Chapter 19: In which Generic_Generica fights the evils of capitalism
---
Sarah's Psi rift exploded into existence from a single point of light, bursting into an all-encompassing purple sphere.
I just sort of sat in Steve and 'watched' the thing go off. One second there was some grey blocky ship just about as big as a Leviathan, and the next that ship'd been surrounded by this black-purple thing, swirling like the eye of Jupiter.
It reeked of the void. I could feel it from here, and I could sense things dying over on that ship, tiny flickers of life fading away. If there were any organics onboard that ship they'd be dead, dying or wishing they were dead right about now. Exploding head syndrome was a thing, mmph.
And well, given that I could sense things dying there were probably organic life forms on that ship. Hey, the lights were going out-
And that's when Sarah's Rift imploded on itself, taking a large spherical chunk out of that grey blocky ship.
Then it exploded again.
"... I think I just peed a little." I thought idly.
"Just a little bit."
I watched the chunks of that ship scatter through the void of space, trailing purple-blackish fire and I sort of nodded to myself a little. Truly, psionics were a load of horseshit. I didn't pay attention to the rest of those ships stop firing and move away from Steve, I was just kind of focusing on the ten kilometer long ship Sarah had just blown to smithereens with nothing but her mind.
I mean I kind of
expected something like that to happen but… Huh.
That was horrifying. She must've been really jacked up by her pseudo-infestation.
Well Kerrigan ended up killing a small-g god at the very end of Starcraft so I guess that's just about right.
Wait. Kerrigan. Sarah. Didn't they look, nah, the resemblance was cosmetic. Right?
Eh. Save it for later.
"Overmind?"
"Huh? Nah, you did good. Uh, you think you can do that to some of the other ships?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Wait don't-"
Another Rift burst into existence, consuming another one of those ships in a maelstrom of black and purple. Onboard I could feel… Panic, sheer terror. Heads exploding from the sheer energies of it all, bodies being shredded, impressions of crewmen turning their weapons on each other, impressions of crewmen shooting themselves in sheer mindless terror.
As Sarah's second psionic rift imploded everything went quiet and still. Well, those asshole's ships were fleeing, my Mutas and Corruptors were chasing down some other ships so not really.
And then the rift exploded, blowing the second ship apart into massive fiery chunks just like the first ship.
"Uh, Sarah, save one of those so like, we can… Take prisoners or something?" I sent to her as I willed Steve into position near another one of those blocky ships.
"By your command, Overmind."
… Okay. I was terrified of her at the time, I'll handily admit it. She scared the ever-living piss out of me. She was literally the equivalent of a psionic nuclear weapon, except with unwavering unfeeling obedience and far too much creepiness.
Point is if I could pee, I would have peed. I would've filled an ocean with my pee. My pants would've been brown.
I'm not entirely sure what else to say. On the one hand, I had the Overmind's recollections of what the Queen of Blades could do
before doing... Something... Else. She did something else, but like, she was crazy powerful anyways. In hindsight I should've expected some crazy feat.
And hey, I'd pulled off some crazy psionic feats. Like that one with the asteroid, that was pretty bullshit- Wait I could've probably shredded that thing with my mind.
Oh well.
Point is, fucking psionics. World-ending bullshit right there.
Then again it's only cheating if the other guy's doing it so I was honestly finding it really hard to complain. It's just- Kinda scary, just a little bit.
"By the way, where'd you-"
"The memories of those Ethereals." She sent back casually.
"Moriarty allowed me to study the body of one of their Avatars. We were able to replicate their psionic techniques after."
"… Imma stop you right there. That's… Cool. Great."
Okay. I shelved those thoughts for the time being. Worry about my emotionally stunted bullshit-powerful fanatically loyal pseudo-ward and my amoral emotionless fanatically loyal chief researcher later.
Even if like, that was going to be eating at me for a while. It did eat at me for a while.
At any rate. Steve launched several combat-tentacles out at another one of those ships. Basically mini-Nydus Worms, acting like grappling hooks, all teeth and sinew and did I mention the razor sharp teeth and acid that'd eat through that armor like it wasn't there? It'd taken a while to get into position, and Steve'd eaten several shots from that ship in the process of getting near that ship but we'd managed in the end.
