Druhalith (The Season of Resilience)

  Day 370

  1 A.E.

  549 days since my arrival

  The six clone troopers stood perched on the jagged overlook above the beach. They were silent and still as statues, their four eyes flickering beneath their red visor overlays.

  The mud around their boots was thick, oily, stinking of decay, rot, and salt. Rain fell in acidic sheets, hissing against their armour as it struck. The sky, a shifting mess of ash clouds and atmospheric distortion, cast everything in a grey haze.

  CT-981B, the squad leader, crouched low, his rifle steady against a block of melted stone.

  “Positions,” he growled. His voice sounded through the silent comms.

  The others moved, spreading out without reply.

  CT-982B to the far left, long-range rifle primed and scanning.

  CT-983B and CT-984B took mid-range cover behind the remains of a destroyed structure, optics glowing faintly as they adjusted fire parameters.

  CT-985B mounted an automated plasma repeater and reinforced his cover with scavenged plating.

  CT-986B laid down extra crates of batteries and supplies in the muck, he expected the worst to emerge soon, and he wanted to be ready.

  Below them, the beach sprawled out in rows of dug-in trenches, reinforced bunkers, and portable turret towers blinking dull red under the rain.

  Defensive lasers tracked slowly through the haze, occasionally cutting through the grey with a piercing bolt of light.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  The comms hissed, then broke open with chaos.

  “—we’ve got multiple water contacts! They're coming from the ocean!”

  “Projectiles inbound, impact within fifteen seconds!”

  “Sky’s lighting up! Defensive arrays can’t keep up in sec—”

  “—they’re everywhere!”

  981B clicked his jaw once. “Stay off general. Keep local.” He didn't need to be distracted by the screams of his masters.

  The clones obeyed instantly, their external feeds muting down to tight-band encryption.

  From the horizon, streaks of light tore across the sky—missiles rising out of the ocean in twos and threes, trailing smoke and heat through the air.

  The defensive lasers roared to life, burning two, maybe three, from the air before being overwhelmed. The rest came screaming down—slamming into the trenches and bunkers like steel-wrapped thunder.

  Explosions rocked the shoreline. The entire ridge shook.

  CT-983B flinched as shrapnel sprayed the cliffside. “Hit. Tenths line’s been compromised.”

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  “Not our concern,” 981B said calmly. “Watch the water.”

  The beach was lit in orange fire and smoking ruin, but the ocean remained calm.

  Too calm.

  CT-982B zoomed in, optics sharpening. “Movement. Seventeen degrees west.”

  All six aimed toward the black surf.

  The surface bulged.

  Then split.

  Figures began to emerge—not one or two, but hundreds. Then thousands.

  Massive, gleaming bodies breaching the water like gliding shadows. BCUs. But something was off.

  CT-983B adjusted his scope and narrowed it in. “That… that’s not the humanoid variant.”

  The new models were smaller but similar to them, their shells almost black against the pale wet ash. Their carapaces were lighter and segmented differently than the lighter-toned lunar variants the clones were used to fighting.

  Each BCU's backs opened up revealing, membranous wings slick with water. But most disturbingly, along their torsos were red seams pulsing like veins, and their undercarriage compartments bulged unnaturally.

  CT-985B cursed under his breath. “That’s not a humanoid configuration. Look at their torsos—that’s a suicide variant.”

  CT-984B growled low. “Heat signatures confirm. Core overload. They’re primed.”

  CT-986B spoke like it was fact, not fear. “Flying bombs. Just smart enough to find our lines before they detonate.”

  CT-982B’s tone darkened. “Nethros been busy.”

  CT-981B locked in his optics. “Open fire!.”

  The BCUs rose as one, wings catching the acid rain, dark grey shells gleaming under flashes of lightning and defensive fire.

  CT-983B’s voice came over comms, level but tight. “They want to crater our trenches. Bleed our lines before the main force even lands.”

  CT-981B didn’t blink. “Then we bury their dead broken.”

  “New plan?” CT-985B asked, powering up the repeater again.

  “New plan,” 981B confirmed. “Drop wings, and core shots if you can. Secondary fire—focus on dismemberment. If they fall into our lines intact, we lose half the defence net.”

