The Withered Land, THE EMPIRE FALLS: HELL'S AVATAR

HELL'S AVATAR -- PART TWENTY-FIVE

Several sunbursts of dull orange light exploded inside the oily cloud that rose from the teetering wreckage of the rear left side of the abdomen of the massive scarab. Small fires fiercely burned both inside the Kolyoptux and outside as metallic wreckage trailed from the scarab's vast frame like artificial entrails. Groups of tiny figures scurried about the multiple decks of the interior of the cyborg-creature as its traumatized human occupants sought shelter and safety. A trio of tiny skitterskim ornithopter-ships hovered over those sections of the open abdomen cavity where the devastation was most brutal, flame retardant foam flowing from hoses mounted onto the compact aerial ships. The slashing, axe-bladed hands of towering Dessimathiah had ripped the rear of the insect chassis from off the once-sturdy foundational framework. Bur'heddam was mortally wounded, listing at an extreme angle off to one side as two of its mighty legs buckled and collapsed, and the mobile city was in desperate straits.

But its deadly, eight-barreled assault cannons remained auto-sighted on the giant Xherim'efarr alien and they kept firing. The creature stumbled and staggered under the explosive impacts, but it did not fall.

In the remains of the Forward Command Center over top the Central Bridge's pilothouse, Primehunde Storm-Captain Qeskan Wa'entrud was directing a pair of heavy-armor shock troop defenders from the City Militia in hosing the huge figure of Dessimathiah with portable, large-bore phase-streamers. Each of the weapon's photon-bursting, wave-packet projectors gushed a retina-scarring jet of energy directly at the colossus. At impact, parts of the creature's armor and clothing shimmered and then ran like lava down its body as the phase-streamers ate away solid matter. But inside of a few heartbeats, the armor, flesh and bone rematerialized untouched, brand new, as it healed.

Ambassador Czuek was sitting propped against the exposed metal bulkhead of the Command Center, wheezing wetly, as The Magistrate, looking sweaty, drawn and frightened, pressed a makeshift bandage, little more than a torn handful of cloth, against a huge wound in the man's stomach. Meanwhile, Aff'Zeqabbah and his entourage of Synthabot Guildsmen were standing rooted in place, physically untouched by the scarab-city's catastrophic devastation, apparently mesmerized by the horrors and the fury of the scene around them. Kos'viggat-Ordinous, Chyremdi-Ordinous and Lal'Pleing-Numinous were nattering aloud to one another in an emotionless machine language indecipherable to human listeners.

And Dame Tanzamia Cleriq, clutching a wireless microphone headset in her trembling fist, her gown disheveled and torn, blood trickling from a cut in her scalp and from along her right forearm, seethed. Through her face mask, she shrieked a series of commands intended for the surviving Central Bridge command staff into the headset's microphone.

"All Artilleryman Assault teams: fire! Do you hear? Fire, damn you, fire! Aim for the monster's head!"

The powerful, front-mounted cannons thundered again and again and again.

And then, partially eclipsed by the mountainous form of the attacking HyperLord, a seam began to split in the night air, opening wider and wider as something shining and smooth and very large emerged from the rip in the night.

The Glide suddenly loomed forth from within the quantum depths of the Ventriculum.

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The vibra-layered cocoon-sheath inside the armor dispelled the harshest effects from the awful repetitive impacts of a dozen projectiles striking the exterior of the battle-suit. His armor's torso suspension surrendered to a few small jerks from the impacts of the enemy shells, but he was prepared for the involuntary shocks and adjusted his weapons system accordingly. A determined group of six Ashen Brood sentries fired at him from behind a huge overturned, broken stone pillar but the ammunition from their weaponry couldn't penetrate the armor. He activated the thermal scanning function on his forward-looking imaging sensors and set the proximity motion-radar for infantry combat-mode as he scanned for a weak spot in their cover. There. Fifteen degrees right of visual center. Targets acquired.

Mune'stahr activated his armor's multi-muzzle light-autocannons and the subsequent thirty-round fusillade ripped apart the column and the men behind it, rapidly shredding them in a fan-shaped blossom of scarlet mush.

An explosion behind him, to his left... Mune'stahr ducked into a squat and swung his body around, already re-sighting on new targets with his semi-automatic .80 caliber target-reactive, smart-rifle. Three more assailants in enhanced exoskeletal combat rigs, swiftly charging from the shadows at him with their limb-specific propulsion systems engaged. They covered the ground running at a speed faster than a cavalry-mount's gallop. It did them no good. The Delta Cannon rifle track-locked their images in a nanosecond's time and Mune'stahr pulled the trigger. He barely felt the rifle's concussive recoil through his tactical armor. Eight explosive smart-rounds rocketed out from the weapons muzzle and six plowed into their targets at center mass. The Brood sentries were knocked off their feet and disappeared in a noisy outburst of orange and white flame.

A flat, ugly ratcheting noise directed his attention to his right and he spun, again re-sighting through the enhanced optics of the Delta Cannon rifle. The sound was from Pylott's position atop a small mezzanine-catwalk just beyond a pile of smoldering metal rubble. Through his night-vision's luminescence-enhanced optics, he saw a collection of tattered bodies, vaguely human, but with dominant feral animal characteristics, falling from the story above him. They were not Ashen Brood, but Mune'stahr had no name for them. It was immaterial, they were enemy combatants. Pylott had eliminated a band of attackers with her twin Rampager anti-personnel auto-repeater pistols. The dual sidearms with their extra-large sickle magazines spat out armor-piercing, rocket-propelled, plasteel-tipped death. The ammunition from the Rampager pistols was made even more deadly by an extra-lethal characteristic: each projectile carried a seventy-five thousand volt electrical charge. A hit from such ammunition guaranteed that, no matter how well insulated or well protected the target was, any biological or artificial neural networking it possessed was subjected to massive and crippling electrical disruption.

Abruptly the air quaked, literally vibrating with enough force to shake and tumble small stones and masonry fragments, hitting a person's body like a series of invisible fists, and the growing blackness flared with an expanding tornado of light as something massive popped into existence, materializing from empty space.

It was dull gray like battleship steel, with intricate tracings of silvery chrome across its bulging surface, a thing even larger than the giant alien attacking the Duskhelm Priory, and it was just as alien in its nature... A satellite or maybe a vessel of some kind, pushing a massive concussion-wave out in front of it, the object's surface expanding as its breadth and mass forcibly surged into an area of space to which it did not belong, and its stretching amplitude rammed into the few walls of the fortress city still standing, fracturing them like brittle plateware.

It was The Glide.

Mune'stahr and Pylott were temporarily struck dumb, but then allowed their expensive combat training and reflexes to take over as they dashed out from the path of the incoming aerial leviathan.

So far as they were concerned, this strange, alien interloper was yet another enemy joining the fight. No matter its origins or its motivations, it was a threat, an Offworld invader of Teshiwahur's sovereign planetary territory, and they would defend the Withered Land against it.

The situation was tragically familiar to the two Territorial Expanse SpecOps troopers.

This was war.

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