• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Chapter 2: The Ruins Are Alive

Doug would activate a short burst of emp on the creature long enough for it to cause pain but not long enough to do a lot of damage. looking down at the creature. Doug asks "Mabie instead of preaching your Rederic ET, Mabie you can do us a favor and answer the questions we want. This can go as long as you want we got plenty of batteries. this whole process can be as painless or as painful as you make it. So by all means answer the question before we get medieval on your ass."

Turning to his oms he used his free hand and hit the radio. "hey Rafael get up here with your medical kits and stuff were probably going to end up torchering this guy to get the info we want and last I checked the Hippocratic Oath doesn't apply to aliens." turning back to Jurgen doug paused and let the openly stated threat remain in the air before looking at the alien. "Now where are the rest of your units, how many and where. If you answer these questions satisfactingly then we may take you in as a POW if not we will take you as a trophy."

Looking over to the dead alien Doug had a hunch after the alien mentioned the humans as a tribe. walking over to the dead alien he looked it then the still living one on the ground. "that being said. you mentioned you thought of us as a tribe and by the sounds of things I'm willing your people fall under a similar higherarchy what would they think about their surviving tribe member who lets the enemy desecrate the remains of their fallen brothers and or sisters?" Doug said bending down and using his knife arm to carve up the what he thinks is the face of the corpse stopping for a moment. he looked back to the alien. "Oh I'm sorry were they important to you?"
 
Korofi laughed at Vlads words to him from earlier and gave a nod. "Count on that, always have everyone's backs if possible. Too bad my jokes don't cut it." He laughed again, but stayed and listened to the interrogation in the background.

Out of habit he checked his weapons once more to see if they were in working condition, but once that was done? He stepped up and held up a hand for a brief moment, as if asking for permission and spoke for a moment. "I'm not the smartest one at this, hell probably the dumbest one here. I think he mentioned them being top dog over us? I gotta ask what is this older truth he's talking about? Don't tell me it's to make honey in a hive all day, else I might say they're the sweet ones in this fight." He laughed a little, but shook his head. "The joke aside what is this older truth you're talking about bug? Please don't say it's about domination of some sort."
 
Vlad let the others get their questions in, taking his time to repack his supplies as they talked to the alien. Sounds like this guy took social-darwinism too far, he thought, shaking his head as he waited for the bug to respond, his rifle in his hands.
 
|| FROM MERE KNOWLEDGE OF STRATEGEM I DEDUCE YOUR DETACHMENT IS IN DIRE LACK OF TIME. FROM THE REEK OF FEAR AND EXCRETED FLUID BENEATH THE PALTRY EXO-SUITS YOU CALL PROTECTION, YOU LACK VIGOR. YOUR CRUELTY IS BUT AN IMITATION BEFORE THE HANGING CLAW OF A RIGHTFUL MASTER; THE FANTASY OF OFFSPRING SEETHING IN THE WAKE OF THEIR BETTERS, THEIR DREAMS MANIFESTED AS LITTLE MORE THAN CONCESSIONS TO FRAILTY THAN AN OFFERING UNTO WRATH. ||

The creature's head had turned to Rafael and its mouthparts, covered in splatter of blood and countless fluids, overlaid and contorted; as if its mouth had become a hole of sorts guarded by pointed, serrated tips. Somethinga bout it seemed crude, obscene, juvenile even; it vaguely resembled a smile. Was it an imitation of some sort with the curving pattern of its lower mouthparts, capped off with a pupil-less face? Maybe it was instead a threat or something else entirely; some alien cruelty to which they were yet to contextualize.

|| THEY ARE NEAR. WE BELIEVED HAD SKITTERED UNTO US, HOPING TO CLEAR YOUR ONCE MIGHTY HOVEL FOR FUTURE USE. YET MY KIND ARE NOT THE SORT TO REMAIN FROZEN IN HESITATION, CONFUSED, AND SCATTERED. THEY CONCEAL THEMSELVES IN THE VISCERA OF YOUR CITY'S PAST GLORIES AND AWAIT AS THE HOSTS OF WRATH. ||

