"THERE IS SAYING FROM YOUR SPECIES THAT PHYSICAL ACTION CARRIES MORE WEIGHT THAN PURELY DICTATED INTENT. YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO DISAGREE. AS WE HAVE STATED THAT WE HAVE ENCOUNTERED YOUR ENEMY BEFORE, THEN LET US DEMONSTRATE HOW ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN THEIR FORCES AND OUR OWN TYPICALLY END."
The spherical diplomat began to shimmer as light swam and bent in arches around its porous body. Dust-consistency limbs of macro-organisms and living machinery extended outwards in rigidly geometric formation, six arms each outlining a large rectangular shape as holographic luminscece began to fill in the empty space in front. The immaterial glow projected into a screen, losing colour beyond a faint silvery pseudo-static blur as recorded audio and clearing video began to manifest onto the biomechanical screen.
It was not solely "
vrexul" video feed that was playing however, based on the sights of dense carapaced chitin outlining a few of the video screens. The screen was wide, enough to be a small theatre, and it hosted a plethora of smaller rectangular windows. Some of them matched known
human video formats - one seemed to be an observation drone in low orbit, another a helmet-mounted camera, another a wall mounted camera, and otherwise presenting a wide variety of perspectives alien, human, and post-humanoid.
What was visible from inference through multiple screens was an outpost of sorts, a backwater world of wide fields and lumpy hills broken up by dense patches of forest between wild, varying shrubs and vegetation. The structure itself was some sort of HFR prefabricated structure but any identification and banners had been removed, leaving it a series of cargo-crate like, slab-structures that formed a large encampment circular in form and flanked by tall hills to the rear.
For an outpost however it was not lightly unguarded. There were humans visible, raiders and pirates perhaps given by the irregularity of their armor and weaponry, but not normal humans. Larger than normal, some of which bearing
weapons moreso associated with the dog, tiger, and snake forms distantly visible within one of the larger structures through its windows. Quiet and impassive, emotions hidden behind their armo, but pointing and poking at something large and lump-like seated behind an observation capsule. Something that seemed at first like a fragment of a ship blackened perhaps by blast-fire or some incident but organic, twitching, chitinous growths were visible on its side.
The same sort seen within object 138. However the
daqin came into contact with it was unknown and given by their body language and what was likely an intense conversation, it was likely just as mysterious to them. Given by the fact that vrexul camera feeds could be seen looking at the structure containing it, their zoomed-in perspectives draped in a wash of static green and daqin shapes within highlighted in animalistic white outlines, it was reason enough for whatever bloodshed was soon to be unleashed upon the outpost.
Oddly enough, nothing seemed to happen at first. There appeared to be roughly six vrexul camera feeds, maybe around 25 human ones, excluding gun turret, security camera, and combat automata feeds. Yet the vrexul ones simply continued watching - sometimes the camera would look towards other vrexul, spaced out before the east side of the base where the buildings were a little less spaced out and the descending sides of the hills provided some concealment as they lay in wait behind foliage, trees, or partially embedded in the dirt.
Two additional vrexul feeds appeared but these ones seemed static-ridden and blurred for whatever reason.
The watching continued, humans milling about but watching the wilderness carefully, weaponry in hand as a pair of
daqinren exited the structure, cautiously looking to the hills. A group of humans were on their way, carrying long rifles and bipod-tipped machine guns, clearly expecting something as they settled in on the hill. Both daqin split, one of the moving to a slightly reddish structure with a sattelite array dish on top, the other into a smaller grey structure - likely private quarters.
A few minutes passed when the one in the red structure, a tiger daqin, abruptly burst out almost knocking the door off of its hinges, weapon armed and raiisng a hand to motion to the now alerted humans. The base was alive with motion, both species spreading out with a contingent of humans backing up the tiger-daqin, weapons pointed at the door, shouting and yelling. From the feed, the door could be seen being kicked opens and guns sweeping into the room - a personal quarters of knocked over beds, crushed furniture, great gashes along the wall, and and a the dog-daqin clutching its side, a sidearm in its grip and a twitching, jointed limb jerking about on the floor.
