Tales of the Amalgam'verse: Berserek Part 1 · 7:20am Dec 21st, 2018
Proofed by Lance Omikron and Faith-Wolff!
The surgeons, had their faces obscured as they worked. The sterile environment of bleached white walls and blinding lights looming above on the ceiling fit the sterile looking operators in pale coats. Of course detail was elusive given just how blurry the subject’s vision was. Unfocused and yet constantly in flux to try and become so. The doctors were saying something, but the subject wasn't quite sure what, white noise drowning out any of the local clicks, chitters, or flexing of air out of their throats that made up speech. Limbs were tested and responded, but movement only came in the millimeter. Said limbs were bound tightly, fastened closely to the mattress the subject lay upon for their own safety and that of the engineers of flesh. The subject didn’t like that, the impulse to stand up, to simply move was screaming and clawing at the inside of its skull.
The doctors were saying more things now, that much was evident by their blurry forms being surprised at his movements. Logic said one of them that was wearing a different color, the leader of the operation, was giving some sort of directive to make sure he stayed down. The subject hated the leader instantly for daring to keep him from the waking world he wish to dwell in. Tiredness was settling back in. The blurriness in his vision ironically was dampened by the torpor coming over him. Little details of the room were coming to light in those fleeting moments. Before unconsciousness slipped back into his mind to overpower everything else, he saw one last curiosity.
A wet warmth dripped over his chest from a location he managed to glimpse out of his periphery. There was a massive hole in his torso, ribs split down the middle and spread apart into a gaping chasm. And being pulled free from that chasm was an organ of some sort. Hoisted up on a set of pulleys, it joined a menagerie of body parts dangling in sealed containers.
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Decades later
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“A colossal waste,” the older engineer groaned while settling into the break room.
His younger colleague was far less convinced and seem to visibly double take at the suggestion. His lenses rapidly darted between the hanger and his superior.
He motioned one of his left arms to the glass windows showing the contents of the hanger, “Bu- sir, S.H.A.S is a legend! It single-handedly fended off the Simian incursion my grandmother fought in!”
“That was almost 50 solar cycles ago, outdated is the word you’re looking for,” the older man groaned while punching at the keys to the food processor with his right arms and waving his left in the dismissing motion.
“Standard procedure, those who don’t innovate fall behind.”
“The our allies still have their mass aggressor unit, and they’ve had theirs even longer than we had ours.”
The elder wasn’t convinced, “And theirs doesn’t require years of research and development and massive portions of the budget burned away in that time to keep it operating. Really, this is nothing to get worked up over. We manufactured the original to serve its purpose and it did a fine job at it. Just as any machine or tool would.”
His maw twitched as he reached out to pat his younger subordinate on the shoulder, his expression showing there was no malice in his intent, “It’s okay to be attached. But do you keep bleeding funds and trying to acquire more parts to keep a derelict ship running? Or do you make a new one with the information you gain from the last one? A new model, better and more reliable than the last one. That’s what the demolition-specialized S.H.B.S. is all about, and that’s almost done.”
The young engineer, still starry-eyed at what he saw as a living legend even if it was just a machine, lowered his mandibles in a way that a human would approximate as a frown, “And when it is done?”
To this the elder shrugged, “We’ll retire the old one. Really kid, don’t think of it as us putting it down. So many gizmos and metal plates inside that one, there’s hardly anything left of the original form. It’s not alive in the traditional sense. Not top-of-the-line, either. So which would be more cruel? Let it get blown apart in some battle and leave everyone exposed, or just a quiet dismantling? It’s not like it’s the first time its parts have been around the city. You can take your kids to see it someday, if you have any, to show them what you worked on. Corporate might make a museum out of it.”
The younger engineer, who’d grown up hearing more stories from his father and grandmother involving the Space Hunter, chittered. Those tales had later motivated him to pick up the career path he did with the hopes of helping his ancestor’s savior with its repairs, so he tried to accept it all. In the end, the Alpha Series was a prototype weapon. Prototypes in their nature imply something succeeds them. Work on the Beta Series was extremely promising and he supposed he had let himself get too attached.
It was like getting rid of an old ship to seek and obtain a better one. Keeping all the old articles on them until they broke down beyond repair wasn't right, and the idea of immortalizing it in some form seemed more honorable than it could’ve gotten any other way. Not like it was sapient and could care anymore, not with all the organics they’d taken out of it over the century and a half.
“Hey,” his mentor chittered to regain his wavered attention before chuckling to himself, “I’m set to retire soon, but you’re still fresh and you have a lot of experience. You’d have been first pick for the next chief engineer after me on the Alpha Series if it wasn’t set to be discontinued. The higher-ups in corporate will want someone with experience. Mark my words upon my mandibles, they’ll be calling you soon to transfer you over to work on the Beta’s upkeep as soon as final construction is done.”
Before the youth could crack a bittersweet smile, the entire building rocked. Contents spilled off the shelves, part of the roof tiles collapsed down to shatter on the floor, and the engineers had to hold on to anything sturdy and each other to avoid toppling over. The tremors were extremely violent, but relatively brief. They were gone as soon as they came and after a tense minute the engineers looked one another with a bewildered expression.
“Quake?” Kubota muttered as he looked to his superior
“Not at this time of year there’s not…”
That’s when the alarms fired off, intercoms asking all personnel to seek shelter. There had been an incident.
======================
The ash and dust clouds were still thick from the fallen skyscrapers’ debris, consuming the surrounding city blocks in a dense fog that cast an eerie glow between the sunbeams and lights other responder vehicles. A hovercraft slowly drifted through the trench cut through the district by what had fallen from space, at one point the remote pilot guided them through a portion that created a near complete blackout. Several of the soldiers on board looked out the windows, clicking on powerful flashlights to see twisted metal and broken wire staring back at them, showing that they had accidentally flown through a gaping hole in an office building that had managed to stay standing.
The craft landed and they piled out with respirators on their spiracles to make sure they didn’t instantly choke to death upon stepping into the dusty veil all around them. It was fortunate they were all clad in what looked like a combination of plated military uniforms and biohazard suits, with respirator masks that completely covered their face along with tubing connecting to spots upon their flanks. In total, they were completely covered from head to toe with some carrying backpacks and others hoisting what looked like rifles of some sort. Cameras mounted on the shoulders transmitted back to command to offer first-person perspective.
