"MASTER, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?!"
The darkness covering my vision faded.
For a few seconds, I just stood there trying to remember where the hell I was. A cave entrance ahead of me. The mouth had been heavily barricaded.
Right.
Verdara.
I was back.
I slowly turned around.
Three chairs had been arranged in a rough circle behind me.
Bolts was standing beside one of them with both hands planted firmly on his head.
And Roger—
Roger was pointing an Irken plasma rifle directly at my face.
"WOAAAH!"
I threw my hands up.
The S.I.R. unit's targeting systems locked onto me.
A small identification request immediately pinged my PAK.
My PAK automatically answered.
A fraction of a second passed.
Roger's weapon lowered.
"Identity confirmed."
I stared at him.
"You almost shot me!"
"Unknown Irken appeared directly in front of me."
Bolts still hadn't recovered.
"MASTER!"
I looked toward him.
"What?"
"What happened to you?!"
He hurried over and stopped directly in front of me.
"YOU CHANGED SO MUCH IN ONE SECOND!"
From their perspective, I'd flashed from a four-foot-five Irken soldier.
Then immediately into...
Five-foot-eight, larger and broader, wearing Jango Fett's chest armor over Jedi clothing.
I looked down at myself.
Then back at Bolts.
"Yeah."
"YEAH?!"
"What do you want me to say?"
"You were small!"
"Rude."
Roger watched silently.
"Are you still Master Dabo?" Bolts whispered.
I stared at him.
"Yes. Already. Now listen up, both of you."
Roger straightened.
"We've got seven days before the Tallest show up and save our asses."
Bolts immediately pointed at me.
"Your ass."
I ignored him.
"First priority—numbers."
I waved one hand.
SUMMON.
A rust-colored B1 materialized beside me.
Then another.
Then five more.
Their heads snapped upright almost simultaneously as their systems connected to my PAK.
Outside the cave, the seven older B1s I'd left behind responded to the new network.
Good.
"Guard the entrance."
"Roger, roger."
The droids marched outside.
I kept going.
Ten.
Twenty.
Fifty.
The cave rapidly became too cramped, so every new batch was immediately sent outside.
By the time I finished, one hundred B1 battle droids were spread around the cave entrance and surrounding forest.
Not exactly an elite army.
But a hundred rifles were a hundred rifles.
My inventory was now empty of functional droids.
So—
Next category.
Corpses.
Bolts watched as the first clone body appeared on the cave floor.
Then another.
Then another.
White armor.
Black body gloves. Blaster burns. Occasional cracked plating.
Most were remarkably intact. That was intentional. I'd collected the best bodies I could find.
No missing limbs. No shattered spines. Hands intact. Eyes intact.
Everything important still where it belonged.
If I was going to raise soldiers, I wanted soldiers that could still use their bodies properly.
I crouched beside the first group.
"Rise."
Energy left me.
The corpses moved.
One sat upright.
Then another.
Then all of them.
I continued.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Forty.
Forty-five.
Then—
WARNING: Current INT limit reached. Control threshold: 45 / 45. Revive anyway?
I stopped immediately.
"Nope."
Bolts tilted his head.
"What?"
"Nothing."
I had already made the mistake of exceeding my control limit once.
I wasn't doing that again.
I pulled up my status.
CLASS: Necromancer (Lv 16 / 100)
HP: 270 / 270
MP: 105 / 150
SP: 270 / 270
Unallocated Stat Points: 50
STATS
STR: 27
END: 27
DEX: 27
INT: 15 (+60)
WIS: 15
CHA: 50
LCK: 15
...
Fifty points.
I'd been hoarding them.
Again.
No real reason.
I just hated spending permanent resources.
Every point felt like something I might desperately need later.
Experiment first.
I put one point into INT.
INT: 16 (+60)
Then raised three more clones.
Forty-six.
Forty-seven.
Forty-eight.
WARNING: Current INT limit reached. Control threshold: 48 / 48. Revive anyway?
Three.
One point of INT had increased my control limit by three undead.
Interesting.
Raise Undead was Level 3.
So maybe the skill multiplied the value of INT?
That would explain it.
If Level 3 gave me three undead per INT point...
Then Level 4 might give four.
Which meant sixteen INT could potentially support sixty-four undead once the skill leveled again.
