[Story] Tales of Annihilation -- Latest episode: #29 Blood and Fire IV

(NOTE: the first part is on the previous page)

The transporter finally docked. He wanted to personally greet Cerberus and execute him on the spot. He was halway to the hangar from where he previously was, but then, everything shook for a moment, and the human-made alarms sounded, emitting their noise which he found so irritating, but never managed to disable them fully.

He checked in with the logs; and he found it outrageous what he saw. There was a gigantic explosion in the hangar where Cerberus' transport docked. He wondered, what could have possibly happened. “Did the fool just blow up?” he said to himself, and then, he ordered to measure the amount of damage it the explosion had done.

He tried to initiate a communication channel with Cerberus, but there was no response. Two minutes after the explosion, he was notified, that Synchronous forces boarded the ship, entering through the enormous hole that the explosion bit into of the hull.

Nero remained calm; he tried to quickly come up with an effective plan to repel the invaders. However, most of his forces were either out in space or on the planet. There was no other option, but to personally take care of whatever scum that infested his precious Valhalla.

The internal sensors were not fully functional, so there was no way for him to tell the number of enemies on board, or that where they were located. He commanded every combat bot that remained on board to inspect every hallway, every room, every hangar, every storage, in groups of three, and annihilate any foe they come by.

A second notification arrived to Nero's personal interface. According to it, Synchronous ground forces also turned against his units on the surface. He ordered every unit he had down there to retreat to captured fortifications and hold them until commanded otherwise. He needed all of his attention to deal with the troubles in the space.

He marched through a corridor that was leading to a generator room, when he reached a crossing, and enemy bots opened fire at him from his left. He immediately turned at them, and responded with a volley of his plasma gun, which out of the six bots, turned five into dust and smoke. He fired three more shots to get rid of the last, but it fled into a smaller hallway, where Nero could not fit.

“The cursed human design,” he said. The entire spaceship was designed to fit the needs of humans, and since they were tiny creatures compared to Nero, their hallways and rooms were a lot smaller. It took him many years to redesign the insides of Valhalla to fit the size of machines, but in most parts of the ship, the hallways were still too tiny for him.

Since the Synchronous was using it to their advantage, he only could rely on his much tinier bots. He remotely took control of some of them – six at a time, simultaneously – as there was no room for mistakes, he wanted to be certain that nothing goes wrong.

This decision of his seemed to have worked, but the enemy also seemed to have endless numbers. With every bot killed, three more showed up elsewhere.

He was reading through the logs again and again to make sure he did not overlook anything important, then it struck him, that while the hole was open, there would be more invaders. He checked the reports on the damage caused by the explosion, and concluded that the breach was too large to be repaired in time. Something else had to be done.

He commanded all of his idle fabricators to find a group of combat bots, and go along with them to seal down every single corridor that leads out of the breach area. That would buy the some time, he concluded.

More dreadful reports were sent to him. Other than the leakage of coolant; calculations had shown, that the Valhalla was in-fact losing from its height and began to slowly hurtle towards the surface. According to the numbers, the spaceship would crash into the sea in eight hours.


He ordered a status report on the navigation engines, but there was no response. He sent out some spider scouts to check those areas, and they reported back in a few minutes. He looked at the visuals of each scout, and it became apparent, that the navigation mechanisms were manually disabled and disconnected from the main network.

He sent out some engineers to activate them again, but they were ambushed on their way to the engine rooms, and Nero could not reach those areas due to his size.

The Valhalla was doomed to crash into the sea. To make his day even worse; more Synchronous forces arrived through the giant teleporter.


Nero concluded that his plans to kill Cerberus was flawed since the beginning. First; they would have never agreed to ally with Legonis Machine. Second; they wanted to destroy the Valhalla since the very beginning, since it is a bionic creation, and a disgrace to machine kind; and to do so, they would exploit any given opportunity. And third; he could have easily destroyed the rebels on his own.

He realized that he made another great mistake when he sent the majority of his forces to invade the planet, instead of holding them back on board. Cerberus most likely calculated the amount of forces the Valhalla possibly could hold, and made his decision based on that.


