Serpentius Alpha, the pinnacle of Forerunner bad ideas. What is the next logical step beyond self aware mecha? What is the answer to the scarcity of high level niode compatible pilots who also have the reflexes and mental makeup to excel at war. The Forerunners left us the gate systems by which the conquered space, they left us signs in their dinosaur mecha, and some bizarre finds on earth and the out worlds that they may have messed with time as well. Not content with space and time, they decided to solve the problem of finding good pilots in each generation by recycling. Not only did they develop cloning technology that gives Drake wet dreams, they decided to stop limiting themselves to living pilots, since the great dead pilots were already known, why not just use them again. Necromancy, technomancy, recycling, or stupid, whatever you call it, they made Zombie mecha. Serpentius Alpha was their control, and they lost control of him.
Did I mention cloning? By the time they decided their super-weapon was off leash, out of control, and going to doom all civilization, and they ordered all copies of it destroyed……well all the official ones. It seems Forerunner factions work like human ones, and there are numbers of these Zombie Overlord mecha scattered about, and when one wakes, his clones rise with him.
What has this got to do with my stocking? Hold your gingerbread kid, I’m getting there. A few years back a researcher into AI tried merging with a Forerunner ID core. He emerged a twisted genius who was more than/less than certainly OTHER than, human. Evil Santa retreated to his North Pole and brought his twisted vision to life. My wife drives one of his Xmas Trees, and I have a few of his Jottun. I really want one of those Reindeer, but those elves have seriously got to go! I digress. Evil Santa was a galactic menace we shed good blood to put in the ground. The Bunnies faced him as our first Clan Raid, and it was terrible. We killed Evil Santa. Be honest; I killed Santa, I saw Father Christmas die under my guns, while around him burning Reindeer screamed and raging Elves tried to rally to his side through a forest of shattered candy-canes. I still have nightmares about it. I put him in the grave, and Serpentius brought him back.
When Charles gave me the word that he had engaged a Reindeer, my blood ran cold as a seal’s tears. When Caitlyn called for help, and Melissa had to step in to save her from Exacto Shot wielding elves, I knew it was true. He was coming for me. I killed him once, now he was back.
My scouts were through the next gate, because our mission was to seek out and destroy Serpentius as the source, kill the command mech, kill the swarm. You can’t sit back and wait, because the dead are endless, and ammo comes out of our end of the contract. What? We are mercenaries, not superheroes. Christine had waded, through a wave of Gorax Red Ants and Anzu; thousand point monstrous versions of the common mecha, then she hit a wall of Elves and I watched her mecha lights go out one by one, as her Namtar , Krampus and Orrester blew out like so many candles in a birthday cake. These were the real deal, Santa’s Elves.
My own opponent was an old frenemy; a Smurf, an Exile, Stephanie’s boyfriend (don’t ask, I try not to), Nobel Prize winner in Genetics, convicted war-criminal and intergalactic menace; Dr Drake Novum. Voted most likely to, and probably twice. His Antithesis was piloted by one of his dead clones. Sure that mecha was flat scary when I first saw it, but I pulled maintenance on Charles often enough I knew the ins and outs of the beasty pretty well, and Drake was always too impressed with himself to believe he could be killed. So I killed him again. He traded cannon shots with my Dreadnought, and we both shook from the force of twinned Ursa Strikes. Of course I had Skadi beside me in her Jottun, and she thoughtfully forked Drake and her own opponent with a wave of T-90 Berserker missiles, loaded with liquid nitrogen and nanites that froze both mecha. My next shot was against an ice-cold corpsicle that shattered like Drakes dreams of conquest. Got to love competent subordinates.
We pushed through one dead intergalactic menace (and snappy dresser) to go hunt another dead intergalactic menace (and beloved children’s folk hero). Punching through the gate caused my own hardened Black Company to shudder with……well not cold.
We stepped into a winter wonderland. Gingerbread houses, candy cane forests, burning Krampus, shattered Christmas Trees, and lumps of coal black Orrester marked the place of the Defenders of Bunny 4077th MASH company. Not such a Merry Christmas so far.
My Dreadnought screamed warnings as alien sensor devices locked onto it. Yup. Evil Santa. Once you are on the Naughty List, he sees you when your cloaking, he knows when you’re shut down, he knows if your ammo is full or empty, so you’d better be loaded for your life’s sake.
I gave the dreaded warning to my people.
