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libermachinae · 3 years

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Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part IV: Touch - Chapter 13: Twisting and Snarling

Also available on AO3 Chapter Summary: A hunt is on and the jig is up. Word Count: 3272

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Gigatron had known, upon entering the throne room, that it was his destiny to have found this place. Why else would the the throne, a grand centerpiece from which he could observe every move of his soldiers, be so perfectly fitted to his frame? From here, he’d known, he would lay the foundations for the campaign that would bring the universe, at last, to its knees before the Decepticons. A place like this was reserved for champions and kings, and his claim over it proved that he had the makings of both.

So the reports concerning the Autobot infiltrators concerned him little. In the hours since their arrival, Startle and Sweeper had alternated rushing inside with alerts to the effect of, “The grounder was spotted in the midst of sector Z4, driving inbound,” or, “The slagged shuttle intercepted and we lost visual.” They treated each announcement as if it were news. Gigatron was well aware Deadlock was headed in fast with an Autobot hanging off his spoiler. He knew his current regiment would struggle and ultimately fail to catch him. Everything was progressing as he had always expected it would, so he stayed in his throne and waited them out.

He knew, as he answered the latest hail to his comm, that while victory would inevitably be his, this would not be it.

“Report.”

“Sir,” Vanquish said, “Deadlock got away.”

“Explain.” Vanquish was among his best, the captain of his security forces and first choice for rare away missions. Hellbat had handpicked him, and Gigatron trusted no one’s judgment more. Clearly, a few years separated from his roots had done nothing to blunt Deadlock’s edge.

“We thought we had him cornered,” Vanquish said. “There were three blasters aimed at his head and a sniper up above. Pothole moved in and he took an unlikely evasive maneuver over the wall at his back.” He grumbled, his pride hurt. “He’s fast, sir.”

“Any sign of his companions?” Gigatron asked.

“No, sir.”

“Is he injured?”

“No, not that I could see, sir.”

“You had him cornered and didn’t shoot him.” This was why he so eagerly awaited Deadlock’s arrival; idleness had proven unkind to his own mechs. Deadlock, whether he ended up serving as idol or an example, would bring them back to the caliber Gigatron expected of those under his command. First, though, he had to get here, and Gigatron was growing tired of being patient. It seemed that afford this encounter the gravity it deserved, Deadlock had decided to turn it into a game. Fine. Gigatron could humor him, if only briefly.

“I’m taking my team,” he decided. “Return to base and await further orders. I don’t need you all broadcasting my location to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gigatron cut the comm and made to gesture to Hellbat, only to remember he had left on his own errand. He waved instead to the next nearest mech, Sweeper, who straightened to attention.

“Get my squad ready,” Gigatron commanded. “We’re joining the hunt.”

~*~

Seated in the Decepticon shuttle, hovering at the far edge of Decepticon territory, Ratchet barely moved. There had been a cough sitting in his engine so long it felt like the fumes were corroding his pipes, but he batted down commands to clear it even as his internals stung and his filters felt heavy. He could distract himself by tapping against his knee, but the feeling was starting to overwhelm his rudimentary distraction technique.

It didn’t help that his other main distraction was judging him, harshly. Rodimus hadn’t said so much in words, but he found it amusing that Ratchet was holding himself to such stringent demands when there were easier solutions. Each time he felt the wave of derision, Ratchet shot back with the simple point that Rodimus wasn’t speaking for a reason. Both of them were silent as Drift slipped into the base, desperate not to distract him but unwilling to cut the comm for even a moment, the crackling feedback of his malfunctioning comm suite their only sign he was still operational.

There had been so many close calls getting him in this far, and he still wasn’t all the way to the target yet. Somehow, he planned to sneak a pair of potentially unwilling Decepticons back out of their fortified base, and then once outside somehow maneuver around the patrols, which were growing more aggressive with each near miss. They’d all known going in this would be a dangerous, difficult operation, but Ratchet kept wondering if they could have done more to prepare. If they’d gone in not just watching one another’s backs, but being—

Rodimus intercepted the thought before it could go any further. Regardless of the fact they kept looping back to it, now wasn’t the time.

“I’m in,” Drift whispered, offering an ideal distraction.

“What are their defenses like?” The words tumbled out of Ratchet, followed by a hacking filter cough that he immediately muted himself for. His fans were still spinning when he jumped back into the channel.

“—very spare,” Drift was saying. “Could’ve walked in through the front door.”

“That’s not normal, right?” Rodimus asked, assuming the answer but trying to avoid saying something stupid in front of the expert.

“It’s not like there’s standard practice out here, but no,” Drift said. “A group with that sophisticated a defense system normally wouldn’t leave their headquarters unattended.”

“Is it possible it’s a decoy?” Ratchet asked.

“Sure,” Drift said nonchalantly.

“As in a trap?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ratchet didn’t bother adding anything else. Rodimus’ thoughts were bland and resigned; a mental shrug, perhaps a pat on the shoulder. Ratchet accepted it as the best he was going to get.

“Any signs of Grit?” Rodimus asked to fill the empty space.

“Not yet. Have an idea where he might be, though.”

“Thought you said they don’t keep standard practice in these places.”

“They don’t.”

Ratchet was going to push him further on it when he heard the subtle click of disconnection.

“Drift?”

No response.

“Drift?” he tried again, pointlessly.

“What—did he—”

He did. He did, Ratchet was certain, because the last tone of a comm being broken was completely different from one shut off manually. That knowledge, combined with Rodimus’ unending confidence in Drift, allowed them to stave off the cascade of panic they felt at being shut out so suddenly.

“Why would he cut us off?” Rodimus demanded.

Ratchet briefly wondered if they were coming to rely too much on their mind link, losing touch with how to understand other Cybertronians without it. The passing thought was swept along in the tide, though, inconsequential compared to their much more pressing concerns.

“He found something.” And now he was facing it all alone.

“Not alone,” Rodimus reminded him. “He’s got us.”

He wasn’t wrong. Ratchet reached out and held onto Rodimus’ certainty, feeling Rodimus do the same as he started to input the commands for takeoff.

~*~

Gigatron slammed one taloned foot to the ground and roared, echoing through the barren canyons. Another dead end and no sign of Deadlock. The little shuttle had made one appearance but fled the moment Gigatron gave chase, leaving him once more to wait for reports full of almosts and nearlys.

The tracks Drop Down had found led to a cliff with no apparent follow through. Same with the trail Sweeper had slithered over. Now, Rageor was chiming in, claiming he had found something. Gigatron flapped his wings twice and took to the air, homing in on the provided coordinates. Rageor stood before a tall cliff face, two members of his squad on either side of him, facing something hidden between the three of them. Gigatron let himself drop, brittle dust stone buckling beneath his feet as he landed and sending a cloud up into the air. He coiled his necks up to their full height before he stepped forward, flames licking his teeth.

“Show me,” he demanded.

Rageor nodded and stepped aside, revealing a mech cowering against the wall. Blocky and tan with green accents, his utterly plain appearance would have made it possible to mistake him for a neutral, were it not for the purple insignia splashed on the back of his shoulder. Gigatron turned to the captain of his vanguard, who raised his hands and took a step back.

“That’s not Deadlock,” Gigatron growled.

“He claims to have information,” Rageor said, turning his face away when the flames came close. Gigatron turned one of his heads to the unknown Decepticon, who cowered from the direct attention and squirmed as though trying to press himself into the rock itself.

“Well?” The thrill of the hunt was waning, glory still at bay, and Gigatron’s patience was wearing thin.

“Dr—Deadlock, he brought me here,” the Decepticon said, “on his shuttle. Rickety little thing, meant we were in auditory range the whole time.” He gulped as Gigatron pawed at the ground, talons driving furrows into the soft stone. “He and his Autobots, they were trying to be vague, but they had something on their ship. Some kinda weapon.”

“And?” Gigatron asked, unimpressed. He hardly needed to ruffle his platelets to reveal his own flying arsenal. If this Decepticon intended to use this weapon as a bargaining chip for his life, Gigatron wasn’t sure which side he was undervaluing more.

“And they specifically didn’t want you getting at it”

Hm. Hadn’t he heard a refrain like that before?

The Decepticon froze as Gigatron straightened, each of his hands rising high to scan the distant horizon. Deadlock might have been the key to this planet’s greatest asset, but Gigatron hadn’t gotten where he was by limiting his prospects.

“All patrols, update priorities,” he announced. “It seems there is a second prize in our midst.”

~*~

“That is what we are, that is why we’re here. Machines of war, of—”

Hellbat broke off mid-rant, which was fine, because with two guns aimed at his head and the tip of a sword digging into his back, Drift was only half paying attention. The rest of his limited focus was on Grit, kneeled at Hellbat’s side with his hands bound behind his back and plating locked tight as a blast container. The stone army he had tucked to the side for now, concerning but not an immediate threat while they remained in their dormant state.

