. Such would be endured. Their words were coarse and without rhythm, and even with aid of the device, it was a grating comprehension. Without aid, it was but grunting. Deep, babbling noise of the hundreds below her marshalling around their machines, waving wildly at one another, interrupted only by the cracks of the artillery and gun emplacements. The spray of the rare throwers knocking down rarer physical explosive. Green flash, white flash, blue flash, and the endless sprawl of this red alien rock underfoot and rising up as mountainous crags around them. Even if she could see the stars through the hail of fire, she doubted she’d recognize their patterns here.

“Can tell you are upset. Rethinking the plan? We will obey if ordered.” She didn’t know the one who had spoken. He was new to her ranks, one of the many elevated after the decimation of the Slaving. He touched her back reassuringly. She struck his arm with force enough to near fracture the plating on it.

“Cease.” Her command was as pincered bite. “Limit contact in front of the creatures. They see it as weakness.” The soldier pulled himself upward as he strode beside her, reeking of pain from the blow but voicing none of it. There was that twang of pride in her core again, their strides quickening together as one. “The plan is not changed. We will use three-column approach. The outer wings will surge as ellipses once we reach their dome. The center body will drive them outward. Once we are in their shield, it is over.” It was not a needless repeating of order; they reached out one after the other, and she pressed the back of her arm to theirs without rebuke this time. Transferring the information, that they could in turn deliver it directly to the divisions. “Build a wall of bodies. The approach will be terrible.”

Aliens wiggling their way up the slope were quick to flatten to the edges, or step aside when she and her retinue passed, their looks barely noticed. If the time spent thus far with them had taught her anything, such expressions, such peeling of meat from around head, were best not dwelled on. Already she could see the formations of her soldiers at the very edge of the dome’s curve, positioned as best they could in the insufficient space for their number. Their familiar sounds as they spoke, readied, prepared one another, finally overpowering the clicking and tapping of hundreds and more fleshy appendages. A beautiful black wall of warriors, set as stalwart bulwark again alien tide. But even here, as she made wave of arm to prompt her retinue to deliver her orders to their respective columns, she could not escape their stench. Her eyes grew sharper as one of their thinkers approached with her ‘throne’ in tow; the softest of the pale shells. Yet, accompanied by one of the most rigid of the ambers. She quickly signed out her safety to the nearest soldiers who had already instinctively begun to approach, and switched the translator back on.

<”The shell/armor suits you, Pry!”> A pet’s name given due to the inability to sing her real one. Disgusting. <”You remember the lift here, how to operate-“>

“He should not be here.” They did not like it when she interrupted, but they would like it even less if one of theirs had his head melted. Her soldiers were but three body-lengths away, and the desire to kill was already being worked up. The most senior of them ran up and down the line, seeking to quiet the discord. The amber shell kept his thrower out, and the hum from its center indicated it had already been charged. “Only a handful of us are used to your sm-…people.” A near error. “You were told to maintain the agreed distance.”

<”You don’t ‘tell’ us anything, *^&(*.”> The blip of translation error was welcome. It could not decide if the male’s sound meant ‘slave’ or ‘food’, and she was struggling enough already maintaining her composure. <”If one of yours gets too close, my men are instructed to shoot and not stop. Can’t keep your *^&(* controlled?”>

<”*^&(*, that’s enough!”> The pale shell raised volume as it spoke to the amber, and the shelled male beside her threw liquid from side of his head in wordless response. <”We have procedures for a reason. I cannot stop you from violating them, but I will not be held *^&(* if you or your soldiers suffer harm again because of it.”> Disharmony between the two was taken as gift, giving time for a quick look over her ranks once more. They pressed close, tight-knight, bodies packed together at base of the shimmering dome’s field. Open space which could have been used to accommodate more of her forces instead left empty, and beyond it, the line of amber shells with their weapons in grip. Watching. There was thanks to be given that only this beast before her seemed to be mindless enough to breach the space Hathan-Commander had promised her.

<”And I won’t be standing by letting you walk up to these *^&(* without guard, whatever the Commander/Queen says. We should be finding ways to exterminate the rest of them, not teaching them to kill us.”> It mattered little that she was the only one with a translator; the discord in her ranks was a silent screaming as the amber shell spoke. She stared a hole into the pale shell’s chest and willed her body to stay still and calm, to set example for rest.

<”Your attentions are appreciated. I’m thankful that your men are here in case our resources turn on us.”> Its words said one thing, but its face, its tone said the opposite. The amber shell seemed to understand.

