Authors note: This chapter is where it swings fully into rimworld. It's raid time and those have body counts. I am not going to write a gruesome story, but at the same time it's not going to be a cartoon network, lasers only do superficial damage kinda chapter.
The video on the computer monitor played for the third time. Floating in the air radiating a sadness that could be felt through the monitor. He plucked a kitten from a tree before giving it to a waiting Bolivian adolescent. Just as the child was cuddling their kitten a blue ovoidal portal opened up beside Scion as Porthole, a joke villain from Nebraska, popped out.
Instead of ignoring the new arrival and fly off like Scion normally did, the golden figure seemed almost quizzical as it looked at the joke villain. The young man opened his mouth and a scream that sounded something like dial up. After a moment, he stopped and an orange portal opened up. Whether it was intentional or not, the portal opened in just a way that the camera recording the video could see directly through it.
The camera took a moment to adjust to the different lighting. Beyond it were dozens, hundreds of golden figures, some looked like the Golden Buda, others like the Norse gods. All of the golden figures slowly approached a single silver figure as thought they were debris caught in a gravity well.
The radiating sadness that could be felt through the video changed to a feeling of wonder, of hope, the hope turned to jealousy as a different golden figure reached out to the silver figure. In an instant Scion flew through the portal and a brilliant flash was seen before the orange portal closed. The video ended not long after the joke villian did his signature salute as he fell backwards into his own portal.
Chief director Rebecca Costa-Brown stared blankly as the video started its fourth loop. There was currently a manhunt for Porthole, possibly the largest manhunt in history. The man was getting called the destroyer of civilization, the killer of hope.
Rebecca couldn't help but find it bitterly amusing, unless she was completely mistaken the boy had just done the impossible, and the world hated him for it. If there was a single point of solace Alexandria took from it, was that he couldn't be found. Clairvoyant couldn't find him, Contessa couldn't make a path to find him. If he'd died either could have found the body, if he'd been atomized they could find the atoms. Porthole was simply gone.
Reaching down Rebecca slid open the drawer that she had for decades pretended didn't exist. Inside was an ornate wooden box with gold filigree that seemed to be a mixture of Arabic and Mandarin. Pulling it out, Rebecca slowly went about opening it. While the box was wonderfully worked, the bottle itself was a work of art.
Rebecca looked at the golden liquid inside, the memories of getting it coming unrequested. Hero, looking happy as only he could be, having convinced Contessa to get them each a bottle of the best brandy in the multiverse. 'So that we can properly celebrate when we beat the worm!' He had said.
Keith had opened his at his wedding, leaving it unstated that he would rather celebrate the life he had instead of holding out for the impossible. David, Rebecca was almost certain, tossed his bottle after the Simurgh showed up. The hope in him of all of this having a good ending dying with the third endbringer.
Opening the bottle, she poured herself some and enjoyed the taste for a little while. She sat there in silence for a while, staring at her ceiling. Her mind playing over many memories, many regrets, and many wishes. Part of her wished Hero was alive to enjoy this moment with her, part of her wished she could cry.
*** Elsewhere roughly the same time ***
Tossing down the last of her sandbags down she looked at her little defensive emplacement with pride. The sandbags were covering up the gaps on one of the two green spaces, the green spaces were sets of six flower boxes, in a roughly oval pattern. With the remains of dead flowers in them, they looked like a failed attempt the original owners had of livening up the place. With only a few sandbags the one she'd been working on looked ready to stop anything short of a missile strike. Between the green spaces and the tall concrete wall that perimitered the lot, the warehouse base was already most of the way to a fortress.
Taylor even had a nice landing spot to the side of her building, within its walls, made with high visibility paint to indicate where the shuttle should attempt its crash landing. So as Taylor heard the shriek of the engines, and watched as the shuttle managed to crash into the parking lot, outside of anything remotely resembling defenses, and somehow landing exactly within the lines, she could feel her eye begin to twitch.
Taylor jogged over as five figures piled out as smoke desperately escaped the damaged shuttle craft. One of them, a male in white power armor pulled out a footstool sized contraption and set it up, before leaving it blinking in the shuttles shade. As she got close she could see the five individuals were not human, instead they were all a part of a reptilian species known as the Saurid. For all they looked human enough for casual bystanders at a distance, up close Taylor could see long talons at the end of their fingers as well as the tall frill ridge on the noble's head. The five of them did not look happy to be in even the mildest of Brockton bays March weather.
