“Mommy, why is everyone running?” Ari asked, looking around anxiously as the two wove their way through a crowded street. “We don’t want to miss our ship, sweetheart. Your daddy’s waiting for us.” Her mom replied, giving Ari a reassuring smile.
Two years earlier, the governments of the world banded together, sending a team to intercept a rouge planet that entered the solar system from interstellar space. The planet, named Vec after its long-abandoned inhabitants, was on course to drag planets and other celestial bodies out of their orbits along its path. When the expedition arrived, they discovered a dead world scarred by eons of interstellar exposure; its surface scoured clean of any signs life once thrived upon it. Shielded away in subterranean complexes, they unearthed an alien energy source, later named vectium, and dormant technology it powered. This tech provided its creators a means to escape the planet prior to ejection into space by its dying star.
Ari hadn’t seen much of her father since the explorers returned. He spent months working on teams around the clock integrating the alien technology into a survival plan for humanity. In recent months, it became increasingly apparent that only a fraction of Earth’s population would be spared from the impending calamity. The revelation plunged society into chaos.
Ari’s backpack, filled with a few changes of clothes and her favorite toys, bobbed with every step. She could feel the tension in her mother’s grip around her small hand as they maneuvered through mayhem approaching a tall metal gate. Armed guards on the opposite side were yelling at a growing crowd to move back.
As the two approached, her mother flashed a plastic card, earning a nod of acknowledgment. They were pulled through an opening in the gate, which snapped closed behind them.
The atmosphere beyond the gate felt calmer, but a sense of urgency persisted as military personnel hurried about the installation. Ari let her anxious mind drift, wondering what kind of toys soldiers would pack for a trip.
Now that people weren’t crowding around her, Ari looked upwards into the night sky. The moon had been fractured by an asteroid a few days prior. Now, large chunks were drifting free of it in a cloud of dust.
Beyond the moon, she could see the “new planet” her dad told her about a year ago.
She hated it.
It was the reason her dad was always at work.
Over the year it had been growing bigger in the night sky but started shrinking over the last few weeks. Ari couldn’t wait till it disappeared.
Meteors were streaking over them as they walked across the base; some bursting like fireworks, others fading over the horizon, ending in distant explosions.
“Keep up, Ari. Daddy’s just inside this building,” her mother said, pointing to a structure flanked on one side by a wire fence. Beyond it, a concrete expanse stretched towards a launch pad housing a group of towering shuttles. “Mommy, are we going on those rocket ships?” Ari asked, her eyes wide with excitement. “Yes, sweetheart. We’re going on a trip,” her mother smiled down reassuringly. “You get to go on an adventure to space.”
From the direction of the gate, gunfire erupted, followed by shrill screams. They both jumped at the sound, and Ari turned to look around. “Don’t look back, Ari. Just keep up with Mommy.”
As they approached their destination, Ari saw a group of mechanical figures loading metal crates at the base of each shuttle. “Are those the robots that daddy made?” she asked, receiving no reply.
When they entered the building, they were directed to a room bustling with activity. Red lights flashed in the halls while a robotic voice announced over the building intercom:
“IMPACT ALERT!
MULTIPLE OBJECTS HAVE BREACHED THE PLANETARY DEFENSE GRID.
SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.”
Dr. Locke saw his wife and daughter enter from the other side of the room. He rushed over to them and scooped Ari up in his arms. “We have spots on the command ship. But we have to hurry!” he whispered to her mom. “Keep your head down and follow me.”
The trio navigated through corridors full of people and exited the building through a sliding glass door.
“Damit, those bastards didn’t wait!” He shouted, gesturing to a set of vehicle taillights in the distance.
“Run!” Dr. Locke screamed as he began to sprint towards the shuttles.
The machines Ari saw earlier were standing in defensive positions now around the spacecraft. She could feel a deep hum emanating from the one they were facing.
The figure’s right arm snapped out in front of it, reconfiguring into a massive cannon. After a few moments of the hum steadily increasing, the weapon was lifted skyward. Ari felt the air around her compress as the concussion of rapid-fire energy blasts cut through the air towards incoming asteroids. Explosions shook the ground behind them.
Panic gripped Ari as the gravity of the moment set in. She felt her heart pounding in her chest, wondering if they were going to die.
Dr. Locke stole a glance over his shoulder, and Ari heard fear creep into his voice.
