Chapter 481 (2/2)
With a puff of purple smoke she was gone.
”You betrayed us all,” Daxin said softly, reaching down to scratch the fur between the canine's ears. ”But you did not kill Matthias when he discovered you standing over the sundered code of our Digital Father, and you did not kill me before Matthias could warn me.”
He stared at the planet, feeling the rage well up in him.
”For those mistakes, you'll pay in blood,” Daxin growled.
**find badboi dhruv daxin** appeared in Daxin's vision.
”I know we will, boy,” Daxin said.
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HESSTLA SYSTEM
THIRD BATTLE FOR HESSTLA
NOW
Pure singing purpose filled Kalki, lifting his spirit, bringing a song to his lips. He did not know what had lifted the darkness from his soul, from his mind, what had leeched the poison from deep within him, but something had.
Something had stripped away the mantle of Kalki the Omnicidal from him shoulders in one painful, agonizing moment that had made him scream in agony. A great clawed hand had pinned him in place, on the bridge of his ship, tearing his soul from his body, pressing it against blackened, twisted, and blasted plains of brown dirt, and ripped away the profane from his soul with cruel mocking laughter.
The poisoned blood had flowed from him, taking the sickness the Imperium had placed inside him with cruel instruments that they had torn open his brain with.
Then the pain had stopped.
And he was complete again.
He could hear their prayers. To his Digital Father. To Daxin. To Peter.
To Kalki the Furious, Defender of the Little Peoples, of Those Too Small to Fight, of the Forgotten and Lost, Bringer of Hope to the Hopeless and Forlorn.
And at long last he was able to answer.
Beside him, on either side, were flickering white phasic shades of baby goats that danced and pranced. The Dwellerspawn and mechanical minions of the Atrekna that touched them dissolved or crashed to the ground smoking and destroyed.
Behind him, the massive war machine, almost like an Imperium Warbound, but full of singing that made Kalki's soul sing in return, was with him as they strode from the wreckage of the parking garage.
And into the face of the enemy.
As he fought, he sang.
brave podling strong podling one and one is two two and two is four yellow square is yellow blue circle is round red triangle is funny fruit is good and veggies yummy pat your head and rub your tummy
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Undrat saw Gunnery Sergeant KaLa'aki's icon blink on his HUD right before Dunkark spoke.
”Gunny wants to talk to you,” Dunkark said. His voice sounded a little fuzzy still, the repeated Temporal Resonance Cannon hits having battered and bruised the eVI.
”Private Undrat here, Gunny,” Undrat said, tabbing the icon.
”Dismount your gun. Delta Company is being redeployed,” the Gunny said over the comms, despite the fact he was only ten feet away. The big Treana'ad warrior was stepping back from his own gun, letting another Treana'ad take over. ”Go back to the armory.”
”Yes, Gunnery Sergeant,” Undrat said. He quit firing, stomping the bar to cool his weapon, then pulled the heavy autocannon free of the mount.
Ertralp stepped up and placed his own Madame Three-Eighteen into the fixed position, locking it in and attaching it.
Undrat moved to the back of the fighting position, to where the armory was, buried slightly deeper and with heavier protection. He noticed that the Dread Corporal, the Ultion Knight, was standing silent by the back wall.
”Command has a mission for us,” Gunny KaLa'aki stated. ”Apparently the Atrekna will keep bringing in reinforcements at the same place until they eventually overrun us. Command believes, based on previous engagements, that if we can take that area, plant temporal stabilizers, that we can deny the enemy that beachhead.”
Undrat merely listened, as did the rest of the Tukna'rn of the company.
”The Navy will give us a single Temporal Resonance Cannon shot to knock out the enemy. We'll have full striker close air support and close artillery support from the 19th Treana'ad Artillery Brigade. We'll be marching straight into the enemy's teeth, men,” the Treana'ad said.
The armorer was putting on the heavy combat gear on to the Gunnery Sergeant.
”Dread Corporal, any comments?” the Gunnery Sergeant asked.
”If we can take the area, I may be able to spot the Atrekna themselves,” the Dread Corporal's voice was heavily synthesized. ”I can engage them and possibly kill them. If I can see the Shift Seed, I can disable it, prevent them from using it. Which should be my target?”
”Can another Atrekna reactivate the 'shift seed' if you knock it out?” Gunny asked.