<”I have one man to every three-hundred of them here, right now. We’d struggle to slow them down.”> Unlike the pale shell, there was no wrongness in the man’s tone. His eyes turned on her. She stared down and back at him. He made a show of tapping his thrower. She made a show of dipping her head, and could feel a hundred eyes from her own nearest warriors lock on to the submission. Enough of them were about to die without giving this amber a reason to kill a few now.

“I am proud for the chance to show your people my species’ usefulness.” She recited the line again, and the pale shell wiggled meat while the amber made noises like he sought to vomit his stomach out onto the red-wasted landscape.

<”Of course you are, Pry. And we’re all forward-facing to seeing you in action! Our people are not as unified as yours. You understand. Some here simply think they know better than *^&(**^&(* and *^&(*-Intelligence.”> She had heard these terms before, but as of yet, the translator could not symphonize their meaning. The links of authority in the creatures’ ranks were unknowable. The pale shell reprimands the amber, who even now stood silent in his fixed displeasure, yet could not send him away? What was their division of labor? Those who thought, those who created, those who acted, but which was in command? When she survived the battle this night, there would be questions. When she survived the battle this night, there would finally be answers.

Another explosion, this one not against the dome itself, but the convex of canyon’s upper reach. Debris raining downward as flash blotted sky, cries and shouts following as jagged rock smashed through meager shells and the meat beneath. Turned proud metal fixtures to twisted mockeries of purpose. This delay was pointless. The amber shell was here, and he was not leaving. She would praise those in her army who survived for their control, and ensure double servings of mass to all upper ranks for quick response. Upward curve of rock, like charred and peeling grass, splintered free and fell far into the small crowds of creatures shouting for assistance. The pale and amber shells instinctively ducked down, if only for moment, while she instead swung legs up and on to the wide sled, her ‘gilded cage’ that had waited so patiently all this while. It always reminded her of the kind she had seen hooked to her people, used for hauling rocks or cargo. That it hovered, adjusted for her weight as she entered, and began to emit that unnatural blue glow from readout screens only added further insult. The aliens had the technology to make easier her people’s tasks and work; they chose not to waste the effort. She settled against the seat while the pale shell, recovered from fear, moved with uncanny speed to assist with locking her legs in place.

Stolen story; please report.

<”All settled? Nothing too tight? Good. The sky-eyes will be observing, but the sled will also be sending us constant information stream.”> Flapping tendrils stroked down side of the floating throne with unsettling affection as the soft-shell spoke. <”I’m sure Hathan-Commander was *^&(*, he doesn’t like showing his worry, but you know how much he has carried by your actions today. Try to stay in the middle of the fighting, it will get us the best view and results. …Oh, but, of course, also make sure you aren’t killed. It shouldn’t a problem for you, right Pry?”>

“I will be fine.” Constriction around her legs, whirring as the protective seal raised to hug against her back and click into place with rest of her armor segments. Like being slowly buried alive by living rock. Every fraction of this device had been made for her, and her alone. Sculpted to her, so that each twitch and shift of body was read as command. They could have made it any form they wished; of that she had no doubt. But it instead clung around her, a shell of her own, her form bathed in metal but unchanged in shape. The sides rose as humming from the heart of the metal monster filled her, became the rhythm to the pounding drum of her heart. “I will be fine.” Power flowed out as spires, miniature version of the towering structures protecting the staging ground around them, extended and sparked. Forming network of protection, these segmented panels of shielding against the varied energies the aliens utilized. Something over her head was clicking as helm settled forward, lowering a tinted screen across one of her eyes. Tearing her mind in two directions as her vision became filled with the glow of heat, the trails of smell. Things one could feel but beyond what should ever be perceived. One foot lowered. The lifts beneath throne growled louder. Her arms stretched. Armor folded on itself to protect the reach of grip. “I will be fine.”

<”Translator seems to be repeating, Pry. I’ll take a look at it when you get back. Do us proud out there, we’re counting on you!”> It smelled like death and firerock in this unliving thing. She could see the soft-shell’s head split open to reveal glistening bone as it retreated back with the other still cradling his thrower, and she tried not to retch. Her focus was torn from the creatures, turned inward, back to the blinding white walls of her true prison and lessons learned within. Little more than a thought and a twitch of her legs was needed to turn the throne about, and bring it slowly advancing to the ocean of obsidian, the jet black gleam of her armored legion. They parted before her, reaching to touch and pat as she glided through them. No alien throwers for them. No shields or barriers. Only their own armor and clicks of readying weapons. All eyes on her, then. She let out the breath she had not even realized she had been holding, and when her head raised again, there was no longer permission to doubt.