“We’re not going to make it…”
As they came closer to the ships, there was a flash of heat from behind them followed by a deafening explosion as the building they were just in was obliterated.
“I’m so sorry, Ari” she heard before feeling her dad’s tears fall down her cheek.
A shimmering wall was materializing now between them and the ship.
He kissed her forehead.
“It was all for you … every minute” he said, still sprinting forward, then tossed her through a closing gap as the ship’s shield solidified.
Ari felt a brief static tingle, and the heat behind her vanished.
Pushing herself up from where she tumbled across the concrete, she looked back where her parents had stood moments before.
The world was engulfed in flames.
From the inferno, she could hear a faint whisper of a voice speaking to her in a language she couldn’t understand.
“NO!!!” Ari screamed as she jolted awake.
She sat, shaking in the dark, trying to blink away tears.
Twenty-five years had passed since select groups, comprised of Earth’s greatest minds and top leadership, both military and political, fled to distant corners of the galaxy. The plan had insured humanity against extinction but left ten billion people behind to their fate.
After she calmed her mind, Ari shuffled across a cold metal floor to a sink on the opposite side of her cramped room. Her quarters served mainly as a place to sleep and manage basic hygiene. Yet, she had the room to herself, a rare luxury in a facility where space was at a premium.
She switched on a small overhead light and began preparing for the day.
As she pulled her sandy blond hair free from her uniform’s collar, she brushed a cold metallic lump at the base of her skull. Her fingers lingered there for a moment before pulling her hair into a ponytail. Even after two years, she was still getting used to it being there.
After rising through the ranks of the colony defense force, Ari was the youngest person ever selected to receive the neural implant. The port allowed her to interface with and pilot one of the colony’s three remaining war machines, named veca by the early colonists. She was told the name was a play on an Earth term, Mecha. The walking tanks that older colonists believed the veca resembled from Earth stories. The Veca were used for everything from conducting structural repairs to excavating new mines in areas where humans couldn’t venture. They also retained formidable capabilities and were the ongoing subjects of study by the few scientists who survived the early tribulations of life on an alien world.
The veca pilots’ primary role was defending the facility from the creatures that roamed the planet’s wastes.
The escape ships’ navigation systems had targeted vectium signatures in deep space. They were laden with enough supplies to establish outposts and begin mining operations. The ship Ari traveled in arrived at a planet nestled in a binary star system where its barren landscape lay bathed in perpetual twilight.
Its surface was a mixture of ice, dark rough-hewn stone, and frozen soil. Gusts of wind swept across the jagged landscape, forming and reforming dunes of ice and dust. The air, though mostly breathable, had an acrid metallic taste and was often too frigid for prolonged exposure.
To Ari, the planet echoed the hopelessness of the aging structure of Hope’s Hold, the name given to the colony at its beginning.
Ari stepped into a dimly lit corridor outside of her quarters and latched the heavy metal door behind her. Along the hallway, she could see soft glows from the openings of other rooms.
“Good morning, Ari!” greeted a young woman walking toward her. Mara was about Ari’s age and one of the few childhood friends Ari had in the colony.
She grew plants and was on her way to tend the hydroponics farms in the lower levels of the facility.
“Late night studying tactics and technology again?” Mara said, as she drew closer.
Ari smiled warmly, “You know it. We have to make sure your potatoes stay safe.”
Mara laughed. “Well, just remember to sleep sometimes. We can’t have our lead pilot passing out from exhaustion.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, giving Mara a quick hug before continuing on her way.
A few steps further, Ari passed a group of children playing a game using makeshift toys and dice on the metal floor. The sight brought a bittersweet smile to her face as she recalled the toys she still kept back in her footlocker.
Ari followed the corridor to the mess hall. The smell of breakfast wafted through the air.
This was the social hub of the community. On one side of the room, a group of engineers waved at Ari as she walked past. At a table in the center of the room, an elderly couple shared tales of life on Earth with a group of children.
After grabbing her tray of food, Ari spotted Captain Liana Raye and her fellow pilot, Ethan Frost at a corner table. They were engaged in a heated discussion as Ari walked up.
Captain Raye, a tall woman with a stern face and piercing eyes, was the most experienced of the colony’s three pilots, and Ari and Ethan’s superior. Ethan, on the other hand, was fiery and spirited, with a touch of recklessness both in and out of combat, especially at night where vodka and pretty girls were concerned.
