radiation priest extraordinaire

i lived bitch

The night was as quiet as it was still in the Great Dismal Swamp. The chirping of various hundreds of bugs brought the insectoid xenolife some semblance of comfort, being reminded of the sound of their sleeping young and mates back on their home planets. As a hive mind, the individual didn't have such feelings, but the Matriarch felt the yearn for her people to be reunited again. She had grown tired of the conquest of this overtrodden ball of dirt. Hundreds, no thousands of battalions had fallen in the conquest, and hundreds more to disease and wildlife. The company of dozens of bugs let out a collective simultaneous buzz, their equivalent of a wistful sigh, silencing the rest of the wildlife around them. The silence persisted longer than they expected it to. Seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes dragged as the forest around them went dead quiet. The prey instinct kicked in and the bugs went onto high alert, drawing their weapons and looking for the predator that was lurking in the shadows.

Belyan held a finger to his lips, active camouflage making them nearly invisible as they loaded the battery into the side of a plasma rifle, the barrel glowing white hot seconds later as their helmet picked up movement signatures ahead. They pointed behind themselves without a word and then ahead of them. Eight humans crept through the forest in the dead of night, like shadows over the roots beneath the darkness of the new moon. Leopard Squad was on the hunt, and each one of them knew just what was on the line. This company was looking for an old survival bunker the Collective had just heard of themselves. It could've had food, weapons, survivors, hell, maybe even clean water. It was enough for Earth's last special forces unit to come out of hiding to secure it.

Quanta's visor zoomed out when she saw Belyan's finger pointed at her. That was the signal, it was go time. A few dozen feet to the side and several hundred feet back, she stood up, the reactor of her power armor letting out a high pitched whine before it melted away to a low drone. The bugs immediately tuned into the noise as the panels of her armor shifted into place. She let out a low chuckle and raised her arm, pressing a button on the elbow and hoping her squadmates had her earplugs in.

An old MP3 file of Ezekiel's Horn blared from the speakers of her armor, the sound of the end of the world blasting so loud it kicked the dirt around her up into a dust cloud as she picked up her weapons, lightning arcing through the dust as the barrels spun up.

"That's right, you big ugly bastards, all eyes on me." Quanta cracked a crooked smiled beneath the tungsten helmet, watching the individual vitals ratings of their enemies spike simultaneously. Interesting... they're synced up. She'd have to think about that. Modular, syncronic design could increase the efficiency of her armor.

"Q, you could at least act like you feel bad. We're supposed to be professionals." Even as Belyan's voice crackled in her ear, she could hear them trying not to smile as they loaded a magazine into their plasma sniper rifle.

"Just because I have a sense of humor doesn't mean I'm not good at my job." Three shots bounced off her armor, the impenetrable wall not even flinching as she continued walking forward, thunder cracking every time she fired her weapon into the horde ahead. One got too close and almost slipped past the sensor. As she wound her hand back for a punch it fell over, bursting into flames from a plasma round in the back of the head. She heard Belyan breathe in from the lungs emptied to steady their hand as she shook her head.

"I just had the most fucked up thought."

"What's that?" Quanta loosed a salvo of rockets, stripping a passing dropship out of the sky in a burst of purple fire as the compressed potassium burned everything carbon-based inside.

"We are definitely getting discharged if we win."

"Oh, no fucking doubt. No chance I'm passing a psyche eval after this one."

yes you, person with a lot of n’s my ass can’t count with the animals in my ask box

“I’m willing to put money on the fact you miserable fucks thought you got us all. No matter what records you dig through, what you look at, how hard you search, you won’t find us all.”

The communications relay post was a hive of activity as the first human voice crackled across a broad spectrum of wavelengths, completely flooding all lines of communication and making any kind of signals impossible to get out clearly. 

“See, what you fail to underestimate is the depth of human tenacity. I figure before I set to work, I can tell you what it is I’ve been up to these last few years. I’ve been in a cave.”

The officers scrambled to activate outdated technology that the human may have overlooked, but when the radio turned on it screeched an awful, high pitched noise before it synced up with the other devices emitting the low, gruff voice. 

