NOVEL NEXT B2 Chapter 40
Angar stifled a wince, the nanites' fire gnawing through his hip, groin, and thigh, a relentless torment that throbbed with every step.
He gripped Simo's laser pistol in one gauntlet and his hammer in the other, its graviton hum vibrating with impending wrath.
Without an empty hand, he couldn't perform the sign of the trey, so he made a silent prayer, an offering of battle and blood to the Lord.
His knuckles touching, he activated his Phasorax Core, phasing through the bridge's bio-metal gate in a flicker of distorted space, emerging into the enemy's last sanctum.
He scanned the chamber, his Omnivis Interface flaring with threat indicators. Three portals yawned open, leading straight ahead, left, and right.
No button or panel remained to open the gate behind him, only a tangle of severed, sparking wires from a gutted console, rendering his hacking module useless.
To his left, the comcap compartment pulsed with profane energy, its single bizarre station studded with conduits tethering dozens of entangled tachyon particles.
Unlike the Holy Empire's stations, where each console bound a single particle to one distant counterpart, this Old Guard station wove a complex web of connections, its purpose unclear.
Was it a hub related to the Neuronaut's hivemind, or a means to commune with multiple fleets, or just an advanced way for one station to control the input of multiple particles?
In the galaxy's vast expanse, where messages could take years, the comcap station wrought the miracle of near instant communication, regardless of distance.
Each hulking console, locked in a ship's sanctum or a noble's vault, bound to one other linked station via a rare entangled tachyonic particle.
Every vessel with a Lux Aeterna Drive had to have at least one station, connected to Imperial Command's iron grip, while only the wealthiest secured private connections, each a ruinous expense.
The stations, ranging from crude to refined, sent binary pulses of ones and zeros born from the particle's spin-up or spin-down states. The usual messages were text flickering, or, more rarely, voices echoing, or scry-captures playing on secure-slates, but a connected Fabricator could create items.
A small Fabricator package, say only shaping a sealed envelope, required 400,000 bits and forty hours to transmit at three state reads per second. Such glacial paces ensured only critical orders or necessary items traversed the void, knitting the Holy Empire's far-flung might.
Most ships had an independent Fabricator station and set packages of items it could create, from food to weapons, but imperial comcap stations always had small ones in case secret messages or small items such as keycards were needed.
If this alien comcap station had a Fabricator, it was a much smaller one than any Angar had ever seen before.
Frieden's warning echoed in his mind – to preserve the station. Its captured data could reveal if this pack answered to a grand-pack, if it now stalked the void, or what orders or communiques had been issued mid-battle.
Angar's gauntlet twitched, itching to unleash his hacking module, when movement flashed in his HUD.
From the right portal, two Crawlers scuttled forth, their monstrous forms dwarfing the engimachs he'd faced on the Steadfast.
These robotic monsters were biomechanical, their spherical cores of pitted alloy studded with crimson diodes swiveling with deadly intent. Ten whip-like tentacles, each a meter-thick cable of gleaming, living metal, unfurled, their tips glowing with laser emitters that hummed with lethal intent.
They skittered and rolled on tentacles, their clattering steps shaking the deck, amplifying their bulk to nightmarish proportions.
Unlike the Steadfast's engimachs, these Crawlers loomed more than twice as large, their relentless programming bent fully on annihilation.
As the bridge's gate swirled shut with a screech, Angar launched off his cybernetic leg, the Hydraulica Aucta propelling him through the closing portal.
He landed in a roll, the deck scorched and pitted from plasma discharges landing around him, shrapnel crunching under his boot.
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Pain lanced through his hip and groin, a searing fire that threatened to buckle his resolve, but he crushed it with iron will.
He vaulted over a console, pistol discharging, its laser carving the air as he assessed the bridge's defenders.
Half a dozen Ruler-caste Reptiloids, unenhanced, crouched behind consoles, their slitted eyes glinting through green visors as they returned fire with bio-plasma rifles.
One Crawler scuttled through the gate unscathed, its tentacles lashing with laser pulses that seared into consoles and machinery as Angar passed.
The second followed, three tentacles severed by the door swirling closed, what remained sparking and twitching, but its core undaunted.
At the chamber's heart stood the Lieutenant-captain, a towering colossus of gene-forged horror, twice-enhanced by the Old Guard's profane arts.
Its three-meter frame was clad in segmented, obsidian bio-armor that pulsed like breathing flesh, each plate etched with glowing conduits that writhed with blue-green energy. The armor encased every inch, its helm a featureless mask save for two molten-red eye-slits burning with cold fire.
From each shoulder sprouted a multi-laser turret, their barrels tracking Angar with unholy precision, spitting crimson beams that lit the bridge in a kaleidoscope of death.
