Next Chapter up.....Enjoy reading.
Where have all the reviewers gone!!?
Tharagon
Three Laws will lead to only one logical outcome
The lone infected, a dark shape among the cold wastes, sprinted through the layer of permafrost among the ice locked grass. So near to Moscow, so near to the dark heart of the machine race, the machine could feel it, it was drawn to this area. It screeched into the night, seeming to spasm suddenly before it cocked its head onto one side.
Before it, an empty village stood, dark and abandoned among the cold, cold snow. As it half stumbled, half ran through the empty streets, the buildings dark windows glaring through the cold. A church stood blasted and along, a single prominent spire as the machine passed the burnt cars in the streets, the smashed windows. It vomited black ichors onto the snow, the black fluid pouring from its chin. Beside the wrought iron railings, the first few flakes of snow began to fall, landing on the machine as it collapsed in a shivering mass on the icy pavement.
Above, the old the street lights hung loose, their bulbs long blown, the street full of shadows and darkness. The battered husks of cars and Old Russian Military transports stood out among the dark, shapes threatening and black, evidence of some old campaign. The machine howled in pain, again erupting black fluid onto the white snow. Above, the cold white moon blazed, illuminating the entire small village in a crisp white light. From the eyeless pits which made up the machines face, the near naked body barely shielded by a large red jacket, legs bare and torn, covered in black fluid and dirt, the female model android staggered on, through the moon light.
Motoko swung herself into the waiting Raven on the flight deck of a large British cruiser. Around her, men lay in makeshift stretchers as Ravens and Merlin Helicopters returned back to the friendly vessels. From the groaning wounded, burned and broken soldiers, the impression of near and total defeat was almost too much for most normal people to bear, Motoko had seen it before, Wading through the radioactive quagmire which was Tokyo after the last war had caused her to see such things.
She grimaced; her usual grim expression clouding her face as she slipped into the harness as the dual segmented doors began to close, sealing them into the dark interior. She could hear the engines roaring as the two pilots ran the pre-flight tests, checking the plasma vents were fully functional and the turbines were all in working order.
She picked the large black rifle from its holder beside the chair, checking the scope and ran a hand over the firing coils, checking the breach and with one firm hand, slapped the stock. The gun knocked back into her armoured shoulder, allowing her to check the underneath before dropping it back down onto the firearm clamp on the floor beside her chair. The gun clicked back, Motoko muttering under her breath as her new found voice echoed around the dark room…
"I am the unknown Soldier"
A car laid peeled open ahead, vast claw marks dug from the carapace. Bodies, frozen and stiff lay about it. Clutched in one of the grey, ice cold hands, a small doll lay hugged to the owner's chest. The machine whimpered loudly, as if trying to wake the child as it stooped down beside it, its horrifying visage ignored as it tried to pry the doll away from the cold dead hands.
The doll came away with only a little force. The android, screeched at the body, defying the cold grasp and claiming its dark, dirtied prize. It hugged the doll to its chest, feeling the smallest piece of comfort from the small form. And in the echoing blackness, the machine began to weep.
For the lost, for the dead, for the living for itself and the rest of the machine race. Barefoot in the snow, the machine could feeling the dark and in the tiniest spring of hope, the ghost existing within it. ODIN whispered still, the madness was still part of it. But in that one moment of clarity, the snow clearing, the machine looked on and saw life.
The sniper's bullet blew its head apart, spilling the dark fluid onto the snow, the doll tumbling away from its nerveless fingers.
The lights blazed through the empty windows of the church as the Raven passed over head, low to the ground to avoid the several radar sites set up around Moscow. From the dull, windowless head of the craft, the thick black crucifix wings ending in the large engine pods, the urgency with which the craft moved was apparent. The twin fins which stuck at angle from the tapered reverse of the craft, the reverse engine pod hung between, twitching every once in a while to change the Raven's flight path, the other pods facing away from the rounded sides of the main flight deck, blasting away the snow as it moved.
From the only opening in the nearly solid slab of black metal, Whitman rubbed at the cold finger ends of her hands and activated the HUD spread across her face. She wore thick fingerless gloves, a large black coat and a thick pair of holographic goggles spread across her face. She was hanging above the open air, tied tightly into her harness, hands wrapped around a large matt black sniper rifle. Her favourite weapon, the rifle had an under slung grenade launcher beneath the barrel, a carved and rune encrusted stock and a custom scope with an inbuilt HUD. From the dark corona of her eye, the coldness was just as much within Whitman as it was outside. From the moment the Raven had lifted off from the British and Russian fleet in the Black Sea, the same kind of dread filled the 32 people inside the large craft. They knew what was coming, and the price that had to be paid to reach it.
