Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 52: Our English Dead
Against all possible odds, the assault began according to plan. Nilbog's Hive had reacted to the breach as expected; that is, turn it into a killing zone. A dozen giants, each larger and thicker and more intelligent than anyone had seen before, had positions with clear lines of sight on the breach. From there, they could rain hellfire upon anything that dared poke its head through. In front of the giants, behind a wall of smooth, gray stone banded by black, shining metal, were somewhere between sixty and eighty shooters of both varieties. Anything or anyone that made it through both the breach and the giants' field of fire would have to contend with them .
Well.
Them, and one other thing.
In front of that firing was a horde. A milling, howling, seething horde of screamers. Their numbers were too vast, their motions too chaotic to get an accurate headcount, but the most conservative of estimates was somewhere between one and two thousand. Therein lay the diabolical beauty of the Hive's plan. Enter the breach? Die by giant-fire. Make it past that? The horde would tear you to pieces. Make it past that ? The firing line would vaporize what the screamers didn't get. Further, if by some miracle anyone managed to make it past all of that , there was still the rest of the city to deal with. The rest of the city, and whatever had made that brief, spine-tingling flare of light.
The Hive had both a good position and the numbers to back it up. An infantry assault would fail, utterly and completely. A parahuman assault would succeed – eventually – but the cost in lives would be the single largest since the Slaughterhouse's destruction. It would be a meat grinder. Eventually, the grinder would break. Eventually. A vehicular assault had the best chances, and even then the cost would be ruinous.
Which was why a – and there really was no other word for it – swarm of man-sized mechs was first through the breach. From the distance Taylor was at, it looked like the footage she'd seen on nature documentaries of locust swarms. A gray cloud that billowed and flowed and spun on its way down and into the breach. They were met by a solid wall of violet plasma and were destroyed by the dozen. The orange flame that marked each one's demise was swallowed by the unending wall of dark, deep violet. It took hundreds, thousands , of mechs. But they pushed through.
The locust mechs ignored the screamer horde entirely. They targeted the giants. The mechs weren't armed with any weaponry. They were the weapon. They flew headlong into each giant by the hundred and detonated. At first, the giants seemed unaffected, weathering the impacts and the explosions with ease. The mechs kept coming, driving into small wounds and widening them. They intercepted plasma blasts just as they were fired and the backwash scorched the filmy, weeping eyes shut. It took hundreds, but the giants died.
At the same time, in the same moments that the giants were being swarmed to death, so too was the firing line. Here, the locust mechs had a comparatively easier time of things. Their method remained unchanged; plow into the enemy until too damaged to continue, then explode. Shooters were torn to pieces by jagged, flying metal. Ichor sprayed as limbs were separated from bodies, as bodies were torn asunder. Metal screamed as damaged frames exploded. Shooters screamed as they were scorched by orange-red fire.
By the time the giants and the firing line had been seen to, there was less than five hundred of the locust mechs left. Under Dragon's direction, they dove into the screamer horde and put a sizeable dent in it. Thus did the continent's pre-eminent Tinker end her more direct contribution to the assault. There was still duties in communication, information processing, and a half-dozen other things, but that's a different matter. After the last of the mechs finished blowing up, Big Rig made his debut.
That is to say; a hulking behemoth of a vehicle that was just slightly too big for the breach. It was a two-story construct of thick, black armored plates that led to wide, bristling gun emplacements that led to vast, churning treads. It was the culmination of almost two years of collaborative effort between Big Rig and every other Tinker he could convince to work with him. It rumbled up, engines growling and howling, and stopped just outside the breach. The breach, it must be repeated, that it was just that much bigger than. After a moment's hesitation, the tension of which could be felt in the air, its operator chose to simply...plow through.
The vehicle punched through the weakened Hive stone and commenced its purpose of eradicating every hostile thing it could target. It spun slowly on its treads, guns ablaze, stitching shells the size of dogs across the charging horde. Bodies flew into the air in large numbers, dissolving in flight to rain black ash down on the battleground. The sound coming from the breach more akin to volcanic eruption than any combat-associated thing Taylor had ever heard. A primal roar that reach into the chest of every person witnessing and made it shake.
After long minutes of that sound, it came to an end. The resulting quiet felt just as deafening as the noise. With a pop , one of her eardrums repaired itself. Her breath, her heartbeat, the breathing and heartbeat of everyone around her was both too quiet and far too loud. Into that silence came Dragon's voice, calm and synthetic as always.
Beachhead established. Phase 2 commencing.