The creature shifted and multiple weapon safeties clicked, barrels and targeting lasers each picking a diffeerent part of its body to blow to chunks if it so much as coughed, vomited, or shat itself. Shoving itself into a sitting position, braced against the squirting pulp comprising a former comrade, it turned its head to Korofi as the drone's screen warped again.

|| RIGHTFUL SUPERIORITY; EMBODIMENT OF A NATURAL ORDER. THE RELATION OF DESTRUCTION BETWEEN TROPHIC LEVELS OF LIVING THINGS, EXTENDING BEYOND THE ATMOSPHERE OF WORLDS ACROSS THE VEINS OF WORLDS. A CHAIN OF EVENTS THIS GRAVEYARD MONUMENT OF YOUR KIND CHOSE TO INTERFERE WITH WHEN THEY CLAIMED WHAT WAS OURS. IT IS NOT UNREASONABLE TO SIMPLY DEMAND WHAT WAS TAKEN TO BE RETURNED. RESISTANCE WAS MET AND LIVES WERE REWARDED WITH FINALITY. TIME REMAINS TO JOIN THOSE YOU HAVE PASSED ON BURNING STREETS AND SHATTERED HOMES. A MERCIFUL FATE THAN WHAT AWAITS WITHIN THIS STRUCTURE. ||

"Breaching charges. Remote control explosives. Either of the two. Anyone bring them? Because you know what? I think this bastard is making us an offer. The thing is he's the one who won't be refusing." Jurgen's voice, cold and barren, was interrupted by the iron bar from earlier slamming inches from the creature's head, causing it to flinch but not retaliate. "C'mon, get up you babbling twat-"

Jurgen pointed to another soldier to approach the battered survivor from behind, seizing both his arms while weapons remained trained on hsi body.

"You know what, you're right, I'm not the cruel kind. I'll be generous; I'll send you to your friends, let you walk us there, and they can have this supreme specimen of whatever Nietzchean might you think you are. But you try anything and the rest of your scumbag friends are getting front row tickets to your funeral then picking up the pieces."

Jurgen looked over to Vlad as a trooper moved with a demo charge. The creature kept its eyes on Jurgen, whatever emotions it could express cold and masked against a fleshless face. It did not budge even as its death sentence was attached to its body.

"Role call: who wants to hold the detonator?"
 
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Korofi waved a hand for a brief moment all the while shaking his head. "Not me, last I checked I don't think comedians do well with any kind of explosives. Maybe those action movie comedians and I don't think I fit that bill---shit never mind I messed that one up given all the combat and bug ass we have been kicking. However I don't think I fit the bill for holding that detonator? Unless absolutely no one is gonna hold it..." That detonator involved quite the responsibility to it, but it was possible he might have been able to withhold using it unless told. The detained bug hadn't been able to enrage him, but that could change depending on the circumstances.
 
Vlad waited a while to see if anyone else would take the big red button. Seeing that no one went for it right away, he raised his hand and walked up to Jurgen. "I'll take it if no one else wants it," he said, putting his hand out while he looked at the alien. "Did anyone actually understand what this mudak was even saying? Didn't even sound like English."
 
"Just bullshit Vlad. Don't pay him mind. Right now, he's our possible ticket out of here and beyond that, I'm sure he can take a few pulse-beams to his mug. He's not a blast-door but if things go to hell, push him in front of one of his kind's grenades."

To emphasize his point, Jurgen's foot slammed into the creature's back and it grunted, stumbling forwards a few feet as he kept his pistol trained on its back.

"Hide the detonator. These guys are probably clever. They see you holding that, they're going to target you. I don't know how smart these guys are but I have the feeling this guy isn't some grunt."

He motioned for the rest of the squad to circle on behind the alien trooper and for Korofi to come closer.