“I’ve been eating bugs. Drinking water that dripped off the roof. Once in a while, when things got scarce, I’d head out for a day. But never longer. Didn’t want to risk your little drones spotting me. Been putting together a little something for you all to think about. You fought our armies, our units, our revolutionaries. You can find them, they’ll show themselves easy enough.”

The officers couldn’t do anything but sit and listen, pincers clacking nervously. 

“Finding one man is different. I am different, and I have decided that only one of you needs to survive for me to get my message out. Humanity is still here. We’re coming for you. ALL of you.”

The signal faded away to silence. A moment later there was the crackly sound of an exhalation on a microphone before a small red dot appeared on the lead communication officer’s head. They all stared in silence, confused as to the appearance of the laser right up until xir head exploded into blue goo and the window shattered, spraying us all in broken glass as we stood in stunned silence. A second later we heard a gunshot from a human ballistic weapon, somewhere far, far off in the distance. Moments later a leg was shot out from beneath another one of the aliens. Nothing made a sound but the wounded, screaming and clutching his leg until another shot through the head silenced him permanently. The two remaining aliens dove for cover, but a bullet found one’s chest in midair, throwing it against the wall behind it, leaving a blue trail as it slid down the wall. The last aliens breathing was fast and heavy as it reached it’s hand out for the rifle left out in the open, shaking fingers outstretched until-

The red dot appears in the middle of his talons, blowing it clean off and sending a burning pain through his whole body as xey gasped for air against the agony in their body. Only the human’s voice rang through the communcations signal, a low growl of a laugh and the sound of a magazine hitting the ground. 

Sarah was not a morning person, nor did any of the crew expect her to be. However the captain did expect her for mandatory physical training the fifth day of every Earth week, and this morning was no different. Sarah rubbed her eyes and took a sip from a can of poison she called an "energy drink". Loc'oa'mpar rolled Xeir six eyes. Xy didn't see how it could possibly energize her when it could kill Xir's planet's deadliest species in just a few drops, but when separated from the substance Sarah got grumpy. The captain jogged in, almost gracefully on his legs, already sweating from their morning run, jade green tank top soaked through.

"Alright, ladies gents and all things in between and beyond, who's ready for some PT?" Their enthusiasm was met with a groan from the group, who clearly were not ready for some PT at five in the morning.

"Bel, not that there's a sun to rise, but the sun isn't even up yet." Quanta piped up from the other side of the room, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall.

"Don't care, didn't ask, this isn't a democracy, lets do some fucking PTTTTTT." Sarah sighed and shook her head. The captain had too much energy this morning, as always. If they were going to start, she may as well start right. She set her hands on her hips and pushed as she arched her back, sighing contentedly at the series of satisfying pops that ran down the length of her spine. Standing back up a little bit breathless, rotating her torso to the side just in time to see the alien next to her go a pale grey and fall on the ground, causing her to stumble backwards in surprise. It pointed a tendril at her and it's eyes flashed, it's voice projecting into her head.

"You need a medic, I believe you just sustained a detrimental injury to your spinal cord." Sarah cocked her head to the side and set a hand on her chin, jerking it to one side and then the other in a motion that made even the Captain gag as it made a snapping motion that brought the room to a halt. The alien's eyes rolled back into it's sockets as their other alien crewmate slithered in, took a single look at the alien passed out on the ground, and flickered it's tongue at Sarah in annoyance.

"Do you feel the need to do this to every new crewmate we have? Your double joints in your neck are not funny. You could seriously hurt yourself."

"I haven't yet! Plus I stop any time I feel like it's straining."

"You're going to drive me to the depths of insanity."

Considering that most of my friends consider me to be their personal heater? I'd definitely say that other intelligent species would react about the same way. If you fall asleep in the ship's common space and wake up covered in your crewmates, I think that'd mostly be on you ESPECIALLY if you already know you run hot.

So probably something like this?

