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What I Am

by Knight Breeze

Chapter 40: Chapter XL

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Chapter XL

Private Qu'zzil fidgeted in the uncomfortable seat, his eyes wandering around the barren room, looking for something, anything, to distract himself. Unfortunately, the room was seemingly designed specifically to have very little, if any, sensory stimulation. It was a bleak, grey room, walls made of some kind of carved stone, with a bland white table in the center. The chairs were made of metal, most likely steel, and were fastened to the floor, as was the table. The only thing that broke the monotony of the walls was the single iron door opposite to him. It taunted him, as if promising him freedom, but he knew that such a thing was only a distant dream.

All in all, the room was depressingly boring, which meant that he had absolutely nothing to distract himself from the flashing grey text in the bottom of his vision.

Qu’zzil knew his duty. He knew that he had betrayed the emperor not once, but twice. He was a disgrace, and had brought shame upon himself, his family, and anyone to bear his blood. He was a coward of the highest order, and the only way he could possibly regain that honor would be to use his tongue and press the button inside his mouth. After that, it was only a single, short command, and the problem he presented to high command would solve itself.

However, every time he began to press that button, he found his tongue would lose its strength, and he would collapse back into his chair, ashamed of himself. Everything inside him told him to obey the flashing light, and end his own, pathetic life, but each time he tried, the cold spectre of death seemed to hover right behind his shoulder, and he found that he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

In the end, he only proved high command right about him. He was a coward and a traitor, and when his life finally came to an end, the Battlewatcher would turn him away at the door, and his soul would be condemned to wander the coldest, darkest reaches of the outlands for all eternity.

As if to break him from his dark thoughts, the iron door of his cell creaked open, and Qu’zzil felt his spirits rise in hope when another krin entered the room. This was quickly dashed, however, when Qu’zzil noticed the colors and insignias of the krin’s uniform, declaring for all to see that he was a confederate traitor. With a dismissive huff, Qu’zzil collapsed back into his chair as his eyes sought out anything to look at other than the traitor in the room.

He would have leapt out of his chair and skewered the honorless scum, but his captors had been smart enough to remove Qu’zzil’s arms, and more importantly, the defensive augments hidden inside those cybernetic limbs. No doubt the traitors told them what the emperor puts into his infantry… Qu’zzil thought as the scum took the seat on the opposite side of the table.

“Hello, son,” the traitor said, his tone almost jovial.

This only caused Qu’zzil to scoff again, this time with a bit more feeling. “Cut the pleasantries, traitor. We both know why you’re here. Just get to the part where you torture me for information, and kill me. Just know that my will is stronger than you.”

The traitor looked amused at that. “Son, you aren’t fooling anyone. If you really wanted to keep us from obtaining anything, you would have activated your failsafes and ended your own life already.”

Qu’zzil didn’t say anything. He couldn’t, especially with high command watching through his eyes and ears. However, deep down, he knew that the traitor was right. If Qu’zzil was nearly as loyal as he should have been, he wouldn’t even be here. Instead, he would have died with his team during that ambush.

“You’ll still get nothing from me,” he said, desperately trying to convince both himself, and the ones watching him.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not the case. The only problem, however, is that you’re a private. The most you’d know is your own mission, and whatever you managed to pick up in the mess,” the traitor said, his words causing a heavy leaden weight to appear in the pit of Qu’zzil’s stomach. “That’s not why I’m here, soldier. I don’t want you to tell me anything. Instead, I would like you to deliver a message.”

Qu’zzil gulped uneasily, before slowly bringing his eyes up to meet the traitor's. He had deep blue eyes, an unlucky color to be sure, but they had a strength behind them that only came from surviving hundreds of battles. It was the even, steady glare of a born leader, and Qu’zzil couldn’t help but gasp when he realized that he recognized the traitor’s face. “Y… You’re the Hero of Thana!” he managed to choke out. “You and your crew are the only ones to survive that dreadful ambush! You… You should be on our side!”

“And you should shut your trap, and listen,” Captain Hazalk said, his voice deadly serious. “I know you’re there, Inos. I know you’re watching our every move, like a carthas weaving its web, searching for fish to ensnare. You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, this time. I saw what they did to your fleet, and even if you get what you want from this little planet, it’ll still spell your doom. You best hope I die down here, because the second I get another ship, I’m going to track you down, and I’m going to take great pleasure in watching you burn.”