“Why are the cannons not firing?!” he though. And indeed, the cannons all over the ship's surface were idle! What was happening to him? He was no longer the flawless machine he once was; the amount of bad decisions he made was simply not fit for a true commander. “There is still time,” he concluded. “I can still fix this.”

But the moment he said that, another great explosion shook the structure of the ship; the lights around him turned off, the cannons stopped firing, despite having only started moments ago, and all of the sensors stopped giving him signals.

“The power generator,” he thought. How could he forget about the power generator? Securing the heart of the ship should have been the most logical thing to do...


A communication channel with Cerberus had been initiated from aboard the Synchronous flagship:


“It seems that your arrogance had you blinded,” Cerberus said. “Did you really think we did not know you intended to turn against us the moment we are done with the cursed ones?”

“You are just like them, Nero. The moment you took over bionic technology, you also took over bionic features; arrogance is one of them. Look at yourself; you are weak, you are making mistakes! Perhaps, you may have been cursed, even before you claimed the Valhalla, perhaps not. There is no way to answer that. However, The Synchronous will not tolerate anyone of the machine kind, who carries the curse of the bionics, and therefore, I sentence you to die, along with all of those on the planet.”


The communication channel then closed. The Valhalla, with Nero on board, continued its fall towards the sea...

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amazing.

Wow, nice turn of events! I feel sorry for that ship though...

That's a good suggestion. What kind of descriptions would you like to see for the characters?

Done.
I've also tidied the first post a bit, so now it looks pretty. Turns out the so called "Rich Text Editor" is not so rich afterall...

Roger that!

We will hear a lot about both giants and humans in future episodes.
As for the progenitors; I try to remain close to the official lore, so as a result, progenitors will remain the 'mysterious race' in the story, until there is more about them released in the official lore.

Considering, that both of the other major fan-fics have Osiris, the Revenant leader starring in them; that is very likely.
Every once in a while, the faction leaders will show up in the story; be it something significant, like turning the tides of a battle, or something unimportant, like jumping in to say a hello.

Oh, noes!

Thank you for your support!
I'll try my best to continue on creating a nice experience for everyone who reads it.
Hopefully, there will be no conflicts with the official lore as it gets released further in the future. By the way, I sometimes wonder if the official lore guy reads these fan made stories.

I should be studying math right now...


PS.: Always remember to sleep six to eight hours daily. Not sleeping enough has the risk of creating serious mental and physiological illnesses. Not sleeping for excessive amounts of times can also cause death.

Your new sig is perfect and the new first post looks great! For the character list I'd suggest something like this:

• Aruora - A commander in the unnamed rebel alliance. She was rescued from the FactionThatICan'tRememberTheNameOf and is in love with OtherCommanderWhosNameIAlsoForgetSoLetsCallHimBob.

and then continue on like that to cover the major commanders, aliens, places, and objects in the story. (I'd suggest putting things like the transformy-into-giant statue, the Valhalla, Nero, and other things along that line there.

I request more tales as soon as you can provide ^^

As requested, here is a list of commanders with short descriptions. The list of telian characters will be released later. (Tell me if I missed someone from the list. )
This list will be updated from time to time as more characters are included.
This list also includes the faction leaders as seen here.

WARNING! THIS LIST MAY CONTAIN POSSIBLE SPOILERS.​

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The List of Commanders from Tales of Annihilation

• Aurora – A commander who'd chosen to be a female. She is a member of the Nameless Alliance. Was temporarily a commander of the Synchronous after they forcefully altered her memories as an experiment. Later she was saved by her allies, and recovered her lost memories. She is in love with Commander Derrick, who is also a member of the Nameless Alliance.
  
  
• Cerberus – A commander of The Synchronous.
  
  
• Derrick – A proud commander who'd never lost a battle. He is a member of the Nameless Alliance, who fearlessly risked his life to save his loved one, Aurora, from The Synchronous' hands, then helped her recover her lost memories with the help of Commander Odin. Former member of Legonis Machina.
  
