BECMI Chapter 457 – Poking the Eye
Looming over the middle of the room was a full-sized warbot, over thirty feet tall, hovering with its tripodal leg array, bristling with energy projectors, force fields, grenade launchers, point defenses, and lots of armor to accentuate all that firepower coming online in our direction.
Mostly behind it, wrapped in its own layered force field, was something welded into what I assumed was the command chair.
Maybe it was humanoid at some point. But its flesh was more like ooze, the bones visible inside its translucence weren’t moving as it writhed there, and disjointed archeo-tech that was definitely not human moved and shifted with the mass of protoplasm shot through with thumb-thick neural veins that was connected to it. Mechadendrites and cyborganic modules of no visible function shifted over command screens, computer banks, and glittered in communication with the base around it by both cable and radio or psi-linkages in no particular pattern or form.
“That bot’s main cannon there is a pulse beamer, uses force shearing. Don’t get hit by it!” I murmured as everyone spread out. That there was something organic behind the creature’s guidance systems was made obvious by the fact it was tracking everyone with multiple turrets.
When the two massive chainsaws exited the weapon housings on its upper arms, the teeth rapidly heating to plasma-levels as they spun with a roaring whine, I could not stifle my groan, while Sif just whooped at the sight, and Thor just sighed.
Chainswords. Really?
“So the barbarians have finally made it here,” a voice that sounded like it came out from something’s buttocks echoed from multiple speakers all around us. We instantly flagged half a dozen turrets popping out of the walls and shifting to focus on us. Two were flagged as net launchers, two as flechette-shooters, and the rest as energy beamers we could mostly ignore. “You will not have this base and my defenses! I will destroy it all, but not before we obliterate that puling mass of corruption in the skies above!”
“We speak Galstandard,” Dama Adama instantly spoke up, and there was a shocked swiveling of cameras upon her. “Did you say you are going to destroy the creature up in the sky pretending to be a moon? Would it be impolite of us to ask you how you intend to do so?”
There was a moment of silence, only the hum of ready servos and the quiet electronics audible as we waited calmly for an answer.
“How novel. You speak as if you are not servants of the Thelagga-Mu above us. Do you think you can fool me so easy with your puerile guises? There are no humans left after all these years, and I alone have kept its corruption at bay!” the thing in the chair proclaimed loudly in its sucking, warbling voice that hinted at not being too sane.
“We are not servants of that creature, nor creations or seekers of it, and that is TRUTH!” Haki immediately refuted him.
There was a moment of horrible silence, and then a low and awful scream started to come out of the speakers. Splurting gouts of protoplasm escaped the goo encasing the skeleton, and sparks flared here and there, violently enough to blow out a couple of non-essential computer banks, crack several screens, send a couple holo-emitters flying for the ceiling, and cause the massive warbot there to sway unevenly on its triple legs as it shuddered.
“I get the feeling something has just been forced to confront the existential horror of its own existence,” Sif stage-whispered for everyone, and the Gallivants all nodded solemnly.
We did not, however, start an attack in this moment of weakness, although it definitely would have been the prudent thing to do. I let the Paladin take the lead in good faith, as something subjected to Truth would have to realize.
“We are no servants of the thing from Outside Creation,” Dama Adama stated in no uncertain terms as she stepped forward. “We ask how you seek to destroy it because we suspect your means simply will not work against it… and we would take steps to correct that.”
“You-you-you destroyed all my internal defenses and combat troops!” the sphincter-voice retorted painfully.
“We defended ourselves successfully against a persistent and most annoying attacker who would not relent. If you review your entire record of conflicts with us, you will note the singular fact that your forces always attacked us first, and without provocation.”
Holos and screens jumped and twisted, and soon monitors were displaying multiple fights all at once, while a dozen eyeballs had formed on the ooze-thing so that it could take them all in at once, doubtless while it was getting more dumped right into its nervous system through organic cables and psi-projection.
“That… is also true,” it eventually squealed, angry and unwilling, but unable to deny the fact. “Why then are you here?” it demanded of us.
“Well, we came here to stop the attacks upon us,” Dame Adama admitted calmly. “If you are talking about the island, we came here to wipe away the infestation upon it, and that includes the thing in the sky that seems to have brought the corruption of the Mu with it. I am Dame Adama, and these are my fellow Gallivants, if you would allow me to introduce us.”
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And rather formally, she proceeded to do just that, all of us bowing with various degrees of flourish to the thing in the command chair whose initially greenish flesh was mottling and shifting through multiple colors in a very queasy manner at the moment.
“I am Commander Brian Helemus of Corashim Colony Alpha Geos Grandier, the last survivor and commander of Firebase Dawnwrought,” the sphincter voice reluctantly warbled and shrilled back at us unevenly after introductions were done. “How did you manage to come to these shores and survive? By our estimation it has been sqrrrrrrrrrk number of years since we have seen sapient mammalian life!”
