A New Terror

BETHESDA , Eastern District, 2420AA, As the Killion and Gabriel came around the final corner  and came into the market square, they were greeted by a most bizarre sight. Insects. Locusts to be specific and a whole lot of them scattered everywhere as they ravaged whatever they could lay their mandibles on. Their black wings buzzed. Their blue eyes crackling, sparking with electricity even as their dark pincers which were essentially the extensions of their mandibles and sharp as swords were busy decapitating heads in a manner like they had never been seen before. "What on earth?" The Captain whispered, horrified at the bloody mess that the giant insects were making and giant they were, for the locusts were as big as tiny dogs, though varying in sizes and with wing spans that could rival that of a moderately sized Marabou stock. Their numbers were also a matter of concern, but compared to the dragon horde that was yet to make an appearance after that altercation almost seven days ago, this situation seemed more manageable that is, apart from the numbers that were also quite astonishing. Where a dragon horde was made up of maybe six or ten dragons on average, these locust swarmed in numbers so high that they could have easily been a thousand or more, making them a huge and deadly swarm whose only resemblance to the real thing were their numbers and their morphology. That is, minus the deadly pincers that the metallic menace were using to tear down the market square. A noisy horde of black metal, blue eyes and a lot of clanking wings! That's what they were. "What do we do now?" Gabriel shouted to his captain above the noise of the clanking of metal and a thousand buzzing wings. For a moment, Killion remained quiet, baffled just like the young lieutant was. "I don't know. I bet though the metal on those things acts like some sort of armor, and those pincers–" The Captain trailed off even as Gabriel shivered at the man's unspoken words."Call in the hub for aerial support, meanwhile, I will cover you even as we continue to try and figure out what we are dealing with." "But...but Captain!" Gabriel tried to stop him, but the man in question was already on the move, regardless of the threat to his own life. Once again, just like that other night, Gabriel watched as his visor came down and his suit came to life. The armor on his right hand, a new suit modification, transformed into a gun which he used to rain bullets one of the giant insects and as expected, the bullets did nothing to harm it. Instead, they ricocheted off the armour and fell down with out leaving even a scrape. Did its armour absorb all that kinetic energy? The young soldier shivered, put off by the thought of fighting another horde of hard skinned terrors. Was that even what they were? New terrors to replace the old ones that they hadn't seen in almost a week? He did not know which of the two he preferred. The flames or the blades and the noise that continued to grate at his nerves, irritating him to no end. "Gabriel! Support!" The captain's voice screeched into his ear piece and just loke that he remembered his orders and began acting. Reacting to his punches, the communication panel on his left hand slid open as he began the process of sending out a distress call towards the central Hub. He could only hope by now that the sensors had had picked up on the new energies and that a team had already been dispatched and was already enroute. For with every moment that passed, a building crumpled or a life lost as the massive insects continued with their senseless decapitations and ravaging. What did a metal insect want with a carbon based life form? No one was spared, be it bird, livestock or human. Fortunately though, there seemed to be less of the latter than the other two that had fallen prey to these deadly insects. As the blaring noise of the Hub's alarms began to fill the evening air, the man managed a smile. His message had been well received and the warning bells set off to warn the town. From a distance a buzzing noise   reached his ears. The whirring of rotar blades even as the choppers drew nearer. A sigh of relief escaped his lips and he also knew that the Captain felt the same way. Fired up with fresh morale, the man dropped down his visor and  let out a huge battle cry. He jumped high and ran straight into the fray and into the mess that was blood and gore upon overturned shacks and decapitated bodies of livestock and what was once a group of unsuspecting town folk. Beginning by launching his assault on a black and extremely oversized murderous locust. His broad sword lashed out from behind him and straight at the insect. It collided with the black wings and bounced back with a resonating clang that left his hands shaking. It had left no mark, but had rather instigated the insect to turn around and glare at him with a set of crackling blue eyes and an annoyed buzz. "Connors!" the Captain's voice screeched once again in his ears even as he retracted a foot to take a step backwards. "Use your lasers! Nothing else will work on them." his voice shouted into his ear piece. Lasers! Gabriel took another step backwards even as he dropped his sword to bring out his plasma whip that he went on to unleash opon the advancing terrors. He raised his hand and snapped back his wrist and the whip lashed out in form of a dazzling stream of blue particulate energy. Fluid as water but deadly as it sectioned off the parts of the insects that lay in its path. A stream of blue sparks and fire was released into the night sky even as insect after insect collapsed into a dark heap of sparking metal. Like their carbon based counterparts the creatures wriggled on the ground before the buzzing stopped. They were dead. Something that had never happened with the other terrors. "They are electric!" Gabriel exclaimed even as he turned around to release several pulses of concentrated laser beams on an attacking insect. "Yes! But they are too many! We need to think of something else and fast." The Captain said as he took down two more only to be surrounded by five more of the deadly locusts. All around them the metallic arthropods milled, tearing