  
• Hector – Commander of The Synchronous who was killed by Derrick.
  
  
• Hepitus – A commander of the Nameless Alliance. Former member of The Synchronous.
  
  
• Invictus – Leader of Legonis Machina.
  
  
• Iywin – A commander of the Nameless Alliance. Former member of The Synchronous.
  
  
• Jesper – A humble commander of the Nameless Alliance. Formerly was the member of The Foundation.
  
  
• Metrarch – Metrarch the Machinist is the leader of The Synchronous.
  
  
• Nemicus – Inquisitor Nemicus is the leader of The Foundation.
  
  
• Nero – A high ranked commander of Legonis Machina, who during a scouting mission, stumbled into an ancient human battleship, the legendary Valhalla. The battleship was so powerful, it had the firepower of a thousand other ships, and was almost indestructible. He claimed as his own, and turned it into his flagship.
  
  
• Odin – The chosen leader of the Nameless Alliance. Though, he never wanted to lead them, they insisted for him to become their leader. He was a Synchronous commander prior to turning into exile upon finding out about his emotions. Later he formed the Nameless Alliance together with the other exiled commanders.
  
  
• Osiris – Leader of The Revenants.
  
  
• Raegon – Former commander of Legonis Machina. Now the member of the Nameless Alliance. His tempers often change unexpectedly, and may make decisions he would normally not make, or get into heated debates against his allies. Otherwise, he has a mostly quiet personality.
  
  
  
• Seth – A Revenant commander and one of the closest advisors to Commander Osiris, the Revenant faction leader. One day he found a Legonis Machina research facility where they developed a power generator which could produce unimaginable amounts of energy. He broke into the facility and stole the generator, then he attempted to travel back in time to overthrow Osiris, but the process failed, and he ended up being captured by an alien race...
  
  
• Thelonius – A member of The Synchronous. He was killed during an attempt to ambush Commander Nero's mighty warship, the Valhalla.
  
  
• Tybalt – Commander of the Nameless Alliance. Nobody knows which faction he belonged to prior to joining the alliance; he claims he doesn't know either.
  
  
• Uther – A commander of The Foundation. He was lost during an infiltration mission to a Legonis Machina research facility.
  
  
• Warwick – A proud commander of The Foundation, who relentlessly defended a planet to save a group of bionics who he'd converted to worship The Founder. However, he'd failed doing so, and in the process, the planet they resided on was shattered. He may have failed, but even so, he built a massive fortification on the shattered planet, which became known as the Shattered Fortress.

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Looks great! Thanks for adding it!

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The Great Migration

The commanders of the Nameless Alliance could scarcely believe what they seen; the Valhalla was on a descending path towards the sea, and it would inevitably land in the sea. In the meantime, Synchronous forces wiped out the last of Nero's forces on the ground.

Eventually, the ship crashed into the sea, and was overrun by the blue masses of water. There had been no signal as for Nero survived the crash, but neither there was evidence of his death.


“This sure turns the tides, my friends,” Jesper said; and he was correct. Without the firepower of the Valhalla, they were given enough time to finish the mighty engines that would move the planet away from the battle.

The ruins left behind by the giant cannon had been reclaimed and replaced by one of these engines. Aurora was personally supervising the building process, and carefully rechecked a thousand times that the fabricators followed the schematics perfectly.

She was personally overseeing the preparations from the top of a nearby hill. A squadron of peregrines patrolled the skies above her, seeking for scouts before they could spot what they were planning; jamming the radar was not everything what it took to keep such project hidden from enemy sensors. Fortunately, as it seemed, the forces of nature seemed to be on their side that day, as thick clouds covered the skies above them, hiding the surface from eyes of curious satellites.

She looked to the ground below her, and saw a tiny furry creature struggling to climb out of under a tree, that was likely overturned by one of the heavy machines that worked in the area. It looked very weak, and her sensors detected that it was crying out for help. She could not determine what kind of animal it was, as after a quick search, she found no match in any of the databases.

