LustForDecay

The Envenomed

The massive cannon's joints pulsed and a deep, meditative hum serenaded the turning of its enormous barreled body. Like the mechanical gears of some ages old contratpion, the very movement of which felt dangerous in a sense for all of the advancement and refinement it possessed. Legs took turns digging into dirt and turning in place before raising and digging into the ground as sliding plates half-buried the sound of whirring backup system duplicate gears beneath as its smooth body seemed to almost shift liquid-like in spite of its metal merely point its barrel at the target. The weapon leaned forward, the shadow it once cast in the absence of much of the surrounding foliage stretching now towards the cliff-edge of the mountain, near hailing the distant shape that rumbled past the treeline of the mountain opposite.

With a deep breath, the machine began its judgement. The same feeling of hyper-tension against mind and against skin permeated the air; the space of which began to bend as if exposed to extreme heat. Shapes, bodies, foliage, remains, gunship wreckage - for a moment they twisted and bent as natural boundaries became watercolour blurs, light sucking away like luminous gas in the sight of the group. It snapped back to normal as the weapon's "exhaust" gaps seemed to both radiate and retract the very light they emanated; an azur blue that faintly shone on the area before coalescing into semi-material raw power. Ethereally resonant seals made from the very human wiring and electronics within collaborated with scielto construction materials as the fierce though restrained glow of the rune-like inscriptions lit up among the length of the weapon.

Raw ethereal power reached the peak of its amassing pressure and in the same thunderous report that shook the mountains and the trees, imposing its anger and will upon the Envenomed and all others who traveled or hid upon the mountain, the weapon fired. The midday of the battlescarred firebase became a blinding dawn of harsh blue-white as the very muzzle flash of the weapon vanished into the void-tearing exposion. As suddenly as it came, rattling the metal of destroyed war machines and the bullet-ridden trees that overlooked them, the flash was gone and they could see the massive globe of pulsing cobalt aquamarine that soared like a cloud made of raw, pulsing, otherworldly power and mass.

As it descended, somehow neither emitting nor absorbing light, flashes of tracers and piercing blue beams shot up from the rumbling metal shape. It some sort of large armored transport, its own weapons fire momentarily revealing it to any sort of telescopic visual capability from where the Envenomed were located - long enough to be a mobile command center and armed well enough to dissuade drones, aircraft, light vehicles but not the enormous pulsing doom that slammed into the ground to its side. A star blossomed in its wake as it expanded from a dome-shape of raw, arrogant white-blue yet the smooth sphericality of it turned into the unruly, bubbling, frothing rage of a proper explosion. Metal was silhouetted temporarily against the hellish inner blast zone, trees, people, drones - withering away, tearing apart, vanishing as a massive crater of crackling, distorting, bleeding reality manifested where it had landed.

The Envenomed and their allies were too far to feel the neuroethereal interference it would have caused but even they could see the once blocky, multi-sectioned body of a massive command vehicle now twisted like fluids frozen amidst the crest of waves. That was all that was left, beyond teeming smears of now rapidly manifesting dwellers of the oneiric chasm, flooding into realspace to feast on the brutally deceased left in its wake and sources of raw, sparking electrical power that were left bleeding and sputtering.

Almost immediately, the League battle-lines buckled. From up top, they could see tanks abruptly pausing as their rail-cannons stopped mid-targetting. Some fired wildly, shots going wild and tearing lengthy trenches far off from the mecha and other vehicles they were targetting. Once mobile defensive positions paused abruptly, feasted upon by storms of concentrated tracer fire. Gunships circling overhead abruptly paused, uneven fluctuations in firing circles making them easy prey for quad-winged, rapidly flapping bolt-like living projectiles swarming and attaching before detonating in brusts of green, maddening fire.

A full scale retreat was in question but the weapon for all its ponderousnessness turned faster than whole battallions could run. A second massive burst nearly a minute after the first from the weapon's barrel; this time the target would not be a recipient of the mere blast itself but a direct hit. The pulsing sun, like a twitching egg-sac filled with swarming, sliding, and jittering light, descended and the impact was no less horrific. The command centre was an enormous buliding, almost like a small stadium, but it suffered horrifically from the direct strike. The ravenous blossoming of the ethereal sun swelled in size just enoguh to barely cover its curving walls, disintegrating girders and reinforced skeletal structure like burning paper, leaving them withered chunks.

