Ravens of Eternity

369 Assassination & Sabotage, Pt Kali spun her infrasonic staff around her body with practiced expertise, then swiped at the uniformed Drogar in front of her. There was a loud CRACK as she struck him on his ribs, and pushed him a couple of meters to the side.

She watched as he stumbled around and regained his balance. And just as he tried to step away, perhaps to run, Kali swung her staff at him again and struck him painfully. She swiped him across his forearms with such force that she fractured his bones.

The Drogar yelped in pain as he stumbled backward and fell on his rump. He cradled his ribs with his broken arm, then reached out with his other hand with his palm outstretched.

“Stop, please!” he cried out. “Stop tormenting me and kill me already!”

“Now now, machinechief,” Kali replied. “You know we can’t kill you. At least not until we ask you a few questions. Your facility, though? And all your research? Well, that’s gotta go.”

The machinechief’s eyes squinted in defiance as he harrumphed.

“I’ve been trained by the finest Drogar mindshield matrons,” he sneered. “You’ll never get me to talk.”

“Don’t worry, machinechief,” Kali said. “You don’t have to speak at all.”

Kali then spun the staff around her body again, then struck him swiftly and squarely across his jaw. The force of the blow combined with the staff’s sonic pulse knocked him out instantly, and his body slumped down on the ground.

.....

The rest of her squad was all around her in the underground command center. Each of them took on the security forces stationed here, along with any defiant technicians, researchers, and designers.

Their staves twirled around their bodies or in the air before they swung down painfully on the Drogar they were attacking. The commandos’ vicious assault easily overwhelmed anyone and everyone they struck, and brought them to their knees.

By the time the last of the command center’s personnel hit the ground, Xylo and her squad finally came in. And since it appeared that everything was under control, they immediately deployed their magnetic explosives at every terminal they could see.

The cottonball drone flew in as well right behind, but went straight towards the closest terminal, and interfaced with it.

Raijin’s Engines were still in a fight to gain control of the system, but were winning. They had taken over almost all of the underground circuits, and clawed their way into the last handful of remaining nodes. The command center included.

And since the drone already had great amounts of access, it began to pull down any data located in the command center as well. There was certainly even more of it that hadn’t made its way into the primary databank.

The entire network had multiple smaller databanks that hosted private notes, separate experimental data, and other miscellaneous goodies. More than enough for the drone to open it all up and pull them all down.

Like before, it transmitted copies to the two squads, and also attempted to send directly to the fleet high above.

Once the engines had taken complete control of the system, and all of the datanodes had been located and extracted from, the drone initiated data restoration.

It wound back any of the damage the engines had done, and completely restored everything back to the way it was before. Then, it repackaged the engines and buried them deep in the code, ready to be redeployed later down the line.

Finally, it erased all record of their intrusion, then logged out of the system. It then chirped to announce the completion of its tasks.

Kali walked over, plucked it out of the air, and stowed it away securely in an armor compartment. At the same time, a couple of units in her squad restrained the machiechief using magnetic body clamps, then lifted his unconscious body up with an antigrav drone.

“Looks like we’re pretty much done here,” she said.

“Command,” Xylo said through comms, “all mission objectives met, and we’re headed back towards the extraction zone.”

“Acknowledged, commandos,” Aurora replied. “Send notification once you’re back in the air.”

Aurora then flipped her comms from the Kill team, and switched back over to the Raze team.

“Raze,” she said. “Kill team has completed their mission. No problems reported. They’re attempting to exfiltrate, please remain engaged until they’re clear.”

“You got it,” Freya replied.

There was an abundance of joy in her voice as she flew circles around the Drogar mecha. She tore through their lines with absurd agility, and threw them around using limbs of their own design. Although she found them gangly and awkward at first, the more she used them, the more she understood them as well.

She smashed one of her opponents across its head with a powerful left hook, and utterly shattered both their chitin on impact. Shards flew in every direction even as the mecha’s exoframe warped inwards.

Freya quickly followed up with streams from the plasma lances hovering above her shoulders, and annihilated the sensor cluster inside.

The pilot inside flew into a panic as his screens and holodisplays fizzled out or went dark altogether. All he got were disparate pieces of data, none of which he could use. The lights inside his core flashed to a dark red as a heavy klaxon rang heavily.

Then, he felt himself getting knocked around violently left, right, and down. The sensation of falling quickly swept over him, and he flailed with his controls in an attempt to stop. But with no sensors and no data, there was literally nothing that he could do.

He smashed into the ground violently. The force of impact threw him around in his own seat and knocked him out instantly.

“You gonna join me or what?” Freya teased Lucifer. “If you don’t hurry up, I’m gonna end up wiping everyone out before you get a chance to play.”

