Intergalactic conquest with an AI-Chapter 512: Defense of the Hive city. {10}

"That’s how it’s done!" Hauer shouted out, the scent of ozone and vaporized metal thick in his nostrils. "Pick your targets! Burn them down one by one! Don’t you dare let up!"

One by one, the skittering shadows were painted and pierced by relentless lances of light. The air grew hot, hazed with the acrid smoke of melting circuitry and superheated rock. The battlefield’s soundtrack shifted from the frantic spang of bullets to the vicious sear of lasers and the glassy, popping sounds of drones cooking off from within.

Finally, an eerie, ringing silence descended, broken only by the click-whirr of cooling rifles and the heavy panting of the soldiers. The last drone was a shapeless, glowing puddle, slowly solidifying in the grime.

A veteran slammed a fresh energy cell into his rifle with a practiced thunk. The spent one hit the ground with a hollow clatter. "Sergeant," he reported, his voice hoarse but calm, his eyes never leaving the scorched treeline ahead. "All motion traces just went dead. No more signatures. No more incoming fire. The channel’s gone quiet."

Hauer finally took his own finger off the trigger, the ache in his hands settling in. He scanned the silent, smoking killing field; the adrenaline calmed itself, leaving the cold, heavy weight of the aftermath. "Alright," he grunted, the command tone giving way to raw exhaustion. "Then we breathe. But keep your eyes and ears open; we haven’t found the sniper."

The advance through the lower hive’s alleys felt less like a military operation and more like a descent into a colossal, rusted gullet. Sergeant Hauer’s company moved in a brittle silence; the only sounds were the scuff of their boots on damp permacrete and the ragged symphony of their own breathing.

The drone spider ambush had carved their numbers in half; what remained wasn’t just a militia but a band of survivors, their nerves frayed down to the raw, twitching wire. And now, they faced a weapon no armor could stop... pure, undiluted fear. It seeped from the corroded walls, pooled in the stagnant shadows, and hung in the air, cold and metallic on the tongue.

Jax panned his rifle’s guttering lantern beam through a shattered hab-unit doorway. The light danced over a half-eaten synth-loaf, an overturned chair, and a child’s faded stuffed toy, the perfect example of a life interrupted with violent haste. No bodies, just absence. It was the emptiness that screamed.

"Hey, Vance," Jax whispered, his voice cracking. He didn’t turn, his eyes glued to the darkness inside. "Doesn’t this feel... like we’re being watched? Like something’s in the dark right behind your back? Not a machine. Something that is more creepy?"

"Shut your rust-hole, Jax," Vance growled, but his tone lacked its usual heat. He tapped the back of Jax’s helmet with the stock of his laser rifle like a brotherly gesture. "The guys are wound tighter than a fusion coil. Don’t pour paranoia on it."

Even as he said it, his own knuckles gleamed bone-white around his rifle’s grip, his thumb resting nervously on the charge selector. He was a rock for the unit, but the pressure of the endless, consuming dark was a weight even he felt bending his spine.

Then, a flicker of instinct or luck, that fickle phantom of the underhive. Vance’s breath hitched. He dropped into a low crouch, a fluid movement of practiced survival, and jabbed his lantern toward the filth-strewn ground ahead. "Jax. Look."

His voice, even in a whisper, was loud enough that he didn’t need to raise it. "Everyone, down! Lights low, now!" he hissed, the command slicing through the murky air.

Jax followed his gaze, and his blood turned to slurry. Further up the alley, perhaps fifty meters, the pool of light from Fireteam Rho’s point man had stopped. It wasn’t just still; it was low, casting long, terrible shadows upward as if its owner was lying prone, aiming. Or as if it had fallen and was shining uselessly from the ground.

A domino effect of dread. To their left, down a tributary sewer tunnel, another light winked out, then another ahead and another to the right. Across the shattered landscape of the lower hive, the tiny constellations of their allied squads were, one by one, being pressed to the earth. Not vanishing but more like submitting.

"W-what in the seven hells is happening?!" Jax’s whisper was a dry, panicked rasp. He fumbled with his rifle, pointing its beam at his own boots, as if the light itself had become a target.

The other three militiamen with them mirrored the movement, a frantic pantomime of hiding, their faces etched in the ghastly upward glow from the ground, their eyes widened, sheens of cold sweat coming down their backs, and their lips moving in silent prayers or curses.