The frenches, the makeshift sub-units, and the vehicles and any infantry among them however - far less remained as the blast wave and void-borne shock slammed into them. Bodies half-vaporized, half shattered into litle symphonies of floating bone, armor, pulp and various bits of fragmenting mass rapidly converting into the unearthly mulch of the void. The metal of machinery cracked and shattered, fragmenting at joints and crumpling at reinforced points, muted explosions of munitions materializing into flourishing, frozen amalgamations of pointed blasts trapped and frozen in place before fading into blurry nothingness.

The ground itself had fared better, kicked up and torn open, yet anything that stood upon it was not returned to dust as much as converted into unearthly, desecrated, un-matter.

All of that was hard to focus on as the rebels, bloodied and worn, raised weapons in victory - hollering, exaltation, cruel taunts, celebration. The pyroclastic extravagagnce below raising their spirits as much as it did the Front forces now storming onto the shattered lines of the enemy.

[TARGET ACQUIRED. COORDINATES MARKING. DANGER CLOSE.]

A third targeting reticle over their HUD's, visible only to them, just as the synthesized voice and coloured text was only perceived by them.

It was not further into the enemy lines, disorganized as they were, nor the opposite mountain top.

It was off to the sides of the battlefield - at a bunker of some sort, the road directly to it blocked off by a pair of enormous and fallen mecha League in origin.

Given the infantry seen entering its hole-punched circular structure and supply vehicles moving in around it over the crater-ridden ground, it was fair to say it was in the hands of allies.

The target marker hovered over it patiently.

"Be fast. You have company. Our allied vanguard detected a spike in raw power readings and something both armored and highly fast moving up the mountain. Do what you need to in order to eliminate the target. Very fast; we are convincing them to hold position. We cannot guarantee it will work."

The special forces team sounded... calm, oddly enough, intentionally even in spite of the fact that the Envenomed team were between two possible disasters. One of which was celebrating around them, stomping and raising fist or firearm alike. Another, little more than a report of a distant threat far off from them... but for how long?

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

Interest is also piqued!

@Gordian Nought

Jump on the discord!

The Evenomed: Violent Military SciFi Action Across A Post-War Expanse

Hello I found this thread from the link in the ooc, are y'all still recruiting?

@Queen Arya

Correct. Would you like to hop on the discord?

The Envenomed

In minutes the concealed position had been turned into an open-air cemetary as the last of defences manned and summoned was set upon by the suviving opposition bloodied and enraged. Ragged camo cloaks torn with holes and out of which jutted long rifles jabbed at frantic, huddling security forces. Near point blank rifle fire tore clean through metal, ballistic under-weave, and partially augmented bodies in neat holes. Heavy duty scatter-shots tore apart cranial protection and mass alike for those who attempted to escape. The truly determined, whether by devil-may-care bravado or some suicidal proffessionalism, fired wildly at the snaking forms as slugs dove through mist and pointed fangs parted biomass and armor.

It had seemed like a painful forever but one armored, alien foot stomped down on a now fragmented skull and grinded into the mush of metal fragments, bone, and organ mush beneath. The gavel had sounded and silence would not answer; the sound of wreckage burning and the ravenous worms destroying the last bits of troopers they could find continued.

As if to break the tranquillity setting over the pulsing ambience of the distant battle happening just over the ridge of the clifftop they were on, a loud and familiar buzz sounded out from the communicator panel - Salvator's HUD immediately was bombarded with infosharing requests, almost obnoxiously enough that it appeared they were trying to brute force their way into controlling his systems as the device all but rattled and exploded off of his storage.

This time however, the message wasn't spoken aloud but forcefully cracked out of their private coms, into their hearing, internal data receptors, closed communication channels and however else they could intrude.

"We cannot advance any further," To the Envenomed it would be as if someone was yelling into their ear, their very stream of consciousness, or otherwise intruding on their privacy. Yet to anyone else, they would hear nothing beyond maybe a faint buzz at best coming from some of their teammates' helmets. "Resistance is stiff, but we have our targets! Confirm control of artillery piece!"

The very reason they had been sent here sat surrounded by the scattered remains of those who had manned it, an enormous mass like some enormous petty emperor. The four legs it sat on seemed stubby before but they were even thicker than the warform's legs, with visible joints meant to curl up for transportation but for whome the gears and axes that defined them looked like they might crack and break under the mere motion of such. Its cannon was wide; enough to fit one of the civsec troopers in straight into its maw. The smooth surface of it looked unnaturally so; the metal itself a faded greyish-white, as if from some sort of combination of skeletal colour yet sculped almost like marvel if not for the blemishes of lightly glowing ridges and gaps along with subtle bumps along the length of the cannon.