“What? Gigatron, sir,” Hellbat snapped, glaring at the ceiling as though he could see his commander through the stone. “You can’t—we need the Autobots alive.”

Drift did his best not to react, though the blade digging harder between his shoulder panels suggested he didn’t do well enough.

“What’s—I don’t know—what do you care about some cheap Autobot weapon? We have the army, remember? That’s—”

Drift’s control slipped. He flinched from the edge of the sword cutting into his subplating, but it didn’t stop him from switching his comms back on. Security be damned, they were already compromised.

“Gigatron knows about the Enigma,” he rushed to say. “Get off the planet, go, they—”

“Hey, enough.”

He thought he heard the blip of a response before the gun pointed at his temple twisted around and came down hard against his helm. His vision went to static as he went down, not from the blow itself but the audible POP as his busted comms suite finally gave out. A hand grabbed his drooping shoulder and hauled him upright again, while another forced his helm up to meet Hellbat’s optics.

“If you tell me where the Autobots are, I’ll promise to put them into stasis before I begin the harvesting process,” he said. “It’s a much better end than they’ll find in Gigatron’s maw, I assure you.”

Helm swimming with pain and spark frantic with worry—please, let them somehow find a degree more sense than they had displayed throughout the extent of this ordeal—Drift somehow managed to find Hellbat’s optics and lock onto them.

“You know, you almost remind me of them,” he said. “You’re all terrible at compromise.” His voice sounded hollow, and when the next strike came he sagged down to his knees, waiting for the pain to fade and the static to clear. He tried pinging his comm suite but got nothing, not even the echo of a signal failing to reach its destination. He was fully cut off.

“Go,” he heard Hellbat bark. “Gather your team. You know what to do.”

“But sir—”

“Once I’ve gathered everything I need from him, you can do whatever you please with what remains,” Hellbat promised Vanquish. “Now go.”

The blade drew away from his back, followed by retreating footsteps. He peered up at his remaining guards, guns still aimed, and Hellbat, who had drawn out a pair of stasis cuffs. Drift glanced at Grit. The returned look was weary, but not yet beaten. The silent dialogue that passed between them might not have been precise as a comm, but it was much faster: Drift only had to leap back as Grit threw himself at Hellbat.

Both guns went off, their near misses giving Drift an opening to draw his swords and rush them. Movements simple, cuts clean: one guard down faster than the time it had taken him to get up. The other fired again, forcing Drift to dodge to the side and back. The remaining guard circled Drift, finger wrapped around the trigger and clearly waiting for him to make the first move. Drift let him, maneuvering himself until his back was to the hallway, the guard standing between him and the stone army.

Down on the floor, Grit didn’t have a way to pin Hellbat, but he was keeping him occupied, both of them twisting and snarling around each other as they fought for the advantage. Hellbat managed to curl one leg between them and shove Grit off. He rolled into Drift’s path, who hauled him up without taking his optics off the guard. Hellbat rose to his pedes with an almost insulting level of patience, dusting off his armor and brushing his hand over the minor dents Grit had left in his plating. Drift shoved Grit behind himself, swords immediately coming back up when he saw the guard twitch.

“Go,” he said without looking back. “I suspect your teammate needs help right now.”

“Which one?” Grit growled. “They’re both—uck, never mind. You want these two for yourself? Have at ‘em.” He took off, awkward gait echoing through the empty stone halls. Drift didn’t know how he would get out of the base with his arms bound, but with so much else riding on him he couldn’t worry about it.

Hellbat’s guard twitched, tempted by the easy target into opening a window. Drift spun his blade forward, going for the gun, but Hellbat shoved him to the side. The scuffle was enough to break the gun’s aim, but now it was pointed at Drift as he rolled to the side and threw off Hellbat. He swept out a leg, knocking over the guard, and used his momentum as he stood to kick the gun to the other side of the platform.

He made to chase after it, but a flash of movement to his other side caught his attention: Hellbat had taken off. Drift gave a second kick to make sure the guard stayed down, then rushed to the edge of the platform, Hellbat touching down at the control panels in the middle of the room.

“Enough of this.”

“Hellbat, don’t!” Drift launched himself over the barrier, knowing he was already too late.

“Maybe a few of you will be left well enough intact for me to finish me work, maybe not,” Hellbat said. “It doesn’t matter; destiny will have its way.” He pressed something on the panel and the whole room began to hum.

~*~

Comms were still online and broadcasting, but they hadn’t used them since Ratchet finally gave up trying to hail Drift. Since then, communication had taken place entirely within their heads, ideas and plans and anxieties cascading and mingling until once more it became a challenge to remember where one started and the other began. Unlike before, though, the overlap in their minds did not overwhelm. Instead, their shared fears were pushed down under the joint weight of their assurance and commitment, elevating a single priority above all the noise of their eddying thoughts: find Drift.

Rodimus was hovering in a canyon near the base as Ratchet moved in. To speed his approach, Ratchet was keeping the base between himself and the orbital cannon, a risky move when they didn’t know how desperate the Cons were. This was the best their combined processors could come up with, though, and addressing all of their doubts would have wasted time better spent searching for Drift.

Rodimus watched their surroundings, looking for any sign of the Con hunting parties that had hounded him and Drift on their way in. The world below was as still as the stone that made it, though, no glints of passing armor or bored blaster rounds to pinpoint the enemy. He knew they had to be out there (unless they were already back in the base, a possibility they weren’t ready to think about yet), but the deep valleys and harsh shadows were working in their favor. There was a real possibility he was being sought just as intently by mechs who would see him long before he found them, but he didn’t dare to leave his post in case Drift came running out of the base, in need of urgent pickup.

It was thanks to his vantage point he was able to witness two arrivals at nearly the same time. The first was the Decepticon shuttle sailing into view, dodging between the tallest rock formations with a dexterity that shouldn’t have been possible for the unwieldy shuttle. The second, and the more startling, was a beastformer of immense size twisting out of the shadows, many eyes locked on the approaching ship while its body rippled and coiled, preparing to spring.

Rodimus shouted something, more sound than word and utterly inconsequential. Ratchet swallowed his panic and the shuttle swerved into a tighter turn than it was designed for, swinging out of the way of the incoming pounce but directly into a stone peak. Even at a distance, Rodimus swore he could hear the terrible sound of rending metal, rattling Ratchet’s thoughts and shaking his control. Rodimus dropped the speeder into a dive, aiming for the shuttle, but Drift’s ship was already spitting out its own complaints, shaking like it was on the verge of falling apart. He could see Ratchet’s ideas forming in real time, and no, stop, that was a stupid idea, don’t—

Got each other.

The Decepticon shuttle’s thrusters heaved up to full burn. There wasn’t the space to gain much speed, but the momentum was enough, slamming into the beastformer who belched flames and raked claws across the cockpit. He was aiming to tear his way inside, but before he could he was smashed into, then through a stone wall, the entire nose of the shuttle lost into a band of an explosion and an outpouring of thick, black smoke.

“Ratchet!” Rodimus yelled, unable to tell whether all the panicked, fearful thoughts were shared between them or just his own processor knocked into hyperspeed.

The shuttle’s engines ground it forward until something gave and they flared out with a series of pops and bursts. The entire craft was forced upward once more before the thrusters finally burned out and it slumped, the angle of the hole it had made forcing it to turn like a final wave goodbye.

#maccadam #transformers #dratchrod #ratchet #rodimus #drift #my writing #longfic #fault lines #oops forgot the readmore #sorry mobile users ^^'

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zenithlux · 4 years

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Cadence CH 7

Catch up on the story here!

In which Roxy shows Vergil what she can really do.

Still is my soul My blood drawn cold I gain control

Oblivion - THE PRIMALS

The second Vergil stepped out of the portal, the latent demonic energy in the area snapped at him like a pack of rabid wolves unaware that he was the much more dangerous predator. He heard Roxy suck in a sharp breath, followed by a cautious coo from Aki as he hopped up onto her shoulder. “What is it?” Vergil said, genuinely curious if she felt something similar. V had some awareness of demons around him thanks to Griffon and Shadow, but a single month wasn’t enough to explore the possibilities of the familiars’ power. A decades-long connection with Aki must have given her something.

Then there was the matter of her second demon. He couldn’t sense it, but that didn’t surprise him. Familiars had no true form when contained within their pact-maker. He’d felt Nightmare at the back of his mind, but had never tried conversing with it. He wasn’t even sure if it was capable of normal speech. Maybe her’s wasn’t either.

“There’s a lot of demons around,” She said with a frown. “More than I’m used to.”

“Can you tell anything about them from here?”

