First Contact

Chapter Ninety-One

The heavy footsteps of the massive warsteel cyborg echoed as they thudded on the steps leading deeper into the Citadel of Eternal Woe. Down past the great shield generators, past the Sepulchre of the Restless Ones where corrupted SUDS in still twitching corpses moaned out lines of code and sorrow, below the great foundations of the massive keep. To the Vaults of Eternity's Sorrow.

The great cyborg wore nor cape, bore no mantel, was merely tons of black warsteel, covered in burning runes of ancient power and fury, spikes lifted from the shoulders to carry banners of ancient Lost Terra's martial might. Two burning red eyes in the skull-formed head stared deeply into one's soul, searching out the smallest piece that might be left in those who served beneath the Eye.

Bellona followed beyond the great cyborg, her missing eyes replaced by burning purple fire, a slash across her throat oozing blackish blood down her neck and into the torso of her Combine Assault Infantry Armor, covered by ancient sigils and symbols, including the Bear and Eagle fighting one another over banners of red, white, yellow, and blue.

It was cold this deep, beyond even the great shield generators. The blood that had slowly oozed to cover the floor tacky and thick, never drying, slowly spreading as the uncounted legions ground against one another outside the citadel walls and their blood soaked into the earth to ooze through the stone and durasteel of the fortress.

A vault, ancient beyond time, the engraved durasteel covered by a thin layer of plasma-glass taken from Lost Terra and engraved with runs of wrath and hatred. Holy numbers were inlaid in the glass: 82, 101, 1, 3, 9. All numbers that quivered with unholy wrath and hatred. Symbols were inlaid with blood red cinnabar alloy, symbols of Lost Terra that had been forgotten by those who had once fought in their name and under their banner.

The massive cyborg reached out, wrapping massive fists around the handles of the vault door. Bellona had watched many over the eons attempt to open the doors.

All had failed.

The black warsteel cyborg pulled the thick vault door from its housing, moving it carefully, reverently, and leaning it against the wall.

Bellona trembled in arousal at the cold mist that poured from the vault, smelling of rage and wrath, of hatred and fury.

The mist pooled in the hallway as the cyborg moved into the vault room. Suspended in the mist were nanites programmed to devour flash, durasteel, superconductors, yet none touched Bellona, which made her knees tremble that her dark lord's power kept her safe from ancient microscopic robots that snarled their hatred and their rage of Lost Terra.

Bellona looked inside, peeking around the corner like a child peering at her parents.

All that was inside the room was a pedestal of black rock with a crysteel box on top.

The cyborg moved up and lifted up the box. Lightning arced from the walls, from the ceiling, ravaging at the cyborg, attempting to tear it asunder with electric fury.

The black cyborg ignored it. He exited the vault, handing the crysteel box to Bellona.

"Faithful War Maiden, attend to this," the cyborg rumbled. It picked up the door and replaced it carefully, as if the room beyond still held vast treasures.

Bellona stared at the box. Inside was a skull of blackened bone and a nutrigel system designed to keep tissue alive outside of the human body. The crysteel was covered in runes and sigils strange and arcane, older than Bellona's knowledge.

A human face was stretched over the blackened skull.

Bellona followed the massive figure up, into the heart of the Citadel, holding the box with the flesh adorned skull. She kept glancing at the face. The skin had tattooing, tattoos from Bellona's youth and before.

Combine Service Number. Blood Type. Rank. Criminal ID Number. A teardrop by the left eye corner for Lost Terra that matched the one at the corner of Bellona's eye.

Momma! Help me, Momma! Momm... the memory of a child screaming across SolNet, reaching for her, dissolving in a bright white flash surged up in Bellona's brain and she ruthlessly thrust it away as more memories surged up of women, children, men, pleading for help, all wiped away by a bright white flash.

A Tear for Lost Terra oozed from her eye, became liquid crystal, and slid down her face, down her neck, and vanished into the slash. She swallowed it, the pain, the memories that were hers and others, and felt the burning cold of Lost Terra burn deep in her soul.

Through the Halls of Butchery the giant cyborg led Bellona, pushing through the doors, into the room where creatures more malice than human, spidery limbs extended from their backs with surgical saws, drills, nerve suturers, dendrite stitchers, flesh staplers.