The chairman of the security division intertwined her fingers and leaned forward upon her desk that sat in the back of the command room, dutifully watching all the monitors from each of the expeditionary force’s cameras. The fog and smoke were so thick that even with their shoulder mounted flashlights they could only see vague outlines for anything more than fifteen paces in front of them. Slowly but surely however, something started to come into view at the depth of the trench the soldiers walked through.
“Security Team 3 Leader, what are your vitals?”
A slightly distorted voice came through the central monitor, “Hazard suits are holding. Exterior temperature is high but we’re managing. It’s cooling down but I’m seeing warped and melted ceramics and metals from the building. Whatever it is that crashed came in hot, very hot. Asteroid maybe?”
“Not likely,” the division head noted as some of her subordinates filled her forearms with readouts from everything entailing atmospheric survey to telescope readings.
“Unless planetary defense is slacking again, we should have seen an asteroid or meteor a long ways off and shot it down. Team Unit 4, use the spectrum radar.”
Another one of the monitor POV’s jogged forward ahead of the pack, pulling something out of his backpack that could be compared to the shape of a metal detector mixed with a megaphone hooked up to something still inside his pack. A low hum was emitted by the device as he swung it slowly back and forth, sometimes growing in pitch and sometimes going dead silent.
“No radiation or EMP higher than what’s expected from the background…” his mandibles clicked in confusion when he pointed the scanner straight ahead at some large dark object ahead in the fog, “in fact something seems to be absorbing all of it, like a reading blackout.”
“Chairman, that could explain why nobody sensed it. Could be stealth technology, maybe a ship crash or orbital drop?”
The team drew into the anomaly, flashlights piercing the dust cloud to reveal a metallic hull. The old division chairman’s claws dug into her desk at the thought. If it was those apes again…
She let her bristling pass and directed herself back to the microphone, “Proceed with caution, keep weapons armed.”
“Acknowledged.”
Sure enough it was a ship, though not necessarily one that was readily familiar. The shape was longer than it was thick, almost resembling two rectangular spires jutting out of the central orb. The odd part beyond the bizarre shape however, was the coloration. The entirety of the ship was one solid color, a blued silver pasted across all surfaces like what one would expect a wet coat of sprayed-on paint to look like. It took several minutes to find an entryway, and several more to use a plasma cutter to force open the hatch that seem to be melted or fused into the hull. In the dim light none of the unit noticed how the metal coating everything seemed to quickly absorb the heat and pull it away once the cut was made.
The interior was dark aside from a few dim purple lights that seemed to hum with an unnatural melody. Keeping mind to cover each other’s back, the unit slowly stepped inside pace by pace with weapons drawn and cameras all at the ready. The chairman tensed when the outline of a bipedal figure at the end of the hall became illuminated by the team’s flashlights.
The pointman of the team didn’t make any motion to call out, doubting the occupant could even understand them for the language and let alone all the respirator gear they were wearing. But there was another reason that soon became apparent. The closer they got and the more illuminated the figure became, it was increasingly obvious they weren’t alive. The team leader gripped his camera in one hand while using the other three to steady his rifle just in case.
“Seems to be some statue of sorts, very lifelike. Odd placement though…”
The chairman tilted her head at what she was seeing through the feed. The statue did look extremely lifelike, even if she didn’t recognize the species. It looked vaguely similar to a Simian, but with a much less protruding face almost like an Xilian; though lacking the enlarged eyes or flat nose. The eyebrows almost looked more like quills, and the jaw was much smaller than a Simian. It was tall, a good head and a half or so than the team. Painting the view down another curious observation was made. The statue appeared to be made of the exact same material the exterior and interior of the ship were coated with, the feet even looking like they were fused into the floor.
“Unit 5, calling in,” one of the other expedition members whom had gone the opposite direction chimed in.
“Chairman here, what is it?”
On the other side of the ship, Unit 5 and several squadmates were mulling about a room that appeared to have several computer consoles and a window of sorts, had the odd metal not been sprayed over it to obscure the outside world.
“We think we found the helm, we managed to find what appeared to be a black box and jury-rigged an uplink,” her tone paused indicate she had gulped, “Chairman, I don’t believe these are statues.”
“Explain.”
Unit 5 audibly cringed and pointed her camera at what, to her conjectured credit of this being the ship’s helm, appear to be the captain’s chair. Sitting in the seat, practically glued to what by the same shiny substance, was what looked like a gaunt corpse rendered in metal. The cheeks, eyes, and lips were all sunken in to form a skull like visage.
“T-The statues, they’re… they were the crew.”
Before the chairman could cringe in repulsion at the sight, the data feed from the black box started to come into one of her PDAs.
The translator system, more code cracker, was rough and dealt more with numbers and letters; but a myriad of files and images started flashing across the screen. Star maps and navigation routes through the galaxy, ship logs, and dozens of images. The first few she could speculate were of the whole world or manufacture place of the ship, her mandibles clicking in agitation at seeing several Simians alongside the race the mummified crew belonged to. More images came by of stars and planets. One of which there were multiple frames devoted to. Of a blue and green world, third from its sun, with a single large moon. Evidently the crew had landed upon the world and attempted to colonize it. Documentation for plants and animals the chairman didn’t recognize were brought forth. One species of which somewhat resembled the crew’s race and the Xilians, but were dressed in extremely primitive clothes of animal hides and furs to obscure some of their features. The last set of images however caught her attention. A name that she set the translator to work overtime on, and something rising from the ocean. Based off the numbers the picture was taken some 50 solar cycles ago, implying the ship had been adrift for a very long time. They had been trying to get away from something it seemed, and in their haste to get out of atmosphere they flung themselves off in a random direction.
Three rows of dorsal spines broke the surface of the water, a titanic, reptilian beast surfacing and rushing at the ship as it was taking off. There was a jet of blue light and the name the translator was having issues with, before the images stopped.
