Chapter 8
The Second Offensive
The combined teams of the Jericho and Golgotha Murders walked off the ship's bridge, their captives in tow. Though the aliens made no attempt to be troublesome, their Tager captors kept a wary eye on them, occasionally giving a not-too subtle reminder to keep up the good behavior. Wallow and Carnage took the lead, conversing as they walked.
"You know, I'm a little disappointed," Wallow remarked, ambling his way through corridors that were barely able to accommodate something of his size. "I was hoping that they'd resist at least a little before they gave up. That final push was a bit anticlimactic."
"They did the smart thing," Carnage said. "Rabbits can't fight wolves."
"So what does that say about those that did?"
"It says that Darwinism is alive and well in the galaxy; we did their gene pool a favor. Speaking of which, why'd you have me heal that one alien?"
Wallow gave a massive shrug. "It might have been an important one. We want high-ranking aliens so when the mind-readers crack their brains open, they'll give us some juicy secrets."
"Well, first we'd better get a translation program running for these little shits," Carnage growled. "I swear, if I have to keep listening to their goddamn squawking, I'm going to rip out their vocal cords, or whatever they have."
The conversation was interrupted by an incoming telepathic call from Snitch. Hey Alpha, I found out what that sound was. Looks like one of the birds decided to opt out of existence with his pistol.
Is resuscitation possible? Carnage asked.
I'm looking at blood and bits of brain spewed all over the place. Even you couldn't put him back together. Also, he's got somewhat snazzier apparel than the others we've seen. He might have been a high-ranking officer or something.
"Shit," Carnage muttered. There went any secrets that one had, and it had probably been a goldmine. All right, head back to our rendezvous point. We've got prisoners to ship.
Will do, said Snitch.
"What's up?" asked Wallow, noticing the Bloodgod's displeasure.
"Turns out, that bang we heard earlier was another alien wallpapering some of the ship with his brains. Snitch thinks he might have been important too."
"That sucks," Wallow grunted. "Oh, well. We've still got a couple dozen other aliens; odds are at least one of them is going to have some good stuff in his head."
A minute later, the Tagers arrived at their destination. It was the same as before they had left; the Tagers who had been left behind to guard the aliens that had already been caught remained at their posts. Carnage strode up to one belonging to his own Murder, a Phantom who, though well over seven feet tall, was still dwarfed by the Bloodgod.
"We're back, Preacher. Anything to report?"
"Everything's under control here," the Phantom said. A normal person would likely have been put off by the distinctly feminine voice coming from it. "It's actually been a little boring."
"Sorry to hear that," Carnage said with a smirk, "but you all had your fun earlier and we need the rest of them alive."
His otherworldly shell opened up where his waist was and from within drew a communication device. The Bloodgod pressed a button and a holographic screen flashed into existence. On it, there was the image of Admiral Slade, his features as stony and unreadable as ever. Carnage gave him a respectful nod; even the most aloof of Tagers gave this man his due.
"Admiral Slade, the mission is complete," Carnage said. "We've taken the alien ship and secured roughly two dozen prisoners."
"And the rest of the aliens?" Slade inquired.
Carnage allowed a feral grin to twist his already grotesque features. "Resting in pieces."
Like the hard campaigner he was, Slade didn't even blink. "Good. I'm sending over escort shuttles to the ship. It's high time we had a little 'chat' with our new acquaintances."
The transmission shut off and Carnage turned to Wallow. "The admiral is sending us our rides. Let's get these aliens over to the docking bay."
"Roger that," the Torment rumbled before bellowing, "All right boys and girls; let's get these birdies moving!"
The various Tagers began hauling the aliens to their feet and shoved them forward, being none too gentle about it. The process was often met with squawks of protest from the aliens, but otherwise they acted compliantly. For the most part, anyway; Carnage found himself dealing with one who apparently decided to do its best impression of a ragdoll, staying limp and refusing to move. Needless to say, the Bloodgod was immensely annoyed.
"Come on you little turd, get up," he snarled, cuffing the alien sharply on the head. Its only response was to continue sitting dully, eyes staring blankly into space.
"All right, if you're going to be a bitch about this..."
Carnage placed a hand on the alien's head and utilized his powers to target its nerves. Instantly, the alien began to squeal in pain, arms flailing about in an attempt to dislodge the Tager's hand. Carnage let this continue for a few seconds longer before he was satisfied. Upon releasing the alien, it curled up onto its side, body trembling as its nerves tried to shake off the lingering pain. The Bloodgod hoisted it off the ground and brought it up so that they were face to face.