“Begin the song.” Vibrations warbled her words, and her instinctive grab for neck to silence the translator brought only the whine of metal as arm scraped down the side of throne’s exterior. Sky swallow the idiots. A few confused requests for repetition were made, but others had already begun the chant. Forms rippled as she passed by, making for center of the awning chasm ahead. All that empty ground between them, and the Coalition in distance. Her column began to form around her. She pressed her armored grip to nearest soldier. “Wider dispersal. Fill the canyon floor.” The wings fanned further out; the flanking columns spread their number. Together, they could deflect a few lances from the throwers. But apart, it would be more difficult to land a shot. A worthy gamble. Feet stomped. She could taste chemical as her body began to respond to the song, the noise of impacts above and of shouting behind and explosions ahead afterthoughts under the din of their singing. Her own fury and theirs towards the creatures behind turned now to those creatures ahead. No more waiting. “Match speed. All speed. Forward.”

Even here, the ground knew to shake as feet began to rush. Bodies bobbing and swaying as they surged around her, a sea as black and starless as the sky above. Rocks shuddered free of the canyon walls as her soldiers, her people, broke into a sprint. She waited for hundreds to pass before spurring her own throne forward, matching its speed to the beat of their legs. Trails were being blazed by those in the lead, the light of the opposing dome merely a blue speck down length of the chasm. They would feel her coming before they saw, perhaps. Perhaps their hearts would fail in their fragile shells before she ever reached them. She let such thoughts flow; those nearest could veritably taste them on this foreign air, and spread them through rest of army. They followed the paths made by those ahead. Forward. Forward. “Forward! Forward!” The chant was a hymn.

The sky was on fire. Hathan-Commander never again spoke untrue. Globules of that green energy sailed above them, white lightning showered and cracked. She could watch it all reflected on the backs and heads of her armored legion, while the speck of blue in the distance flared and intensified as it was struck from a dozen angles. Their kind was cowardly. They would never open their shields while under such attack. Her metal-clad limbs felt nothing, but the wind of their passing slipped under her and across her head. Billowing around her. Her heart hammered as hard as the pounding of feet around her. Forward. Forward. “Forward! Forward!” The hymn became paean.

The first contact. She saw the ground rupture, smelled the bodies melt. Saw a limb fly up, bounce off soldiers rushing over crater. The message came down the trail left. Eighteen dead. Long-ranged, something for heavy armor. “Fill gap. Non-threat.” Soldiers pushed themselves ahead and over what remained of the corpses caught at edge of impact site. Another impact, left column this time. Twenty-two dead. Same pattern. “Fill gap. Non-threat.” Confused spasming was registered on her left, two soldiers who had fallen from the blast trying to stand as they were trampled by the rest of the army, their armor cracking under stampede. She waited for a third explosion; none came. Two emplacements then, either side of the canyon wall. The information was passed. They would be priorities for the outermost fighters. The cackling shield energy was visible now. Forward. Forward. “Forward! FORWARD!” A choir. An anthem.

And then, they knew. Realized what was coming for them. The map had told her what was ahead; stationary throwers on raised platforms. A shallow divot in the dirt for the aliens to squat in. Larger guns behind. Lightning sparked like horizontal rain across the gap, flashes of light that tore her people apart. Messages and signals thrown from those ahead, and those behind her now. A single shot would sear at their protective coatings. Two would expose and sear their flesh. Three would melt through them. The visor over her eye showed a hundred and twenty-six dead in the first volley, seventy-one more damaged. A few of her newest troops lashed out at their siblings in a panic. Anti-armor had reloaded. Another seventeen gone from the left. ‘Build a wall of bodies’ she had said. Corpses were seized where they fell, lifted over heads by paired hands. Severed torso spilling innards down raised arms to shield the soldier who carried it even as life left his eyes. The ground crunched and slid, wet with gore as forms were blown apart and muddied the soil into slush. They did not slow. They did not stop. A shot glanced off her shielding, another struck the metal at base of lift. She was terrified. And the anthem was a roar of wild fury as her army threw themselves forward to protect her. Forward. Forward. “FORWARD! FORWARD!”

The first to reach the ditch was one of her former suitors, some part of her vaguely recalled. The message sent said he killed two before his lungs were cut apart by sharpened metal. Seems he had been a good choice after all. Flames erupted from the elevated positions, momentarily blinding her even as far behind the front as she was. One of her soldiers threw himself onto the barrel of the weapon, armor and fat melting and clogging the hole as the thing ruptured backwards and ignited to the aliens operating it. The same as her masters, simply of a different collective. These creatures had red shells, and she was close enough now to see their heads split open, screaming as their throwers spit death. Hole-ridden body, black armor sundered, was thrown forward into a section of trench. Crushing, pinning the smaller creatures beneath as legs surged across the new-made path. Others leapt down to cut and tear at the flimsy shells still within pit, and became bridges themselves for their brothers to stream across. A red-shell was pulled down from raised platform and thrown out over the sea of bodies. He bounced once, before those nearest gripped and slashed and tore. The larger guns, those meant to destroy the alien machinery, fired over her head at the tide behind her. Her soldiers were already scaling the walls. They would be silent soon. Forward. Kill. “FORWARD! KILL!”

