Chapter 602: No Time for Tears (2/2)
True, she wasn't like one of those freaky Mar-gite War guys. She didn't drool liquid warsteel or anything like that. She wasn't powered by rage as far as she was concerned. She was just powered by sheer overwhelming joy when the fists met the metal and then the meat.
Roca reconnected with her mother, her father, her siblings.
Even her estranged children.
The friendships she made were deeper than even the connection with lovers.
She felt more for her squad than she ever had for her wives or husbands.
At times Roca felt like she had wasted nearly two hundred years of life.
When the Council-Confederacy Conflict, or C3, broke out, she found herself already in Council space, fighting the Precursor Autonomous War Machines.
Privately, she was slightly gratified that someone, in ancient history, had programmed the PAWM to scream when took catastrophic damage.
Roca even enjoyed fighting the Dwellerspawn. The bigger, the better.
She'd ripped the face off of an Ohm Class Dwellerspawn more than once when in Full Form.
Not even the SUDS packing it in bothered her.
She was Roca del Yaung y. McDonald, Heavy Assault Polyphasic Infantry, Confederate Army, and she was built to kill with iron will.
Roca had been part of 235th Infantry Division, part of XXII Corps AKA Double Deuce. She often flashed 235's hand sign, index and middle and pinkie fingers out, ring and thumb folded, thumb over ring finger.
You know, 2-3-5, if you had to use your fingers to count like a jarhead.
Then came the Slorpie Invasion.
Talk about great.
To be honest, she didn't like fighting the Lanky's or their slave armies. She felt like a bully, something she'd never considered herself. Yeah, they'd killed a couple score billion humans, but it wasn't like she knew any of them. It was nothing personal, it was war, but against the Lanky's and their slaves?
It felt like picking on some unaug'd cripple while wearing a power-loader. Like chasing a guy with no arms and legs named Matt while driving one of those big honking heavy main battle tanks.
It just made her feel a little dirty.
And not in a good way.
The Slorpies, though.
By Enraged Phillip's overflowing ballsack, she loved fighting them.
At one point she'd jumped off a building after she'd finished destroying a buzzbomb hive, landing on the ground, and the shockwave had disrupted Slorpie stealth shielding.
For the first time since the Big C3 started, she was laughing as she wreaked havoc.
She could feel their dismay, their terror, as she killed three of them with one swipe of her spiked fist.
She laughed as their psychic blasts did nothing but distort air and blow debris off of her skin.
”ROCK 'N ROLLA LOCK IN ROCA!” she'd bellowed before grabbing one of the purple slorpies and biting off his head in front of the others. She spit in their faces and laughed at their panicked attempts to stop her.
It was good to have that feeling back.
The battle for that planet had ended and she had been ordered to a new station. More Dwellerspawn, out by the Council/Long Dark Rim. Double-Deuce was ordered to a friendly planet to establish a forward operating and logistics base.
The people there were nice. Small, barely coming up to the bottom of Roca's breasts even when she was only 6' 2” and in Garrison Form (Garry'd Out). Like the rest of 235, she'd only been in Garry, better that the locals not get an eyeful of her and her fellow Heavy Assault Polyphasic Infantry.
Then had come the headache.
It was sudden, a rushing burning feeling that started in her brainstem and rolled down her spine even as it burned through her brain. She could see on her retinal link that she was suffering multiple failures, bioware and cyberware rejections, incompatible DNA linkages.
She had gone down on her hands and knees, staring at the floor, while the little lizard people had rushed over to her and tried to help.
Her datalink had clinked.
And she'd felt it.
Felt her youngest child die first.
Then her oldest.
Then her siblings.
Then her mother and father.
She screamed, long and loud, and tried to get to her feet.
I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE
She felt her squad die. Her company. Her battalion. Her brigade. Regiment. Division. The Corps. 12th Army.
Everyone in 12th Army on the planet.
Then it spread out like a wave, then came rushing back like the water that runs off a beach before the tidal wave.
All of them crashed into her brain.
It surged through her datalink, into her brain. She felt them die.
And screamed.
I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE
She'd gone into recovery mode.
Down on one knee, fist pressed against the ground, head down.
I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE
She was aware of the little reptillian lizard people moving up to her. Moving around her. Talking to one another in voices she couldn't hear.
The deaths of everyone she had ever known, people she had never known, even motherfuckers she'd hated, burned and screaming in her mind.
They'd rolled her onto her side with a winch, onto a stretcher. They'd used loading straps and power loaders to straighten her limbs. They'd carried her to a vehicle, then to a hospital, and, eventually, put her into a bed.
I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE
Roca had laid there, caught up in a tsunami of death and agony and misery, afloat in the deaths of trillions.
Then she heard the whispering.
soft human warm human good human sleepy human safe human
She fought, she struggled. She howled and screamed her denial as she lived death after death.
The other whispering slowly turned into a song, wrapped around the pain and screams, and started to lift them from her.
Then she heard it.
Far away, but audible.
you belong to us
eat a dick she whispered back, still struggling, still fighting.
I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE
Then she heard it.
riiiiice riiiiiiice riiiiice
She saw it on her retinal link.
Black Fleet Neural Link Override
Codes flowed in. Unlocking codes.
I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE I WILL NOT DIE
Rage followed.
The Phrewicken nurses ran to the far side of the room as formerly immobile and comatose patients suddenly sat up.
”ROCK N ROLLA LOCK N ROCA!” she bellowed out, jumping to her feet.
With a roar she threw her head back, her arms out before going into recovery pose.
Spikes erupted from her skin in a shower of blood and scraps of uniform. Her jaw lengthened, her skull thickened, massive tusks ripped free of her gums. The floor creaked as her weight increased. Her limbs thickened as her body grew.
Molten warsteel ran from her jaws.
The Phrewicken nurses stared as she stood up.
Three steps and she threw herself through armored cryplas windows, launching outward in a spray of sparkling shattered molecularly bonded crystal.
She dropped nineteen stories and hit the ground with a crash, leaving a crater fifteen feet wide.
Roca stood up slowly as a half dozen others dropped around her.
In unison they rolled their shoulders and necks, thick heavy vertebrae popping.
They could sense it, feel it.
Phasic energy.
They broke into a long stepped, almost jumping, run.
The nurses looked out the broken window and watched them bound away through deserted streets.
Heavy Assault Polyphasic Infantry, Monster Class.
One.
Each.