Ari slid into a seat across from them, setting down a tray of the day’s breakfast — rehydrated eggs and a slice of protein loaf.
She looked up at Ethan and raised an eyebrow. “You look like you had a hell of a night.”
“It’s called ‘fashionably distressed’, Ari,” he retorted, through a mouthful of food, pointing to his disheveled hair.
Captain Raye chuckled. “Leave him alone. He probably stayed up all night not using the combat simulator unlike someone else I know” she said, elbowing Ethan and winking at Ari.
“What’s the gossip of the day?” Ari asked, scooping up more egg from her tray.
“The shields cut out on the north side of the compound last night. They were able to get them back online, but it took over an hour.” Ethan replied. “The mine isn’t producing like it once did. If something attacks with the shield down—”
“We’d be sitting ducks,” Ari finished.
Captain Raye nodded. “They need to find a more sustainable way of powering the colony. Relying solely on vectium won’t be enough to keep the facility going long term, let alone give us a chance to leave this frozen hellscape.”
Ari thought back to the night she heard her dad talk about “the colonies.” Clusters of ships would be scattered across the galaxy. After a few years, he was convinced they would be able to contact one another and re-establish civilization among the stars.
It was all the colony could do to keep itself running. In recent years the power supply had been supplemented by wind turbines that required constant repairs. It was hard to believe that they would ever leave the solar system.
“I wonder if anyone else even made it…” she thought.
Raye and Ethan were about to delve further into the topic when the blare of the emergency alarm cut through the hall’s ambient noise, bringing Ari back to the present.
“Veca pilots report to the launch bay and stand by” an authoritative voice called over the facility intercom.
Ethan looked over at Ari, sadness and disappointment clouding his expression.
“Damn it. I haven’t even had my coffee.”
They entered the storage bay where the veca were maintained and studied during downtime from patrols and other tasks. The smell of grease hung thick in the air.
Captain Raye walked to a communications panel by the door and clicked a button to connect to the colony operation center. “Command, what’s the situation outside?” After a brief pause, a gruff voice came through the speaker.
“We’ve been tracking a large group moving through the northwest quadrant. An hour ago, multiple signals broke off and are now on an approach vector with the facility. They’re moving in from harbinger territory, so we can say with some degree of certainty that it’s those bastards. Currently, they’re twenty-five kilometers northwest, beyond the outer perimeter.”
“Copy that. If they’re still that distant, why sound the alarm? We can head out and handle them. No need to unsettle the colonists,” Raye responded.
“That’s the issue. It’s the largest group we’ve detected this close to the colony. Given that our shields are at a diminished capacity, we can’t guarantee they’ll hold against a larger group. We’re preparing for a worst-case scenario,” the voice replied.
“Got it. I’ll take my team and check it out.”
Ethan’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Time to crush some bugs?”
Captain Raye sighed. “Mount up. Let’s get out there and get back. There’s a storm coming from the opposite direction, and we don’t want to be caught in that. I want both of you on high alert and not taking any unnecessary risks.”
Ari noticed her mechanic, Tom, working at a diagnostic panel at the foot of her towering veca as she walked up.
Tom had been working on the war machines since Ari’s father had been part of the effort to reconfigure them for human use.
“Tom, how is she looking?”
Tom glanced toward her. “What do you make of this?” he replied, pointing to a readout scrolling across the screen.
Ari studied the scrolling text blankly for a moment. “What am I looking at?”
Tom chuckled, “Right here.”
He pointed to a repeating line of code on the screen.
“This is an activation command of some sort. Similar commands turn on stuff like the vectium core and navigation systems. The brainiac scientists were digging around in the subsystems and came across it.”
“It seems to start when the machine powers up and loops until it shuts down like it’s waiting for an input to continue a sequence.”
“Is it going to cause any issues I should be aware of?” Ari asked.
“Not that I can tell.” Tom replied. “There is a lot about these machines we didn’t have the time to understand before we ended up here. Just keep an eye on her.” Tom said, shutting down the panel.
“I’ll let you know if it blows me up.” Ari said, half-jokingly as she turned to walk away. Pausing, she turned back.
“Tom, you have an interface, don’t you? To connect to the veca?” She asked.
“I do. I get in and make sure she’s ship shape after repairs.”
“Do you ever hear anything when it’s connected?” she said, looking towards the veca’s cockpit far overhead.