Her look turned quizzical. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Vergil realized he didn’t have a good response to that, as any explanation he could provide would likely give away his own demonic nature. He wasn’t sure what the right time to share that was, but the first day of an actual acquaintanceship probably wasn’t it. “We need to find Nico,” He said. Nico was smart enough to stay away from the more dangerous fights, but if the portals had caught her off guard…

He heard the van long before he saw it. And whether it was the screeching of tires, the clear panic in the echo of Nico’s voice, or his demonic sixth sense, he pulled Roxy towards himself and dashed to the side. He heard her gasp, but it was drowned out by the engine of the van as it whirled by them both. It spun to the side as it skidded, and nearly toppled over before somehow landing on all four wheels. In her wake were at least five demon corpses, including the one who’s bones cracked under the van. Roxy’s ragged, terrified breathing echoed in his ears, and her heart was beating so loudly that he could feel it as if it were his own. “What was that!?” She said.

“Nico,” Vergil replied

“Is she crazy?”

“It’s highly probable.”

“I knew he’d save ya,” Nico said as she hopped out of the driver’s seat. “Well, I didn’t know you’d be here, but figured it would work out.” Vergil glared at her, but Nico didn’t pay him any mind. Instead, she kicked at the head of the dead empusa beneath her van three times before it dislodged from whatever had impaled it. “I haven’t heard from Nero or Dante since we got a call about this place, so I’m assuming they’re fine. But another portal opened up near here that you should be able to take out before they get back.”

Vergil wasn’t certain if that was a casual remark on how quickly he could fight, or a warning: Nero will be back soon. “What’s causing it?” Roxy asked.

“Not sure,” Nico said. “They might know more by now but…”

She flinched as a series of varied shrieks echoed on the horizon. Of course, Vergil heard more than she ever could. “There’s a lot more than just demons around,” He said simply as he clicked Yamato in his hand.

“Humans caught up in it?” Roxy said. “We could try reaching…” Her voice trailed off as a black line appeared in the air before expanding into an uneven square; a shredded portal that was nowhere near as clean as the ones Vergil could open. The demons that spilled out were the expected variety of rabble. Empusas (hell seemed to have an abundance of those) Hell Cainas with their skeleton bodies and incredibly long scythes, and a few Hellbats with the usual chamber of explosive flames mounted on their backs. These weaklings weren’t a concern. Vergil could kill them all with a set of summoned swords if he wanted. Though that would make hiding his demonic nature a bit more difficult, so a few quick slices would have to do.

A trio of arrows pierced the empusas first, draining their blood as they crumbled. The arrows vanished in a spark of purple light and the energy returned to Roxy’s hand. She took a deep and satisfied breath, though Vergil could see the twinge of worry in her eyes. “These bugs are always nice to see,” She said. “Easy targets. Plenty of energy to harvest. A hunter's dream.”

“They’re called Empusas,” he said.

She hummed in thought. “Not the name I would’ve given them. But sure, let’s go with that.”

“There’s plenty of books on the topic.”

“Not in any library I’ve been to recently.”

“Your father studied demons, didn’t he?”

“The important ones, sure,” She said with a dismissive wave. “I also don’t think those particular demons existed while he was still alive considering they showed up when that tree did.”

Vergil hadn’t thought of that, nor did he want to talk about that particular tree. Instead, he silently grabbed Yamato, lurched forward, cut down the Hell Cainas and shot a bat out of the air with a summoned sword from close enough that she shouldn’t see it. He slid away from the explosion, taking great care to not instinctively teleport.

Acting human was a lot more difficult than it should have been.

“So you fight them up close and I’ll shoot down whatever I can.” Roxy said cheerfully.

He almost snapped a quick “I can handle this myself”, but bit his tongue. Sure, he could. But handling itself meant he wouldn’t get to see her other demon, and she would have used all of her energy for nothing. But not trusting himself to express that the right way, he simply nodded as more demons spilled out of the portal. This time, the empusas were replaced by the lizard-like Riots. Nothing that concerned him. He surged forward without a second thought, forcing himself to weaken what he could without outright killing them.

That too was something much more difficult than it should have been.

But Roxy kept her word. Every almost dead demon he left behind, she shot in a heartbeat. He tried his best to move on before absorbing the essence himself. However, he realized quickly that he didn’t have to worry, as her arrows drained the demons on their own. A clever evolution for Aki. Vergil wondered if it was something her father had taught the demon or something it had picked up on its own over the years.

Once that portal vanished, Vergil was confident he had seen enough. “Check on Nico,” He said as he sheathed Yamato and scanned the area for any more spikes of energy. There were still a few demons around, but the human screams in the area were gone, and the only blood he could smell was demonic. If any humans had died, they weren’t here.

But whatever pride he might have felt at such a thing (which wasn’t much given the simplicity of the task) dissipated the second Nero arrived.

Every time Vergil saw Nero, he was always struck by the impossibility of it all. He really should have been Dante's son, not his. He knew from the occasional drunk conversation that Dante had considered it when they first met. (Dante being drunk, not Vergil. He'd be a corpse in the ground long before he partook of that infernal drink). His brother's escapades with women during their teenage years were far more frequent than Vergil's, seeing as he'd been with one person and Dante couldn't give him a definitive number. But Dante had joked that Vergil must not have considered any form of protection, and Vergil had been too stubborn to ask what he meant.

Now he knew, but not through his brother. He tried to avoid his brothers smug, know-it-all grin as much as possible.

But he and Nero were nothing alike, physicality aside. Vergil was calm and kept his thoughts mostly to himself. Nero was brash and spoke his mind. Vergil avoided most human contact whenever possible. Nero embraced it, even volunteering at the orphanage in his spare time.

Nero had his life together. Vergil, regrettably, did not.

“What are you doing here?” Nero said as he reached for the sword on his back. Vergil wasn’t sure if that was a self-conscious decision, or if his son truly intended to fight him right now in the midst of a demon invasion.

“I am here to help,” Vergil said. “Just as you are.”

“Sure you are,” Nero said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the idiot who summoned all these things.”

Vergil’s eyes narrowed. “I did nothing of the sort.”

Nero snorted, rolling his eyes. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Both of ours, Vergil thought, but he stopped himself before he said it. Vergil refused to blame anyone else for his predicament, even though he didn’t think there was much else he could do. Nero seemed to take his silence as an admission of guilt and continued. “Thankfully for you, Dante already found the guy. Some old man in his basement. But don’t you dare think this makes anything better. People are dying out here and you went on a date.”

“You didn’t call me,” Vergil said. “Nico did. And it wasn’t a date. It was a meeting.”

“You were supposed to be on surveillance.”

“Wasn’t it your goal to keep me away from this part of the city to begin with?”

Nero was seething now, and Vergil was surprised one of them didn’t burst into flames. “There are portals over there too, asshole. I had to send Lady and Trish in your place.”

“How many?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes it does,” Vergil said. “As I am more than capable of dealing with the influx of portals here. A single, coincidental one over there would be a waste of my time.” It was simple logic really, but Vergil didn’t say so.

A scream from Nico knocked them both out of the petty feud. In the distance, a pack of Riots surrounded her, stalking from all sides. Another demon, a gangly Baphomet that Vergil hadn’t seen in a long time, hovered just in front of a new portal, chanting something in an old demonic language. And while Nico scrambled for the van, Roxy stood in front of her, calm and collected. A small blue light hovered over her palm, and Vergil realized that the demons were moving much slower than they usually did.

“Nico!” Nero shouted

“Wait,” Vergil said.

Nero’s head jerked toward him in protest, but Vergil ignored him. Roxy’s fingers twitched and the light rose just a bit higher before snapping into a new shape. An orb of ice hovered over her hand like an otherworldly snow globe called from the aether. A single glass snowflake hovered within, glittering with a swirl of light blue. It was enough to quiet Nero’s panic beside him. Even the demons consumed by a desire for human blood had gone still. Her eyes flickered to him, and her tight-lipped expression shifted to a small smirk as she looked back at the monsters before her.

“Come forth, friend.”

Her voice was a whisper, but the air around her responded to her call. The orb pulsed once as she raised her hand toward the sky. It lifted far above her head before it pulsed again. Shards of ice shot out from its smooth surface as its perfect form expanded into a jagged, powerful conglomerate of magic. The blue in her hair bled out, and a matching glow radiated through her clothing. An impossible flurry of snow rose from her feet, swirling upward around her body until it reached the ever-expanding orb above her. Her hair turned a deep shade of red. Her skin paled. Energy pulsed again. The demons broke from their stupor, each one charging with desperate abandon.

Vergil grabbed Nero’s arm seconds before the younger devil hunter lurched to her aid. “I said wait,” Vergil said, calm in the face of the pure rage that followed as his son tried to escape his grasp.

“You’re just going to let them die?” He snapped.

“The situation is under control.”

“You don’t know that you fucking…”

A resounding crack silenced him. When they looked back, the orb shattered. But shards that should have gone in all directions turned to snow, and the energy alone shot the demons backward. Some shattered the moment they touched the ground. Others survived but were slow to get up. The Baphomet began mumbling its familiar shield incantation, but Vergil knew that wouldn’t save it from her.

