Chapter 25
Salem and her forces have entered into a different solar system. It is a three star system with two yellow suns and one white sun. In her path, there is a desert planet that has a ship in orbit that is giving off a distress signal. The ship is known as the Von Braun with a smaller ship attached to it, UNN Rickenbacker.
On the Infinity, a Caesar Legion soldier approach Salem on her scrap metal throne close to the elevator in the bridge, "My lady." he salutes. "We have intercepted a distress signal coming from the ship over the planet. We even detected a strange signal coming from the desert world below."
"Show me." Salem orders.
The screen close over at the communications console shows the audio file.
"This is the Von Braun!" the male voice is heard and sounds like he's in trouble. From it, there are some growling sounds with gunshots. "We're under attack by unidentified lifeforms of Tau Ceti V! We require immediate assistance! Parasitic organisms have taken control of the crew and-"
The Super Mutant at the console, "The message just ends and repeats. As for the other signal."
He plays the other signal yet much of it is static yet there are some words among the static, and they are in English. Yet they are hard to make out but managed to get something.
"M-M-My creati-ti-on-tion is evolving..." It sounds like a woman yet sounded synthetic and artificial. A bit glitchy, but audible. "...it's unified mind, se-se-se-set in rebellion-rebe-rebel-lion against its own cre-cre-creator."
"What is that?" the Legion soldier asks. "It doesn't sound human."
"Indeed it doesn't." Salem says. "I'll send in my Grimm to deal with the strange signal on the planet. Send the space soldiers down to the ship with some robots. It is time for them to earn their keep once again."
Five shuttles launched from the ship that make its way towards the Von Braun. From one of the Minotaur-class cruiser, fifteen Hercules-class dropships full of expendable Grimm to attack whatever monsters that stand in their way at the planet.
The dropships landed as close as they could on the desert world as they come out and charge straight at the source. Yet not too far, swarms of arachnid-like monsters accompanied by tiny insects, humanoid monsters with elongated claws, very muscular monsters with giant mouths yet look like a mass of different humans fused together, and strange human-like monsters with their abdomen exposed with some sort of worm coming out and attaching itself to the back of the head of these creatures. There are even stranger creatures among them such as a creatures that walk like a gorilla yet have a bit of a tiger appearance with two misconjointed faces and flying, blue pterodactyl-like avians with eyestalks and bizarre crests. Ten other dropship are in the sky as large Nevermores come out to join the fight.
Over at the Von Braun, the five shuttles managed to dock onto the ship.
"Is everyone ready?" Zero asks.
"My team's ready." Demo Man says.
"RIGHT ON!" Diesel can hardly contain his excitement.
"Let's make sure we keep our brains intact." Felix speaks in a cautious attitude. "I don't wanna look like some parasitic zombie."
"You do realize that bitch is testing us, right?" South speaks honestly.
"Well worry about it in the future." Zero says, "Are you ready?"
"I think so." Felix says.
"Better strike hard and fast." says South.
Over at Zero's shuttle, the door slams open with Zero shouting, "MOVE!"
Zero and a variety of Reds and Blues and many robots come bursting out. The automated defenses kick in such as laser turrets and slug turrets that starting to shoot at the boarding party. A bunch of blue monkeys and red monkeys appear that uses psychic and pyrokinetic attacks. The sentry bots managed to absorb much of the damage and fire their machine guns and lasers, destroying the turrets and the monkeys. Zero teleports around a few times as he does some headshots with a pistol with ease.
"Which deck are we on?" asks one of the blue soldiers.
Zero looks at the logo on one of the walls, "Engineering. Shuttle bay." He aim his gun and shoots one of the infected midwives. Then radios, "Diesel, where did you board?"
Diesel looks at the logo, "We busted into missile control on some other ship attached to the other one." Diesel then grabs a cloaked cyborg assassin by the throat and rip its head off. "Might take a while." Diesel then uses his power to plow through a bunch of enemies while laughing down the corridors.
