First Contact

Chapter 480

There had once been a hospital there.

Then the PAWM had come, and it had been destroyed.

But the Terrans had arrived, helped rebuild the hospital, built shelters beneath it.

But the shelters had not been completed in time, and the Slorpies had came with their uncaring metal servants, seeking out the sick and injured children to take their brains to enhance their machines and, for the tall purple ones, feed on their dismay, misery, pain, and suffering.

A unit that was there to work on the shelters had built hasty fortifications and, armed with rifles, had done their best to hold off the Slorpies.

Stars had fallen as the Terran Task Force had jumped into system and into the waiting arms of a Slorpy combat fleet. One of the stars had landed at the hospital, turning out to be a unit responsible for munitions and resupply.

The humans had fought a desperate fight to keep the Slorpies from harvesting the children. Falling one by one, even as they continued to fight despite the burning red lights at the base of their skulls. Their allies, the Telkan Marines, had done a daring rescue via grav-lifter, hauling out the children, the doctors, the nurses, the family members who all been unable to do anything but huddle down and tremble in terror as the humans fought the Slorpies with atomic weaponry at point blank range.

A parting shot from the Terrans had wiped the hospital away.

But that war, like all others, had ended, and the hospital had been rebuilt. This time the shelters were deemed priority and finished before the hospital, with 150% over capacity.

Some believed it was a waste of efforts. The PAWM and the Slorpies had tried to take the planet twice, surely they would realize that the Law of Diminishing Returns meant that Hesstla was not worth the effort.

But for those who said they, they did not understand that their foe was alien beyond alien. That their thoughts were different, their ideas were different, that the entire universe was little more than a larder to fill their entire appetite.

Those who argued that the Law of Diminishing Returns were completely unaware, either purposefully or ignorantly, that what the Slorpies wanted was not copper or iron or warsteel or even water or oxygen.

But the very brains they used to argue that the Slorpies would never return.

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It had been looked at with fear at first. A massive construct of warsteel and rage, with two pillar-like legs covered in heavy armor, the feet claws and sinking deep into the ground. The arms were as armored as the legs, one a grasping claw with a plasma ejector in the palm, the other a dual barrel 66mm autocannon. The front and rear were studded with mortar tubes, grenade launcher barrels, and missile launchers. It had no head, just a small outcropping full of sensors. It was painted in the red and black of the Telkan Third Marine Division.

On its chest, inscribed in burning warsteel, was the Telkan symbol for Omega.

Several times the local government had moved the massive machine.

Each time it had walked back to the hospital, taking its place in the middle of the garden, where the architects had intended on putting a fountain.

Each time the local population, the doctors and nurses who had been at the hospital during those terrible days, and the families of those who had huddled next to the Terrans during the fight, had petitioned the hospital to allow it to stay.

"The Telkan Marine had been killed here, next to the Terrans, fighting to protect the sick and injured. Does he not deserve to rest where he had fallen?" was the question everyone had. "He was good enough to die for our children, but now he is not good enough to stand where he fell?" was another.

After the sixth time the hospital administration gave up and just had flowering bushes planted around it, the bushes coming up to its knees.

It didn't move. It didn't speak. It was motionless, even as the local equivalent of birds strutted across its armored chassis as if they had defeated the massive machine.

Six months after the war, many family members of patients, even patients, would come to see the massive machine, to touch it, to pray to the Digital Omnimessiah, kneeling before it. Masked and robed Telkan would arrive to commune with it, using ornate wax seals to affix to the armored hull long strips of paper inscribed with prayers written by children.

After nearly a year, the massive war machine was more a statue, more a strange relic of the terrible war that was just beginning to soften and recede into memory. Many wondered if it was still even active, it just stood there, unmoving, the ancient Telkan symbol for Omega burning on its chest.

Then the sirens came.

The Slorpies came again. Not using ships, but materializing on the planet.

And because Slorpie machines, Dwellerspawn, and the Slorpies themselves had been there, with a wavering of heat distortion and a low thrum, the Slorpies and their servants were there again.