A faint sense of tension pervaded the air; not from the thrill and fury of battle but something else that hung within the very space around it. It tingled skin and caressed bone, seeming to whisper to the mind not in truths or temptations but raw id and seeping symbolism of inexplicable un-logic but something deeper and within every cell and vein. The ZRF troopers staggered about for a second, huffing and stabilizing themselves - some took out chemo injectors but the single remaining gealtirocht grunted as the air in front of his skull distorted for a moment; light simply did not pass through and it blurred as if exposed to intense heat on a summer day.

"We have multiple high-value targets to eliminate. Marking now!"

It was the same fully armored Intransigent commando as earlier, but there was no direct camera feed. There likely wasn't a point; heavy audio-filtering was being employed. Sometimes his words half cut out before the background noise vanished and his voice, forcefully separated from it, spiked in volume almost enough that it began to clip.

Multiple data-uplinks; this time, not requests but forced manifestations upon whatever targeting or HUD systems were in use by the squad. The handheld computer's screen blinked and flickered as it forcefully began to manifest three large upside down orange triangles, tip pointed downwards and distancting in metres manifesting overlaid across their vision if they possessed the cybernetics, biomechanical or otherwise integrated capability for such.

The first target was on the mountain opposite of the very one they stood on; the specific target in general was hard to determine - constantly fluctuating numerical measuresments of distance resulted in the targeter-triangle growing and shrinking. Yet if they zoomed in with whatever optical enhancement capabilities, they would notice quite a few trees shaking about and a large black shape moving between them - something metallic, lumbering, yet not slow - seemingly in the direction of the receding CivSec frontlines.

As harsh as the insurgents had been hit by the civsec defenders, the battle line had moved tremendously since they last spoke with the Intransigence commando group on the ground. The same defensive emplacements once firing at the surge of resistance fighters now found themselves as their beacheads and rallying points for the swarm of darkly patterned troopers and blocky, aged tanks vaulting and rumbling across the battlefield.

The next target marker above a spot roughly 10000 meters away, far off into the defensive lines of the UCL backed lines. A dome like structure of some sort like a giant glassy eye and out of which milled machinery and personnel alike. Targeting data suggested it was a sort of command center of some sort, possibly a major communications hub, and it was by and far the furthest target.

The third however... a red triangle manifested on the corner of their HUD's or equivalents, crossed out by red lines and with an equals sign to its right. [TARGET DATA VERIFYING, PROGRESS UNKNOWN]

"Eliminate both targets."

All the while, the surviving ZRF troopers looked at the squad somewhat impatiently. They were under the impression they were trained to use this technology; some of them certainly looked the part.

"Your hesitation is grating; man that cannon, it's what we brought you along for! The remains of my comrades grows colder by the second."

The same scielto who had spoken with them over the intercepted coms jabbed his finger at the unmanned weapon as the once-bisected human soldier staggered alongside him, his steps unsteady but his agitation no less visible.

"Do not let them get into the com channel. We require the first two targets eliminated before we can reveal the third."

OUTLAW SPACE

How far does the fantasy aspect of it go?

The Envenomed

As the gunship descended, most had been quick enough to get out of the way as its chin touched the soil followed by the rest of the bulk. Flames and smoke billowed from its husk as it tore up soil and flattened tents underneath, crushing any corpses that lay on the battleifled and smashing a few of the repurposed shipping containers out of the way. As if dead-set on finishing its job, it was moving directly towards not just Kleo but Alice, a vengeful final sendoff for its ultimately futile efforts. Precision was not the name of its game and its huge bulk did not directly slam into Kleo. Yet what was left of its wings and a jutting missile pod slammed into Kleo's sides as it came to a stop dead in the middle of the battlefield, the force easily enough to knock her off of her feet.

Alice would fare somewhat better but secondary detonations across the bulk of the fallen machine sprayed her body with hot shrapnel, the sputtering wreck seemingly hungry to get in whatever hurt it could before it was reduced to useless slag. The metal fragements did not cut deep but the near-cauterizing heat and blast-like spray made it clear they would have to relocate soon.