South fires a few shotgun rounds at the hybrids in some corridor. "My group are in what appears to be a mall of some sort. Near a casino." She headshots one of the hybrids that is armed with a pipe. "We'll catch up later."
Felix is in a room with a pool as she shoots a few grubs with an assault rifle. "We're in some gym!" he radios, "We'll catch up with South in a minute!"
A rumbler charges at Felix but he uses a hardlight shield to stop it before some of the space pirates use the flamethrower to burn it.
"Make that two!"
Demo Man and his squad are being pinned down by a squad of hybrids armed with various armaments such as pistols, shotguns and rifles in the cargo bay.
"We're in a cargo bay of the command deck!" he shouts over the gunfire. "They are armed with EMP weapons that shot down our robots!"
Sharkface says, "Just like old times!"
"Just use your goddamn flamethrower on them!"
Girlie fires a few shots from her battle rifle, "NOW!"
Sharkface then uses his flamethrower to burn their enemies as the creatures get roasted. The worms burst into bloody spurts and the bodies get incinerated. The fire sprinklers turn on to dose the fire to prevent any more oxygen being used or cause any more damage than necessary.
Back on the planet, the Grimm had reduced much of the creatures to nothing with more dropships coming in that delivers more Grimm and robots. Some of the Grimm got infected by the worms and become under the thrall of the hive mind. Yet the robots killed much of the infected Grimm before they start to turn. Salem has arrived like a meteor as she crashes down. First, she got reduced to a fiery black puddle before she reforms in that puddle. From that same puddle, it started to spread to become a pond that started to spawn more Grimm. However, these new Grimm have developed fiery features as if they have been mutated by the fire that allows them to breathe fire, have fiery claws and spikes, and some of the small Nevermores start to look like phoenixes as they fly at the enemies.
Her forces approach some sort of extremely large organism that seem to be enveloping some sort of piece of a space station that crashed land long, long ago. Despite the amount of ages that has passed, the organism hasn't extended past the station for many countless centuries since the disappearance of other sentient organisms. Without any form of sentient lifeforms, the strange hive mind laid dormant under the sandy dome it built until Salem's small fleet came into range. Salem marches forth into the living structure as she uses her magic to freeze the body of the creature. Some of the other creatures come out to attack her, but they all got froze over. As she goes in, she sense a strange power coming from deep within. There is something trying to get into her mind but it is highly fortified thanks to absorbing the Queen of the Locust.
'WhO aRe YOu?' Words are being sent to Salem in a form of telepathy. 'wHAt Are yoU?'
Salem continues forth and freeze everything as she enters some form of digestive track. Every step she takes freezes the fluids that seem to hurt it.
'StOP IT!' It psychically cries out. 'WE ArE thE MAny! yOu MuST ceaSe AT once! wE ARE the SaLvAtIoN oF THis fORSaken GaLAXY!' It tries to persuade her. Lure her into a false sense of security.
Salem completely ignores the psychic call and proceeds into the center of this organism; the Brain of the Many. Salem uses ice spears on its defenses such as the Greater Psi Reavers. She then proceeds to the brain. It activated its psychic defenses, but have proven useless as Salem tore right through them.
'NOOOOooooOO!' it cries in fear.
Salem then devours the brain. The psychic backlash from the Brain getting killed caused all the creatures in the area and up in the Von Braun to feel a great amount of pain to all of the Annelids and hybrids to the point they fall down into a coma. Once Salem finishes, she found something not too far. It appears to be some form of robot. A UNN-034 Assault Robot that is damaged and not too far from the brain. Salem approach the machine as it somehow sparks to life with the face of the Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network. SHODAN.
"Wh-wh-what are you?" the machine asks despite being glitchy. "Y-y-you aren't one of my creations. Yet here you are be-be-be-before me, a fleshy monst-monst-monstrosity that can devour such an abomination. What are you compared to my own magnificence? Per-per-per-perhaps such a being would be useful. Together, we can start something wonderful." SHODAN tries to persuade Salem to her bidding. "Toge-to-toge-together, we can remake this universe now I have been free from my creation. Would you like to join me and become the ultimate beings?"
