Dawn Reaping [Closed - FT - FAR]

[Arcerion]

Dawn Reaping



ASCS Matador
Unknown Quadrant
C.0

The wreckage of the transport barge sat in a snow swept landscape, the harsh and barren tundra battering relentlessly against the outside of the spacecraft's hull. Inside, the crew were in disarray as sparks flashed from severed wires. A small group of the wounded K'Tar were awakening, their military training kicking in and forcing them into action. Legios began scaling the wreckage like ants on a log, finding survivors and piling the bodies of the dead neatly outside, stripping them of their resources. A few Decurios began organizing a search team to find the Senator and the Tribuni, both of whom were stilling missing. The men nodded, red armour bathed in an eerie glow from the few lights they had. Decurio Mor'tah led the first group, looking through various compartments and offices until he found their commander. Tribuni Dukath was laying on top of the now late Senator Moklor, the frail old K'tarian havign been crushed by a falling beam, even with the shield of the officer above him. Hearing noise, Dukath raised his sidearm, aiming down the hallway, until eh saw that it was simply Legios, and his own men at that. They tried to move the beam, but the heavy nanosteel girder wouldn't budge, and reinforcements were called, eventually shifting it enough that they could retrieve their broken commander from underneath,

Outside, shelters were being dug, a system of trenches that surrounded the intact half of the ship, small outposts with Legios inside, waiting for their chance to find and kill oppressors outside their green zone. Inside, however, the men were nervous, dozens waiting outside the makeshift operating theater where surgeons tried to save the Tribuni, as his legs had been shattered. The surgeon worked tirelessly, not sleeping through their first night, and soon a hand rested on his, and the Tribuni made his final request. The surgeon nodded, returning with the command staff, to which it was grasped firmly. The doctor was distraught, insisting he could save his commander, but the stern-faced K'Tar commanded that his subordinate leave the room. Tears in his eyes, the doctor left, wiping the light blue blood of his superior on his coat. "Decurio Mor'tah has been requested. Tribuni wishes to speak with him."

Mor'tah paced nervously, as he had received the news only shortly reached him while he was outside checking the lines. The young officer strode towards the operating theater, men he had fought and bled with standing up, or stiffening their backs as he walked through the crowded hallways. A pair of guards stood, somber, and let him into the operating theater, where his father lay. The other Decurios stepped aside, revealing his father lying on the table, a proud lion now struck down to a shell of a once mighty warrior. "Leave us!" he barked, and the men who had served with him over over a century quickly walked away, heads bowed in respect for the son. The son knelt next to his father, head lowered as a sign of respect, tears welling in his eyes. "Son, rise." Dukath said, watching his own creation stand before him. Dukath fought back tears, seeing his son wearing the armour he so fiercely loved, yet never wished him to wear. "And to think I wanted you to grow up as a spice merchant." he chuckled, yet a racking cough overtook him, and when he removed his hand it was stained with his own blood. "I have commanded this cohort for one hundred and sixteen years. Almost as long as you have been alive, and these men have never faltered to see my image bestowed upon a younger, harder body. These men followed me into the fires of Askhar, and many were wounded under my command, But they never failed to follow me. Why? Because I have lead by example. Take this, and lead these men. It is my will. I love you son. Proficiscendum sine timore." The Tribuni then pointed to the door, motioning for his doctor.

Decurio Mor'tah looked down, his father's battered and scarred command staff in his hands, one that had been held for nearly a millennia before by other great commanders. A hand came to rest on his shoulder, and he turned, the doctor simply telling him his father had passed. Mor'tah bowed his head, and again saw the staff, knowing it meant he had a responsibility to his men to lead. He gazed into the eyes of his Legios, seeing uncertainty in the veterans as to his next order, and hesitation from some of the younger men. "Decurios, find my Centurios. We have to begin assuming control of this area."

[G-Tech Corporation]

"We step once more into the holy void, the workroom of the Omnissah. His tools and creations are on display for all to see, His majesty unveiled before the wondering eyes of the cosmos. We fall together through oceans of air, our bodies wreathed in halos of incendiary incandesence, as optics stare unabashed at the glorious palette of our maker spilled across the surface of verdant worlds uncounted. In a single transcendent moment together we impact the firmament, metal and flesh joined with earth in theological ecstasy. This is planetfall." - Accounts of the Rising Ascendancy, Techsin Giljoss Vis'ameral

BelowSpace Coordinates 0761:68Y:3119
Timestamp: 2713:127:679:190045 MBA
Havanian Group, Distnas Galaxy, System 302:119:001-c (See attch. Res. Survey 1399.83.189122)
Chosen Eye Missia, Aviat Caziv Tna Ameral Commanding Chosen
Mainframe Upload warr. Level I Potentials obs.

