Sigma/Star

Chapter 89: Burdens

Porter sat back in the cockpit of the White Storm. His head was still spinning from his previous moment with Riya but the fog was beginning to clear. He couldn't say for sure he had completely revived, but he could at least pilot his Goliath around. The group had gathered at the edge of the cliff once more, but were now surrounded by fellow Goliath pilots and armed forces swarming down at their feet.

This would be a titular battle. Or so they were being told. Different channels buzzed with voices as commanders addressed each of their divisions. It was rumoured that Cross Marian would be coming north soon to serve as the leader of all the forces, including the Artisans. Bloated warships were already circling overhead, enormous whales in the sky that watched the ants below. Maybe Marian was already in one of them.

"Our job is largely to assist in taking out any larger Jahari." Ardwen cut in through the noise, his channel programmed to override the others in each CRU battlesuit. "From the last battle, they couldn't gather that any one particular Jahari stood as anything more than any other. They don't seem to have leaders or a hierarchy. So, if it comes down to it-"

"Kill all." Ochenkov's brusque voice ended Ardwen's speech. The barbarian general liked things simple and efficient. If the enemy was in front of them, they needed to kill the enemy. Nothing more and nothing less.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it," said Chase, brushing aside the comments with his confidence.

"Chase are you...are you reading in your cockpit?" Ardwen's eyes narrowed as he accessed the internal camera for the South Star. Chase's eyes were slowly moving along like a typewriter, resetting every so often as they scanned a screen.

"Uh...no, no, not at all." The accused scrambled to close all his open windows, sitting back in his chair and taking up a relaxed pose, as though nothing had happened.

"It's probably that Parallel book everyone is into at the academy," Nami snorted, a bit upset with her boyfriend's lack of seriousness. "He hasn't stopped reading it since last week."

"Say Chase, wouldn't that make you a bit of a nerd to be reading like that?" Porter couldn't resist the opportunity to take a stab at his bully and he snickered to himself.

"No way loser, it's not like it's a school book. It's about a video game where..." The group simultaneously hit their mute buttons on Chase's microphone, leaving him to drone on and on to nobody.

"Back to the point." Ardwen stepped forward, surveying the terrain beneath them as he spoke with the group. "We don't know a lot about the Jahari beyond what little we've seen of them. They seem to have a weakness in their chest but nowhere else. Decapitated Jahari are still just a vicious, and others were seen crawling around without legs, dragging down whoever they could find. We would prefer not to end up that way."

"Got it, go for the heart." Porter felt a tremble in his fingertips. This was not there first battle. It wasn't their first foray into danger. But the magnitude of this particular fight felt different, wrong. Fighting other humans was different. You knew there was emotion, thinking, and pauses. There were lapses in judgement and mistakes and bursts of energy. But the Jahari had none of that. They killed and did nothing else. They cared little for how they did it or how much damage they took to do it. They only wanted to do it.

The first explosion ripped through the earth, shooting rock bursting outwards before the ground caved in. Porter watched in awe as the snowy mountains turned into ant hills, swarms of Jahari pouring out from holes mixed with the hulking Bahari. The tip of another mountain cracked and split apart, an immense worm rising up and floating into the sky, immediately hunting down the warships. Tentacles began to sprout from its body, lashing on to the first floating vessel it came across, pulling the two together.