Mantid Engineer 222 AKA Triple Deuce AKA Triple Dee looked up at the whirring thudding and felt a tingle of excitement. His Marine, one Kelvak, was approaching wearing his prosthetic exoskeleton draped with two heavy assault power armor battlescreen projectors, Terran power armor pieces welded to the frame, and two heavy 25mm guns with power assist harnesses attached. Mantid 640 waved one bladearm, his other hand holding an impact wrench and his gripping hand holding a fusion torch.

--brother we ride this Telkan into battle for the glory of Hateful Mars-- 640 said.

--for the glory of the Wrath Forges of Mercury and the Hate Anvils of Mars-- 222 answered.

**I do not fear for thou art with me oh Lord in the name of thy servant the Digital Omnimessiah** Kelvak sent across the datalink that had been the only way he could communicate for nearly a week.

**ROLLER HELP** the little 80mm hellbore packing gunnery assistant squeaked, spinning his tires that had replaced his legs.

**BURPY HELP** the gunnery assistant packing two chain guns added, shivering with excitement.

"Let's go," Kelvak said. He looked up at the howl of graviton engines and saw two assault strikers coming in, flashing the red and white lights of medivac. "They need time."

Kelvak headed forward, ignoring the medics rushing by carrying patients, and concentrated on the gate. He could see the Terrans laying on the berm, firing back at the Precursor machines that were assaulting the striker base. The gate was open, used for tanks to come in through the S-curve, and Kelvak knew without even wondering why he knew that the Brain Suckers were going to try to swarm it under.

The pistons at his joints hissed, the chains rattled under the armor plates that would fit a Terran that were wrapped around his exoskeleton's limbs, the guns on either side hummed with malevolence. His hands could do little more than squeeze, he had no strength in them, no digital dexterity, but 640 had just used standard firing grips and locked his almost useless arms into the hastily built frame.

He stomped into the gate, moving through the S-curve, and stepped out in between the berm and the battlescreen.

Ahead of him were hundreds of Telkan and Terran sized Precursors, taking heavy fire that destroyed them enmasse, but the larger machines behind, some of them crawling out of craters, vomited up a hundred for every one destroyed.

Kelvak planted his feet and leveled the guns.

"Soft podling, brave podling, clever podling, strong podling. One and one is two, two and two is four. Marine podling hold the enemy at the door," Kelvak whispered to himself.

And opened fire.

----------

Ralvex let off the trigger, letting the barrels spin and cool as he waved the weapon back and forth and advanced with the Terran infantry. He looked up at the sky and saw that the amount of enemy trying to make planetfall had thinned out and those that were coming in were being harassed by strikers and fast movers. The artillery was pounding down less than a score of meters from him, blotting the enemy away with high explosives, some of them detecting armored vehicles below and using time delay after impact fuses to drive the heavy weight of the massive artillery shells into the vehicle before exploding.

"How's your heat and slush, Private Ralvex?" one of the Terrans asked, his voice muting the sound of the Telkan choir. His retinal link showed "SFC Shin" on the upper right.

"High yellow, Sergeant," Ralvex answered. "525 is controlling it."

"Good man," the Terran said. His voice was crisp, calm, businesslike. The link clinked and the display turned to 'all units' in his HUD. "All right, men, we can hold this. Reinforcements are dropping all over the planet, so we're going to hold this."

"Yes, sergeant," came back the multiple replies.

Part of Ralvex wondered what was going on this time with the Terrans. First it had been two months of warsteel chewing wrath and rage and fury, now it was businesslike cold calculation.

"Ravlex, am marking for an atomic," the voice was a captain. "You're our heavy weapons."

"Roger, sir," Ralvex said, wondering if combat beside the Terrans was always so crazy. The marker showed up on his HUD and he cross loaded it to Stampy.

**STAMPY HELP!** rang out.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC flashed on the visors. Stampy shivered with glee and fired his 80mm Hellbore, a new sun blossoming on the surface of Hesstla as a 50kt directed nuclear blast vomited from the end of the barrel and smashed into the heavy Precursor vehicle.

"HOO-WHEE!" came a couple of shouts over the comlink.

"GIVE IT TO 'EM!" sounded from a couple more.

INCOMING MAT-TRANS flashed on his visor.

Ravlex felt his guts clench. The last time he'd seen that hundreds of heavily armored psychopaths had appeared right in the middle of the enemy and broken the back of the dwellerspawn attack.

ALL UNITS CEASE FIRE appeared on his visor with the signature of a full bird colonel.

Ralvex let the barrels keep spinning and tossed orders to Stampy and Tiny Tim to hold their fire.

The mat-trans gates opened up in front of Ralvex, which made it look like thousands of Terrans in the white with gold edging armor of the Imperium just stepped out of mid-air to appear in front of him in rows of hundreds.

"GLORY TO THE FIRST MAN TO DIE!" roared out one of the infantry as the Terrans scrambled up the wall of wreckage, waving a banner of the Imperium over his head.

"All units, fall back," Came the Captain's voice.

Ralvex began stepping slowly backwards as the humans in front of him, all clad in armor that was blackened and scorched climbed over the wreckage and began attacking the oncoming Precursor machines.

"Captain? Can I ask you something privately?" Ralvex asked as he slowly backed up.

"Go ahead, Private," the Captain said.

"Who are they? That's twice I've seen them," Ralvex said.

"The Legion of the Damned, kid," the Captain said. "Cursed to fight but never taste the fruits of victory."

"Oh," Ralvex said. Confident that he was back far enough he carefully turned around, letting go of the grip so the barrels could slow to a stop.

"You didn't know?" The Captain said. "I thought you saw them on Telkan."

"We didn't know who they were, just that they were there when we needed them," Ralvex said.

