High above the sky five squadrons of Reavers flew forward, engines humming in the background of each pilot’s ears. At their head, Yamak Rettle flew in his own personal vessel, Red Dancer, his own bright red aircraft, a stark difference to the black outlines that the rest of the formation cut in the blue sky.

“T-minus five minutes to contact with the anomalous signature’s last known location,” the flight-leader of the Reaver’s spoke. Emilia Barman, no stranger to high intensity combat, betrayed no sense of nervousness if she felt it. She’d been the pillar of no fewer than eighteen aerial combat missions in the last year, as well as countless support, rescue, and ground pound missions. That track record had been noticed, and Emilia’s flight-team Terrania had been given the green light to be the main voice of command on the field if something went wrong.

A round of affirmatives greeted her notice, a gentle reminder to keep their eyes peeled went unspoken. Yamak himself had come out, and he would have had more of his fleet here if he could. Most of them were tied up elsewhere, thinning out the ever expanding horde that was assaulting New Damond. The Reaver’s themselves were at a fourth of their strength here, but it couldn’t be helped. There were far too many enemies on the field elsewhere to simply commit a larger force to this front at the moment.

If possible, they would gather information on the target, assess what kind of force would be necessary to take it down, and then rally for the strike. If that proved impossible or unfeasible, Emilia and Yamak had express license to engage under their discretion.

Given that New Damond was nearly swimming in biotics, the both of them knew that taking care of the threat as soon as possible was virtually a requirement.

“After this, I want a new paint job.” Emilia heard the voice of her artificial sentience ring in her ear. She shook her head fractionally, but couldn’t help but to quirk a smile.

Ensuring that the comm’s were off first, Emilia asked, “Wouldn’t happen to be hot-rod red, would it?”

Emily laughed, “You have to admit, that Yamak guys’ ride is pretty nice.”

“I don’t think that would be conducive to any stealth missions,” she teased her A.S., “but maybe we can see about changing up the car.”

“Aww, c’mon! Maybe we can get some adaptive paint that can change color? It’ll make our stealth better, and we can look fancy when stealth doesn’t matter anymore!”

Emilia opened her mouth to speak before pausing, the sensation of the radar detecting something denser than air ahead of the squadron.

Immediately the two went back into business mode, the comms coming alive once more.

“Unknown contact ahead-” Emilia cross checked her information with several other Reavers at once before shaking her head “-signature is all over the place. Possible large targets or several smaller targets ahead of us.”

The others confirmed their own readings even as they began to work with the information that gave them. The fact that their target was this much closer meant it was moving quickly, directly towards New Damond with no deviation in path.

“All units burst fire for three seconds on my mark,” Emilia began, feeling through her connection in the Reaper Net the readiness of her battalion. Only Yamak was a dark spot, not connected on a personal level like the rest of the Reavers were.

Hundreds of weapons mounted on module platforms hissed, all pneumatics and magnetic components priming for combat. Chemical shell projectors, Gauss Cannon arrays, Metal Storm weapons, and racks of high explosive inferno rockets made up the vast majority of the arsenal that the Reavers selected for this mission. No single platform was lacking in destructive capabilities, having always been the primary focus of the aerial squadron.

Emilia took a breath, “Mark.”

All at once every single Reaver opened fire, accompanied by Yamak’s Ion pulse cannons. The sheer weight of firepower was like a tide, tearing through the air towards the distortion on their radar. Whether or not the enemy was a horde or a singular large mass, this attack would do well to probe the enemy. In the first place, the fact that they couldn’t see their target was bothersome, but not entirely unheard of. Many biotics had eventually begun to evolve potent stealth abilities, but erasing one's presence entirely was impossible.

Emily counted the seconds between projectile impact and the initial firing, measuring the distance to any potential target accurately. In reality, it was milliseconds, but for Emilia’s cybernetic partner, that was hardly an issue.