“Kuraokami,” She said. The snow surged backward forming a tornado flurry. A massive tail with overlapping scales of ice curled out around her and slammed against the ground. Two arms twice as tall as Roxy followed, with one on either side of her. Pauldrons of white ice formed on its shoulders and talons pierced straight through the concrete. Vast wings of sharpened icicles snapped outward and the tornado dissipated. A large dragon head stretched out over her with four horns curving backward and multiple layers of ice protecting its back. Pale blue eyes snapped open and the demon roared; a haunting sound that echoed all around them even though there was nothing to contain it.

But Vergil felt the strength behind that sound alone. An arch-demon; one far older than himself. His demon-half wasn’t intimidated, but it acknowledged the untold amount of years between them. And, given Nero’s dumbfounded expression, Vergil assumed he felt something similar, even if he didn’t know what it was.

But Vergil… Vergil was impressed. This human woman, whose body seemed to shift between perfectly healthy and broken in the blink of an eye, had made a pact with an arch demon. And given the way its power quite literally radiated off of her, Vergil was certain this partnership had lasted far longer than he would have ever guessed without seeing it for himself.

Now, with this ice dragon towering over them all, he realized he’d judged her far too soon. He had taken her for someone who had made a pact on a whim and was still struggling to control it. It explained the back pain and the temporary paralysis, so he hadn’t considered this second demon to be any more than an unruly mess. Aki had been a gift from her father, so surely she couldn’t have made a strong pact on her own.

Vergil now understood how wrong his assumptions had been. She stood with pride, staring down the demons before her with the confidence of someone who had fought similar battles hundreds of times. And the way her hand drifted along the dragon’s icy scales with great fondness… She was clearly an experienced summoner, and this pact was no accident. A single month with three arguably weaker demons had nearly broken him. He couldn’t imagine what she had given up for such a beast.

Now, Roxanna had Vergil's full attention, and he was certain she knew it.

“It is good to see you,” Roxy whispered as she glanced up at her companion. The dragon growled in response, and she laughed. “It has been a rather long nap for you, hasn’t it?” The portal across from her widened, and a new batch of demons surged outward. But her smile didn’t fade. “Destroy the source, and I’ll handle the rest.” The dragon huffed, and a puff of white snow billowed from its nostrils. Roxy shook her head. “Child’s play for you, yes?” She held her hand out and Aki vanished as the bow appeared. This time, it crackled with purple lightning, surging outward stronger than the last time he had seen her.

I hunted yesterday, She had said. How many demons had she needed to kill to achieve this? Surely he and Dante would have heard about such an infestation.

And how had she done that alone in what he assumed was a weakened state?

Vergil swallowed a sudden strange feeling of excitement. A part of him thought these questions shouldn’t matter. Her abilities were there for all of them to see. But he realized very quickly that he wanted to know how she had accomplished such a feat. He wanted to understand how this power of hers worked, and why her strength seemed to wax and wane at seemingly random times instead of a steady decline.

The Baphomet’s shield appeared as Roxy threw her hand out. “Shatter!” The dragon’s head snapped forward at her call and a beam of pure ice swept through the demons. Each one turned to ice. The demon struggled, but a series of quick arrows killed them all. The essence flooded into the dragon as it fired another shot straight into the portal. Ice billowed out, swirling around the edges until only a small hole remained. Vergil heard the shrieks from the other side; one more shot would end it. But when Roxy reached for another arrow, she flinched. Her hand twitched toward her back, but she stopped and forced herself to stand up as straight as she could. “Impossible,” She muttered. “How could yesterday not have been enough?”

A shard of ice shot out of the portal. The dragon’s tail knocked it out of the sky, and Roxy found a smaller arrow to shoot at a second. A Riot slammed into the ice, shrieking as it tossed itself into the barrier over and over again. Vergil heard the grating sounds of metal claws scratching on the surface, but it had yet to break through. But as soon as he heard Roxy’s labored breathing, he knew she couldn’t hold the dragon’s power much longer. “He’s slowed the demons inside,” Roxy said. “But I can’t close it myself.”

Vergil moved without another word, and long before Nero had the chance. The Riot’s head emerged from the hole, cracking the barrier. But when Vergil slashed across the ice, the portal snapped shut. The lizard’s head hit the ground and turned to dust. He sheathed Yamato with a satisfying click and looked to her.

Except what he got was a very very angry Nero.

“What was the point in waiting?” Nero said. “You risked their lives for what? Your amusement?”

Vergil’s eyebrow shot up. Did Nero truly believe he couldn’t have intervened? Or that he wasn’t ready at any point to step in? “They were fine.”

“Bullshit!” Nero said. “You didn’t have a clue what she could do.”

Now, Vergil was baffled. Wasn’t Nero the one who wanted humans to learn to fight for themselves? Or had he misunderstood Dante’s descriptions of the boy? “She is a grown woman, Nero. She’s fought demons before and wanted to do it again. Who am I to stop her?”

“Wonderful!” Nero snapped. “Let’s just risk the lives of even more humans so Ms. Ice Queen over there can summon a demon!” He paused for a moment, before glancing at her and mumbling a quiet “no offense.” She shrugged, but the pain in her eyes was more alarming than her lack of response.

“You closed the other portals, yes?” Vergil said.

“Of course I did,” Nero said. “Because unlike you, I’m not a useless asshole.”

Vergil stared at him, fingers tightening on Yamato. He felt his jaw clench and quickly fought to bury any other reaction to his son’s words. He expected to be angry or find a reason to fight. Vergil assumed he would have something to say to such an accusation. But any response he might have had vanished before it reached his tongue. Instead, a deep stinging pain pierced right through his heart. His mind flashed to his imprisonment, and he tore his gaze away before it consumed him. He would not let Nero see his weakness. Not now. Not like this. Not when Nero already hated him, and not when Vergil didn’t know how to fix it.

But what could he do? Nothing he said could fix this. Nothing he did…

“Vergil?”

His eyes snapped to Roxy’s as she pulled away from a very worried Nico. The dragon was gone, and her hair had returned to its light blue hue. Aki hovered toward Vergil with a concerned chirp, but Roxy whistled and the demon returned to her shoulder. And as she slowly made her way toward them - no slump, but a slight limp. Clearly in need of more demonic energy- Vergil wanted to walk away. He didn’t want the questions, nor did he know what to tell her. This was all moving too fast, even for him.

This was a mistake. He couldn’t even get along with his own son. What right did he have to make friends with someone like her? How did he dare consider pursuing this new information when he hadn’t atoned for all his past mistakes? But how did he tell her this? How did…

Then, she turned to Nero and bowed her head. Vergil froze, surprised. Nero stared at her, confused. “It was my fault,” She said. “Not his.” Nero’s eyes widened and his mouth opened to respond, but Roxy continued. “I should have been able to handle it, but I misjudged the amount of energy I was carrying.” When she lifted her head, her back spasmed, but she held herself together. In fact, Vergil was certain Nero hadn’t noticed a thing.

“It’s not… that…” This was the first time Nero had ever looked embarrassed as far as Vergil could remember, but his anger had completely diminished. “I didn’t mean to doubt you,” He said hastily. “I mean that demon of yours is pretty cool… no pun intended,” He chuckled awkwardly.

“Come on, devil-boy!” Nico said as she dropped her arms over both his and Vergil’s shoulders. Honestly, he was more annoyed that he hadn’t noticed her move between them. “Let’s go check in on your uncle. Your old man’s got plenty to take care of himself.”

Nero frowned as he pulled himself out of Nico’s awkward, three-man hug, but he didn’t look at Vergil again. “Fine,” He said. “It was nice meeting you.” Vergil could hear his voice crack, caught between the genuine desire to be nice and his anger toward his father. He finally gave up and hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door, flinching as he did so.

Nico gave a dramatic sigh as she pat Vergil on the back. “You’ll take care of your Ice Queen, right V-man?” She winked at Roxy who blushed and looked away. Vergil paused, his mind drifting back to his worries. Was this… alright? Was this… fair? Should he continue on with this friendship after everything…?

He twitched when Nico quite literally smacked him upside the head. “Excuse me?” He said, glaring at her.

“Restarting those gears in your head,” She said as she followed after Nero. “See ya later, right Rox?”

The woman blinked before her gaze fell to the other woman. “As long as I get to drive,” She said.

“Hell no!” Nico said with a laugh. “I’m the best driver around.”

Roxy looked like she believed that about as much as she believed she could jump to the moon. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Her small smile was genuine, at the very least. That was much better than Vergil could manage at the moment. At least the tightness in his chest was starting to ease the more he had time to breathe. And Roxy stepping toward him was… comforting. That same, interested spark returned when she stood beside him in Nico’s place, and the pain in his chest vanished completely when she met his gaze with that same confident smile.

“How do you do it?” Vergil muttered.

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Vergil blinked, unaware he had spoken aloud to begin with. He glanced at the van one last time, but Nero didn’t look back as Nico drove away. Vergil took a long deep breath, and he could almost hear Griffon’s voice pulsing in the back of his head.

Ya ain’t gonna give up like that, right, my lady?

Vergil shoved the bird aside and looked back at her. “You need more essence, yes?”

