Chapter 145 The Hive Node
The issue of countering a hive mind is that there is no blind spot.
The enemy did not panic when Ryker and Baron jumped in the sea among white-armored troops. They didn't break formation. They merely moved, like water that encircles a rock, Around the Alpha and the Warlord.
Even had Ryker drawn his Star-Metal sword to attack a man on his left, a man at his right immediately put up a rifle to put bullets into his open side. They did not have to communicate. The one, violet-flaming consciousness which they had was arranged by General Vance, who stood on the safety of the huge command crawler five hundred yards up the road.
"Push through!" Ryker shouted and his sword flashed like a burning slice of orange flame that cleaved the darkness through the snow storm.
He cut bio-mechanic cables that supplied the armor of soldiers, and threw them into the snow. But against each that fell there were three others that stepped into the gap.
Baron was a force of nature. He was an enormous grey-furred battering ram in his complete Alpha form. He ran on all fours, his iron-crushing jaws ripping weapons of the mutated Coalition forces, and with his massive bulk made a furrow of them.
But they were being stuck along. The mass of figures was dragging them back. A volley of kinetic slugs Riker blocked with his blade, and a troopman went in just in the right place to swing the butt of a rifle. With a grunt Ryker received the blow on the ribs and fell back into the freezing slush.
They are expecting his maneuvers! Jaxon shouted on the barricade, throwing his assault rifle to the swarm, and covering Ryker. They are responsive to the point that he has not finished his swing!
It is a processing net work tactical, frantic buzzing of Sato over the comms, said her voice. The violet biomass that functions as their nervous system is radiating an electromagnetic frequency. Vance is installing combat algorithms in their brains, in real-time!
I was standing on the overturned transport truck, and the cold blistering wind was ripping my coat. I observed Ryker and Baron go on a hundred yards further, and perish in a sea of white armor and shining purple cables. The Iron Guard and Ferrous were holding the line back at the breach, and their scrap-metal shields are the sounding of dreadful church bells with the constant beating of the swarm.
We were losing. We were being an inch at a time crushed mathematically.
We must cut the connection, I thought, and my teeth rattled. Probably, they can not hear Vance, and then they are dead men walking.
"How?" Vane called across the crack of the anti-air guns. "It's a localized network! It would require an EMP to fry the signal and we do not have such munitions!
I looked down at my left hand. The Origin Stone was broken, the blue jewellery lifeless and slow in the low temperatures. It didn't want to make wind. It did not feel like to push the heavy, frozen air.
But wind was not the only thing spawned of a storm.
Winter air is dry. Brittle. And as you make it move it causes friction.
I do not require munitions, I said to myself.
I removed my thick thermal glove, and threw it into the snow. My naked left hand went up to the sky. I never made an attempt to call a hurricane or a shield. I grabbed the electric nature of the ambience which had frozen in the blizzard, and which was around us.
"Elara, get down!" Kaelen shouted on his sniper post. "You're exposed!"
I ignored him. I shut down my eyes and directed all my strength of will into the broken rock.
Friction. Heat. Spark.
The ring grew hot. Painfully hot. I was being pricked by the jagged crack of stone. I started hearing a humming air not of the wind, but of a sharp metallic vibration. My hair on the arms stood on end. The odor of ozone dominated exhaust and blood smell.
"What is she doing?" Ferrous grunted, returning to look at the barricade.
I opened my eyes. The air over my hand was distorting, full of small, crackling blue-white sparks. I was drawing the free charge out of the falling snow, and concentrating it into a heavy, unbalanced ball of atmospheric energy.
The Origin Stone was scalding my finger, complaining of the pressure. A thread of blood dripped out of under the ring, and was evaporated away in the heat of the collected charge.
"Ryker!" My voice was straining as I screamed over the comms. "Cover your ears! Close your eyes!"
A hundred yards distant, Ryker decapitated one of my soldiers, overheard my voice, but was immediately thrown on his knees, with his face covered by his arms. Baron cuddled up into a huge mass of hairyness next to him.
I raised my hand and struck out straight in the middle of the combat area at the strategic position between the command crawler and Ryker.
"Break!" I shouted.
I released the pressure.
The stationary ball imploded back, and then went off. It did not burst with fire and concussions. It broke out as a blinding, blue-white, shockwave of electromagnetic staticality.
The EMP wave crossed the frozen expressway without any noise with a speed equal to that of light.
As the wave struck the barricade in the Iron City, our comms immediately burst out into noise and broke down. The guns on the roof that were against the air dropped with a moaning whimper.
However, when the wave struck the White March the impact was devastating.
The violet cables which linked the helmets of the mutated soldiers with their power packs fluttered wildly and flicked like shattered neon lights before becoming perfectly dark.
The hive mind shattered.
The ideal, harmonized beat of the army fell dead with one heart stroke. Thousands of men fell dead where they stood. The reanimated corpses were not aware of how to move, how to fight, or how to think without the combat algorithms that Vance had to feed them with.
Some of the soldiers threw down their arms and grasped their lances with hand-in-gloves as the sudden silence in their brains shocked their rotting nervous system. Others were feeling their way, striking one another, the ideal arrangement degenerating into a wild, grovelling children.
"The signal is down!" Jaxon screamed, but his comms were out. A sudden silence of the battlefield was filled by his natural voice. "She broke the hive!"
I went on my knees on the roof of the truck and gaped. I could not feel my left hand, the flesh around the Origin Stone was blackened with soot. The magic withdrew, and left me empty and cold, yet it had served.
Out on the ice, Ryker stood up.
Soldiers around him were no longer a lethal machine. they were mere bewildered, out of place bodies.
Ryker didn't hesitate. He did not struggle any longer with the soldiers, he merely pushed them aside. They went plummeting over the snow like bowling pins without their concerted reflexes. Baron stood up, and gave a deafening howl which drove the bewildered infantry away in front of them.
"Now!" Ryker screamed, and his voice was heard across the wind.
They dashed through the ranks which were broken. The path was clear.
The last hundred yards could be closed by Ryker and Baron in a matter of seconds, and they were at the huge, steel-plated treads of the command crawler. The car sat stalling, with its violet headlights bouncing about as a result of my EMP residual.
The figure of the shadow of General Vance, as seen peering down the reinforced glass bridge, was at the lone swordsman and the gigantic wolf before his gates.
Ryker looked up at the glass. He lifted up his Star-Metal sword, and aimed the smouldering orange point right at the head of the General.
Vance, open the door, Vance," bellowed Ryker, coarse and vile. "Or I'll cut it down."