She sighed loudly, her voice torn away from her in the howling gale as the snow began to gather on the right side of the harness. With a hiss and a clank the harness withdrew into the crowded interior, revolving inwards on it's axis as it did so, allowing Whitman to place her boots on the metal floor as the door behind her clanked shut and sealed.
She dusted off the thin layer of snow spread across her black armour and looked down the long space. Ryeman was no where to be seen, Motoko sat at the far end, head bowed, eyes closed in shadow, waiting. The old brooding presence had returned to the Cy-Borg, Whitman realised with the ODIN infection which Ryeman had been rather unclear if the virus had gone or not.
Shi'ja sat nearer, head deep in an open book on her knee. From within the paper pages, hundreds of Sanskrit letters flowed underneath her fingers as she ran her hands over each text. Beside her, Basher, priming his solid rifle would occasionally glance across, his own thick armour well polished and unmarked, silent testimony to the lack of combat situations he'd ever been in.
Diego sat beside the sniper's port, deep in conference with another soldier. Unshaven, his long face cut quite a striking impression among the shadow, his hair shaved nearly down to the skin. Resting on his knee, the Savant Electrolysis rifle was down to its stock as he cleaned its inner workings, a rather melted battery on the floor by his foot.
Whitman realised, among the Deathwatch and the dark outside, they were all still here, all of them. Even when the Patrol had found her in the wastes, sealed the hole in her stomach with plasma burns and had brought her home, Whitman had never lost faith. She had someone to return to….
"This is a response to Delta squad, Philadelphia Squad and Maximus Squad…"
Brent smacked aside the dust covered wreckage covering the radio; its speaker system was broken. The microphone that allowed him to talk gone as in the ash and the mud, the shells smashed down, scattering human body parts and mud across the trenches. Hundreds of mecho-pods smashed down among the crowd of human forces, rending those who got in their way. It was like looking into the fires of hell, each time Brent raised himself up to stare across the trench top. Men, running for their lives, behind them, the glowing eyes of the machines flying through the sky over head, their many metal tentacles writhing as they passed by, tearing through the running troopers.
"…..Delta squad do you respond?!!"
Brent swore as he tried to find the lost microphone. The trench behind him blew out in a smattering of debris as a well placed missile whipped from the dark sky. Behind his dark visor, his face unknown and unapparent, Brent could hear the machines behind him, running through the trenches behind him, hundreds upon hundreds of them. He gripped his rifle, wrenching it from the dark mud and turning back. In the black, the androids came, the EVA suits and the vast bulk of the Kraken Harvesters passing overhead.
"….we have confirmation from command, all forces are advised to fall back to secondary positions…..people I don't know who can hear this but we have hope….we cannot fail or this race will burn and fall. Delta squad, everyone, I'm…..so…..sorry."
"No, No, No" Brent began to moan as above him, in the dark clouds, a hole began to form, the eye of the storm, a vast swirling dark cloud of pure fury, blue lighting formed, tearing down toward the dark earth. The rain stopped, the air becoming thick and dry. In the rasping heat, the dark earth and the curdled sky….
There was the sound of pure silence, the air been ripped from Brent's throat as he leapt for the nearest foxhole. A single beam pierced the heavens, tearing down through the sky like some vast needle, alighting on the ground. And then there was silence, the sky stalled, the air seemed to freeze in the mouths of those still out in the dark. Machines didn't not stop, did not pause in their slaughter. Above, almost in slow motion as the wind began to howl a mournful dirge, picking up the dust and dirt in eddies of wind, a single pulse travelled down the single point of light.
The blast melted most of the objects in a mile radius, hundreds of machines, their chassis broken and melting fell away as the roar of blue fire and shockwave the dark earth tore asunder. Like some vast blue orb, the shockwave tore across the battle field. The houses were reduced to a pile of ash, the last remnants of the TA forces screamed as the blue fire tore through their tanks and trenches, killing all, sparing none. In the ash soaked plains of America and England the Earth cried as the dead burned along with the enemies they were trying to fight against.