I looked at my remaining points.
Forty-nine.
...
Fuck it.
I dumped thirty-four into INT.
INT: 50 (+60)
The effect was immediate.
My brain felt—
Clear.
Not smarter in the sense that secret knowledge suddenly appeared inside my skull.
Just cleaner.
Like someone had taken every thought in my head, organized it, wiped away the dust, and lubricated the gears.
My awareness sharpened.
Oh.
I liked that.
I spent another nine points.
Three into STR.
Three into END.
Three into DEX.
My muscles tightened slightly. My body felt more solid. Cleaner.
Six points remained.
Those I kept.
Because apparently I hadn't completely defeated my hoarding problem.
I checked everything again.
CLASS: Necromancer (Lv 16 / 100)
HP: 300 / 300
MP: 102 / 150
SP: 300 / 300
Unallocated Stat Points: 6
STATS
STR: 30
END: 30
DEX: 30
INT: 50 (+60)
WIS: 15
CHA: 50
LCK: 15
Nice.
Clean numbers.
My brain approved.
I dismissed the screen.
Then went back to work.
"Rise."
More clones stood.
Fifty.
Seventy.
One hundred.
One hundred twenty.
One hundred fifty.
WARNING: Current INT limit reached. Control threshold: 150 / 150. Revive anyway?
One hundred fifty undead.
Plus one hundred B1s.
Plus Roger.
Plus Bolts.
...
Not bad for five minutes of work.
But something about the clones bothered me.
I looked over the assembled undead.
At Level 1, my zombies had been obviously dead.
Stiff.
Clumsy.
Slow to react.
These weren't.
They stood straighter. Their heads tracked movement.
One adjusted his grip on a rifle without me consciously telling him to.
Another stepped sideways to make room when a new body rose beside him.
...
They were aware at least more so than before...
I found that extremely unsettling.
I also found it extremely exciting.
"Form ranks."
The undead moved.
Not perfectly.
But close enough.
Bolts stared.
"That's creepy."
"Thank you."
Roger looked toward the undead army. I took his lack of response as praise.
"See? Roger gets it."
Bolts sighed.
~~~
I finally stepped through the barricaded cave entrance.
Right.
Verdara.
I'd forgotten how bad this place looked.
My B1s spread through the trees outside, taking defensive positions beneath thick green foliage.
The forest itself was still alive.
Lush.
Dense.
Almost beautiful.
Everything above it?
Less so.
The sky was stained with ash.
Clouds had turned into a dirty gray ceiling stretching from horizon to horizon.
Far away—
ZZZZZAAAAAP!
A red orbital beam punched through the clouds and struck somewhere beyond the forest.
A few seconds later, the ground gave a faint tremor.
Another beam descended farther east.
Whoever was firing those things was still having a wonderful time.
I stepped farther outside.
The undead clones began filing out behind me.
White armor appearing between green trees.
Rust-colored B1s moving among them.
Roger followed.
Bolts stepped out last.
I looked toward the horizon.
And there it was.
The sun.
Or—
What passed for it here.
A thin artificial-looking ring surrounded its circumference.
I stared at it for several seconds.
Whoever lived up there was probably looking down at Verdara right now and thanking every god they knew that they didn't have to deal with this bullshit.
Orbital bombardment.
Monster-infested forests.
A planet apparently determined to kill anything living on its surface.
...
Lucky bastards.
I looked at the army forming around me.
One hundred B1s.
One hundred fifty undead clones.
A S.I.R. unit.
Bolts.
And me.
Seven days.
I smiled.
"Alright."
Bolts looked over.
"What?"
I stared into the forest.
"We've got a planet to conquer."
~~~
I wanted somewhere better to operate from.
The cave had worked.
But if I was actually going to spend seven days preparing for the Tallest, I needed something better than a hole in the ground with furniture jammed across the entrance.
So I opened the terrain data stored in my PAK.
I'd collected plenty of information on Verdara during the invasion.
Topography.
Old settlements.
Military routes.
Infrastructure.
Anything that had looked useful at the time.
And apparently God hadn't completely abandoned me yet.
There was an old military fortress less than a day's march away.
It had been built during Verdara's last major civil war, back before the planet had finally been unified.