Approaching them Taylor tried to wave them over to the devenses she'd set up behind the walls. Seeing this the noble Duke Atreides turned up his snout at the offer and said in an accent that was vaguely russian. "The shuttle transponder is here, I do not intend on remaining on this primitive arctic world a second longer than needed."
Taylor gave a pleading look to the soldiers in hopes they might support getting behind something solid, however they pointedly avoided her gaze. Giving an internal sigh at the suicidal stubborness, Taylor tried a different tactic. "The shuttle is going to be several minutes to an hour. I have some double aged whiskey that you might enjoy sampling while you wait." That seemed to perk the Saurid's attention momentarily, so Taylor went for the kill. "My waiting room is also nicely heated."
In an instant she had five sets of reptilian eyes gazing at her with an incredibly uncomfortable level of intensity. Clearing her throat Taylor added. "If you will follow me."
Leading them back was a trial of the universal language of angrily pointing behind the bosses back. First Taylor made sure they brought the transponder with them, after that, Taylor pointed to three of the guards to stay outside. There was a brief finger pointing equivalent of an argument, where Taylor convinced three of the guards to stay and defend the entrance. Then there was convincing the fourth to leave his triple barreled rocket launcher with the three outside.
Admittedly Taylor wanted to use it for herself but settled on one of the Saurid guards using it. While she was at it, she posted several of her scraphounds, both with the guards and in the far trio of flower boxes. The rest of her pets were prancing about her, seeming to know there was soon to be a fight and acting like dogs about to go to the park.
Just as Taylor was about to go into the warehouse and close up the garage door there was a young voice that shouted. "Wait!"
Turning around, Taylor paused, surprised to see a little girl that really should have been in middle school running up to her. It suddenly clicked and she muttered to herself. 'Oh right, the kid.'
Just as the teenybopper caught up, gasping for breath, Taylors pocket buzzed. Checking it, she nodded to herself. It seemed like Coils mercenaries had arrived and were taking a minute to prepare. Even where she stood, with the tall walls blocking her sight of the entrance she could see the black SUVs pull up. They looked like they rolled straight off the set of a bond movie as they pulled in front of the heavy iron gates that sat partially open. Even from where she stood she could see the coordinated military-esc formation to how they parked, a double stacked defensive semi-circle that gave them cover to attack, defend or retreat.
Taylor felt momentarily impressed as she felt her power whisper knowledge on military formations, and all the ways that what she was looking at would be a pain to deal with. The walls around her base were both a blessing and a curse. Her single exit was blocked, and she was effectively trapped. However she was in her own little fortress in the middle of the city, and Taylor intended to make a stand.
Her internal monologue cut off as a second caravan of cars entered the long abandoned parking lot. The gaps left by Coil's PMC to retreat gave her just enough that she could see what looked like a clown show had arrived in comparison to the sleek orderly soldiers. When Taylor saw the top of one of Coils SUVs pop open and a minigun setup began to pop out, Taylor decided it was time to stop gawking.
"Just for the sake of time we will be going through my machine shop." Taylor told her little tour group to get them moving. She rushed them through her crafting area, there was a whirlwind of movement inside, and far more circular, roomba like robots then there should have been. At the moment however Taylor had bigger problems than a possible robot rebellion and making a second Machine army, which included a very definite invasion of the original machine army.
A pair of her stone hauling minions appeared wearing improvised butler outfits and each holding a bottle of the promised whiskey on silver platers. Taylor wasn't sure where they'd gotten any of that other than the whiskey however it was so far down her priority list that she didn't care.
Delivering her guests to her mental break room, the room itself was pretty barebones. It had a small table, a couple of comfortable chairs and an old Tube TV that could only pick up a couple of the Spanish network channels. In one corner was a poor attempt at sculpting a dog from her art class.
Seeing as the three of them were delivered and out of the way, Taylor bolted to where she really needed to be, she almost made it. Her mad dash was to the snipers nest she'd set up on the second floor, she was half way up a flight of stairs when she heard the screams of jets as she saw drop pods decelerating into the ground.
