Once he gets back to the temporary camp, Myco hails the Antithesis.
“Oy, Drake, wake up! The other you is working with one of those people’s elders to see what all can be done about their genetic stability problem to improve the Antihumans’ health. He also said there would be…”
Myco’s three beast mecha are growling, staring at some object near the edge of the Gate approach.
I don’t remember that being there he thinks to himself. Some sort of a burrowing mecha perhaps?
“... some resistance.”
“I’m up ol boy, just running some scans, seems like we’re under a pheromone attack again. I’m aware of what my clone is doing there.”
“Wait, you mean Zeteg and Gom already told you?”
“No, my clone did. He downloaded himself and self terminated.”
“I think even if Yithson isn’t to be trusted, he seems at the very least to have been helpful so far…”
A message from Gom cuts across all channels with the auditory translator device embedded in Myco going into overdrive: “It’s a holy war. Zeteg has called all our fighters to mobilize station defenses. The fanatics have made their move and were hiding amongst our own numbers; I’m afraid we can’t send any manned reinforcements until we’ve dealt with this little insurrection. Drop ship will have sent the handful of guardians you and our mechanics have gotten back online we can spare… we think they mean to take over the station. Want to starve transport of supplies!”
The message cuts out... “What was that message? My clone was the guinea pig for that little device.” Drake smiles to himself, why put yourself at risk when you have diabolical clones willing to try crazy stuff for you.
“He’s saying the bad guys are coming, but that the zombies will be on our side.”
“Well that’s disturbing.” Drake laughs, “Okay lets power up weapons and collect some fresh samples.”
“Agreed,” I laugh heartily as I get into Claymore and once in instruct my 3 beast mecha to converge their ranged weapons on the fanatics’ burrower.
It rears itself up, moving through the soil with an unnatural fluidity as though it were in water or weak oatmeal. Things aren’t supposed to swim through ‘solid’ material like that… perhaps this eldritch mecha has a similar hull composition to our dimension’s Skriag?
Its full body when unearthed is much larger than the small portion of it previously above ground.
It has large clacking jaws. Smaller eldritch mecha (of a different make) pop out of the ground around it, fanning themselves into a pattern. So that must be their formation…
“Do you remember that mech your Gigus relieved himself on? My scans are saying that these mechs are from the same people, looks like the Norunners have found us before we could find them.” Drake’s Antithesis trains his projectile weapons on the main mech. Wonder what other tricks these Norunners are capable of.
“We’ll see. I think we may be at an advantage though. Particularly if they think we’re still susceptible to their psychoactive pheromones.”
Submitted by Mycobacter & Drake Novum Scientist #712711, 706289