Meanwhile, the half-guerilla nodded to Salvator and sprayed the entire container's contents into his lower body, covering it in a soapy mess of frothy bubbles before tossing the canister away and picking up the assault rifle. As Salvator momentarily disapepared from sight, a full load of cadenced bursts sounded out and caught the gun platform's attention and that of the squad it was guarding. It was enough that as they focused on the pressing threat furiously emptying a weapon not intended for fully automatic fire, they did not notice the voidhanger threat until it was on top of their very gun platform.

The platform paid little heed to the sudden booted weight on its upper body, not until a knife dug into vulnerable electronics and joints. That's when it paused and the sudden lull in suppressive fire let the half-guerilla retaliate, popping out of cover just long enough to catch distracted civsec rifleman in the chest and face. The others spun to notice what Salvator was doing far too late for the crack of their rifles to do anything. The gun platform bucked and shook, but Salvator has removed himself with a blink, just in time for the ensuing explosion to send a plume of fire and shredded metal outwards.

The entire squad perished in a storm of shattered armor and dismembering fragmentation, leaving three more plus their quadripeds to deal with.

Having extricated him from a close-quarters battle with a berserk automata, Ilshar's machine gun resumed its grisly work and sent an advancing duo of civsec troopers hunkering to the ground. The shielding of the gun platform accompanying them flared to a near opaque level, deflecting bullets off into trees and the surrounding dirt as it expanded into a dome-like shape around its body. The gun-platform held its ground, swivelling its turret to face the source of suppression, one it intended to answer with a considerably larger and higher-output machine gun.

Targeting systems locked onto Ilshar's chest and a full spray of luminiscent bolts spat out in flashes of muted light, shredding the tent behind him and cutting through the smoke beginning to spread onto the battlefield from the massive wreckage of the still-burning gunship.

There was a world of difference between the energy discharged fired by the gun platform and the entire autocannon used by the unztadtlige endoform stomping its way back across the battlefield. The quadriped stopped abruptly, hunkering as a few stray rounds slammed into its shield now flaring with power as it neared its breaking point. That was enough to get the duo of civsec troopers to break from its protection, stray rounds kicking up fountains of dirt as they slammed mere feet from their location.

The remaining two gun platforms immeditely stopped firing at the rest of the squad, pelting the massive armored titan with concentrated gunfire and the rifle rounds of their surviving infantry accompaniment. None of this prevented the final bipedal robot from having its chest and cranium caved in, before flying out of the tent and into a whole squad of infantry and their quadriped support.

At the speed the junked robot fell, the shield did not activate; it simply was not fast enough. Yet the raw mass behind it and the brute strength of the huge unztadtlige turned it into a projectile more than a match for the armour of the quadriped. Legs buckled and armour bent before the hulking turret-machine was knocked clean over, rolling thrice before both robots slammed into a large shipping crage, spewing sparks and smoking black.

Enemy infantry and quadripeds had been halved and they were getting desperate. The remaining two gun platforms began to fall back, eight infantry spreading out as they tried to form a defensive perimeter around the massive artillery platform - its wide base like some enormous four-legged iron mat, huge digging legs entrenched in the soil and the unnaturally smooth, almost living shaped metal-like composite of its hefty barrel glowing with a latent, resting power.

No matter however; a beam of hyper-accelerated particles dropped their number to six, two soldiers sharing the same gaping hole int their chest as one of the surviving gealtirocht troopers advanced. The only of two it apepared, assisted by a mere four human infantry, including the foamed up, freshly bisected one - now grabbing his once missing lower half as its legs began to twitch and he began to reconnect.

"THEIR HOPES LIE CRUSHED AND THEY ALL BUT BEG FOR AN END! LET US PAY ONTO THEM WHAT THEY HAVE PAID UNTO YOUR FOREFATHERS!"

This time, the gealtirocht commander spoke with no voice-distortion and not on private coms. They could hear him, see him perched on top of one of the two destroyed gun-platforms, his rail-cannon slung and a long weapon almost piscine smooth but predatory in its pointed shape, taking pot shots with lances of cold blue particle beams. A desperate security trooper tried to blind fire over the trench they'd built around the bun platform but soil was poor protection for hyper-acclerated particles - his body slumped soon after as they could see and *feel* the morale drop in the surviving troopers.

They were panicking, desperately trying to find more cover and fire off what weak retaliatory fire they could, their taxed gun platforms struggling to adapt to the fact that they were cornered - wild sprays of pulse-beam and chin-mounted gatling fire going wide.