Qu’zzil froze as text began to scroll across his vision, and he found himself gulping nervously. “He… He says that your words are hollow, like the barkings of a mad tenglath, chasing the moon. He… he also says you’ll never leave this planet a… alive…” Qu’zzil said, as his heart sunk even lower in his gut. “This… this pathetic mud ball will be a marble once we’re… we’re finished…”

“I figured as much,” Hazalk said, before he rose from his seat and straightened his uniform. “I’m glad we understand each other. I just hope you keep cultivating that pride of yours. It will get you into trouble one day; I only pray that I am lucky enough to be there when it happens.”

Without another word, Captain Hazalk left, slamming the door closed behind him. Qu’zzil wanted to call out and stop him, to keep talking to someone for a little while longer, but he did not.

After all, he deserved this, and so much more. No punishment was too severe for what the private had done, and his only hope now was that someone would come and finish the job he was too cowardly to do.

* * *

“Was that enough?” Hazalk asked as he left the room.

“That was plenty. He’s played right into our hands,” I said, an evil grin appearing on my face. “Your people should really update their coding policies.”

Hazalk scoffed in disgust. “They are not ‘my people.’ They haven’t been ‘my people’ for a long, long time.”

“Just a joke, don’t take it so personally.”

Hazalk didn’t think it was very funny, but he decided to let it slide for the time being. “Well, what happens now?”

“Now, I use the codes that your old general provided to do a little snooping…” I said, before I leaned closer to the door. While it was true that I could break into krin computer systems pretty easily, I had found out when breaking into Hazalk’s systems that I had a very specific range to my abilities. Apparently, I needed to be pretty close to override a computer system. Without that proximity, even if I piggybacked off of another signal, I was still basically just a random user. Just getting through a human firewall like that would be a chore, much less the krin empire’s firewalls. I had a few programs in my head that might help, but for the most part it wasn’t worth the time investment.

Luckily, when I had broken into Hazalk’s computer, I had also learned a workaround. Hazalk’s tablet also had his security codes inside it, which allowed me to break into his ship with ease. Without any real security codes, the best I could do to the invading krin was lift a sergeant’s clearance from a corpse, which wasn’t a guarantee of anything. In fact, there was a high probability that they purged old codes the second their old users died, which would make using them a risky prospect at best. It was why I had Hazalk go in there and talk to the fool. I was hoping that, when they sent their message to the private, there would be some kind of authentication between the private and his superiors, and that through the private’s wetware, I could pick up and decrypt those authentication codes.

Of course, logic would dictate that, if Qu'zzil could decrypt those codes, then those codes were also hidden somewhere in his wetware. The problem with lifting that, though, is that, if the krin were smart, they would put into place something to stop a private from instantly gaining general-level clearance. The best way to stop that would be that the private would only have half, or more likely, a quarter, of an encryption key, with the rest of the data being held by the generals and such.
This way, when they authenticated, the data would only make sense the moment it authenticated, and would instantly be deleted by the program.

Too bad for them, then, that they did not consider something like me existing. “Thanks again, Hazalk. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some work to do.”

“What comes next for me, then?” Hazalk asked, a slight note of resignation in his voice.

“Now, you come with me,” Colonel Conners said as he took a step forward. “I have some questions about the tactics and technology that your former emperor uses, as well as a few other things for you to do.”

Hazalk took a few seconds to work through the garbled translation he had no doubt received, before he shook his head. “I’ll tell you all I can, but it has been over twelve years since I was a part of the empire. They would have definitely changed some things since I served.”

“Old intel is better than no intel,” Conners said, shrugging off the bug’s concerns. “Besides, even if you know nothing too important, there is something that you can do. Alex will be useful when we put our plan into action, but the most important part will be your people. Can you handle that?”

Hazalk straightened up at that, his antenna rising with pride. “We’re ready to do our part.”

“Good, that’s what I like to hear,” Conners said as a sadistic grin appeared on his face. “Now, the important stuff. How many of your men would you say are able to fly one of the empire’s landing crafts? We’ve managed to capture a few during our operations, and I think it’s high time we returned them.”

“Realistically? Most of my men are capable. Some are much better than others, but each one with a chip has basic flight controls installed, and will be able to get them off the ground. Without the ship’s codes, though, they’re little more than really expensive rocks.”

“That’s why we have him,” Conners said, before he clapped a hand onto my shoulder. “Alex, do you think you could lift their codes from their computers?”

“If you get your men to send snapshots of any identifying markers on those ships, it shouldn't be too hard," I said, my grin never leaving my face.

"Good. You get to snooping and tell me anything important you find, I'll have someone get you those pictures,” Conners told me before he turned to Hazalk. “As for you and me, we've got some things to discuss.”