However the translation from before had finished, riddled with errors but still legible. The spelling was off on many words, apparently in a struggle to find a close approximation in their native speech. The damage to the ship seemed to cause something to go awry, obscene in such a way those the ship had contact with called it an abomination. The crew begged to differ about what a passing Kilaak vessel called their creation. The chairman’s eye narrowed as she muttered the word aloud.
“Ber….serek… Berserek.”
There was another word she was unfamiliar with, but very common. Given its frequency she had speculated it to be either the name of the ship or the name of the species the crew belonged to.
“Bilusaludo…”
The screaming caught her attention back to the team’s camera. Unit 3 and 5 started jumping around and batting at their own feet in a blind panic to get something off. Their compatriots turned towards them and when they did the Chairman’s eye lenses dilated in shock. The floor itself had jumped up out at them, crawling up her legs like liquid running down the window in reverse. Several of the team members attempted to restrain their comrade or help get the metal off them to no avail. The panic only spread when they all realized something had just tore its way through their suits. Shots were fired blindly, several team members falling over from friendly fire before the gun was eaten by the floor as well.
One team member ripped his mask off and attempted to remove his suit in a last-ditch attempt to get it off him. His camera was thrown aside and pointed back up at him, revealing an entity that could most favorably be described by a Terran as an upright, vaguely humanoid cockroach. Six limbs, a pair of large legs to stand upright upon with a pair of primary and secondary arms, writhed in agony. The Team member, an M Nebulan, chittered and screamed in pain while swiping and grabbing at his body to try and hold the metal off; even ripping out one of his antennae on accident. But every touch just made the metal spread, tendrils stretching over his body to invade every spiracle, his mouth inside his mandibles, and his cyclopean compound eye.
It was then, aside from some choked rasps and convulsions, that he went still. The feed was probably cut off when the metal spread over the camera too.
The chairman could hear her hearts pound at full blast, thinking it couldn’t go any higher. She was quickly proven wrong when the stern camera to the hovership was brought into focus by one of her staff. The metal of the crashed ship was spreading, coating the ground and coiling around anything solid or liquid it touched. Pools of it raced for the hovercraft and snagged onto the landing gear before the remote pilot could achieve lift off. System warnings about hull breach blared as the ship was swallowed up by the living metal. The last thing the ship’s camera projected was the glowing core of the crashed vessel pulsing with an eerie purple light. Parts seemed to deconstruct and break away, reconfiguring into a mass of tendrils and plating that began to form something else.
One could hear a pin drop in the command room, all eyes falling upon the stunned security chairman. Thankfully experience snapped her out of her stupor.
“C-CODE GHIDORAH! FULL ALERT! GET THE EVACUATION TRANSPORTS IN THERE AND HAVE SECURITY BLAST THAT THING TO THE NEBULA COME!”
A valiant effort, but futile.
==============
The hanger shuddered from a distant explosion, a whole new set of sirens blaring through the air to indicate how dire the situation gotten. This certainly was no earthquake and the code given out by the security division spoke last.
The young engineer Kubota help wanted his fallen coworkers back up to their feet, “Stop scrambling so blindly! You’re going to end up ripping a wing or getting your arms tangled!”
“B-BUT IT’S CODE-” the other Nebulan screamed in sheer, unadulterated terror.
The engineer just focused on getting them back up despite their thrashing and ushering them down the hall, “Ghidorah, I know! That means to get clear as fast as we can! Security is going to be piling in and they’ll call the Xilian Fleet over if they’re in range.”
The clearly very panicked arthropod looked through an open door in the hallway, to what was beyond the glass wall inside the hangar.
Kubota saw it too and shoved them ahead, “Get to the evacuation routes now! I’ll handle the servers for the S.H.A.S.!”
“W-Why aren’t we turning it loose?!”
“Because we don’t know what attacking us and repairs weren't tested from when it came back to us trashed!” Kubota bellowed through his mandibles, “Between all the things we had the pull out of it and how badly it was damaged, I don’t even know if it's but operational! But the servers for its blueprints need to be secured. The apes already tried copying our alloy development, we can’t risk more being lost. Now MOVE IT!”
He jumped up and extended his wings from their covers to briefly hover in place, bracing three limbs each on the backs of his colleagues and shoving forward to get them going. Thankfully they got the message via the kick in the thorax, leaving Kubota to scramble into the server room that overlooked the hanger.
The various divisions have a lot of rivalry in corporate, and all too often someone would go rooting around through a disaster area. And given it was ‘Code Ghidorah’, which meant either the King of Terror had arrived or something that scared security just as much, something told him this whole place was set to be a disaster zone. He wasn’t going to risk some double agent or unscrupulous type selling secrets over to rival groups or the Simians.
But when he booted up the computer, one usually helmed by the chief engineer who had been dragged away to medical when a falling piece of ceiling struck him in the head, he found some server connections he wasn’t expecting to see. The holographic interface that appeared before him and reacted to the taps of his four hands filled the space between him and the monitor with various pathways and access routes. Some of which have been used into places well beyond the engineering division. Like a quadrant map and command keys for all of the security division drones.
It was accessed. Someone was on the systems.
==============
The metallic mass crawled and dragged itself down a street filled with lights and sights, thrashing tendrils of metallic liquid clutching and digging into the building and street to pull itself along. Almost anything it tore out, covered, or pulled its mass through was absorbed. Only twisted scraps of the denser parts to some buildings were left in its ever growing wake. A line of what a human might understand to be the M Nebulan equivalent to a tank formed up and opened fire, their turrets cocking back in recoil to reload another round.
The living metal colony squirmed from the impacts digging into its form, but the rounds were eventually caught in the girth of its mass. Still, the barrages of the tanks along with some strafing hovercraft filling a role similar to an attack helicopter did force it to stop its advance.
Back in the security division control room, various Nebulans jockeyed the controls to their fleet while calling out to one another.
One called out from his seat, “Rounds effective at penetrating and slowing it down, but it’s still alive!”
An engineer ran between the combatants with a PDA, swiping at it to throw his finding onto their screens, “Scans show it’s composed of some sort of nanite mass, a nanometal that’s converting mass around it into more of itself.”
