We walk through fields of strange tentacle like stalks, forests of rock formations and oceans of toxic fog, all the while she instructs us about her land and its people. She speaks of beings she calls The Anti-race, and how they are at odds with her people. She tells us of how her kind are proud and true scavengers not like others who inhabit this land that would kill you then take your tech. Her species prefers to take only from downed machinery, as to them it seems more honorable. They take great pride in building weird constructs out of what they can salvage, and according to her have built truly marvelous creations not seen for generations in this odd land.
Every now and again she pauses to sniff at the air and gives us course corrections. It seems like we have been traveling forever but when I check my mech’s power levels I see they never quite go down. My Jadoon explains it is because he can absorb the radiation of the area to continuously recharge his batteries. It seems the land itself is bombarded with toxins of all kinds. Chemical poisons, Bio hazard spills, radiation contamination, even gamma and dark matter saturation are strewn across the planet’s surface. Cities that at one time must have been major hubs of mighty empires are now little more than burned out husks.
It is in one of these burned out cities Toto calls an immediate halt to our progress while sniffing at the air frantically. A look of what I would call panic crosses her oddly human features before she cries out, “Rust beasts!”, before scampering quickly down the arm of my mech and disappearing into the remains of the buildings around us.
“Attention Writer unknown movement detected, half a mile to the east and closing fast, uncertain if it is biological in origins or not.” Apocalyptor informs me through the internal comm system.
My reply was simply to switch on his defensive shielding and activate his weapons systems, all the while keeping an eye on the fast approaching blips on his radar screen. The wait was short lived as a half dozen screaming creatures came into our immediate vicinity.
I had no idea what the hell these things were as looking at them it was all I could do not to be sick. They seemed about as big as a Gigus with what looked like most of their internal organs on the outside of their bodies. Musculature looked to be inverted with metallic looking bone showing through it, covered in slime and making enough noise to deafen a person from even inside a sealed cockpit. I think they saw us as I could see no clear eye ball or pupil only vacant sockets where the eye would be sitting. The largest of the six sniffed in our direction and roared three times sharply before lowering its head and charging straight at us.
It rammed us full speed and sent myself and my ninety ton mecha flying backwards from the impact. The Jadoon went wild over the neural link upon landing, exploding into buzzes, whirls, and chattering in my mind. I had never heard a “machine” so pissed off before and almost felt sorry for what was going to occur. But before we could even get up and get our bearings on these strange foes they had huddled together in one great big ball of slimy sickening flesh. Upon impact and connecting up to each other they started spewing bio-chemical acid in all directions totally saturating the immediate surroundings.
As soon as this acid landed on the surrounding structures they began to bubble, hiss and melt. I glimpsed Toto scrambling from a deteriorating building to more stable cover and ready herself for another run. Apocalyptor was back on his feet firing madly at the massed creatures with his Heat Lasers and Flavian Spears. Each impacted shot burned and cauterized large sections of flesh and was met by terrible screams, followed by more ejections of acid. Having enough of all this Apocalyptor brought his Rage Pulsars online, overclocking them to critical mass and aimed directly in the center of the massed creatures, before firing.
Upon impact the creatures exploded into flaming pieces, spraying acid everywhere and screaming horribly before they eventually near as we could tell “died”. It was then that Toto came out of hiding scrambled back up to her sitting place on my mechs shoulder and advised we basically get the hell out of dodge now! I was about to ask why when I saw the exploded pieces of flesh start to crawl and ooze back together. They seemed to be attempting to reform around an odd hexagonal structure in the center of the debris. We didn’t wait around much longer to see what would happen next and set off at a fast pace towards what Toto called the Anti-race’s dwelling. In a few short hours based on the locator beacon of Mycos and our newly acquired travel guide we will have finally caught up to our wayward explorers…. I hope
Drake’s Antithesis AI told Drake that a 90ton mech had just entered it’s long range scans, he told it to keep track of it while he and Myco made plans.
“I am detecting some further anomaly spikes commander” “An insect mech?” “Shall I tell the Hierophant?” “You, clean up his remains. You are now the new sub commander.”
Submitted by Mycobacter, Drake Novum Scientist, Pat Willis # 712744,706289, 224534