Even better—
After the war, the place had apparently been converted into a museum.
Which meant there was a chance it hadn't been stripped apart.
Fortified walls.
Storage rooms.
Observation points.
Maybe functioning generators.
Compared to the cave?
Luxury.
I marked it on the map.
"We're moving."
Bolts looked over.
"Where?"
"A fortress."
Roger's head turned toward the projected route.
"Estimated travel time acceptable."
"Good."
I sent the location to every droid connected to my PAK.
Then issued one final instruction.
"If anything moves and it isn't us..."
I pointed into the forest.
"Shoot it until it stops."
A hundred B1s responded nearly at once.
"Roger, roger."
The undead clones said nothing.
We started walking.
For a while, everything went surprisingly well.
Too well, honestly.
The forest was dense, but the old military route was still partially visible beneath years of growth.
My B1s moved ahead and along the flanks.
Undead clones formed the bulk of the column.
Roger stayed close.
Bolts wandered beside me.
No monsters.
No ambushes.
No orbital strike landing directly on my head.
A wonderful change of pace.
Then—
THWIP.
My antenna twitched.
I stopped.
THWIP THWIP.
Both antennae started moving.
"What?"
Bolts stopped beside me.
I ignored him.
Something was...
In the air.
Not a sound.
Not exactly.
A smell?
Maybe?
I turned my head slightly.
My antennae moved again.
Then again.
Like two tiny biological detection rods trying to point me somewhere.
I followed them.
Through some brush.
Past a tree.
Until I found myself staring at a flower.
A large one.
Beautiful.
Its petals were spread wide like a blooming rose, colored in shades that seemed almost too vibrant compared to the ash-darkened sky above us.
I crouched.
My antennae immediately angled toward it.
"...What are you doing?"
I whispered.
They did not answer, obviously.
I leaned closer.
One antenna moved forward on its own.
Then the other.
The pointed tip pressed gently between the petals.
What the—
The antenna carefully spread them apart.
Just searching.
The tip moved deeper.
Right toward the center.
Then—
Poke.
It went in.
I felt the strangest little sensation travel down the antenna.
A tiny vibration.
The tip wiggled once.
Twice.
Then pulled free.
I stared.
There was a droplet on the end.
Tiny.
Barely anything.
A bead of nectar.
It caught the light and reflected it strangely, producing a faint rainbow sheen.
I stared at it.
My antenna curled inward.
Toward my face.
"No."
It kept moving.
The tip positioned itself directly where my nose would've been if Irkens had noses.
Then my mouth opened.
Not consciously.
My tongue slipped out.
Long.
Thin.
Wormlike.
It curled around my antenna.
I went completely still.
The tongue slid upward.
Reached the droplet.
And collected it.
...
I slowly pulled my tongue back into my mouth.
The nectar touched it.
Then changed.
The liquid hardened almost instantly.
Not fully solid.
More like a tiny crystal forming against my tongue.
My mouth moved without asking permission.
The crystal was pressed against the roof of my mouth.
My tongue held it there.
I stared straight ahead.
Bolts stared at me.
Roger stared at me.
Several nearby B1s had turned their heads too.
...
What.
The.
Fuck.
Was I doing?
I slowly touched one antenna with my fingers.
Then looked back at the flower.
Then at Bolts.
He blinked.
"What was that?"
"I don't know."
"You looked like you knew."
"I absolutely did not."
My tongue shifted again.
The little crystal remained pressed against the roof of my mouth.
That was definitely biological.
And I had absolutely no idea what the hell my body had just decided to do.
I stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, staring down at the flower.
Great.
Fantastic.
Another thing to add to the list.
Monsters.
Orbital strikes.
Random bullshit hidden in the forest.
And now—
Flowers.
Verdara was a vibrant green world covered in vegetation.
Flowers were everywhere.
Wonderful.
I straightened my robes.
"Let's go."
The column started moving again.
Every so often my antennae twitched toward something off the path.
A flower.
A patch of vines.
Something blooming against a tree.
Each time I forced myself to keep walking.
I was not getting distracted by alien nectar every ten minutes.
It took more effort than I wanted to admit.
About fifteen minutes passed before—
PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW! PEW!
I snapped my head forward.
Several B1s had opened fire on something ahead of the column.