It was a matter of time before they were fully crushed

Closed

I think we should start up a discord. Would be be easier to keep track of updates and discuss the RP there.

Closed

Will there be a discord later? What's the limits of technology in the setting? How "hard" is the scifi here? Is stuff like magic/the force/biotics/warp powers/telepathy/etc. allowed?

An adventure in a sci-fi setting

Possibly interested.

The Envenomed

The missile that Alice fired was old, probably older than the gunship she was firing it at, and its age was painfully clear. Lock-on systems slowly calculated the distance to the target and the particular design element to track, waiting for the all-clear sign of a pixelated missile to manifest before it would automatically deactivate the safety mechanism. It might have been considered a godsend for infantry in its heyday but even before the floundering gunship, its clunkiness in both physical design and targeting was far from ideal.

The payload however was promising, smoke trailing behind a pointed missile designed to pierce and obliterate a variety of targets airborne and ground-based.

The chin-mounted chaingun swivelled with a pause in firing as it began to spray wildly towards the direction of the missile. With on-board systems handling targeting the struggling pilot was able to notice the missile while battling the jerking, damaged aircraft. The hefty vessel jerked rightwards, staggering drunkenly as the curve the missile's trajectory sliced over the same side its still burning missile pods had been. Residual shielding flared a light rose-red, solidfying patterns of condensed energy almost threatening to shatter like glass from the mere pass of the projectile, signifying thier severely degraded state.

With the Envenomed focused on an airborne threat however, the remaining survivors of the League-run firebase made their move. Their infantry had been depleted - maybe just 11 left but they had one key advantage still.

Four key advantages on closer inspection

Walker Gun Platform

Shuddering from behind the smoke kicked up by the conflict, the units previously disabled by the armored trooper's cranial explosion shuddered back to life with flickers of blue LED's and the slow rising of power signature readings. They were vrexul in origin; their arachnoid appearance hinted that much, but they had been simplified from their original designs. Bioplating was externally absent, shielded in composite flexi-metals that stretched and bent to the shape of the reinforced organosynthetic mass beneath. It had only four legs rather than the six to ten often fielded by this platform, possibly combined into the meaty limbs dragging them into a steady march. A chin-mounted tri-barrel gatling swivelled left and right as if providing additional sight for the frontal eyes, armor tapering off towards their split vertical arrangement.

The main point of focus was the laser turret sitting tyrannically upon them, a cruel and pointed despot watching from a subtle camera between its dark bulk and the denser shoulders connecting to its frontal limbs. It was a darker shade than the faded grey-blue stripe pattern of the rest of the machine; it seemed they were recent arrivals to this world and were finally about to be used. They advanced in a reverse circular formation - the two furthest arms were the furthest up, the two in the middle deliberately lagging behind them, providing cover for the space of toppled trees and hole/corpse-ridden no-man's land between both opposing forces.

One of the remaining ZRF troopers spun out of cover, three bursts slamming not into metal but a field of spherical, rippling energy flaring a resolute blue. He spun back behind the bisected shipping crate Alice was running to but not fast enough. His rifle flew out of his hands as bolts of bright purple punched clean through the armour, splattering his arm into bone fragments and synthetic material. His chest and its armour erupted outwards next, silencing any cries as he fell face first to the ground. The sound of the automata's accusatory shimmer-crackle report echoed amidst the gunfire.

It had come from the right arm of the advance, the ape-spider-platform having gained a partial flanking shot on the guerilla before its chin-mounted weapon whirred and began spitting energy-shrouded bolts, tearing through a partially collapsed tree. Bark split as a stream of rifle-grade rounds flew right at the voidhanger. Even through the carnage she would be able to catch a glance of three infantry advancing behind it, aiming to close in and try to force back the ruthless onslaught to protect their only real chance of survival burning in the sky. Desperately they fired a spray of bullets her way, shredding the bits of fallen tree that remained obscuring their sight.

The bisected shoulder immediately tossed itself into cover next to Savlator and pulled a grenade from part of its armor-vest, smeared with its own fluids and primed it. It landed near the leftmost arm of the gun-platform backed advance and blew apart in a storm of needles, a small blizzard that caused the shielding of the gun-platform to flare an angry pinkish-blue. A few of the soldiers fell back, shrapnel biting through armor and into flesh. One slumped back only for their neck to disconnect and send the head rolling into blast-crater; he had been the closest to the storm of needles, unwillingly having shielded the remaining two, trading shots with the half-soldier. The gun-platform did not fire upon Salvator yet; it appeared its shielding was interfering with its targeting with all the interference just yet, even if it had a fairly clear shot from between a few partially defoliated trees at the voidhanger.

