I never make it to Red’s lab. Earthquakes ripple through the ground, shaking me despite the heavy armor.
Sable Yurten recognizes this feeling, making our heart freeze. Real guns, the sort of long range mass drivers that only rare fortresses can fuel, begin to thrash our world. The sort of supercannons never seen on Earth for there is no need to shell an octagon of space shuttles month in and month out.
Lights cut off, not because we’ve been hit but because point defense counterbatteries need every picowatt and spare electron of energy. Notifications scroll down my HUD, reports and authorizations from the base’s automated defenses. Some are simple damage reports, others recognize me as commander and grant authorization befitting a Field Marshal.
That receives my full attention, as the Novan Artificial Intelligence in command of this base just promoted me. I should be grateful, not suspicious as fuck. How the hell did the AI survive Trinity, my attack, the nuclear detonation, and an EMP? What’s most surprising is the AI flat out reports core status and which vault is protecting it, displaying 100% functional and undamaged.
After the EMP I’m surprised anything is working, but the life saving point defense weapons are a top priority in base defenses as they are the only weapons directly protecting the AI itself. Logical enough to harden against all possible assaults. Shells land, sending another earthquake through our tunnels.
“Get a detachment to the base entrance. Those guns are powerful, but if they worked the Technomancy would have been defeated long ago. Once the bombardment ceases, expect a ground invasion.” I broadcast on an open com.
“Yessir.” Chimes across private com lines, all neatly rearranged by the AI.
No voices overlap, none are incoherent, they are all perfectly aligned in a way only total control of our broadcasting systems could implement. It can control our suits.
Suits that seal and can vent internal atmosphere.
>Terran Thena: The AI is active and in our suits.
>Executrix Alaea: Fek. That will take time to excise. Try making nice I guess.
I want to scream at her, but only because I know she’s right. There isn’t jack shit any of us can do about an AI designed to have total control of our suits. Every sensor, from weight to carbon dioxide to toilet flushers is connected to the base. Our suits have life sign readings, heartbeat, atmospheric, etc, all microscopic bits of information designed to educate the glorified computer so it can effectively triage wounded soldiers or deliver medical supplies and ammunition. It probably knows the number of molecules in your average fart and has confirmed that number thousands of times.
>Terran Thena: Can you give me an emergency button to warp the suit out? Let’s call it laundry day.
>Executrix Alaea: Nerd. lol. Here.
The button appears on my Warp HUD, and I quickly rearrange things there. It’s simpler than I could ever imagine, like using telekinesis to move zero-mass blocks around.
Our friendly neighborhood AI keeps track of my eye movements and adjusts the alerts in accordance, mostly shifting them to the leftmost edge of my vision, like the damaged unit warnings in starcraft, ie when a lone marine lands a shot against a battlecruiser and ‘ABANDON SHIP!’ echoes despite the marine already being blown apart by the very same battlecruiser.
For now I am stuck with the AI stalker and work the problem. We are under bombardment, thus the AI decided we are preferable to whatever is coming and decided to grant me command access. Or it knows we’re all chucklefucks who can’t code our way out of a wet bag, posing zero risk of overriding it. Either way, I now have scanners that extend a hundred miles in every direction.
For a moment my mind fuzzes, taking in the vast sum of information via databurst. Like a fist through both eye sockets. I hit the floor, crawling sideways and curling into a ball. Lings dogpile me, for a protective layer of spinosauri as the war enters my mind.
Outside our bunker an estimated million Singularity troopers fight against a few hundred thousand Azhurai scouts, each a masterpiece of variable sculpting, often in the form of a predator but there appear to be some hippos, cows, rhinoceri, and other creatures too alien for labels sprinkled throughout.
Makes sense, I’d get bored of sculpting wolves and lions all day, it would be healthy to sculpt a lovable fatass of a cow every now and again, but whomever carved a hippo out of marble ribbons needs to check in with their shrink. Eh, who am I kidding, I’d end up sculpting a chubby catgirl named meowmeow just for shits and giggles. Probably give her a box full of chicken nuggets that doubled as grenades.
Hundreds of shattered fortresses act as cover or bunkers for Singularity infantry, the vast majority of which fight unarmored, with no protection other than the condoms in their pockets and rifles in hand. Sensors track them by the squad, except for two individuals. Who are tracked with a thousand sensors each.