I couldn't even get a proper look at it before the creature disappeared beneath a wall of plasma.
Red bolts hammered into a writhing mass of flesh.
I expected the undead clones to join in.
Their rifles were already raised.
Their fingers rested near the triggers.
But the moment another creature broke through the blaster fire and got close—
Their grips changed.
Not firing grips.
Melee.
One clone stepped forward and swung his rifle like a club.
CRACK!
The sound made me wince.
Whatever bones the creature had...
They broke.
Audibly.
The thing collapsed sideways.
Another undead clone brought his rifle down across its body.
CRUNCH.
I stared.
...
That was not normal clone strength.
Not even close.
A living clone was strong but definitely not that strong.
Much stronger.
The movements weren't graceful either.
No fancy technique.
Just raw force behind every hit.
The B1s continued firing.
PEW! PEW! PEW!
A few more undead stepped in and beat the creature whenever it tried to rise.
Eventually the blaster fire stopped.
Silence returned.
All that remained was a smoking pile of flesh.
Very interesting.
Raise Undead wasn't just making the bodies move better.
It was making them stronger. At least physically.
"Keep moving."
And just like that—
We continued toward the fortress.
The forest didn't get any friendlier.
At first, that wasn't a problem.
We had numbers.
A lot of numbers.
Anything stupid enough to attack one hundred B1s, one hundred fifty undead clones, Roger, Bolts, and me was making a very poor life decision.
The problem was frequency.
Ten minutes after the first creature, another one appeared.
This one dropped from the trees.
Long body.
Six limbs.
A mouth that opened sideways.
It barely hit the ground before—
PEW! PEW! PEW!
Half the front of the column opened fire.
We kept walking.
Another fifteen minutes.
A group of little things crawled out from beneath some roots.
Dog-sized.
Covered in overlapping black plates. Probably scavengers.
PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW!
Gone. Those weren't even zombies...
We kept moving.
Then something large began following us through the trees.
Never close enough to see properly.
Just—
CRACK.
A branch breaking.
Then silence.
A few minutes later—
THUMP.
Something heavy landing somewhere behind us.
The rear guard rotated toward the sound.
Nothing appeared.
We continued.
I looked toward the forest.
Still green.
Still beautiful.
Still full of flowers my antennae desperately wanted to investigate.
But now that I was paying attention...
The place never really became quiet.
Something was always moving.
Branches shaking.
Leaves rustling.
Distant calls.
Occasionally something enormous roared far enough away that even the B1s stopped walking for half a second.
We killed something roughly every ten to twenty minutes.
Sometimes two things.
The terrain started climbing.
Not steeply.
Just enough that the forest thinned and the ground became rockier.
Almost there.
Another kilometer.
Then half.
Then—
The trees finally broke.
I stopped.
"Oh."
Bolts walked up beside me.
Roger followed.
Ahead of us, nestled directly between the bases of two massive mountains, sat the fortress.
And calling it a fortress almost felt insulting.
The place was built into the gap itself.
Two enormous steel walls extended outward from either mountain, meeting a central gate that looked thick enough to survive artillery. (think helms deep on a hills)
Dark metal plates overlapped one another across the exterior.
Weathered.
Rust-streaked.
Covered in vines in places.
But intact.
A squat command structure built partially into the rock.
The mountains formed natural protection on both sides.
There was only one obvious way in.
The front.
...
Now that I liked.
An old communications tower rose above the compound. Several antenna arrays surrounded it. Old. Probably obsolete.
Solar panels covered sections of the rooftops and climbed partway up one mountainside. Most were buried under dirt and vegetation. This was from before they had built their Dyson Ring but regardless of the period Vederan's loved their renewable energy.
The metal was weathered, but not neglected.
The panels had been cleaned at some point.
The tower's support beams showed no serious corrosion.
My eyes moved across the compound.
Exterior lighting.
Water collection tanks.
Ventilation structures.
A communications relay.
What looked like an old landing pad.
There were even security cameras along the walls.
Dead, obviously.
The closer I looked...
The better it got.
The outer grounds had clearly been designed for visitors.
A paved walkway led from the gate toward the main entrance, though weeds had pushed through the cracks.
Covered display shelters stood along either side of it.