They had not arrived fast enough however to stop his appropriated rail-cannon from preparing to fire. The angular blade-characters of gealtirocht language manfiested on Salvator's screen as targeting reticles and data-feeds blurred into static before roughly solidifying and stabilizing. Multiple lines overlaid on his visual feed indicated the very straightforward travel path from projectile to target as the rising numbers hit 100%.

The weapon rocked, not quite a kick as much as a shove, as a flash of white-pink spiked out of its mouth. The gunship's chin flared white as sparks and flames erupted outwards; the mounted weapon vanished as did a concerning portion of its lower body, turned into a gutted, warped trench. The machine wobbled precariously as its stream of gunfire abruptly came to an end, the space around it distorting from the effect of the energized hyper-accelerated round turning its lower shielding array into a distorted blur of fragmented, rapidly dissolving mist around itself. Only pod-mounted autocannons remained, firing a wild if inaccurate salvo towards Salvator and his half-trooper ally, themselves hastily shoving in a new mag as he pointed furiously at the CivSec troopers and their gun-platform almost blasted by the AP/HE rounds slamming on their location.

A digital notification popped up on Echo's gestalt consciousness-computer-network. Target lock x2, missile launch, anti tank - two streaks swirling as they descended, attempting to slam into the endoform. A smaller target than they were typically used for; the missiles were wobbling somewhat as they adjusted their flight path but no less concerning.

Another lock - x3. A trio that this time flew in more deliberate arching patterns, locked onto the power spike detected from the warform charging its mighty cannon. The trails of smoke rapidly dissolving yet leading back to the smoking, sparking airborne wreck orbiting towards the direction of the now silent artillery cannon as it attempted to gain some distance. It was still closer to the ground than it was when they initially engaged it and given how one of its engines was sparking, it was likely having trouble maintaining consistent altitude. Its aggressive dodging manoevres were taxing it dearly.

A poor move.

Perhaps it was hoping the interference from the battle would interfere with Echo's sighting, or that its missile would be able to knock the cannon off course - it did not see which ones connected, likely at least two, but energy beams flew faster than even cutting edge homing missiles. A lance of light malevolent and judgemental cut across the length of the battlefield, through smoke and spiking readings on all HUD's and biointerface systems, through the belly of the aircraft, its tail-wings and as quickly as it had manifested, it vanished.

A gutted, flaming wreck began to descend, missiles and shell munitions either having detonated or been erased from being as it slammed through a now splintered tree, into the middle of the no-man's land, the force of its final flight dragging it across the ground and towards the staggered Kleo. Corpses were crushed or tossed aside, craters torn up, and for a few moments all infantry and even gun-platforms hunkered down as its sparking body spat fragmentation and sparks all across the battlefield. Kleo had likely heard it, maybe seen the streaking partially disembowelled burning meteor as it slid her way with enough force to knock over a tank, digging a massive trench across the middle of the battlefield as it went.

Such carnage did not distract the gun-automata in the least as it stomped forth and in the confines of the tent, blunt metal meeting back as crates, furniture, spare supplies, and all matter of debris scattered or broke under its relentless attack. There was neither vigour nor hatred in the strike; cold calculation of attack vectors and force of swing were all that mattered. Its camera eyes locked onto Ilshar's momtions as it strode forth, shooting out a hand to grasp his elbow to try and stop his swing. Its other hand released its grip on its own light machine gun, letting it clatter to the ground, connected to it still via its ammo belt leading into its back. It immediately swung its now free hand horizontally in a nasty chop aimed at Ilshar's neck, one that could easily break an unaugmented human one at the least.

Ilshar's fist intercepted its face, causing the head to swivel rightwards and its own fist to swing wildly; maintaining trajectory yet minus any course correction or additional accuracy. It was stunned for a moment but only a momnet. Gears complained as it shead moved back into position, its hand still gripping Ilshar's elbow as it raised that same free hand again aiming to bring it down like a hammer onto the tarrhaidim's skull! Fingers clenched, arm rigid, light machine gun swaying against the ground and bumping against crates and empty magazines - it almost seemed hateful.