Cold sweat cuts through the pain, terror suppressing the migraine of knowledge.
Bioweapons.
One cleaves through constructs with seven swords, sheathing and unseathing faster than I can track, carving stone like one might carve melted butter. Unthinkably terrifying, so powerful. I’m lost in rapture, unable to look away from this bladed berserker, who dashes through enemy fire, like Alarak plowing through hordes of Rak’shir, or a wall of Hellbats holding the line against Meinhoff’s infested. Curtains of fire supplanted by curtains of venting solarium reactors, yellow instead of red, ripped from the beating hearts of hundreds.
So strong. Part of me wishes such a man would apply that strength in my defense. That would-
-end the flashtraining my own suit was attempting.
An error message appears on screen, marking me as some kind of ‘irregular’ with a long string of binary before and after. Not something my human eyes can read or parse.
“Ah hell. It can flashtrain us.” I say, broadcasting on all coms.
Except, no warning leaves my suit. Filtered out y the AI’s influence. I swallow, mouth too dry to speak.
‘The AI can flashtrain us within the suits.’ I warn.
‘Yep, he already tried on us, doesn’t work on symbiotes or myself, Emurine thought he was tripping balls, but his bird brain saved him. Barker requested a symbiote to help fight through it.’ Wormface answers, sending a mental picture of the updated battlefield directly into my brain.
Hive minds really have their upsides. In seconds my headsplittting migraine retreats, along with legions of scouts and the Bladed Berserker, replaced by a uniquely different bioweapon. One far larger, yet walking methodically, only moving at speed to dodge missiles or projectiles, while he shields and empowers the squads around him. He and forty eight unarmored troopers carve through thousand golems, C9 Sentinel rifles somehow equalling Azhurai shielding and overcoming it.
A bioweapon, fighting with reason. It’s a calculation I’d never truly expected, and seeing it firsthand fascinates me. Just who is this Heavy bioweapon, who fights with the men and women beneath him.
I swim through the dogpile of lings, giving Ling1 a headscritch before sprinting to Wormface’s command post, his CP at the rearmost entrance to the fortified atrium. With the AI providing an overhead rendering of various defensive options. If this were a castle gatehouse made of mithril and adamantium, it would be less strongly fortified than the first ten feet of blast doors. Which are now fully functional and sealed.
“Boss, glad you’re here, we’re buttoned up tighter than a nun with crossfires set up and thirty separate angles on the blast doors. This won’t be like last time where we needed Kerrigan to beat back the lings. Overmind- No- uhm. A-I-mind? AInd? Gave me gate control. I’ve opened the innermost blast door so we have a way to seal the entrance if the first two doors get blasted.” Worm reports.
Looking around him fills me with satisfaction. Barker leads an entire squad of carbine-toting, sword-wearing knights, Spiderman has six clones scattered across the base, each with a solarium reactored pulser. While Emurine’s squad of six has mushroomed into a dozen Ereapers. Then there are the infested troopers who account for the majority of our numbers. Checking our supply I’m immediately forced to question how long I was out.
36 / 42 Biomass (Hygieia’s pool of available biomass)
764 / 2000 Courier Ship Progress
64 / 144 Mechanized Units
1 / 1 Protochronian Artefacts
2 Nanofactories
1 MacroFactory (Foundry) Novan Primary Fabricator
10 / 100 Project ‘ODIN’
I blink at the progress, a stupid grin spreading across my face. My nap turned out like the strangest match of Starcraft where both players had emergency door knocks and neither ‘PP’ in chat, the cultured request to ‘Please Pause’ so both players could be on even footing; leaving us with an overabundance of resources and personal.
All waiting to fight.
Except for the Odin, that sweet love child of imagination and necessity needs some time in the oven.
Wormface taps his com link, a power armored soldier’s way of tapping my shoulder. It’s a whole lot easier than trying not to smash each other’s visors, making me wonder why we’ve been so cavalier about suit protocols.
“Ahem, uhm, the AI has to have a name, just ask it.” I say, thinking back through Worm’s report.