”No. No temporal or spacial shifting can take place in that zone any longer, it will be ripped away from the Atrekna's powers,” the Dread Corporal said.
”Then target the shift seed first. Mark the Atrekna if you see them,” he turned and looked. ”Undrat, you're the best marksman with your Madame Three-Eighteen, if the Dread Corporal marks any actual Atrekna, engage them immediately, don't shift munitions, just finger on the trigger.”
”Yes, Gunnery Sergeant,” Undrat said. The armorer was placing his weapon in a smartgun harness, his assistant attaching a secondary nanoforge and additional cooling.
”This will be ugly,” the Gunny said. ”But wars are not won without taking risks.”
The Tukna'rn all nodded.
”I'm ready,” the Dread Corporal said.
”As soon as everyone is geared up, we march,” the Gunny said.
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The Atrekna felt the buildup of chronotrons in orbit, snarling at the fact that space vessel was beyond their reach. Still, they had developed a counter-measure to keep themselves safe when the devastating weapon fired. They only had a scant few seconds warning, but when your defenses could be reconfigured at the speed of thought, you only needed a split second.
The gun fired, and outside turned into a thousand stars being born, dying, and reborn. The planet whipped through billions of years, and the chronotrons all screamed and vibrated as the massive gun caused them all to resonate in a rippling pattern.
The Atrekna held within their protections, taking a moment to let their bodies heal from the minor bruises and abrasions they had suffered.
Look, one sent to the others.
The Atrekna turned their attention to the fighting line between the rivers, which had so far been content to waste their strength upon wave after wave of easily replaced spawn.
Nearly two hundred armored beings had left the shelters, moving quickly through the steaming knee deep morass of riven flesh and boiled fluids.
The Atrekna sneered and activated what the Dread Corporal had called the 'shift seed', anchoring where the Atrekna were through time and space, to make it all one eternal instant and allow them to take what was or what would be into the now, to copy them, and send them into combat. They undid the protections, letting it shine in their sensors, and fed it psychic power.
Artillery started pounding the field, sending up huge sprays of dirt at first, then gouts of flesh and blood as the thickly clustered shells began to fall among the Dwellerspawn and combat machines brought, again, to this moment as a perfect copy.
The primitives were still rushing forward to their doom.
They brought forward more to face the primitives.
The damnable air combat craft swept in, dropping flaming gel, hammering with bullets, raking with missiles and rockets, almost directly in front of the primitives, who charged through the flames with a disregard to their own safety.
The slavespawn and mechanical war machines rushed forward.
Artillery and rockets blew them to scrap, hitting directly in front of the advancing primitives. Shrapnel from the rounds and from the shattered chitin and armor bounced off the advancing primitives, their armor saving them from injury.
They kept drawing closer.
The Atrekna were not worried. They would simply shift the primitives somewhen else, pin them, trap them, in a repeating loop until their strength was spent and they succumbed to a battle they were forced to fight eternally.
The Atrekna paused bringing in more slavespawn, to lure the primitives in.
The primitives rushed into the ambush.
The Atrekna reached for the shift seed, to use it to bring forth a multitude of slavespawn and combat machines.
One of the primitives, different looking than the others, who's psychic shielding screamed and raved and howled in primal agony, turned and faced the shift seed as if they could see it.
ONE AND ONE IS NONE WE NEED THREE WHERE IS THE DAWN IN THIS DARKNESS?
screamed out from the primitive as a black beam, a tear in space and time, in reality itself, lanced out and touched the shiftseed.
At the same time, before the Atrekna could react, could recover from that primal howl of agony, one of the other primitives, one of dull wit and mind, lifted his weapon.
The strange matter white phosphorous cored warsteel tipped flechettes exploded against the Atrekna psychic shields, forcing the Atrekna to devote so much psychic power that the shields became visible.
The shiftseed vanished.
Everything turned inside out for a moment as the Atrekna's power rebounded on them.
Before they could recover, the flechettes found them.
And then they were gone, what remained falling from the sky as the strange matter phosphorous burned brightly, each bit no bigger than a fractured grain of sand, the Atrekna bodies smoking as they fell to the ground.
The dull witted primitive raked fire across the larger pieces.
The tide, which had been flowing in the Atrekna's direction, was halted.
Those fighting the tide did not stop to breathe, instead, they set their feet, shifted their hands, took a deep breath, and resumed pushing.
The tide hadn't turned.
Not yet.
The Third Battle for Hesstla raged on.