down the market place and anything that seemed to lie in their path. More of the giant sized insects scaled up the walls and attacked the residential buildings. They tore the buildings apart, brick by brick and every once in a while several sets of metallic antenna would shoot up from holes located at the front of their round metal helmets. The antenna would then turn around in every direction as if they were communicating with each other or seeking out signal that remained a mystery to the two officers. The antenna would turn rretreat back into the safety of their indestructible head gear even as the insects continued with their rampage. "Something is not right!" Killion breathed ouas he turned his rifle to mow down two of the insects. He took a step back and slid below an overturned shack in to catch his breath. "You've noticed!" Gabriel responded just as he jumped out of the way of a snapping set of deadly pincers to dive beneath the safety of a nearby upturned market cart. "They are not actively seeking us out. It's like they are scouring for something. Look at the numbers on the roof tops alone with their antennas roving all over the place!" Gabriel looked up and sure enough the largest population of the horde was resting upwards. There were so many of them that they temporarily masked the stars and for a moment he found himself worrying about their pilots and the aerial teams. "Sir..." he started to speak but the Captain cut him off. "I know Gabriel, the laser blasters won't cut it. We need something more powerful...more powerful than...I've got it!" The Captain suddenly exclaimed leaving the young man to fill in the answers for himself. "Sir?" He asked sounding confused. "I'll explain it to you later. For now, power down your suit as I send back the aerial teams!" It didn't make sense to the young soldier, but as he had come to learn, being a soldier meant learning to follow orders. No questions asked despite not knowing the actual reasoning behind them, or the main purpose they were meant achieve. It should have been hard, but as he had learnt to trust his commanding officer, he found it easy despite not knowing his Captain's real intentions. All he knew was that the reason had to be a good one. Otherwise, Killion would never tell him to shut down his weapons and his life support system right in the middle of a raging battle. As Gabriel complied with the commandband began to shut down his suit, the droning of the helicopters began to fade and so did the accompanying lights that he knew to be the laser blasters from the aerial support team. For a moment it got all quiet as all battle activity seemed to cease. The locust being more interested in their surveillance activities than they were with the soldiers who had now made a strategic retreat. Two minutes went by like that. Then five, then ten and then, the sound of a boom that could not be mistaken for any other filled the night air. A screeching of metallic noises filled up the air even as the horde at the roof tops began to disperse. They tried to jump into the air, but very soon they began to drop even as the second boom sounded and the area become much quieter with every clink and clank that hit the pavement below the buildings. Then, there was absolute silence, all the buzzing having ceased as the locusts became immobile. Their once blue eyes had turned dull, a dark grey that was reminiscent of a dark starless night. As Gabriel watched on mersmerized by the view that lay before him, his ears prickled as his ear piece flickered to life and the voice of his Captain filtered through into his suit again. "They are getting away. They are getting away! Power up! They are getting away!" "Wha...what?" An astounded Gabriel mumbled out. Despite his confoundment, he quickly powered up his suit and even as he did so, his eyes, enhanced by the optometrics on his suit's visor were able to narrow down on the group of escaping locusts that were fast approaching the Central District. "Havillah!" It finally clicked in his mind. With his suit now fully powered up, he easily threw off the cart that until then been concealing him and joined the Captain in his mad dash for the Central District. "The EMP canon will take some time to charge up again until then, we cannot let them escape." Killion told him as he fell in step beside the young lieutenant. "But how could they escape?" "I do not know how. It has to be an A.I. That, or the armors of their fallen comrades worked to protect them in some kind of way." "An A.I? Is that even possible?" Gabriel was skeptic. "They must have seen the trouble coming and reacted in time just like we did when we powered down our suits." The Captain tried to reasoned. Gabriel just nodded, grateful that only a small portion of the horde had been able to escape the EMP canons. Wether it happened due to luck or some sort of inate intelligence within these electric creatures, he did not know. However, he sure hoped that it was the former and definately, not the latter. "There Gabriel! They are entering the Central District!" A panting Killion called out to the young officer and despite being clothed in that powered suited, the man struggled much to catch up with the flying beasts. As the two soldiers were now coming to see, it was rather hard to keep up with this new type terror, much harder than it had been with the dragons. Sure, these insects were giant, but they were much smaller when compared to the dragons, and unlike their fire breathing counterparts, their large numbers were more of a problem and their smaller bodies meant that they could meander through the maze of buildings with much more ease than their pursuers who were struggling on the pavements down below. "Oof!" Officer Connors heaved out as he came face to face with yet another brick wall. "Why do this things keep happening to me?" He mumbled angrily to himself. "That's a no brainer considering what you are." A female voice answered him back. "What I am?" The officer retorted as he grew offended. "Captain I..." The man began to complain to his superior, but his words failed him as he came around the final corner and he beheld the sight that was waiting for them.