Chapter 345 (2/2)

Then her fingers twitched again, her hand clenched.

She sat up, bending only from the waist, and looked around, her eyes glittering and glowing a faint amber.

It was the most chilling thing Myken had ever seen. The way she had sat up just seemed... wrong somehow.

The Terran coughed, wiping her hand on her bare chest.

”Damn, stabbed me right in the pump,” she said. She got up, putting her hand on the wall. She blinked a few times. ”Wow.”

”How... how are you alive?” an elderly female asked.

”I'm Terran,” was all she said. She reached up and touched her thumb to her lower lip and two extended fingers to her ear. ”They're pulling back. It should be a straight run to the secure area, but I'll go with you,” She coughed. ”Need to see the medics.”

Myken just shook his head.

Terrans are weird.

-----

Above them, great engines came online. Not all of them. Out of the three rows, one of seven, one of nine, another of seven, only six total came online. But enough that the Djinn began to shudder.

It lifted off, crumpled wreckage of buildings sliding off of it. It tilted slight, making a straight line run in such a way it would be able to use the curvature of the planet to avoid the weapons of the massive tanks behind it.

More AWM's were coming in, all of them under heavy fire, but the Djinn computed that the feral firing systems wouldn't prioritize a unit fleeing the planet.

It reached the edge of the atmosphere as three more engines came online. One went back out, the other exploded, the ravening energies biting a chunk two hundred meters deep and destroying two (thankfully) non-functional engines.

The Djinn put on the speed, the functional engines laboring outside of tolerances to pull the Djin against gravity.

It had already ran the computations, but it ran them again.

The feral infection inside the hull was still resisting everything it could send at it. It was sticking to the more narrow hallways, the more confining maintenance spaces, and were able to destroy any of the maintenance machines that could engage them.

That left one way to deal with it.

Just beyond the planet's magnetosphere it activated the plan.

---------------------

Palgret was kneeling down, coughing, while the little green mantid fixed his visor. A chunk of battlesteel had scythed off of an exploding precursor machine and hit him straight in the face. The visor had cracked in a spiderweb pattern, but it had saved Palgret's face.

The interior reeked of ozone, burning lubricants, scorched metal.

The machine had been vibrating for the last twenty minutes, and had sent attackers in one long continuous wave for even longer.

But there was finally a lull in the fighting.

--done done done-- the little green mantid said. It handed Palgret the faceplate and Palgret slapped it in place.

PURGING ENVIRONMENTAL - CLOSE EYES AND MOUTH

appeared with a timer of 3 seconds. Palgret did so and felt his suit flush the atmosphere out, then refill it.

He inhaled gratefully, the air clean, even if it did stink of sweat.

Palgret opened his eyes and looked around.

He couldn't believe everyone was still alive. The Lieutenant had lost a hand, but the mantid had frozen it and tucked it in the LT's pack after sealing the stump. Culvit had a broken arm but the mantid had pulled the chunk of endosteel out of Culvit's arm and used the pressurized sleeve inside the armor to stabilize the injury. Culvit's armor had given him a shot of painkiller and the other Maktanan weren't feeling any pain. Nanuft had taken a hard hit to the leg from a high-vee round. It hadn't penetrated the armor, but the kinetic gel had been destroyed and Nanuft was walking with a limp, the muscles of his leg bruised up. Jagler was moving stiffly, 281 had turned up the pressure on his chest pressure sleeve to compensate for several broken ribs.

All four mantids were fine.

Palgret didn't want to think about the human, who was down on one knee, one fist pressed against the ground, the other hand clenched and pressed against his forehead. Steaming molten warsteel ran out of his mouth as he breathed.

He's Terran. What, you've never seen one before?

The vibration changed pitch and the mantids all looked up. The human slowly stood up, like some kind of monster unfolding.

Icons were flickering over the heads of the two smaller mantids, the two black ones scurried over, one to the LT and one to Palgret.

”Get close, get close,” Three said. ”Bunch up tight.”

”What's going on?” the LT asked. He was feeling a little nauseous and slightly from the painkiller and the residual pain in his hand.

”That's a Hellcore charging,” Three said. ”Buzz, get over here, I'm deslushed.”

281 jetted over, landing on Three's back. He opened the rear housing of the minigun, revealing a black orb. The little mantid stuck a bladearm directly into a slot on the orb.

”Big as you can make it,” Three said. After a second he looked over at the Terran, who had moved over to the side and was shaking his head. ”That's not big enough, you have to make it bigger, Buzz.”

”No way,” the human rumbled. ”Not and be powerful enough to withstand it for them. For Lima-Niner-Eight, yeah, for Sword Hoof? No.”

Three looked at 030, who was touching the housing of the orb. ”Sir, we can't.”

--must-- 030 said. --knew the risks when put on uniform--

”I'll be fine, Spanky,” the Terran rumbled.

Palgret watched as 030 and 281 pulled small, wet looking devices out of an access point that had dilated open on the side of the orb. They tossed them to Three and Two, who watched for an LED on the side to go green before setting them down on the ground or tossing them up on the ceiling.

The weird cyclic vibration was picking up strength.

”GET CLOSE!” Two yelled. ”Cluster up like it's orgy time at the nunnery!”

Palgret pressed close to the side of the LT, jostled over by Three.

030 lifted up a small device in his hand and looked at the Terran.

”It's all right, sir,” the Terran said. He smashed his hands together with a clang that sounded like two anvils colliding. ”I'll be all right.”

030 pressed the button.

Everything got a shimmer and Palgret shuffled, lifting his feet up from a tingling burning. When he set his feet down he felt a weird slickness to it.

”THREE!” Two called out. ”TWO!”

The Terran waved, his bestial features contorting in a smile.

”ONE!”

Palgret's stomach flipped over and he suddenly could taste the colors around him. His skin burned, it felt like red hot talons digging into his brain, and for a second it felt like his eyes were going to be plucked from his skull.

Palgret screamed, vaugely aware that he wasn't the only one. It felt like someone was pulling him out of his own body with barbed hooks.

”MORE POWER!” Three yelled just as the green mantid pulled a disc the size of Palgret's palm out of the opening and plugged a cable into it.

The feeling went away and everyone sagged against each other.

There was a weird vibration in the air. Multicolored shapes flickered into existence and vanished. Shadows rippled and shifted in the dark spaces of the room.

”What... what happened?” Lieutenant Mu'ucru'u asked.

”The Precursor just jumped out of the fight,” Two said.

”What is that?” Nanuft asked, pointing at what looked like a twisted creature made up of shadow and strangely flickering prismatic energy.

Two turned slowly, all joking gone from his stance.

”Hellspace.”