BECMI Chapter 318 – Doom is Coming
The Other Shore…
I hit the counter-attack like the Wrath of God.
Force fields ruptured under Argent Mastery, feeding back into their wielders with sparking, shattering arcs and crackles of ruptured power conduits and focusing arrays. Shardrays punched in and blew out capacitors and generators, ruptured techno-hearts and the boosted power relay systems of robots, androids, and cyborg creations alike.
I Chained an Argent burst through the collected array of turrets, blowing out and fusing the lot of them with the feedback as their force fields detonated. The heavy plasma guns from the shooters on our side took them out with converging precise blasts as the incoming heavy laser fire hit Mass Protection from Fire, Fire Resistance, and Resist Fire combined, going absolutely nowhere.
Suppressive fire from servo suits swept over and past the advance team, scything down scrambling droids and scuttling cyborg insects suborned to the corrupted self-defense system here. Then a line of combined alchemical lightning attached to an EMP field blew over the mass of them, coating them in goo that conducted the disruptive wave right through all of them to their key systems, blowing them out in multi-colored cracklings of electricity.
“Get them out! Move, move!” I ordered, as an enemy hovertank swung into view, mass-driver cannon snapping around to center on me.
I double-shot its protective fields as the supersonic BOOM of its cannon rippled the air, the hypersonic round reaching me in an instant with a lot of KE = MV^2. The two fields blew apart in silver crackles, the emitters exploding energetically from the feedback, and then Reverse Missiles at IX+1 sent the shot which should have reduced me to bloodspray right back the way it had come for double damage.
The molecularly-hardened hull and turret survived the hit… separately. The internal supports didn’t quite hold up, and the turret was blown right off the engine mount with a terribly loud CLANG of impact. The residual energy actually flipped the tank completely over onto its topside even as the turret vanished back down the tunnel behind it with wild echoes of clanging metal ricocheting on stone.
Shouts from the rescue squad indicated that they had one, two, four, six, all nine members of the team, or what remained of them, and were bugging out at speed. Disks were tracking behind medics in power suits or lightfooting it to beat the band, Flight spells or Airwalking close to the ground to stay out of the line of fire.
Most notably, I shifted into their route of retreat as the remaining turret fire and techno-beasts tried to unload on them. My Shards sniped grenades, mini-missiles, droid bombers, and mortar rounds out of the air and tracked back into the launchers behind them, not incidentally generating a lot of visible and electromagnetic static that made further targeting a pain in the arse.
Two of my Hexar Shields had the Missile Attraction property. This was normally a Cursed effect, which I was making work for me. Fully half the ranged attacks on the entire field were being sent my way, with my Heat Sink, Mirror Trap, and Lightning Rod Shields blurs of motion as they intercepted fire, radiant/laser/maser, and electrical attacks respectively. Indestructible meant that even tank-destroying energy blasts couldn’t do a thing to them as the shots bent to those shields, while the other Shields formed walls against shrapnel.
Actual kinetic loads they just let through to bounce off of me and back to the shooters for double damage+ Holy Kicker damage, generally enough to quickly silence whatever was shooting at me as bolter rounds, rocket barrages, mini-missiles, and railgun loads went zipping back the way they’d come with Return to Sender accuracy on them.
More shit was coming out from inside the mountain, but we weren’t here to penetrate it or to overcome it, we were here to pull the probe team’s arse out of the fire after the defenses went into complete fucking overdrive on them.
Spatial disruption fields were up, interfering with dimensional movement of any kind, so we not only had to pull back, we had to put a good two miles of distance from the entry to the mountain behind us.
I Shaped the rock out of the mountain and began to fill in the entry at great speed, ducking behind my Hexar Shields as artillery-grade fire began to blow the obstructing stone of the way and back out the entry, a hellstorm of molten slag and flying rock shards that bounced off my Hexar Shields and promised a hellish bombardment for our retreating forces if I let what was coming reach the entry.
I blew a VIII+1 and filled the entire entry with a massive plug of solid conjured iron, then continued filling the area bracing it with thousands of cubic feet of stone every few seconds. The whole thing shook and jiggled as it absorbed crazy amounts of kinetic and thermal energy, but now there was no venting, so the backblast was going right back down the corridor and making things difficult for them, not us.
There was a squeal in my ear, and I recalled my Shields, then turned and Rode the Lightning out to the extraction point in a highly visible and very fast discharge of ground-following electricity. The Teleport Circle gleamed alone on the stone, I dropped through it, and it detonated after me, leaving no trace of the destination behind to be linked or tracked through.
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“Caspus, Killia, and Verna are all perma-dead, spiritual dissolution through necroic rending,” Chief Medic Renasha reported to me, long sworn into the Order of the White Hand and using ki to heal every bit as ably as magic could. Her face was drawn and tight, as all three adventurers had been among the most skilled and celebrated explorers of the realm, all of them on Captain Emeril’s Vanguard exploration team. The Vanguard’s noble mission was to find and unearth the ancient history of the world, seeing what technology they could recover, and introduce the natives to the truth of their own past!
