The Life Biotic
-A Splicer's Short-
The insectal buzz of the bio-comms vibrated the back of his brain. The buzzing voice told him to move left. He did as he was told. His life was one of obedience.
Criminal,
Lunatic,
Scum,
Slave-soldier,
Biotic
Thrace thumped along, his heavy body thundering down an old concrete drainage canal. His big booted feet crunched stone debris and ancient rusted junk. A dozen other Biotic's followed after him. After running for two minutes the brain-buzzing ordered him right. He turned and climbed up a steep vertical wall that was the corpse of once great steel and glass structure. He topped a ridge line and glanced downwards.
Thrace was not particular elegant to look at. He was thickly and powerfully built. His dark blue living body armor of alien organic plates and tissue-fibers was packed with big, genetically enhanced man-muscles. His left arm, a weapon-limb, was a large bone and flesh cannon, with a gleaming bone-blade mounted underneath. Mottled fur strips highlighted the hardened armor plates of his torso and arms, wrapped around his neck like a lion's mane, and lengths flapping from his shoulders like a short cloak. His eyes were deep-set in armored sockets, and they reflected the light eerily.
Barbaric and alien, Thrace the Biotic.
It was hard to see what was happening below. Smoke blow strangely as pressure waves pushed air, dust, and grit around. Black plumes of smoke indicated fire and burning combustibles. Sound echoed off the remains of the buildings, the thumping of gunfire, zip-zinc of energy weapons, shrieking roar of rockets. Light flickered within the smoke.
The buzzing told him hold position. Waving his hand at the other Biotics he did as he was told. He hunkered down behind a large block of stone, resting his weapon-limb on top of the block, aiming down below. Thrace noticed the pebbles on the block vibrating.
The smoke bulged and pushed outward. Light from within the cloud pulsed more frequently.
With an increasing roar the smoke cloud broke. A stumbling robot clanked and clattered out of the thick smoke. Nearly thirty feet tall and sixteen tons. The vaguely humanoid robot had four legs and each of its arms were huge cannons. The Assault-Slayer behemoth was rocking backwards on two of his legs, one arm raised upwards, holding a Dreadguard at arm's length. The huge host armor was part-humanoid, part-snake, huge tusks goring the shoulder of the robot. Its long tail was wrapped tightly around the weapon-limb.
Thrace and his company of Biotics waited. They were no match of the huge robot, only a Host Armor could engage one and hope to survive. Even then chances were slim. The odds were evened slightly when another Host Armor leapt from the smoke. This one looked like an insect, thin and skinny with freakishly long arms, shiny olive green plates, antennae, and barbed tentacles. It sprang like a bug and attached itself to the robot's other arm, its bard tentacles stabbing at the joint where the weapon was attached to the robot's torso. The Host-Warriors were attempting to disarm the Assault-Slayer, literally.
* * *
Thrace waited longer, but he did not have to wait for long. The Robot had summoned help, from the smoke and the buildings came shadowy figures. They were shaped like large men and carried weapons, their metallic skin glimmer in the weak sunlight. Steel Troopers came to the Assault-Slayer's aid.
Laser bolts spat at the Host-Warriors.
The brain-buzz told Thrace to … engage the metal bastards …
Thrace half-smiled.
He lined up a robot and thought. The gases stored in his weapon-limb ignited violently and ejected hardened pellets of his own compressed body waste at an incredible velocity. Flame roared from the barrel of the flesh and bone limb. The air stank of methane gas discharge.
The pellets struck the Steel Trooper in the shoulder and back, metal shards flow away, the Trooper was spun around violently. The other Biotics that could, had done the same. Some fired Caster weapons like his own; others fired Bore weapons, which fired living grubs that ate metal with a terrible hunger. Some fired weapons Bio-Energy weapons, which generated destructive energy directly from the wielder. Those without ranged armament rose up and raced down the slope, a great battle-roar shook the air.
A few Steel Troopers fell to the ground, but most got back up quickly, and by some unheard communication from the large Robot the foot-soldiers split their forces. Twenty Steel Troopers turned and fired lasers at them. Thrace saw Vexco, the foremost racing Biotic, lose an arm, then a leg, then most of his head. A handful more were killed or crippled under the energy barrage. Biotics were 'remade' to be as tough as any foot-soldier the Machine could produce and they could shrugged off horrible wounds, but they were considered fodder by Warlord Thos, lord and master of House Atlas. They were there as a distraction, to draw the Robots fire, their lives mattered little in the great war against the Machine.
Thrace spat half-a-dozen more pellets then leapt up and raced forward to join the rush. His weapon-limb continued to roar flame. The pellets punched into and around the Machine's robots, then he was amongst them.
Using the bayonet of his weapon-limb Thrace stabbed clean through the chin of a Steel Trooper and using his great strength tore the robot's head off.
Though some of its sensor units, and its transmitter/receiver pod was now gone, it was far from destroyed.
The Trooper swung a metal fist that rocked Thrace back and cracked his chest plate. Blue-black-red blood seeped from the cracks. The Biotic aimed and unloaded four pellets point-blank into the Trooper's chest. The robot's torso blew apart in a spray of metal bits and electronic components.
He snatched up the heavy axe tied to the belt, and glanced around.
* * *
A third Host-Warrior had joined the other two. This one was a fiendish wolf-headed brute of black and silver. The first two Host-Warriors had de-armed the thirty foot robot. They we now in the process of cracking open its torso and shredding its internal components. The wolf-headed Dreadguard had all but disappeared into the robot's body, claws and blades tearing its innards apart. The Assault-Slayer sounded its external horns, trumpeting like a dying beast.
Their ambush had worked perfectly. The three host warriors, and company of Biotics, had been tracking a squadron of large robot for several days, and when one separated from the others they attacked.
Thrace spun around, laying about the Steel Troopers with his axe. Suddenly, the world became white and felt his body become lose. He collapsed uncontrollably to the ground, staring at the blue sky. He saw a robot standing over him, his blood and bits of brain matter staining the butt of its rifle. The Trooper turned the weapon around, and took aim at Thrace's face.
Two long spears stabbed into the Trooper, one punching into its head, the other into its chest. Then two long arms took hold of the robot and tore it in half. The olive colored insectal Host-Armor stepped into Thrace's view. The thing also stepped on his foot, snapping and crushing it. Not that Thrace felt the pain, with half his brain smashed and the other half draining out of his skull.
He rolled his broken head around and saw the other two Dreadguards mauling the few remaining robots. Another victory for House Atlas and Warlord Thos, Thrace thought, his vision diming to black.
* * *
The olive green Host-Armor reached down and picked up Thrace, brain-buzzing the other Biotics to do the same. No one was to be left behind, dead or alive. Altruism had little to do with it. Resources where tight with all the Great Houses, even more so for House Atlas in its mountain stronghold. The Biotics meant nothing to the Dreadguard, less than nothing, but if they managed to get the dead back to the Gene-Pool in time, their organic components and meat-parts could be reused. The war against the Machine and her robot minions, after all, had to go on.