Her sled sputtered briefly as it pushed to ascend the small hill of corpses made by the bodies of her forces. Those around her clambered over without struggle, rushed into the wildly firing forms trying to maintain a line above. Forty-six were sent tumbling back down, melted. Then they stopped falling, and the screaming of dying aliens struggled to be heard against her chorus. Their perimeter was breached. The edge of dome was overhead. Shots began to come scattered from beneath the protection of their battered shield, and she knew they were through. An explosion shook out the wall to left as the platform supporting the heavy weapon gave way, two red-shells flailing arms and grabbing with their grotesque tendrils for support as her soldiers still latched to the gun’s barrel waved exultation in the fall. She pressed her rearmost legs hard to the throne’s floor, and a surge from sled finally crested her over the pile of dead. Signals raced. Messages traveled like spreading fire through the chain of bodies swarming around her. The first soldier had reached second line of defense. The encirclement was starting. Kill. Kill. “KILL! KILL!”

And something stirred beneath her. Not stirred, perhaps, it was doing its best not to move, but its heartbeat could be felt through the disturbance in air. The small smearing of scented trail. One of hers nearby noticed as well, and his climb was halted instantaneously to begin digging for the source of discord. He hunkered his form lower to allow the others to clamber over him in their ascent. She bid the sled halt, taking stock of the information being funneled to her. Six-hundred ninety-four dead so far. Sixty-eight damaged. Two-hundred and eight under the barrier now. One-thousand two-hundred and forty-five of hers still on approach. Fractured headplate was torn off the black-armored body by nearby soldier, and the red-shell beneath came into the light. Face twisted, presumably in pain, perhaps in fear. She could smell the foreign blood, overpowering, oozing from one of the thing’s legs. Her soldier made to lunge, the alien threw arms over head, but she gave click and short chemical spray for good measure. Ordering him back, to which he obeyed immediately. Her height on the encased throne, these thing’s smaller stature, made her lean down all the harder. But she was not needed directly anymore. Her army had their commands.

Was it because she was never allowed so close to her own captors that she felt this urge now? It was pinned, trapped under rest of corpse, and its head was open in that horizontal split near center. Sucking in breaths, oozing that unsavory goo as near red as the crimson rocks around them, mingling with the streaks of orange blood caking the bodies of her fallen. She extended her metal-encased forearm, placing sharpened tip against the smooth curve above natural gash in face, the paired oculi staring up at her. Watching, as she knew those sky-eyes were watching down, as everything she did here would be watched later. Even in the thrum of her battle-high, she had questions, questions she wished to peel out of this soft, disgusting thing. She could see its heartbeat through the lens fitted over her eye, the other three holding its fading gaze. But more than her want for information, more than her want of comprehension of the where, the why, the how of these two-legged creatures, there was more pressing need. She wanted this saved. To watch it again when she returned back to her shackles. To watch it, and watch her masters watching it alongside her. She flexed the spur at end of her scythe’s forelimb and dug down. Red welled up slow from cut. Green flashed overhead, and white was bared as flesh pulled back away from panting mouth hole.

<”Ple-…please, d-“> She watched as the pink thing of weak flesh and bone crunched in, tip of her claw splitting through its head. She watched it send small gout of blood and brain spattering wet against base of sled. Watched as mouth opened in empty scream. Watched as beady, black eyes drained of life. Watched in them the reflection of that starless sky set alight by the unending hail of enervating energy, silhouetted by her armored head. Her mandibles gave another click, and she saw her palps extend from mouth to taste the air. And as she yanked her spur, coated by this sled’s armor, from creature’s skull, she let a secret joy fill through the fire racing in her limbs and core. Barely registering the quick bite her nearby soldier gave to sever body’s neck and assure death of the alien beneath her. The shouts and cries from further beneath the dome had begun anew, her army herding the creatures from edges to waiting jaws of central column of multitudinous, scrambling forms. And with translator yet set about her neck, she understood every single scream. She threw her head back to that voided sky, and let the vibrations of her song rise foremost in the chorus of her swarm’s choir.

Kill. Kill. Kill.