Underneath them were old vehicles, armored transports, field equipment, and pieces of machinery I couldn't identify from this distance.
All of them were dusty.
None of them looked ruined.
There were information boards beside several exhibits, their lettering faded but still readable.
A ticket booth sat near the entrance.
Next to it was a small visitor center with broad windows, a reception desk, and what looked like a gift shop inside.
There were benches beneath the trees.
Restrooms near one of the side buildings.
A cafeteria or snack bar attached to the main hall.
Even a children's activity area with faded painted shapes on the ground.
The exhibits had been protected from the weather.
The buildings had been sealed.
The equipment had been cleaned and arranged.
Even the dead systems looked like they had been shut down properly instead of left to rot.
I smiled.
"Oh, this is perfect."
Bolts looked at the massive gate.
"It looks abandoned."
"Even better."
Roger scanned the area.
"Defensive value is high Master."
"See? Roger understands."
Seven days suddenly didn't sound so bad.
If the inside was even half as intact as the outside...
I could get the solar grid running.
Restore power.
Bring the cameras back online.
Repair the communications tower.
Get interior lighting working.
Maybe reactivate whatever old defensive systems remained.
Set up charging stations for the B1s.
Behind me, hundreds of metal feet and undead boots filled the clearing.
I pointed forward.
"Secure it."
One hundred B1s raised their rifles.
The undead clones began advancing.
And I followed.
The fortress was quiet.
Suspiciously quiet.
No monsters waiting inside.
No hidden survivors.
Nothing.
For once, Verdara seemed content to leave me alone.
I wasn't going to complain.
The B1s swept the outer grounds first.
Then the visitor center.
Barracks.
Vehicle bays.
Command building.
Storage rooms.
Museum halls.
The undead clones followed behind them in small groups, rifles ready.
Roger stayed near me.
Bolts wandered off twice and had to be called back.
By the time the entire compound had been searched, we'd found exactly zero living occupants.
Good.
One less problem.
I immediately divided the force.
B1s on perimeter duty.
Undead clones covering the gate, walls, and interior checkpoints.
Roger with me.
Bolts...
Well.
Bolts could go wherever he wanted.
Then I got to work.
The first thing I wanted was power.
Everything else could wait.
The fortress had three main sources.
Solar.
An old backup generator.
And what my PAK identified as a small geothermal system buried beneath the command complex.
That last one surprised me.
The solar array was the easiest.
Most of the panels were intact.
Dirty.
Overgrown.
Disconnected in several places.
But intact.
I sent twenty B1s up onto the rooftops with cleaning tools while I worked on the damaged connections.
An hour later, several sections of the panels came back online. My One with Machines trait even shedding hundreds of years of rust off a few of the things.
The first exterior light flickered.
Then another.
Then—
A whole row illuminated.
"Beautiful."
The generator building came next.
The fuel tanks were nearly empty, but the generator itself was in surprisingly good condition.
Whoever had been responsible for preserving this place deserved a medal.
I replaced several degraded connections.
Cleaned the intake.
Repaired a damaged control board.
Then manually primed the system.
"Moment of truth."
I hit the starter.
VRRRR—VRRRR—VRRRR—BRRRRRRRRRRRR.
It came alive.
Lights throughout the generator room turned on.
"YES!" I'd be generating enough power to recharge the B1s steadily enough.
The fortress hummed.
Not loudly.
Ventilation fans started turning.
Interior lights flickered on.
Old displays inside the museum illuminated one after another.
Somewhere in the visitor center, a recorded voice suddenly began speaking about Verdara's civil war before cutting off halfway through a sentence.
That one was creepy.
"Turn that off."
Roger did.
~~~
The fortress slowly came back to life.
Most of the lights functioned.
Ventilation was operational.
More importantly—
The landing platform worked.
I stood on it near sunset. The pad was built against one side of the mountain, slightly elevated above the rest of the compound. Large enough for several small craft.
I summoned the ship.
WHUMP.
My ship appeared onto the landing platform. The same one we technically crashed in earlier today. I had 7 years to repair the thing while I was stuck waiting for the clone wars to start.
Roger's eyes brightened slightly.
There it was.
My ship.
The ship connected to my PAK almost immediately.
Diagnostics appeared.
Fuel.
Weapons.
Navigation.