“Electrical shocks from the hovership’s taser bursts and sabor heat rounds are just absorbed, but the heat does at least burn it. Kinetics seem to be the most effective,” the hovercraft pilot looked up from his seat at the engineer, “Anything it can’t absorb?”
Another tanker driver called out in the background, gnashing his mandibles while pounding at the controls, “We’re hitting it but we’re not hurting it. Antennae up, it’s doing something new!”
The engineer brought up their PDA and checked images of the path the nanometal mass took to review what had been left behind in its wake, “Some titanium, a few plasma routers, harder steel alloys, the Giga Nizer derivatives. Seems like only anything more durable than itself or hotter than 800’C.”
“What the?!”
The stupored lack of professionalism could be excused given what was happening. The nanometal mass was, for lack of better terms, constructing something. At first it looked like just two protrusions of its mass, but they began to rapidly condense and form recognizable shapes. Dense plates coated the exterior, burning sparks indicating rounds that previously but into the mass were now ricocheting off it. The form was becoming more solid and orderly, forming what clearly looked like arms complete with smooth spikes in place of digits.
As the firepower rained down on the mass, one arm dug into a nearby skyscraper and yanked backwards. The towering pillar of industry shuddered and crumbled in a column of smoke and dust and the firing stopped for the tanks and hovercraft to pull back so they avoided the debris.
There was a tense silence, but the slow rumble underneath a pile of smog, dust, and fallen rubble made it clear their opponent was still very much ‘alive’ and active. It was so sudden when large, jagged dorsal spines pierced out of the rubble that the pilots couldn’t get out away before spears of metal were fired in salvos from their holdings. The darts, resembling blades fired out of rail guns, impacted several of the tanks. Those that were destroyed instantly on the hit sparked and smoked as the nanometal forced its way into their internals.
The tank pilots who were hit in such a way yelped from the surge of sparks and shocks coming to their controls, some jumping out of their chairs and others fighting to try and get the tanks to follow their commands. Loud swearing filled the room as two tanks in particular had their targeting systems compromised and began to act on their own. They took aim at some of the hovercraft and fired.
The entire column was in complete anarchy and disarray as the berserk metallic titan unburied itself and began to stand up on forming legs. The body was still extremely abstract, large plating and spikes fighting for space with chaotic tendrils and dripping metal, but order was slowly being acquired. A large portion of the mass stayed in the center and extended backwards to start forming a tail of sorts. The head, or at least where the head should be if this were a living creature, was still amorphous. The hands reached out to grasp the possessed tanks and stuffed them into the cavity where the neck would be. The nanometal wrapped around and digested the polymers and carbons the assault craft were built out of, reconfiguring their form and makeup to adjust them to its needs. The torso extended outwards to form a proper neck, with the converted tanks forming a crude facsimile of a head.
Vents that emitted a purple glow appeared on the roof of a converted tank, giving the appearance of eyes. If they were such, they looked down upon the remaining military craft around it and recorded them briefly, before firing more darts of nanometal to possess them. The magnificent machine continued its trek across the city, absorbing more material as it plowed through several buildings without pause.
Reports streamed into the command room, the chairman of security reading through them all at a mile a minute.
-Tank Division 2 offline
-Hovercraft Division 4 engaging
-Tank Division 4 engaging
-Tank Division 2, friendly fire upon Tank Division 4
-Bomb Division 1 engaging
-Hits confirmed for mass ordnance 1
She chanced a smile while looking to the viewing screen of hovercraft between them firing upon the rogue tanker division 2. The nanometal monster seemed to buckle and fall, having to catch itself with its arms braced against two skyscrapers. There were obvious large dents in it back from where the bombs had hit it, which had succeeded in blowing off several of its dorsal spines. But all hopes were soon dashed when it did what it had done in the face of the first division’s wall of fire. It started changing. Its head, which had come to slightly resemble a reptile of which species she didn’t recognize, extended and flattened. Almost now like a variety of beetle complete with two very large mandibles. It straightened its neck and head to be in line with its back and energy arched between the mandibles. Any thoughts that it looks similar to a railgun were quickly confirmed when a geyser of purple light, a burst of plasma, fired out of its maw and quickly turned the bombers into explosions of light and smoke.
Seeing the threat dealt with, the Titan returned to its normal configuration but kept the adjusted head. Now against any ships it couldn’t reach or hit with its harpoons, it was spewing smaller, weaker versions of the plasma railgun to shoot them down. And the devastation to the city… Even if almost all the security division vehicles were unmanned, the casualties at this point had to be catastrophic.
The report updates kept coming in...
-Large Scale Aggressor entering district 2, population evacuation only 40%
-Bombing Division 3 engaging
-Tank Division 2 destroyed by Tank Division 3
-Tank Division 3 reduced by 80%
-Large Scale Aggressor confirmed at 250 meters tall and growing
-Hovercraft Division 4 offline
-Hovercraft Division 5 destroyed by Hovercraft Division 4
-Bombing Division 3 destroyed, shot down by Large Scale Aggressor
-Hovercraft Division 4 marked as hostiles
-Hovercraft Division 5 engaging Large Scale Aggressor and Hovercraft Division 4
-Large Scale Aggressor changing path towards S.H.B.S. construction site
Her eyes widened and she grabbed at the intercom.
“Someone get word to the engineers at the Alpha and Beta series Space Hunter hangers to lock them down, NOW! If that thing absorbs them we will never stop it!”
“Chairman, should we release them to engage?”
“And risk contact? The Beta isn’t combat ready yet and the Alpha series is mostly mechanical,” she strained a chitter as her eye dilated in dread at what might happen, “If that thing possesses the Alpha it would be as big of a catastrophe than if it absorbed it!”
“Hovercraft Division 4 just fired upon it!” Some voice from from the pilot room below shouted.
Normally having someone shoot at an enemy wouldn’t be anything unexpected, but the chairman knew why that staff member sounded so shocked. She glanced back at the updates to confirm it. Sure enough it had been made clear as day Hovercraft Division 4 had been possessed. And yet…
She grabbed at the intercom, “Anyone with a view of Hovercraft Division 4 put them on screen now!”
