As Alice protected the passed out Eduard from the approaching arachnids, the orb had made a loud metallic noise, before dropping to the ground knocking up a dust cloud and attracting the arachnids attention.
(I hope you do something fast Dax, if not the arachnids will remember what they were doing)
Alice had briefly considered grasping Eduard and running while the arachnids were distracted but judged it as ultimately futile. As the dust started to settle the arachnids seemed to think the threat had passed their attention went back to Alice and the passed out Eduard as they started salivating and closed in to feed.
(Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit Dax help me)
Watching her own death approaching Alice started to panic as tears started to form at the corner of her eyes.
"DAX HELP ME!!"
Reacting to her shout the arachnid queen gave a quick hiss, commanding its brethren to finish the annoying prey off, and the closet arachnid raised its leg and prepared to skewer Alice alive. It never got that far, however, as its head suddenly exploded and it fell over lifelessly. When Alice looked towards the orb she saw Dax wielding some kind of larger black pistol that she assumed to be what he had called a 'rifle' with only 1 hand, as he had presumingly purged his mechanical arm after it malfunctioned. After Dax had shot the closet arachnid to Alice dead, 3 other shoots followed from behind him in the dust cloud still surrounding the orb, reaping the life of multiple arachnids as the projectiles passed through several arachnids, with the sound of their flesh melting. Appearing behind Dax where 3 mechanical looking soldiers about Alice's own height each one wielding a black rifle like Dax, all wearing the same black mask that seemed to absorb the surrounding light and strange grey and black clothes as Dax. After one of the mechanical soldiers put Dax's mask on him a red dot appeared in the centre of it, and a second later the soldier's masks all lit up in the same way, before splitting open vertically on the middle, revealing a bunch of strange looking sensors and a single large mechanical lense behind.
(Are they machines? or some kind of golem, no perhaps they're those 'drones' Dax talked about a few times?)
REX-Delta 04 Cyclops - Atomus Light Scouting Unit.
An android mimicking the appearance of a regular soldier, the Delta 04 Cyclops stands bipedally about 1 meter and 80 centimetres tall. Made for direct interface mind melting it mimics the functionality of a flesh and blood soldier with 2 arms and legs, but differentiates from a living soldier by being remotely operated by a drone commander and therefore completely disposable. The REX-Delta 04 model gets its name from its specialised primary sensor mounted in the head, the Cyclops long range sensor pod made by Guardian systems is a series of rangefinders surrounding a single large high resolution ultra long range camera that makes it able to track contacts from/in geostationary orbit (a distance of about 35000 kilometres). The vulnerable sensor pod is normally retracted behind a black carbon-polymer shield, giving the Cyclops the look of a faceless android wearing a reaper's mask. When the sensor pod is in use a Cyclops can track and engage anything within 600 kilometers provided a clear line of sight and standard equipment, the Cyclops units are therefore employed in scouting, recon and extremely long range combat, although they're considered mostly obsolete and outdated.
"Time to wipe out the rest, ICI give me full control of these 3. Oh and unit 2 please top of my rifle"
[DIALING REX-DELTA04 UNIT 1-3, PATCHING CEREBRAL ARCHITECTURE, STANDBY]
"What the hell are those, some kind of golem?"
Having retreated carrying the passed out Laura away from combat, Redmond was surprised to see very alien looking drones standing next to Dax wielding strange weapons.
"Ah these? they're basic throwaway combat drones welding gassus rifles like this one"
Holding forward his weapon, Dax displayed a black carbon-polymer about 70 centimetres long bullpup style rifle, with a clear plastic magazine behind the trigger. The clear magazine displayed several bright blue plastic cases, hiding ferromagnetic slugs that are shot at hypersonic speeds with the help of multiple electromagnetic coils surrounding the rifle barrel. The rifle barrel was shielded by a solid black carbon-polymer plastic, hiding electromagnetic coils that surrounded the barrel, and on the outside, it had a conductive grip surface to charge the capacitors that powered the coils and as Dax showed Redmond the rifle, a cyclops was gripping the grip, charging it.
"It's a REX-344 fully automatic gauss rifle, or more like a burst rifle not fully automatic, but anyway this is the kind of weapon my world uses instead of swords and bow and arrows"
[RECHARGE COMPLETE, READY FOR MIND MELT]
"Anyway, I can show it to you in detail later, right now I need to exterminate some pests, ICI initiate domination"
[PREPARING FOR FULL MIND DOMINATION. WARNING: COMPLETE MIND MELT IN EFFECT. EXPECTED CORRUPTION AT 100% PATTEN BLACK NOW IN EFFECT.]
