Rek'narash Part 3 : Incursion
(Author’s note: if you haven’t read the earlier parts of this story, you should read that first before enjoying this story. Start with "Rek'narash : Arrival”.
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On the planet’s capital, the large sphere was of a deep blue color and it seemed to act like a lens to an outsider. At first, it seemed to be of a blank blue hue but, as time moved on, the sphere gained a bright blue color. For nearly an hour it stayed as such, until a shockwave broke the panic from the people’s minds, only to have them focus on the shrinking sphere, until it turned into a ring-like object, of the same dark blue hue as the sphere. Amidst the now settling dust cloud lifted by the shockwave, figures could be seen walking out of the ring, alongside vehicles as small as an APC and as large as Walker Mechs.
Mere shadows in the dust, once it settled, their true shapes could be seen. A small group of Unity marines, baseline humans with little cybernetic alterations, a rare sight within the marine core, had arrived at the ceiling of one of the buildings surrounding the plaza and stationed themselves watching the ring.
“Command.” Spoke one of them. Beneath the encased head, the helmet did not let anyone see their faces, yet his tone of voice made it seem he was the commanding officer of the quartet. “We’ve arrived at checkpoint delta. It seems the enemy has some sort of… gate set at the center of the square. Troops seem to be pouring out of it. And vehicles, mechanized. A LOT of infantry, command.”
From the other side answered a voiceless person, with a near synthesized voice:
“Roger, bravo team. Continue scout, report as the dust settles.”
“Roger, command. We’ll keep you posted.”
As the dust settled, the larger machines of the invading forces started coming into view. One of the larger Walkers was slipping through the gate as it became visible to the scouts and they saw its shape: A large, purple hull, highly adorned with symbols unrecognized to the men. Four large plated legs made the machine move and the two wide plates on its sides seemed to protect it rather effectively. A long and large two barreled weapon of some sort seemed to adorn its top, and its mount seemed to grant it great mobility.
As the dust settled, slowly inching away, the smaller vehicles could be revealed, each with similarities to the larger ones. The same large side plates, long barreled weapon mount atop them, yet the smaller vehicles had no legs, instead, seemingly sucking the very air from underneath it in a crimson swirl.
Not an hour had gone by and the dust cloud had nearly disappeared and, with it, the infantry came into view. From the distance, they could indentify three types of infantry by what they wore:
“Command. Bravo team.”
“Go ahead, bravo.”
“Infantry came into view from the cloud. I can discern three different types by what they wear, plus vehicles. I can also see they seem to separate male and female troops into these groups, but their weapons… Sir, the males, largely outnumbering the rest of the army… They’re wearing plated armor and… polearms? Swords? What the…”
“Bravo. Please repeat. You said polearms and swords? No ranged?”
“No, they have ranged, it’s the females, apparently, but… They have bows?... It’s like their weaponry is still primitive, but their tech is just so advanced. Yes, the females make up the second group and they all have some sort of bows.”
After a minute of silence, the synthetic voice from command broke the silence:
“Bravo. You mentioned a third group. Explain.”
“Yes, I can’t see clearly, but they seem to have actual weapons. Handguns, mostly, but I do see some heavier weaponry. Shoulder mounted, I believe.”
Upon prolonged observation, one of the larger Walkers emitted a loud, deafening noise and the infantry below it answered it with a cry for battle. This, in turn, was answered by the other three Walkers shooting their weapons at the surrounding buildings, a powerful, blinding white beam that seemed to melt any material it touched.
“Command, bravo! They’ve started to move away and the mechas are tearing up the surrounding buildings. Please advise!”
“Roger, bravo, please standby.”
“Better hurry, we wait any longer, we might as well serve them a picnic.”
The team’s CO spied down again and noticed one of the females with a bow aiming at them with a glowing white arrow. Releasing the arrow made it fly at the rooftop where they were, fifteen stories high and the arrow crossed straight through the concrete between them, its tip narrowly missing them by no more than an inch. The arrow still lingered on the concrete for a few seconds before vanishing, as if made purely of energy, leaving only a hole on the spot it went through the concrete.
“Shi-… Command, they found us, we’re pulling out now.”
The CO heard muffled sounds of something heavy hitting someone and their grunts and the sounds of bodies falling to the ground. Swiftly turning on his heels, he saw three of the large males holding polearms and the rest of his team, unconscious, being pulled away by two more. He noticed their faces, but they were not showing anger, nor happiness, rather contempt and disgust were what filled the men in front of him.
“To hell with you all.” Spat the CO at them.
As he pulled his sidearm, one of them had already gotten near him and shoved the back of the polearm onto his face, knocking him out.