Thankfully multiple sets of eyes had a view of the action and while the three point of views from onboard cameras fought for space, the image was bright as day and just as clear.
Hovercraft Division 4, many of which were half covered in nanometal, were hovering in formation and unloading their entire payload into the aggressor which seemed to react to the attack more than what one would expect for such light damage. It seemed, for lack of better words, surprised. But the ships kept firing, even pulling some impressive maneuvers to avoid return fire from their former master’s salvos of harpoons and plasma bursts. And when they finally ran out of ammo, they launched themselves at the aggressor without any hesitation to suicide-bomb into it.
As many gawked at the sight, it was quickly followed up by some of the possessed tanks rejoining their brethren. While the nanometal continued to fester and grow upon them, all the tanks continued to fire upon the aggressor while moving away in a specific direction. Finally, as the nanometal consumed more and more of it, the possess tanks charged forward to slam into the aggressors feet and self-destructed while their untainted compatriots kept firing.
“Which tanker division is that?!” The chairman roared while looking down from her command chair.
Several crews saluted from below, but their clearly confused expressions soon spread to her. They were in their seats and yet their tanks were still moving, still reacting to the titan now chasing them after it had been on the cusp of reaching the S.H.B.S. hanger.
“Tank Division 6 chairman,” the leader announced, “We seem to have a hacker.”
The chairman’s antennae twitched and her head tilted, “A what?”
“We’ve lost total control of all tanks,” the leader gulped before motioning to the next division over, “Division 7 were overtaken by the nanometal and they seemed to have been hacked too.”
There were a flurry of questions coming through her head at this information. They had some of the most secure servers their race, let alone any race, ever had. Typically Nebulan logic, if you can’t innovate yourself, buy from the best and keep going from there. A hack in the security division would usually be a catastrophe. And yet….
She glanced up at the feeds, the nanometal monster seeming to be enraged and letting out a metallic shriek at some of its own possessions firing upon it. It was maddened, berserk. Instantly her mind thought back to the investigation scouting team who’d perished aboard the ship. The corruption of the data shifting the spelling off that reoccuring word, ‘Berserk’. Berserek, for what it was acting like now, was as good a name and descriptor as any. And yet the hacker clearly wasn’t so. Whoever it was was guiding the vehicles, they took control over with skill and experience, clearly with a motive given the move to draw this... Berserek monster away from the hanger where it might access the S.H.B.S.
“How’s the firewall holding?” she barked to the engineer teams.
“Holding up, we can’t stop the nanometal possession or the hacker but we are at least slowing down the latter-”
“Shut it down.”
The engineer was dumbfounded by the way her mandibles dropped. The chairman took in a deep breath through her spiracles before slamming her upper arms down upon her desk and pointing with her inner pair.
“You heard me! Shut the damn firewall down! Grant full override with my access permissions.”
This move could easily cost her her career, billions in property losses, and who knew how many casualties. But in a case of Merton’s fork, it was the best solution possible.
“NOW! Unplug the server guard yourself if you have to!”
The weight of the security division, and potentially the planet was bearing down on her shoulders. She could only hope she had made a wise choice.
The Berserek roared a shrill call most favorably compared to scraping metal, stomping forward through a skyscraper’s flank to become showered in falling glass and metal. All around it was an all out war, each side constantly possessing the nearby machinery to attack one another and the nanometal’s master. In both the physical world of steel and sparks and digital realm of codes and overrides, the conflict spread to all nearby districts of the city. Even as it and the units of attack drones it commanded chased the uncorrupted security units across the city, crisscrossing the air with artillery and maser fire that dug into buildings and wash over the Berserek’s exoskeleton, the city itself seemed to come alive and attack the intruder.
Construction vehicles one could compare to everything from dump trucks to cranes all sparked and whirled to life. A menagerie of carriers hauling materials ranging from cements, molten metal, glass, and building parts all lined up in the high skyline to simultaneously dump their payloads onto the Berserek and its forces. The massive machine buckled and let out a metallic shriek, stumbling from having all the articles suddenly raining down on its head in such magnitude many of the hovercraft it had managed to maintain a hold on were sent crashing to the ground either by being impaled by beams or smothered by getting several tons of liquid metal, heated to such a degree even the nanometal couldn’t take it, spattered across them.
Much to the shocked ire of the security division and no doubt the engineering corps, it was soon made obvious the hacker had used the clearance to take control of more than just military and construction drones. Inside many of the skyscrapers were a set of automated support beams, stabilizing structures meant to help keep the skyscraper upright in the case of a violent spring earthquake.
The stabilizers were all shifted in one specific direction, far too much to be safe. Especially when the commandeered construction vehicles drove through the lines of possessed tank fire to crash into the base of the buildings. The resulting fireballs caving into the base of the tilting structures was too much for them to handle. Multi-hundred floor monuments to economics and engineering work turned into multi-hundred thousand ton clubs that came crashing down on top of the invader. The Berserek configured its head, twisting its ‘jaws’ sideways and aligning its head with its neck. Bright purple glows sparked within its mandibled maw before torrents of thin, purple plasma flew up from its tail, accelerated up its spine, and fired out of its mouth like some sort of energetic railgun.
The searing beam easily bisected the skyscraper falling towards it, but that only managed to lop off the top half from its base rather than destroy it out right. Berserek was hit with the full force of the impact and sent careening backwards to fall on its back. Its mechanical eyes looked up to see a second, even taller skyscraper falling towards it. Even kilometers away, the evacuating Nebulans could hear that mechanical roar sounding off while a purple beam split the sky.
The dust cloud from the collapsing structures hung in the air as an eerie fog that was illuminated in the magenta glow of the railgun piercing the sky, with only glimpses of light visible as the possessed machines, by either Berserek or the hacker, continue to battle it out in the smog and dust filled streets. Slowly but surely, the latter side started to gain ground. A nanometal-spattered tank stopped firing at its uncorrupted compatriots and rammed itself into a mass of nanometal before self-destructing, two nanometal-coated hovercraft fidgeted in the air before crashing into each other; and just as the lead hovercraft managed to gun down one of the hacker-controlled tanks, it made the mistake of flying too close to one of the buildings. A scream of metal sounded into the dusty air as a crane whirled its arm around the corner, wrecking ball on the tip caving in most of the aircraft’s front half to clobber it out of the sky.