“It’s pretty loud when it powers up. I’d be worried if you didn’t hear anything.” Tom chuckled.
“Not from the veca, from the connection, like… a voice?” Ari asked, still looking up.
When she finally turned back to meet his gaze, Tom’s face was painted with sadness and concern.
“You’re still having nightmares, aren’t you, darlin. You’re not sleeping well? You need to promise me when you get back, you will go to the infirmary and get something to help you sleep.”
Ari forced a grin and held out a pinky. “I pinky swear I’ll get something to help me sleep. I’ll check out one of those audio files about quantum physics from the central repository.” She said in an attempt to shift the tone of the conversation.
Tom rolled his eyes and grabbed her pinky with his before she started climbing.
The ladder leading up to the cockpit was cold to the touch. The faint hum of the dormant machine vibrated through each rung as she scaled her way past the veca’s dark armored plates. As she approached the top, a canopy opened with a hiss, revealing the cockpits dark confines.
She swung inside and settled into the form-fitting seat, which adjusted to her contours, anchoring her securely.
In front of her, an array of dormant screens, switches, and tactile control interfaces awaited activation. Integrated into the seat headrest was the neural interface, a thick cable which connected to the port in Ari’s head with a click.
Initiating the power-up sequence, Ari placed both hands on the tactile control pads to her left and right. A cool sensation spread from her fingertips as the computer began to sync with her. A low, pulsating hum filled the cockpit, intensifying as the machine’s vectium core and systems powered on.
Screens lit up, displaying diagnostics, system readouts, and external sensors. An intricate heads-up display illuminated in her field of view, providing information on energy levels, ammunition status, navigation, and targeting data along with a number of icons, allowing her to switch between weapons systems.
Through the neural link, pilots could command the veca as if it were part of their body. With practice, countless hours in simulators, and some mental conditioning, Ari had learned to operate it as an extension of herself. She had been on three successful combat missions since her training had been completed.
To finish the start-up, she performed a few calibration movements – flexing arms, rotating the torso, and adjusting weapons systems. Then, something caught her attention at the edge of her display.
“What was that?” She thought as an unfamiliar icon appeared for a few moments, then vanished.
“They need to stop messing with this thing,” she continued, recalling the disorienting experience she had when they adjusted the navigation module.
Once synced, the three pilots moved towards the storage bay door and exited into the frozen alien landscape.
5 kilometers from Hope’s Hold, they stopped on a steep hill overlooking a narrow valley that lay between them and a rocky outcropping in the distance.
“Do you think they chickened out when they heard we were coming?” Ethan quipped over the radio.
“Stay alert,” Captain Raye instructed. “This is a large enough group for command to be rattled. If it is the harbingers like command assumes, we should be ready to hit them first to keep the upper hand.”
Ari focused on her long-range scanner, searching the horizon for signs of the creatures as gale-force winds drifted ice and dust across the landscape around them.
“There. One o’clock. Do you see them?” Captain Raye asked after some time had passed.
Ari noticed a faint group of signals on her display. There were dozens of creatures pouring over the outcropping on the other side of the valley.
“Contact front! Command, we have a visual on the harbinger horde. Request permission to engage.” Captain Raye reported over the radio.
“Acknowledged, Captain. You are clear to engage. Good hunting.”
Ethan took an eager step forward then paused, “Ready when you are, Captain,” he chuckled over the radio, realizing he hadn’t received the go-ahead.
“Thank you for containing your bloodlust for the moment, Frost,” Captain Raye said. “We’re going to engage using a standard flank formation, bottle necking them toward the center. I’ll take point up the middle. You two, swing wide and cut off any that try to get around us. Keep an eye on what you’re shooting; I don’t want to get killed by crossfire.”
Ethan needed no more encouragement.
“Get some!” They heard him shout out as he began his advance down the hill. Rotary cannons sprung to life on his shoulders as he fired into the creatures surging toward them. Ari and Captain Raye followed close behind, carefully choosing and engaging targets.
“I think Ethan needs a hobby,” Captain Raye joked as her right arm shifted into the veca’s main cannon, “Perhaps crochet might mellow him out.”
The harbingers were a species of nightmarish design.
The smaller, more common creatures, affectionately named reapers, epitomized predatory evolution. Standing ten feet tall, they were clad in thick skin protected by chitinous armored plates. They moved in swarms, allowing them to overwhelm their prey.