[[[I HAVE CONTROL]]]
As Dax mind melted with the drones he took complete control, even suppressing their basic OS. In Dax's world mind melting is normal although primarily used for military purposes and there exist 4 levels of mind melting that each has its own advantages and drawbacks. Level 1, also called code green gives access to higher levels of consciousness and carries a minimal risk of mental corruption and is commonly used for high speed quantum communication. Above code green is code yellow, a process that breaches the subjects lower thought patterns and subconscious, allowing the operator to take control of a subject to control and/or command it directly, this is the lowest level of mind melt where imprinting of memories and programs is possible but carries a large risk of metal corrosion, commonly called mindbleed. Above code yellow is code red, a level of mind melt that's restricted to military use only. At code red it is possible to rewrite base level sup conscious or OS, giving a drone commander the ability to 'be' any number or drones depending on the operators skill, effectively turning a single soldier into 101, with 100 of them being completely disposable, working as a force multiplier on a scale with the first thermonuclear weapons of old. Code red had until a few hundred years ago been thought to be only possible in theory, as that level of melting produced extreme read and write errors, resulting in an almost immediate fatality in all parts due to stage 5 or 6 mindbleed. It was only recently a breakthrough had been made, making code red feasible, by making a subprocessor take the blunt of the data and then reformat it to the operator to avoid mindbleed, in essence, an early ICI prototype.
Then there's code black, or complete mind domination, no public records of its use exists, but it's been theorized that with a fast enough subprocessor and an extremely capable mind it's possible to not just briefly possess a subject or droid, but become it while maintaining a sense of self, in essence creating a hive mind in perfect synchronization turning a single soldier into a million - with the force of a billion.
[CODE BLACK NOW IN EFFECT - 3 REX DELTA 04 ADDED TO ARCHITECTURE, ALL RAM AND PROCESSING POWER INTEGRATED TOTAL CONTROL HANDOVER COMPLETE. ICI ENTERING SLEEP MODE]
(Time to die, fucking bugs)
What followed could hardly be called anything other than a massacre, with Dax leading the droids, every shot fired reaped the life of multiple arachnids as a metal slug passed through their exoskeletons at hypersonic speeds, like a focused plasma beam through butter. Only the 2 arachnid queens seemed immune to the sustained rifle fire, and they were to only ones alive 10 seconds after the 'battle' had started and they quickly fled, presumably back to the arachnid nest nearby.
"Are you okay my sweet Alice~?"
Having made his way to Alice, Dax wore a big smile as he checked on her, as a droid checked the passed out Eduard and injected some nanobots into his bloodstream with a syringe.
"T-there's no way I'm 'yours'! And I'm fine, shouldn't you be taking care of Eduard?"
"[I am~]"
Answering the angry and slightly blushing Alice, the droid and Dax answered at the exact same time.
"Creepy.. What the hell is that?
"[Oh this? this is a drone. A standard in warfare and life in general where I'm from]"
"could you stop that? it's gross"
"[Terminate mind melt]"
[MIND MELT TERMINATED, STARTING POST DOMINATION CLEANUP AND EVALUATION]
"There you go Alice~ what's your opinion of me when I'm serious?"
"Kind of sloppy to be honest, you missed 2"
"Did I? number 3 go find number 1 and bring it here when it's done stabilizing Viktor"
Having finished helping out Eduard, the drone ran back to the orb
"Is he okay?"
"Sadly not, he has mindbleed, I don't know how bad"
"Mindbleed?"
"An aftereffect of mind melting. Rewritten neurons, loss of memory, internal haemorrhaging, paralysis are just the major symptoms, but there are a dozen more lethal minor symptoms, but he'll live. As for the damage to his mind and psyche, I'll know after his head is no longer split open and he's out of the bioprinter."
As Dax ended his explanation on the aftereffects of an unprepared mindmelt, the drone returned with its brethren.
[3 AND 1 AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS.]
"Track then exterminate all targets with extreme prejudice. wipe them out completely"
(No one messes with my adorable tour guide and gets away alive. Ever)
[MOVING TO EXTERMINATE TARGET 1 AND 2]
"No I mean everything, patten 4 manoeuvre"
[MOVING TO TARGET AREA AND EXECUTING PATTEN 4 - AREA PURGE, PLEASE CONFIRM]
"Registration 044587356420, purge all sentient life at location"
[ORDERS CONFIRMED, MOVING TO COMBAT AREA]
Having their orders confirmed, units 1 and 3 set off running in the same direction the arachnids had fled, moving arccos the uneven terrain at a speed Alice only could hope to match on flat ground, and with a large head start.
