"Squads 37 Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, an elite is approaching Beta Squad's position. You'll want all the firepower you can get!"
I had long since stopped bothering to confirm there was someone listening on the other end. People either knew to listen to my callouts by now or they didn't, wasn't my problem either way. If they hadn't learned in 5 months, they probably wouldn't.
Besides, I had quite literally a million better things to do than relay intel. Unfortunately we had not nearly enough people specialized in data-processing, so everyone who could spare some computing-power was asked to.
And of course that included me. My dumbass just couldn't be satisfied with a Class II brain, no I had to get one that could effectively process every single scrap of data picked up by every sensor and satellite on this protectors-forsaken planet.
Thank fuck my brain was quite literally built to multi-task and that my adversaries were little more than fodder. Yeah sure, not everyone would refer to a 53 and a 55 as fodder, but even combined, they posed little to no threat.
Nevermind the common foot-soldiers that had at one point surrounded them. I hadn't bothered checking what model they were, they didn't last long enough to warrant that.
It was laughably simple even. Just select half the atoms within the thing's body, freeze them in time and the instant it isn't perfectly 100% still, it's getting diced up by a million trillion needles and turned into a fine mush, with not a single cell left intact.
No regeneration, no turning into a hive, none of that. Every molecule that's bigger than water gets ripped apart, so that of course includes proteins, DNA, even fats and individual amino acids.
They could no longer regrow, because there was nothing left *to* regrow. Just a puddle of very chemically reactive antithesis-goop.
Unfortunately the so called Elites were different. Some Antithesis command model had decided to equip everything past a 50 with a built-in temporal stabilizer. Specifically to annoy me.
Specifically to annoy me.
Fortunately the stabilizing was limited to the models themselves and I had yet to face an army that had one Elite protecting them from my instant-kill button. That would be annoying. I would probably get Antithesis all over me.
Perks of being a melee fighter.
The 53 tried, and failed, to pin me down, closing the gap, only for me to dash out of its range again anyways.
Sure, I could cut it down, but these things had a tendency to take more than one hit and it was just common sense to go after the ranged squishy before taking down the tank.
You'd think models this advanced would come with some amount of brains, but they were only a little less stupid than a model 3 or 5 respectively.
Barring a 6, 17 or other commander calling the shots of course.
The 55 fired the most telegraphed salvo in the history of artillery at me, trying to bait me to dodge back into the 53's range. At least they could teamwork.
I decided to rush forward instead, meeting the projectile head-first. Well, sword-first. Kindness cleaved through the thing like a hot knife through butter and within 573 nanoseconds the acids, bacteria, nanites, quantum field disruptors and the secret fifth thing coating my sword's edge had reduced it to nothing.
If Antithesis could do facial expressions, I would imagine the 55 had a mix of shock, surprise and horror on its face by now.
Unfortunately for both Antithesis "fighting" me right now, they were about 20 years too late to have a shot at actually doing any damage whatsoever, nevermind meaningful damage that would stick around.
Sure, the 55 fired at a rate-matching a machine-gun, but 200 RPM was hardly consequential when you could perceive the world in milliseconds and tell the laws of momentum to fuck off.
I had closed the gap between us, before it got the opportunity to fire a second round, and unceremoniously stabbed the tip of Kindness into it, letting all of the warcrimes do the actual killing.
One advantage to my foes having the stabilizers was that their power-budget evidently wasn't big enough for that and regeneration. Granted the regen was inconvenient at best, since all the stuff on Kindness would easily keep it in check, if not outpace it, but it was nice to not have to worry about that.
It was almost funny. One tiny little poke and the Antithesis just poofed away. Gone. Reduced to literally atoms.
I side-stepped the charge of the 53, which had apparently decided trying to run me over was a good idea. It wasn't.
I did swing my blade at it, as it charged by, but unfortunately I was unable to put enough power into the swing, so the edge harmlessly bounced off the bark.
If you could even call it bark, given that it was made from an extremely tough steel-alloy.
Since it survived one attack, I opened my eyes and actually looked at the thing. Time to figure out what it looked like.
I will admit. Jet-black nightmare crossbreed of hippo and stinkbug was not what I would have guessed.
I mean the colour made-sense, there's definitely steel-alloys that are black, but you'd never think hippo and stinkbug would make anything threatening. Well stinkbug anyways.
Hippos had been terrifying. Maybe they were still terrifying? If any species on earth could survive Antithesis attacks without human intervention, it was certainly the hippos.
Those things were quadrupedal tanks full of barely contained rage and with enough power to knock over a car.
It definitely had plenty of both of those. And while the maws didn't have sharp teeth, I would wager that sticking your hand into them was a bad idea regardless. The 5 heads looked uncannily similar to a hippo-head.
The stinkbug elements mostly came in the form of being hexapodal, a - probably - thick carapace and body-shape.
On one hand, it was weird to see Antithesis take the form of a herbivore, on the other hand Lyona would probably tell me this form is actually copied from some apex predator halfway across the galaxy and the similarities to Earth's wildlife were a mere coincidence.
The creature slid to a halt, leaving deep marks in the red soil and turned around, probably to charge at me once more. But I was faster.
Before it had even turned halfway around, I closed the gap and rammed Kindness into it, this time cutting through the carapace, even if it was barely a scratch. But barely a scratch was enough.
The monster dissolved from the inside, leaving the inorganic and therefore impervious to my bullshit shell behind.
I tagged it as a potential resource, in case anyone else needed it or had any interest in it, and waited until the squads at my flank caught up. Truly, the one thing slowing me down the most was the fact that I had to keep pace with everyone else, or risk breaking the perimeter and allowing xenos to slip through.
It would probably happen regardless but definitely not due to a slip-up of mine. Or lack of patience, even though I could not wait for this war to be over and done with, so I could finally go get some sleep.
It helped that we were working inwards now, having cleared well over half the planet thus far, which meant that naturally as we kept advancing, the perimeter would shrink.
Hopefully this would mean I soon no longer had to guard a section of it and could just keep pressing forward, taking out hives and heavy-hitters, instead of waiting for everyone else to catch up.