All the while, a torrent of purple energy raked across the sky above to knife through the tomb encasing its owner. Molten metal and glass caved in on itself with the tomb constructed by the bodies of fallen monuments to industry collapsing in on themselves. The beam cut off and for a moment there was silence. But as the dust started to settle, it was quickly made clear it was far from over. Quite the contrary actually. The metallic titan had been knocked down and stalled, but not beaten. The opposite in fact, as tendrils of nanometal started to creep up through the rubble and metabolize what they could, mostly the non-molten metals and minerals making up the structures. It ate the skyscrapers, moving aside what could be used as piles of slag the size of houses.
The Berserek burst out from its prison, repaired in damage and even larger than before. Now the ground didn’t just tremble at its step, it quaked. The massive head rose up further and further, to a height otherwise inconceivable by an inanimate object even with it being hunched over. The piece of main street it stood beside was just over 300 meters tall, and it towered over that height by a good 15 or 20%. Even as it stood alone with its forces destroyed, it stood as a living mountain.
The scattered surviving aircraft, tanks, and other vehicles the hacker had commandeered surrounded it at all angles, but didn’t fire. The Berserek didn’t wait for such to happen, instantly going on the attack with several harpoons fired in a salvo from its back that impaled or clipped several vehicles. As the ones hit began to be possessed by a now even more aggressive nanometal, they suicide-crashed into their would-be master as the others all retreated in a formation. The Berserek paused for only a moment, almost seeming to contemplate its situation before giving chase. The assessment was a logical one: the largest obstacle facing it in this world was likely pulling their resources back to pool them together. With spiny limbs that resembled a parody of feet, it started to give chase without any particular rush in its slow pace or paying any heed to the buildings it casually smashed through or trampled in its path.
While it was outpaced, it never lost visual sight of its targets and soon found itself catching back up given they had all stopped. The buildings here were especially tall, resembling a deep canyon made of concrete and metal with urbanized walls and large construction cranes, it was a foundry, a shipwright of sorts for the larger engineering projects. The high walls and tall towers even eclipsed the Berserek’s great height, funneling it into a valley. The controlled military and construction drones were all formed up at the other end of the valley in front of a very large tube-shaped tower. The Berserek closed in without any hesitation or rapid pace, plodding down the valley in thundering footsteps. The moment it got within 500 meters however, the dark chasm flew to life. Everything was attacking it all at once and in one direction. Construction cranes willfully swung themselves and their payload around, intentionally overtaxing their foundation to snap themselves off at the base and throw their shapes at the titan. Tank fire and aircraft gunship barrages peppered its massive body from head to toe with explosions. Construction vehicles drove up ramps created by several cranes holding up thick beams and bridges, driving up to the higher rafters and crossings up top the valley to either dump their payloads on top of the invader or throw themselves over the edge as kinetic bombs.
The Berserek weathered the storm with barely any attention given to it being assaulted, metallic harpoons were readied before being withdrawn. Those wouldn’t be needed, these were simple machines not worth absorbing. Just dispatched with their master. The energy railgun configuration was readied, the Berserek keeping its head, neck, body, and tail parallel to the ground as various vents absorbed the atmosphere around it, taking in particles through vaccum suction. Billows of air and debris were absorbed into its body to be overcharged into that purple glow that filled the titan. A deep, bass hum sounded off when the charged particle beam cut through air and machine alike. Consistent in its flow, the beam was raked across the valley sides to cleave through any and all machinery, active or not. Broad sweeps around heated decades of engineering in a few seconds, coating the valley in smoke and explosions. The Berserek canceled out its ray to avoid overuse, observing how the onslaught had died down but quickly becoming privy to it not dying out entirely.
One salvo of missiles pierced through the haze and uselessly struck it on the forehead. Smoke was blown away by the jets of one lone remaining hovercraft shining its floodlight at the metallic invader through the haze. The Berserek barely paid it any attention, the last opposition being put down in a brief purge of charged energy that engulfed the craft and hit the structure behind it without pause.
The hacker’s presence disappeared from security division’s servers, a consciousness collecting back to the broken hanger. Their puppet attack fleet had done its job. Just above the gash the Berserek’s beam had cut into the side wall were a set of numerals in Nebulan that, if translated to a modern English alphabet, would spell out the letters.
S.H.A.S. - Space Hunter Alpha Series
The plan had worked perfectly, and more importantly, it now had a clear line of sight. He had a clear line of sight. And that was all that was required for his warp drive. Bindings and restraints that had held him were torn free, unable to hold something that vanished instantly in a flash of red light. A similar blinding flash appeared above and behind the Berserek, the gargantuan machine slowly turning around just in time to get clobbered in the face by a stomping foot. Even if it’s opponent was less than one third its height and far less massive, the suddenness of the impact sent it stumbling forward. Privy to a counterattack, the living mountain of metal whirled its tail around in an impact course with the newcomer, only to hit another flash of red light and sail through the air before caving in part of the slagged foundry wall in an explosion of debris.
The crimson flash of light appeared upon the foundry wall, the invader leering up towards it as it pulled its tail free from the slag and rubble. 120 meters tall at the top of a gleaming horn and 60,000 tons in mass, the wall crumbled slightly under single toed, spiked feet. With the sun at his back, the newcomer clacked his scythes on his forelimbs against each other before throwing his head backwards. The light shone on a body of green hide striped across synthetic blue skin, the latest set of repairs after an encounter with Kaizer Ghidorah having done away with where there had once been golden scales; shattered hooks replaced with bladed scythes. Gigan hated it, unable to recognize himself in a body that felt all over as a hand might feel through a glove. He hated them, the insects of his masters. They who’d bastardized his body and set to replace him. The cyborg directed it all at the transgressor. It was massive, far larger than he. If he failed to kill it, he at least denied the vermin the satisfaction of dismantling him. If he ended it… there would be no Beta series by the end of the day. One way or another, it was time for a slaughter. Gigan’s bladed mandibles and toothy metallic beak were agape to throw out a shrill roar that called out to the sky with the noise of his revving buzzsaw.