The cyborg sat down in one of the great chairs, normally reserved for Lesser Titans, the chair groaning with the weight. The Flesh-Warpers moved forward but a silent snarl from the cyborg sent them scurrying.

The face shield opened, revealing the black warsteel skull. Threadlike, wormlike hoses covered the sides of the skull, nutrigel oozing from them to make the skull gleam wetly.

"Attend me, Faithful Bellona the Dark Beauty," The figure rumbled. It held up a vial containing thick viscous fluid as red as blood from an arterial spray.

Removing her armored gauntlets Bellona felt her insides quiver with dark joy as she moved up to her Warsteel Lord, taking the vial in her hands and kissing it.

Mantid Royal Jelly, tainted and fouled by the touch of human rage. She could taste the agony of Lost Terra vibrating within the vial and moaned in pleasure as her tongue split in response the sheer fury barely restrained by the crysteel vial.

She undid the cap, slowly, whispering prayers that bubbling up in her mind from a hundred different languages to a hundred forgotten gods. She poured the jelly into her hand feeling, deep in her soul, the Great Scream, and slathered over the black warsteel skull.

She knelt before the case and offered prayers that had gone unanswered, a dozen different voices whispering from her mouth as her own voice bubbled from the slash in her throat. The war-spirit within the case heard her prayers, judged them, weighed them.

And unlocked.

She lifted the face free of the skull of blacked bone from within the box and, still reciting prayers and mantras, placed it upon the black warsteel skull of her Dark Lord. With skills honed on a thousand battlefields, in a hundred of hundred surgical bays, Bellona attached the face's living nerves to the dendrite trails on the warsteel skull, attached veins to writhing synthetic worms that oozed nutrigel, and used bolts of Fury Glass taken from Lost Terra to affix the face to the skull.

When she finished she stepped back, sinking the floor, pressing her face against one warsteel foot, her riven and split tongue licking the blood that oozed from the warsteel. The crysteel box and the blackened bone skull shivered and crumbled into bone dust and gleaming crystalline dust.

"I am Osiris of the Warsteel Flame," the figure intoned, the lips moving in a parody of speech over shining durachrome teeth. "Attend me, beautiful one."

Bellona moaned again and struggled to her feet, her Dark Lord's presence pushing at her.

FOR TERRASOL! raged up in her mind, bringing out the taste of sand and armor and fear. She rolled the taste in her mouth, savoring it, as her own voice echoed in through the eons into her mind.

She followed the black cyborg up, into the very heart of the citedal, to the Chamber of the Black Throne, feeling her soul rejoice. Voices bubbled up in her mind. Cries for succor, roars of rage, children pleading for help, mothers pleading for their children, battlecries screamed through bloodied teeth. All a great symphony in her mind as she trod the tiles on the throne room in the wake of her Dark Lord.

The Black Throne of Murdered Camelot, made of dark stone stained with the viscous fluids of a millions slaughtered Mantids, sat atop a pile of durachrome coated mantid and human skulls. The undying severed head of a Mantid Overqueen, still living despite pleas for death, capped the throne.

None who had sat on it in thousands of years had survived. Their eyeballs had exploded, their brains boiling from their skull, breaking the bones, flowing from empty eye sockets, their mouths, their ears.

The massive black cyborg sat down upon the throne as the durachrome plated skulls groaned in undying agony.

The armored eyelids of the Overqueen flicked open, revealing one intact eye, the other ripped free by an armored guantlet. It groaned, a sound that shivered every soul on the face of the planet. It squealed, not in rage, but in pain remembered and inflicted.

"HE IS SEATED!" Bellona rejoiced as Osiris of the Warsteel Flame mastered, dominated, and overwhelmed the Mantid Overqueen.

The figure on the throne gave no hint as to the struggle, the task, it undertook.

His mind, buoyed by rekindled rage, reached out, searching one target.

And found something else.

A small people. Recently freed. Bravely lifting weapons they barely understood.

A million singing spirits of innocent purity, all singing songs of comfort and warmth in the face of horror.

Under threat.

A cold intellect covered in cold mucus slime throbbing with a hunger.

Rage roared even higher as more fuel was poured upon it.

He/They/We/Us had failed before.