"Here's the plan; we're going to try to find the emergency bunkers. If anyone is still alive here, anyone human, best bet they're down there. Worse comes to worst, we'll scavenge any supplies we can find from the armories and garage. That broken message we got earlier? It has to have come from here."

He lowered his voice in case that thing was listening.

"Right now, everything hinges on the idea they might not shoot their own. That guy, the one we took out, clearly tried to save our prisoner. He's our bargaining chip, our hostage. He takes point but we keep at least two guns aimed at him. If it's one of you or him, abandon him."


The walk downstairs was even more tense than when they had been ambushed on their way inside, the huge insect hobbling forwards as fast as it can. Was it regenerating? Parts of its body seemed... firmer and less hole filled. As if it had managed to somehow regrow bits of carapace and torn meat. Vlad could see... something moving under translucent scab-growths, roughly in the shape of ticks or lice the size of fingers. This thing was picking up its pace. Maybe it wanted to be a martyr. A demo charge would change that but who knew what it was thinking?

Down here, downstairs, where wires and tiles hung like dead branches from a ceiling pummeled by alien artillery and the weight of its collapsing internal structures, it did not necessarily feel like the squad was escorting a hostage. It was leading them, even with Jurgen having chosen to go downstairs. It walked and they followed, even with Jurgen shouting at it to keep walking a certain way. The click of his handgun was a reminder to it that if it strayed too far, he did not mind putting more bullets in its legs.

Another stairway loomed ahead; an escalator. Yet there was something different about this. There was a corpse in front of it and it wasn't human.

It was... something like a very large spider, yet with a flattened shield-like body and densely up-armored legs ending in almost fang like curving claw-legs. There were malformed growths across its body, protruding like some sort of half-melted barnacle growth, with pseudo-barrels pointing out. Weapons, Jurgen imagined, melted by some kind of heat or explosive, thermal force.

"A drone?" Jurgen asked out loud to his squad mates. "Don't think it's one of theirs. Colour's off though; black and red, not purple and white."

He looked to the prisoner, standing there silently. Perhaps he was examining it himself.
 
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Vlad stood there with the detonator for a few moments, trying to reconcile holding a detonator to make sure the alien didn't kill them and hiding the it where it couldn't be seen. With a sigh, he secured his rifle, pulled out his pistol, and held the detonator next to the gun as he walked, hoping it looked like one object and not like a glowing red target.

Once they met the next bug corpse, he looked between Korofi and Jurgen in confusion. "They had a color scheme? Sorry, my head was a lot more focused on the amount of limbs and weird weapons to notice colors."
 
Sucking air threw his teeth Doug looked down to his stump burned and mixed with the slagged metal of his armor. The haphazard raggedy weapons sling tied off around it with a combat knife secured within its wrappings. A cold sweat building up from his helmet causing him to remove it using his suits mag harnesses to attach it to his waist next to the secured emp device. his skin pale and starting to get a bit clammy, "Jurgen, I hope we find a holdout or evac point soon I'm not feeling so hot." he states leaning up against the wall. Looking over to one of the Russian soldiers. "hey by any chance any of you guys happen to have any ap rounds for a pistol? My rifle seems to be one with the armor." he says looking down at one side. Not as bad as Korofi's side but with the swimming feeling of the painkillers started wearing off, his bravado seemed to be going with it as he saw just how bad the damage to both his side and stumpy arm was. staring up at the ruined ceiling he sighed. Walking over to the prisoner he turned on the device to the translator function they had used to talk to it before now.

"Look you don't like us and we don't like you but with everything that's happened today your people are in the shit of this just as much as we are. As far as it looks your people have been fighting scared same as us. There's a old saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend I cant say that were anywhere near ready to not shoot you in the back but call me crazy from the damage or stress but if you watch my back ill watch yours deal?" looking back towards Jurgen turning his back on the alien he mouthed trust me.
 