"Now then, are you going to cooperate, or do I need to give you another taste?" He wiggled his digits meaningfully, and even with his limited knowledge of its kind's facial expressions, the Tager knew that the alien was staring at them with absolute dread. Carnage set it back down and this time the alien scampered off to join its fellows, casting the occasional cursory glance back at him. The Bloodgod chortled; nothing like a nice blast of pure agony to make the defiant cooperative.
No doubt that would be the case during the interrogations as well, something that Carnage found himself looking forward too.
#
Down on Shanxi, the orders that everyone in the relief force had been waiting for finally came: assault the enemy and terminate with extreme prejudice. Within minutes, the entirety of the outfit had mobilized and set off, intent on exacting a bloody toll on the invaders for daring to occupy their planet. The mecha and Engels, being the iron fist of the operation, would be at the head, followed by the thirty thousand infantrymen and other miscellaneous combat vehicles.
Within her mobile command center, Brigadier Xiu Chen watched the army move upon a holographic display of the battlefield. Miniature renderings of her units were traversing the terrain, moving ever closer to the enemy's lines. Finally, the mecha squadrons and Engels came to a halt, and the voice of Captain Katsu Yoshahara, callsign Black Sun, the overall commander of the mecha and Engels, crackled through the comms.
"Overseer, all mecha and Engels have reached the designated zone and are awaiting further orders."
"Black Sun, hold your positions for the moment," was the Brigadier's answer. "Callsigns Chasm, Impact, Tremor and Red Rain will commence long-range bombardment of enemy positions in tandem with the howitzers. Prioritize any artillery or other combat vehicles they might have. I want the alien bastards reeling and confused before we get down to business. The tactical powered armor mecha will support the troops while the rest engage the enemy. On my go ahead, you will be weapons free."
"Black Sun copies all, Overseer. Relaying your orders now."
Not a minute later, there came the piercing scream of missile racks unleashing their payload, audible even from miles away. These were followed in short succession by the earth-shaking booms of the self-propelled Jaeger howitzers. Chen allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction; the aliens were about to get a nice "good morning" greeting, courtesy of the Federation.
#
Colonels Silvanus and Tarkin were helping themselves to a meal of packaged combat rations, trying to forget about the debacle of last night, when a loud whistling sound suddenly filled the air. It didn't take a master strategist to know what those sounds meant, and both Turians sprang up and rushed out of the bunker.
"INCOMING ARTILLERY!" Silvanus bellowed. "TAKE COVER!"
No sooner had he given the warning when fiery explosions suddenly blossomed within the 230th's ranks with deafening booms. Anyone or anything caught within their fifteen yard radius was torn to shreds. The soldiers of the 230th did their best to find cover, but the area around them was all open field, perfect targets for the enemy's artillery. Entire squads of Turians were reduced to bloody chunks; those that managed to survive a blast sported missing limbs and other grievous injuries. They added their screams of agony to the terrible din of battle.
The two colonels took refuge within a freshly made impact crater nearly five feet deep, which currently was occupied by a few soldiers. The moment they jumped into the crater, Silvanus began yelling out questions.
"Where the hell are our own artillery pieces?! Why aren't we firing back?!"
"They're targeting our armor, sir!" one of the soldiers answered as another explosion rocked their position, spraying debris over them. "They seem to be prioritizing our Jiris hovercrafts! They must be getting real-time reconnaissance info from somewhere!"
"Oh, shit," Tarkin muttered.
"What do you mean, 'oh shit'?" Silvanus snapped. "What's happening?"
Tarkin looked his fellow colonel in the eye. "They're not just shelling us for the hell of it; they're softening us up! This is the start of a major offensive! Colonel, you need to call reinforcements here now! If I'm right, then you're going to have about three hundred super-powerful mecha bearing down on you, plus whatever else the aliens have decided to throw at us! I can guarantee that, without additional support, you won't be able to stop them!"
Silvanus's eyes widened in realization and said, "Oh, my Spirits…If they get through us, the command center is next!" In the blink of an eye, the colonel activated his omni-tool.
"This is Colonel Silvanus of the 230th Legion! Our position has come under enemy fire, likely the preliminary stage of a full-scale assault! Be advised, we will not be able to hold them off in full force. I repeat, our position is indefensible; requesting immediate sup—!"
His voice trailed off as he happened to glance over the lip of the crater. The horizon was no longer empty; now, there was a vast swathe of enemy forces tearing across the terrain, from infantry to armored vehicles, and at the head could only be the colossal mecha that Tarkin had warned him about.
"Holy mother of Titans, that's a whole fucking army coming at us!" Tarkin declared.