The story of Gigan: City on the Edge of Battle(that actually happened!).
Honestly, it seems fitting that Gigan will be Berserek's opponent considering that in the supplementary prequel material in the Anime trilogy, Gigan had served as a prototype for the Bilusaludian MechaGodzilla. I suspect that by the end of this tale, Gigan will have the Nanometal incorporated into his body, therefore completing his transformation into a machine, as was the case in the Anime novels.
Still, it's interesting to note here that Gigan resented Megalon before he was "born". And my god have you made Berserek huge. Why don't you just go ahead, and make him one kilometer tall while you're at it, eh? Though his powers with what we've seen so far have been relatively consistent with the concepts, and curiously enough, Berserek also shares the Atomic color & behavioral traits of Shin Godzilla... A whole lot of questions about that particular aspect & the footage of the Bilusaludians' encounter with a Godzilla-like entity I would like answered. Whether here, or by the next part.
Anyway, it's great to see you producing quality content as always after weeks of god-awful dead air.
no idea what is going on but you have my interest
Epic!
And that explains how a 50 meter Mechagodzilla could've grown to match a 300 meter tall Godzilla...
I suspect Berserk will quickly realize that it should have kept it's size down upon seeing Gigan's quicker footwork.
Every time nanites are put to use, they spiral out of control. They are a cancer that evolves/adapts. Anyone who could effectively control them would be a menace to all firearms and vehicles.
Rather ironic that I have an OC idea along those lines...
And you never cease to astound me.
It wasn't until the end that I realized who was actually fighting Berserek. This is going to be epic.
So, the Nebulam M don't know or don't care that Gigan is still alive and sentient?
What we have here is a classic battle of Brains vs Brawn, where one would hope Brains shall kick Brawn's arse.
That said, one would hope that the Elder Brother will be aided by the Younger one, if only with high heat supporting fire, and a true brotherly bond could form as a result. either that, or this turns out to be in a very separate universe, the world of Godzilla Earth...
Who's Kubota?
This Guy! (in Human form)
( vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/godzilla/images/4/44/Kubota.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20160703084648 )
Edit: from the "Godzilla Vs. Gigan" showa film
Holy emperor....
Holy Shit this is Kickass Metal
So is this a prequel to The Bridge or just semi-canon?
4984117
A prequel side-story that is Canon.
Hell yeah, Gigan is my favorite character in the series. Looking forward to part 2.
("Giga Nizer derivatives")
HA! Ultraman reference!
With all this "berserk" talk.......
I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF! XD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9DCKahS2No
Tarbtano, I can see You and I have a VERY similar taste in music. XD
4984152
so "part 1" and "part 2" are prequels to the actual chapter coming out?
4984334
No, prequel as in I mean this side story takes place before the main story. Not a prequel to any specific chapter, just something to add to the general lore.
4984316
Yep. In this Canon, Monster X got into a battle against Belial and got the Giga Nizer away from him when the other Ultra came to reimprison him. The Xilians and Nebulans reverse engineered the alloy it was made from to make Gigan. Giga Nizer metal.
4983669
What can I say? When I get denied my kaiju fight fix, I fix it. Hope the end result is good.
Also about the 1km tall Mechagodzilla... Don't think I wasn't tempted XD
And who knows what part 2 entails?... Well except me.
I can actually clarify the Godzilla encounter if you'd like.
4984376
Please do, I'm a little confused as to where this tale takes place on the timeline. I assume this happened recently after Gigan's first encounter with Kaizer which was 200 years ago I believe. Long before 1954?
4984152
So it's like Monster X vs Ultraman Belial, then?
4984398
Yes.
4984377
I believe this is happening in the Halloween specials universe potentially, balisulades saw Godzilla Earth and their ship was infected with nanometal while on the planet. At least that is my guess. That or the ship has been adrift for millions of years. There were godzillasaurs alive during the Precambrian in the time line I believe. They helped Reiju fight the demons.
4984414
Just to clarify that was the Permian period. Precabrian was before there was any advance life at all hehe.
4984377
This takes place sometime between 1800 and 1900. After Giga got mauled by Kaizer Ghidorah, but before Megalon was finished.
4984336
that's what I mean. BEFORE the STORY.
(I meant the story in last comment)
4984374
yep. I read it.
I Like the pun "Giga Nize"
(on a side note: my favorite Ultraman is 'Geed', although the Geed show was not that good (in my opinion) the IDEA was GREAT! Geed and Belial are like the Kaiju versions of Darth Vader and Luke. I'd like to see him in a blog and/or side story Plz?)
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/ultra/images/2/28/Ultraman_Geed_Primitive_render.png/revision/latest?cb=20170427043259
4984559
Then who was that Godzilla? Gojira?
One thing I appreciate here is seeing the Nebulans as a people, not just as nameless alien invaders. This is something this and Monster X's backstory did very well.
4985020
agreed!
#Stop Alien Racism!
4985025
Then why do they keep trying to kill us?
4985089
For the same reason Japanese pilots killed American Sailors at Perl Harbor in 1941 before the invasion of the Philippines, or the British established "Colonies" wherever they could to the detriment of the natives, or why American Solders fight wars in the Middle East. To gain access and/or control to valuable resources. Obviously, there's something Earth has that they want that they can't get elsewhere in the solar system, and consider the natives as an expendable obstacle to getting what they want.
Which leaves me to wonder, what could possibly be so valuable they are willing to invade the world with the second highest known Kaiju population? Only the Homeworld of the Ultra Men has more gigafauna, and Earth's Kaiju population is varied and aggressive by comparison. In other words, quite possibly the worst world to try to hold currently known....
4985150
well....Earth IS easier to take then Ultraman home-world. I mean, Ultraman kill rabid kaiju DAILY!
chances of taking the Ultra home-world: 1%
chances of taking Earth: 10%
see what I mean?
4985089
they're desperate for resources, food, water, materials, etc.
4985221
.... And chance of taking a world with no Kaiju 99%+. Whatever they are looking for has to be pretty special and pretty rare if they're willing to come here instead of going almost anywhere else.