She sighed. “Seems that way. Guess I miscalculated.”

“There are some demons left behind,” Vergil said. “I can weaken them for you, but you’ll have to find the strength to kill them yourself.”

She nodded. “Lead the way.”

#zenni-writes #dmc #fan fiction #vergil #vergilxoc #Cadence #nero #dante #nico #Roxy #VergilxRoxy #demon summoning

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scoundrelstars · 6 years

Text

The Price of Ink, Part 4

The low growl of the engine echoed strangely along the walls and off into the darkness. They’d been driving for almost an hour down a series of winding subways and rail tunnels that had been used to ferry workers out into the mining pits. Now, illuminated only by the floodlights of their vehicle, the tracks were empty.

Inside the Taurox, things were quiet. The Hellbats sat watching the shadows cast by the floodlights. Reddy and Abel sat with their eyes glued to their wristcog dataslates which showed live pict-feeds from the pair of servo-skulls that roved in front of and behind them. They cast about with auspex readers, scanning the darkness for things unseen. They were moving closer and closer to the heart of Scarist Hive and the odds of them going undetected were shrinking by the moment.

Naemi concentrated on the map in her head, seeing more than what the dataslate on her arm could show her. They were close to the Archives now, barely blocks away from city center. She was amazed they’d made it this far without encountering any of the deranged cultists that had taken over the hive. By all accounts, they had swarmed up from the underhive and taken control of every major building, system, and office in the city. Perhaps none remained down here. The Archives was on the surface, however, and a lump formed in her throat at the thought of facing down those killers.

She shook herself mentally and steeled herself. They’d have to get there first.

“It should just be up there,” she said in a whisper.

“Lights ahead,” said Sergeant Alcoin.

“Abel?” said Sorn.

“Yessir.”

With two fingers, Sorn punched runes on his wristcog and brought the view from Abel’s servo-skull onto the bulkhead pict-screen. It hovered high in the tunnel, creeping along ahead of them. The tunnel widened out into a large railway loading area for people and cargo that would have gone down to the mining pits. Only a few of the vapor lamps were still on, but the pools of light revealed the grand vaults of the Archives stop, where countless scribes would bring their daily tabulations and recordings to be stored at the end of each shift.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of any of those tunnel scuttlers. Makes me nervous,” said Sorn.

“Think the Hallowed Starborn cult is big on reading?” asked Naemi. Her voice was strained, but the Hellbats chuckled around her.

“No I don’t, professor. All right, Caissy, bring us in. Aime, look alive on those guns.”

The Taurox pulled into the train station and up onto the equipment loading ramp, its treads biting into the fractured tile and ruined mosaic floor. They came to a stop and opened the back hatch, piling out with guns ready. Caissy and Aime stayed aboard, covering the Hellbats’ advance with the heavy guns.

Water dripped from pipes in the vaulted ceilings, lending the loading platform an echoing, spectral quality. Naemi was squarely in the middle of the formation, protected by Scions on either side and a slab of armoured vehicle at her back. She still wasn’t used to the carapace armor she’d been fitted with, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it looked and she found that her movement was mostly unrestricted. They slunk quickly to the grand staircase that led to the surface. Wrought iron gates had been reinforced with heaps of scrap metal welded together across them to form an impassable wall much like they had encountered on the surface.

“We’re blocked, sir,” said Reddy over the vox, “should we blow it?”

“Maybe not,” said Naemi, searching her memory, “there’s another way, I think.”

She broke away to the side of the main pedway where she followed a pair of tramrails sunk into the floor. They led to a loading ramp that was closed off with two heavy blast doors and big enough to move mining equipment on and off of the trains that would depart from the platform. A freight elevator. And it went up to a storage garage on the surface, adjacent to the Archives. This was their way up. She found the control panel under a pool of light cast by one of the few remaining lamps that shone.

“Can you get it working?” said Sorn, coming up next to her. He made a series of hand motions to the other Hellbats and they fanned out around them, taking covering angles, some facing the elevator and others the approaches.

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

She pulled her Logos icon from underneath her chestplate and turned it over. From the back, she unspooled a fine interface lead that she plugged into the elevator call panel. The solar icon around the stylized tome lit with green light as the cipher-gheist inside did its work. With the scrape of metal on metal, the doors to the freight elevator ground open and glowglobes flickered on inside, revealing a platform big enough to hold a full dump-loader.

Satisfied that nothing was going to jump out at them, Sorn motioned the Taurox forward. With a low grumble, it moved up the loading ramp and onto the elevator. Aime rotated top turret to face back the way they’d come. The brake lights cast a sullen red glow out into the darkness. The Hellbats followed their vehicle up the ramp and took defensive positions along the outer edges of the lift platform. Naemi unplugged her icon and followed.

The doors slid closed with the push of a control rune and the platform lurched upward.

They were dumped out into the storage garage meant for the Archives adepts, mine-boss vehicles, and materiel destined for the railway below. A quick jog up the ramps brought them to ground level where the garage connected to the Archives. They stopped in front of the doorway that led to the building next to them.

“Caissy, Aime. Stay here with the Taurox and keep our getaway secure.” Acknowledges came back from the two troopers and Sorn continued. “We’ll be in an out before anyone knows we’ve been there.”

Naemi followed the Hellbats through an archway that led to the Archives’ main foyer, using her icon’s cipher-gheist to get them through the biomantic scanners and lockouts.

The main hall of the Archives was a soaring edifice of rib-vaulted stone and stained glass, but its grandeur was despoiled by looting and vandalism. Scrivener’s desks were overturned and staved in, the tall tome-stacks had been pushed over, scattering books, dataslates, and mnesis-tapes all over. The great stained glass windows that had once shown the full glory of the Administratum were smashed and huge sack-cloth banners painted with the Starborn’s heretical symbols hung in their place.

“Spread out. Search pattern delta-tertius,” came Sorn’s order, “I feel like a whiskerfish in a river full of swampcats.”

The two servo-skulls that accompanied them zoomed ahead, their auspex scanners searching the darkness for threats unseen. The Mercier boys followed close behind, disappearing into the ruined stacks, their hot-shot lasguns held at the ready. Lufleur hefted her own weapon, a heat-scarred meltagun, and moved quietly for a soldier of her size.

It was eerily quiet amid the stacks. The musty smell of old paper and books made it through the omnishield mask that covered Naemi’s face. It almost comforted her. It was familiar, yet sinister, reminding her of the scriptorum back on Terra, but tainted by the smell of smoke and fresh aero-paint.

Her vox crackled in her ear. “Found something.”

They passed into the great narthex where the High Archivist would have watched over the entrance to the data-crypts, the repository for the planet’s most sensitive and important knowledge. Abel and Reddy were already there, standing over the cracked marble desk and a mound of blue cloth. As she drew near, Naemi realized it was the High Archivist’s corpse. Blood had seeped out onto the white stone floors and dried to a dark brown.

“Been here for a week, maybe?” said Abel.

“Went down fighting,” said his brother, pointing to the huge chunks blasted out of the stone desk.

Naemi stared down at the High Archivist’s body and swayed. Dead eyes stared up from a slack-jawed face. She felt bile rise in her throat and had to look away. She felt a hand on her arm.

Sorn steered her away from the corpse and towards the data-crypt’s doors. “Come on, professor. The quicker we can get into those data-crypts, the faster we can get out of here.”

“Right,” she said, swallowing hard and unspooling her Logos icon’s interface lead once more.

The back wall of the narthex was dominated by a heavy vault door. A gene-scanner and voiceprint analyzer would have to be passed for the High Archivist’s key to be accepted, but Naemi wouldn’t need to go to such lengths. She prised the front panel off of the crypt’s access cogitator, mouthed a quick apology to any red priests who might be watching, and connected her icon to a data port hidden within. Once again, her Logos icon glowed green as the cipher-gheist went to work.

Runes and tech-script scrawled along the pict-screen as the panel went haywire. A loud clunk echoed through the Archive as the data-crypt’s maglocks disengaged and retracted. Lufleur hauled on the huge door and it swung open, revealing a cavernous structure built of ceramite-reinforced steel and it stretched back into the darkness. Rows of glowglobes clicked on in succession, flooding the data-crypt with clinical, white light. Towers of datastacks and mnemono-matrices rose from the floor, lights winking across their surfaces in dizzying patterns. Along the outer walls, bookshelves containing musty scrolls, tomes, and volumes were neatly organized. It seemed that the Hallowed Starborn hadn’t managed to get into vault. Naemi’s heart leaped at the prospect of the Iterator Soldatta’s greatest work still being intact.

“Neatly done, professor,” said Sorn, coming to stand next to her.

“There’s still power, which is better than I’d hoped,” she said, stepping over the threshold, “The stasis vault should still be functioning. We might even find Soldatta’s work undamaged!”

