The Horde.
As the Captain Killion and young Gabriel came around the final corner and walked into the market square, they were greeted by a most bizarre sight. Locusts, a whole lot of them were scattered everywhere ravaging whatever they could lay their mandibles on.
Their black wings buzzed, their blue eyes crackling, sparking with electricity even as their dark pincers which were essentially the extensions of their mandibles and sharp as swords were busy decapitating heads in a manner like had never been seen before.
"What on earth?" The Captain whispered, horrified at the bloody mess that the giant insects were making and giant they were, for locusts were as big as dogs, though varying in sizes and with wing spans that could rival that of a moderately sized Marabou stock.
Their sizes were also a matter of concern, but compared to the dragon horde that was yet to make an appearance after that altercation almost seven days ago, this situation seemed more manageable that is, apart from their numbers that were also quite astonishing. Where a dragon horde was made up of just six or ten dragons on average, these locust swarmed in numbers so high that they could have easily been a thousand or more, making them a huge and deadly swarm whose only resemblance to the real thing were their numbers and their morphology, that is, minus the deadly pincers that the metallic menace were using to tear down the market square.
A noisy horde of black metal, blue eyes and a lot of clanking wings!
"What do we do now?" Gabriel shouted to his captain above the noise of the clanking of metal and a thousand buzzing wings. For a moment,the captain remained quiet and baffled like the young sergeant was.
"I don't know. I bet though that the metal on things acts like some sort of armor, and those pincers–" The Captain trailed off even as Gabriel shivered at the man's unspoken words."Call in the hub for aerial support, meanwhile I will try to launch an attack on then even as I continue to try and figure out what we are dealing with."
"But...but Captain!" Gabriel tried to stop him, but the man in was already on the move, regardless of the threat to his own life. Gabriel watched as the Captain's visor came down and his suit came to life. The armor on his right hand transformed into a gun that he used to rain bullets one of the giant insects and as expected, the bullets did nothing to harm it. Instead, they clanked off the armour and fell down with out leaving a scrape. Did its armour absorb all that kinetic energy? The young soldier shivered at the thought of fighting another horde of hard skinned terrors. Was that even what they were? New terrors to replace the old ones that they hadn't seen in almost a week? He did not know which of the two he preferred. The flames or the blades and the noise that continued to grate at his nerves, irritating him to no end.
"Gabriel! Support!" The captain's voice screeched into his ear piece and like that officer remembered his orders and began acting. Reacting to his punches, the communication panel on his left hand slid open as he began the process of sending out a distress call towards the central Hub. He could only hope that the sensors they had had picked up on the new energies of the terrors and that a team had been dispatched and was already enroute. For with every moment that passed, a building crumpled or a life lost as the massive insects continued with their senseless decapitations and ravaging. What did a metal insect want with a carbon based life form? No one was spared, be it bird, livestock or human. Fortunately though, there seemed to be less of the latter than the other two that had fallen prey to these deadly insects.
As the blaring noise of the Hub's alarms began to fill the night air, the man managed a smile. His message had been well received and the warning bells set off to warn the town. From a distance a buzzing noise reached his ears. The whirring of rotar blades even as the choppers drew nearer. A sigh of relief escaped his lips and he also knew that the Captain felt the same way.
Fired up with a fresh morale, the man then dropped visor as he let out a loud battle cry and ran straight into the fray and the mess of blood and gore and of overturned shacks and decapitated bodies that had once belonged to a group of unsuspecting town folk even as he began to launch an assault on one of the black and extremely oversized locust.
His broad sword lashed out from behind him and straight at the insect. It collided with the black wings and
bounced back with a resonating clang that left his hands shaking. It had left no mark, but had rather instigated the insect to turn around and glare at him with a set of crackling blue eyes and an annoyed buzz.
"Connors!" the Captain's voice screeched in his ears even as he retracted a foot to take a step backwards. "Use your lasers! Nothing else will work on them." The Captain's voice shouted into his ear piece.
Lasers! He took another step backwards even as he dropped his sword to bring out his whip, a plasma whip that he went on to unleash on the advancing terrors. He raised his hand in the air and snapped back his wrist. The whip lashed out into the air in form of a dazzling stream of blue particulate energy, fluid as water before sectioning off the insects that lay in its path. A stream of blue sparks and fire was released out into the night sky as insect after insect collapsed into a dark heap of sparking metal before its buzzing stopped.
They were dead, something that had never happened with the other terrors.
"They are electric!" Gabriel exclaimed even as he turned around to release several pulses of concentrated laser beams on an attacking insect.
"Yes! But they are too many! We need to think of something else and fast." The Captain said as he took down two more only to be surrounded by five more of those locusts.
All around them the metallic arthropods milled, tearing down the market place and anything that seemed to lie in their path. More of the giant sized insects scaled up the walls and attacked the residential buildings. They tore the buildings apart, brick by brick and every once in a while several sets of metallic antenna would shoot up from holes located at the front of their round metal helmets. The antenna would turn and turn in every direction as if communicating with each other or seeking out something that remained a mystery to the officers, before retreating once again into the safety of their indestructible head gear as they continued with their rampage.
"Something is not right." Killion breathed out. He tore down two more of those giant insects and hid behind a crate to catch his breath.