Flomping into her sniper nest, Taylor took a moment to attach her carabiner to her escape wire, before picking up her heavy rifle and assessing the situation. Her three stooges were safely tucked away in the green space, out of sight of just about everything on the road. Coils PMC had formed their SUVs in a way that worked both as cover from her, as well as anyone to their rear. They were also parked in such a way that in the event of a retreat, the inner SUVs did not need the outer SUVs to move to be able to escape. The carefully coordinated arrangement was foiled by the mishmash sprawl of the E88's odd assortment of cars.
Thankfully while the two groups had seemed like they were postering at each other, both sides seemed to have cool enough heads that in the minute it took Taylor to drop off her guests, there hadn't been a shootout. While the E88 had a cape and a clear numbers advantage they were armed with baseball bats, handguns and a couple shotguns. In comparison Coil's PMC had organization, each armed with rifles and a pair of miniguns. That was at least how Taylor interpreted the scene. As it was however, there were a dozen drop pods in the final stages of landing in the middle of the E88's clown car show as their owners were diving for cover.
Through her scope Taylor watched as the machines were deployed in a rapid fashion. Unlike the old video's from when the Machine army first emerged. Gone were the titans of war that first took over Eagleton, instead these looked almost dinky. Half were spiky headed robots with stubby arms, and digitated legs, Taylor's mentally listed them as Scythers. The other models were about as tall, though looked more like gangly teens who had yet to grow into their limbs, and carried oversized rifles, Taylor mentally tagged them as Lancers.
For a moment, the whole area was silent, like a held breath. One of the dinky machines step forward, its lone red eye scanning the assembled mob. Taylor could almost imagine hearing the sound, like that of an old camera rotating, as the Scyther took in the groups of men standing between it and its target.
The dinky, cheap feeling the Scyther's had evaporated as two blades slid from its stubby arms. The machine still felt cheap, but in the way disposable weapons felt cheap. Just as it began to move, looking like it was about to sprint towards the nearest man, a shotgun blast took it square in the chest, knocking it off its feet.
The shotgun blast broke whatever spell held everyone frozen as all hell broke loose. The E88 opened up with all they had as the butcher bots sprinted towards them on their digitated legs. As much as Taylor loathed to give Nazi's credit for anything, the eclectic assortment of weapons they carried were actually somewhat effective. Heavy baseball bats met cheap blades and were not found wanting. Handguns at point blank range could penetrate the metal bodies, and shotgun blasts would hit even when they missed.
Where it was just Scythers against gangsters, they might have held their own. That was not the case however, from their position, Coil's PMC lined up shots and put down Mechanoids. While their shots were accurate, there wasn't a priority to protect Nazi lives.
Almost forgotten in the initial moments of the fight, the Lancers raised their long barreled tinkertech rifles as one and fired. In a heartbeat Taylor watched as 24 people died, a volley of energy bolts lance out and obliterated basketball size chunks out of anyone they came into contact with.
Horror crept into Taylor's mind, as she felt her innocence die with those men. They were here, directly or indirectly because of her. Even as she watched a pale skin man flicker and stand back up, the missing parts of him returned. Closing her eyes for a moment, she steadied herself, when she opened her eyes she was greeted with the sight of Coils men using the underbarrel tinkertech lasers, as they cut through the metal bodies of the Machine Army as though they were barely there.
The miniguns also opened up, and while Coil's riflemen had lined up their shots to minimize 'friendly' fire, the heavy guns had no such compunction. Caught in the crossfire, the E88 thugs began dropping like flies.
The firefight dragged on for a little while longer as the E88 were badly mauled, stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Mechanoids were not doing much better, though their focus had mostly moved to the small band of Coil's PMC. For a moment, it almost seemed hopeful, but that moment passed as a scream of retrorockets cut through the deafening gunfire. The second wave had arrived.
As the second wave landed, their very appearance told the story eloquently enough. The Scythers and Lancers, where the cheap disposable first wave. As the second wave touched down, and the pod doors opened, swarms of space efficient mechanoids didn't pile out. Instead, out of each of the pods a pair of well armed and armored looking mechs deployed. Around their frames energy shields popped into existence, blocking both bullets and the few remaining beams of tinkertech weapons. One of them raised their energy rifle and sprayed a burst of fire at one of Coil's soldiers. Considering their shields and the visible amount of better tech that went into them, Taylor dubbed them Knights.
