Quasitech 2 (Patreon)

Quasitech

Chapter 2

-VB-

You have to understand that Quasimorphs are dangerous. They are varied, intelligent, and powerful. Individually, they can destroy any infantry. In a group, armored vehicles are lost. 

What about Battlemechs?

Battlemechs do well… but the problem with Quasimorphs is that they do not care about open battles. They appear where people are. They don’t care about strategic interest because their interest is your blood and your blood alone. 

What are you going to do, shoot up a school when the Quasimorphs start appearing?! 

The first rule of engagement against Quasimorphs: if you have the option to run, then fucking run! 

-Alexander Vakirrov, Commander of the 1st Canopian Cuirassiers, 3032, Interview with Crimson Magistracy News.

---

It wasn’t just the Magistracy of Canopus.

It was everywhere.

Where violence and bloodshed reigned, the quasimorphs emerged like an opportunistic infection. 

Humans didn’t know that. Not yet at first. 

But they noticed it very quickly when entire worlds began to turn a sickly red and yellow.

-VB-

“What the fuck are those?!” Natasha Kerensky, the Black Widow and the only bloodnamed warrior in all of the Wolf’s Dragoons, commed immediately to the rest of her troops and beyond on command channel when she saw a giant three headed rhino with the lower body of an emaciated horse in a wheelchair rammed into a Charger assault mech she had been in process of curbstomping.

The giant three headed rhino in a wheelchair that looked like it was made out of the same material all throughout let out a rasping scream as it pushed against the assault mech that was twice its height in the middle of the main avenue of Glenmora’s capital city of Tronka.

The Combine mechwarrior just turned its weapon and fired the lasers into the nightmarish hallucination, and the creature shrieked as its body melted under the attack.

But it didn’t stop attacking.

Worse, there were more joining it. 

Natasha whirled around, watching as all manners of hellish creatures burst out from alleys, buildings, and through windows of those buildings. They charged at everything and everyone. 

Natasha backed away. 

“{H-Hel-! This --- base! --- enemy! MONS-!}”

She paled. 

That was a radio call from their main base. 

She whirled around and saw fire from where the Dragoon’s dropships were. She immediately radioed Joshua. “Colonel-!” 

“[I know! They’re not responding at all! Including the commands of the Galedon Regulars!]” Joshua radio’ed back from somewhere across the city. “[This is Colonel Joshua Wolf to all Wolf’s Dragoons! Fall back to the dropship!]”

She turned around to do just that.

But then the entire street was flooded with those monsters and people trying to run.

Natasha loaded up her gun, ready to shoot at a monster chasing a couple…

When both of the couple exploded into more of those monsters.

She froze in horror. 

“{M-Major… It hurts…}”

She whipped around to look at Lieutenant Weslie in his Phoenix Hawk.

“{M-Major… it’s … it’s inside me…! GGAAAHHHH-!}”

And then his cockpit windows got splattered with blood from the inside and then the mech fell forward.

“MOVE IT!” she shouted into her radio.

Her demi-company immediately moved it, pulling out of the main avenue and towards the edge of the city so that they can move much more easily. As they left the once heavily-populated city center, they watched monsters pouring out of city’s bunkers.

It was obviously what happened down there. 

And then she saw more of those rhino monsters.

A trio of them came around the corner in their fucking wheelchairs and charged at her demi-company. Her freeborn and Innie mechwarriors opened fire without even needing orders, and punched right through the monsters. 

She felt sweat start to drip down her brows, and it wasn’t from any extra heat her mech was making. 

The situation was fucked in a way that didn’t make any sense. One of her mechwarriors just died inside his cockpit, exploding into meat chunks literally without anyone killing him. 

Nothing made sense!

After what felt like a heart pounding hour, she arrived at the Dragoon’s forward operating base, and found it in chaos. Everyone was armed and shooting at whatever that didn’t look like humans. Even the few prisoners they had were given guns and not shooting at the Dragoons but at the monstrosities trying to break perimeter. 

She opened fire on the swarm just outside the base, and stomped her way in along with what remained of her demi-company. Or rather, just a pair including her. 

“... Quentin. Where’s the rest of the demi-company?” she asked incomprehendingly.

“[T-They didn’t make it, major. None of them made it. It’s just us two.]”

She immediately radio’ed Joshua through the command channel. “Joshua-.”

“[Get in the dropship, Natasha. We’re leaving. We’re not staying on this godforsaken rock.]”

She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. Not after the utter chaos breaking out in the city. 

Joshua waited exactly one hour for everyone to get in, and then had the entire Wolf’s Dragoons get off the fucking planet. They stayed in orbit for exactly two days. By the end of the second day, all radio contact went silent, and they left the slowly reddening and yellowing planet behind.

She would only learn later that they were lucky. Their closeness to their dropships and quick retreat saved half of their band while everyone else on the planet, including civilians, suffered near total casualties. The Tenth Deneb Light Cavalry, a regiment-sized unit, was survived by a single Union dropship holding one thousand people, both refugees and the Deneb Cavalry soldiers. The status of Combine invaders, the Fifth and Sixteenth Galdeon Regulars, remained unknown.

Glenmora, along with nineteen other worlds across the Federated Suns, would be quarantined by the end of the year. 

Nineteen worlds, including three heavily industrialized worlds, was a heavy blow to the Federated Suns. But they got off lightly.

By the end of 3029, Free Worlds League would lose twenty, Capellan Confederation would lose thirty-six, Lyran Commonwealth would lose twenty-three, and the Draconis Combine would lose thirty-one. In the periphery, Taurians would lose three worlds and Magistracy of Canopus would lose seven. Oddly enough, the Outworlds Alliance lost only one world.

The Marian Hegemony, however, would go silent. 

In total, humanity lost 149 worlds in the span of six months with an estimated loss of 19 billion people.

This loss would be named “First Wave,” the most devastating and harrowing loss humanity as a whole suffered. 

The Second Wave would begin only six months later on June 17th, 3030… 

… On Terra.

-VB-

A/N: so. For those of you who don’t know what Quasimorph is, it is a turn-based roguelike RPG where if you do enough murdering, demons from other layers of reality can skinwalk into yours. In it, entire floors can instantaneously become quasimorph-infested hellscape if you aren’t careful. In this story, I am considering a city as a “floor” where quasimorphosis can occur and kill everyone inside of it.