“Yessir.” Worm answers, knowing me well enough to pick up on a stalling tactic. “Need some adderall boss?”
“Shut your mouth- uh- Face! Shut your face!” I snap, not wanting to understand worm anatomy. “Look, we blast anyone who tries to sneak in, any cloaks, any tunnels have to die. But if the Holy Singularity comes a knocking we need to give them a chance to talk things out.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Worm pantomimes a nod, “Logical, keeps you from shooting any stepbrothers.”
My recently disolved eyebrows disappear into the peach fuzz of hair.
“How?” I blab, trying not to squirm in my suit.
The answer is obvious, there are no secrets within a hive mind, all soldiers know me on a deeply intimate level, too intimate. Like knowing exactly how many fillings are in someone else’s mouth. A glut of knowledge better left unstated.
“Sorry boss, I forget you aren’t used to the shared mind.” Worm says, pulling up a feed to the exterior world.
Beams of green Novan point defense flash like ten thousand polaroid fireflies, cutting missiles in half or detonating middair projectiles. Protecting our base from harm.
The AI recommends a maneuver, move all available juggernauts to a few dozen outlets, small connections no larger than my palm, where the Juggernauts can provide reactor energy to power the bunker’s shield.
“Great idea if we had spare tanks!” I snap, my helmet coms finally restored.
At least the AI can admit when it’s wrong, or at least acknowledge shared goals. Neither man, worm, woman, nor machine wish to die here. Buried under tons of irradiated dirt, forgotten and alone.
“Crap,” I say, watching the point defense work. All shots are skewed to one side, and it’s not the Azhurai’s. “Artillery barrages seem to be a Singularity special tactic.” I say, trying not to roll my eyes at how ineffective artillery seems to be. My waist tingles, reminding me that the artillery likely accomplished everything it was intended to do. “We’re a small force, pinned down by artillery. Against millions of enemy soldiers.”
If only these weren’t my stepsiblings, if only those singularity troopers out there where Baz-the-azzhole and Whore-the-Ashley, then I’d treat this like the surmountable conquest it was and pull off my kiddy gloves.
“Novan AI, send a message to the Singularity, tell them Sable Yurten of the 105th training regiment has taken command of this fortress and seeks an honourable return. They will be forgiven and compensated for shelling my landing position.”
Worm cocks his head, the gesture copied by our re-brained troopers. There are a dozen of them in the command post with us, mostly operating remote sensors or managing logistical chores while they wait for power armor to be repaired and returned.
Intrinsically I know they are piloted by multiple symbiotes, a war crime I’ve become numb too.
“Don’t cock your heads at me! A month from now we might have a hundred tanks, do you really think a hundred tanks can beat a hundred thousand Azhurai? Or a million troopers?! Cmon! Put the facts together, I don’t want to kill human beings. Allying with the largest human faction is a basic bitch level of assumption. Besides, we’ve ceded the upper world to them, given enough time and soldiers, which they have, we will be crushed by the weight of their carcasses. And that’s if we are lucky! We can all see the tunneling tank on screen! What if hat Bladed Berserker tunnels into our Primary MacroFactory? Or some other awful bioweapon with cloaking shows up? Nothing is stopping them from sending a dozen tunneling tanks into our rear or simply digging down from the surface to reach us.”
“Yessir!” Chimes over the com, a hundred voices all answering me with a zeal that says, sure mom, despite tightening their fingers against triggers.
Maybe that’s for the best. The ‘Holy Singularity’ only knows me as Sable Yurten, a fresh recruit who got dumped onto this world with nothing and hasn’t been seen for weeks! Worse, my last orders were to kill every alien, not inject yourself with nanites, become half zergy, create a slew of mutant marines and shack up with all the remaining iguanas on this world.
I am soooooo screwed.
“They’d hang me at best then call in a few humanoid bioweapons to finish off everyone who follows me.” I whisper, checking the Novan’s projections for Singularity forces.
At least a hundred thousand soldiers. Probably several million, offworld support guaranteed. A single line of text at the end surprises me. Full authorization granted, bleed them in every way possible to ensure the balance of power.
I’m forced to read the line a second time, full authorization? That means the foundry will be unlocked and all of the Novan’s most advanced technology is available to me… This is like walking into a supply depot looking for crackers and toilet paper only to discover a functioning fusion core instead!