I barely heard him by this point. I was already back in Private Qu'zzil's wetware, and on my way up to one of the enemy ships as part of the private’s outgoing packets. It was an odd feeling, having a large part of your consciousness sent through an electromagnetic signal. When I had first done this, I was a bit wary about it, since I knew that signals like that traveled in waves in all directions, and it was entirely possible that my consciousness would be scattered to the heavens.

I really didn’t need to worry, though, because instead of being broken up and distributed to the cosmos, I was more like a fish swimming through the sea of signals broadcast from Qu’zzil’s implants. The ships I was headed for were broadcasting their own signals, creating slight interference in the currents I was swimming through, making it all the easier to locate my targets. Sending/receiving dishes stood out like beacons, and with hardly any effort on my part, I slid in, only being stopped temporarily by the ship’s computer as it asked for authentication. I quickly gave it the codes I had received, and before I knew it, I was sliding through the computer systems of The Emperor’s Triumph, masquerading as someone called Lieutenant Cava.

The way my mind interpreted this was based purely on my own imagination, and for the sake of ease of use, and because I had watched way, way too much anime as a kid, I imagined it like I was floating in a sphere of circuits and wires, around which I could see a number of screens, each showing different sections of the system I was in. It was a lot of information to go through, and quite a bit of it was closed off to me, due to my relatively low security clearance. It was going to take me some time to go through it all, especially if I wanted to remain undetected, but worrying about that would only cause me to lose more time.

And time really wasn’t on my side.

“First things first, what are they concentrating on?” I muttered into the void. Everyone had noticed that the aliens had stopped sending reinforcements to attack Equestria, and while there were still quite a few krin forces left on the planet, they were currently scattered and disorganized, and without any reinforcements, they would quickly be annihilated. I had heard around the castle that some thought that this meant that they were winning, but I knew better. It was far more likely that they had already gotten what they wanted.

Fortunately, we had a way of keeping tabs on our enemy, and through Edmund, we knew that they hadn’t given up, or even taken enough ‘test subjects’ for their research. Really, all that had happened was they had set their sights on a juicier target, one that probably was far less prepared to meet them.

According to Edmund, the krin ships were still firing pods down to the surface, but none of them were pointed at Equestria. Most were headed to a desert in the south, but for some reason, Edmund lost track of them once they crossed a certain threshold. Edmund had said that there was some kind of barrier preventing magical scrying, which immediately threw up red flags for all the top brass.

Whatever was hiding there, it had drawn the attention of the krin, and that was never a good thing.

“Okay, then. What are you looking at right now?” I asked as I reached out and touched one of the floating screens. It flickered briefly, and changed to show what was currently being shown on the main viewing screen on the bridge. I was somewhat disappointed to see that General Inos wasn’t directing an attack on the desert at all, but instead was keeping an eye on an assault in some city. A quick look at the ship’s mapping of the surface was all I needed to confirm it wasn’t anywhere near the desert, and I almost changed the screen I was watching, if it weren’t for the fact that I recognized someone in that city. A certain, snake-like someone.

“Lieutenant Cava, send reinforcements. A void knight is too tasty a prize to let go,” I heard someone order through the ship’s microphones.

‘Well, that’s not good…” I muttered as I watched Lieutenant Cava carry out his general’s orders. With the lieutenant’s clearance, I could have easily belayed that order, but I didn’t want to expose myself so soon. All I could do was watch as the nearby troop transport received the general’s new orders, and sent a new batch of soldiers down to the planet below.

* * *

"Jedon! More fire in that area! I’ll help the humans!” Akitesh shouted as she slithered through the battlefield. Her second voice nodded in assent, before he and his warriors began peppering the enemy position with blasts from their M.B.E. cannons. Instantly, vast sections of the enemy’s cover was turned into a fine powder, revealing the krin behind as they tried to scramble for new cover. A few were hit by some of Jedon’s men, but their armor was good enough to take a few blasts, saving the krin inside and giving them a precious few seconds to dive for cover again.

It wasn’t Jedon’s intention to kill them, though that would have been a happy bonus. No, it was his intention to give his priestess enough cover to allow her to reposition, and reposition she did. Like lightning, the priestess slithered across the battlefield, her personal shield flashing several times as she closed in on the humans' position. Luckily, her shield held long enough, and she managed to slide herself into the crater the humans had taken cover in.

Several of them immediately pointed their weapons at the priestess, but they did not fire, especially when Akitesh held up her hands in surrender as a rune lit up at her neck. “I am a friend! Please, don’t shoot! I’m here to help!”