It really was just supposed to be a nap. Well, it really wasn't even supposed to be that, but 30 hours straight on a death world worse than Earth was enough to exhaust anyone to the point they'd accidentally fall asleep. He'd meant to just sit down for a minute and get his thoughts together. What had confused Yalek was that when he woke up, he felt like he was under a weighted blanket, but that would've meant someone carried him to his bunk. That couldn't have been it though, his chest was too cool for him to be under a blanket. Instead when he opened his eyes, he found three of his smaller crewmates curled up on his chest and stomach respectively. The great bear of a man grunted, looking down past the thick red beard as the three little birds woke up.

“Rough fight?”

“No more than usual, no.” 

“That really doesn’t say much.” Quanta sighed and set her now blue stained helmet on the bench beside it, opting to worry about scrubbing it back to spotless later. The person in the green flight suit twirled a finger for her to turn around. She obliged and turned, the damaged actuator nearly tossing her off her feet before the gyroscope caught her, putting her back on center despite the pitching heeling in her stomach. All at once the feeling faded away and she fell backwards out of the suit as the armor opened with a hiss. Another second of weightlessness caught up with her before the other person in the bay caught her arm, pulling her up into a tight hug. Quanta, the terror of the battlefield, smiled and wrapped her arms around their neck, pulling herself up onto her toes so she could get a little bit closer. Now that the adrenaline had worn itself out of her system, she could feel her muscles starting to burn from the effort of the last thirty minutes or so. They’d had engine trouble because of course they had. That had delayed evacuation by five minutes. Five. Minutes. Did they have any idea how long five minutes was when she had a spider ant demon trying to bite her helmet off every other second of those minutes?

“Thanks for the hand.”

“No problem. I know you can’t reach the wheel.” Normally that would’ve netted them an elbow, a flick in the side of the head at the bare minimum, but she was a little too exhausted to do much but groan. They help her take a seat back on the bench. Quanta takes a look at her armor and winces internally. That armor was her baby. Almost every minute of her free time was spent in the engineering bay tinkering with it or thinking up new designs to route auxiliary systems to if one wound up breaking or getting boring. Seeing the outer layers ripped to shreds hurt her heart a little, but once she got the diagnostics scan off her computer she’d know how to make it better again. That was, if-

“Q?” She blinked and her train of thought crashed, derailed by a smell that set her immediately at ease. “How’s your own little world?”

“It’s good. Everyone likes me there.” They chuckle a little and press a styrofoam cup of hot chocolate into her hands. Quanta wraps her hands around it, holding it tight as she could without cracking it and letting the warmth seep into her hands as her squadmate wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. For the first time since the general retreat was announced, the stress melted out of her shoulders and she actually relaxed, leaning her head on their shoulder with a tired, happy sigh. “You’re my favorite welcoming party.” They chuckled and rolled their eyes, resting their head on hers with a contented smile. 

“I’m really glad you made it back. Had us sweating for a minute there.”

After what the human, Mickey, had called a wild boar, we thought we’d seen the worst this rock had to offer. Boars travel in groups, by the way. Mickey called it a “drift” of “swine”. Our scribes truly did have a field day with the etymology of those two words. However, this log pertains to another report we had gotten from all over the planet. Thousands of reports from all over the six inhabited continents came in, reporting of tiny, near microscopic red specks appearing on the skin. Most troops reported them to be itchy, primarily an irritation beneath the heavy plates of our patrol armor. Others reported a small rash that went away when we applied antibiotic foam to the wounded areas. However despite all of those efforts our troops started to suffer, and they suffered immensely. 

Disease ravaged our ranks the likes of which we had never seen. The biological weapons used against our people parasecs ago paled in comparison to the symptoms. Our soldiers would grow tired, and then their temperature started to rise to levels that would either kill them or nearly kill them. Those that didn’t succumb to the fever were usually taken by what we had taken to calling “The Shakes”. An odd phenomena we had never seen on our own homeworld. Massive electrical signals to the brain that had no explanation except for what we found in the autopsies. 

Earth is host to something called a “virus”. These proteins are complex enough that humans still debate them, or they did before their species was crushed into the dirt. Protein encasing deoxyribonucleics that is self programmed to release said nucleics and hijack living cells functions. Needless to say, we were completely unprepared. 