The peace of Hesstla, which the bunny people had slowly grown used to and were now believing would never be broken, was murdered a foggy morning as a full Quorum appeared with the Dwellerspawn and AWM's they had the strength to bring with them.

The first hint that the hospital had was the birds strutting on "The Warbound Statue" suddenly lifting off in a flutter of wings and cries of startlement. The Warbound lifted its arms and giving an enraged bellow. Lightning coursed over the hull as it screamed at the cloudy sky.

Those who had been praying screamed and ran for the hospital building.

The massive machine stomped out from the decorative circle.

The machines were in the parkinglot, attacking cars. The Dwellerspawn were still wavering, still appearing. The machines were busy ripping apart cars to get at the screaming occupants and did not notice the massive form of Omega at first.

The 66mm autocannon roaring to life, firing canister rounds of armor piercing flechettes that ripped apart and shattered the Slorpy Machines, got their attention.

They broke off attacking the patients and their families in the hospital with a screech and rushed Omega, believing that their sheer number, in the hundreds, would be enough.

In the hospital the Hesstla in charge of security found himself frozen. His hand was only an inch from the big red button that would activate the psychic shielding, the battlescreens, open the shelters, and slam down the blast shutters even as the hospital would go to full positive pressure.

Sweat began to slick his fur as he struggled against the suckered tentacles that held his brain tight, that squeezed his body, that snuffed out his will just the same as every other official in the hospital.

The Quorum turned from holding the hospital to the massive figure of Omega.

The machines had been shattered, destroyed, and the huge automaton appearing combatant was launching ripple fires of 2.75 inch rockets, the tubes and creation engines for which kept growling at the 80mm mortar tubes, which kept growling back. The rockets were hugging close to the ground, sometimes only inches above the shimmering tarmac, weaving between vehicles. As they approached the slavespawn, which were milling around as they fully materialized, a second solid fuel booster would kick in and it would streak into the ranks before detonating.

The missiles, rockets, mortar shells, grenades, all had a butcher's cleaver screech of pure rage enhancing the explosive, a psychic pulse that clawed and ripped at the slavespawn and even the members of the Quorum.

The Quorum watched as the cattle stampeded by the huge war machine, which was spawning drones, and rushed for the building.

Officer Ertran could see on his monitors the crowd running for the hospital, screaming, streaming around Omega like water around a large rock. The massive war machine was engaging enemy, brass pouring from the autocannon, discarded sabot falling around him. As Ertran watched the massive machine activated its battlescreens.

Officer Ertran saw four cars explode into burning scraps as the battlescreens spun up to full power.

Sweat was sliding down his back, his fur was wet, his uniform soaked, as he screamed and thrashed and struggled against the slick slimy tentacles holding him tight within his mind.

His fingers trembled and moved a fraction of an inch toward the button.

Outside the drones, gleaming and glistening from wetprint, added their firepower to the massive combat machine. Two went to point defense, ripping missiles and rockets out of the air before they could hit the hospital as the Slorpies suddenly shifted their attack.

Omega roared out in rage, doing a slow 120 degree rotation and then back again, the heavy autocannon bellowing out, brass flying across the parking lot as the heavy bolt ran so fast it was a blur ejecting a steady river of gleaming shell casings.

The Quorum snarled and reached out, attempting to snuff what was obviously a mechanical device. Electronic intelligences were easy to suppress.

Instead they found a screaming living mind bound to electronic intelligences, guiding them, pushing them, ordering them.

The living mind was in terrible pain, hovering at the instant of death, its mind full of the memories of dying and the hideous black nothingness beyond. It hated, a pure shining razor sharp hatred, for the Atrekna and all of their servants, but it also loved, deeply and purely, even those it had never met.

"I AM BUOYED BY THE GIGGLING OF PODLINGS!" the massive machine roared out as another ripple fire of rockets exploded from its chest before the hatches slammed shut.

A finger trembled as a drop of blood ran from one ear.

It moved another tiny bit, the surface of the button cool and smooth under the pad at the end of the finger.

A drop of sweat ran into his eye but he could not blink.

The button.

The button was all that mattered.

Only the button.