Eight of these elite units emerge from their pods, relying on their energy shields to protect them, they march forward with cold efficiency cutting down the last of the E88 before moving on to deal with Coil's soldiers as though they were barely an afterthought. Between their gear, their allies and the depleted state of Coils men, it seemed hopeless as they were trapped out front of Taylor's warehouse.
The coup de grace appeared as the final, and by far the largest drop pod opened and a massive, insectoid mechanoid flopped out. Looking like a giant maggot, with many legs and a sizable minigun on top, that already began to spool up.
Mentally tagging it as a Centipede, Taylor decided that now was the darkest hour if there ever was one, so she triggered a trap of her own. The detonation normally would have been loud enough that Taylor would have been worried about people calling the police on her, however in the middle of the gunfight, the loud thump couldn't be heard through her earplugs. Because of that, there was a brief moment of almost weightless limbo, after she pulled the detonator's trigger. There was no recoil, and any shake that might have been felt at this distance was overtaken by the firefight happening in her parking lot.
There was a blur of motion as something fell from the sky before a bluish flash. In an instant, the passive feed Taylor was getting from every single phone in the battle cut out. The strange science of the tactical EMP looked like a wall of electricity raced through the firefight. Every unshielded mechanoid, as well as the sole surviving minigun froze as if their strings were cut.
The eight Knights however were still moving, marching forward without a care in the world. Unshielded and unsupported as they were, the beleaguered remains of Coil's PMC were able to systematically take them out with minimal losses.
There was a lul in the firefight as Coil's soldiers took stock of their situation. Some of them restocked themselves on their underbarrel tinkertech while others saw to the wounded. Taylor could see some of Coil's soldiers looking towards her base, their expressions were hidden by the masks they wore. However their intent was plain to see, they were debating the viability of trying to attack her warehouse. One of them was even looking towards where she put her sniper nest.
A trio of shots rang out and Taylor's attention shifted to one of Coil's men, the man was walking up to the stunned Mechanoids and putting two rounds into the nearests mechanoids chest, followed by one to its camera faced head.
When Taylor moved her sights over the E88, the only one still moving was Alabaster. Currently struggling between three Scythers, each had been in the process of stabbing him. Stunned as they were, they were locked together like a trio of lovers taking care of a fourth.
That was the crux of the issue however, they were only momentarily stunned. It felt like watching a horror movie, knowing the killer was in the closet while the lovers tumbled on the bed. Through her scope she saw a Scythers arm twitch, a Lancers head move slightly, the barrel of the Centipedes minigun turn over once.
Part of Taylor wanted to shout, to scream at them to finish off the mechanoids. She wanted to unload the high explosive armor piercing rounds into the Centipede's face while it was stunned, again and again, until she was certain it was dead. There was a problem with that idea, the men down there had come to kill her and take the little girl. Even if they had not cared about her life before, after the losses they'd taken, Coil's men were not her friends. So instead, Taylor held her silence, watched, and waited.
As the slow horror started to grow, Taylor nervously checked her exit plan. A carabiner attached to a zipline, then she checked her ammo. The labor intensive work, crafted just in case Hookwolf had ever come knocking. Pushing her nervousness down, she looked down at her scope again.
Another triple tap, as the one sane man in the group moved onto the next one. Even as he did, Taylor could feel the Mechanoids communications traffic start to scream again, as they experienced a horror story of their own. Frozen in their own bodies, forced to watch death approaching.
She saw the moment when it happened, one of the soldiers called out to the smart one, distracting him just as the Scyther he was about to shoot came online. As he looked away for a fatal moment the Scyther lashed out. It lacked the smooth programming the machines had before, forced to work around damaged systems. As it slashed through the man's arm and embedded itself in his rifle, it seemed like it was still good enough.
For anyone else it might have been, this man however handled losing an arm better than any normal human should. His remaining hand already pulled out his pistol and put several rounds into the Scythers head. Had it been something organic, he would have killed it. Unfortunately for him the machine core was in its chest.
Taylor felt queasy as she watched the blinded Scyther take off his leg somewhere near the knee. As the man fell to the ground, the blinded Scyther marched past him, seemingly operating on the signals from the others. It was a small mercy that the mechanoids weren't interested in finishing off the dead and the dying unless that person was their target.