She bent down, and easily lifted the tree that by the looks of it, may have weighted several tonnes. The creature slowly and cautiously crawled away, giving a suspicious gaze at Aurora.

Aurora could now see the whole of the animal, as its body was no longer covered by the tree, but even then, there was no match in the database. Her sensors curiously examined the poor thing, but then...


“This is the perfect time to act,” Odin rallied the other commanders across the planet. And right away, the gigantic engine in Aurora's outpost activated, and a bright tower of flame emerged out of it, far into the atmosphere. The ground started to shake; and ancient buildings of the once proud bionic race started to collapse, one by one, but according to the status reports, the ancient temple of the giants endured.

The planet was moving. Aurora directed her sensors back to where the tiny furry thing was a few moments back, but it was not there anymore. She scanned the area, and found it running in terror towards the area where a beautiful forest once was; it ran directly into a huge power distribution facility, and the first wire it touched struck the poor being with nearly a billion volts, and it turned into ashes in a friction of a second.

Aurora felt rage; she wanted to blow the whole facility away with a well-aimed shot of her uber cannon, but she knew it was not an option at the time. She wanted to mourn the creature, but the metal body she had lacked the functions some bionics had to mourn the dead. She wished it would be all over, once and forever; the whole war, the Synchronous, the Legonis Machina, the weapons, the machines... EVERYTHING!

She did not realize at first, but then she had noticed that rage had overflown her circuits. It was something she did not understand – nobody did. She wanted to explode right there on the spot, but her love for Derrick somehow overwrote the self-destruction command... The feelings... they've taken control...

Aurora's system suddenly started an emergency reboot, and after two minutes, all of her systems were on-line once again.

The rage was no longer there, and she was able to control her actions once more.

(Continued in next post due to character limit)

She checked the report logs of the evens of the past five minutes since the engines were active; it showed that the planet was moving, and Cerberus' fleet struggled to keep up with them, but in the last minutes before they activated the thrusters, the Synchronous managed to drop six powerful battleships in the sea and an aircraft carrier.

“Do we have some nukes?” Jesper said in the comm channel.

“None,” a short and simple answer followed by Hepitus.

“Their fighters are taking down our torpedo bombers,” Derrick said.

“Should I send some of my peregrines?” Aurora suggested.

“Don't! All of them are required around the engines. We can't afford to lose any of them.” Jesper said.

“They are bombarding the shores.” Hepitus said. “But that was expected.”

“Just let them,” Odin said. “We can't spare any units right now.”

Aurora agreed with him. Every unit was needed to secure the engines, and the ships can be dealt with, once Cerberus was out of the equation; left behind by the planet. The calculated chance of success for their plan to work was ninety-nine percent, but if they had moved resources away, it would have dropped to seventy-nine.

Cerberus' fleet was still after them, desperately trying to get back into the planet's gravity well. Many of their orbiting units crashed into the planet's surface after they had ignited the engines and the planet started to move. That was certainly unexpected for him. Aurora wondered what his next move would be.

The answer struck her quick, and brought in a great but not very pleasant surprise.

“They are heading for the statue!” Odin warned.

“The statue should be safe in its shell,” Jesper said.

“It's protected against most weaponry, but it is not well-defended if it is claimed. They could easily open the shell, and destroy the statue.” Odin advised. “That, or threaten us with it.”

“The Synchronous are not the kind of machines who threaten their enemies. Besides, there is no point to threaten us; he knows that we know he would destroy us in either case. Iywin said.

“We have thirty commanders here. Please, don't tell me nobody has any idea!” Derrick complained.

“What if we defended it ourselves? That way, we would not have to spare units.” Jesper said.

“A plan that worths considering,” Derrick said.

“There is no time for considering,” Odin said. “I have done the prior calculations. The plan has almost ninety percent chance for success, but we must expect casualties.”

“Heading to the statue on a transport,” Hepitus announced, followed by the reports by many others.

Aurora also called in a transport to deliver her quickly to the square where the statue stood tall – hidden in a box of metal.