"Void shielding."
"What was that Moriarty?"
"Psionic techniques extracted from corpse of Ethereal Proxy-Bodies. New sequences available. Essence examined."
"So like, what shield Steve with my mind?"
I got a sense that Moriarty was slightly exasperated.
"Mutation causes Leviathan to grow organ. Extra nodes in the nervous system. Able to exhibit ability similar to psionic ability referred to as 'Stasis.' Void Shielding. Absorbs energy. Kinetic, thermal, electromagnetic. More esoteric forms of energy."
There was a brief pause.
"Would also prevent psionic attacks from affecting Leviathan. Like how inferior ships were destroyed by 'Rift'." Moriarty sniffed.
"Overmind could also 'Shield Steve with their mind.' Rudimentary but effective."
Well, that was terrifying. Also terrifying.
"Wait, how long have you been working on this?"
"Dissection of Ethereal-Proxies almost immediate. Examination of new sequences longer. Ethereal essence… Rudimentary, yet refined. Cobbled together, yet flawless. Xel'Naga influence. Necessary sequences identified five minutes ago."
... Ignoring those hilariously broken R&D research speeds, or well, what passes for R&D with the Zerg-
"… Xel'Naga influence?" I asked.
"I'm sorry, what the fu-"
"Ethereal essence… Noticeable Xel'Naga influence in DNA markers, in psionic fingerprint. Similar to Zerg, possibly more similar to Protoss. However, greatly inferior in design and form. Skeletal and muscular atrophy. Useless."
I had to force myself to resist the urge to scream. I tried to force myself to scream. Nope, couldn't stop it.
In space, a Mutalisk screeched incredibly loudly and then its head exploded.
Another Mutalisk began to screech before that Mutalisk's head
also exploded.
Okay,
clearly I needed to ask about these things on a regular basis holy shit wtfbbq.
After I finally calmed down a little bit I continued on.
"… Ig… Noring that little info bomb… So how many mutations have you-"
"Many variations of Zerg strains created as result of incorporation of newly acquired essence into the Swarm. Sectoid. Muton, Berserker. Viper. Ethereal essence easier to work with, more similar."
"So basically like-" I tried.
"Did not take very long time, yes. Minutes. Hours. Days at the most."
Have I mentioned the Zerg were bullshit before?
The Zerg're fucking bullshit.
Holy fucking shit.
"Well, holy shit." I stated.
"Let's just- Just attack this ship thing. Board it. And. Um. Yeah."
And that's kind of what I did. Steve's combat tentacles had well and truly latched onto that ship, and all that was left to do was to order my murderous killbeasts to head on through those combat tentacles.
And that's what they did. Zerglings were the first to leap through the breach. Followed by Roaches and Hydralisks obviously. A couple of drones interspersed here and there, just to pick up any bodies. Biomass was important gosh-darn-it-all. And as the first Zerglings leapt upon the enemy I finally got a glimpse of whoever the hell I was fighting this time around.
…
Blocky grey stupid-looking box-helmets, cheap looking jumpsuits. Most of them were armed with some kind of
plasma rifle that was shooting these little blue pellets of energy at my Zerglings-
Wait I knew these fools. I'd put in a shitload of hours into this game to the point where I was brain-damaged and yet I remembered playing the game.
Those were the fucking
Corpus. One of my Zerglings leapt from their boarding-tentacle onto a Corpus Prodman and started biting at their helmet, clawing at their body and trying to get through the jumpsuit. Out of the corner of that Zergling's eye I could see a bunch of stupid-looking robots marching on through. Green, all leg, with a tiny little head and no arms sort of like a bird, a Moa, a-
"Wait am I in Warframe?!"
"… Overmind?" Sarah asked.
"Is something-"
"Not now." One of my tentacles flailed just a little.
"Actually, yanno what? You want to go out there?"
"… Overmind?"
"You know, rip and tear?" I said.
"… I do not see why I need to 'rip and tear' when I do not have claws." Sarah replied slowly.
"That's on purpose dammit. I- never mind."
… I really, really needed to get better at talking to people godsdammit all, that was just awkward.