It belonged to a creature best described as something like a very large lacewing larvae - the same scissor-mandibles but in a pair of four, its body the colour of rotted undergrwoth filth, at least three times as many limbs, and more than just its mouthparts it packed a number of large, long clawed-limbs ending in multi-fingered sickle tips. Bullet wounsd were visible across its body, sparking from multiple holes but it lunged again, jerking and twisting as more rounds slammed into its body, turning about to ram into one of the humans with ripping, ravenous fury.
The two blurred vrexul feeds suddenly began to lighten as the savage creature tore outs ripping appendges out of a mangled human and into another, the tiger daqinren stepping in to try and pull it off of its comrade, motioning for its wounded comrade to get out.
This would unknowingly prove to be a mistake.
From a human feed running to the wounded daqinren, a medical kit clattering by their side, what should have been first aid soon turned into a post-mortem. Just as they raised the supplies to their compatriot, a lance of blue-white light passed through their sight, enveloping the dog-form's head, silencing a muffled cry with the sound of suzzling, burning, melting flesh. Dripping, pooling bodily mass bubbled against the blackened outline of a burnt skull, falling to the ground stiff as a mannequin.
Another feed showed the machine gun and rifle team immediately zeroing in on the sight of the beam, lighting up the foliage of the copse with heavy duty rounds in streams of tracer fire and staccato semi-auto bursts. Thermal vision revealed beneath the fog of smoke and heat, a shape rapidly crawling across the ground, vrexul and on all fours or rather, maybe 12's, moving like an enormous ground beetle as it repositioned.
A swivelling gun turret, its view flanked by four long barrels, swept across the camp zeroing in on the increasingly subjugated larval-creature visible through a hole within the daqin commander quarters. Yet in the corner of its sight dirt could be seen kicking up between the flashes of light streaking across its sight; return fire from the vrexul sniper. From the growing hole in the ground, dirt exploded outwards and a large shape erupted out of the ground, shrouded in dust and debris but familiarly looming, staphylinid and bipedal in shape.
The vrexul feed that was once blurred static showed a quad-barreled turret sitting atop one of the prefabs, swivelling towards the camera-feed outlined in a bright purple. A massive rifle of some sort held in its hand swung towards it but not before it popped up a few shorts, clanging audibly against the carapace, crunching through and audibly cracking it at portions, before a burst of needle-like energy bolts from its rifle reduced it to a sparking mess. The weapon turned to the commander quarters, blowing smoking holes in a trio of human troopers attempting to fire through holes in the wall as more blasting and shouting sounded off on the background.
While the singular feed showed the vrexul firing its hefty weapon, clamped against its side through multiple long digits, in a savage exchange of fire with the forces bunkered in the commander quarters (the larval-thing could be seen torn in two through a recently made hole), it was also engaging another set of targets. Looking to a camera feed on an adjacent building and its other large clawed arm, along with various smaller appendages some of which resembled long jutting insects, firing a deadly barrage of spines and directed energy bolts into another structure, multiple rounds slamming into its body as additional security personnel forced themselves to reposition and engage a new threat.
The two remaining
drones lay in burning piles by its feet but in the adjacent building, charred and burning, it wasn't hard to see butchered humans within, desperately attempting to hold back its vicious fire. That was the last thing the feed showed before it gargled and fell to the ground, staring at its ower body smoking a few feet behind it, shakily raising an arm towards the sight of the monstrous miasma-thing, holding a a dripping mess of a daqin commander sunken into one of its massive claws, meat pouring from its desecrated torso and the gash-wounds of devourment across its form.
Yet the vrexul were not here for mere butchery. From the feed of the one who had stormed into the research facility, shoving the pouring cadaver of of one of the daqin it had blasted earlier out of the way, the fragment could be seen jittering and violently convulsing in its container. Not for long; the creature's massive claws wrapped around crustacean like, cracking, cracking further, shattering the glass as smaller limbs ensnared the twitching, reluctant fragment, dragging it back to its body and into whatever grotesque crevices lay within its carapace.
