Chapter 4 - Termination of MarsH2-3(4) - Void Seer

A marine with silver armor stood up from a black seat with a red light shining from the floor. The marine’s eyes glowed a slight light green color as he looked out the window of the command module overlooking MarsH2 section 3.

The marine turned towards the marine standing at the bottom of the commander’s platform and asked, “David, what’s the infestation percentage?”

The marine at the bottom of the platform was wearing all silver power armor plates except for a black helmet he held under his right arm. He glanced up at the commander, “It’s at forty three percent Xavier.”

“Shit. We’re going to need to purge it.”

David frowned, “Shall we begin to detach the section?”

Xavier nodded and inputted some numbers into a keypad.

“Hello, this is workshop one. How may I help you?”

Xavier cleared his throat, “Are you able to provide ground support within the next ten minutes?”

“Hm, yes?”

“We need twenty-four Sentinels in district two. Get them there.”

“Hm. So you need twelve pods?”

“Affirmative.”

The engineer paused for a second, “Give me ten minutes. I’ll need your clearance code.”

Xavier quickly typed fifty or so numbers into the keypad.

“Orders received. Please stand by for planetfall.”

Xavier stood up and ducked out of the two-meter-tall door frame to breathe the fresh air outside the base. He looked up at the mothership class Punisher and smiled. He investigated the city and saw blobs of grey and pink flesh everywhere and sighed, “Prepare some orbital strikes. Hand me the beacon gun.”

David removed a small pistol from his belt and handed it to Xavier who swiftly stuck it to his belt before starting down the steps to the hanger floor.

David looked at him, “Are we starting evacuation?”

Xavier nodded and stood on top of one of the balconies overlooking the hanger.

“Attention!”

A group of 24 marines gathered around the bottom of the balcony and looked up.

“Kill anything that passes the ether threshold. Don’t stop unless you hear glass shatter.”

All the marines understood the meaning behind the words. Xavier smirked and examined the marines. Each one had at least seven pieces of silver armor plates. Xavier nodded, “I trust all of you to make it out in one piece. I can’t have you idiots going on leave to rehabilitate a finger.”

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The marines collectively burst out laughing while Xavier glared at David.

“To be fair, it was kind of miss-“

Xavier pointed at David, “You bastard got your wife to convince the army to give you five years leave. I could only get one year for the same shit.”

Xavier jumped off the balcony and landed on the floor of the hanger, “The mothership will drop each squad four Sentinels.”

He pressed a button on a panel floating next to him and the large metal doors with white letters of “Section 3” opened with a loud rumble.

A loud voice spoke into Xavier’s helmet, “Be ready for planetfall in ten seconds.”

He looked upward and saw twelve shining dots speeding towards the section. A loud cracking sound reverberated through the air as they crashed through the habitat’s artificial sky. Xavier smirked, as a series of thuds sent the floor quaking below their feet.

Each pod released a puff of vapor before two humanoid figures with glowing red eyes stepped out of each drop pod. Xavier nodded to the marines, “Let’s start the purification.”

The man couldn’t feel his legs as his left arm was twisting wildly like a noodle as he sprinted towards the edge of the district. Behind him, creatures were kicking up dust on the street. A thin line of blood ran out of his nose and into his mouth. He spat on the ground and looked up when he saw the boy.

To his horror, the boy’s wide-open eyes were black like holes in space. They seemed to swallow the light of everything around them. The boy was muttering some unintelligible gibberish as black particles radiated from his head.

The man glanced upwards and the stream of particles, “It’s 101…”

He could feel his mind splitting as he gazed upwards at the spectacle of flowing ether.

Xavier, David, and two other marines walked through the streets with four Sentinels in front of them firing at anything that was alive.

In an instant, red alerts filled the top of each of their displays. A robotic voice announced, “High psychic energy detected. Level: supermassive black hole.”

Xavier’s eyes opened wide, “What is a black hole doing here?”

David looked over his shoulder, “Should we go to the source?”

Xavier nodded, “Deploy the shield.”

David produced a white cylinder from his back and stuck an energy core onto the top of it. Around them, the air seemed to crystallize as a thin barrier was formed. David started twisting the ends of the cylinder adjusting the settings.

Xavier saw multiple goblins frantically scurrying away from a pillar of black light that poured into a column to the top of the artificial sky.

He stared at a Sentinel, “Protocol twelve, fire on sight.”

“Orders received. Targeting sixty incoming heat signatures.”

In unison, the four Sentinels raised their arms parallel to the ground. Their chest plates flipped outwards covering the top of both their arms while extra armor plates on their arms wrapped underneath to cover the bottom.

All four of them swiveled their heads at an unnatural angle to look at Xavier, “Repeater cannon deployed.”

Xavier patted one of them on the shoulder, “Fire in green.”

“Orders received.”

Thin lines of light blue electricity, ether, and other coolant liquids flowed around the cannons as each of the sentinels knelt resting the cannon on their knees. Xavier tapped a few buttons on his wrist and a projected hologram in the marine’s helmets showed the accuracy indicators for the Sentinels.

Xavier glanced at David who nodded, “We’ll be fine as long as the shield holds up in this ether storm.”

Xavier frowned, “But why the hell is a void here?”

David shrugged, “There’s only thirty or so voids in the galaxy and only three or four can do something like this.”

Xavier gazed upwards at the expanding pillar of black, “Could it be another galaxy?”

David scoffed, “You do know how three-dimensional space works right? Physics would not let th- oh. Well... Shit. “

At the top of the pillar, a presence breathed out sending a shockwave of ether into the habitat section. The other two marines blacked out collapsed on the ground. The tracers in their eye slits extinguished as they fell into stasis.

David coughed as he felt a splitting headache go through his head. He quickly regained his balance and looked up at the shield. A large grey crack ran along the length of it as the Sentinels start firing volley after volley of highly concentrated jets of bright blue plasma making the ground quake from the resonating shockwaves.

Xavier gazed up at the massive cloud of ether creating a fog in front of the artificial sky. He blinked.

*Shatter*