Chapter 474: First Telkan (2/2)
Three dozen points in the city suddenly exploded. White hot flame roared out, the edges of the hole slagging and providing fuel for the fire. In one spot the flame devoured its way up a skyraker, exploding from the windows story by story until, in one roaring moment, it ripped through the roof and the skyraker, nearly six thousand feet tall, was a candle topped by roaring white flame.
Vuxten felt it.
The reeling shock.
That it had never happened before meant it could not happen.
When it did, that cold greasy feeling at the edge of his senses recoiled.
The city vanished, flame roaring up.
”T-Shift,” he said.
The jungle appeared.
The air itself was still burning, and the jungle erupted into a conflageration, despite the fact that the Atrekna had brought rainclouds and jungle soaked with precipitation.
He opened his mouth.
------------------
Awgwarkawk ducked underneath the swipe of a pale whitish blur as the Enraged Shade swung at her, trying to take her head off. She stabbed forward with her KBar, letting the rage at this thing trying to keep her from ever seeing her ducks again fill her mind, body, her soul
the Kbar.
The shade stumbled back, hands going to its waist as its intestines suddenly spilled out of the gash the Kbar had left from hip to hip.
”GUN READY!” Lieutenant ShrakHark yelled. The Kobold ducked, not fast enough, and the hand passed through the top of her helmet, ripping away part of her feathery crest. The lieutenant grunted and managed to roll clumsily in her powered armor.
Awgwarkawk managed to lunge forward, half climbing in the chair.
She could feel a strange thrumming sound up and down her spinal cord, in her head, as she wrapped her hand around the firing handle.
NO TARGETING SOLUTION
NO TARGET
burned on the Captain's monitor. She looked at the external viewscreen.
The Stop Hitting Yourself was still pointed at the planet.
A shade leapt forward, kneeing her in the crotch, reaching through her armor, wrapping its icy cold spectral hands around her throat, choking off her ability to breathe.
Her pulse was pounding in her head as she slapped the override icon and squeezed the mechanical safety, feeling it unlock.
The specter leaned forward, snarling, silver blood running from the jaws full of meat tearing and bone grinding teeth. His eyes were black pits of forever nothingness and she could see her own reflection in them, as if she wasn't wearing armor.
She pulled the lever back as the shade, all white hazy energy that was somehow able to perfectly show the dead Terran's enraged image, leaned forward, his jaws opening.
The temporal resonance cannon fired. Lights flickered and went out, there was a soft sigh as the holotanks failed and collapsed.
She got her KBar up, putting the edge of the blade under the shade's nose and pushing hard. The blade felt like it was sinking into concrete as it peeled back the shade's nose, exposing its skull.
It hissed and tightened its grip.
Everything was tunneling down as Awgwarkawk brought up her knee, fighting desperately.
I want to see my pretty ducks again, she thought as she dragged her numb and pain filled arm up, put her free hand, which felt like a foreign object on the end of her wrist, on the back of the blade and pushed.
There was a loud THRWANG sound, with a heavy vibration, that seemed to shake everything.
Purple light filled the air.
Awgwarkawk could see, out of the corner of her eye, one of the monitors on the Captain's chair. It showed the primary and secondary reactor drain as the phasic system tried to engage. It overloaded, shut down, rebooted, tried to engage, only to repeat. The secondary reactor was flashing up to full power, but in the half-second it took the phasic system kept surging up, overloading, resetting over and over again.
Nearly a hundred times, faster and faster, in that half-second. The phasic system would try to clear the lines, almost succeed, then fail, the previous surge state would return, and the system would try again.
The purple light flashed crazily, bright as the bridge lights dimmed and went dark.
In the strobing lights Awgwarkawk kneed the shade in the gut again, pushing with one numb hand against the back of her KBar as the shade squeezed tighter and screamed in rage.
The shade she was fighting gave a scream and dissolved.
Awgwarkawk rolled off the Captain's chair, coughing and hacking, tasting blood, but pulling in ever so sweet canned suit air. She realized someone must have fired off the phasic stabilization system before it had fully discharged the previous charge.
She'd take the win.
”Report,” she said, her voice a hoarse rasp.
She looked up.
The bridge was full of sprawled bodies.
”Sound off. Is anyone alive?” she asked.
Two hands went up, one shaky and bloody.
Lieutenant ShrakHark pulled herself up. Her faceplate was cracked and sealant had oozed out. She was cradling her arm.
The ensign stood up. His uniform was covered in thick viscous slime that glimmered and steamed. His ear was torn off, blood coursing down the side of his head and neck. His blue and white fur was gray where spectral hands had raked at his face. His helmet was missing as were his gloves. Two of his fingers and part of his palm was missing on his left hand.
”Can't. Kill. Me,” the BASS catboy panted.
Awgwarkawk noticed his eyes were glowing a soft red.
”All teams, report,” she ordered.
She'd boarded with almost a hundred Marines.
She hoped some were left.
-----------------
Vuxten stood there as the jungle burned when the sky turned white.
The light was sudden, shocking, as multiple phasic detonations happened in the sky.
471 was looking at the drone when it happened.
As the white light cleared he could see his target.
He was in range.
471 slapped the button and the payload aboard the little drone, smaller than he was, went off.
A temporal inversion mortar shell.
----------------
Everyone on the planet heard it.
Everyone paused.
Even the slavespawn.
Dokigirlz whimpered and covered their eyes. Orkboyz shuddered and turned away. The Sisters of Wrath staggered. The Sons of Mars were almost driven to their knees.
A'armo'o, Trucker, and Ekret's tank hulls rang with the sound.
Vuxten staggered from it even as he saw the entire area collapse back into brown dust.
The Dwellerspawn collapsed and convulsed.
The feed from the single surviving drone showed a lone figure standing in a field over overlapping craters each measuring in the hundreds of meters wide.
The roar of rage rang out across the planet.
----------------
It was an enraged bellow. Bottomless fury. Endless hatred.
The Atrekna reeled back as the containment was stressed almost beyond their ability to maintain.
A little green mantid slapped the detonate icon.
The temporal bubble exploded.
The primate's voice roared out.
----------
IARÐ SKAL RIFNA OK UPPHIMINN!