Xiphos cut down Bryn'adul without mercy, again and again her saber sliced through Bryn flesh, her sons gutting and butchering Draelvasir in every crevice of this wretched place. It was a reckoning. If only it could have been their Homeworld.
Xiphos hated the Bryn'adul. So long had she struggled to build up the knowledge and resources to inflict real damage. And here they were, setting fire to one of their Super Constructs.
It would be a great battle, sure. But Xiphos craved nothing less than their annihilation. She had sacrificed a life she had been truly happy with to see the Bryn falled.
But she hated the Jedi just as much now.
They would feel the wrath of those they threw to the wolves. She was training them to make sure they would. All she had lost because of the Lobsters hit all at once. She didn't want to lose control, but she couldn't help it.
She slashed and slashed and slashed in a frenzy, one of her children was killed by getting his head blasted off and she immediately gained vengeance in the killer, beheading him in turn.
She did not teleport. She was the wall, a crushing, inexorable wave of judgement upon these beasts, limbs and heads being severed all a mixed up blur in her eyes.
Her disappointment and fury towards the Jedi for ruining any hope of a unified response against these monsters bled into her every attack, making her cuts and slices even more brutal.
They had stood in the way of
everything! Ruined
everything! She hoped the order burned at Coruscant. She wasn't done with them. Not yet.
But the Bryn'adul came first. She would tackle the Maw next. And the Order when possible. But the Order would pay. With their lives. With their
souls.
They would pay for not doing everything they could to stop the Bryn'adul. They would pay for caring only about The Sith.
She would not allow them to escape the consequences. She would sooner
slit her own wrists then let them get away with that. This was about
justice. This was about punishing them for their concept of it. Feth power. Feth empires. The Order had to be punished for the crime they had committed. At
any cost to herself.
She couldn't help but replace the Bryn'adul she slew with an image of a Jedi Knight. So smug. So self righteous. So
cruel.
They were evil, and she had never understood that until now.
She sliced in half another ultra, explosions ringing throughout the Super Construct. Her sons had been smashed apart many times, but they killed four for every one they lost. Familiarity with Bryn'adul tactics made this task fiendishly easy. Insects and Split-Jaws and human traitors littered the area behind her and her rampaging sons.
In her section, even the Juggernauts were in full tactical retreat. The wrath of Xiphos bore down on them and they crumpled under the assault, the Drael fighting ferociously, but her sons fighting more savagely still, many locked in hand to hand combat with the Bryn'adul, and while some lost that fight, the Nuetralizers still had too much data on their physiology not to inflict severe damage in hand to hand, one pair of Model 2's holding down a violent Ultra and painfully chainsawing him apart. The Sirens fought like demons, one managing to brilliantly kill an Ultra by tricking him into burying his sword into a drone behind her and sticking an explosive knife into his knee cap, scrambling and remote detonating it as he pulled it out.
Females and the young of the Bryn'adul were not spared in the slightest, the Model 3's making a special point to single them out for painful deaths via chainsaws and sledgehammers. One Model 1 even went so far as to use a baseball bat with nails embedded in it to crush the skull of a pregnant Drael.
"How's it feel to be your victims?" he taunted, turning his attention to a fleeing insect Bryn.
"Hey, how much XP is a Bryn Youngling worth?" a Model 3 asked as he blew one away with a shotgun.
"Headshot or general bodily kill?" a nearby Model 2 asked as he crushed a Drone's face like a grape.
"Headshot."
"Three hundred, easy!" The Model 2 answered.
"Aw just three hundred? Shouldn't it make more sense to get at least double that for high tier war crimes?"
"There's no such thing as a war crime against Bryn'adul!" A Model 1 painfully tearing a Drael female's head off claimed.
"I still think they should be worth more, especially if we're going for headshots." The Model 3 protested as he gunned down another Juggernaut. "What if they surrender?"
"Shoot 'em anyway! They didn't want to play nice with the Galaxy so they don't deserve any consideration!" The Model 1 called back.
Just then the first signal from
Ingrid L'lerim
came in that the charges had been planted. They were gonna detonate quantum bombs.
Everywhere.
Even the Nuetralizers were impressed by the viciousness of this tactic.
"I like this Empress. No fething subtlety..." a Model 1 remarked. "QUITTIN' TIME!"
"Someone go get Mother!" A Model 2 yelled.
A Model 3 ran ahead, past piles of the sliced apart.
He found Xiphos mindlessly stabbing a dead Ultra, pretending it was a Jedi.
"Um...Mother?"
Yes, Son? Mother said to him in his electronic brain via her technopathy.
"We've received new orders. Immediate clear out. They're gonna hit this place with Quantum Bombs."
Finally. Someone who wants to win! Xiphos exclaimed, standing up, ignoring the horrific delusion she had been trapped in seconds before.
Signal your brothers on both the ships in space as well as the Swamp. We are pulling out.
Meanwhile...