Their long limbs each culminated in a sharp blade, allowing for swift movement over the icy terrain and effortless evisceration of anything that crossed their path.
Above a maw of razor-sharp teeth sat multifaceted, eyes, granting them near panoramic vision.
They communicated through display of intricate bioluminescent patterns across their dark armored bodies. Allowing coordinated movement toward prey in the twilight.
As the reapers aged, the ones that survived underwent a metamorphosis. These brutes, dubbed ravagers, were even more heavily armored and formidable than their smaller cousins.
Standing nearly as tall as a veca, they developed the ability to spit plasma generated from within their bodies. They acted as the de facto leaders of a swarm; their presence typically signaling the escalation of an already dire situation.
After taking up their positions, Captain Raye reviewed the readout on her display. “Team, my sensors indicate only reapers.” she said. “Cross-check and confirm.”
“Confirmed, Captain” Ari reported. “I’ll corral them here and clean up the stragglers.” The buzz of small arms fire erupted as she swept the battlefield.
In the center of the formation, cannon thuds shook the ground as each methodical blast from Captain Raye cut down the creatures as they made their way across the icy valley.
The operation was executed with textbook efficiency.
Within a few minutes of encountering resistance, captain Raye noticed the swarm in front of her change course back towards the outcropping.
“Odd…” Captain Raye thought to herself.
“Command, can you confirm the horde is in retreat? We’ve pushed them back across the valley.” Captain Raye called over the radio.
Her question was answered with intermittent static.
“Command, do you copy?” she repeated, but the static persisted.
“Damn this planet.” Captain Raye huffed.
“I’m going to push the retreat, Captain.” Ethan called out over the radio. “It looks like we have them spooked!” He plodded forward cutting down the creatures as they moved away.
Ari’s voice crackled over the raido.“Something’s off, Captain. They aren’t retreating over here,” Ari relayed as the horde continued towards her.
Through her display, the captain noted the horde’s shifting focus, amassing to the left of the valey.
“Locke, move towards me. Don’t let them…”
She was interrupted by radio feedback followed by an earthshattering explosion. Chunks of frozen ground were launched into the air, raining down on reapers passing nearby.
She watched as five hulking creatures climbed out of the ground, followed by a tide of reapers.
Captain Raye’s blood ran cold as she spotted Ethan’s veca sprawled out on the ground, having been caught by the explosion.
As her mind raced to process the scene in front of her, the radio crackled back to life.
A small group of reapers had emerged from a tunnel near the northwest side of the compound.
“Are they… strategizing?” Captain Raye thought.
“COMMAND, THIS IS CAPTAIN RAYE! FIVE RAVAGERS HAVE ENTERED THE BATTLESPACE OUTSIDE THE NORTHERN PERIMITER. ONE VECA DOWN.” She shouted into the mic, trying to maintain composure.
“Frost, report!” Captain Raye switched to her secondary weapons, preparing to clear a path through the renewed onslaught.
“I should have had my coffee, ma’am…” Ethan’s voice, laced with pain, crackled through.
“Secondary weapons are offline. Looks like I lost an arm in the blast. Structural integrity is at fourty-seven percent; my left leg stabilizer is out. I can cover you, but I’m not walking out of here.”
“Stay put, I’m on my way. Prepare to transfer to my veca,” Captain Raye instructed.
“Absolutely not. You have to fall back to the colony. I’ll cover your retreat and draw them my way. You won’t make it to me before the ravagers do, and if you try, we’re both toast when they get here. I still got my big gun.” Ethan responded through labored breaths.
Captain Raye watched as Ethan’s veca propped itself up, taking a seated firing position. Its remaining arm reconfigured and leveled off in the direction of the crater.
“Come and get me, you ugly bastards.” He powered up the weapon and opened fire on the advancing swarm.
“Dammit! Locke, report!” the captain yelled.
“I’m en route to you, Captain. They’ve nearly surrounded us. We’re going to get cut off.” Ari said anxiously in reply.
She was dodging reapers between bursts from her guns. As they closed in, she would rake her arms out, shattering teeth and bone.
She saw a warning light up on her display indicating her secondary weapons system was nearly spent as she made it to Captain Raye’s position.
Elsewhere, Ethan was firing overcharged blasts, causing his vectium reserve to drain rapidly. Warnings started to display in his field of view as non-essential systems started going offline.