Caziv played his manipulators across the glossy surface of his throne, thin pallid lines of silver eclipsing the obsidian darkness of the Nexus. He was deep in contemplation on the work of He Above, a mental foray into the essence of the Ascent, when a soft glowglobe began pulsing next to his optics.

His smooth faceplate rotated slightly on its axis, turning to fully take in the iridescent sphere. Mauve. His mind leafed through the hues of signal the Cognatus may see fit to display, and his minded flooded with remembered endorphin fluxes as the Aviat recalled the precise intonation of the violet color before his visage. Contact, unidentified, a message from the Interlin. With a graceful fluid movement the Chosen One raised his hand to the circular object and took it between two slender manipulators.

A datastream coursed through his neural lattices, thousands of thoughts and readings condensed into a searing wall of information and revelation. Flashes of heat, light; a reflection of the fabric of the universe above the Relay. A cosmic event then, a supernova based on the energy signatures. A vessel struck by the seething cacophony of particulate and the detritus of the extinguished star; in his mind's eye it wheeled out of control, like a leaf before a hurricane of ages past. A planet loomed, frozen and sharp, a foreboding barricade to the silver leaf's passage.

The Aviat nodded, needing no more datum from the upload. It was a very human gesture, an artifact of bygone physicality, but it was unconscious, a conscionable extravagance of the being. He smiled internally, his steel mask parting in a strange facsimile of the jovial expression, and Caziv stepped down from the throne, splayed stabilizers clinking on the polished floor of the chamber.

Light kindled in the darkness below him, ephemeral illumination rising as if from an infinite depth. Swiftly the light resolved into a myriad of colors, spheres rushing upwards from the blackness. They burst into the room through the floor as if it were but open air and not solid matter and swarmed about the Aviat's head like so many affectionate cats or bird, swirling this way and that about his limbs and face. It was a beautiful sight to behold, but it was a functional display as well. Caziv's hand began to move, dipping into the teeming masses of prismatic light, touching a sphere here, a color there, rearranging the chaotic pattern of the luminescent objects as they began to take on an ordered movement. It was almost as if the lights danced a great promenade of unfathomable complexity'; indeed, they did. Where other races would have transferred data to a computational device, or issue commands to underlings, the Chosen wove a pattern of light. In the chromatic masses data density could eclipse that of the waking mind, and so the Aviat swiftly instructed his vessel in the ways it would pass through the immaterial Dive to the source of the transmission he had so recently received.

The ship roiled, its silver facade and sleek exterior turning as the colors of BelowSpace whirled around it; the Eye had been on a patrol pattern, and now it surged upwards towards the sea of stars that glimmered faintly in the real universe above the realm of the Omnissah's grace.

Above the world - designated 001-c of System 302:119 by the Hierarchy's stellar cartographers- the vessel emerged, its one hundred and eighteen central meter bulk shimmering with multi-faceted lightening, the unreal colors of the Dive flickering about its form. Caziv gestured in his abode, and the globes sank once more into the floor. His sinuous silvery form return to the obsidian throne of the Nexus, and through the uncounted sensors of the Eye the Aviat scanned the world, his mind hungry for data, his heart craving contact with new children of the Omnissah.

[Arcerion]