The faster projectiles struck first, tearing into something with a deluge of bright purple liquid showering the air. The explosives hit with the chemical shells in the next instant with a huge plume of smoke and fire, the noxious acids quickly eating into nearly transparent flesh that only now seemed to be revealed.

All at once a ripple moved across their field of vision, beginning where their attacks had struck and spreading across a huge creature. More than a hundred meters in diameter, something that vaguely resembled a castle in the sky was revealed. After a second, though, Emilia realized that this thing wasn’t made of any kind of man-made thing. Purple, dark blue, magenta, and pink colored corals intertwined, creating complex, geometric shapes that dizzied her eyes to look at. Long reaching tentacles and immense, thirty meter long fans and fin-like protrusions stuck out from what looked like massive clams, gently pulsing with energy in the air. In the center, a huge black half-sphere sat embedded into the bulk of symmetrical formation.

In all, it vaguely resembled an upside down trapezoid, the top of its body much broader than the bottom. Emilia couldn’t make out the other sides, but she could see the extending tentacles all around its body, waving with vast shimmering fields around them that distorted light as it passed.

A few of the tentacles bled purple from the attacks, but the creature before them gave no indication of being in any pain at all.

Then, the Reaver Squadron felt a strange sense of unease come over them.

Sparkling light shimmered over top of the creature, and only then did Emilia realize that there were a truly massive number of tendrils and other organs that extended upwards from the creature. They were nearly invisible even now, and she found that she couldn’t make out the tops of them.

-System Notification: Gen 4 Biotic detected… assessing…-

Emilia frowned at the sudden notification before pushing it to the side. The Obelisk systems had grown less and less talkative as they’d advanced, no longer needing to intervene in most matters. The only thing that would get it talking, she noted grimly, was a truly dangerous biotic presence.

“All troops, spread out and begin aerial combat, hold nothing back.” Emilia stated, the rest of the wing ignored the still assessing state of the Obelisk notice.

She banked hard with her Reaver, the module weapon beneath her humming with potent electrical energy. Her gauss cannon array began spitting round after round at the biotic, every shot caught against the tentacles and not hitting the main body. Each flight squadron broke down into smaller units, the teams that they were originally built around. Her team now consisted of five Reavers, two of whom had been with her from the beginning. Lani and Francesco were long veterans, but Rody and Nancy were no less skilled.

“We’re climbing. Focus fire on the organs coming out of the top of this thing.” Emilia ordered, her gut telling her that they needed to deal damage to this thing fast.

“Roger that,” their answers came at once. Each of them could feel adrenaline begin to pump in their systems, tension rising in the face of this thing.

They remained calm in spite of it all, though, having trained long and hard and experienced many battlefields in their careers.

The Reavers moved as one, carefully communicating with other teams to ensure no friendly fire occurred. Yamak himself moved on the outskirts, ensuring that he stayed out of the way while unleashing punishing volleys of enhanced weapons.

Even so, Emilia couldn’t tell if the creature really even noticed them. It continued onwards, and the only indication that it even knew they were there was the fact that it had sped up considerably, dropping any pretense of stealth. It climbed in velocity rapidly, and as Emilia and her team climbed and circled it, she realized that each side was almost a perfect replica of each other side. Every corner of its body disgorged huge bundles of tentacles, whereas the top appeared to be an entire field of them.

They opened fire on that field, aiming for the base of the tentacles rather than the waving mass that extended hundreds of meters and more above it.

During the entire process, the biotic didn’t seem to be able to fight back at all, but the Reavers didn’t dare underestimate it. They kept out of reach of the tentacles, wary of any physical strike it could deliver. Yet, they were still hopeful of the results. Less than a minute into the battle and a few dozen tentacles had been nearly entirely destroyed. Already the Squadron was able to strike directly at its colorful body, shattering huge surface areas of coral. Sheets fell away or ran in trickles from super-acid chemicals, showering the ocean below with evidence of their battle.