Story of my life.
Goddammit I was in
Warframe. Well I'd... have to worry about those ramifications at a later date because my Zerglings were kind of dying.
---
Background's probably needed here. Warframe was a third-person shooter. Free to play, as in, pay-to-make-things-go-faster-and-avoid-the-grind. Incredibly grindy. RNG was a fucking nightmare in that game.
But the combat was really awesome which is why I actually ended up dropping dosh on the game.
I think I dropped dosh on the game. Memories still- Anyways.
In-game there are four factions. You have the Grineer, who're militant-xenophobic assholes. They're clones, one and all, and most of them suffer from some type of genetic deterioration that forces them to replace their bodyparts with cybernetics. They're not relevant at the moment.
You've also got the Infested who're literal space cancer. Think of the Zerg's hyper-evolutionary virus. Think of the Beast from Homeworld. Combine the two and jack them up to eleven and you've got the Infested.
Not a pleasant image no. But anyways they're not relevant at the moment.
Then you've got the Tenno, AKA the player faction. They pilot the Warframes. Roll credits. Basically one-man super soldiers capable of plowing through entire armies on their lonesome via bullshit space-magic-ninja skills. They're not relevant at the moment.
Then you have the Corpus. Who're space capitalists. Like literally, their religion is profit I'm not even kidding. They're probably the third most technologically advanced faction in Warframe. They've got planets devoted to churning out combat robots by the thousand. They make liberal use of Drones, and Ospreys, and Moas. They have plasma weapons and laser weapons, and plasma-laser weapons, and lightning guns, and anti-matter grenade launchers. And big-ass ships that're kilometers long.
And yes, they're relevant. Because they were who I was fighting.
There're a couple of other factions but they're not relevant because I wasn't fighting them then.
The… Corpus, they were the Corpus… Were putting up a fight. The problem was, my combat tentacles were bottlenecks. And my Zerglings were lightly armored. And they had these big guys in red jumpsuits wielding Supras, plasma miniguns that spewed out hundreds of plasma toroids per second.
It was a fucking slaughter is what it was. Zerglings charged out of the combat-worm-tentacles, Zerglings were promptly perforated by plasma. Corpses started piling up in front of my boarding tentacles, Zergling corpses, steam rising from the cauterized wounds of the corpses.
Occasionally one Zergling would manage to get through but they did shit-all because those Corpus Crewmen had some kind of shielding. A Zergling'd try to get a bite in and then the crewman would flicker blue and the Zergling'd end up doing no damage.
That Zergling'd then get its asshole torn apart by a couple dozen blue plasma rounds.
I couldn't keep this up. I mean I had reserves aplenty but I kind of wanted to keep those reserves.
I also wanted to take that ship mostly intact so I couldn't just get Sarah to blow the ship apart with a Rift. Conundrums, Conundrums. Roaches and Hydralisks might last longer but the fact was, my combat tentacles were too narrow and the Corpus had me bottlenecked.
An Ultralisk trundled on by the area where my 'main body' was as I thought.
Moriarty could get Steve to grow some extra organs. Hell, Steve could modify her own organs by the sounds of it. Zerg biology truly is bullshit. Also... Ultra-, no that's fucking stupid.
Infestors? Infested? No, they'd get shredded. Bane- No, they'd get shredded. Lur- Shredded. That ship's cannons were targeting Steve now, I could feel Steve's carapace shedding layers, melting away under those plasma guns.
I was approaching this the wrong way. I didn't
need to send in units, I didn't really need to capture any captives, I just needed a way to kill everyone onboard and sort through the bodies later.
Biotoxins. No, no, Viruses. Hyper-Evolutionary Virus? No, their suits probably had NBC protection, those stupid helmets and spacesuits probably weren't for show. Corrosion though, some way to get through the suit coupled with-
The lights finally went on in my head.
"Moriarty. I have an idea."
---
You thought this was dead, but it was I, Generic_Generica!
Anyways. I'm gonna finish the next chapter and then insert links. Because inserting links is not fun. But writing is fun. And we like fun things.
All jokes aside, I'll get to it eventually. Eventually.
If anyone's still reading this after it's gone a month without an update at any rate.