“Let’s have ourselves a look,” drawled the colonel. He motioned quickly with one hand and Leger and Monpremier bustled in with their equipment. Out of their packs, they brought out black plastic boxes with retractable cables. The two troopers went to work connecting them to the stacks’ dataports, flipping the small switches on their boxes. Small red lights blinked as their exhaust fans revved up with an electric whine.

Naemi started to speak, but remembered the colonel’s face the last time she asked what he would do with the data he was taking from Scarist’s vaults. She decided not to press the issue. Hopefully, she’d be well out of this Emperor-forsaken subsector before it came back to bite her. She affected to not see them and push on deeper into the data-crypt.

The two of them proceeded towards the far end of the chamber where a glass panel separated a section of the vault off from the rest. Arcane machinery hummed around it, projecting a stasis field to keep the contents within protected from the ravages of time. At the center of the stasis chamber, atop a small plinth, Naemi could see the object of her quest. The Rise of Empire, Iterator Soldatta’s greatest work, was a tome the size of a paving stone and engraved with the head of an eagle over crossed thunderbolts.

Naemi began to manipulate the stasis controls though her Logos icon. She could have shut the entire chamber down and retrieved the book, but there was a chance that the Archives might survive the Imperial assault on Scarist and she wanted to keep the accumulated knowledge of the planet safe within the time-warping fields. The entire data-crypt was hardened against attack and she would give it good odds to survive even an orbital lance strike. By adjusting the edges of the field generators in a precise way, she could open a path through the stasis chamber and retrieve the Iterator’s tome without disturbing the rest of the precious objects inside.

The vox channel came alive and she could hear Reddy’s voice whispering, “I’ve got movement out here, chief.”

“Visual?”

“I’ve got mining vehicles and groundcars pullin’ up to the front of the building. They’re packed to burstin’ with some of the meanest characters I ever did see. I think they know we’re here.”

“Pull back to the crypt, we’re almost out of here,” voxed Sorn before giving her a serious look, “Wrap it up, boys. Time for us to go! You too, professor. If you’re gonna grab this thing, it’s got to be now.”

#Warhammer #warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #black library #The Price of Ink #Logos Historica Verita #Astra Militarum #militarum tempestus #Javier Sorn #Naemi Vandenberg #sci-fi #fiction #fan-fiction

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mechagalaxy · 6 years

Text

Pot Metal Swords

The raid had been raging for less than two days. We had less than two thousand mecha in total, against over forty thousand of them. Probably a couple thousand more, but after you are twenty to one outnumbered, a few more mecha more or less don’t seem as important.

The mecha were Unification monstrosities. Clones of pilots long expended in the endless and pointless wars between Unification and Xeon, riding machines that were force ripened in ways even Drocha would find offensive, they boasted massive levels of armour and potent weapons.

Sort of.

When the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy defied the west in WW2 on old earth, they drew heavily upon the Samurai tradition to motivate their troops. Like Unification, it had been a long time since the warriors whose traditions they picked and chose bits to use in their propaganda were in charge of anything except dying. The Samurai of WW2 went to war with pot metal swords, so cheap you could break them across a door frame with a casual swipe. They were not samurai, they were expendables less valued than the ramshackle war machines an war industry run for profit by the Industrialists who expected to not only profit from victory, but from each and every drop of blood during the struggle cut costs and maximized profits because the only red that they feared was on the ledger page.

Unification was the same. The Science Council was about statistics. They understood graphics fine. Levels were quantifiable, tonnage was quantifiable, damage was quantifiable, so material based warfare, the kind that would make Joseph Stalin rise from his unhallowed grave to give a golf clap, was their strategy. Attrition. Attrition but not driven by survival imperative, for fear was as alien to the science councils thinking as was mercy, but by economics. To get higher production numbers of the same book value, corners were constantly being examined for cutting. After so long, the corners cut had reshaped the mecha to the point they were no longer truthfully nearly as potent as their numbers suggested.

Not quite a paper tiger, nor target drones, they were still very dangerous, but they were not very durable.

Our chief technician Knocker’s McGuinty was arguing with the Armourer from Myth and Legend over a Hellbat he wanted to install.

“You are not putting that in any machine in my mecha bay, I don’t care whose clan the machine belongs to THAT UNIFICATION CRAP IS NOT GOING IN” Knockers screamed

The Armourer was powering up the implanted weapons in his artificial arm, and Knockers had a crystal wrench the weight of her massive bust hidden behind her back, so I figured I was about three seconds away from being down two techs (one dead, the other in lockup, which was which to be randomly determined by caffination state and reaction speed), so I charged in like both my little rabbit feet were lucky.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, chill the frack out, and power down those weapons. That means put the wrench down too Knockers. I know this raid has everyone tired out, but why don’t you tell the nice man why you don’t want him to install the salvaged Hellbat in that Ignus, because I love the damned Hellbats and can’t ever have too many!” I said, forcing my way between them.

Knockers was wild eyed, the look of too many stim packs, too much caffine, and too many hours on the repair line, so was the Armourer, but his beard allowed him to hide it better. She spoke slowly, and tapped her headgear to bring her mag/res lenses down over one eye to deep scan the Hellbat, and opened her cyber implants to display the results on the screen.

“This Hellbat is not made with a crystal matrix housing plasma weapons hotter than the square flame. It has a Ferrite housing with crystal overlay.” Knockers swore as the display began to flower with scan data in the air between us.

“Ridiculous” Scoffed the Armourer “If you did that, the thermal shock would begin to craze the crystal overlays within a few firings, by a dozen it would be filled with microfactures, and by twenty you would be lucky if it didn’t explode outright.” His voice began ringing with surety but trailed off into horror as the microfactures on the screen gave a visual to his words, and his own magnaflux revealed the housing was a badly thermodegraded low purity ferrite matrix, rather than the standard (and utterly reliable) crystal housing.

“This is obscene! This weapon was HARD MOUNTED in, not designed to be easily replaceable, I had to build an insert sleeve to mount it in the Ignus. They didn’t build this for short term use and quick field replacement. This Hellbat was designed to be in the Notas until the mecha was destroyed. That would mean they…………” The Armourer could not complete the sentence. His life had been caring for the war machines of Myth and Legend, and the Bouncing Blue Brotherhood during Faction War. He lived for his clan and its pilots, as much as he did for the war machines that gave them all purpose. To design an army like this, it was obscene!

“A throw away army. Expendable troops. They were not meant to survive this campaign, so why waste effort or materials designing weapons for troops as if they are coming home to fight another campaign when really there were never any plans to even recover them.”

As I spoke the words, I realized the gulf between the Unification Troops and us was wider than religion or politics. I also realized an uglier, mercenary troops. We were screwed.

There was no way the loot from these sad sack disposable troops would be worth the cost of the munitions to blow them to hell. We literally were going to win the war, and walk away in debt for doing so.

This is the secret cost of Faction War; fighting a raid whose payout is so poor you will have created a greater demand for niode and crystal to level your machines than you could possibly recoup from the salvage.

Unification was not going to win this battle, but they had found a way to make sure no one won the war.

How easy would it be to recruit for the next Faction War? How long before Humanity falls because no one was willing to lose good money to save the world anymore? The raid was almost over, victory was within our grasp. Too bad victory seemed like it was going to be warm, brown, squishy and steaming when it filled our hands not with gold and glory, but crap.

John T Mainer 28840

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raymondchougaming · 7 years

Text

TvZ Analysis

First, to get a good idea of what people are doing, I’m going to compile general strats.

//Zerg//

What am I afraid of?

Mutas

Sensor tower + turrets and thors in key positions

Mines! Mobile defense

Scout it early

Apply enough pressure to not let him get there

Cyclones DESTROY mutas with good control

Ling Run-bys

Sim city, have mines in key positions, perhaps leave a few boys at home

Vision of key chokes/paths - think, where am I weak? Get vision there

Hellions

Pressure so hard that they need their lings at home

Early roach cheeses

Scout

Get like 1 tank

BANSHEES

Baneling busts

Early: sim city, get like 1 tank

Good marine micro

Get some hellions

Scout - ez money if you see it coming

BANSHEES

A lot of counterattacks

If playing mobile style, have low-supply defenses (eg, planetaries, maybe a few ravens for the turrets, a few hellions)

If playing non-mobile (mech), spread army wisely.

SIM CITY

VISION - where must he move through to counterattack? How will I respond to this counterattack? If I am more immobile, I kill whatever I can at his base, and I try to “manage the damage” knowing I’ll be ahead

Him having a big ass army that never seems to end

Fuck with drone count or do strong timing pushes

Infestors fungaling everything

Ghosts?

Tank target fire?

Sick spreads

Hive tech = instaghost (if going bio) because ghosts kill most hive tech shit anyway

Lurkers

Ravens are a pretty good unit

Micro

TANKS

Vipers being gay af

This is only really a problem if going mech = just get a few vikings or something. Or HSM

BC teleport

Swarm hosts

Tanks + HSM

Ultras

Build Marauders and ghosts, try to force engagements where they’re running through a choke and you’re not.