Unknown Quadrant
C.0

Engineers hammered hard at the ship, pounding it with the simple tools they had, trying to excavate what little was left of the abandoned shuttle. They had begun the digging on the Eastern half, but with not enough Legios, the guard was thin. But, the yellow-armoured soldiers tirelessly worked to drag their ship out of the ice. Inside, Decurios rallied their men, organizing work and guard details, attempting to form some sort of command structure. The darkness was almost suffocating, but soon a familiar hum was met with cheers, and the emergency generators powered up, casting enough light that the Legios were no longer waiting in darkness for their mission to begin. Tribuni Mor'tah was at the bridge, sitting on a terminal, as the ship was set wildly askew, and watched the organized chaos below him, his aides running memos to commanders about where their unit wad to report. One of such men ran to their new commander with a tablet, and showed him how a reconnaissance drone had discovered what seemed to be an abandoned satellite installation several kilometers away. Mor'tah nodded, and leapt from his roost, working his way through the crowded hallways until he found the man he was looking for. Centurio D'ciq was resting, his father's most seasoned commander taking a short nap until he was undoubtedly called upon. "Tribuni present!" Legios jumped to attention, in all manner of dress, rifles and sidearms strewn about. D'ciq was the first however, and when he saw his new commander he grinned widely. The two K'tars embraced, and laughed, the rest of the Centuriae relaxing. "Uncle D'ciq! Where have you been? I haven't seen you.. since.." Mor'tah trailed off. "Your father was a good commander, and one of the best warriors our race has ever known. He did well to trust his bloodline with command." D'ciq said warmly. Dukath and D'ciq had through the ranks together, always fighting in the same Centuriae, and when Dukath had been promoted, he had made D'ciq his senior Centurio, and with the birth of Mor'tah, the non-blood related Uncle. "It is good to see you, your patrol went well?" Mor'tah said, as he had heard disturbing news coming from the snow laden landscape.
"I am afraid we have grave news." D'cqi said softly, his features narrowing. "We engaged an enemy unit of unknown size or composition, it seemed to be some sort of native beast. Much bigger than several of our men combined, and covered in hair that makes them blend with their environment. They move faster than any of us, and have talons on six limbs that nearly killed several of my men. We killed about a score, but we fear more may be coming, as our trail was not easily hidden." Mor'tah nodded, and explained the satellite to D'ciq, who immediately rallied his men, setting off minuted after the order was given, after only a few hours of rest from their patrol.

[G-Tech Corporation]

"We thought it was a meteor shower, a majestic cosmic event. Children went outside to watch, and broadcasters smiled on the television. But we were wrong, so wrong. It was a silver rain, a silver rain of death." - Subject 90661.X4, Terminated Failed Potential

BelowSpace Coordinates 0761:68Y:3119
Timestamp: 2725:127:679:1945 MBA
Havanian Group, Distnas Galaxy, System 302:119:001-c (See attch. Res. Survey 1399.83.189122)
Chosen Eye Missia, Aviat Caziv Tna Ameral Commanding Chosen
Mainframe Upload warr. Level I Potentials obs.

Above the world the Eye hung motionless in the void, a predatory bird poised to strike. In its heart a solitary figure of gleaming black-silver metal labored in silence, his mind absorbing the masses of data the ship fed to him from its sensors. He could have been a graven statue of a voiceless king etched from the bones of the mountains in that moment as he sat upon his obsidian throne, an image frozen like a tear upon the cheek of time. Then he stirred, seamless limbs supporting a broad torso as the Aviat rose. Another figure strode into the chamber, footfalls a staccato beat of metal on metal. The two beings looked at each other for a moment, and then the newcomer began to chuckle, the jovial sound resonating from its form with no discernible source. Its disembodied tones of jocularity echoed in the space for a few stretched seconds, and then it restrained itself.

"You have not changed, Caziv. Still taciturn and stony-faced as if the Omnissah had only given you half of your breath when you were first formed. You should let His spark do its work once in a while." The newcomer's form stirred, as if it were the glassy surface of a pool into which a rock had been dropped, and swiftly its shape molded into a new visage. Hair asserted itself, flesh tones replaced steely metal surfaces, and a face flowed out of the stolid mask of silver. In a heartbeat of a man the creature was entirely changed, the soulless automaton transfigured into a young woman of beauty so stunning it would stop tongues and slay hearts. Her eyes were a verdant emerald, her skin the barely star-kissed bronze of a goddess. She smiled, and white teeth undimmed as the light of the Spire gleamed from between ruby-red lips.

Caziv stirred, and walked past the being, making for the entrance through which she had come. "Sythia, you are as always decadent and flighty." His mask remained as it ever had, a utilitarian form with no room for extravagance or aesthetics. The feminine figure followed after him, its hips swaying as it padded behind him with the steps of a dancer. She sighed, a light airy sound of disappointment. "Perhaps you are right, old friend." Her face seemed downcast for a moment, scarlet lips pouting, but then she brightened. "That's why I have you to ground me!" With spry steps she flitted past the taller silver figure, and swiftly they both came to a large spacious room.

Within the chamber over a hundred other forms stood, motionless. They had no faces, like Caziv, and stood mute, literal artifices of silver steel. The Aviat nodded briefly. All was in readiness; Sythia may be scatter-brained, but she was an effective partner. "That weapons discharge we scanned earlier, did Central have any idea if this world was inhabited?" The lass- for so Caziv thought of her, being three millenia her senior- shook her head, tossing her hair. "Garasov said we had old readings on an atomic-age civ on this world, but that was in 1953. It was pretty good looking then, lots of oceans and forests, just a few cities. All scans are showing now is a whole lot of ice, and some pockets of ash." She shook her head again, sadly this time. "So many nascent children never make it past their infancy."