>Terran Thena: Hey, can you try reconnecting a nanofactory with the central AI? I’m not sure, but I think we just got an upgrade to go toe to toe vs the Singularity…
>Executrix Alaea: No need, we have full control over ten satellite nanofactories- oh I mean satellite like Soviet satellite states, not satellite like space. Sorry, updating now! I got lost in how many options the foundry has. Athena… They have everything. Including things they shouldn’t. Like a sort of Goliath who requires you to teleport inside it and control it with psychic impulses. And some battlesuits that augment the pilot’s psychic abilities.
>Terran Thena: What’s the big deal with a psy-liath? Sounds awesome.
>Executrix Alaea: They’ve sold all psychic rights to the Collective. Why develop tech for psychics you cannot own?
>Terran Thena: Psychic rights? What?
>Executrix Alaea: It’s complicated. Essentially each race can have a set number of psychic beings under their direct control. That number is set by the nameless. Some species find that too restrictive, and ‘purchase’ all psychic entities from other species then integrate them into their species or uhm… replace those entities with their own. The Collective is really good at that, technically it’s a bad faith treaty violation but you can just pay a fine and keep the organism, which the collective does all the time. TLDR, Novans are not allowed to have any psychics for the rest of the century but these designs were updated a few minutes ago. The AI redesigned some dimensions to better fit you and Kerrigan… Which would be fully accepting two additional psychics into the Technomancy, and the limits are hard-caps, you don’t get fined a few tons of Solarium for violating the cap, you lose a world.
We consider what it means, reaching the same conclusion within a second of each other.
>Executrix Alaea: Rebellion.
>Terran Thena: Galactic civil war. Against the nameless.
This is why the Singularity cheated, a last ditch effort to steal solarium before full scale conflict begins. That’s why a dozen starships dialed a new gate the second it activated. Everything clicks into place. Was Earth even a seeded world? Or had some tricksy AI decided they could steal a few billion soldiers for the coming war and abscond any responsibility in the chaos that followed?
As if reading my mind Alaea speaks.
>Executrix Alaea: We need a fleet. Actual battlecruisers and orbital defense platforms.
>Matriarch Hygieia: Girls, we need a motherfucking deathstar
>Terran Thena: A second and third fleet too. What shipbuilding facilities exist on Syrak?
>Executrix Alaea: On the shielded half of the planet there are some light cruiser production sites, uhm, if we factor in the lore accurate scale of Starcraft units, it's like a shielded Liberator. Mmmm, actually a little bigger than normal so more like the spec ops version from Nova’s Covert Ops.
>Terran Thena: Can we set sail and cross the sea?
>Matriarch Hygieia: our courier can just fly over there
>Matriarch Hygieia: way easier than making a sailing ship
>Matriarch Hygieia: wait
>Matriarch Hygieia: cant the foundry make hovercraft
>Matriarch Hygieia: things like vulture bikes and hover tanks like a diamondback
>Terran Thena: You beautiful son of a bitch! COUNT ME IN!
>Matriarch Hygieia: daughter
Her correction falls on deaf ears. Here on Syrak-9 only one gender is recognized, and that is ‘cannon-fodder’.
I’m already drooling over the best possible diamondback variant. Truth be told the unit was kinda ass in Starcraft’s campaign, so bad it was one of the units that got cut from all competitive modes. Imbalanced to a fault by being mobile but slower than a hellion, expensive since it required a tech lab and lots of gas but too fragile to ever justify usage, only able of shooting ground, and only acceptable levels of dps against the units that already hard countered it like concussive shell marauders, siege tanks, fucking ten zerglings, or a single immortal. Banshees were similarly priced, sometimes identical depending on patch, yet cloaked, were flying death copters, and in general kicked more ass.
Vultures were similarly problematic, cheap but not cheap enough to compete against marines or -once again hellions- and their only redeeming feature being the ability to lay mines.
>Terran Thena: Crap, both units suck, do you remember any campaign mods that made them good?
>Executrix Alaea: Junker mod diamondbacks, if you add missile launchers, a plasma cannon, more reactors, biosteel, and an upgraded main cannon, oh and shields. Can’t forget the shields. Didn’t one mod add the immortal’s hardened shield ability too?
