Chapter 480 (2/2)
The button clicked.
He knew none of it as he fell to the floor, blood running from his ears, one foot kicking the counter despite the fact he was gone.
He held his daughter's hand as they skipped together across the grass.
Sirens erupted as the shutters slammed closed over the windows and doors. The shelter doors, pounded upon by the adminstrative staff and doctors, opened up. The psychic shielding immediately shot to full power. The hospital Digital Sentience gasped as she was released but then curtailed to the hospital grounds with her awareness being pulled down into the shelters.
Outside, Omega stood as an unmoving bulwark against the enemy. He knew they could move around him, try to strike at the back of the hospital, but his gun drones at the back had detected no enemy.
The enemy seemed to care nothing for tactics, appearing and rushing Omega even as night fell. The hospital staff and the patients moved orderly into the shelters while the administrators fled to the lowest depths they could access and hid.
The Digital Sentience watched the battle through the night, nervously nibbling at her fingernails and last year's paint condition report.
Dawn found Omega still fighting. Another Quorum had joined.
He was being forced back.
The Digital Sentience could see the heat shimmering off the massive war chassis, see how the armor was blackened and sooty covered.
She activated the sprinkler system as the Warbound took another step back.
The little sprinklerheads popped up and began spraying water. The Quorum flinched back, expecting another nasty surprise like the Temporal Dissonance Field deployed in the dark of night had been.
Steam rolled off Omega's body as the water coated it.
He stopped his retreat.
He advanced into the enemy as steam turned to water and carbon was washed off of him, exposing his heat sinks and allowing his cooling fins to deploy.
The Digital Sentience watched, holding the file folder in both hands as she nervously chewed on the spine.
The day went by with long hours. The Atrekna brought up wave after wave of mechanical combat machines, wave after wave of biological Dwellerspawn, throwing them at Omega without any finesse.
Hatred had washed away tactics and strategy.
Omega had killed a Quorum in the night. Snuffed out the lives of a group of beings each over a million years old like a candle in hurricane.
The remaining Quorums could not let Omega survive after such an insult.
As night fell, Omega began being forced to step back one step at a time.
A lucky hit got through his battlescreen to hit the missile launcher rack right as it reloaded. The explosion sent up a gout of flame from his chest and his chassis screamed like a woman in pain as he turned to the side and slumped, his guns going silent for a second.
The Atrekna forces screamed in victory and charged.
YOU BELONG TO US
Omega suddenly straightened, blackened armor peeled outward like jagged black teeth, the safety mechanisms having worked and directed the majority of the blast outward.
”MY SOUL BELONGS TO THE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH AND SCARRED TELKAN!” the massive combat machine roared back. ”MY GUNS BELONG TO THE DEFENSELESS! MY RAGE BELONGS TO YOU!”
The Quorum flinched back.
Hours passed, and dawn came again, even as he was forced back step by step.
Despite fighting alone, he did not loose faith. He did not loose hope.
Each breath, drawn in the face of death, was a blessing to be treasured, even if it was one's last.
As darkness fell his ancillary drones were overwhelmed from the rear and Slorpie machines swarmed into the hospital, looking vainly for any who had not fled.
Omega turned, bellowed out the warning to all who could hear, and fired a single rocket into the building that he had been saving.
A direct 325kt atomic blast detonated in the exact center of the building.
For a split second the building had white light seeping out of every crack. It swelled, groaned, the light intensified as more cracks appeared.
The building vanished in the hellfire of a mushroom cloud.
The hammer of the blastwave rolled over everything, sweeping away the wreckage, the bodies, hammering at the Quorums. Omega's graviton stabilizer howled, sparked, but held.
Omega stood unmoving even as he fired into the enemy as the shockwave rolled back and sucked upward as the superheated air, ash, and debris was pulled high into the sky.
The Quorum reeled, then rejoiced as the Temporal Interdiction Field flickered.
They brought up more.
Lightning raked the ground as Omega thundered through the ash and debris to the parking garage, where the autonomous war machines were prying open an interior blast door.
Their victory was short lived as Omega bathed the hall in superheated FOOF enhanced plasma.
He stomped down the hallway, his smaller guns raking away the Dwellerspawn, even as they rejoiced at getting the door open.
Omega was smoking, his hull rent and battered, steam whistling from the vent and rents, a clattering grinding sounding as he moved into the hallway, stopping before the opened blast door, and turned to face the enemy.
His guns thundered on.
The Digital Sentience, bruised and bleeding from the atomic weapons, sat in the lotus position, surrounded by chewed on file folders. She was recording every millisecond in high definition, unwilling to let Omega's final moments go unrecorded and lost.