Caziv shrugged. Some days he thought he should have been a Techsin; caring about the lives of Potentials had never been his forte, and he honestly didn't mind if a few bratty civilizations died young. If they didn't make it, they didn't make it. Such was the Omnissah's will. Sythia sighed again, and walked to her position.

It was time to go get a look at this planet and the new Potentials that had come to the graveyard on accident.

With a swift noiseless rush the floor retracted half away from the wall. No air rushed out of the chamber, as the Chosen did not breath, and with a fluid motion the two Aviats jumped through the gap into the void. Behind them the silver faceless figures followed, their legs bending and flexing in unison as they leapt.

As he left the Eye the world swelled before his vision, a grey and white ball gleaming in the inky blackness of space. Downwards he fell towards it, his arms splayed behind him and his face towards the planet. The Aviat felt a rush of old emotions; exhilaration, and a touch of fear. Even after millenia orbital drops still recalled to him his physical form, the frailty of mortality. He was a leaf before the wind, just as the ship of the Potentials that had crashed here had been; nothing but a tiny silver dot rushing downwards to embrace the cold ice of the earth below. Well, not just a silver dot. Behind him came fifty other shiny specks in formation, and behind those Sythia and her followers. They descended through the atmosphere in a loose triangular formation, arms splayed and flattened to control their headlong dive.

Suddenly, a bang sounded in his auditories, over even the wild rushing of the atmosphere past his visage. He turned his optics marginally, just in time to catch a black cloud clearing, and one of his Servitors falling away from the formation in a mass of tumbling limbs. He swore under his breath, if he had had breath, and sent a thoughtpulse up to the Cognatus of the Missia. Through its electronic eyes Caziv scanned the world below his entry trajectory, and swiftly the Eye located a small military looking structure; funnily enough, it looked to be the same one that had generated the weapons discharge the craft had detected earlier. Swiftly he targeted it with the vessel's armaments, and then cut the connection.

He relayed Sythia a summary of his actions, and the two Chosen swiftly deployed flaps to take them and their underlings out of the path of the bombardment. They were just getting into the thicker part of the atmosphere, silvery skins heating and glowing a cherry red under the friction of the dive, when the stream of energy descended past them.

A might column of chromatic hues, it licked down at slightly under the speed of light to slam into the coordinates Caziv had specified. He was too high up to see if it hit anything, but a quick check with the ship displayed a clean crater where the facility used to have stood; its mass now formed part of the Dive. An amusing though. Perhaps one day he would call upon its particulate inadvertently for future excursions.

Through the cloud level they came, punching holes in the moisture canopy. Lightening flashed about the descending Chosen in places, a strange phenomena Caziv was amused to observe, and then they broke out of the clouds, large whisps of cumulonimbus descending in the divers' wakes.

The ground rushed up towards him and his followers, and the Aviat braced himself. With a loud whump he impacted the snowy terrain. A rush of noise and sensation greeted him after his virtually placid descent, and for a moment Caziv shut off his sensors.

A few sectons later he stood, and strode quickly up the slight incline that marked the edge of his crater in the icy landscape. Above him snowflakes whirled, and the clouds were thick and dark with storm. Around him he made out all of the Servitors, and then in the distance Sythia.

Time to look around this world for their quarry.

[Arcerion]

Unknown Quadrant
C.0

Centuriae D'ciq raised a pair of binoculars to his face, looking at the gradual ridge that had presented itself to him. On it, he saw a pair of the snow beasts wrestling, presumably for some primitive and carnal reason. Behind him, his eighty men waited, rifles at the ready, their sensors almost all switched to thermal imaging as they could not forsee their enemies with the blinding snow. The wind cleared, and a large metal construct stood before them, the stark contrast to the natural landscape making its perception as ugly and a scar on the land well deserved. D'coq returned to his crouch, motioning for one of his Decurios to come up to him. Recon the far ridge, remain radio silent the Centuriae motioned with hand signals, and the officer nodded, his men quickly running of through the snow, fighting their way through snowbanks and drifts as if they were their enemy. Silence followed, and soon the designated check-in point was missed, and the second radio report as well, until an exasperated Legios was heard over the command network. "This is Legios Kamato, Decurio is down. I repeat, we are under attack! Need reinforcement! I rep-" the transmission was cut short, the static serving as the reply to D'ciq's many questions. "Attack formation! Advance at the double!"