The rest of Coil's PMC was not having a much better time of it. Caught out of position, having thought the fight was over, they were struggling. Even as fresh tinkertech lasers lashed out, cleaving through many of the remaining Scythers and Lancers, it wasn't enough. The beams of energy carved into the Centipede, and while the beams were doing damage, the massive machine seemed entirely unbothered by the damage. There was a whirl of motion followed by 'BRRRRT' as the Centipede's minigun fired, its bullets ripping through armored SUVs and bodies, gunning down friend and foe indiscriminately.
Taylor lined up her shot on the Centipedes head, the pair of sensors she'd placed on her rifle, one on the end of the barrel, and the other in the weapons stock. The sensors she'd placed in the parking lot, where she dug up then paved over, all of them together gave her an almost proprioceptive sense of the battlefield.
Even though she looked through a scope, her eyes were almost secondary to the feel of lining up her gun. The crosshairs moved just above the Centipedes optical sensor, and she squeezed the trigger. Again and again and again, she pulled the trigger, not so much aiming as correcting her body's position back to where it needed to be.
In moments her magazine was empty and Taylor was diving off the catwalk and out of her improvised snipers nest. She was halfway to the ground when her little nest was shredded by minigun fire. The zipline snapped as a round shredded it and Taylor hit the ground in a barely controlled crash. Her vision briefly went white from the impact, and she struggled for a moment to get herself righted.
Picking herself slowly off the ground, Taylor let out a pained groan. All around her, her Scraphounds prowled, circling like a pack of protective hounds for whatever just hurt her. Taylor breathed for a moment, letting the adrenalin pounding through her system wash away some of her pain. Even as she did though, she heard a new sound. A distinctively different tone, that she clocked as the sound of the energy weapons that the Duke's guards were using.
Favoring one leg, she rushed to a side door. Grabbing the grenade launcher she left on a stand by the door, she burst out the side door and dashed along the small space between the side of her warehouse and the concrete wall. As she got to the front and peaked around the corner, she saw a Lancer go down. If the small pile of mechanical bodies is anything to go off of, hopefully it was the last.
From behind the corner, Taylor wasn't directly behind the green space instead off to the side. While she could have dashed out and joined the Ducal guard, the concrete corner she was currently standing behind was overall better. It offered less protection than the flower boxes and sandbags, but it was outside of the firing line.
With a mental command she sent all but two of her Scraphounds to join the ones that had been protecting the Ducal guard. Her pack bounded and lept for a few moments before they laid down at random intervals, still as statues. That part of their behavior still unnerved Taylor a bit. One moment they acted like living and thinking beings, the next they were like machines that had gone into standby. It made it hard for her to put them in a mental category of pet or tool.
As a shadow began growing in the gap, Taylor pushed her mental musings aside. She could dissociate later, for now she needed to make sure there was a later. Moment by agonizing moment she could see the shadow grow until she felt it was right and unleashed her first wave of Scraphounds. As its face peeked through the gateway and Taylor found herself staring down a spooling up minigun her hounds were on it.
For her part, Taylor dropped, hunkering down the best she could, with a mental command to all her hounds, other than the two hunkered down next to her to attack. For several agonizing moments there was the sound of grinding, tearing metal, but no thunder of a minigun. In its place however were three roars of rockets firing, followed almost immediately by the cacophony of explosions.
Scrampling up she peeked around the corner, her heart pounding as she hoped it was over. That hope died as a glowing red light pierced the cloud of smoke. The way it moved past told Taylor it was a scanner. Leveling her grenade launcher, she fired her last EMP grenade.
There was a pulse of energy and one of the Ducal guard dashed forward, a white hot shortsword in hand. With a leap, he landed on the Centipedes face and stabbed downwards in a specific spot. There was a moment of indelicate jerking the blade about before whatever he was looking for was found and the giant mechanoid went limp.
Taylor felt a huge surge of relief, as she realized it was over. Even though she'd barely done anything she felt exhausted, and wanted to cry for several hours. Even as she thought that, she realized the next problem she had. As she looked over the burning wreckage, and slumped bodies, Taylor wondered how she was going to deal with the mess.
