The captain’s fist slammed down on his controls out of sheer frustration. The Hussars brought their heaviest weapons to the battlefield. Their intent to collapse the bunker was one hundred percent clear.
And to top it all off, they were more than double their numbers.
“All mecha squadrons,” he ordered, “enemy Hussars inbound, eight hundred strong. Stay sharp!”
A shiver ran through his command as he displayed their loadouts over comms. Some had seen those hammers in action, and never wanted to see that again.
But now, they had no choice.
“I want all RR units to head back to the bunker asap,” he continued. “One wing from each squadron will escort all of you back to base. The rest… we stay here and provide support to
It’s not looking good for the bunker.
The dust had barely enough time to settle before the colonel and her units blasted back down towards the ground. They slung their hammers back, and slammed down on the hill right when they reached it. THOOM! The combined force of nearly four hundred Resonance Hammers pounded the soil, and the sound of their impact reverberated throughout the bunker. Everyone inside felt it deep in their bones. The Hussars had set their microvibrations to a specific frequency - the kind that caused reinforced structures to fall apart on a molecular level. Waves of energy shook the ceiling and walls as they traveled through the bunker. Though the impact was nowhere near as powerful as the artillery strike or the rockets, the vibrations were enough to cause the whole bunker to shake and shudder. Everyw
While the colonel was distracted, the captain immediately retreated from the fighting. With the pillboxes mostly useless, there was no point in them continuing to defend their positions. All they were doing was be more fodder for the slaughter. “Fall back!” he ordered. “Point alpha-sixer, acknowledge!” “Hooah!” His remaining squadron officers confirmed and pulled their troops away as quickly as they could. They were battered and in pieces, but jetted over to the captain’s designated rendezvous point. The mecha set up a small perimeter less than a hundred meters south of the bunker’s entrance. This allowed them to cover the airlock and the two remaining pillboxes, and vice-versa. While their most damaged sat in the center
The Hussars under the colonel’s command didn’t even hesitate to fire, despite their mark being right on top of her. They all understood how far the colonel was willing to go for the Hegemony. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in their hearts and minds, even as they pulled their triggers. Five hundred of the Hussar rearguard then fired missiles out of each of their shoulder-mounted missile pods. They shot out by the dozen, which left white streaks as they darted over and towards their targets. “Scatter!” ordered the colonel. She and her siege Hussars immediately fled the hill at full blast in every direction even as the missiles soared overhead. Since the Phalanx was far too slow to evade the strike, they instead raised their shields to absorb the blow. Scans of the
“So that’s Godeater, huh?” said Eva. “Some crazy energy that eats battlefields? Is that what it is?” The Admiral shook her head solemnly. “We’ve no idea, to be perfectly honest. It swallowed up the entirety of Dendrus. Whole thing up and vanished off the map.” She made poofing gestures with her hand, and had a tone of incredulity in her voice. “Worse,” she continued, “anything that touches it vanishes, as though it simply stops existing. We sent in multiple probes to perform planetary scans, but… they were consumed by the planet. We can’t sense or scan the planet in any way with what we have. The only way we even know it’s there is through its gravitational field.” As a person of science, what had happened to
Over the next few cycles, the project became a little more subdued in general. While they were all much more exuberant before, Eva, Miko, and even the Admiral had slowed down their pace. Their discussions on Godeater had given all of them some pause regarding Prometheus. Additionally, Commander Chase badgered all of them to take things easy. Not that they didn’t stop improving their connection to their cores. Instead, they worked themselves up to a certain level before they eased off completely. They found themselves able to easily sustain a Promethean Merge for a full cycle, while only needing an hour of rest. The Admiral had noted that there were diminishing returns after those ten hours had been achieved. “Our physiology simply can’t handle more than t
Similar to Eva, Miko decided to go out and do a little digging. She had never been the type to let things get to her, but having heard about Godeater seriously scared her. For her, it wasn’t so much about its lethality as it was about its unfathomable nature. Her pragmatism didn’t really allow for the unknown to exist. Or rather, when she didn’t know about something, she did everything she could to learn about it. Her curiosity about the scientific world knew no bounds. So, in the face of a terror that couldn’t be defined and was unknowable, she retreated. At least, for now. Instead, she focused her mind on things that she could deal with. In particular, she was bothered by two things - the first of which was the signal dampeners that the Admiral’s security team had uncovered.
Miko dropped two more amplifiers into her shielded pocket and snapped it shut. Though there were more out there, she decided that three was enough for now. She couldn’t wait to get back and dismantle them. But there was something else she needed to do. One other thing that had started to seriously bug her was Commander Chase. She noticed that he seemed to get progressively more obsessive with Eva, even if she didn’t realize it herself. It came down to a few of his words and actions. If he was addressing any of the pilots, most of his time would be spent talking directly to Eva. Or if he was monitoring their vitals for the Admiral, he paid more attention to Eva’s statistics more than anyone else’s. And there was that moment when Miko caught the commander leering
Eva groaned loudly as the troops she was controlling were torn to shreds by her newfound pilot buddies. Over the last few hours, they shared laughs, drinks, and names. The two guys were Colin and Oratus, while the two girls were Kayt and Jinti. All four of them were only in their mid-twenties, and had been assigned to the asteroid straight out of boot. In fact, many of the pilots on the base were relatively young. The older pilots had experience, but were still green in terms of conflict. Only a handful of pilots were actual combat veterans, and they typically led the base’s squadrons. But these four were still relatively green, having spent only a year or two on the asteroid base. Since the whole thing was a military secret, they literally saw zero action. The closest they had ever gotten into a sortie was