After a mere day the entirety of Grilja’s orbit had fallen. All the military installations were turned to debris, all the defensive platforms reduced to nothing and the civilian stations were apparently next on the menu. But the enemy had no intentions on destroying them, rather they had successfully boarded them and were now reaching for every civilian that hadn’t evacuated and gathering them in the hangars, most of them beaten to near unconsciousness. A small trio of enemy infantry, lead by Conqueror Kumari was making its way through the hangar as they approached one of the mounds of human flesh and Kumari smiled at it:
“Such pain. The smell of their fear and agony fills my nostrils to my contentment.” She reached down and grabbed the skull of one of the waking bodies, his face clenching in the pain of having Kumari’s claws cutting through his scalp. As she tightened the grip on his hair, her claws dug deeper, making the man scream in pain. This seemed to please Kumari greatly before she threw the man on his back and yelled on his ear: “SCREAM LOUDER YOU PITYFUL RUNT!!” she then punched the man, crushing what was left of his nose. One of his men approached her as she stood up and whispered something to her ear that made her near stand in salute, her eyes blank and her mouth twitch to a smile: “How many?...” she asked
“Several million, Conqueror.”
“Millions…” her eyes started glowing red, her twitching smile became more accentuated, along with a labored breath. “My… And we have barely scratched the planet’s surface. Literally.” She finished with a loud, heart-chilling laughter, a sound that filled every corner of the hangar.
After calming herself, she tapped her neck and called:
“Yes, Deva?”
Aboard the flagship of the warfleet, Gehenna still looked at the hologram, but she had taken a seat, her legs crossed in a sort of back-less throne, her fingers pressed on her neck:
“I’ve heard the reports. I assume it to be the reason for your delay.”
“Quite so, Deva. They’re already millions for the offerings. Indra shall be pleased with your efforts, Deva.”
Gehenna noticed another warning from the hologram’s surface and she shot upright as a window opened with details.
“No.” she spoke in a worried tone.
“Deva?” asked Kumari in a quizzical tone, as Gehenna still had the comms open.
“Nothing of your concern, Conqueror. Gather the offerings in orbit then move in on the surface. Have Conqueror Yami aid you on the surface.”
Gehenna cut off Kumari before she answered and spoke aloud:
“Where is that transmitting to?”
A crewman behind her answered her in a nervous tone:
“Everywhere, Deva. Anything within one hundred light years should be able to listen and view that stream for several kazyie, Deva.”
Anger spiked inside Gehenna as her eyes started to glow red again.
“Exterminate that citadel.”
“Deva? Our troops…”
“NOW! Activate the PSC. I want that citadel turned into a crater.”
“The… Deva, firing the cannon at a planet can cau…”
Gehenna grabbed the polearm her armor was seemingly growing from its back with half-silent metallic noises. Without a warning, she swung it from her lower left, making a huge, deep gash on the man’s chest, almost slicing him in half. After stowing it away on her back, still half blinded with rage, she called out loud to the room, her voice reverberating in an echo:
“Fire the Cannon, or I will have you in the front lines with the Warriors.”
Deep within the planet’s capital city of Eginwis Worot, things looked bleak. The immediate area around the central plaza had been leveled to the ground and the areas around it didn’t look too stable either. The large Walkers were circling the devastated areas, now only firing at anything that moved too close to the gate. Unity gunships that had approached too close to the gate were also shot down by those Walkers by the same kind of beam weaponry as their large cannons, only from a much faster and more agile platform. Nothing could cross the vastness of the city into the plaza without being made known to the Walkers and the dust cloud arising from the battle wasn’t enough to stop anyone or anything. Fires were brewing throughout the city and yet more explosions were occurring at an alarming rate all across the city.
Inside an installation at the city’s far eastern area, a command center was in place for the military and police forces of the city to organize a defense, a failing defense due to the enemy’s superior technology. The main room was much like any other Aynrin CC, a round shaped room with a hologram at the center, only the hologram was now that of the city itself. At the opposite end of the room’s entrances, a large, wide window stood from floor to ceiling, a window that revealed the destruction this new enemy had brought onto Grilja, people passing near the window either looked sideways or couldn’t look at the scene unfolding before them. Around the hologram were three men, if they could be called that, hung upside down from the ceiling above the hologram, so filled with cybernetic links on their heads and necks they looked less human than most genetically modified people currently inside the room. A fourth person, a baseline human, walked around the hologram staring deeply at the advancing red “wave”, in a literal sense, as they appeared to be unstoppable.
“What’s left?” he asked in a completely calm and controlled tone.
“Nothing, sir. The city has fallen.” Answered a woman working on a console behind him. “I’ll go as far as to say the orbit has fallen to them, I can’t contact anyone above the planet.”
The commander stared to his left and saw the city in ruins from the room’s windows and walked towards it as he spoke:
“Tell the men to retreat, most of the civilians have evacuated to other cities.” He then noticed the ceiling high above, saw the transmission antennae and his eyes widened. “That’s it. The antennae. See if they’re still working.”