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Korofi gave a small laugh and shrugged, as he gave an extra look at the bug corpse colors. "I'm with Vlad on this one, partially was more focused on my pain however. I thought some of the colorations could have been from some battle earlier on this world...You don't think we can use these weird weapons can we? Unless we spot more weapons or some kinda all you can grab weapons cache buffet? Things might start getting a little hairy around here and a little buggier if you catch my drift." He laughed at his horrible puns, but kept watch of the surroundings. "Sorry Doug no ap rounds on me, but I might have brought some if I knew I signed up for bug extermination. Hell of a draft I tell ya and they didn't tell me of a retirement plan either."
 
"Do you remember the grubs? The swarm that came in when we found the drone. They didn't harm us, even when we shot them. They were all soft, grubby, motley. They didn't look like the predators we were fighting earlier. Maybe there's some variety but this..."

Jurgen's foot lightly kicked the carcass as he addressed Vlad and Korofi. A few bits of burnt carapace flaked off. Some bits of its armor clattered but even with the heavy burns, the material that comprised it was... odd.

It was more... metallic, yet somehow insect-like. As if metal had been woven into the complex mechanics of an arthropod exoskeleton. It was like-

"The video, the security footage, do you remember? The massive walking... legged tank thing, that attacked this building. This isn't the same design or colour scheme as them. Maybe it's just some variety but what's it doing here blasted dead if it's one of theirs?"

He knelt and grabbed a fragment of it body, poking at some of the holes in its body. There were a number of holes, many of which were far, far larger caliber than any service rifle he knew of. Last generation rifles and their rounds would not make holes this big.

"You don't get wounds like this from the Commonwealth..." He paused and looked over at Vlad's rifle. "And I don't think the Soviets are loaded with anything that intense either."

"Unless they got some top secret KGB shit hidden away they're not telling us about." This time, it was another trooper, Jorge, who made the joke before looking at Vlad. "Hey, Korofi can't have all the quips, right?"

"Whatever, so our friend got anything to say?" The Soyuz trooper Marczin looked to Doug then cursed, walking over and pulling out some medical supplies. Yet he kept the corpse of the thing in his perierpheral sight. "Shit, let me take those comrade, you are in no position to fight."

He'd grab the sling and put it over his shoulders, raising his eyebrow at his request.

"Besides, I do not think pistol rounds, armor piercing or not, were meant for... that thing, whatever it was." Producing a few spare painkillers, the dislimbed soldier was given an injection.

"Hey dude don't get too comfy with him. He shot unarmed civvies, maybe he'll bite our heads off. Oi, fuckhead!" Jorge called out. The alien remained unresponsive, still, almost at atatention. "Don't bite or me knife."

The creature just stood at the stairs; the drone itself had no text on the screen. No nietzschean lecture materialized on the drone, the insectoid merely standing slightly wobbly. Good, thought Jurgen, means that he shouldn't be hard to take out.

"Weapons... well, we have no idea what these things are. Everything about them seems alive. But the last two weren't that tough. First time we fought Mr. Civvie-Shooter, we had him on the run. Second time, they had the drop on us. One grenade and a few bursts though? Look at his sorry-ass now..." Jurgen's finger tap-danced on the pistol. This "alien hostage" strategy was the strategically sound call.

It didn't feel like the right one.

"... He's got nothing I guess. Look, Korofi, why don't you take Doug's rifle? We'll test out AP to see if it does any better when we get the chance. Better not spray-and-pray or else I'm having you pay for all irresponsible expenditure."

He wasn't really joking. Right now, they needed any help they could get and AP was better than nothing.



The squad moved on, down the stairs, and things did not look any prettier. There were bodies here; many charred or in pieces. Some human, some... whatever their prisoner was, both of which were only occasionally in one piece. They could tell which ones were humans easily; they had bigger holes or more chunks missing, splayed over overturned furniture or occasionally in a collection of limbs around some blast craters.

There was a disappointingly smaller number of bodies like the one they had captured; mostly intact with some dismemberment here and there. More of the smaller, bestial ones however in various stages of forced disassembly. It was a somewhat awkward walk; sometimes they were pushing the corpses aside, others awkwardly stepping over them.