The Battalion
had given herself to the constant thrill of killing with a Lightsaber Xiphos's sons now under relentless assault but still inflicting devastating damage to the defenders. The Model 1 Units sent here were hardened veterans of multiple conflicts. It was little wonder they were doing so well. But they too got the first signal.
"Hey, Batty!" A Model 1 called out, putting out the eyes of a Juggernaut he had paralyzed from the neck down. "The charges have been planted! Quantum Bombs are headed for these ships."
The Battalion shoved her light red blade through a Baeduran's face.
"Aw, we have to leave? I was
this close to getting fourteen beheadings in a row! I've
never managed to do that!" The Battalion complained.
"We've done a good job distracting them. They've spent a significant portion of their security teams on us. Probably too much to focus on the teams planting the charges..." another Model 1 surmised.
"Drat. One day of uninterrupted slaughter, is that
too much to ask?!" The Battalion complained.
"Aw, cheer up, Batty! We get a fireworks show!" the Model 1 replied, even as he signalled the Advanced Model 1's to pull back.
One Advanced Model, dicing up a Drael Council man, obeyed, and hand signalled the other Advanced Model to bail but she shook her head.
Their government figures cannot be allowed any hope of escape, Sister. She told her twin wirelessly as she butchered a guard.
I will stay behind to ensure it...
May you go to the Great Droid Boogie in the sky, shiny and chrome. the other Advanced Model 1 said back wirelessly before becoming a puddle of mercury and escaping.
The remaining Advanced Model attacked even more viciously than before, her arm blades flashing at dizzying speeds, beyond razor-sharp as it effortlessly tore through Bryn Armor and Flesh. Hopefully her merciless slaughter might catch Osam's attention enough to allow Ingrid a chance to get one more blow in and end him or escape.
The Bryn'adul regarded most forms of tech as weak.
Yet here they were, being gutted and eviscerated by some of the most advanced tech in the Galaxy.
As far as the Advanced Model was concerned, shunning most technology in favor of flesh was just asking to lose a war...
Meanwhile...
The Model 3 units had been in full fledged battle when the order to retreat had been given.
The darkness causing spell by Darth Phyre in the body of
The Amalgam
allowed them some retreat in the confusion, and we're tactical in the doing. The Nuetralizers never did anything less than a fighting retreat. Many were the Maw that died fighting. Many Nuetralizers had been lost to the swamps also, the Model 1's self destructing when possible. But they had been badly hit in this battle also. The Swamps had been the battle where the Nuetralizers had lost the most units by far, their newer Model 3 brothers the only thing keeping it from being a complete rout, kept in the fight by both higher resistance to what had damaged the previous two units.
Phyre kept draining as much stolen life as she could, all for one grand spell.
As the Model 3 units retreated with their surviving brothers she unleashed it.
Dark, violet flames flooded out of her mouth and went
everywhere, spreading throughout the swamp. It wasn't lethal. It couldn't kill. But it could drive people insane from the sheer *hate it was infused with. It covered trees, rushed over the murky waters, incapable of harming EE Military, but any Maw Warrior it encountered had better pray to their dark Gods that their mind would hold.
But Phyre, once she was informed, knew she couldn't stay. Nearly half the swamp was ablaze with the non lethal but insanity inducing purple flame. Self sustaining at this point.
It was time to leave.
Hastily the Witch with the shuddering skin made a rapid retreat to her own ship just as the surviving Nuetralizers set off primitive, non Electronics based grenade traps all over the woods to cover their retreat to their drop ships. They were fleeing for the relatively simple chaos of space soon after, the Nuetralizer TIE's covering them by attacking the Phedrak's however they could. Though somewhat outnumbered by Phedrak's, the Automated Starfighters were as smart as Organics and flew circles around many enemy fighters, being smaller than normal starfighters with high speed, often having to be destroyed by sheer volley fire being chased. The Alyosha Series Star Destroyers now had turned their full attention to the back up fleet
Osam
had sprung, and concentrated their Seismic Energy Torpedo in a single, devastating volley at the ship launching the Phedrak's...
Xiphos was the first aboard one Alyosha ship with her surviving forces, having evacuated both her sons as well as all the surviving Sirens that
Esmeralda Io
was part of, having torn through the terrible Space Battle in The Shadow Bride to do so. The Battalion and Darth Phyre arrived soon after on their own respective vessels and immediately went to look for Xiphos. The ship rocked as it sustained an impact, and returned fire with all of its heavy electric turbolasers.
Upon spotting Xiphos, Phyre snarled as her mind was temporarily overtaken by The Amalgam, shifting back to her form.
"Doesn't it feel nice working for a faction that wants to win?" The Amalgam asked, taunting Xiphos with a smirk. "Imagine the victories you could obtain truly working for the Sith..."
"Shut up, Amy..." Xiphos said, getting her emotions under control as she headed for the bridge to get the best view of watching the EE turn Danuta into a failed Weyland-Yutani Reactor...
Steve the Ultranaught
Aximand Sicarus
Osam
Sethrak
Gordrak