“Interesting,” Dame Adama replied without blinking an eye. “By our estimation, it has only been about four thousand years since the fall of the primary technological civilization upon our world. Commander, is the existence of demiplanes a known thing among your people?” she inquired calmly.
“Fractal dimensional holdings? Creating artificial spaces like that requires an outlay of power and computational power we were not capable of, but they were considered theoretically possible, Dame Adama,” the squeaky, twisting voice admitted uneasily. “Why do you ask this?”
“You probably have anomalous sensor data that indicates that the edge of the world is only some sixty miles away, including the high heavens, centered on a forty-mile radius sphere centered to the northwest.
“Your sensor systems are not in error, and you do not need to recalibrate them. Your firebase has been moved into a demiplane that reflects a mirrored, smaller version of the original island upon which your base was first established. The temporal flow inside this place is five orders of magnitude faster than the primary mortal world.
“You have endured the ages with pride and discipline, but outside, only four thousand years have passed, Commander!”
Squeals and warbles echoed back and forth over the sound system as the thing in the chair tried to process that, probably testing the limits of a sanity that wasn’t really there in the first place, and only skewed by Truth hammering into it and forcing it to realize what was happening here.
It was a good two minutes before it finally responded, “I intend to destroy the Theggla-Mu with a multi-warhead antimatter missile attack. The radiant backlash will likely purge this entire landmass clear and boil the very seas away, but nothing will survive the assault.”
We all looked at one another.
“That is incorrect,” Dama Adama stated immediately in professional counter. “Your target possesses vast psionic and dimensional mastery. A combination of dimensional shunting and mass force structures will redirect your explosion to other levels of reality and render your attack useless. This island will be purged by the backblast, but the enemy can just reseed it and begin anew as it likes.
“Your attack on it needs to be upgraded to have any real effect.”
The silence seemed a bit stunned at the implications. “The creature can survive the deployment of a World-Cracker? One such missile can split apart a moon!” the squirling, warbling voice cried out in disbelief.
“You are attacking a lifeform capable of interstellar travel in the deep void, penetrating spatial boundaries, living for uncounted eons of time, and possessed of a vast and unknowable intellect. A moon just sits there and takes it. This enemy will do nothing of the sort,” Dama Adama refuted directly. “Look at the creature, where it is, and reflect on the amount of time that has passed. If anything, it has only grown larger while it has been here!”
Screens flickered and flashed, glitching out as they swapped rapidly between records that had likely all decayed over the vastness of time, but still likely went back at least a million years before having to be copied or recycled to new mediums.
Layers of intact records pasted over one another, comparing sizes on one of the holograms in front of it.
It had indeed grown…
“Data verifies the Theggla-Mu has increased in size. Dimensional redirecting of explosion deemed likely. How are you proposing to stop this?”
Dama Adama looked at me, and I stepped forward. “An infusion of Immortal Power into a lattice array and Rune Structure on the missile casing of your warhead will both render it unseen to temporal foresight and allow it to punch through any force field or similar screening elements or force attacks on the way to its target. When dispersed by the explosion, it will rend apart any spatial distortions and subject the Theggla-Mu to the full force of the attacks, as you have intended, and thus do the job you desire it to.”
I buttressed my words with Holos flowing up and down, showing a multi-stage ballistic missile and covering it with the aforementioned Rune Array in gold.
“Proper empowerment of the missile’s structure and form can be accomplished in about thirty days of effort on my part. If the Commander could hold off on his missile launch until the appropriate upgrades can be put into place to finally destroy the invading organism, I will get started on it as soon as I can be escorted to the launch silo.”
“You seek to destroy the Theggla-Mu?” Commander Brian’s sphincter voice squeezed out again.
“That is Truth,” I said softly, nodding again.
All the screens and holographic displays glitched for a second, then reset showing multiple launch scenarios and pictures of the silo in which the gleaming missile sat, ready for use.
There were clattering metallic steps behind us as a smaller force of reserve androids danced up, general usage and not programmed as duplicates of us this time.
“You will be escorted to the missile bay to begin your work,” a much smoother and gender-neutral voice spoke up from the central android. “What do the rest of you intend to do?”
They all looked at one another. “Well, if you’re not going to shoot us any more, would you like to join us in shooting a lot of the Mu, Commander?” Sif grinned cheekily. “Given the amount of firepower you’ve been expending, it looks like you’ve a lot of aggression you want to work out, and we would like to kill and harvest as many Mu as possible before you ash them all. It turns out the spores are extremely useful in a broad variety of pharmaceutical materials and organic chemistry distillations.”
“Would you happen to be rated in usage of mek-suits?” the android asked evenly.
Everyone straightened up with clear interest at that particular comment…
“Yes, actually, we do know how to manage power armor, from individual power armor up through full mecha,” Dame Adama replied confidently. Because it was simply too much fun NOT to get rated on such stuff in the only place on the planet that had it, down in the Hollow World, where they’d received training in between killing Annelids...