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323: Blitzkrieg
🕑 Added 2025-12-15 17:03:01 +0000 UTC‘Stealth,’ rippled the Queen, and a wave of assent moved through the Hornets. They vanished from sight, and Nicolai flew alone. From the pure number of them all around him, he and Threat Analysis were still able to quite easily work out their presence. But whatever this method of stealth was, it was very effective.
A moment later he felt ripples coming his way, then some kind of Art—Tier 3, so from the Queen—washed over him. The world around him shifted, looking slightly watery, and his ability to sense ripples and hear was markedly dimmed.
Only one kind of ripple made it through. The communications of the Hornets, which had taken on a new cadence. Cyberwarfare, analysing all this with interest, determined the cloaking effect was performing something like encryption. It would ‘silence’ ripples sent out, then the other cloaking effects worn by others would ‘unsilence’ them. A further effect allowed him to make out the Hornets around him, or at least their shapes. Vague, purplish-glowing forms.
The Hornets formed up over the hill, from which others were rising to meet them. Drekhul and the scouts.
Nicolai was mostly concerned with adjusting to this new way of seeing the world, trying to work out the vagaries of the Hornet stealth, but he paid some attention to what was said.
Drekhul was immediately looking to explain and defend his actions to the Queen. ‘Vorath threatened me, he said he’d kill me if I gave him trouble! I had no choice—‘
‘The matter is settled,’ she replied shortly. ‘For now,’ she added, ominous. ‘The Greybugs?’
‘Still digging in,’ replied Drekhul. ‘Now is as good a time to strike as any.’ His figure—under the stared sight of the Cloak, a vague purplish shape which Nicolai had only identified due to what he was saying—glanced in Nicolai’s directly and froze. ‘What?! Why is the human here? He is not stung!’
‘He flies with us now, brother,’ spoke a figure Nicolai realised must be Xyrrith. ‘Calm yourself. I will explain.’
‘We waste no more time,’ said the Queen, gesturing to another purple figure.
That one rose higher into the air, waved a long weapon. ‘Form up!’ she—Sythera—cried.
The Hornets flowed over the hill, forming groups. Nicolai was tugged along with them, stuck close to the Queen. He and the Modules were focused on working out how to read the purple shapes. It was apparent the Hornets could do so, were able to recognise one another on sign. A skill he needed to learn.
Threat Analysis said there were definitely differences between each shape. It was possible to know who was who, but it required experience with each individual shape.
The Hornets must know simply from spending quite a bit of time using this cloaking effect and flying with one another. He and the Modules were able to shorten that significantly, by saving snapshots of each purple shape and tagging them with identifiers the moment they worked out who was who.
They ghosted above the massing Greybugs. Below, a very large pit yawned, Greybugs streaming in and out. Those within came out burdened with soil and rock from the fresh tunnels, and after dumping it they rejoined the inward flow. Many hadn’t yet made it down the pit, but their number was definitely reduced compared to when he’d last seen them, more having poured into his hill. His concern for Legal and the Assembler rose. He needed to get in there, get to his base, see if he could salvage it.
But not with the Queen or any others looking over his shoulder. So long as the Hornets didn’t find his base, then so far as he could see there was no reason for them to think he had one here. Well, excepting the fact he’d been on that hill in the first place. Still, that would just be a guess. He could just as well have been exploring in the area, hunting Toothbearers perhaps, then heard the noise and come to investigate.
It was possible, if only barely, that he could end this day holding onto his base, and with the Greybugs removed. It had been nearly two hours since he’d left, which meant the Greybugs, according to their last estimation, should be breaking through… around about now. But pessimism was always best. They may have broken through an hour ago. Regardless, the faster he could get there, the better. But he needed to shake the Hornets, first.
A purple figure rose beside him. ‘Stay close to me,’ hissed the Queen. Her Soul Sense was bulging outwards, becoming visible even through the cloaking. Likewise, the powerful ripples of many Symbiotes being activated were breaking free. There was a sense of rising energy, a build-up. Apparently the Hornets did not need to discuss their plan. All knew what to do, except Nicolai.
Below, the Greybugs’ endless movement stuttered, bugs pausing and raising their heads. From some, especially a mass of stronger looking bugs either side of the great hole, came ripples of their own.
‘Strike!’ screamed the Queen, and the cloaking effect burst apart at the same time as a barrage of attacks were launched.
A wave of lightning and fire, force and energy, fell in one unified strike and blew gaping holes in the swarm of Greybugs clustered around the entrance. Corpses were thrown tumbling into the air in gouts of pulverized rock, ichor spraying.
The Hornets barely paused. The Queen and those around her broke away from the main host, dragging Nicolai along with them. All of a sudden he was speeding down, at the centre of a sixty-strong Hornet vanguard, practically all of them Tier 2. The elites, led by the Queen.