MINES surprisingly

Hive tech

Keep Zerg gas count low

Zerg defending really well and just having infinite shit to kill you with

Timing pushes - investigate when Zerg just cannot have that much...but it seems like LotV isn’t like that. I dislike styles where you HAVE to do damage to win...so perhaps figure out some sort of solid af MVP/Bomber-style timing push

Brood fucking lords

HSM, Vikings, ghosts, Thors, BCs

OPENERS

Hatch-Gas-Pool

(Inno vs Scarlett, Newkirk District) into Bane Bust ///17 Hatch (0:52-2:04), 18 Gas (1:00-1:21), 17 Pool (1:14-2:00)-> Speedling drop (instant speed)

Queens come out at 2:37

Speed finishes at 3:20

Early +1 carapace, finishes at 5:00 (from evo to +1 is ~3 min)

Around 3:00, 2nd overlord appears outside of your base, Zerg has enough has to morph droplord

Since speed finishes at 3:20, it takes the lings until 3:40 to get to your base, so the drop will occur then

Can baneling off of ONE FUCKING GAS...goes down at 4:30, finishes 5:20

Bust gets to your base at 5:45

Bust is done off 21 drones ish

Scarlett took her third around 7:20 (but maybe 7:00 is possible?)

====

When queens pop out (2:40), 21 drones and 4 lings, 2 larva, 3 overlords = TOTAL LARVA COUNT: 28

(3:10) - 9 larva, 21 drones, 10 lings, 4 overlords, 1 egg = TOTAL LARVA COUNT: 40

(3:40) - 5 larva, 21 drones (made building, so 20), 22 lings (11), 4 overlods, 3 eggs = TOTAL LARVA COUNT: 47

(Alive vs IIIIIIIII) into Roach Ravager

Roach Warren goes down at 3:30, finishes at 4:09; Roaches take 19 seconds, so they’ll come out around 4:30. This was done as a reaction to seeing Reactor hellions.

**They may not necessarily build roaches

Around 3:30-3:40, third hatch goes down.

Zerg took a blind third - I’m guessing he assumed the Terran took an expansion. No vision on the natural; this style of play is vulnerable against 1 base all-ins.

Saw two Factory (3:45) - lair (finishes at 5:00, takes 57), second gas, presumably to get the Roach speed. It’s possible he was planning

Was not able to get Roach speed for a while - due to lack of gas, since he had to make roaches. Goes down at 5:20 (finishes at 6:40) since he had to make a metric shitton of Roaches.

(True vs Soul Game 2) into Ling/Bane/Muta

True got his baneling nest + lair as a response to seeing mass marines - would he have delayed his lair even more?

True is going for double ups, and some banelings - no mutas any time soon. There’s just not enough gas.

Since Zergs don’t get their gases until they get lair, then they won’t have enough gas to do much really. If they get their gases early, then they won’t really have minerals to do anything.

5:40 - lair went down

At 6:30 (if hatch first), Zerg will have mined 800 minerals. 100 for ling speed, 150 for +1 carapace, 100 for +1 melee, 100 for hte lair, 50 for the baneling nest, 375 for +2 carapace and melee. He actually just can’t do anythiung else.

Centrifugal hooks starts around 7:00 (slightly earleir), will finish around 8:15

If Zerg is making banelings off of 4 gas, it will drain almost all of their gas.

Zerg gets 4th at 7:00. Would they have gotten it earlier had we not applied pressure?

Spire dropped at 7:42, after the Zerg stopped making banelings. The more banes, the later/less mutas will occur. Mutas pop out 1:30 + map flying time after spire is dropped. So expect mutas around 10:00. Around 7:00 if you left them alone, or they went lair before third. It looks like Zerg really needs those 4th gases to do anything scary.

(True vs Soul Game 3) into Death

If Zerg does not get an evo chamber, and you don’t do anything to them, the third will will go down around 2:40-3:00. Evo chamber is delayed until finishing at 4:00.

Lair starts around 5:15 - no gas to do so until then.

Zerg will start their 4th at 6:00 if you do nothing to them!

Spire started 6:20

Pool-Gas-Hatch

(True vs Soul Game 4) into Roach/Ravager push

Pool finishes at 1:30, first queen out at 2:10; second one out at 2:50

2:30 hatch finishes, ling speed and roach warren at 3:10. Roaches come out at 3:30, get to your base (Palodino) at 4:00

Done on about 22-24 harvestors

MIDGAME COMPOSITIONS/BUILDING SETUPS/ATTACKS

Ling/bane/muta

Roach/Ravager + maybe a few lings

LATE GAME

CHEESE

Baneling bust (2 base or 1 base) (1 base shows up at 3:30, 2 base around 5:00)

One base roach ravager (look up timing)

14 pool 14 gas - 2:00

//Terran//

OPENERS

Reaper expand -> 2-1-1 16 marine drop?

RaxR - Gas - CC - RaxT - Factory - Port, stim immediately. Second gas around 2:15, or reaper halfway across map, or a little after you started reactor. Ebay as you start medivacs. Start third ASAP after you move out.

Into Hellbat-Cyclone push + Cloak Banshee & liberators and tanks..? LOL

Normal Reactor hellion expand (CC first), and then get a starport with cloak.

Upon seeing a roach, immediately pulls units back and builds a bunker, and builds 4 cyclones asap

Gas first double factory expand (gas first, marine -> reactor, second factory asap) -> hellion cyclone push

MIDGAME COMPOSITIONS/BUILDING SETUPS

5-1-1, double ebay, stim/combat shield, going MMMM

Marine tank liberator vs ravagers. Innovation’s Raven build?

LATE GAME

CHEESE

Zerg Mechanics in General:

-Larva drops off the hatch every 11 seconds -Inject cycles last 29 seconds (so every 30 seconds) -Effectively, 13-14 Larva per hatch per minute. -Queens take 36 seconds, so come out at 2:36-2:37 if Hatch First -Slightly over 150 gas/minute per extractor if 3 workers on it -Zergs are usually more limited by MONEY as opposed to LARVA, unless behind on injects, or specific situations (rare) -20-22 drones is magic number to fund mass speedlings (about 1050 mineral income, so 2 overlords per minute, and so 16 pairs of lings, leaving a HUGE larva excess...) -~50 resources per worker per minute, regardless of what it is -Each overlord is 16 lings or 8 drones (8 supply) -If Zerg is getting his third base, and has double evo chamber, then he cannot be going for lair - cannot afford it. The lair transition will occur around 5:30-6:00 if he went for double evo chamber and 3 hatch. -After getting his two hatches up, Zerg will try to get upgrades, a third, and lair. Zerg cannot do all 3 at the same time - scout for which ones they’re doing so you know which ones will come later. -

HATCH FIRST SPECIFICS:

Queen will come out at 2:40

They will have 31 Larva at 2:40, so count the lings. They usually make 4 to deal with a reaper that shows up at ~2:30ish on most games.

For the 2:40 situation, they will typically have 3 Overlords and 2 pairs of lings, so the 26 ish larva will be drones. So 22-26 drones at 2:40.

Start rounding - safer. At 3:10, expect them to have 44 total Larva. If they made no units, they will have 38 larva. (!?!?). 3:40 - 57 larva.

GENERAL TIPS

Take your first gas closer to the Overlords if the gases are spread out - that way, Zerg cannot time your second gas.

Lair will require a second & third gas to go down, third is usually staggered. Fourth will go down a bit later.

On two base, Zerg will go for 35 drones on one gas, and there is no reason to get more until he takes a third.

Zerg tier-1 units take like 17-20 seconds to make, drones take 12 seconds. (Overlords included)

If Zerg has 24 drones and is going for ling/bane, with 3 drones in gas, he can get ~1050 minerals per minute. Say 1100 to be safe. He will have 27 larva per minute. So he will need 500 minerals & 9 larva for 8 pairs of lings. He can comfortably do this - so he will have 32 lings per minute.

4 Roaches:1 Overlord; Takes up 400/100 and 5 larva. If all roaches, kind of possible but you really can’t be getting anything else.

If you draw their queens out, they cannot inject.

On two bases, we expect about 8-10 drones every 30 seconds if we leave them alone.

In the midgame, if you see a huge spike of ravagers, then they can’t really be getting anything else. If you see a bunch of lings, or not much unit production, they’re either stockpiling mutas or droning really hard. We’re going to just murder them if they’re droning, so it’s probably mutas or infestors. Scan to find out.

Stop around 65-70 SCVs?

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antasmas · 3 years

Photo

Scan of a sticker sheet from the Christmas Wonderland promo oekaki bag!

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antasmas · 3 years

Photo

Scan of the Pokemon Center Online Monthly postcard for May featuring the Gigantamax forms of Grimmsnarl, Duraludon, Butterfree, and Garbodor!

