BETA Kashgar Hive (Objective 01)

The BETA Superior wondered how everything had stagnated. Across World 03, the Carbon lifeforms had disrupted mining operations to the point where quotas were falling behind, and Hive 22 had been destroyed earlier.

Not to mention with that wormhole near Objective 09 and the Carbon entities on the other side, they needed to deal with that.

Still, it knew that they had time and the numbers to deal with the problems-

The Superior felt something odd, a feeling it rarely had to deal with: a feeling of Unease.

Then it felt something, a data inquiry from one of its hives.

It reached out to Hive 11, something was going on near its hive.

And then the superior learned: that another wormhole had opened near the hive and 11 was requesting new orders.

This was going to…disruptive.

Mentally resigning itself to another quota delay, the Superior sent the orders to investigate. A force was sent again to investigate.

()

Existence 0049371572 was what the humans considered a fort class, one of the largest entities produced on a mass scale. The seventh hundredth of its batch, it was virtually identical to any of its batch mates besides the date of its 'birth' and its numerical serial Number that it held for logistical reasons.

It was among the millions of other mindless mining entities, meant to mine, carry carbon material, and rinse and repeat on a typical day.

Today was not a typical day.

It along the thousands sent to walk into a wormhole to give knows where. Another portal, akin to the one where tens of thousands of its batch mates walked into, and died.

Had it been an intelligent being, it would have been understandable to feel some form of fear, hesitation, despair, or a dozen other emotions as it lumbered toward the swirling mass of energy.

Instead, it dutifully followed its directive: walking into the wormhole and relaying back information and data to its parent hive.

Soon, it was its turn to move forward into the unknown. There were no great deep breaths, last minute contemplations, Existence 0049371572 merely walked into the portal.

Three seconds after it stepped in, the fort class exited the portal-

-an into a slaughter.

Its optical organs analyzed the situation, realizing that the thousands of entities that had stepped through before it had seemingly perished or were being wiped out themselves.

Existence 0049371572 realized that the portal exit was seemingly surrounded by thousands of Carbon entities, sending endless waves of red laser beams into mining entities left and right.

Existence 0049371572 computed the data it was seeing, moving away from the portal when a particle beam smashed into one of its legs.

It stumbled, then a pair of missiles crashed into its leg joints, a kinetic round slashed into its stinger, and the beast stumbled forward and crashed into the dirt.

Dazed and confused, Existence 0049371572's sensory organs could tell that all the previous mining entities were now…dead.

And then, it could feel the ground shake. Existence 0049371572 turned its 'head' upwards as it felt the sun blot out.

And it watched as a massive bi-pedal carbon entity, larger than anything its origin world could create, stomped its way towards it.

The fort class, gutted of both mobility and weaponry, could merely watch and send data back.

The leviathan Bipedal entity stood triumphant over the fort class, seemingly unphased by the fort's side.

And Existence 0049371572's sensory organs heard the worlds that would haunt the BETA superior for the rest of its existence.

"IN THE NAME OF KANE" the entity bellowed, "I CAST YOU DOWN INSECT! PEACE! THROUGH! POWER!"

The Bipedal machine raised one of its legs and brought it down on the fort's head.

Existence 0049371572 would go dark nano-seconds later, alongside a whole division of BETA creatures.

It was a harbinger of what was to come.

Happy April Fools Day. I didn't know what to do for this wonderful day but then I was thinking about how to integrate NOD into this fic, and got inspired by a few other fanfics to do a snippet for this glorious day.

Enjoy, I'm working on the next chapter.