4985229
indeed
4985229
Probably mana, the only known mana based Kaiju are on earth. Also in Tarb’s universe the mana nodes and leylines were made by Reiju after the defeat of the demon hordes so it’s possible nothing like them exist any where else in the universe.
4985337
Perhaps. But if Mana is only found on Earth, and the only confirmed effect of it's presence is a plethora of wild Kaiju, and if even on Earth it's very rare (to the point that most of the native population believes it is mythical), then why would they know it's there (aside from having a very good reason not to come) or have any reason to think it may be valuable?
The only thing that Earth has that would make dealing with a huge Kaiju population worthwhile would be the Kaiju themselves. And frankly, if aliens showed up and started collecting/harvesting members of the Mutant Faction, no human government on Earth would bat an eye, and a few would offer to donate territory and supplies for their base of operation, along with as much information for their "Pest Control" operations as they would like. No costly invasion needed, and if further plans involved a takeover they would be able to remove much of the danger posed by the Kaiju and gain useful local intelligence well in advance and in a way that would not raise suspicion.
Then again, if the Aliens are being led by the idiot young Controller from Final War, then messing up and not managing to get control of the Kaiju or establishing a local base first would make sense.....
4985630
Mana is also used to make various artifacts of great power and has positive effects on living creatures, as seen in flashbacks and in the “humanity’s stand” spin off.
I also believe that the aliens know more about earths ancient history then even the humans know. A line that sticks out to me that makes me think that is when Gigan says “We just kidnapped someone under the protection of a Mothra,” that implies he knows that there were multiple of them and not just the one. That knowledge is extremely ancient history.
4985630
Also wild kaiju are not a side effect of mana
Reiju made Battra and Mothra and all the the guardian beasts and Gyaos where made with magitech engineering by the old civilizations.
4987803
Many of the Mutations are based on Mana created creatures. All of the Guardian Beasts are Mana based. Even Godzilla's unmutated form was created with Mana. Mana is a mutagenic energy that crates Kaiju. The vast prevalence of wild Kaiju are definitely due to the presence of Mana.
4987800
The Mothra Dynasty would be common knowledge to the Kaiju of Earth, so it seems likely that Irys at some point told Gigan about the major powerhouses he would be likely to face.
Further, since the Aliens have Elerium, which in many ways is similar to Mana, it stands to reason that if they knew how to create enchanted artifacts, they would have done so and used them in the attack on Earth.
If they do not know how to make enchanted items, then Mana would be just a naturally occurring isotope of Elerium to them, and rare enough on Earth that they likely used more in the invasion then they would replace by mining. Remember, Mana is vanishingly rare at this point, so if the Aliens have the means to detect Elerium, they would know there is not enough Mana to be worth mining.
Remember, they use Elerium as their primary power source, which means either it's commonplace somewhere out there, or it's synthesized. Either way, Earth's meager Mana reserves would not be worth the trouble of dealing with a planet with Kaiju by the score.
4987809
Isn’t Elerium from Xcom?
Also the mana based mutations mutated from kaiju forged by the old civilizations, Mana on its own didn’t make them. It’s a very powerful energy that can be used to make Kaiju. Also the Godzillasaurs are radiovores(I think that is the right term) as established in the Reiju origin story and existed before the mana streams where created.
Also Gigan already knows about earths current power houses from his time in final wars, I not entirely certain if that was the first time he came to earth in Tarbs timeline so I’m not sure if he ever meet Mothra Lea’s mother, not sure if Irys has either, I don’t know how old she is.
4987816
Yes, there were radiovore gigafauna in the Permian Period. Of these, only a very few survived to modern day. The Godzillasaurs were not among them; they were created much later and barring exposure to intense radiation or Mana, they are omnivores. Remember, Gojira is in no way related to Godzilla; their similarities are the product of convergent evolution.
All the other dinosaur based Kaiju were mutated from animals who's ancestors were created by the First Civilization using, you guessed it, Mana. Radiation may have caused the final mutation into Kaiju, but only because their very cells were primed to accept Mana and Mana-like energies in the first place. Ergo, either directly or indirectly, Mana was involved in the creation of the majority of Earthly Kaiju.
Are there those who's origins are not in any way linked to Mana? Yes, there are. But they make up a small percentage of the total number of Kaiju on Earth.
Besides, the main point is that Earth has enough Kaiju to make taking and holding the planet far too costly for any sane invaders. Too much risk, too little reward.
4987827
I’m not saying mana wasn’t the energy used to make kaiju and other creatures I’m pointing out that exposure to mana alone does not make them. A controlling spell caster such as Reiju or the magitech engineers of old earth have to guide it to do that. That’s what makes it do valuble. It’s a safe non life threatening energy source that can be used to make all sorts of powerful creatures and tech, also the humanity’s stand spin off hints at the worlds mana modes and reserves slowly recovering.
the reward is acess to an energy that they can use to forge kaiju strong enough to stand up to Ghidorah.
4987835
Er, no. It's a dangerously carcinogenic and mutagenic energy source worse then most forms of Ionizing Radiation. A small amount of unshielded exposure will raise the likelihood of cancer in Humans dramatically. That's why most of the wild Kaiju who are a product of Mana Exposure are descended from First Civilization creations.
In Humanities Stand, the Aliens have a similar substance called Elerium. It's just as useful as a power source, just as easy to shield, and common enough that they use it as their primary energy source. By comparison, Earth has very little accessible Mana left. Ergo, if they want something like Mana, they likely have better sources already without a large Kaiju population to deal with.
4987846
Where is it said that Man is worse then radiation I don’t recall that in any of the materials I’ve read.
It’s also been a long time since I read humanity’s stand I do not recall elerium being in it at all.
4987852
Chapter 14. Where both the Alien power supplies and Earth's Magicite (Crystallized Mana) are first mentioned.
Huh, that’s weird. When the Kaiju first showed up in Equestria they only bothered to test if Junior’s passive radiation would poison people, plus it was mentioned that when junior and Mothra first meet she grabbed a bus full of people to save them. If mana exposure was poisonous those people should be dead and they should have tested the guardian beasts effects on the locals.