In the new, profound silence, the only light came from their feet, illuminating nothing but grime, their own trembling shadows, and the terrible, yawning blackness above them that now felt absolutely, purposefully alive.

The silence stretched, each second feeling like a minute. Then, the communicator on their helmets crackled to life with broken static: "C-squads... come... report... zzzzzt... squads."

Jax slammed his helmet button. "Here, Squad 6! Come in, sergeant!" The only reply was the same fractured loop: "C-squads... come..."

Laser fire suddenly erupted nearby with a sharp, sizzling sound. Vance grabbed Jax’s wrist, cutting off another attempt to call. He raised a clenched fist, then pointed two fingers at his own eyes and toward the door of a nearby abandoned house. "Everyone! Get inside now, and be quiet."

The door was sealed, dead without power. But another militiaman tapped Vance’s arm and pointed to an open window. One by one, they slipped through like burglars, flicking off the lanterns on their rifles.

Darkness swallowed them. Then, a new sound began in the distance... the unmistakable, heavy footfall of power armor on metal walkways.

It came closer and closer right outside their wall.

The footsteps stopped. The last crunch was so close they could feel it in their teeth. In the thick silence, fear took over, sweat dripped down their temples, their hands shook, and the sound of someone swallowing seemed deafening.

Then the footsteps began again, moving away, fading into the hive city’s hum. A collective, shaky sigh escaped the squad.

They would never know what really happened just beyond that wall.

Cleo stood outside for a moment, her sensors piercing the darkness. Through X-ray and thermal vision, the five huddled figures glowed brightly against the cool wall. She saw their heat signatures, their held breaths, and their racing heartbeats. With a single shot, she could have turned them to ash.

But... instead, she tilted her helmet slightly and marched on.

The heavy silence after Cleo’s departure lasted only minutes. Then, from deeper in the hive, the distant, popping crackle of gunfire erupted again. Their helmet radios buzzed with the same awful static as before, but this time, it cleared. The sergeant’s voice, strained but clear, cut through.

"All squads, rally to my coordinates now! The enemy is picking us apart. I repeat, fall back to my position on the double!"

Vance’s eyes locked with Jax’s, then scanned the others. He gave a sharp, single nod. "We move. We take the side tunnels, the long way around. Whatever that thing is out there, it’s wiping out entire squads. We don’t face it head-on."

One militiaman, his face flushed with rage, shoved forward. "You’re telling us to run? To abandon our posts? We’re not cowards!" He spat, his voice trembling with patriotic fury.

The words barely left his mouth before Jax’s fist crunched into his jaw. The man staggered back.

"He said regroup, you fool!" Jax snarled, standing over him. "You want to march straight into the monster’s teeth and die for nothing? Is that your brave plan?"

The militiaman on the floor wiped his mouth, his hand coming away red. With a glare of pure hatred, he spat a mix of blood and saliva onto Jax’s boots. Jax tensed, pulling back a leg for a kick.

"Enough!" Vance’s command was a low growl as he and another soldier hauled Jax back. "We are leaving right now. That thing or its drones could be back any second." He shot a final, hard look at all of them. "Follow me, or don’t. Your choice."

In one fluid motion, he gripped the window ledge and hauled himself out into the gloom. Jax glared down at the defiant militiaman, then spat on the ground beside his head before climbing out after Vance. A third soldier followed silently.

The three of them stood outside in the chilling air, waiting. No one else climbed out. The dark window remained empty.

Vance placed a heavy hand on the shoulders of the two men who followed. "They’ve chosen," he said, his voice flat. "Let’s move."

They melted into the shadowy alley, leaving the silent house and the men inside behind. The only sound was the fading, mournful echo of distant gunfire.

A flicker of light coalesced on Cleo’s armored shoulder, and Mini Cleo popped into existence. The tiny hologram mimed a pistol with her hand, pointing it back toward the abandoned house.

"Pew! Pew-pew!" she chirped, her voice a digital synthetic echo. "My other half, why leave the snacks? They were right there. Enemy signatures confirmed! It would have been so easy... Bam! Pentakill!" She bounced on her tiny feet, creating prismatic sparkles of light with each hop.

Cleo didn’t break her stride. A low, hydraulic sigh hissed from her helm as she glanced at Mini Cleo.

"Incomprehensible," she stated, her voice flat and analytical. "You are a fragment of my tactical consciousness. This... frivolity is a corruption. Should I initiate a full system purge? Or have you contracted a narrative virus?" Her visor glowed faintly as a scanning beam passed over the tiny figure.