The Atrekna had already lost their first wave and they quickly brought up a second wave.

"TIME CANNOT SAVE YOU FOR YOU HAVE NO TIME LEFT!" the massive machine bellowed.

From the tubes on its back fired 80mm mortars straight up. The Atrekna frowned, the dispersal pattern was a ring around the hospital in a dented circle. The circle was dented to exclude the massive machine.

Before they could focus, autocannon fire ripped apart the machines that had made the transfer far enough that they were solid here rather than there. They snarled, bringing up psychic shielding that immediately began taking heavy fire.

So far Omega had only taken enough steps forward to clear its line of fire.

The cars in the parking lot were all burning, strewn with the wreckage of the AWM.

The missiles reached their apex, popped their fins, and plummeted down.

The red button moved a fraction of an inch downward.

His right eye filled with blood as the vessels ruptured.

His finger trembled.

The Quorum wanted to stop them, but it was already stretched tighter than they had foreseen.

The missiles hit the ground, spikes driving deep. The housings popped off, exposing strange equipment inside.

The Field Deployable Temporal Stabilizers activated.

The Atrekna shrieked and reacted. They squeeeezed those they held in their grasp for a second as they reeled back from the exploding field of razors.

Half of the hospital administrators died as their brains turned to slurry in their skulls.

The slavespawn that had not made the transfer exploded into bloody gobbets.

The autonomous war machines that had not made the transfer exploded into flaming junk.

Omega took a single step forward, raking the sky with his autocannon.

The finger trembled and moved slightly.

Blood ran out from his eye. Pinkish fluid ran from one ear.

He could hear his still-feral little girl laugh somewhere far away, where she had gone when the Slorpies had found her while he was at work.

The Quorum called for assistance and another Quorum answered.

They pulled back slightly, forced back by the pulsating screaming cascade of energized and somehow enraged chronotrons that emanated, not only from the stakes in the ground, but from the massive combat machine itself.

But they brought in AWM and slavespawn by the tens of thousands.

He could hear her now, almost see her. Her beautiful amber eyes. Her little drooly smile. How the tip of one ear drooped.

His finger moved.

The sheer firepower forced Omega to step back. One step, but a step all the same.

The Warbound roared in fury, upping the cyclic rate of the autocannon, slashing it across the front ranks. Missiles, grenades, mortar rounds, all erupted from his chassis in a roil of smoke and flame, even as he began using the plasma ejector on those Dwellerspawn that got close enough, even as they threw themselves against Omega's battlescreens, to shatter and explode and leave nothing behind but scorched carbon and the stench of burning organics.

"MY FURY IS UNENDING!" Omega roared out.

The Quorum snarled back in hate, an emotion they had learned to feel again. They clamped down control on the food inside the hospital, stilling their bodies, even as they kept up their psychic battlescreens and brought in more slavespawn.

Blood vessels in his brain ruptured as his heartrate skyrocketed and his blood pressure peaked.

'Da da' his feral little girl said, staggering over to him in the cute way children did.

She held her hands up to him to be picked up.

His finger moved.

The button clicked.

He knew none of it as he fell to the floor, blood running from his ears, one foot kicking the counter despite the fact he was gone.

He held his daughter's hand as they skipped together across the grass.

Sirens erupted as the shutters slammed closed over the windows and doors. The shelter doors, pounded upon by the adminstrative staff and doctors, opened up. The psychic shielding immediately shot to full power. The hospital Digital Sentience gasped as she was released but then curtailed to the hospital grounds with her awareness being pulled down into the shelters.

Outside, Omega stood as an unmoving bulwark against the enemy. He knew they could move around him, try to strike at the back of the hospital, but his gun drones at the back had detected no enemy.

The enemy seemed to care nothing for tactics, appearing and rushing Omega even as night fell. The hospital staff and the patients moved orderly into the shelters while the administrators fled to the lowest depths they could access and hid.

The Digital Sentience watched the battle through the night, nervously nibbling at her fingernails and last year's paint condition report.

Dawn found Omega still fighting. Another Quorum had joined.

He was being forced back.

