Kick the Sphere 23 (Patreon)

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 23

-VB-

General Morbarreon watched through the cams as the impact craters began to spawn more of those mechanical creatures whose bodies could not possibly move. Where were the axles, the gears, the engine, and power? Where was the computer, microchips, wires, and wheels?

The first mechs to arrive at the scene of the crater at the airport began to open fire.

Those shard creatures exploded, yes, but not all of them did.

Many of them were too small to be shot at by mech cannons and guns, and they swarmed.

And when James meant swarm, he meant swarm.

He heard the comms get flooded with the screams of the mech pilots as the somehow fast moving critters latched onto the mechs nad began to tear them apart. Some of them crawled into the mechs, and silence followed as he saw the equivalent of a worm and an apple happening to the mechs.

… But that was still doable.

They could lob mortars at these things. Artillery bombard them.

But then he saw what happened to the mechs.

He watched those metallic bugs turn the mechs into more of themselves.

And then the airport began to fall as the metal structures of the buildings were torn apart to make more of the bugs.

It was like watching a biological disaster. A plague. But for metal.

And with the airport fallen, there were very few places dropships could land and evacuate their assets.

“Betelgeuse is lost,” he mumbled in horror. “The entire League Front is lost…!”

-VB-

Thomas ran for it.

It was shameful. Dishonorable. An utterly irresponsible act.

He didn’t care. Against the grey tide that ate through his lance and then his company, he didn’t care. All he wanted to do - and did - was run as fast as his bug mech could take him.

His Stinger light mech jumped over fallen trees and boulders with ease, and even though he was pushing the top heavy bug mech to its maximum speed, the thumps of its ninety-plus kilometers per hour rampage sounded weak compared to what was happening behind him.

He took a glance at the rearview mirror on his mech and wanted to scream.

Five of those things chose to chase him instead of the bigger mechs! Or rather those mechs and their pilots were dying or dead already.

They were giant spiders made out of tens of thousands of fragments of something. By themselves, the fragments did nothing. When they got together, that’s when they became threats. Small ones, made out of hundreds of fragments, were threats to infantry.

And the ones chasing him were threats to all sorts of metallic. They jumped on anything metallic and turned their targets into more of themselves! Tanks, artillery pieces, ammunition, buildings, bunkers, wires, battlemechs. It didn’t matter. If it was metallic, then it would be twisted into more of those horrors.

So Thomas ran.

He’d ran out of the city he was supposed to protect. He’d run off the road hoping it would throw them off. He’d run into the forest because his mech wasn’t quite taller than most trees there.

But they still chased.

And then he felt a thump on his back.

“No, no, no, stop -!” he shouted but he saw his mech screaming at him as his back armor disappeared and then his structure began to crumple.

And so his mech crumpled forward.

He quickly reached down for his harness and began to unbuckle them all, pulled his pistol out, and ignoring how hot the metal grip was, he backed himself up against the window of his cockpit and pointed it to his seat.

He trembled and wept as the metal around him screeched and screamed.

And then something grabbed his seat and flung it outside.

There was now a hole between him and the monstrosity.

Thomas screamed like he never did before as he fired his pistol with abandon.

It did nothing to save him.

-VB-

Catherine, formerly Kar98k, stared down at her computer at her station on the bridge of her carrier.

The replicators proved to be overwhelmingly superior to the conventional forces deployed by the Capellan Confederation. Despite having multiple regiments of footsoldiers, armored vehicles, and battlemechs, the sheer force of what “corruption” and “zerg swarm” that the replicators unleashed upon the enemy overwhelmed any defense they could have had when the replicators repurposed the very city those soldiers were supposed to defend.

She did somehow get the replicators to remove most of the civilian infrastructures alone; she was here to test out the Capellan defense and the replicators’ viability as her general’s infantry-equivalents, not commit war crimes and bomb the locals back to the stone ages.

But considering what she’s been reading from their databanks about their own operations, culture, and society, she wondered if actually conquering these people would be a mercy. What was it like to live in a society so stifling and authoritative? To serve a state that could any at moment that your citizenship away and reduce you to a slave? A society where slaves made up the largest portion of their population? To be forcefully fed drip by drip unless you conformed to the state’s will?

She wouldn’t know. She served willingly the one man who gave her a new life. He owned no slaves and would never accept one, except maybe to free them. She still vividly remembered what he asked her.

… She digressed.

Catherine looked at the enemy numbers and hers. Her replicators grew almost logarithmically while their numbers fell at a steady rate. She guessed that they would either die off within the day or surrender.

She knew that this kind of blitzkrieg was unheard of in modernity of the Third Succession War. However, she also knew that this was nothing compared to what her general could unleash at any given time.

And then she received a signal from the planet that wasn’t from one of the replicators. She accepted the singal and routed it to her mind directly.

“This is …”

What title should she use? Just calling herself Catherine felt too casual.

“Commander Catherine, speaking.”

There. Not high enough in rank to be seen as disrespecting or outright rebelling against the general but also high enough that her words mattered.

“This … this is General James Morbarreon of the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces,” a tired and despondent deep voice spoke up.”As the leading commander in charge of the Betelgeuse defense force, I want to know your terms for our surrender.”

That’s…

Hmm.

She wanted to prolong the fight. She didn’t think she gathered enough data, especially ones regarding the different shapes and functions of non-standard replicator forms. At the same time, she wasn’t going to start killing people after they surrendered because she didn’t get enough data.

Even if it might disappoint her general. If it did, then it would be a failure on her part. Perhaps she should have been “gentler” with these frail soldiers.

… But if she made an outrageous demand and they continued to fight, then she wouldn’t be committing

“Very well, here are your terms. You will provide a third of your still operational mechs.” Battlemechs were super important to the locals and basically everyone beyond her home world. It was an asset that linked not just their advancements and number to defense but to individual pilots, their pride, and the pride of their families. Demanding that they surrender something that impor-.

“Very well. I accept your terms.”

Ayo, what?

-VB-

I stared at the manifest of the mechs Catherine brought back. I’d thought she would lose numbers, not bring back more than she went out with. There was so much stuff, in fact, that many of the replicators had linked up to form spaceships. I also didn’t know they could perform that particular function without a direct order.

“So they surrender just like that.”

“Yes, ge-, Alan.”

“Huh.”

If an important factory world surrendered after taking a “light assault wave” with replicators, then was I overpreparing?

-VB-

On Betelgeuse, General Morbarreon stared out into the devastated cities and the surrounding lands. This world, his homeworld, was important because of its factories. They produced some of the most advanced components, armors, battletechs, and civilian goods within the Capellan Confederation.

But those factories were gone, devoured by the voracious machines to produce more of their kind.

There were whispers that those grey machines would soon return, and bring with them even more of their kind. Next time, they would not just stop at Betelgeuse. They would bite deeper into the confederation and devastate more worlds.

However, not all hope was lost.

He stared down at a chip. Not a microchip or a metal chip but some sort of sophisticated infusion of both. This and other chips like it had been the things that made up the grey machines.

If they could research how this worked. If they could take this and make it their own…

There was still hope.

-VB-

A/N: the art is AI-generated, so have fun if you like it.