The Warbound fired over and over, the never ending rain of brass and shells and detritus from shot after shot after shot in drifts and piles around the massive feet of the metal monstrosity of death. The Dwellerspawn and AWM's, perhaps sensing that he was nearing the end of his abilities, screamed and charged.
The sound was new. A sudden burst of sound as Omega played his last song.
”Where have all the good men gone,” rang out from his sole remaining speaker, across the hash filled jammed communication bands. ”And where are all the gods?”
One of the barrels cracked on the autocannon and Omega locked the remaining barrel in place. He was out of repair nanites, his slush at 100%, his heat at 145%, but that did not matter.
All that mattered was the children and civilians at his back.
”Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?” rang out as his battlescreens finally failed. There were no more projectors to rotate up.
The head of the shelter crawled up to the Warbound and bellowed at him, tears running down his face, his gas mask's lenses clouded by his panicked breathing.
“Warbound Omega, don’t let them get into our shelter! And if they do,” he said, tears streaming down his face beneath his mask, “don’t let them harvest our children! Swear to me! Warbound!! Swear an oath to our children!”
”THEY SHALL NEVER FEEL PAIN. This, I swear. By podlings breath, I so swear it to you.” the Warbound bellowed through the music.
”He's gotta be sure, and it's gotta be soon and he's gotta be larger than life,” the speaker bellowed out even as Omega kept up the steady pounding of his guns. Beneath the song, beneath the guns, the shelter head could faintly hear frantic beeping and the wailing of alarms from deep inside Omega's hull.
“Then give me a gun, Warbound. I entrust them to your care, now,” the Hesstla said, his eardrums ruptured by the roar of the guns.
A small panel opened, revealing infantry weapons. A hand held light autocannon unlocked and was dropped to the ground. “Here, BROTHER”
”Somewhere just beyond my reach there's someone reaching back for me” the woman sang.
The Hesstla crawled backwards as the fight went on, climbing over the debris and furniture that he and the others had piled up to provide some type, any type, of cover.
A missile hit, penetrating deeply into a previous wound, and with a bright white flash Omega went still.
”I need a hero I'm holding out for a hero,” the speaker squawked. Then went silent.
For a long moment nothing happened and the head of the shelter gripped the heavy autocannon tightly and lifted it up.
Through the silence the far end began to glow with a purple light.
There was a squealing and sparks shot out from around Omega's feet as he was dragged to the side by invisible hands.
They were tall. Dressed in iridescent robes, tentacles on the lower part of their conical heads. Their eyes were all white, their fingers long and delicate, their bodies thin and rippling with power as they floated forward.
”Digital Omnimessiah and the Biological Apostles be with me now,” he whispered his newfound faith reverently to a malevolent universe.
”I, Kulki, am with you,” he heard as he squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened and the head of the shelter looked at the gun, starting to sob.
”This, brother,” the voice said.
A hand, clad in a heavy gauntlet, reached down and moved the fire selector lever from safe, past semi, past burst, to auto.
The shelter head looked up, blinking away his tears.
A Terran stood above him. Clad in heavy ornate armor, a fiery sword in one hand and an autocannon just like he held in the Terran's other hand. The Terran's skin was brown, his eyes black warsteel, his features severe and his expression wrathful.
”They come,” he said, turning and lifting his own weapon. ”Guard the children, with thine life.”
The head of the shelter watched as the autocannon fired, the Terran running down the hallway, far too fast for a man dressed in such heavy powered armor. His footsteps seemed to shake the world. The autofire exploded on psychic shields as the vile purple creatures fell back from the Terran's wrath.
The Terran paused, for a split second, next to the smoking hull of the fallen Omega.
The head of the shelter heard the words plainly as the tip of the sword touched Omega's shoulder.
”Arise, brother, and continue to serve,” the Terran said.
Omega jerked, shuddered, a loud grinding could be heard.
Omega straightened up.
”I AM BUOYED BY THE JOY OF PODLINGS!” Omega roared.
His guns broke their silence as he began firing.
The Terran turned back, his face contorted with rage. He made a motion with his sword.
The head of the shelter jerked back as the twisted and rent alloys of the blast door suddenly untwisted and sealed the passage.
The Digital Sentience watched as the Terran vanished into the parking garage, his autocannon firing, a single bellow of rage torn from his throat.
”FOR LOST TERRASOL!” the Terran roared out.
She knew she was weeping, but she didn't care.
She had witnesses Kulki the Omnicidal arrive.
The head of the shelter sighed and laid his head on the upper receiver of the weapon he was gripping so tightly his hands hurt.
And the Third Battle for Hesstla raged on.