The Digital Sentience could see the heat shimmering off the massive war chassis, see how the armor was blackened and sooty covered.

She activated the sprinkler system as the Warbound took another step back.

The little sprinklerheads popped up and began spraying water. The Quorum flinched back, expecting another nasty surprise like the Temporal Dissonance Field deployed in the dark of night had been.

Steam rolled off Omega's body as the water coated it.

He stopped his retreat.

He advanced into the enemy as steam turned to water and carbon was washed off of him, exposing his heat sinks and allowing his cooling fins to deploy.

The Digital Sentience watched, holding the file folder in both hands as she nervously chewed on the spine.

The day went by with long hours. The Atrekna brought up wave after wave of mechanical combat machines, wave after wave of biological Dwellerspawn, throwing them at Omega without any finesse.

Hatred had washed away tactics and strategy.

Omega had killed a Quorum in the night. Snuffed out the lives of a group of beings each over a million years old like a candle in hurricane.

The remaining Quorums could not let Omega survive after such an insult.

As night fell, Omega began being forced to step back one step at a time.

A lucky hit got through his battlescreen to hit the missile launcher rack right as it reloaded. The explosion sent up a gout of flame from his chest and his chassis screamed like a woman in pain as he turned to the side and slumped, his guns going silent for a second.

The Atrekna forces screamed in victory and charged.

YOU BELONG TO US

Omega suddenly straightened, blackened armor peeled outward like jagged black teeth, the safety mechanisms having worked and directed the majority of the blast outward.

"MY SOUL BELONGS TO THE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH AND SCARRED TELKAN!" the massive combat machine roared back. "MY GUNS BELONG TO THE DEFENSELESS! MY RAGE BELONGS TO YOU!"

The Quorum flinched back.

Hours passed, and dawn came again, even as he was forced back step by step.

Despite fighting alone, he did not loose faith. He did not loose hope.

Each breath, drawn in the face of death, was a blessing to be treasured, even if it was one's last.

As darkness fell his ancillary drones were overwhelmed from the rear and Slorpie machines swarmed into the hospital, looking vainly for any who had not fled.

Omega turned, bellowed out the warning to all who could hear, and fired a single rocket into the building that he had been saving.

A direct 325kt atomic blast detonated in the exact center of the building.

For a split second the building had white light seeping out of every crack. It swelled, groaned, the light intensified as more cracks appeared.

The building vanished in the hellfire of a mushroom cloud.

The hammer of the blastwave rolled over everything, sweeping away the wreckage, the bodies, hammering at the Quorums. Omega's graviton stabilizer howled, sparked, but held.

Omega stood unmoving even as he fired into the enemy as the shockwave rolled back and sucked upward as the superheated air, ash, and debris was pulled high into the sky.

The Quorum reeled, then rejoiced as the Temporal Interdiction Field flickered.

They brought up more.

Lightning raked the ground as Omega thundered through the ash and debris to the parking garage, where the autonomous war machines were prying open an interior blast door.

Their victory was short lived as Omega bathed the hall in superheated FOOF enhanced plasma.

He stomped down the hallway, his smaller guns raking away the Dwellerspawn, even as they rejoiced at getting the door open.

Omega was smoking, his hull rent and battered, steam whistling from the vent and rents, a clattering grinding sounding as he moved into the hallway, stopping before the opened blast door, and turned to face the enemy.

His guns thundered on.

The Digital Sentience, bruised and bleeding from the atomic weapons, sat in the lotus position, surrounded by chewed on file folders. She was recording every millisecond in high definition, unwilling to let Omega's final moments go unrecorded and lost.

The Warbound fired over and over, the never ending rain of brass and shells and detritus from shot after shot after shot in drifts and piles around the massive feet of the metal monstrosity of death. The Dwellerspawn and AWM's, perhaps sensing that he was nearing the end of his abilities, screamed and charged.

The sound was new. A sudden burst of sound as Omega played his last song.

"Where have all the good men gone," rang out from his sole remaining speaker, across the hash filled jammed communication bands. "And where are all the gods?"

