"This boy has killed one of our best operatives. Sure, he may have been a sadist but he has been able to kill anyone we ever assigned him to," the council member who had controlled the robot, said.
"I never did like that man. He always gave me the creeps whenever we needed to use him," another member of the council remarked.
"Margret, you're thinking out loud again," the first man said.
"Oops, I'm still working on that. Sorry, Gerard," Margret apologized.
"It's fine. Now! We need to get back to discussing how we plan on killing this Martian Swarm before they can get to Earth. If they find out that we control the Swarm, then we're all dead."
"Jeremiah, you've been awfully quiet. Is everything alright?" Margret asked.
"I've got a security breach on my property. Give me a minute to deal with it. It's probably that stupid squirrel again."
"Alright well, you can reconnect once you've dealt with it. You know the rules."
"Yeah, I know just give me a minute. My eyes aren't what they used to be."
A loud crash could be heard from Jeremiah's residence before his computer lost connection.
"What was that?!" Margret shrieked.
"Give me a minute to check his security camer-" Gerard fell silent as he watched a massive metal monster tear his friend in half.
"Gerard? What happened?" a fourth man asked.
"Who the hell are you?!" Margret demanded.
"Someone who you all decided to shun twenty or so years ago," the man said.
"Reinhold?! What are you playing at here?" Gerard hissed.
"You might all want to get to your bunkers or what just happened to Jeremiah will happen to the rest of you." A video feed of Jeremiah's room popped up on each of the council member's screens. "Don't underestimate the hybrids of the Martian Swarm. We get revenge for the little guys… and girls."
"Jeremiah's dead?!" Margret muttered, stunned at what she was seeing.
"He's biomass now. We might as well take him back to earth with us," a girl's voice said over the video.
A ten-foot-tall monster of flesh and metal walked out from behind the computer desk and picked up the pieces of the man, savoring every bite.
"Welcome to the legion of the damned, little girl," Reinhold said.
The monster turned blood dripping from its mouth and came in closer to the camera. "Where are the other two, Mister Reinhold?" the monster demanded in the girl's voice.
"Not at their computer anymore. That's where. I've arranged for you to get to their bunker from Archimedes colonies launch facility. The rocket should take you straight there."
The video call ended as sirens went off all around Jeremiah's mansion. The little girl Loyd had turned into a monster didn't mind. She had worked up an appetite and the main course was making its way to her.
xX Back to the space elevator cable Xx
"Hey, Loyd. You sure that little girl is going to be alright? I mean we transferred her pretty quickly. I'm not sure we didn't do some serious damage to her," Griffon said.
"She'll be fine. We would have had to transfer everything over correctly or she wouldn't be able to move," Loyd declared, putting an eye patch on until his eye finished regrowing. "Besides, we have to worry about the thruster right now."
Griffon nodded to himself then turned back to his computer. "All we have to do now is wait for the worms to get back from the fields and we can turn it on. It was a good idea to send Jim ahead and attach it to the middle point of the cable but dragging us through an atmosphere seems kinda dumb."
"You forget we have these," Loyd said holding up a chunk of the black possessed eidolons heart. "This should nullify the effects of the atmosphere as soon as I plug it in."
"You don't even know if that'll work. Maybe it'll fold us into the sun! We need to test that thing before we actually use it!" Griffon declared as Loyd plugged the little crystal into his nanolathe.
"Well consider this test one."
The nanolathe began spinning up and gave off the same light obliterating aura the possessed had before. Loyd picked the tool up and walked into the airlock which began to cycle automatically. He walked out of the airlock and positioned the nanolathe against the cable.
("Wait, it's actually already working! Space is warping around the entire elevator!") Griffon declared excitedly. ("We've got zero air resistance right now! Loyd, you just need to make sure the nanolathe doesn't start overheating.)
("Alright, I'll stay out here and babysit this thing while we loop around the planet,") Loyd jested.
("Jim, you good to go?") Madeline asked from the control room.
("As good as I'll ever get. This thing is starting to fall faster by the second.")
("Alright, then you've got permission to light the engine,") Loyd said, bracing himself.
A bright light could be seen from half of Mars as Jim lit the engine that would pull the cable and the crawlers up, out of the atmosphere.
Loyd turned on the news in his helmets HUD.
"This just in, the Martian Swarm is keeping their promise to fix the Greeley catastrophe! They have positioned the mother of all rockets further up the cable and are already pulling it away from the colony. We are going live to one of our long-range cameras on the ground at Greeley now!"
The screen filled with blackness until the camera operator activated the zoom and got a better look at the thruster. It was spewing a massive amount of blue light from one end as the mag thruster pulled the cable towards the planet's equator.
Loyd smiled and turned on his feed jacker. "We said we would fix your little cable issue and here you can see us doing just that. You thought your council were the people in control but I will show you the bodies of those who tried to assassinate me and who currently rule over your council. The Earthborn can either turn themselves in, or face annihilation at my hand. They use people like you would use pawns in a game of chess. The person they sent to kill me tortured two people to death and was planning on doing the same thing to their nine-year-old daughter once he was done killing me." Loyd paused while the news crew panicked, trying to figure out how he had highjacked their signal. "Active camouflage. That's the answer to why you can't find my equipment. I borrowed it from the first Earthborn I killed. Have you ever wondered why you feel like you're being watched?"
Drones all around the world decloaked for everyone to see. Several massive blimp-like ones floated above each of the major colonies with massive camera arrays along their bottoms. The smaller ones all seemed to carry a form of firearm.
"Now do you see why we are a neutral party? We kill those who we deem wicked and protect those we deem pure. We are both the knight and the demon!" Loyd declared, watching the stunned faces of millions of people over the camera network. "Now, I give you back both your privacy and your freedom."
Loyd grinned as he released more mind-altering spores in every colony of the planet, then hijacked the Earthborn drones. The drones, from all around the world, flew to the nearest airlocks and out to the blimps. The blimps slowly moved away from the colonies and had their engines torn out by the drones.
"This is all controlled by one person using a dive system. If the Crystalids still think they can beat us, then let's see them try!" Loyd challenged, to cheers across the entire planet. "You all need to arm yourselves for the coming war. Many of you will die in the initial conflict but we have reinforcements coming ever closer from the outer colonies. They may not have as advanced technology as our crystals but they can still hold their own in a fight. Not to mention the entire fleet is piloted by three individuals."
More cheers rose up from around the world as people got to work making machines of war. Those who couldn't or didn't have the skills to do so continued doing their own work with a renewed vigor. Even the lowly office workers' production skyrocketed after Loyd's speech.
"We are fighting for our very existence here. It may cost us a planet but we will live on in the stars!" Loyd turned on a camera that showed him on the outside of the crawler. "This is a declaration of war against the Crystalids and those who sought to oppress us. Surrender will never be an option for us but we are not tyrants. If you wish to surrender, we will integrate you into our society as best we can. We already have one Crystalid helping us who can vouch for me."
Tiny stepped into the frame. "I am a Crystalid and I prove this message is true. If you have any further questions just go to TheMartianSwarm website. I'll be answering any questions you have as best I can," Tiny paused and raised his fist into the air. "FOR THE MARTIAN SWARM!"