Silvanus simply nodded in numb agreement. There was no time for reinforcements to arrive nor for the Legion to withdraw to a better position. Already, the mecha were barreling towards them at top speed. The sleeker ones raced across the ground, their movements so fluid that they might as well have been alive. The bulkier ones were nowhere near as graceful as their faster brethren, but they were far from ungainly. The hulking cybernetic creatures moved with the eagerness of predators ready to take down their prey, loosing terrible howls as they went. It wouldn't be long before they were in range to open fire. Wasting no time, Silvanus rapidly tapped a command on his omni-tool and began relaying orders to his legion.
"All units, find defensible positions and prepare for battle! Anti-armor teams, target enemy mecha. Everyone else, engage enemy troops once they get in range!" He looked over at Tarkin. "Which of the mecha types would take priority in being destroyed?"
Tarkin let out a humorless laugh. "If I had to choose, I'd pick the giant cyborgs, but those fuckers are extremely hard to kill; nothing less than a direct hit from a mass accelerator cannon is going to hurt them, and from what I saw, it'll take a hell of a lot more to put them down for good. My advice, aim for one of the others. At least then you'll be able to do some actual damage."
With a grim look, Silvanus took his fellow colonel's advice and relayed the order. He looked back over the lip of the crater just in time to see the mecha begin their attack. They hit the Turian lines like a force of nature, hard and merciless. The eerily lifelike ones flew through their ranks with blinding speed, firing as they went. The towering masses of metal lumbered in their wake, unleashing the fury of their own weapons. The air was soon filled with the roar of laser beams, plasma blasts and other armaments being discharged.
The monstrous cyborg-beasts were the worst of them all. Though they occasionally utilized their ranged weapons, the creatures seemed to prefer, if not outright enjoy, getting up close and personal. The two colonels saw one with a tail tipped with an oversized stinger; in a blur of motion, the appendage whipped through the air, skewering soldiers with uncanny accuracy. Another caught an unfortunate Turian with what looked to be a fifteen foot long tongue and pulled him into its mouth. Many more Turians suffered grisly deaths at the hands of these terrible beings.
Meanwhile, the rest of the aliens' army had closed the distance and proceeded to open fire on the now disorganized Turians. Their weapons seemed to be of the electrokinetic variety, a version long rendered obsolete by mass effect technology, but they were no less deadly. If anything, they seemed to be far more dangerous than their mass effect based counterparts, for even those Turians who suffered only flesh wounds would suddenly collapse onto the ground, convulsing violently and foaming at the mouth for a few moments before finally succumbing to death. Though the Turians fought back valiantly, laying scores of enemy soldiers low, there were simply too many of them. With every passing minute, more of the 230th Legion was whittled away.
This was no longer a battle; this was a slaughter, and all the two Turian officers could do was watch.
It was at this moment that they were treated to a close look at one of the creatures as it strode up before them, searching for new prey. It was one of the smaller breeds, just a shade under thirty feet, but it was a truly disturbing sight, something which not even the black armor encasing it could hide. The head was grossly bulbous, appearing too large for the thing's body to support. A sickle-shaped spur jutted from the ankle joints of its digitigrade legs like that of a monstrous prehistoric saurian predator. It was an abominable, terrifying thing.
And it now took notice of them.
Before either Tarkin or Silvanus could even blink, it struck. The other Turians who had been with them were all crushed with one swipe of its armored fist, their broken forms flying through the air.
"FUCK!" Tarkin bellowed as he and his fellow colonel scrambled out of the crater. The creature paused as if in curiosity, looking on as the Turians ran as fast as they could away from it. Then, it broke into a loping gait; in spite of their frantic speed, the creature gained on them with each long stride.
"Split up!" Silvanus yelled. Without pause, they ran off on divergent paths, ensuring that the monster would have to pick who it went after. Unfortunately for Silvanus, he got chosen, and was run down only a few seconds later. The thing's hand sped through the air and it was only by sheer luck that the Turian was only clipped by the massive appendage. Even so, it still carried enough force to lift him off his feet and send him somersaulting across the ground and finally flat onto his back.
As Silvanus wheezed helplessly, the beast moved to stand directly over him, its feet stomping down with enough force to shake the ground around him. A loud hiss, like that of some hellish serpent, came from the creature's head. One of its hands extended and wrapped thick armored digits around the colonel, hoisting up as though he were a child's toy. There came several metallic clicks and some of the plates that covered its head slid back to reveal what lay beneath.
Silvanus immediately wished it had just killed him then and there and spared him the awful sight. The thing's face was beyond abnormal; it was an affront to natural law, a travesty that should never have been made. A pair of bulging eyes stared at him, ugly pools of blackness that displayed a soullessness that comes from unnatural creation. Serrated teeth, each at least a foot long, studded its maw, which looked to be permanently fused up into a cruel smile. Silvanus could not fathom what kind of depraved mind would be willing to give an abomination such as this life.