#hellbat scans #pokemon #pokemon swsh #grimmsnarl #duraludon #butterfree #garbodor #sorry for my stupit liddle watermark but i don't trust posting my scans without one anymore because of a certain someone #*looks at pokesh*pper*#anyways i might post the back of the card (it has gmax gengy on it) but we'll see

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scoundrelstars · 6 years

Text

The Price of Ink, Part 2

The two wended their way out of the sprawling command bunker and into the grimy rain of Rescalia. Each drop prickled at her skin and she pulled her coat’s hood up over her head to protect herself from the astringent drops. Sorn seemed unfazed by the weather and continued his sauntering pace down the main thoroughfare of the camp.

The Imperial staging camp was an enormous clearing that sat atop what had once been a mountain, long since mined flat and outside the range of Scarist Hive’s main defensive guns. Armor, aircraft, and troops all bustled about, preparing for the first assault.

“This your first time in the field?” asked Sorn.

“My first time off Terra,” said Naemi, stepping carefully over ruts left in the mud by a heavy Leman Russ battle tank.

“I’d reckon an adepta of the Collegia Afrikasa would be more politic.” He drew out each syllable of ‘politic’ in his slow accent. “Never try to convince an Inquisitor to do somethin’ they don’t want to.”

Naemi found herself frowning at Sorn, who didn’t break stride.

“You read my file, so I read yours.” Sorn raised his left arm, displaying the gauntlet he wore. Inlaid into the armor, a dataslate glowed with her picture and her entire dossier. Sorn scrolled through it with one finger. “Naemi Vandenbergh, daughter of menials who earned her place in the Collegia on Afrik before being scooped up by the Logos Historica Verita in the first induction by the Lord Regent himself. Truly a story to inspire the masses.”

Naemi narrowed her eyes as they walked, wary of the seemingly lackadaisical military man. He gave her a sidelong look, his hands in his pockets. “You’re trying to impress me.”

“How am I doing so far?”

“Not nearly as well as you think.”

Sorn stopped in front of a long barracks that had been constructed from pre-fab panels and ferrocrete. The number nine was stenciled onto the corrugated roller door set into the side.

“Look, Miss Vandenbergh. How often is history made by askin’ permission?”

Naemi gave the colonel an appraising look, considering. One hand idly touched the Logos icon she wore around her neck. Maybe he was right. She knew she could commandeer almost any military asset in the execution of her warrant, within reason. And the Tempestor Prime of the 9th Higaran Hellbats had taken an interest in her case. She shuddered at the thought of Drant’s fury if he were to find out, but the thought of an iterator’s first-hand account of the Great Crusade being lost forever steeled her against fear.

She nodded firmly. “All right. I’ll concede that you may have a point. What I don’t see is what your Hellbats get out of it.”

“I told you, professor. We can help each other. We get you into the Scarist Archives and you’ll help us by using that,” he pointed to the Logos icon she wore, “to open up the data-crypts.”

The icon, in addition to being a symbol of her station, was the vessel for a complex machine spirit that could grant her access to records and reports that were locked behind even the most complex cipher-wards.

“What’s so important in the data-crypts?”

Sorn smirked and shook his head. “Sorry, that ain’t part of the deal.”

“I’m not sure I like going in without all the facts.”

“Well, there’s only three Scions regiments on-planet. Ground pounders won’t get you into the city in one piece and if you think any of the other by-the-books types are willing to take you, then you’re welcome to try. Drant’s got ‘em all whipped into line.”

She raised one eyebrow skeptically. “But not you.”

“We’re a fan of longshots here in the Ninth,” said Sorn with a grin, “You want to get into the Archives and we can get you there.”

Naemi was silent for a time, analyzing her options. “Fine. I’ll get you into the crypts.”

“Excellent!” Sorn smiled and pressed an intervox call button set into the wall of the bunker. A buzzer sounded briefly and the roller door began to crawl upwards. “Welcome to the Hellbats, professor.”

Inside, lumen-globes lit a garage of midnight-blue assault vehicles, cogitator banks, and weapon racks. Soldiers in every state of uniform milled around cleaning weapons, servicing engines, or dozing anywhere their bodies could fit. Overall, Naemi counted at least thirty men and women.

“Look alive, boys and girls. We got ourselves a dance and the music’s startin’.”

The Scions of the Hellbats piled in around their commander, who was shucking off his dress coat. Naemi felt herself taking a step back before mentally chastised herself. It wouldn’t do to show the intimidation she was feeling. Field work meant dealing with rough characters and, by the Throne, did these Hellbats look rough. An older man with a white scar running down his face and neck stepped forward first. He spoke with the same slow drawl that Sorn did.

“She’ll do it, sir?”

“Yes she will, Cal. That means you’ll be leading the Ninth in the main theater itself. I’ll be taking the professor in as planned. Round up your bats and uplink with the belfry, you’ll receive formal orders as soon as.”

The man called Cal gave Sorn a stern look before nodding with a “Yessir” followed by a bellow, “All right, Nines! Fall out and put on your dancin’ shoes. I want to see everyone in full battle rattle by the time the CAG has his birds all gassed up!”

“First squad, on me,” said Sorn.

The majority of the Hellbats broke away at a quick jog, back to their barracks, to find their shoes, Naemi guessed. A few stayed back, looking at their commander expectantly.

“First squad, this is Naemi Vandenbergh, historitor extraordinaire and the whole reason we’re goin’ on this picnic in the first place. Professor, these are the people who will be gettin’ us in and out of Scarist Hive in one piece.”

Sorn went around the small circle of Scions, making the team’s introductions.

Sergeant Alcoin was a man with a dour face and sallow eyes. The strange humor that seemed to infect Sorn was absent in him. Troopers Aime, Leger, and Monpremier nodded and smiled a warm welcome to her before being sent off haul in a small holotank from an outer room.

“The Mercier boys, Abel and Reddy,” motioning towards two young, gawking soldiers with ruddy skin and fair hair. They were the spitting image of each other and, to Naemi’s eyes, very young to be soldiers.

“Best sharpshooter in the Ninth, ma’am,” said one, “my brother’s a close second.”

The other looked indignant, “Not a chance, ma’am. It’s the other way ‘round!”

Sorn raised one hand and continued down the line. A man with sharp features, dark skin, and a mat of scar tissue on the side of his shaved head was introduced as Corporal Caissy.

“Best driver in the Hellbats,” said Sorn proudly, “We ready for action?”

“As ready it’ll ever be, sir. The red priests tried their best with the grav chutes, but they just weren’t meant to hold something this big. There’s a chance they’ll short out if we push ‘em, they says.”

“Then we’ll just have to get in real close, won’t we?”

A woman practically the size of an ogryn with a square face and short-cropped hair touched one finger to her eyebrow as she was introduced. She had an air of jovial aggression about her that shone through her eyes as she gave Naemi an up-and-down look.

“Finally, Syvette Lufleur, our weapons specialist. Think you can kit the professor out?”

“I might have somethin’ that will fit her.”

Sorn clapped his hands together with a light in his eyes. “All right then! Leger, bring up the map on that thing and let’s figure out where we’re goin’ to drop.”

“Map might be a problem, sir,” said Leger, “the belfry says no one’s mapped Scarist Hive in the last two hundred years. S’why Drant is having such a bad go of gettin’ inside the city.”

“Bring up the orbitals, then. We’ll play it by ear.”

Naemi did not like the sound of that. Whatever ‘it’ was, she wasn’t going to leave something as important as this to people who didn’t even know the full layout of Scarist, no matter how skilled of soldiers they were.

“I thought you already had a plan,” said Naemi Her fingers clenched hard around the Logos amulet she wore.

“I do,” said Sorn, crossing his arms and frowned down into the holotank, “but there’s always an element of improvisation to war. That’s a lesson you learn on Higara.”

“Oh no,” Naemi sighed. “I know the city, colonel. Tell me how we want to approach this thing and I can get you a route.”

“Ain’t you from Terra, ma’am?” asked one of the Mercier brothers, punching buttons on the holotank as Leger tried to bring up orbital scans.

“Yes, but the Logos has access to practically every screed, tome, and datasheet in the Imperium. I studied everything I could about this benighted place on my transit from the throneworld. I saw the original foundation documents for Scarist. Every drainage ditch, sewer system, and maintenance tunnel. It’s all up here.” Naemi tapped her temple.

“You’re sure, professor?”

Naemi pulled back her long hair, revealing a cranial sheath that ran up her neck and into her head. “Eidetic memory, colonel. I don’t forget anything.”

Lufleur clapped Naemi on the shoulder and laughed. “See, Abel? That’s what you get with a real education!”

She swallowed hard, but felt a smile creeping onto her face. Things were moving so fast. She’d barely been planetside for three hours and now she was about to be in the midst of the largest Imperial assault in the subsector’s history. She’d checked the numbers. As she was lead away to the armory for her own ‘dancing shoes,' she wondered again if field work really was her calling after all.

#warhammer #warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #black library #The Price of Ink #Logos historica verita #Astra Militarum #tempestus scions #Javier Sorn #Naemi Vandenberg #sci-fi #fan-ficton #fiction

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