In its clawed gauntlets, a massive auto-blaster roared, its bio-plasma volleys hammering out fire.
A shimmering shielding field flared with each of Angar's shots, absorbing the laser beams in bursts of violet light, rendering his weapon useless against the Lieutenant's defenses.
Angar flipped over another console, his tripod-foot finding solid purchase as a laser tentacle grazed his Crusader Armor, sparking a warning in his HUD.
The nanites' fire in his groin flared, threatening to drown his focus, but he roared in defiance, his maul raised high. The Lieutenant's turrets pivoted, their beams slicing toward him as the Crawlers closed in, their tentacles coiling for the kill.
Ground Current surged, Angar's form dissolving into a crackle of electricity, reappearing through the deck behind the Lieutenant-captain, a bolt ripping down to strike the monster, the lightning now a yellowish-hue, infused with Holy power.
His maul hummed as he imbued an Energy Point, its graviton head shimmering with warped distortions. The hammer arced downward, shattering the beast's shimmering shield in a violet flare, the impact hurling the colossus forward, but not the four meters he had hoped for.
Sparks erupted, but the obsidian bio-armor pulsed, its writhing conduits knitting shut any damage, leaving no dent or scar.
The stun failed to take, the Lieutenant's molten-red eyes burning undimmed as it twisted on the ground.
Angar dropped to a knee, Simo's laser pistol roaring in his gauntlet, its beams lancing through the bridge's haze.
Three Ruler-caste Reptiloids lay crumpled, their visored heads bursting in sprays of ichor as bio-plasma rifles clattered to the deck.
The Lieutenant surged upright, its shoulder-turrets swiveling to track their prey, sending crimson beams scorching the air.
The two Crawlers scuttled closer, their biomechanical tentacles whipping, laser emitters blazing with lethal intent.
Angar went from kneeling, to semi-standing, his left foot forward. He pushed off his cybernetic leg, propelling him into a backflip over the Crawlers' lashing limbs.
Laser pulses grazed his Crusader Armor, sending sparks and warnings flashing as he landed, his tripod-foot nearly catching on the pitted deck. Pain seared through his hip and groin, the nanites' fire searing through him, but he tuned it out.
Pivoting to dodge the Lieutenant's auto-blaster volleys, Angar took two steps and launched into a handspring, his maul arcing as he landed before the towering beast.
The Lieutenant swung its massive blaster to block, but Angar's graviton-charged strike targeted the weapon itself.
The auto-blaster shattered in a shower of sparks and a concussive blast, sending shrapnel pinging off Angar's armor.
A Crawler's laser tentacle and some plasma fire struck his back, causing heat to flare against his plating, failing to breach its integrity.
He triggered Lightning Strike, a crackling shield of electricity cloaking him as he swung his hammer again. The Lieutenant swung too, a lightning-fast combo of a right then left hook, its clawed fists blazing with bioelectric fury.
Angar raised his left elbow, catching the right hook on his armored joint, the impact rattling his bones.
The left hook met his cybernetic leg, Digiti Terebrantes drill-toes whirring to life, boring into the Lieutenant's forearm with a screech of rending bio-metal.
His maul slammed into the beast's chest, the graviton pulse erupting in a thunderous boom as yellow lightning shrieked down.
The Lieutenant roared, a guttural bellow of pain from the hammer and the drill-toes, its three-meter frame hurtling backward, crashing into a console with a crunch of metal and flashing circuits. The bio-armor sparked, causing conduits to flare, but reformed in seconds, unmarred.
Angar rolled aside, his left-hand pistol blazing, dropping another Reptiloid in a burst of gore, then another, leaving one cowering survivor he couldn't down in time.
The Lieutenant vaulted over the helm, its turrets tracking Angar mid-air, crimson beams slicing the deck where he'd stood.
Angar rolled backward, pressing his back against the bio-metal helm's sturdy frame, the nanites' fire in his groin screaming with each movement.
He narrowly dodged a Crawler's tentacles and the Lieutenant's crushing bulk, their impacts cratering the deck.
His three most dangerous enemies were upon him, ready for the kill, and there was no escape.
For Angar, the battlefield aligned as foes clustered, and angles cleared.
He dropped the pistol, put both hands on his hammer's haft, and spun into Tempest, his maul a whirlwind of graviton-charged destruction, lightning forking from its head as he became a whirlwind of Holy wrath.
He had already survived long past what his companions, bar Simo, stated would be his certain doom. Again, he had defied the odds.
He may yet die in this battle, but he'd do so gloriously, proving he was superior to all others, honoring his ancestors, worthy of the blood of kings and conquerors pumping through his heart.