“Easy for you to say,” Lucifer answered. “You’ve had lots of time to practice Prometheus. I haven’t. The whole Godeater thing freaks me out.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“Don’t assume that,” Azrael countered. “Luci: take it as slow as you need to. And you don’t have to push yourself if you don’t want to.”

“This is true,” added Raijin. “Freya has already given us plenty of data to analyze.”

“Still, I’d like to give it a shot,” Lucifer answered. “I oughta be able to handle anything Freya can.”

Like Freya, ze flipped open a switch cover and activated hir Promethean Module. Ze immediately felt hir consciousness run alongside the digital interface of the module itself. And although the first few moments jarred hir, and caused hir to fly erratically, ze quickly took control of hirself and hir ship.

Hir heart thumped in hir chest as the sensation of synchronizing with the Oni core filled hir. Ze could access hir modules and systems directly, with a thought. Or at least, a complex and highly concentrated one.

And ze found the process incredibly familiar, and ze filled out hir core in the same way ze filled hirself into a flightsuit. It felt natural in some ways, yet oddly disjointed in others. As though the flightsuit itself wasn’t made for hir body, even if ze changed it to fit in the reverse.

But it was natural in the sense that ze could feel the air as it flowed around hir core, as the enemy’s rounds scraped against hir armor. As ze fired hir own plasma lances back at the enemy. As ze felt the g-forces press down on hir physical body inside.

The sensation was absolutely wild to hir, and nothing like ze had ever felt.

It was certainly similar to, but also vastly different to how ze and Freya merged telepathically. That was, to hir, a completely organic process where the two synchronized their thoughts. Here, the only thing ze synchronized hirself to was a neural control scheme.

Certainly nothing with its own consciousness.

“It’s like a mirror,” ze said over comms.

Like Freya, hir voice echoed with a kind of a digital signature, as though it was created purely through computational means.

“Or maybe more like I’m controlling a mirror version of me,” ze continued. “How’s my data looking? Better yet, how’s my flying look?”

“Your synaptic connections are stable,” Raijin answered.

“And your reaction times are above average,” Azrael added. “Still, you shouldn’t strain yourself.”

“It’s definitely exhausting,” Lucifer said. “I could maybe do this for another hour before I gotta stop. I can feel my stamina just... draining away.”

Ze looked outward with hir sensors and glanced at the world all around hir. Data filled hir mind instantly, along with a complete 360 degree view all around hir core.

Lucifer watched as Freya spun and danced in the air with such grace that ze was filled with a bit of desire and a bit of envy and a bit of excitement. Ze watched as she dispatched her opponents with such refined, sweeping movements.

At the same time, she whipped at her opponents with extended rings of armor and slashed them apart bit by bit. She spun around them with such speed that she struck them on their opposite flanks in the blink of an eye.

It occurred to hir that Freya was bladedancing in the sky, and that she was lost in some kind of destructive trance. A joy that ze too wanted desperately to feel.

Then, out of pure desire, ze spun into a wild corkscrew up into the air, then broke into a hard hairpin back down. Hir core flew at blinding speed towards the streets below, then evened out at the last second.

Lucifer sped around the ruined facility and picked up whatever limbs ze had cut off previously. Ze pulled them up into hir antigrav fields, and locked them in place with electromagnetic tethers. And just like Freya, reached out to connect to the Drogar-made mecha limbs.

Ze attempted to slip into them, but like Freya found them to be resistant. Ze also detected a low level of anger embedded in them, as though it was intrinsic to their design. But ze also felt a twinge of malevolence.

Those were both feelings that ze was incredibly familiar with, and easily let them wash over hir.

At the same time, the Drogar parts connected to hir, as though drawn by hir emotions. But for some reason, something about the connection gave hir a deep chill. It crawled up hir spine and struck hir deep in hir core even as hir synapses made more and more connections with the limbs.

Ze was so shaken that ze immediately attempted to end hir Promethean Merge, and stop the connection and synchronization process. But found that ze couldn’t.

Fear immediately leapt into hir throat and lodged itself there.

Some kind of darkness that spilled through the connection found its way into hir, and attacked hir. And as the shadows took hir sight, ze realized that Godeater had come to say hello.

To hir, it seemed like a predator who had just found its prey, and it pounced at just the right moment. Right when ze was vulnerable and unable to retreat.

Lucifer’s Oni core immediately shot up into the sky, then hung suspended in midair. It shuddered and shivered, as though it was having a seizure. Then, rings of armor whipped out in all directions around it, and lashed at everything all around.

Worst of all, Lucifer’s semiconscious disembodied scream filled the comm.