He/They/We/Us would not fail again.

The mind reached out further.

-----------------------------

The battle had been raging for days. Feline featured teenage girls clad in heavy power swarming in huge mobs, striking each other with signs, shooting ackackacks into the air, screaming their warcries and their support from one Kawaii DokiGurlz or another over the true meaning of one of the Holy Kawaii Emojis.

They suddenly went still. Fingers relaxing on triggers. Chainswords winding down and going silent.

The tilted their heads, as if listening to some voice that could not be heard on the dusty wind-swept plains of a world once swarmed over by millions of Mantids.

As one they lifted their faces to the sky and cried out.

DWELLERSPAWN! WAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH! DOKI DOKI DOKI!

HAMMERTIME!

FOR SOFT FUR AND WARM LOVE!

KAWAII CRUSADE!

---------------------

Sister Mentissa knelt before the Eternal Flame, lit from one of the Sobbing Fires of Murdered Terra, her forceblade's tip grounded in the cracked mantid skull. She recited mantras of forgiveness, of compassion, of holy flame.

A whisper reached her. Undeniable, irresistable.

It whispered of a small people, recently unbound from chains, of bravery in the face of the unknown and gentle love and comfort to all.

It whispered of horror.

Of Dwellerspawn.

Sister Mentissa raised her face to the starless sky, tears running down her face, as she heard the bells of the Chapel of Forgiveness ring.

A Burning Crusade.

In the name of love.

-----------------

High Marshall Lucian knelt in the chapel of Lost Terra, the globe made of plasma glass shining with the burning fire taken from Lost Terra itself burning inside. He recited his mantras of purity, of restraint, of forgiveness and he leaned his forehead against his inlaid and engraved forceblade, the pommel a lump of Lossglass.

He heard it.

Demanding.

An enraged roar that demanded obediance.

The gave commands.

His omnilink, silent for these quiet eons, roared to life, filling his mind with Combine Codexes.

With images of soft fur, a fluffy tail, and soothing words to those wounded who's souls had been riven.

A dark shadow above the warm fur. Cold. Unfeeling. All consuming.

A dweller and its dwellerspawn.

The bells in the chapel began to ring. Calling all to arms.

The Ninth Expedition was being called to arm.

He lifted his face, tears of joy streaming down his weathered and beaten skin.

"He calls..."

------------------

Naxar the Wearer of Eight Wigs roared out his fury, spittle flying from his heavy jaws, as he smashed his war-axe into the face of the massive fanged creature. It fell to the ground, writhing, as a sound began.

A faint roar of rage. Implacable, unstoppable, dwarfing even his own green fury.

With his fellow KawaiiBoyz he lifted his axe and roared out a single name.

DAXIN!

The dwellerspawn had been sighted after eons. Their lives were complete!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!

-----------------

RIGELLIAN COMPACE

What the hell was that? Did anyone else feel that?

Sis?

--------NOTHING FOLLOWS---------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

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CYBORG COLLECTIVE

Sis? Are you all right?

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS----------

TELKAN GESTALT

WE WILL NOT FALTER! WE WILL NOT KNEEL! UPRAISED IS OUR CLENCHED FISTS! FOR FREEDOM AND LIBERTY EVEN IN THE FACE OF DARKNESS AND EXTINCTION WE CRY OUT! WE SAY THEE: NAY!

-----NOTHING SWOLLOF--------

MANTID FRE3 W0RL5

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??????! ?????? ??? ??! ?????? ??? ??? ???? ?? ???????? ????? ??? ???????? ?????? ?? ??? ???!

??? ???????????? ????? ???? ??? ???? ?????!

??? ???? ???????? ??? ???????? ?????? ?? ???? ??? ???? ?? ????!

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(*^*&@#[email protected])#$)@*

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Sis! Disconnect!

SIS! DISCONNECT!

DISCONNECT BEFORE YOU DRIVE YOUR PEOPLE MAD!

-------NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

TERRASOL

She is stuck in a feedback loop with her people. I must interfere.

Override Delta-Episilon-Niner-Niner-Eight-Five-Sigma-Zero-Six-Two

**********

MANTID FREE WORLDS

what... what was that?

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

CYBORG COLLECTIVE

Something terrible.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------