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Phase 2 began with the appearance of a shield. A dome of force within a dome of stone. There may or may not have been irony in that. Taylor never would be able to decide. From the roof of Big Rig's truck emerged a pylon of carbon fiber panels. They fit together loosely, leaving gaps and slits, and through these came a translucent, electric blue glow. Then came a sound like thunder and a rolling drumbeat, followed by the appearance of the shield. From the ground up, it rose, an interconnected array of translucent, electric blue hexagons. The array had just peaked and was beginning form the ceiling of the dome when Nilbog's Hive made their counterattack.
They neither came from underground nor beyond the shield. Instead, above the closing dome, came a ripple in the air. A flare of green light. A hole in the sky that wept green smoke and violet fire and showed beyond it an endless, black void. From that hole, that tear in the weave came a vessel. It emerged both slowly and entirely too fast, seeming to ooze forth and appear in the same motion. It hurt to look at. Taylor, swaying as the armored transport carried her and two dozen other capes to the Beachhead, forced herself to watch.
Enemy , her soul whispered, her Light shivering within her, as if revolted by the sight. Enemy.
It was vast, metallic and smooth. Black metal that shifted and shimmered, smoke dancing beneath its surface. Green light, the same green light, illuminated intricate engravings, statues and figureheads, and a script that was both jaggedly runic and elegantly looping. Its belly was segmented, like an insect, if the insect was a dweller in the blackest, coldest pit of Hell. There was void in the space between those segments, until there wasn't. Until a flare of light, this time purple, came from those void-spaces, and disgorged a host of creatures.
They were familiar.
Yet they weren't.
Nilbog's Hive, yet more.
Beneath her helm, Taylor bared her teeth.
Enemy.
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Big Rig's beast of vehicle wasted no time, guns tracking up and coming to furious, burning life. Bullets flew, faster than the naked eye, accompanied by tracer rounds – lances of fire that hit the plummeting horde and tore it to pieces. The ones that looked like screamers, but weren't, fell to pieces. Their bodies were too small to do anything else in the face of firepower of such caliber. The shooters that weren't died as well, rounds punching through insectoid chitin and spraying a black ichor that Taylor knew well. The transports' engines whined as they were driven to greater speed. Those within bore witness to the vessel birthing another clutch of monsters and those monsters falling through the now nearly-closed shield above the Beachhead. Almost none of the first clutch made it through.
Most of the second did.
The carbon-fiber pylon flared as the shield was completed. It began to pulse, almost on time, and spin slowly. As it span, a ripple ran through the shield, causing the hexagonic pattern to flare momentarily. The monsters that made it through the closing and that weren't destroyed by the massive vehicle's guns landed heavily atop it. They scattered across the surface, some producing weapons – actual weapons, blades and firearms made of some brassy metal and gleaming from within a pale green glow. The transports pushed through the shield as the monsters set about attacking Big Rig's beast.
Screamers that were too tall, too thin and spidery to be Nilbog's creations tore rents in three inch armor plating with long, tapering black fingers. The ease with which they did so was sobering. Shooters that moved too quickly, too coordinated to be the semi-mindless things Taylor had fought before used V-shaped firearms to shoot concentrated blasts of neon-purple plasma that stuck to the metal and burned like napalm. The big blades, now earning their name with huge, single edged cleavers of gleaming brass, carved into the vehicle's armor with sickening ease. They moved too smoothly, wore armor, and spoke, pointing and shouting. The words themselves were lost to distance and unfamiliarity, but there could be no doubting their existence.
Taylor watched as they seemingly attacked the beast at random. There seemed to be no coordination, no purpose to the locations they struck at. Sparks and metal plates flew, great lengths of cable were exposed and severed, and then...she realized. The monsters weren't after the guns or the engines. She looked beyond the beast, beyond the shield, and saw the horde of Nilbog's creation pressing against it. Screamers beyond counting pounded against the translucent, electric blue field. Shooters poured fire onto it. Giants stood, patient and still. Not the vehicle, but the shield.
Legend's voice came to every transport as they arrayed themselves alongside the beast. Doors opened and parahumans spilled out, leaping into flight to combat the monsters before they could destroy the pylon and bring the whole assault crashing down before it could begin. "All capes, all capes. Thinker analysis confirms new targets as extraterrestrial. I repeat, new targets are extraterrestrial. Treat as hostile. Do not allow them to destroy that pylon."
Taylor's boots hit Ellisburg dirt. She peered up to see her fellow heroes engaging the monsters. She breathed in, electricity crackling up her spine. Atop the beast, combat had broken out against the Enemy. They fought well, these new monsters, but the number and ferocity of the parahuman assault would soon overwhelm and annihilate them. She lifted her rifle, considering. She saw one of the big ones, sword in hand. It moved with purpose towards the pylon, lifting its massive blade.
She would have to be blind to miss from this distance.
Crack!
She wasn't.
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