Jericho closed its large flower like head, folding it back into the diamond shape body, its outlets steaming as it retracted its firing mechanism back into the huge, pointed main body, allowing its solar sails to fan out to catch the rays of the sun, unknowing and uncaring about the destruction it had wrought on the world below.
Behind the cockpit, in small 10 metre corridor between the crew bay and the cockpit, Ryeman sat, the console lit up before him. The armour he wore, its dark surface reflecting the light, the small blue neon lights glowed among the black. The whole piece of armour resembled a rather thick set human body; each muscle group was segmented to allow easy movement exposing the Plas-steel under-skin underneath. From the previous war, the Orga or Organic fighters tended to look like third world fighters, their armour chipped and covered by large black or brown cloaks, great for camouflage, their bodies strung with beads and scarves. Ryeman had gone for the more refined look, his armour was heavily reinforced, large plates acted as pauldrons on either shoulder and ran down to the large, metal gloves.
There was nothing on the screen. The Nightwatch logo of a broken cog struck by lightning revolved on the screen, just a screensaver, Ryeman was in a thoughtful mood. He couldn't quite shake it, the incomparable feeling of dread….
The pilots looked up from their chairs as an alarm sounded deep within the consoles which surrounded them, the holographic displays rolling past their heads.
"We're passing into a Red zone…."
Inside the 'blind' head of the craft, the image of the flight path ahead was displayed on a large holographic screen, the snow rolling away beneath them. Around them hundreds of numbers began to spill past, holographs, distorting in the air as the pilots manipulated the image.
"Comm silence is kept."
"Place is completely dead."
The other dark clad Pilot nodded, twirling the joy stick to evade a large pinnacle of rock.
"Welcome to the Jungle"
"Yeah, I mean still, why do the Exiled come here?"
"Because the top brass order them to, to keep tabs on what ever crawls from the wood work."
Ryeman looked up at the pilots' murmured conversation. Behind his head, across the metal walkway, the brightly lit luminescence of Icarus swirled as it automatically scanned the surrounding area for any signs of life. It flickered…..strange….Icarus unable to express emotions seemed puzzled as the V.I system struggled to comprehend.
The console chimed loudly. Ryeman glanced warily over his shoulder as the screen swirled again. Across its glassy surface, a vast horizon was depicted, a vast glowing mass of hundreds of vertical lines, outlining buildings in a lurid, neon green colour. In its dark streets, hundreds of swirling lights moved among the dark gaps of building faces, passed through the air at speed or passed through deep tunnels, driven through the ground.
"It can't be…"
"What have we got…?" Whitman pushed the chair away from the desk to allow her and Ryeman a better view of the console screen. As the black clad chair pulled away, the metal cold under her hands Whitman looked into her Commander's face
"They can't have created them…."
"What…."
"The machines…." Ryeman stopped "….they have Ghosts."
Whitman glared balefully at the large screen, running a hand over the solid keys and distorted the image, squinting at the flickering lights. Each ghost, a bright flash of colour moved among the streets, hundreds passing among the shrouded buildings.
"What are they doing….They're not fighting or running. Why are they all out?"
"Isn't it obvious…?" Ryeman leant back clasping at his face with the Metal gauntlets "….either they're waiting for us or….."
"What?"
"Something."
Whitman sighed and rolled her eyes at the rather cryptic answer given by the large man.
"It must be the gathering of energy or Icarus is mistaken, I don't know…Something may be disrupting the lens."
"But it would be impossible to create a ghost…" Ryeman didn't answer, staring fixedly at the screen. "….isn't it?"
"When I was in ODIN….." Motoko said as she stepped through into the small space, grim faced and determined "….I saw what ODIN has done, creating vast swathes of energy, fields, one of each machine to fall under it's command. A pseudo Ghost"
"Almost like a ghost dubber"
"They must be all based on one though. You require bodies and ghosts to make this possible."
"That would be what the Harvesters are for…." Whitman lent back against the metal wall behind her "….they need living humans to sustain the green fields, so all the machines"
"….but the idea is so huge….Where can they possibly stemmed this…."
"Hans"
"His book, his life was for machines…." Motoko stopped, that was it "….he is part of the machine, he is part of Deus."
"He is a Ghost within the system, the Ghost within the Machine."