“Sir?” questioned the woman with an inquisitive look as she worked the console to follow the order. “That’s an old system, I don’t think… that’s…”
The commander went close to her in a hastened walk: “Well?”
“They work. But they need a tremendous amount of power to reach anywhere useful to us.”
“Start diverting power.” Spat out the commander as he went for another console. “You.” He pointed at another crew on a nearby console. “Gather any footage we have so far. The enemy’s ships, their troops, what the hell is going on out there. Sound, any transmissions sent throughout the defense network since this hell began. Clamp it up, put a paper pin on it, I don’t care, get it ready to be sent.”
“Sir, diverting this much power will cut the lights and many other systems in many nearby cit-…”
“Don’t argue, just do it! Grilja is lost without outside help. We already lost the planet once, I will NOT let it fall again.”
The woman answered with a mere nod as she resumed work on her console. The commander walked towards the window once again to see the antennae near the ceiling and the devastation below it. He banged his fist on the railings and the second man spoke up again:
“Sir. Data burst’s ready.”
“The antennae?” asked the commander.
“Still not ready, sir. Just a few more minutes.”
“Now. Not tomorrow. We won’t be here tomorrow to send that!”
“It’s charging. If you want to send this as far as you want, I need one more minute.”
The commander smiled: “Now you’re thinking straight.”
The minute it took the antennae to charge seemed to take an eternity for those in the room; for those outside, it was merely another minute spent facing the never ending enemy onslaught. After the minute elapsed the woman spoke out:
“Data burst ready to send?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Commander.”
The man near the window turns on his heels with a sparkle in his eyes and he approached her, once again, in a dashed step, as he spoke:
“Send it. Now!”
The woman kept working on the console as she spoke:
“Yes, sir. Sending data burst… now.”
The antennae outside cackled with energy as they were activated and, soon enough, the distress signal had been sent out.
“Now what?” asked the woman, breaking an almost uncertain silence.
“Now?” retorted the commander in a happier tone. “Now we wait.”
Not a moment later, a gunship of sorts hovered right outside the window. Its purple, symbol adorned plating made it known to the people inside it was not Aynrin. Its sleek hull showed no evidence of wear and tear, nor any markings of any gunfire and the enormous gun beneath it showed signs of being charged, the same crimson swirls from the small land vehicles the enemy had with them were keeping it leveled with the window. Flooding the room with a bright white light, it illuminated the command room and a booming voice filled the ears of those inside with an incoherent speech. Not a second later, the cannon below fired a black tinted shockwave, shattering the highly resistant glass and destroying everything inside the room. Consoles exploded on contact, the metallic floor, walls and ceiling ripped apart into pieces, flesh stripped from bone.
Outside, a few more of these gunships were flying around the city occasionally firing their cannons with the same devastating effects. The enemy’s advance seemed unstoppable. As they took the roads and avenues most of them seemed to storm inside the surrounding buildings and bring out the unconscious bodies of civilians, pilling them up in sleek, blue colored dropships parked in the middle of the road or parched on the wider rooftops. The Aynrin had their hands full from the moment the enemy walked through the still active gate in the plaza and they knew it was a losing battle. Ever since the attack on the city began, the military and police had been trying to evacuate the civilian populace from the city onto further away locations via the vacuum trains, but the enemy had been closing in on the stations on several cities at a near unstoppable rate.
Near the station, a lavishly decorated entrance with pillars and statues of various figures stood hundreds of military personnel, guiding the civilians into the station and into the trains. Most of them witnessed the command center being destroyed by the enemy ship, which was right above them, the shattered window pieces falling on top of people like rain. Civilians had been evacuating for hours and it seemed like there was no end to the fighting around them. When the enemy finally reached them, the slaughter was near instantaneous. With very few losses on the enemy’s side, they charged in through Aynrin ranks as well as their melee weapons were cutting through them. Most of the present Aynrin noticed the enemy had some kind of powerful shielding around their figure, but the ones that tried to say anything through their radios were quickly silenced by the hails of white arrows raining from nearby rooftops.
One of the soldiers noticed the antennae on the city’s ceiling had been activated and he smiled at it. Not a moment after he called out to anyone nearby him about the antennae, a large, black sphere engulfed the antennae and anything within hundreds of meters, seemingly sucking everything near it. The dust clouds had been attracted to it, half of one of the gunships had been instantly engulfed, leaving the other half to linger for a moment before being sucked in, along with most objects in the nearby ground area not attached to the ground at the time. Even the very rocks around the sphere were being pulled into it. The sphere behaved exactly like a black hole, only much smaller than the collapsed stars all over the galaxy. After no longer than mere seconds, the sphere disappeared as quickly as it appeared, leaving a void area quickly filled by the surrounding atmosphere. The antennae, along with anything nearby, had simply disappeared into nothingness.
The battle on the capital city was lost. Grilja was about to fall.