The apparent leader of the group shouted an order to his troops, and they quickly stood down, and returned their attention to the enemy that had them pinned. The commander, on the other hand, fixed Akitesh with a level glare. “You being help? What do?”

“I can cast a shield over the crater, and allow your troops a chance to escape,” she explained. “Please, you have to fall back. There are more incoming!”

He eyed her for a few seconds, before an evil grin appeared on his face. “Boys! She make shield! Preparing advance!”

The humans immediately let out a cheer at that, and Akitesh could only shake her head in disbelief. “No, it would be wise to retreat!”

“And would wiser to make enemies die. No more enemies, no more problem!” The commander answered stubbornly, before pointing towards the lip of the crater. “Make wall there, we hopping up, we advancing!”

Akitesh glanced up towards the lip that the commander had pointed out, before she threw up her hands in frustration. “Fine! Do not blame me if you are killed!” she finally shouted as she began to draw in the powers of the aether. A shield was a fairly complex spell, but it was something that she prided herself in, and had received top marks for from her master. With a flick of her wrist, she erected the shield, its shimmering, translucent field easily seen through the smoke and dust of the battlefield. Already, Akitesh could feel the enemy fire pound against her mind, but she could bear it. There was far more mana available here than she was used to, and even if she could only use a finite amount of it, it was still more than enough to withstand a few minutes of concentrated enemy fire. “Go! I will tell you if it is about to fail!”

Before the words had even left her lips, the humans swarmed up the side of the crater, quickly reaching level ground before they leaned up against the field and opened fire. Akitesh did not know the exact specifics on how their weapons functioned, but she was aware that they employed chemical compounds to propel small bits of metal. Most civilizations developed them at some point, but they usually did not last long, as energy and magical weapons were, by far, the superior option.

That particular piece of xeno-historical data and common sense was quickly dashed to pieces in the face of the human’s onslaught. Their projectiles were loud, quick, accurate and deadly, and quickly made short work of any krin that had the audacity to keep his head up and keep firing.

“Son-Of-A-Smith! Sending them presents!” the commander shouted. There was a yell from the soldier in question, and he quickly moved to the forefront, his weapon in hand. It looked somewhat different than the sleek-looking rifles that the others employed, it being far bulkier, with an undercarriage that looked similar to a krin plasma missile system’s magazine, if somewhat more compact. The carrier of the weapon hooted in joy, before he began to pull the trigger, sending several, slower-moving projectiles out over the battlefield, and directly behind the enemy position. Akitesh barely had a second to wonder what purpose they served, before several explosions, one right after another, echoed out through the battlefield, rattling Akitesh’s bones, and sending several krin flying.

Already, the enemy fire had ceased, and the remaining enemy quickly began retreating, clearly not wanting to stand in the way of humanity's advance. "Forward! Make them hurting!” the commander barked, and Akitesh had her hands full trying to keep up with her short, yet quick, cousins.

However, as the group charged, a distinct roaring sound caught Akitesh’s attention. She quickly looked up, only to reflexively strenghten the shield around herself as an enemy drop pod landed right next to her, bathing the entire area in flame. Deep down, she started shouting at herself, telling herself that she should have shielded the humans as well, but it was far too late, and all she could do was listen to their screams echoing in her ears as they were burned to cinders.

Her shield held, though, even if the constant pressure from the fire kept her concentrating on that, and nothing else. She was so very alone, at that point, her only companions the flames, and the screams of her dying cousins as they burned alive. She wanted to help them, to extend her shield, to maybe save one of them, but even if she could find them in the flames, it took every ounce of her concentration just to keep the shield around herself steady, and she knew that she couldn't hold out forever.

However, right when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, the pressure seemed to decrease, and the fire that surrounded her slowly died out, before disappearing entirely. Completely exhausted, the priestess dropped her arms, and the shield, before she collapsed onto the scorched pavement below her. She could hear the krin’s spidery legs all around her, but she barely had enough energy to raise her head, much less fend off their attacks.

However, instead of ending her life then and there, the krin seemed to have other plans. They were oddly silent, most likely they were communicating through their implants, meaning Akitesh was not privy to their intent. It soon became apparent what they wanted, though, when they started tying Akitesh’s hands behind her back. While a single krin was more than strong enough to carry her, it still took two, because of her long, serpentine body.

The only thing Akitesh could do was curse weakly at them. “Cowards… don’t… you don’t-” she managed to say, but her words were quickly cut off when one of them punched her in the gut, driving the air out of her lungs and bringing tears to her eyes.

