HPDBC Chapter 24 – Delta class Mark IX Progenitor Najav
Chapter 24 – Delta class Mark IX Progenitor Najav
Chapter 24 – Delta class Mark IX Progenitor Najav
“What the fuck is that thing?!”
- Random civilian during the defence of the New Savannah undercity
Understood. Prepare for arrival.
There was a long moment of nothing and I saw my point count plummet. I was just about to ask Kaysa what went wrong when something big appeared in front of me and right over the flood of aliens still trying to get through our defences.
The something turned out to be an egg the size of a train car and with a deep thump it crushed a good chunk of the aliens in front of us, shaking the ground and knocking me off my feet.
Before I even managed to scramble back to my feet there was a loud crack, then another, before the shell burst apart in a flurry of shrapnel that was blocked by a Hard-Light construct from my Pristine Fortress, probably thanks to Kaysa.
A deep and rumbling growl rang out as the Delta class Mark IX Progenitor Najav unfolded itself from the confines of its egg, long limbs thrashing about and crushing the antithesis surrounding it to paste.
When I finally had a moment to get a good look at my newest toy, my jaw dropped.
It was a Scorpion alright, or at least Scorpion shaped. Our new friend was the size of one of those large mobile basis PMC’s used to keep track of things, as long as it kept all its limbs close, and limbs it had a lot of. Two ginormous pincers the size of trucks, easily taking up a third of its general size and big enough to grasp a tank and cut it in two. It had six legs, giant things, with long-ish feet like things, similar to earth insects, made to distribute the probably ridiculous weight of the damn thing.
At the other end of the Najav were three tails, although instead of scorpion tails that would curl over the body these ones were more like thick lizard tails with mean looking blades at the end. It also had two... I didn’t really want to call them arms with hands on top of the pincer arms, but they were obviously for gripping stuff.
Its skin was a weird mix between chitinous carapace, metallic reinforcements and cybernetic armor, scales and some strange fur on some parts of it. Embedded in its outer shell were various different emitters and other things, while weapon emplacements could be found all over the body. One of the pincers had an integrated heavy machine gun that looked to be a combination of Jenna’s Legion tech as well as Chloe’s weaponry, although I was pretty certain that on their own they couldn’t piece this thing together.
The underside hid two large slits, one on each side, probably the hatchery and the sentinel factory. Would need to get a closer look later.
Its movements were eerily silent with just a hint of mechanical noise to it, I would have thought that something this size would be much louder, but somehow it wasn’t. The steps were definitely audible, but not the ground shaking and deafening kind.
Once it had unfurled itself from its egg it seemed to go through an entire check of its new body, connected to my implant, and then turned to look at us, weird gripping arms resting on the inside of its pincers above the face, if one would want to call it that. It had a giant maw with smaller spider-like appendages, twelve eyes although I wasn’t quite sure why it needed so many, considering that the pincers were blocking most of its field of vision, and pretty heavy looking armor around its face and pincers. Made sense I supposed.
Just looking at it gave me shivers and I couldn’t stop my manic grin at the sight of this majestic beast.
“What the...” Chloe muttered, similarly shell-shocked.
Then it stomped the ground, turned around with a long swish of its tails, before it rammed its massive pincers into the ground and started to rush through the alien horde in front of it, smashing them apart at a speed that nothing this size should move at.
It will take some time for it to finish growing, although it can already start on Hexclaw Production. To achieve that I had to make some concessions elsewhere, so don’t expect it to perform at its best yet.
I honestly couldn’t have cared less. This thing was fucking awesome.
Then I mentally slapped myself out of my stupor, this wasn’t the time to sit around and watch the action! Raising an arm, I squashed an enterprising model Four that was trying to sneak up on us.
“Chloe, deactivate the lure, the Najav can deal with things for now. Blitzer, where do you need our help?” I spoke in my Virtual realm, my body too busy fighting off the smaller aliens still in front of us.
I just barely evaded the projectile of what I thought was a model Nine-S and flung a Lance into its general direction in response. There was no way for me to confirm if I hit it or not, nor the time to send any of my Hatchlings to check up on it, so I simply marked it on the map with a danger marker.
“Uhm, like, everywhere? We have hotspots popping up all around the undercity. It’s like there are stealth hives hidden all over the place!”
He sounded a bit panicked and I couldn’t blame him.
“Fuck! We need to deal with this Hive now! Kaysa? Anything the Najav could do? Doubt we can get in ourselves to plant a bomb!”
Indeed. For the time being I can take control of your Hexclaws to more efficiently deal with the antithesis; between the Progenitor Najav and the Devouring Roses you have a very solid combat force. Theoretically the Najav could burn out the Hive all by itself, once the majority of the flood is dealt with, but it will take some time for it to burrow its way to it. At least if you want to limit collateral damage.