One of the barrels cracked on the autocannon and Omega locked the remaining barrel in place. He was out of repair nanites, his slush at 100%, his heat at 145%, but that did not matter.

All that mattered was the children and civilians at his back.

"Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?" rang out as his battlescreens finally failed. There were no more projectors to rotate up.

The head of the shelter crawled up to the Warbound and bellowed at him, tears running down his face, his gas mask's lenses clouded by his panicked breathing.

Warbound Omega, dont let them get into our shelter! And if they do, he said, tears streaming down his face beneath his mask, dont let them harvest our children! Swear to me! Warbound!! Swear an oath to our children!

"THEY SHALL NEVER FEEL PAIN. This, I swear. By podlings breath, I so swear it to you." the Warbound bellowed through the music.

"He's gotta be sure, and it's gotta be soon and he's gotta be larger than life," the speaker bellowed out even as Omega kept up the steady pounding of his guns. Beneath the song, beneath the guns, the shelter head could faintly hear frantic beeping and the wailing of alarms from deep inside Omega's hull.

Then give me a gun, Warbound. I entrust them to your care, now," the Hesstla said, his eardrums ruptured by the roar of the guns.

A small panel opened, revealing infantry weapons. A hand held light autocannon unlocked and was dropped to the ground. Here, BROTHER

"Somewhere just beyond my reach there's someone reaching back for me" the woman sang.

The Hesstla crawled backwards as the fight went on, climbing over the debris and furniture that he and the others had piled up to provide some type, any type, of cover.

A missile hit, penetrating deeply into a previous wound, and with a bright white flash Omega went still.

"I need a hero I'm holding out for a hero," the speaker squawked. Then went silent.

For a long moment nothing happened and the head of the shelter gripped the heavy autocannon tightly and lifted it up.

Through the silence the far end began to glow with a purple light.

There was a squealing and sparks shot out from around Omega's feet as he was dragged to the side by invisible hands.

They were tall. Dressed in iridescent robes, tentacles on the lower part of their conical heads. Their eyes were all white, their fingers long and delicate, their bodies thin and rippling with power as they floated forward.

"Digital Omnimessiah and the Biological Apostles be with me now," he whispered his newfound faith reverently to a malevolent universe.

"I, Kulki, am with you," he heard as he squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened and the head of the shelter looked at the gun, starting to sob.

"This, brother," the voice said.

A hand, clad in a heavy gauntlet, reached down and moved the fire selector lever from safe, past semi, past burst, to auto.

The shelter head looked up, blinking away his tears.

A Terran stood above him. Clad in heavy ornate armor, a fiery sword in one hand and an autocannon just like he held in the Terran's other hand. The Terran's skin was brown, his eyes black warsteel, his features severe and his expression wrathful.

"They come," he said, turning and lifting his own weapon. "Guard the children, with thine life."

The head of the shelter watched as the autocannon fired, the Terran running down the hallway, far too fast for a man dressed in such heavy powered armor. His footsteps seemed to shake the world. The autofire exploded on psychic shields as the vile purple creatures fell back from the Terran's wrath.

The Terran paused, for a split second, next to the smoking hull of the fallen Omega.

The head of the shelter heard the words plainly as the tip of the sword touched Omega's shoulder.

"Arise, brother, and continue to serve," the Terran said.

Omega jerked, shuddered, a loud grinding could be heard.

Omega straightened up.

"I AM BUOYED BY THE JOY OF PODLINGS!" Omega roared.

His guns broke their silence as he began firing.

The Terran turned back, his face contorted with rage. He made a motion with his sword.

The head of the shelter jerked back as the twisted and rent alloys of the blast door suddenly untwisted and sealed the passage.

The Digital Sentience watched as the Terran vanished into the parking garage, his autocannon firing, a single bellow of rage torn from his throat.

"FOR LOST TERRASOL!" the Terran roared out.

She knew she was weeping, but she didn't care.

She had witnesses Kulki the Omnicidal arrive.

The head of the shelter sighed and laid his head on the upper receiver of the weapon he was gripping so tightly his hands hurt.

And the Third Battle for Hesstla raged on.