The beast let out a low growl, the sound reverberating all the way to Silvanus's bones, and its gaping mouth opened wide. In that horrible instant the colonel realized that he was about to die; he was about to become food for this terrible creature, and there would not even be a body left to bury. He closed his eyes, and proceeded to make peace with the Spirits.
Then, there came a tremendous boom, a screech of pain, and suddenly Silvanus found himself falling to the ground as the creature reeled back. He landed hard, and suddenly there appeared to be spinning. Once his head cleared, Silvanus saw Tarkin advancing on the cyborg, a procured missile launcher in his talons.
"YOU LIKE THAT, YOU UGLY MOTHERFUCKER?!" he roared, loading another missile. "THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM!"
The creature hissed in rage, a large area of shredded flesh marking the impact of the missile, though it was ultimately a superficial wound; already, the injury was healing at a despairingly fast rate. The armor plates slid back over its face in preparation for combat. Tarkin fired off another missile which impacted on the cyborg's shoulder. For all the good it did, he might as well have hit it with a flashbang, with hardly a blemish on its armor to show. The beast bounded over to the Turian, and quicker than blinking, it snatched him up, the missile launcher falling from his clutches. The creature let out a triumphant howl, and the plates covering its visage once more opened up. The great toothy mouth opened, ready to devour the colonel.
Tarkin then pulled out a fist-sized object, which Silvanus recognized to be a grenade. Tarkin primed it and growled out, "You want to eat me, huh? Well, open wide and choke on my bones!"
Tarkin then hurled the grenade into the cyborg's mouth and was promptly swallowed. A second later, a dull thump came from its chest area, marking the grenade's detonation. The beast shrieked and fell to its knees, retching up thick globs of blood. Tarkin was sent tumbling across the terrain before coming to rest only a few feet away from Silvanus.
Tarkin propped himself up on his elbows and let out a strained chuckle. "Well, that was something."
Unfortunately, it appeared that even Tarkin's act of defiance also failed to inflict any true damage, for the creature rose back to its feet. While it now seemed to have a dazed look about it that was the extent of the harm.
"Fucking hell!" Tarkin protested. "What does it take to kill you freak-shows?"
Thunderous footsteps announced the arrival of one of the other mecha, a hulking two-story mountain of metal. One of its arms raised and the two colonels found themselves staring down the barrel of a very big gun.
Tarkin let out a fatalistic groan. "Are you kidding me? Come on Spirits, can't you guys do something useful?"
Then, without warning, the cyborg attacked again, but this time it ignored the Turians. Instead, it targeted the allied mech. Before its pilot knew what was happening, the beast had all but reduced it to a pile of scrap. With a great leap, the thing went after another of its erstwhile allies, leaving the colonels thunderstruck.
"What just happened?" Silvanus asked.
"Our sorry asses just got saved," Tarkin murmured. He then looked up at the sky. "Thank you, Spirits. I take back what I said."
#
Brigadier Chen was busily coordinating her forces to achieve her objectives. As of yet, there had been no major issues, but she had a feeling that would not last. Sure enough, a transmission suddenly blared out in the bunker, bearing some very bad news.
"Overseer, this is Black Sun! Aral-105 has gone rogue! Callsign Nightshade is unresponsive and callsigns Blackjack, Sunder and Blaze have suffered critical damage! Requesting immediate use of Engel lockdown codes!"
Chen let loose several potent curses in Chinese. Locking down an Engel was not the same as deactivating an LAI system; the creatures within their armor hated being constrained and would become surly and uncooperative for days on end. The Engel would essentially be out of commission until the creature decided to calm down. But have one run rampant through her ranks was something Chen could not allow; even a smaller one like an Aral could wreak all kinds of havoc and it wouldn't stop until it felt that there were no more threats in its immediate area. Calling up a screen displaying the Engel's status, she relayed the codes that authorized the locking of the Aral's armor. Its joints flashed red, indicating that the code had done its job.
"Lockdown code is sent," she said. "Aral-105 has been incapacitated. Prepare an extraction team to bring it back. Relay to all units to hold off on the assault until the Engel has been secured."
"Copy that, Overseer," Black Sun replied, relief evident in his voice.
The Brigadier ended the transmission and pinched the bridge of her nose. So much for finishing the aliens off in one fell swoop. Not that it mattered; they were stuck on the planet and their ships were held at gunpoint by the 5th Fleet. They weren't going anywhere.
Their heads were already on the chopping block. She could wait a little longer to swing the ax.