Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Midlands

as written by Azrican

Staff Sergeant Jackson swung side to side, locked into the MAW-83 with breakaway straps as he sighted in on the creature. The barrels of the rotary cannon began to whir, spooling up to a rather blistering RPM as the Private behind him slid a tracer round into the breech of the grenade launcher. “We gonna’ open up on this thing or what, Staff Sergeant?!” Rock inquired, screaming over both the howl of the engine and mechanical buzz of the cannon.

“Fire a tracer at it when I give the word, we need to lead this thing out of the way towards the city.” Jackson replied, pumping one foot at a handle in the rig of the cannon and angling the barrel upwards.

Private Rock replied with a nod, crawling out of the cupola slightly more so he could lean one elbow onto the hood of the armored car. A digital crosshair flittered across his vision, and he steadied himself on the roof of the car as it bucked and jostled over several craggy rocks. “Open fire, Private. Spicer, bring us to the hill line over there at the far end of the ridge! We’ll bring it around and catch it in the stomach.”

Jackson hollered, and as the Saber began a slow turn up the face of the ridge Private Rock sent a single 7cm projectile launching straight into the creature’s path. Halfway through its trajectory the canister burst, dispersing a hail of chip-sized trackers both in front and onto the lumbering beast as it continued forward. As soon as the launcher fired, the Staff Sergeant flipped the guard off the trigger and then began pouring rounds from the MAW-83. The tri-barrel rotary cannon unleashed a distinct whiz and howl, 14.7mm slugs firing at nearly seven round a second gave the weapon the appearance of a bright, burning lance that cut through the air and soon pummeled into the creature. The vehicle bucked and spun, rooster tailing dirt and stone out behind it as the vehicle climbed it's way to the flank of a predominant hill over looking the quaking grasslands and pastures.
 
as written by Lobos

Ur'Helaraakan's forward lumber had continued steadily, the rising voltage crackling around it not seeming to have the desired effect, the interlopers not retreating from its presence, not vacating the territory it claimed as its own. The canister fired at it was virtually ignored in its rage, less than a fly in size to it, the contact of trackers against its hide virtually unnoticed. However, what came next had its attention well and clear.

The line of rounds stabbed at Ur'Hela's hide, piercing through the outer scales to meet the inner scales before encountering a natural defense, a biological electric reactive armor that passed a charge into the metallic inner scales to shift together, deflecting the rounds with overlapping slabs of hardened tissue, cosmetic damage at best. But like a mosquito's bite, it attracted the beast's undivided attention, the gleaming line of bullets drawing its red-rimed gaze towards the Saber before it lunged forward into a charge, nearly tripling its speed within a single round of steps. Lightning slashed from its mane, scoring the land around it as it screamed its roar, sprinting to crush the challenging vehicle under its claws.
 
as written by Azrican

The GV-12 Saber crawled its way up along the ridge, dirt and stone flying behind two rugged wheels. Staff Sergeant Johnson cleared the chambers, yanking a lever back with one gloved hand. “I’d hurry up and get this bucket up the hill already marine, this thing is gaining on us!” He shouted, looking back at Private Rock as he noticed a precariously lodged stone come tumbling down the incline beside them.

Weighing several tonnes at least, the possibility that the Saber’s trespassing was entirely out of the question. As the Saber crested the ridge, it broke left hard and drifted along the bumpy dirt of a small back road, beelining for the incline of a hill sitting at the crown of the ridge.

“Staff Sergeant, somethin’s up!” The driver shouted, fighting the wheel left and right as if the ground itself were beginning to shift and crumble beneath the wheels of the armored car. Then, as the Saber trundled its way over gnarled roots of trees and ancient elms, the entire hillside seemed to shift in one rugged movement.

“What the fuck -- “
 
as written by Emperor Jester

What seemed to be a steady rumbling shift in the soil that the off-worlders and the massive fauna shared would escalate suddenly, a massive hole seeming to appear for no reason other than the earth itself willed it. An explosion of dust and grass, roots, trees, and rocks would obscure the air, enough to seemingly fill in what would later be found to be a hole roughly fifty feet across and nearly a hundred and twenty feet deep. So few would hear the eerie, soul shattering screech that accompanied the ambush, the cry of a creature known on a galactic scale to be a crisis level pest. A Coronusfurabatur Ento-arachni, a Crown Thief, a creature whose eggs would travel on intergalactic refuse and rock, landing on planets to incubate over long periods of times, centuries even, sometimes far more.

Who knew how it got here? Who knew how long the egg had been dormant, how long it has hibernated and matured under ground. Was this even its origin hole? Perhaps it was simple the spot it had chosen to wait out the decades for something roughly its size to pass by.
And all the ultimately mattered was that it was here now. And it was hungry. And its territory had been invaded, not by scurrying ants on metal ships, no, but by something it would consider not only potential food, but a rival as well.