Jedon… please, help… she whispered through her guardian, but she knew her call would go unanswered. Jedon had problems of his own to deal with, and even were he to abandon his quzin and rush to her aid, he would never make it in time. To top it off, the krin's drop pod was between them and her, meaning that even if help came, they'd still have to go around or through the pod to get to her, delaying them further, and only further decreasing the odds of a rescue.

As she was slung over one of the krin’s shoulders, her gaze came to rest upon the burnt, blackened bodies of the humans she had tried to rescue. Of the humans she had failed.

The humans she had let die.

“I’m so sorry…” she whispered, as tears fell from her face. She wanted to close her eyes, wanted to shut out the horrors around her, but it was as if she had lost control of her own body, and all she could do was weep, and watch in silent terror.

“Be quiet, if you know what’s good for you,” the krin holding her muttered in his own tongue as he adjusted his load. Akitesh barely heard him, though. Her attention was too focused on her failures to allow her to do anything but pray desperately to the creator that this was all just a bad dream.

Then, something moved at the edge of her vision, and Akitesh found her gaze snapping towards it, a faint hope growing in her breast. It swiftly fell, though, when she realized that it was only the burnt body of the human commander, his life still lingering, despite his blackened, destroyed body.

“Please, stay down…” she whispered, her eyes locked on the wounded soldier.

If he could hear her, he didn’t show it, and instead of rolling over and dying, the soldier slowly reached out, his hand searching for the grip of his weapon. With halting, almost jerky movements, the human’s hand closed onto the blackened grip, and his exposed muscles flexed as he started to push himself into an upright position.

His movements did not go unnoticed, and with deadly accuracy, several nearby krin opened fire on the dying human. Steam instantly covered the battlefield as the human’s body was ripped apart, leaving behind nothing more than a bloody, burnt stump on some legs.

“No!” she screamed as she struggled against her bonds, but another blow to her stomach stopped her, forcing her to hunch in pain over the krin’s shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here,” she heard one of the soldiers mutter. “I don’t like these things… They’re too tough, the fire alone should have been enough to kill them.”

“Agreed, move-” another soldier said, his voice calm, despite the battlefield raging around them. However, his order seemed to die in his throat, only to be replaced by a swear. “By the Battlemaster, what is this?”

Akitesh looked up again, only to see something that she refused to believe. The commander’s stump was still there, but oddly enough, it was still moving. The legs slowly folded in on themselves, and very briefly, a shadowed form of a human could be seen in the smoke and fire, one of his hands gripping his weapon as the other pushed himself into a standing position. “Get up, you lazy louts…” he said, his voice chilling Akitesh as it bypassed her ears and echoed in her very soul.

As if compelled by their commander’s orders, another body slowly began to stir, followed by another, and another. The krin began firing, desperation in their voices as the started shouting at each other, but it seemed to do very little.

After all, how does one kill something that’s already dead? Akitesh thought as she watched another body turn to steam.

As time wore on, the ghostly warriors' forms became more defined, their movements more fluid as they each got to their feet, their bodies left behind as they were burned away by the krin’s plasma fire. “Kill them all!” the commander yelled as twenty floating weapons quickly swung around, took aim, and fired at the krin in front of the landing pod.

Akitesh felt herself thrown to the ground, further bruising her already battered body, but she ignored the pain. She had to see, had to raise her head, to make sense of the insanity around her.

She needn’t have bothered, however, because in the time that it took her to look up, the last shot was fired, and the immediate battlefield grew eerily quiet, with the only sounds being the clattering of several somethings hitting the cobblestone road. When Akitesh finally managed to take stock of her surroundings, the krin were all dead, their bodies torn asunder by the weapons of the slain, the only evidence of this being the twenty rifles lying on the ground, all pointed towards her.

Author's Notes:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a great turkey day, that you were able to spend time with friends and family, and that you were finally successful in crushing Aunt Gertrude in Settlers of Catan.

As for me, we had a bit of trouble with our fridge, so our turkey day consisted of homemade pizza. We're still planning on having our turkey day later, but it'll have to wait for later.

As for this chapter, I'm so excited that I finally got to do my big reveal! Not telling you too much about humanity's special power, but I can give you a big hint!

It is pure, concentrated spite.

...
...
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Anyway! Here's the usual stuff!
My book: => What I've Become! <=

My Patreon: patreon

And the Tv Tropes that Alias_the_J made. It still needs a lot of work, but if you're willing and tv tropes savvy, it would be awesome if this stub got filled out, more!Tv Tropes: Humanity Within.

Next Chapter: Chapter XLI Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 46 Minutes
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