D'ciq held his rifle at the read-low position, wary of what lay ahead of him. Approaching the area of the last radio call, blood was smeared on the snow, large gouts of light blue staining the fragile flakes, and larger amounts of red blood intermixed. The unit spread out, gradually finding their dead, until they came across the aggressor. A pair of snow beasts had ambushed the column, yet both had been killed. A pair of Legios knelt by the dying Decurio, and when asked why they did not respond, they motioned to their gutted radioman, who lay in several parts a few feet away. "Leave the bodies, gather their gear. We continue to the satellite."

[G-Tech Corporation]

"The enemies of the Light hide themselves in cloaks of darkness, on worlds far and secluded, inhospitable and remote. They think their distance, their obscurity, will save them from the righteous wrath of He Above. They are mistaken. To us the dark is light, the night is bright; the Light suffers not the darkness to reign, even for a moment. Wherever the night draws close it shall be snuffed out, and its fetid denizens cast into the abyss." - The Catechism of Illumination

BelowSpace Coordinates 0761:68Y:3119
Timestamp: 2725:127:679:1945 MBA
Havanian Group, Distnas Galaxy, System 302:119:001-c (See attch. Res. Survey 1399.83.189122)
Chosen Eye Missia, Aviat Caziv Tna Ameral Commanding Chosen
Mainframe Upload warr. Level I Potentials obs.

Caziv trudged through the swirling snow, his optics nearly blinded by the icy precipitation, but his other senses tingling with new datum. Behind him came his party of silent followers, metallic forms now nearly invisible against the blanket of windy white; he had altered his skin, and that of his Servitors, to an off-white gray hue so as to defy easy visual imaging. Thermal and electromagnetic scans might pick out the moving patches of cool metal against the colder snow, but the contrast would be virtually impossible to discern in the morass of the blizzard. Orbital scans placed the crash site of the Potential vessel only ten standard kilometers to the north west of his current position, and so the Aviat was sure contact could be acheived shortly. His mind was occupied with what the Potentials might be like when suddenly a large form loomed out of the wall of snowflakes before him.

It swiped a massive paw at him, knocking his main form to the side into a small snowbank. The beast then grabbed a Secrat with two immense forearms and brought it to its mouth, chomping down on the battle construct, then howling as teeth as long as arms snapped on the unyielding flowmetal figure. Swiftly the Servitors swarmed forward to assail the beast, their movements coordinated in the back of Caziv's mind by a fragment of his consciousness held secure in each form. Meter long blades with edges a mere atom thick sliced enormous gouges in the creature's flanks, and a blast from one of his accompanying Munits took the beast in its shaggy chest, leaving a gaping bloody hole that rapidly began pouring stick crimson-black liquid onto the few Secrats that fought it and staining the snow with the strange monstrous creature's viscera.

In moments the frenzied battle was over, and the beast lay dead, its shaggy coat stained with scarlet and now slowly being buried in the driving snow. A Secrat's swipe had severed the being's spinal column, and the thing had rapidly expired; a waste in Caziv's opinion, but it would have been a nuisance to walk along with this creature constantly harassing his column. It was well that he had ordered Sythia to construct a spire, if the megafauna of this world were any indication of the savagery the Chosen could expect from the planet.

The line of white-metal beings continued on their trek towards the crashed vessel, leaving the giant corpse to freeze in the permafrost of the planet until time ended and the stars fell.

[Arcerion]

Unknown Quadrant
C.0

"Contact right!" "Reloading, cover me!" "Gorkan is down!" "Medic!" Mor'tah sat against the side of the ship's hull, dazed and confused, a large hairy beast lumbering over him. The jowls of the creature dripped with blood and saliva, the yellow gnarled teeth slowly opening to bite his chest. Mor'tah could not move, from the combination of the weight of a massive paw on his chest and the fact that he was nearly unconscious from a swipe to the head, nearly severing his head from his shoulders. "Die you fucking beast!" a Legios snarled, the soldier leaping onto the beast's back and repeatedly plunging his knife into the neck of his quarry, the creature thrashing and attempting to throw him off. The Legios gave one last stab, leaving his knife embedded deep in the snow beast's back, and grabbed Mor'tah, dragging the commander into a nearby trench. "Sir! Are you alright?" the soldier nervously asked. 'Sir? Sir! We need orders!" Voices grew in urgency as the lack of command began to break the back of the K'tarian line, Legios being slain, blood running fresh and warm onto the snow. Mor'tah lay there, slowly fading away, knowing that he had abandoned his father's legacy.

Kilometers away, D'ciq had secured the satellite tower, and had a detachment of engineers attempting to contact their fleet in order to request assistance. He had to idea of the chaos and carnage happening back at the wreck, or the retaliation that was about to occur when two civilizations collide.