Larger Greybugs, some the size of buses, released their own Symbiotic blasts and waves of destruction. But the vanguard was ready for this, formed a single great shield that shook aside all that hit it, and the fast-moving Hornets flowed around the rest. The remaining Hornets up above continued to rain destruction down, distracting the Greybug.
The ground and the milling insects swung closer with shocking abruptness as the Hornets dove as one. Nicolai’s whole body was flexing with the urge to act, to fight, as on all sides Hornets threw out attacks. He saw Vorath hurling white spears at the bugs, and the vanguard was surrounded by hundreds of Xyrrith’s explosive crystals. One Hornet, laughing, had his arms spread wide and caustic liquid sprayed from his palms, raining down and melting the bugs below.
The Queen, at the front, simply used her empowered Soul Sense to lay waste to everything around. One of her three great spiritual arms reached out, plucked a monstrous bug from the ground and used it as a huge club, smashing the Greybugs who’d risen up to fill the entrance out of the way.
Then the vanguard hammered through what was left, and, still flying, they poured into a dim, bug-infested underground. The Hornets moved fast through the initial wide tunnels, a flowing mass that used overwhelming firepower to blast through everything they encountered, spreading chaos and carnage everywhere they passed. The blitz attack rolled right over and through the defenders before the Greybugs had even had time to truly comprehend what was happening.
The vanguard finally slowed upon entering a larger, open chamber. Nicolai was breathing heavy, rasping breaths, the Dark replaying the carnage. It had been a long time since he moved as a part of a proper team. Hateful as they were, and annoying as it was he hadn’t been allowed to take part, he respected their skill, efficiency, and most of all the overwhelming manner of their attack. If he could bend these things somehow to his will…
They could be very useful, the stealthy and spiritual counterpart to his straightforwardly physical bots.
The Queen rose up. ‘I go to subjugate their queen.’ She glanced around, began pointing Hornets out. ‘You and you, you two, you four…’ until she’d pointed out perhaps twenty Hornets, then, finally, her pointing finger landed on him, ‘and you, human, will go to hunt their High Caste.’
He had no idea what a High Caste was. The other picked Hornets, which included two Highspawn—who were looking at him in a distinctly unfriendly way—were moving.
A ripple like a fly buzzing sounded by his ear. He barely stopped his hand from rising to slap at it. ‘High Caste are tall, slender bugs who look a little like us,’ spoke the Queen’s voice. ‘But that does not concern you. Those two Highspawn I pointed out will attempt to kill you. If you are as capable as you claim, then the chaos of battle should provide you all the opportunity you need to sink that Knife into one, then the other. If you kill them with anything other than that Knife, their deaths will release ripples that the other Highspawn can use to decipher who did the killing. This is your test. Go that way.’ A vague force prodded his head around, a tunnel swimming into view.
‘Move!’ cried the Queen, and the Hornet vanguard rose off the ground and ploughed through a tunnel. The various hunters were disappearing into their own chosen tunnels. Except for the two Highspawn, who made a show of moving toward a tunnel, but their pace was slow. Nicolai knew the moment the others were gone they would abandon that show and come after him.
Nicolai turned and sprinted for the nearest tunnel. But after covering only a few metres he turned a corner and ran into a flood of shrieking bugs, boiling toward him. The Spectral Claw’s sword-like talons speared the first in line, then, grunting with the effort, he lifted it and hurled it into the rest of them, bowling bugs over.
The Big Mouth zipped open and his AA-12 was in his hands, while Pegasi rings lifted his feet. He hauled himself forward with the Spectral Claw, passed over the bugs packing the corridor. The AA-12 shuddered in his grip, snapping left and right as he punched leaping bugs from the air. Sonar pulsed from his suit continuously, building a map of the tunnels around him.
There was one figure streaking across the chamber behind, chasing after him. The Highspawn was very fast. He didn’t know where the other one was. He found a side tunnel, dove into it, plucked his shimmer poncho from his storage. The sonar had revealed a clear area a short distance ahead.
He blasted a few more bugs out the way, turned a few sharps corners and was in an empty space, no bugs. He wrapped himself in the poncho, shelled his Soul, deactivated Symbiotes and Pegasi rings, then activated the Lurker and a single Pegasi ring.
But from a tunnel ahead of him one of the Highspawn emerged, and the other came from behind him. They’d already closed and boxed him in, just like that. Somehow they were tracking his precise position.
They were looking right at him. It wasn’t that they could spot him through the shimmer poncho, but a matter of Soul. According to Threat Analysis they had some method of seeing straight through the Lurker and his Shelling. A combination of skill and Symbiotes.
They were stealthed, but he saw straight through it with sonar. It worked especially well in these caverns, possessing longer range and giving more detailed feedback than outside.
He’d thought to pretend he didn’t know they were there, turn their ambush when they came for him, confident in their stealth. But with twinned flashes, they dropped their invisibility.
‘Going somewhere, human?’ rippled one, wings barely moving as it hovered between him and the way out.