“Technology doesn’t do necroic damage,” I snarled as I headed for the treatment rooms. “And mortal magic doesn’t adapt to high tech well at all.” Not without every component of said tech being made by hand instead of by machine, which basically defeated the purpose.
“Immortals setting a trap,” the Green said under her breath, any sign of her alien birth long since Altered away, save for the brilliant green eyes and her affection for pink hair. She was long read in on the ultimate purpose and coming of the Doom, and knew what we were thwarting. Captain Emeril’s success in ferreting out places of high tech that lazy Immortals had only buried instead of destroyed had probably been noticed. “Gills, Rokshur, and Niambeill are going to require extensive cybernetic rebuilds to stay alive. Their flesh is refusing regeneration, and we’ve had to remove irradiated limbs just to keep the rest of them alive.”
I curled my lip. “That will cripple Niambeill’s Casting ability. Cybernetics interfere with all elven magic, especially Halcyon magic. She’ll be forced to retrain as an Artificer if we can’t do Constructed limbs. Rokshur won’t have the same problem as a dwarf. I’ll get the Ceruil Artisans started on a custom set for her as soon as you have final specs and word. If we can work with wood for Niambeill, we will. The other three?”
“Dulgrin got off with flesh wounds. Millburn’s magic saw him through with only a lost ear and left hand needing regeneration. Captain Emeril…” she trailed off with a wince.
His Markdoor was closed, but pain was radiating out of it.
The other medics moved out of our way as we opened the doors of the sealed treatment area. The quarantine field broke past our skin as we entered the antiseptic and full-scrubbed trauma center.
The magical coil over my left ear reached out and smartly interfaced with the neighboring machines, giving me all the medical information on the men and women lying on the beds in each chamber. Adventurers often got into some fairly horrific injury situations, ranging from dismemberment to parasitic infections to nasty Curses that could spread to others, so this trauma center was customized to be able to deal with any of those things.
Emeril, or what was left of him, was at the end of the corridor. I flicked an eye over the prognosis for the other members of his team, final evaluations still forthcoming because all the cutting and treatment wasn’t done, magical or scientific solutions being applied as whatever was more effective and needed.
Emeril was only alive because the nanotech in his blood had kept him that way, stopping him from bleeding out and keeping what remained of his vital organs operational. I could see the sickly black-green Aura about him, sure signs of necroic infestation, and Dread’s star sapphire head lit up inside a deadly grim black Skull, eyes backlit with Holy Light and bloody red roses.
“Step away,” I ordered shortly, and the medics using ki to help stabilize Emeril’s functions stopped respectfully and backed away, while the cutting instruments slicing away infected and rotting flesh paused for a moment in their work.
His remaining green eye flickered open to look at me. He was still conscious, no surprise there. He was by far the highest-Level and most adept Green alive, having hit the mortal cap and continuing his mental and spiritual training while helping lead others further along the mortal road to greatness.
I just nodded at him once, received the mental nod back as I lowered Dread to his chest, and let go the full Cleansing at IX+1.
And instantly dumped 18 IP into the effort as I opened my lips and blazed Truth, Hope, and Valor into the spell as well.
A hundred black Skulls crowned in roses, Holy Light spilling forth from them, appeared around me and promptly unloaded upon him. In response, a thousand screaming demons uncoiled from the nefarious Enchantments upon him, the things starting to infect the equipment and the entire room.
My gesture froze the medical staff before they could retreat, and some of the Skulls turned upon them, hosing them down and washing screaming black Aural infections off of them in incinerating streams of The Light as the demons’ existence was revealed, and the will and power to fight them was made manifest.
The Sublime Chord was echoing through the entire wing, Skulls peeled off from me to zip into the other rooms, where they started spraying down everything and everyone as the aghast Renasha ordered everyone to present themselves for decontamination and not to run. The grim medical personnel waited with arms out as the Skulls came zipping around, trailing bloody rose petals, and streams of Light from sockets and empty jaws played over everything… and found rather too much stuff to Burn away.
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was a premeditated trap. I was familiar with the stench of the Immortal Power at work here, and I was pretty sure it was the beginning of the end.
-I need a full report from the surviving Vanguard as soon as they are capable. Prep a medical shuttle and stasis pods for the full team stat for evacuation to the Barhund’s facilities. As soon as they are out of here, I want this entire wing obliterated with plasma torches and the remnants fed into a waste disposal disintegrator. Get a Shogun bot here now and a disposal unit on the way. Once the disposal unit is done, I want it melted to slag, and the slag disintegrated in a separate unit. Go!- I /sent out the orders to everyone in Markspace who was relevant. -Current medical personnel will report for deep spiritual decontamination in the White Circle as soon as all patients are off-loaded and out of here. Do the job and do it right, people!- I /ordered crisply.
This was more than a shot across the bow. This was a shot against Immortal aspirants, as it were, the very best of the Greens and the adventurers of Darkmoor who hadn’t gone into administration and were seemingly living out their waning years in peace after building a great dream.
It was coming.