It's a gruesome jigsaw puzzle landscape, a topography of smaller often fragmented human bodies and chunky purple-white carapaces. The rest of the room was gouged by blasts and gunfire - walls and ceilings torn open as if by gigantic claws, sometimes accentuated with green-orange or red splatters, others by chunks of alien matter smeared into them.

Jurgen's coms crackled and he winced as the volume auto-adjusted. He could hear it from everyone else's coms.

"UNKNOWN THREAT HAS DISRUP-... EXTERNAL FORCE TYING UP-... MULTIPLE SAFE ROOM-... SECURITY FORCES ATTEMPT-...NOT SECURE PLEASE FIND-... EURO-SOVIET TEAMS ISOLATED IN-..."

"It's that message again..." Jurgen commented, finding it less crackly but with less static backwash. Something was different; there were mumbles of some sort, as if the volume awkwardly dropped at moments.

"The drone, shit, Vlad keep an eye on the prisoner. Anyone who knows anything about the drone, see if we can use it to capture and clear up the coms! There's parts that are being left out of the transmission but it's getting clearer, see if we can decipher them!"
 
Doug looked up threw the holes in the ceiling the painkillers easing the tension and pain. the effect allowing to think a bit better, thinking back to his training and thinking for anything ANYTHING that might help them. Turning to Jurgen he spoke up again. "Korophi you got a taser? also Jurgen I got an idea on how to raise the signal problem if I'm right about this is going to draw attention to us and get those things barring down on us. Suppose we can take the emp wand. *pointing to the device he's given to Marczin* and walk 30 feet and wave it around the perimeter of this room we could shut down nearby electronics and after that we switch the radio to FM only, we won't be able to talk to them but it should clear the static in the area to get a clear idea of what it's saying downside? Well, using a taser or a big enough electric jolt to jumpstart the signal the frequency would most likely let the bugs know where we are, and clearing a static area gives them a clear picture of where we are."


Doug stated this, not with excitement but solemnly he was aware such an idea if excited meant more people would die if he were right not only that but in the situation where they finally got the info they needed the likeliness of getting there would be impossible unless others where left behind to fight them buying others time to escape.
 
Korofi laughed at that quip and maintained focus on the group as he spoke. "Lemme tell ya I needed some help with these quips. My back was starting to crack carrying all of the quip load and trying to fight bugs the whole time." He looked at Doug a little confused by that question, which he gave a shrug. "Well the job I was supposed to get here might have given me one, but my prior one? Definitely not. No taser on me. Although let me take a look at that rifle Doug and no Jurgen I won't be spraying and praying with it, man people won't let you forget one bad idea that technically worked. Not in the way I wanted to, but still." He would carefully take Doug's rifle making sure to avoid his injuries, which out of reflex he would take out the magazine to take a look at the ammunition and slide it back in. "Might feel weird to wield something not the M17, but hey I'm not complaining...I do feel bad about Doug not having a better weapon to compensate though."
 
doug shook his head. "right I'm going to look around and see if I can't find anything useful, mabie I'll get lucky and find a mostly functioning pdw off of one of the dead bodies nearby...." That made him realise something. there were a lot of vehicles both military and civilian outside and while a majority of those are slagged crushed or blown up there might be useful gear on some of those out there. "sir Permission to take some guys outside and see if we cant secure any gear ammo and or useful things off of the dead bodies and vehicles outside.?" Doug asked wanting to still be useful in his state.
 
Korofi will shrug and raise a hand at that. "I'm gonna volunteer for that. Who knows? Some of them may have ammunition for the gun that never dies and ironically it's lasted all of this time." He laughed at that and focused on Doug. "Although a little joking aside given our numbers and whatnot? It'll be best to find him a functioning weapon in his state even better an arm replacement...Hopefully mechanical? Rather I should say not one of their mechanical arms anyway, as it leaves me as curious as afraid of the thought." He would prepare his M17 as his main weapon and leave Doug's rifle as a backup weapon for now if need be.
 
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