>Terran Thena: I think so. But like… We don’t have hardened shield generators… How would you even make that? It’s literal space magic. Can you make a game accurate Dback and some variations? We’ll take the Abathur route and have them face off. Kinda sad that diamondbacks sucked so much, great for the one train mission and never again. I’ll give it some thought, come up with a few iterations. Vultures?
>Matriarch Hygieia: fodder
>Matriarch Hygieia: remove mines then add second reactor for speed
>Matriarch Hygieia: lengthen the fuselage so two armored troopers can ride in it and… idk
>Matriarch Hygieia: add jewish space lasers?
I laugh so hard a snort echoes across the entire bases’ coms. Which only makes me laugh harder for embarrassment. Tears well. Soon dripping into the confines of my combat armor and pool there. Ah, if only the alloys used in my suit’s construction had some anti fogging mechanism or better yet absorbed the liquid like a self contained stillsuit, but such a thing would require microscopic channels and would operate more like a wetsuit; so disgusting soggy that would be guaranteed to grow moldy after a single use-
-Moldy.
Mold is a fungus.
>Terran Thena: How did Stettman cook up biosteel?
>Matriarch Hygieia: he smoked wayyyy too much terrazine with Tosh while eating hot mutalisk wings
>Executrix Alaea: Ya know, sometimes I worry about you two.
>Terran Thena: GROW VULTURES!
>Matriarch Hygieia: cmon girl
>Matriarch Hygieia: collective sucks at flying bioforms
>Matriarch Hygieia: its the powerplant
I understand instantly, birds can only fly due to their absurdly light bodies, even a small drone has a larger payload than a Bald Eagle; and the largest flying creatures ever known to man Quetzalcoatlus, could not carry anything more than half its own weight. An impressive sum, but to carry two soldiers in power armor would require a creature with wings larger than whales. Sure there is probably some super efficient farting spacewhale/dirigible we could cook up.
Or…
>Executrix Alaea: Stuff a fusion reactor and an engine into an organic vulture. That’s so stupid.
There is a long pause, spanning a few precious moments. All while Singularity troopers -earthlings- fight and die to animated sculptures. Slowly purchasing an avenue to attack us with gallons of blood.
>Matriarch Hygieia: Zazathur confirms it would work
>Matriarch Hygieia: he already cooked up a single person vulture with two sidecars
>Matriarch Hygieia: replaced grenade launcher and magazine with reactor and rapid fire particle cannon
>Matriarch Hygieia: like wtf is this guy
>Matriarch Hygieia: oh wow
>Matriarch Hygieia: the diamondback design is interesting
>Matriarch Hygieia: this… could work…
>Matriarch Hygieia: if you would hurry up and
>Matriarch Hygieia: MINE MORE MINERALS
>Matriarch Hygieia: NOT ENOUGH MINERALS
>Terran Thena: God damnit girl. Some text you can just hear. It’s not right! So how about I’ll fart in your general direction! How is that for some biomass?
Around us lights flicker back on. Power returning after the bombardment abates and our point defense retracts into hidey holes. One glance at a strategic map tells me everything. Azhurai constructs are pulling back across the continent, ceding ground to the bioweapons. Two individuals who are now heading our way with several thousand troopers at their beck and call. Scores of individual anti tank guns, self propelled mortars, and the occasional squad shielding carriage. Equipment that should have been deployed to save my life.
Instead it is all coming to end me. To slaughter those the Singularity claimed to protect. This wasn’t my deal with Jim, all head our way, alongside two beings who can only be described as human shaped bioweapons.
We got lucky with Trinity. If she hadn’t already been three quarters dead I’d be laying in the atrium, sliced into certainly dead -even for a nanite infused zerg- pieces.
25 / 42 Biomass (Hygieia’s pool of available biomass)
734 / 2000 Courier Ship Progress
15 / 68 Powered Armors (-4 to construct the TriThenar armor)
15 / 65 Mechanized Units
1 / 1 Protochronian Artefacts (Alaea’s warp engine)
12 Nanofactories
1 MacroFactory (Foundry) Novan Primary Fabricator
10 / 100 Project ‘ODIN’