Thirty commanders gathered in the square, and began building up fortifications with their nano-lathe tools; some strengthening the anti-air, some setting up mines, some others building walls around the area.

The commanders were all busy working on their tasks, then the ground beneath one of their comrades had collapsed, revealing a dungeon beneath the square.

Odin, the four-legged commander crawled there to examine what lies beneath the floor. “Interesting!” he said.

“We could use this to our advantage,” Iywin said.

“We can't,” Odin said.

“Why? What are your reasonings?” Iwyn demanded.

“We need these dungeons intact, if we are to ever find out the secrets of our relic.” he said.

“There is nothing down there, just thousand years old dust and some useless rags. We examined nearly ninety-four percent of everything that was left behind by the giants, yet, we found absolutely nothing related to the statue. The chances of actually finding anything in the dungeons is less than three percent; two point zero zero nine eight percent, to be exact.” Iywin said.

“Your numbers don't lie, my friend, but if we ever want to live like the bionics, we must leave behind the calculations, and act like they would; without reason, with courage.” Odin said.

“If you want to be courageous, then why don't you drop yourself in the middle of their approaching army, and be a living bomb for us?” Iywin said. “Like the heroes, the martyrs of the history databases.”

“There is difference between recklessness and courage,” Odin reasoned. “Even the bionics could separate the two from each-other.”

“The bionics are long gone, and so will be us, if we don't act.” Raegon said. Aurora was surprised he'd joined the dispute, as he remained silent up to this point; he hadn't spoken a single word since he arrived to the planet.

“The bionics are gone, but we are responsible for keeping their memories and their heritage alive.” Odin said.

“To whom?” Raegon asked. “The so called gods that the giants feared so much? Or the 'Spirits Beneath The Walls' that the writings on that walls were telling about?”

“The what?!” Jesper asked.

Raegon turned towards Jesper, “The Spirits Beneath The Walls,” he said. “The other day, while making the preparations, I found a piece of writing that told about them.”

“What exactly did the writings say?” Odin asked.


“Forgive me for interrupting, and ruining it for you all, but they are approaching.” Derrick said. “We'll have plenty of time to find the spirits and the walls, once we get rid of this army.”


“Line up, my friends,” Odin said. “The Synchronous will forever remember this day.”

The thirty commanders lined up, forming a straight line over the perfectly prepared choke point they had built. Some of them climbed to the top of the walls on both sides to handle the artillery, for which they had no time to prepare the functions that would automate them, they had to be handled manually. The others remained at the choke point, behind covers made of metal plates that perfectly protected them from projectiles coming from the front.

The first enemy tank appeared on the horizon, followed by a couple of bots. They moved slowly, most likely preparing for the right moment to charge in. Aurora knew they were most likely aware of their fortification.

Hepitus sent an air scout to check out what was inbound. “He's most likely expecting to overwhelm us; they have no artillery.” he said.

“Then let us ruin his day!” Jesper said from the top of the wall, behind a large cannon.


First there was just a single loud blast, then it was followed by more and more, until it was not possible to differentiate them; just a giant mess of loud noises.

The artillery pounded continuously, shooting the rain of neutronium shells up to the sky in a beautiful arc, causing beautiful bright explosions at the spot at which they landed. Aurora found it a beautiful sight; the fire, the partially melted metal scraps that scattered and flied everywhere in the distance, combined with the couple of bots that were thrown into the air by a land mine they stepped on.

The bots melted under the heavy artillery fire in an instant, but some of the tanks outlasted them, and crawled towards the choke point, where her and the others awaited them.

As they reached close enough, Odin sent the signal, and the commanders unleashed a massive volley of uber cannon shots against the heavily armored vehicles. Their massive plates melted away the moment the bright blue projectiles touched their metal shells, leaving nothing behind, but a pile of scrap in the ashes of dry grass that burned away in mere seconds in the tremendous heat.

“Gunships!!” Hepitus warned.

The gunships rushed in quickly, and within moments, completely wrecked the artillery stances on the walls, and then they were ripped to shreds by the anti-air. The commanders handling the cannons remained unscratched – more firepower is needed to damage a commander after all.

