Chapter 34
Night of Blood.
Part a.
Capella
23rd August, 3025
A storm raged over the capital city, lightning crashing down among the buildings, lightning rods drawing their ferocity away in controlled channels, the HPG facility dark and foreboding as a ComStar dropship descended to the cities primary spaceport, House Liao informed to stay out of the way and to not interfere. The threat of a communications blackout keeping them back as a lance of mechs escorted a convoy of vehicles to the facility, the people watched the convoy with something approaching fear.
The stories had already run back and forth across the city a hundred times about the night that the HPG went dark. The C* commander had heard and listened to briefings from Liao prefecture about how monstrous creatures descended on the facility, alien beasts or, according to one report, shapeshifting lizardmen from Orion... the oldest conspiracies are the hardest to shake.
Leading the Column in his King Crab, the Excalibur behind him kept pace with the APCs between them and the trailing mechs, another Excalibur and a Firefly. He felt a deep sense of dread as he saw their facility resolve itself as a black cube in the darkness before a flash of lightning illuminated the structure and his heart skipped a beat. The massive antennae were utterly ruined, half-melted slag, defenses were ruined.
"This is Commander Reynolds, move up. I want our tech-team to get the gate open."
The process was drawn out, lethargic and dangerous, if there was an enemy force, or traps, then they were risking walking clean into it. The doors parted with terrific screaming as they were forced to widen without the benefit of power to the hydraulic motors within the structure. Claws open and ready to fire Reynolds stepped in as soon as the gates were wide enough to permit entrance and he felt his blood run cold.
The courtyard was occupied by the former garrison, on steel rails ten feet high each corpse was impaled and rotting in the rain. Some corpses were intact, but grossly riddled with stab wounds, while others were parts strung on with razorwire. Image recognition only managed to ID a quarter of the corpses.
A crack of lightning lit the courtyard in sudden stark-white light, throwing the shadows of the dead across the courtyard like spectres seeking vengeance.
Reynolds took an involuntary step back in superstitious shock at the impression. The pilot of the Excalibur behind him signalled. <"This is a bad omen Reyn, this is a very very bad omen.">
<"Be silent idiot. Of course a courtyard full of corpses is a bad omen, what did you expect? A musical number?"> Reynolds snapped to his wingman, unjustly chewing him out for saying out loud what he was thinking. <"This is Reynolds, get the troops in here, I want the facility swept with a fine-tooth comb!">
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Sarah moved through the facility with trepidation, heading for the main HPG below, the fusion reactor powering the facility had clearly been tanked, and the main dishes were utterly destroyed, but both of those could be replaced, and she knew that the pencil-pusher assigned to their mission was already tallying up the costs involved. A splash of blood on a wall gave them all pause before they realised it was dried up.
The soldiers were moving cautiously, laser weapons held with extreme care as they waited for something, anything to happen. But the deeper they went, despite the ever increasing evidence of violence that had taken place here, the only bodies were in the courtyard, and only the evidence of violent passage remained.
As they entered the vaulted hall where the primary Hyperpulse Generator was installed Sarah quailed as torchlight played over the structure. The entire irreplaceable Class A generator was blown to hell and back, esoteric bombs had blasted chunks out of it, weapons fire had shredded complex components and everything, everything, was covered in soot and dust from the unholy vandalism of the HPG.
Sarah screamed as the torches played down below however. Forty chairs arranged in a circle around a pedestal with a datapad on it. The device conspicuous for how obvious it was. On each chair a figure sat in ComStar Adepts robes, their bodies were bulked out impossibly.
"Strike Team Alpha to Command Lead. We've.... found something."
<"This is Reynolds, define 'something'.">
"The HPG has been destroyed, if we set off a nuke in here it wouldn't be more wrecked, but there is something.... weird here. Forty robes, and some sort of pedestal. I think its a message.."
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The technical staff moved in behind a wall of guns as a platoon of troops began to assemble in the chamber, Reynolds stood there, angry to be on the ground with the grunt staff. But the strike team was right, this was weird. Several of his men had gone forwards and removed the hoods from the forty and the revulsion had nearly forced him to order they open fire immediately, the rictus grins of those present peverted the purpose of the robes they wore, and they sat there, seeming lifeless as the helm that seem fused to their heads glowed with a single malicious red light at the front, the light rising and falling like a bloodied sunset.
"Take those two." Reynolds ordered. Take a Swift and load them in secure cells on the Dropship. Men moved forwards and secured the two specimens, they meekly allowed themselves to be placed onto gurneys and led away.
The figures were distorted, monstrous and had clearly been recently 'modified'. The signs of surgery were evident and manifold, and yet, nobody had been willing to do more than catalogue what they saw. "Sir, the techs have the emergency reactor hooked up."
"Well, power it up."
Lights snapped on across the facility, sparks were thrown from damaged conduit and in the mess hall an oil fire was started due to the rampant current running through a spill. Within this section, fuses detonated as power tried to supply itself to the HPG and its damage state tripped the safeties, the only remaining current in the room igniting the vast overhead strip lights.
A technician walked up to the dataslate, examining it with all of his available equipment before making his determination and stepping forwards, touching the touchplate.
The screen lit up. Green text scrolling down it.
"Well. What does it say?" Reynolds asked from across the chamber, he didn't want to be anywhere near the creepy cyborg-things.
The technician began to read it out.
"We know. You have fooled many, but not us. We know. Coromodir knows. Davion knows. Traitors of man. You have committed an atrocity to cover up a theft and a kidnapping. You failed at the theft, but not the kidnapping. But we know. And justice will be delivered unto ComStar."
The words took on a sort of droning delivery, almost hypnotic for its seemingly jarring narrative.
"You have acted in a hostile manner against the Lathe Nation. And so now we will bring you terror and ruin and bring down your organisation upon your ears. And when we stand upon Terra's shores triumphant we will not remember your names. And so we leave you now in the care of our children. Would you kindly stand up?"
The technician realised it far far too late that he'd done wrong when the dataslate detonated in his face, destroying his head as the thirty-eight remaining figures in the room exploded into action, their adepts robes were torn from them by the frenzied berserk motion as the cyborgs began to kill.
Laser fire stabbed out as quickly as the troops could react, and yet they were still largely too slow. There was no chance they'd fail entirely, the number of killers was simply too high for all fire to be wasted and one was dropped by a lucky laser blast to the head, but those moments of action were over, the machines had vaulted into action, crackling energy flails flensed flesh from bone or stabbed out and cooked their targets, others were shorn into pieces as crackling shears did their grisly work.
Reynolds ran.