“Good idea, get to it. Blitzer, can you update the map in the conference hall so we can coordinate from there?”
Not wasting any time I raised my arm and started to fire into the horde of xenos, trying my best to hit the bigger units first. It didn’t take long though for me to realise that that was all but useless. For every bigger model I sniped, five smaller ones made their way closer.
Instead I started swinging with big sweeping motions with a variable blade, cutting down the leading mass of xenos before they could cross the street separating the scavenger town and the junkyard.
“This won’t work,” I muttered with laboured breath, “I need something to more efficiently defend the area.”
I took a quick glance at my point counter. It sat at over 2700 points, rising steadily. Well, I did just buy a huge fuck off scorpion, but at least it looked like we made some of those points back already. Only bad thing was that the point income had slowed to a trickle, I was now too far away to get any appreciable amount.
An explosion further away caught me off guard for a moment. Only when I checked the map to see what was going did I realise that it most likely came from Chloe’s location. She was facing her own horde of aliens and seemed to be quite effective at it too.
Since I was already at it I checked up on the Najav in my virtual realm, while I continued fighting off any aliens trying to come too close. It had started burrowing down into the ground not long ago and was steadily making its way further down. At the same time the two Devouring Roses I had placed at the entrance to the Hive had burrowed their tentacles deep and were closing in on the center of the Hive.
Not that it looked too much like a Hive. Oh, there was some Hive biology there, sure, but it was much smaller than I would expect even from a small Hive, nevermind the size it should be considering the army of xeno it had unleashed.
I have some options for you. First would of course be another Devouring Rose, but I also have some recommendations for a more mobile force. Which would you prefer?
Just when I was about to ask for another Rose, I stopped and reconsidered for a moment.
“I need something mobile. Fighting off this horde is important, but I need the flexibility to go around and I can’t afford to drop Roses everywhere I go, that’s just not point efficient, especially with the point drop off. Do I have something like Chloe’s fortifications or something? Or maybe drones that can defend shit well and move afterwards? Basically a mobile Rose?”
Of course. Considering that we do not have the time to go over every little detail for the moment, I have put together a list of Hexclaw Units that could help you defend the place. Part of them are defensive units that will be stationary while they hold the line, but are capable of switching locations, while part of it will be a sort of hunting swarm that will flank and clean up any stragglers. Plus additional scouts. How many points would you like to invest?
“As many as I need, but I want around 100 points, probably a few more as emergency funds. Can you work with that?”
Of course.
New purchase: Mark II Hexclaw Siverin Bile Spewer x15!
Points reduced to: 1712
New purchase: Mark III Hexclaw Sabertooth x5!
Points reduced to: 712
New purchase: Mark II Hexclaw Kaimon Scout x20!
Points reduced to: 212
A large number of eggs appeared next to me, all neatly arrayed by size. A moment later they started to crack, revealing three kinds of creatures.
The first were similar to small meerkats, just really alien looking. These things immediately started to run off in every which direction, some even burrowing underneath some rubble, vanishing from sight.
Wherever they went my map was updated, more and more detail filling in the vague blanks. It made it much easier to see what kind of terrain I was working with, not that I had any ideas how to properly use that knowledge.
To my surprise a lot of them also travelled away from the horde in front of me. From their input I could tell that they were going around trying to find any other hidden nests, which I was glad for. Didn’t need any additional surprises.
The next group were five huge cats, easily bigger than a tiger. True to their name they resembled a sort of Sabertooth, and all of them immediately started off to the sides, smashing into the smaller models on the way.
It was quickly apparent what Kaysa had meant by flanking and picking off stragglers. The majority of the horde was coming directly at us, but there was nothing that would prevent them from running off into different directions if they wanted to. Well, until now at least.
My Sabertooths quickly began making sure that any alien that tried to sneak around us was dealt with, making the entire fight a lot less stressful. Oh, it didn’t make it any easier, but knowing that I had something in place that could prevent ambushes already helped.
The last group were my new defenders and by far the strangest looking.
In some ways they reminded me of ants, six legged and with three separate parts to their body, although that was the only similarity. Unlike ants their biggest body part was the one in the middle, thorax? I really didn’t know, nor did I care too much at the moment. Their faces were ugly looking and could shoot some strange acid that immediately started to melt the aliens in front of them. A similar contraption was on top of their big middle part, this one more like an organic turret.
They started to spread out a bit before they burrowed their feet into the ground and bent forwards, achieving the optimal spread for their weird turrets. A wall of acid greeted the next wave of xenos, quickly melting through the front lines.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would buy me some time, time I used to finally catch my breath and quickly check up on the people around and behind me. Some were wounded, although none seemed to be too injured which made me breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe I could manage.
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