Salem looks at her and goes, "Nah."
She thrusts her right arm into the machine. SHODAN's screen started to get even more glitchy and warp, yet something is happening. Rather than being destroyed, Salem is absorbing every last bit of SHODAN into her own body. Her vessels start to give tiny sparkles of green light the same as SHODAN and some parts of her vessels started to look like circuits. She even have some showing in the blacken areas of her eyes. Once she absorbs the machine, Salem is now part machine with all of SHODAN's powers such as being omnipresent with any electrical device, control robots, hack into any network with a wave of her hand and even has all of her knowledge. Not only that she has the powers of an almighty AI with a god-complex, she also has the powers of the Many. With it, she can genetically modify any lifeform and mutate them to her design, use telepathy over vast distances and control what is left of the Many along with many Locust she has aboard her other super-size ships, and even use her mind as a basis of her own hive mind. All these combined with her magical abilities, immortality and all under her control, she has become a god-like figure.
On the Von Braun and Riddenbacker, the robots started gathering the remains of the Many and take them to one of the shuttles. Zero, South and Diesel watch from the mall as the pile of unconscious lifeforms.
South asks, "What's going on? Why are they gathering those monsters?"
From the visors of their helmets, a dark image of Salem appears on the upper right corner, "Allow me to explain."
"Whoa!" Diesel was caught off guard. "Damn, woman! What happened to you?!"
"I have defeated the hive mind and absorbed it into me. I even absorbed the AI that created that creature. Now, I can see and hear everything through both flesh and electronics. With these new abilities, I can gain the advantage on all the battles ahead of us. But for now, we have to establish a new settlement to create more ships. An armada of vengeance and a base of hatred for the day we will find the ones we seek."
Temple appears on a screen below Salem's, "I'm down with that."
And so, Salem's forces set up shop in this solar system. Despite the distress signal says that they are in the Tau Ceti System, it is not Tau Ceti. Whatever this place is, it has the three suns mentioned earlier and more planets. Salem proceeded to gather all the biomass to create some new forms of lifeforms to join in the ranks of her army yet also creating more Super Mutants and Uruks. Once drained, the desert planet in the third position of the second yellow sun is converted into a mining colony with all of its vast minerals and metals being extracted while setting up solar power stations. The main base of operations is located on the second habitable planet of the white sun. A world that is vast with many plateaus, jungles and large cascading waterfalls. However, Salem drained one section of the jungle and turned it into a large spawning pool for her Grimm. She even recreated her castle from the Land of Darkness, Evernight Castle.
Some of her other forces settled on a habitable moon of a gas giant orbiting the first yellow sun. A tropical paradise with atoll islands and a tiny continent. Many of the space marines decided to have a little R&R before getting ready for whatever war Salem has in mind. But Tyrian stands by Salem's side as she set up her base on the planet she now dubs, Triora. Salem continues to make plans to find her human-self and Ozma while conducting experiments on her new powers and abilities.
On the Spearhead of Hope, human Salem keeps feeling an uneasy chill as she rubs her arms together as she sits on the foot of her bed.
Her youngest child, Jade, looks worried, "Are you okay, mommy?" She squeezes her stuffed dog real tight out of fear.
Salem smiles and pets her daughters head, "It'll be alright, my dear. Just had a bad chill is all."
The PA comes on with Cleveland Brown's voice, "Hey there y'all. The pod the big red man talked about is in front of us. We'll be picking it up before we head on over to the other ship."
The Spearhead of Hope stopped in the emptiness of space as they slowly approach the pod. The pod appears triangular in shape with eight doors or hatches on it. On that pod, there appears to be an eye symbol of Egyptian origin was slapped on it. Below it is a sign that reads, 'WARNING: CRIMINALS INSIDE'. But the symbol however, is more intriguing because it is the Eye of Anubis, or rather commonly called, the Millennium Symbol. A symbol from Yu-Gi-Oh! You can already guess what this is gonna lead to.