  ———

  The numerical advantage I had long craved finally took shape as wave after wave of missile strikes blanketed the battlefield. I targeted everything—mines, outposts, facilities, bases, logistics hubs—pounding them with relentless force.

  It was about overwhelming their senses, exhausting their responses, breaking their rhythm before they could adapt.

  Above, the skies were choked with my newest drone: the suicide beetle, their smaller frames housed less explosive, but their numbers made up for that disadvantage.

  They scoured the clouds and ruins alike, hunting anything that moved—anything that looked valuable—as I pushed through the post-apocalyptic corpse of Imreth.

  From the ocean, my swarms surged ashore. They smashed against the beachheads like living waves, testing clone defences, and measuring the enemy reactions.

  I deployed drones in layered waves, adapting the attack for changes in enemy behaviour. This was meant to be a probing assault.

  But they didn’t break.

  Clones that should’ve faltered in the face of hopeless odds stood firm. I had already dissected their cheaper genetic variants—they were mass-produced flesh with a shelf life of a few years, perhaps two at most.

  They were designed for endurance and aggression. Even so, when I unleashed scores of beetles to tear them apart, they fought with unwavering resolve.

  Through countless eyes, I watched them fall. But they did not die easily.

  Even torn apart, burned, or limbless, they kept fighting—dragging themselves forward with shattered arms, detonating munitions as they were overwhelmed.

  They held on even as I killed on. It was strange to meet an advisory that acted like me surviving. Engineered to throw their lives away with maximum impact, and they embraced that design like zealots.

  Their machines were no different. The four-wheeled variants blanketed the field with overlapping fire, explosive rounds ripping holes through my numbers.

  They were resupplied constantly, defended fiercely, and shielded by mobile bunkers and automated platforms. In some sectors, their firepower matched mine—and held the tide. Every meter I gained was soaked in sacrifice.

  Aerial units joined the fray in disciplined clusters—fifty, a hundred at a time—turning the skies into chaotic mazes of explosions and collisions. I had to adapt, rigging some of my drones to detonate in chain reactions to catch groups of theirs mid-flight.

  Even that became a chess match—when to trigger the blast, how to bait their formations into a kill zone, and how to minimize waste.

  Missiles still rained down. Some found their marks. Many were cut from the sky by laser fire, some still found their mark.

  Then came the light all over the ocean.

  Multiple points above the ocean where my drones and missiles surfaced ignited in brilliant flashes. Explosions tore through the air, and shockwaves rippled outward, obliterating thousands of my drones instantly.

  Underwater explosions followed that tore through the sea like divine wrath. The shockwaves rolled out in concentric death, annihilating hundreds of thousands of my drones instantly.

  I felt them die—not with pain, but with certainty—as radiation shattered their internals and the sea boiled. Not even my deepest burrowers survived.

  I watched not in horror—but in fascination.

  They had chosen to taint the world again. It made me pause as a splinter of my mind recalculated everything was it a desperate act of a cornered enemy?

  The seabed erupted again. Outposts, mines, and bases I had seeded across the continental shelf were all vaporized in nuclear fire. The sheer scale of destruction turned whole regions into roiling craters of steam, glass, and death.

  I exhaled.

  Not in fear. Not even in anger. Just a quiet sigh of recognition. They had made the choice I hoped they wouldn’t. The loss was enormous—but not fatal.

  My operations on Imreth’s surface would continue. I had made contingencies. I always did.

  Already, my infiltrators were planting seeds for the next attacks. Burrowers, harvesters, and architects were spreading through their logistics networks like rot behind the walls.

  My agents had infected the veins within their systems, transporting everything throughout Imreth.

  Still… the use of such extreme retaliation forced a shift in strategy. The fallout from those detonations would last centuries—perhaps millennia. And while time was mine to spend, the complexity of reclaiming the irradiated zones would need to be studied.

  Perhaps the civilized sectors of this universe had faster ways to clean up the mess.

  Perhaps not.

  Either way, Imreth had new scars. Its oceans screamed, its skies choked with smoke, its soil fractured and blackened. And I was far from done.