Twice, the computer attempted to re-route energy from the primary weapons array to life support. He promptly overrode the safety preservation protocols, routing all remaining power, not keeping the main computer online, into hammering back the tide of alien monstrosities.
“I’m not going to need life support in a minute.” He said to himself. “Just stay with me a little bit longer.”
“Captain, what’s the plan? We need to get Ethan and fall back.” Ari called out stepping back-to-back with the captain.
The radio had become a steady stream of chaos. Defense forces at Hope’s Hold were engaging the reapers, along with evacuation orders for personnel to move to the facility’s lower levels and barricade the entrances.
Somewhere, in the chaos Ari heard a voice speaking, calmly, in a language she didn’t recognize.
“What IS that?…”
An explosion knocked both her and the captain off their feet, sending Ari tumbling across the blood-soaked ground.
A ravager was walking towards them, its maw still steaming from the plasma blast. It was missing chunks of carapace where Captain Raye had fired into it moments before.
Laying on her back, Captain Raye lifted her weapon and resumed firing at the monster through blurred vision and a damaged targeting system.
Inside her cockpit, Ari blinked and shook off the daze. She glanced around, trying to orient herself.
In the distance, she could see Captain Raye firing at the Ravager. Beyond her, the other four creatures had reached Ethan’s veca. Its main cannon was charred and melted. The machine was sitting, frozen in place; clearly powered down.
The lead Ravager reached out its taloned hand, grasping the lifeless machine and lifted it up, before plunging its free hand through the veca’s chest plate, raking it up up through the cockpit.
“NO! Please, no!!” Ari screamed helplessly as she watched them rip the veca apart.
Tears began streaming down her face as the savagery of the battlefield played out in slow motion in front of her. She tried to right herself and stand but was knocked back down by a charging reaper.
A loud thud rocked her prone veca as the reaper leaped on top of it and began to tear at its armored exterior.
She lay there, sobbing. The finality of her situation taking over. She was going to die on an alien planet in an alien war machine lightyears from home. Her dad bought her time, but to what end? To die scared and alone?
She closed her eyes and held the image of her parents in her mind as tears ran down her cheeks.
She heard her father’s final words echo in her mind.
“It was all for you… every minute.”
The faces of her new family began flashing through her mind. Mara, Tom, Ethan, Captain Raye, the kids. All the people she saw every day in the mess hall that were currently evacuating to the lower levels of the facility, awaiting their fate.
A wave of clarity washed over her, reigniting her resolve.
“Not… without a fight. They get every minute.” She said, wiping tears from her eyes.
She heard it again. The voice was an echo inside her head now. It spoke in a language she couldn’t understand. Soft at first, like a whisper, it grew louder, slowly morphing and shifting into English.
It was her mother’s voice… clearly repeating in her mind:
“Please engage WARRIOR protocol to begin the system link. Structural integrity is at 55%.”
“…Mom?”
“Please engage WARRIOR protocol to begin the system link. Structural integrity is at 53%.”
She blinked away tears noticing in the sea of warning lights on her display, the icon she saw during the startup sequence had returned.
Hesitantly, she reached out a shaking hand and selected the icon.
“Warfare Analysis, Rapid Response & Integrated Overwatch Relay activated. Initiating AI-pilot link. Please stand by.” The voice responded.
“Initiating wh-”
Ari screamed as white-hot pain shot through her skull. She felt the tendrils of an alien consciousness burrowing into her mind through the neural implant.
“Wha.. What is this!!” She screamed out as the pain turned to rapid electrical pulses shooting through her body.
“You should get up, Ari. Structural integrity is at 45%.” The voice sounded like it was inside of her mind.
A scraping sound, indicating a reaper tearing at the cockpit hatch, brought Ari’s attention back to the danger outside.
She screamed and shielded herself with an arm. As if on instinct, the veca’s massive hand reacted, quickly reaching up to crush the creature.
“Battlefield data processing. Prepare for cascading data relay and tactical readout” the voice said calmly.
Another blinding pain shot through Air’s head, but this time, it was as if a fog had lifted from her mind. She could… feel… the battlefield around her. The movement of the reapers, the proximity of the ravagers.
Now free of the reaper, she staggered to her feet and began shuffling forward, extending an arm that quickly reformed into the veca’s signature primary weapon.
The ravager, seeing Ari stand to face it, chose to ignore the Captain Raye for the moment and started towards her.