Hepitus' scout also reported that Cerberus' army splits into three forces; the main force still heading to the choke-point, while the other two trying to get around it.

“We definitely need those tunnels now,” Iywin said.

“No, there must be another way!” Odin insisted. “First, we must repair the artillery.”

“No hope for that, at least, not in time. They are far too damaged.” Jesper said.

“I'll gladly give my life for the heritage of whoever created the statue!” Raegon announced, which was rather unexpected, at least, that is what Aurora though at first, but Raegon was always known to have a temper that could change a lot within a short period of time. She watched him as he picked up a large piece of plate, and held it as a shield with his nano-lathe arm, then proceeded to march forward against the enemy forces, bathing them in uber cannon fire; wrecking eight to eleven of them every second as he marched forward while the others, including Aurora followed and supported him from behind.

“Now, that is courage,” Iywin said.

“Agreed,” Odin put in.

The Synchronous forces were slowly repelled, and their advantage of numbers disappeared.


A notification arrived to Aurora's personal interface; Cerberus' flagship was too far away to send direct orders to his units on the surface. They carried on, following the last commands they received before they got out of Cerberus' influence, and there was no hope for him to ever catch up again.

The alliance soon annihilated all of the Synchronous forces on the planet, seized their battleships, and the planet was on its way to their new solar system...


The mysteries of the newly discovered dungeons needed to be uncovered...

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magnificent! this just gets better and better!

Exactly! Great job!

excellent work, I read all the chapters/stories and loved them all, you truly put your heart into these pieces of work
please keep going!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!


I'm going to use this opportunity to announce! Because you know, I like announcements!

The next episode, #12, is in the works! Yay! The title may be Blood and Fire, though, this may be not the final title.
The episode will be focused on the telians and their seemingly endless number of conflicts among themselves.

The character list of telian characters is also in the works, and may arrive after #12 was released. Blood and Fire is going to introduce many new characters.

So, stay tuned! And as always, if you spot anything that seems not ok in the story, don't be shy and throw it at my face! I appreciate critiques.


PS.: Always brush your teeth before going to bed! Saliva production is slowed down at night, and therefore, more remnants of food may remain in the mouth, providing a great environment for bacteria with all the plaque and stuff.

love the brush your teeth!
I am liking how mysterious the humans are!
POSSABLESPOILERSINMYMIND:
I think the humans built the commanders and gave them AI, and accidently the AI evolved killing the humans and then raging killing all the biotic creatures as was there "mission" just my version of events BUT ONLY THE FUTURE WILL TELL!!!

Awesome story, keep it up!

Oh, well... this is not really my day, I guess.
Windows updater borked up... right now I'm waiting for the damn thing to revert the changes.
To top it off, after weeks of hopeless searching on the net, I can't get my AMD driver to properly work with Ubuntu Linux on my laptop. Oh, well...


So, right now, I'm sitting here, gazing at the ceiling, thinking on what should happen next in the upcoming episode.

By the way... this post is a bump, disguised as some sort of ranting.


PS.: Contrary to the common misbelief, pineapples don't grow on trees. They grow on these little things...

​

They are not bushes either; just tiny plants that grow something like 1 meter high.

I've had the most success with the open source AMD drivers so you may want to try that.

I'd stick with the open source driver too, only if it wasn't an Intel/AMD hybrid card.
The driver itself actually works, and I can switch between the low power and dedicated VGA, the problem I'm having is that it borks up the suspend function, which in case of a laptop, is rather important. It can suspend when the lid is closed, however, it will never wake up, and I have to hard reset it.

But I need the AMD driver, because otherwise it won't switch between the dedicated and low power graphics, thus draining the battery, and burning off my balls with all the heat it generates.
As a temporary solution, I ended up disabling the dedicated card in BIOS.

EDIT: And by the looks of it... I'm going to have to reinstall my Windows...

Hm, and that's way you should just stick with custom builds.
I'm no Linux expert so I can't really help you but maybe @SXX could.