Mickey called it malaria. Normally he had some grim chuckle or joke to say about what misfortune we suffered. Instead his face fell and the rawhide hat came off his head and over his chest. 

Quanta sat outside a heavy vault door that had been sealed not ten seconds before she’d taken her seat. A deep breath caused the rebreather attached to her face to hiss as it filtered toxins out of the air for her to breathe in. Or at least... for her armor to filter out for her. Behind her sat the last bunker humanity had left on this miserable fucking rock. Even if it was a miserable rock, it was her rock. She’d been born here before the Frontier Wars had even started. She’d enlisted early, at 15, with forged documents after her little brother had been killed in a surprise bombing raid by the Xivaar. Behind the vault door, the last of the evacuation shuttles were being loaded by the last of the Planetary Guard, getting the only civilians left out before retreating themselves. It was a job that would take at least an hour. The issue with that was that the Swarm was only forty minutes behind them (and frankly, she had thought that was generous), and those claws would be through the tungsten door in less than fifteen minutes, less in the face of a swarm. Which meant someone had to but between five and fifteen minutes. At least she was pretty sure, math had never been her strong suit. The strong suit was wrapped around her body. A screech in the distance was picked up by the sensors, displaying a soft red pulse of light through the virtually constructed environment in the helmet’s visor. The multi-layers plates moved in tandem as she stood, picking up the heavy gatling railgun from the crate she’d left it resting on. A cable slithered out and linked to the weapon, and a crosshair appeared in her visor, moving with her weapon as the barrels started glowing blue, arcing with energy as she dug her heels in, watching the hills in the distance. She’d been picked for this because her teammates, Leopard Squad, had taken to calling her “The Great Wall of Quanta”. Hell, even she thought she’d earned that nickname. She was the only one who packed power armor after all, and the only one who carried weapons so heavy the exosuit struggled to move it. Even when the battery had run out during the Battle for Hill 249-B1, she gotten out and fought with her hands until she was dragged away on a stretcher. In her own words she was “one hard bitch”, and she intended to show these overgrown bugs just how true that was. Something skittered at the top of the hill and the sensors beeped. Quanta felt herself momentarily pitch forward before the suit’s gyroscope caught her, two rocket pods mounting up on her shoulders as the barrels to the railgun started to spin. There were scared people behind that door, behind her. She glanced down at the arm of her armor, where he unit’s insignia and motto was sketched. A squid, each arm holding a trident, faded into the words: 

‘For those who stand next to you, show them your respect

For those who stand ahead of you, show them cover

For those of them behind you, show them protection

For those who stand against you, show them no mercy.”

Quanta couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. She just couldn’t bring herself to be scared of the hundreds, maybe thousands of skittering legs charging her. She just didn’t care. 

Because she was a wall. 

We thought we had won Earth from it’s residents. Truly, we had thoroughly beaten their military. I had swung the plasma blade on many of the necks of their generals myself, having conquered most of what the humans called a “Texas”. When our patrols started to go missing after the occupation, we had expected insurgency forces. Bullet holes on the bodies, blast burns, the whole six units. Instead, we turned up corpses that looked... chewed. Gored, slashed, and then eaten. The next patrol we sent out, we sent with body cameras. What we saw horrified us. A four hundred pound tank of a beast with tusks like knives made what we only could describe as a screech as it charged impossibly quickly, ripping the first of our kind to shreds with the swords attached to it’s jaw. I... can’t say what happened to the rest. I ran away. Upon my arrival back to headquarters, I went to our only human captive, one we’d been asking questions to about the local flora. He only chuckled and tucked what he called a “cigar” in his mouth, clenching it between his oral bones and taking a deep inhalation of the smoke. 

“Yep. Back home, that there’s what we like to call a problem.”

“Yes, This One can see that clearly, but what is it called?” The human arched his eyebrows and leaned forward on the table, taking the cigar from his mouth and rolling it between his fingers. 

“‘Round this area they’re called hogs, but most’ll call ‘em wild boars. But lemme tell you something.” The alien couldn’t help but match his gesture, intrigued by the words the human was telling it. 

“What?” 

“You let me outta this here pen? You can call that thing supper ‘long as you got enough butter.”