The pain became localized to specific portions of her head like ice picks digging into her brain, sending her crashing down on one knee. She began seeing flashes of tactics textbooks, and simulator sessions cycling through her mind’s eye.
“What… are you DOING??” She screamed as the pain finally leveled off.
“Beginning tactical analysis, please engage primary weapons.” The voice replied.
She stood back up and began firing rapid blasts that flaked off bits of the ravager’s armored plates but didn’t otherwise faze the monster.
Within moments of the first shots impacting the ravager, small portions of its body began to highlight in her targeting display.
The sections of light pulsed as the creature walked, becoming faint as its armor plates shifted forward and bright as they shifted back.
“Breathe, then fire.” The voice spoke calmly in her head.
Following the command after realizing she had been holding her breath, she steadied herself and let instinct take over. The next blast found purchase just underneath the creature’s right arm, punching through its ribcage.
It reeled back, pausing its advance as inky blood dripped down its body.
Ari fired again and again into the creature. The data being fed into her brain told her that there was a high probability of vitals under a section of its exposed chest. She let her weapon arm strafe down the creature’s torso until it punched through the weak spot and through to its spine.
The ravager’s body slumped to the ground.
“It’s. Learning,” Ari realized. Whatever had connected to her mind was updating and revising tactics and targeting as the battlefield around her shifted. It was interpreting and anticipating the creatures around her and feeding her the data.
The experience was excruciating.
A wave of reapers shifted in her direction. She could feel what their bioluminescent flashes meant, now. “Go left, move right, speed up, slow down,” they were all one creature commanding dozens of limbs. Ari could predict where they would shift and met them with closed fists, sending their broken bodies tumbling across the battlefield.
She forced herself forward as sweat and blood dripped down her face. Her head was on fire, the pain causing her to stagger as she struggled to maintain consciousness.
Ari’s vision blurred as she reached Captain Raye, who was pulling herself back to her feet.
“Captain… you need… to go,” Ari said through labored breaths. She blinked her eyes a few times to regaing some clarity.
Captain Raye stared in shock at the ravager that Ari had killed. “We should regroup at the compound. Once we’re safe, we’ll retrieve Ethan,” she uttered with a trembling voice.
Before she could finish, Ari was already moving past her in the direction of the four ravagers that eviscerated Ethan’s veca.
The brutes turned towards her. In seconds, two precise hits severed the arm of the lead Ravager, causing it to stumble back behind the others. Warnings flashed across her mind. Reflexively, she dodged to right as a plasma blast tore past her, detonating on a far hill.
“Not today, you bastards.” she said, mustering a short dash forward towards the closest ravager.
A well-placed fist found its way under an armored plate and between the creature’s ribs. The ravager convulsed and fell to the ground with an earth-shattering thud, leaving its dripping heart behind in Ari’s hand.
The remaining ravagers paused their advance. Bioluminescence flashed across their armor, and Ari felt a group of reapers re-direct towards her.
She braced for them to hit, but they never made it.
From across the battlefield, Captain Raye, having regained her composure, was firing overwatch into the horde.
Ari stepped forward and took aim at the next ravager. She stumbled before she fired, but the veca quickly recalibrated her aim, salvaging the shot. The creature’s left leg was torn from its body.
Ari could feel the emergent AI system draining energy rapidly. Warning readouts flashed across her display, showing sub system down to re-direct energy.
“Ari, vectium reserve is at 5%. Total system shutdown in thirty seconds” the voice echoed in her mind.
“Damnit…not yet…” She said, gritting her teeth as she advanced towards the remaining ravagers.
She noticed a new pattern in the bioluminescence around her.
“Retreat“
The three remaining ravagers abandoned their fallen comrade and followed the hoard into the crater they emerged from.
“Vectium reserve is at 1%, total system shutdown in 10 seconds.”
“That’s… all I need…”
Ari shuffled up to the remaining ravager, struggling to crawl away. Its bioluminescence emanated a palpable rage as she pressed the barrel of her weapon against the creature’s head, ending the battle with a final concussive blast.
The veca shut down immediately, severing the neural link. It fell crashing to the ground next to the twisted scraps that had been Ethan’s veca minutes before.
The world plunged into darkness as the voice in her head faded into silence.
Outside, the storm howled drifting bloodstained ice and dust across the battlefield.
Quantum Chronicles 