"That's that done, now are you hurt Alice?"
"I'm fine, but are you okay?"
"Yeah I am okay, one of the drones immediately stabbed me with a syringe after it came out the orb, anyway let's go join the others"
Before Alice could object Dax picked her up to carry her in a princess carry.
"W-w-what are you doing!? shouldn't you help out Eduard!!"
Looking back Alice saw a droid carrying the passed out Eduard.
"What did I tell you not even half an hour ago?"
"W-what?"
Sensing that Dax was pissed off for some unknown reason, Alice turned meek.
"I told you: no hero shit. Therefore it's time for a punishment"
"Noooooo!"
REX-344 - Fully automatic gauss rifle
A black assault rifle in bullpup design made of a black carbon-polymer with a conductive surface on the grip. 36 round capacity, and fires ferromagnetic slugs through a series of electromagnetic coils that makes them accelerate to hypersonic speeds. Although sustained fire is not possible because of the limit of the built in capacitor, burstfire is extremely potent. The Rex-344 is not the standard armament of the Hellwalkers or even the rest of the galactic army, as it is severely outdated, and lacks the capability of automatic fire and has no fire and forget guidance system build in natively, and is therefore only deployed in pre build drop pods that are designed to overwhelm planetary defences brute force, or in limited police service.
"Uuuu my head hurts…"
Awaking the next morning, Alice rubbed a blue mark right in the middle of her forehead. Last night after Dax had wiped out the arachnids with the help of his droids, he had 'punished' Alice, by flicking her head, repeatedly. The first flick to her forehead had been flimsy, making her doubt the severity of the punishment, she had foolishly questioned the punishment, foolishly. While the first flick could be described as flimsy, the ones that followed where not. What followed was about 30 minutes of Dax flicking her forehead with increasing intensity while 2 droids had held her in place and Eduard, Redmond, and even Laura laughing loudly with Dax grinning like a child. The end result being Alice with a blue mark on her forehead, and her pride severely wounded. After crawling out her sleeping bag Alice went to find her bag, only to notice Dax sitting on top the orb meditating
"Showoff.."
[GOOD MORNING ALICE]
Having noticed Alice being awake a drone went over to her with the morning rations she had gone to her backpack for.
"Ah thanks and good morning to you too, what's the rest of you doing?"
[UNITS 1, 2, AND 4 HOLDING PERIMETER, COMMANDER DAX CURRENTLY RESTING TO RECOVER FROM EXTREME INTERNAL TRAUMA]
"'Extreme'? was it that bad?"
[SMALL INTESTINES DECAYED, LARGE INTESTINES DECAYED, LIVER NOT FUNCTIONING DUE TO TRAUMA, OPERATIONAL LUNG CAPACITY AT 0.03%, KIDNEYS NON FUNCTIONAL AND WORKING MUSCLE MASS AT 0.1%, MAJOR BRAIN DAMAGE AL-]
While the droid listed the state of Dax Alice's face became increasingly pale.
"How the hell is he still alive…"
"Because I'm a qiton, good morning Alice~"
"Hii! d-don't scare me like that please!"
Appearing behind Alice suddenly was Dax with his signature child like smile.
"Then don't ask about private stuff~ anyway how are you? does anything hurt or feel out of place? I have plenty of medical supplies now"
"No my body is fine it just hurts a bit, thanks to a certain someone. Anyway, how is Viktor?"
"Viktor is… Recovering, although at a slow pace and I won't know how bad the side effects will be until he recovers consciousness"
"What are you expecting?"
"At worst? complete loss of identity with total memory loss, he'll no longer know who or what he is or what he was and will need help to take care of himself for the rest of his life. At best there'll be some missing memories with hopefully intact foreign data having overwritten the old. The complete metal corruption - as in unreadable data that can be repaired, but that'll take anything between 5 and 50 years so I'm hoping it's minimal. In any case, he's not gonna be the same Viktor that put on the mask, I'm just hoping he'll be mostly the same"
"Can I see him?"
"I'm not sure you want to, as he's currently being operated on, but sure. He's over there at the orb in the bioprinter. But please don't touch anything~"
As Alice ran towards where Dax had pointed, she quickly located Viktor.
"What the fu-!"
And puked all her breakfast on the spot, as she saw Viktor lying in some strange transparent tube completely nude. Viktor being nude was not the reason for her puking, no she barely noticed that the reason was that his head was removed from his body, and his skull had been split in 2 vertically right over his eye, and his brain floated freely with over 50 small metallic arms sticking it with needles.