It would emerge with the enormous cloud of debris and dirt, tail and the deadly, venom dripping stinger attached to it flashing swiftly through the highly obscured air towards Ur'Helaraakan's left flank, the rest of its massive, insectoid bulk following rapidly behind. Once again, mid-way through its attack, it would unleash its banshee like shriek once more.

A fight between two titans had just begun, with poor Syndicate forces caught in the unfortunate middle.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
as written by Ottoman

From the relative safety of the forward operating base, the command staff of the landing force watched as several staggered flights of strike-craft were en route to their target, displayed in golden font and markers upon the holographic projection before them. The first finger-four of Krohn Valkyries weren't even a minute out from firing on Ur'Helaraakan when this second monstrosity appeared, pulling itself from the soil and rending the Earth asunder. The moment it dawned on the pilots just what was happening the flight's leader pulling up and away from the absolute carnage that would soon begin in earnest, the four craft maintaining their formation as they did, his voice crackling through the display's speakers, the link to his flight's comms provided by the stoic automaton on the colonel's flank.

"New contact, Alfar actual, unknown megafauna - your orders? Over."

"Standby, Gigant lead. Over." Elisabeth murmured, her Azrican Aenglis easily distinguished from the harsh Austran voice of the Valkyrie's pilot. "Legionnaire," As if awoken by the word alone the cyborg beside her stirred, looking to the commander from behind its own helmet, silently awaiting orders. "Identify these contacts, if you can - compare them to records, I want to know if we've met them before." After all, it might prove prudent to simply hold one's fire here, and step out of the way from being crushed underfoot.

"No references on first contact, colonel, nothing in our database matches any description of yet-unidentified megafauna. However," The machine raised a hand, a single finger aloft, as if it needed to take a moment before continuing, having already examined and cross-referenced the images from the various gun and hull cameras that were privy to this showdown several seconds prior. "Second contact has been engaged previously by Syndicate and imperial forces across seventy-three separate systems with sixty-eight infestations eradicated. Specimen is believed to have attained limited interstellar capabilities - designation AFT-2179." Commonly known in frontier vernacular as the Crownthief, but the automaton, haughty as it might have seemed, was not one for embellishment or dramatic flair, however, despite its restraint, there was one word it had spoken that stood out among all the rest to the colonel.

She took a moment after the cyborg finished to look back at the holographic display, at the positions of these beasts that, no doubt, were about to engage in mortal combat, leaning over the table for but a moment as she mused quietly, just loud enough for the microphones in her helmet to pick up, "... infestation." There was no telling how many of these creatures might be on this world, if engaging this single Crownthief might awaken others or, God forbid, draw more to its aid against them. While Redwing had every confidence in the 6915th's combat prowess, she would not play her trump card so boldly, or so quickly, against what might prove an overwhelming foe. Two massive beasts were one matter - another dozen?

"Gigant flight, hold your fire, assume a holding pattern above both contacts, angels twenty. How copy? Over."

"Solid copy Alfar actual, assuming holding pattern. Over."

____

Across all of the Midlands that were under SARDAS control, the security forces quickly began to egress from the AO which Ur'Helaraakan and the Crownthief now dominated, eager to get out from beneath these titans as they saw to the primal conflict that the men and women below had abandoned so many millennia ago.
 
The readings - spikes of energy beyond normality, far above what should've been emanating from a simple single-seat escape pod - showed on any monitor whose operators were paying any sort of attention. It streaked through the sky, flashing red, orange, white - incoming in a trajectory too steep and too erratic for the pilot of the single-seater to have any control. A wave of radiation spiked as it violently slammed into the earth, spraying rock and mud out from around its nose as it ground against natural forces, bending and twisting too-hot metal. Inside the pod, cooling jets sprayed, sirens blared, heat venting in any way it could as the pod slowly destroyed itself against the vegetation and rubble.

It bounced once, twice, cartwheeled through the air, and slammed to a hault at the face of a cliff.

The door creaked open, then fell away.

Inside, there sat a man - almost seven feet tall, heavily scarred, wearing a dark red jumpsuit that was labelled 047B.

He didn't appear to be conscious.
 
The Midlands, following the failed assault on Westeria City, several small groups of Imperial Aschen fled the city in all directions, one of them establishing a camp deep within the wilderness of the Midlands. Between anomalies, magical creatures, and the occasional refugee, the men and women of Second Squad were tired, exhausted, the thirty man team reduced to no more than fifteen, a casualty ratio of half.

Sergeant Colin Greer, a seasoned Imperial Marine surveyed the surrounding wilderness from a small cave where his men had holed up, a crude base camp of sorts that had some supplies, as well as food, and water that had been raided and looted from nearby refugee convoys.

The Sergeant kept his eyes on something in particular, an escape pod that was descending right for them.