Motoko stirred, her finger on her chin, the matt black armour clacking against her armoured finger "A Stand Alone Complex…."
"Full Circle….."
There was a vast whoosh of jet engines beside the Raven; Ryeman had the impression of evasive manoeuvres as the craft lurched to one side.
"Ground Level fire, I repeat, we have ground level fire."
"Missiles….We're into the thick of it now."
Whitman looked up into Ryeman's face as the craft shuddered again and across at Motoko.
"Go back to your seat…" he said "….strap yourself in and hold on. Things are going to get bumpy."
Whitman hurried down the dark aisle, pulling aside several troopers who were struggling to pull themselves into berths. Ryeman pushed himself into the cockpit, strapping himself into one of the jump harnesses.
"We're going live, full visuals."
"Understood."
Two large inlets opened, rectangular in shape, the thick glass ice encrusted and lit by several console lights. Below, vast clouds of white rolled by, broken occasionally by several thermo-plasma missiles breaking through like blue flowers bursting from the white earth. Above, the moon hung in the sky, its bright surface playing across the cloud tops and a needle like spire which erupted through the bleak view like an accusing finger.
The cockpit shook as another missile blew apart nearby in a cloud of blue fire causing the cockpit to shake violently.
"They're blind firing, the perception filters must be still be effective"
One exploded directly before the nose of the craft, blue, superheated plasma scattering over the nose cone and the now open windows.
"That one was a little close!!"
"Fuck!!! Fuck!! Fuck!!!" the pilot twisted the flight stick to one side "….bastards, absolute bastards!!!"
"Keep your nerve…"
"How!!! How!!!" Do 'NOT' fire that blue shit at me!!!"
The Raven twirled in the air, hundreds of plasma flares burning out behind as a valve mis-ignited in the rear engine pod. Motoko grabbed hold of a support as the craft shuddered again, a missile blasting apart the rear side carapace.
A sharp whining alarm began to sound across the interior, a hull breach obviously caused by the plasma scoring along the nose cone of the craft.
Ryeman lent forward in his seat staring out of the nearest window port. Hundreds of black dots were pouring from the white cloud, their metal glinting in the white light. Machines by all appearances, metal glinting off the swarm of tentacles which flickered out behind. From this distance it was impossible to make out each individual of the swarm, one vast black swirling mass of metal and red eye light.
"Machines, 9 o'clock, go go!!"
The Raven burned bright as the pilot ditched the after burners and pushed the craft into a dive. Mecho-pods, millions and millions of machines reared up like several vast tentacles from the white cloud below, moving as one solid mass. Motoko struggled to pull herself into her harness as the craft shuddered to the left.
"Make for the gap between the two swarms….see if you can lose them"
"Easier said then done…" the pilot twitched the joystick, spinning the craft on its axis, before pushing the craft down toward the cloud level. They passed into the shadow of the vast bulk of metal above them, the 'pods' swirling down toward them, tentacles sounding like hundreds of chains rattling.
"C'mon, c'mon" Ryeman was pressed back in is seat as the craft flipped on its tail, the plasma engines shorting out.
The pilot reached above his head, clasping a large level in the console above his head and pulled it. An alarm began to sound as perspiration began to bead the man's brow.
"Engines cut out!!!"
The Raven sputtered again, plunging down toward the ground. With one final effort the pilot wrenched the level again. With a scream of hot metal and plasma the engines came to life, their blue flares igniting the cloud level, melting through the condensed air. Wasting no time, the controls were wrenched back, pushing the Raven from the cloud level, up back into the pitch black sky.
And immediately jolted back down as hundreds of Pods slammed down onto the black metal carapace, Ryeman spilling from his seat.
"Action Stations!!! We've got company..."
Machines began to crawl across the windows, their red eyes becoming the only visible orbs in the sky. From the crew hold, the dull thud of machines hurrying down the outer carapace. A bolt came apart, falling sizzling into Basher's lap.
"They're cutting through…!"
In the cold, freezing depths of space, several large square edged pods hung in orbit. below the limitless stars, the cold, judging moon, the objects seemed almost to be waiting for something. With a blast of cold steam which erupted from the reverse of the craft, the pods began to descend, in sync, down toward the black mass of cloud which rippled across the Northern hemisphere......
(targets set \:JSFCODE : IS23334/Singular Think Tank drop in operation)