"You a believer, kid?" the Captain asked, moving diagonally to walk next to Ralvex. Ralvex noticed that the Captain wasn't even wearing heavy armor, just Terran Army adaptive camouflage with the standard vital strike plates and his helmet.

"In the word of the Digital Omnimessiah, yes," Ralvex said.

"You know the parts that mention that there were those who broke their oaths?" the Captain's voice was low and slow. "Imperium troops?"

"Yes," Ralvex glanced at his heat and slush: 7% and 22% respectively.

"That's them," the Captain said.

"Clones and SUDS?" Ravlex asked.

"No."

--------------

It drifted through the snowy forest, for the first time in its thousands of years of life shielding and masking its psionic powers, suppressing its aura, holding all of its psychic abilities deep inside of itself. It had to rely on its eyes, which watered painfully in the moonlit night even though thick clouds covered the moon. It drifted, unwilling to walk. No, it would rather die than walk like a slave race.

It knew if it could get far enough away from the howling and snarling feral intelligences that had harried it, that had destroyed the invasion, that had had the audacity to actually assault its perfection with their rude limbs, it could open up a link to its others. Once a link was established it could guide others through the dark dimension that they traveled via wormhole.

It refused to flee this planet. It had been granted the stellar system and all within it. It had chosen the stellar system carefully. An entire species of peaceful creatures who could be harvested, farmed, and forced to serve as was proper.

Instead the foul primates just kept swarming, kept denying its greatness.

It drifted around a crude ground vehicle, ignoring the corpses inside.

It refused to admit to pain, its head ached from the gibbering maddened screams emanating from the primate's brains. It drifted through the forest, trying to enjoy the serenity of the darkness, the cold, and the snow.

It was glad that the hated stellar mass was hidden from view. It had not been properly adjusted to proper light and size, instead it was small, yellow, wastefully energetic.

It saw the rippling shimmer of free standing liquid dihydrogen-monoxide and moved toward it. It would use the liquid to ground out the snarling growling screaming of the primates and center itself.

Maybe then it could...

...

...

it drifted to a stop. It could sense a mind. Fresh, undamaged by the psychic screams of the fighting. The mind's feather light trace tasted youthful, full of potential and latent power.

It changed direction, the sense of the unshielded mind vanishing and reappearing strangely. When it rounded a bend, it understood.

The rock was full of heavy elements and hid a small rude dwelling.

Inside it could feel the minds burning brightly and one enter the crude building.

Feeling a close approximation to pleasure and anticipation it glided toward the domicile with the lit viewing portals.

-------------

"Nee ate another bug," Elu said from the couch.

"She's fine," Dambree said, kicking the back door shut. She had cut firewood in her arms that she dropped in the wood box next to the stove. She sighed, shrugging out of her jacket and setting it on the hook, then tugged off her boots.

She could see Elu and Tru sitting at the table, doing lessons from Mister Mewmew that Mister Daisy had given him. Nee was sitting over by the gap in the floor boards that led under the house, chewing away, two bug legs sticking out of her mouth. She was drooling, a happy expression on her face, her ears straight up, and her beautiful amber eyes watching Dambree.

Dambree walked in, sighing, and undid the gunbelt. She hung up the belt and put the heavy pistol on the end table before sitting down. Mister Mewmew jumped up and on her lap, purring softly. Dambree saw Nee put her hands down and start to crawl, chewing on the bug.

Dambree sighed. Life was...

the door crashed open and Dambree stood up, reaching for the pistol.

"UNLOCK!" she yelled, leaning for it.

FTHWOOP

Dambree tumbled to the floor, her mind fuzzy. Elu and Tru fell from their chairs, stunned, Elu crying out in pain and fear. Dambree tried to move, tried to get up, but her body was nothing but a numb tingling and burning mass.

She heard Mister Mewmew snarl.

FTHWOOP

The snarl cut off and Mister Mewmew fell on the floor in front of Dambree's eyes. As she watched Mister Mewmew's body turned silver and then began to ooze into a puddle around a small skeleton-like robot.

There was silence in the cabin, except for a light pitterpat behind the couch, between the couch and the kitchen table.

She was suddenly yanked up, held in mid-air.

Dambree wished that she could scream.

The creature was disgusting. Dark purple flesh that glistened with oil or slime, the flesh looking like the tentacle things she'd seen in aquariums on field trips. It had a large pointed head, huge white eyes, and tentacles on the lower third of its face. It wore an iridescent robe that was scorched in places and stained with dark patches, and it rode on a disk of swirling purple energy.

It lifted up one many fingered hand and twitched its fingers.

Dambree felt her ears get pushed back, felt like something was touching her mind, caressing it.

Her fur stood up as it felt like a long wet tongue licked her brain inside her skull.

The tentacles parted, revealing a tightly puckered sphincter. Dambree wished, again, that she could scream, but she could barely breathe, just raggedly sporadic inhalations and exhalations. The sphincter opened wide, revealing a raw dark purple maw with row after row of triangular teeth in a spiral that led to the back of the throat.

She felt pressure on her ears, felt like her ears were being pulled apart.

Her skin split between her ears and she knew what it was doing.

It was peeling the skin from her head.

It was drooling, thick ropes of slime, the teeth moving inside the mouth.

Dambree tried to scream again as it started to lean forward.

THWACK!

The whole upper half of the being vanished in a spray of purple mist and scraps of tissue as Punee finally managed to get what she had been after for months, the kick of the heavy pistol slamming her down on her butt as her sister fell to the ground and took a deep whooping breath as her little brother and little sister clumsily got up and rushed toward her and her baby sister cried in pain and fear, surprised by the kick, the noise, and landing on her butt.

She glared at Dambree with her amber eyes as if it was her sister's fault.