“Look alive people, Santa Claus is coming to town” I felt stupid just saying it. Stupider to be scared. I was a lot tougher than last time I killed him. Of course, I can’t figure out how to come back, and he keeps doing it, so that’s not as reassuring as it ought to be.
A wave of dancing Elves crested the hill, and opened with their Exacto Shots, my Dreadnoughts replied with the same. We took savage damage, but our Dreadnoughts were built to ride the recoil of the massive guns, and our shots grouped a lot tighter than the dancing elves. They struck and wounded, we struck and killed. Skadi leveled an Arctic Gale at her foe, and froze her elf with an expression of dark joy on its not-face. Before it could disturb me, it was lost in the splashing flame of Red Fury’s fire. The Elves apparently were poorly shielded against fire, , as the dance of his Elf went from demented to desperate as it thrashed its death throws on the burning earth. Our combined fire wiped out the remaining elves, and lead to the blood curdling scream of a wounded Reindeer. Yup, there is the golden crown of Antlers, it looks like Comet is looking more like he belongs to the Red Comet Clan than a children’s tale, as he advances with blood in his eyes, and Flavian Spears in his fist. Seriously, who gives Flavian Spears to wildlife?
I hear a comm call over the link, its HIM.
“Mainer, you are on the Naughty List. I will crush your bones, and squeeze your blood for my cocoa. I will give what is left of you back to your Clan in a stocking. No one stands against Santa!”
The fat man himself was coming. Tipping the scales on the shady side of an Antithesis, Evil Santa was jolly full of reactors, had shielding larger than most space stations, batteries equal to Star Frigates, gods-awful ECCM that ignored most missile countermeasures. And he was a talented bruiser when he was still alive. He was lurching forward, a shambling zombie Santa with none of the speed, but an ungodly vitality that equated to literally a hundred times my own protection, and my Dreadnought was no featherweight.
“Christmas is coming” he swore as twin beams of sun hot plasma burned totally through my niode powered laser shields, and flashed over my skin, even as it passed beneath my starboard cannon, and above my hip. A near miss that would have burned through me, and half way through Faction War 1, the Dreadnought behind me. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, not beam weapons.
My Exacto Shot hammered his great red belly, and accomplished nothing more than weight loss from armor chips. Still, there was one thing Santa forgot. We are the Defenders of Bunny, we are sworn in the service of Easter, the goddess and the bunny. Christmas may be coming, but Easter has already arrived.
Red Fury had burned the last of the Reindeer, and while one of my Dreadnoughts was down, it still left my Dreadnought, Skadi’s Jottun, and Red Fury’s Inferno against the abomination of Zombie Evil Santa (so much more stable than living insane Evil Santa!). Giving linked fire commands to my lance for a time on target salvo designed to overload his shields with three strikes on three different frequencies hitting his shields simultaneously, I keyed my radio and hurled our defiance at Santa.
“Easter says your holiday is done fat boy, and sent us to kick the chocolate out of you”
We fired in tight sequence, Skadi fired first, her Flash Freeze causing the shields to flare and harden, the chill hardening the surface of the armor as it flash froze. The Kojin Stove plasma struck within heartbeats, the thermal flux of flash freeze and heat destabilizing the crystal matrix, and disrupting its ingrained energy components. Last the charge capacitors of my Rage Pular reached full and began the banshee wail of its death scream of energy. The ululating scream of its pulsing discharge was matched by the screaming of Evil Santa as its beam hammered through his disrupted shields and weakened armor, digging deep into his massive form through the pinhole of weakness, to release giga-joules of raging energy into the delicate matrix that was the heart of Santa’s massive war machine.
Throwing back his head, blue white energy screamed from his eyes, mouth, and dozens of cannons in his arms and chests. Gang explosions of missile and cannon ammunition blew his great belly one armored bay at a time, like winking Christmas lights around the greatest tree of them all. As he died, yet again, he screamed.
“I know your name, Ferrite in your stocking, you are on my LISSSSSSTTTTT!” and then a final cataclysmic explosion took him. My own mecha shut down, and it was my second rank that dealt with the zombie elves and one last Reindeer.
The Galaxy is safe from Evil Santa. I am getting Ferrite in my stocking, Serpentius Alpha is going to die for it (again). For the record, it is still the Forerunners fault. Merry frigging Clan Raid. Ho, Ho, frigging, Ho.
Submitted by John T Mainer#28840