Still, it accelerated, and it was only then that Emilia frowned. This thing wasn’t faster than them yet, but at this rate it would only take a short time longer for it to approach the city. Still, they didn’t relent, and the results of their relentless strikes was quickly becoming apparent. This biotic didn’t seem to have much in the way of direct combat ability, but neither was its defense especially impressive. Emilia and the other members of her Squadron were bewildered as the altercation carried on for another minute, only needing to burn hard in order to keep up with the startlingly fast thing.

It would only take another thirty minutes for it to hit the mainland, but at this rate, Emily calculated that unless its interior was far more durable than expected, the creature would be dead before even half of that time.

Paranoia drove every one of the pilots to be on the lookout for the caveat, and the still calculating system did nothing to assuage their growing anxiety. A longer time generally correlated to a more specialized creature. The Obelisks weren’t all knowing, but by cross checking what the system knew with what other systems had come into contact with, almost any biotic would be able to be identified by their characteristics. Only the ones that were more rare - or terrifyingly Unique - would take longer.

Every one of them knew how dangerous even the most basic of Unique biotics were. Legion history was already plagued with examples of a Unique causing untold destruction and casualties.

Before it could finish, the creature shuddered, causing the very air around them to shiver. Emilia watched on her sensors first and foremost for any change, as with others in the Squadron, and could easily see the cataclysmically increasing temperature within the being.

In the next moment, each of the black spheres on its sides glowed, but did nothing else in that time.

“Commander, there’s something coming from beneath the body!” One of the other teams reported, sending an image of another sphere attached to a flexible neck.

Not waiting for the order, the Reaver immediately opened fire, aiming not for the sphere, but the fleshy appendage that held it.

Unfortunately, the biotic’s attack was faster.

A beam of light erupted from the sphere in an instant, crossing the distance across the water and towards a target far away. Emilia’s stomach dropped at the sight, the entire world seemingly grew dark in the wake of the beam.

It lasted less than a second before her subordinate's weapon nearly cut through the entirety of the flexible appendage. The beam stopped instantly, and the temperature within the biotics body climbed precipitously in that instant, smoke rising from its surface as purple blood suddenly vaporized out of the many wounds on its body.

The dizzying speed at which this happened stunned the Squadron.

And it wasn’t over yet.

The four spheres within the sides of its body lit up fully and began to focus four sets of beams on its surroundings.

“Shit, dodge! Get above it!” Emilia nearly screamed, a rare streak of terror hammering her heart. Every one of them could tell almost instinctively that this attack was lethal.

Half of the Squadron was already above the biotic, but the other half was not, having been attacking its flanks repeatedly.

They didn’t have the time to respond.

Each ‘eye’ focused on one Reaver to the next, not staying on target any longer than a moment before sweeping forward. Each vessel that came into contact with a beam erupted in fire and was cut through, the laser weapon turning the world around them dark in contrast to its own brightness.

And within seconds it stopped.

The body of the biotic pumped blood from its frame, smoke and charred flesh clear upon its mass. Even so, Emilia could not count this as a success. Half of the Squadron was gone in the blink of an eye.

Grief stabbed at her heart in that instant, but she grit her teeth, pulse racing as she checked the status of New Damond.

“No…” she felt her heart clench, feeling the damage reports already rolling in from a damaged Reaper Net.

The Obelisk of New Damond was molten slag, and an ocean of fire had replaced it in the middle of the city.

-System Designation complete. Gen 4 “Lightbringer” has been discovered.-

The air shuddered in a strange rhythmic pulse, forcing the wide-eyed Emilia to stare at the abomination.

“It’s laughing…” She realized, at once, a surge of rage burning away every other emotion she’d felt in that moment. “This motherfucker is laughing.”

Hot rage cooled as Emilia reconnected with the remains of her Squadron, her connection across with them facilitated by their artificial sentience counterparts.

They shared in that pillar of clinical rage and put away their pain and grief for later.

“Squadron, murder this fucker.”