"Everyone get down! Brace for impact!" He called out, taking cover behind a large boulder, and reaching out for his Type 53 disruptor rifle. In an instant, he racked the charging lever back, and the weapon let out a high pitched whine. The pod had stopped not more than ten meters from the entrance of the cave, and so Sergeant Greer grabbed his rifle, and moved out, gravel crunching under his boots as he laid his eyes on the pod, flinching as the canopy jettisoned from the pod.

"What.." He said aloud, lazily pointing the rifle at the pod.

"Come quickly!" He called out, two more soldiers emerged from the cave, one man and one woman.
 
The escape pod hummed lightly, not all of its systems completely destroyed from the high-impact landing that it had been designed to withstand. A control panel was completely dark and cracked from behind the man's head - three large holes were punched in it, as though it had been hit with a small circular spear repeatedly. Sparks shot out of the cabin in a staccato rhythm - two, two, one. Two, two, one - showering the man's bald head in light. When the electricity hit his skin, he showed no reaction.
 
The men were at a loss as to what to do, they were running low on medical supplies already, and the thought crossed the sergeant's mind to simply leave the man to die. Or better yet, if he emerged from his pod, to gun him down so he couldn't compromise the location of the camp.

He and his men looked on in silence, all of them were unsure on how to proceed.

Slowly the sergeant approached the pod, his weapon pointed and his finger on the trigger.

It didn't take him long to close the distance, and with a light poke, he prodded the man in the chest with the muzzle of his weapon, seeing if he could elicit a reaction.
 
The man's eyes opened, slowly - carefully - as he watched the sergeant. He took in the other two, took in his crashed pod, the sunlight hitting him directly in the face. Blinking, he slowly raised both of his hands, pointing the open palms towards the other man.

"Friendly," he said, softly.
 
"It speaks." The female soldier said aloud, and the sergeant nodded. All three of them were in the strange fractal woodland camouflage that was typical of the Aschen Empire, fairly easily. At least to those familiar with the Aschen Empire.

"Friendly to who, you aren't friendly to us." The Sergeant said calmly. "Looks like we have a prisoner..." He added, nodding to his men, both of the soldiers started to approach, to cut him out and pull him out of the cockpit. The Sergeant took a step back, his weapon still trained on the strange individual.

"We're going to get you some medical attention." The Sergeant said.
 
"I'm unharmed," the man said, but didn't resist the cutting out or the pulling. Free of the escape pod, he glanced around - curiosity lighting his eyes - at the Midlands.

"Where are we?"
 
Pulled free from the pod, all three now kept their weapons trained on the strange individual. The sergeant was eyeing the markings on the pod, and then he brought his attention back to the man. "Identify yourself." The Sergeant demanded, the cave hadn't been revealed, but there were three of them and one of him.

The Female spoke up next.

"A region known as the Midlands." She replied. "On a planet called Valore."
 
"Valore," he whispered, trying out the vowels on his tongue. "VAH-lure. Valowr. Hm."

Turning towards the sergeant, the man smiled.

"I have no identity to provide. I've been in a cage such as this," here, he gestured to the pod, "since before I knew language. It feels good," he murmured, closing his eyes and tilting his head backwards.

"The sun."
 
The Sergeant look to his men, and made a face. "No identity." He said, confused. "Our uniforms, do you recognize them?" He asked, slowly and slightly lowering his weapon.
 
"I do not. Do you recognize mine?"

On the back of the jumpsuit was CHIRON-344, a little known, privately funded pirate station that extorted planets into keeping their prisoners locked away. Refusal to pay meant unleashing the prisoners back on the planet, where they'd be free to roam and reap until payment was once again procured. Its location was more a myth than a fact among all but the most well-informed of travelers.
 
All three of them shook their heads, for many Aschen, they weren't fairly well educated about what went on outside of the Empire's ever expansive law, further more they were taught to point and shoot, but this was the opportunity or somewhat of a clean slate, the men could recruit this individual to replenish their ranks, and no doubt the Empire would reward this mystery man for his loyalty.

"You do exactly as we tell you, and you won't be killed." The sergeant said calmly. "I'm going to get you a change of clothes, and you're not to leave my sight, otherwise you'll be shot. Do I make myself clear?" The man asked, hefting his weapon a few times in warning, gesturing with it and stepping to the side to reveal the entrance to the cave, where two more Aschen soldiers peered out at what was going on.
 
There were a few chuckles from the group, but the Sergeant didn't seem amused, turning to face the woman, he spoke. "Hoc stulti non capit lingua"

She simply shrugged at the words spoken in Anquietas.

"Fortasse utile erit." She replied.

The Sergeant nodded. "Etium." And then turned back to the strange man. "Do you comprehend my words, you do as I say, you do not leave my sight, if you do, you die, do you understand?"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top