Systems.
All normal.
Good.
Then I looked around.
Fortress.
Army.
Ship.
Working electricity.
Running water.
Defensible walls.
Not bad.
Not bad at all.
The rest of the day passed almost peacefully.
Almost.
One creature approached the outer wall.
It lasted approximately four seconds.
The B1s handled it.
The undead clones stood watch without moving unless ordered. Also incredibly unsettling when you walked past twenty of them in a dark hallway.
The first day ended fairly quickly...
~DAY TWO~
Day two began before the sun had fully risen.
I stood in the revived command center watching the exterior cameras.
I'd spent part of the previous night restoring enough of the security network to give me a rough view of the fortress perimeter. The image quality was poor. But they worked.
The B1s lined the walls in organized firing positions.
One hundred rifles overlooking the main approach.
The undead clones were outside the walls. One hundred fifty of them.
Spread across the clearing, positioned in loose defensive groups between the fortress and the tree line.
I remained inside.
Watching.
Waiting. For nearly an hour, nothing happened.
Slowly branches bended aside. Leaves trembling.
The first creature of the day emerged shortly after sunrise.
It walked on four limbs. Each one was too long for its body, jointed several times between the shoulder and the ground. The joints bent in alternating directions, giving the creature a crawling gait that looked wrong no matter which angle I viewed it from. Its body had no visible fur, skin, or scales.
Only pale gray flesh stretched so tightly over the skeleton that individual ribs moved beneath the fibers of flesh whenever it breathed. There was no face. No eyes. Only an enormous vertical split running from the top of the skull to beneath the jaw.
The opening twitched with each step.
Then it unfolded.
Four separate pieces of its head peeled outward.
Inside was nothing but rows of thin, needlelike teeth.
The B1s opened fire.
Red plasma hammered into it from the wall.
Flesh bursting away the creature fell as one of its joints buckled from the damage. Then immediately began dragging itself forward.
The undead clones moved to meet it.
No hesitation.
The first clone reached it just as the creature lunged.
Its head opened.
The four jaws clamped around the clone's torso.
White armor cracked.
The creature shook violently.
The clone's upper body disappeared inside its mouth.
Then the jaws closed.
CRUNCH.
The clone folded.
Its spine snapped.
The creature threw the ruined body aside.
Three more undead reached it.
One drove the stock of his rifle into the exposed joint of its remaining foreleg.
Bone broke through skin.
Another clone grabbed the creature's lower jaw.
The thing twisted and tore the clone's arm from its socket.
There was no scream.
No hesitation.
The one-armed corpse continued attacking.
A third clone buried both hands into the open mouth.
The jaws closed around his forearms.
Bones shattered.
He kept pushing.
More clones piled onto the creature.
They pulled at its limbs.
Its head.
Its exposed bones.
The B1s stopped firing once the undead surrounded it.
For almost a minute, the thing disappeared beneath bodies.
Then one of its rear legs came free. Pulled off.
Dark blood sprayed across the grass.
Another limb followed.
The creature tried dragging itself backward.
The undead followed.
One seized the open plates of its skull.
Another seized the opposite side.
They pulled.
The head split farther than it was built to open.
Tissue stretched.
Tendons snapped.
Then the skull tore apart.
The creature stopped moving.
Fresh corpses appeared inside the outer courtyard.
I raised them.
Sent them outside.
The line returned to one hundred fifty.
~~~
The second attack came less than forty minutes later.
This one flew.
At first, the cameras showed only shadows passing over the ground.
Then the B1s began tracking upward.
A flock descended through the ash.
Twelve creatures.
Each had a wingspan of nearly six meters.
Their bodies were narrow and almost skeletal, wrapped in black membrane instead of feathers.
They had no legs.
Only two enormous wings and a long segmented tail of what appeared to be spinal columns repurposed.
Their heads looked vaguely humanoid.
That resemblance lasted until their mouths opened.
The lower jaw split down the center.
Both halves peeled sideways.
A circular throat lined with hooked teeth expanded beneath the skull.
The B1s fired. Three died before reaching the wall.
One lost a wing and spiraled into the clearing hard enough to break its body.
The others continued.
One struck an undead clone from above.
Its tail wrapped around the clone's neck.
The creature climbed again.
The corpse was lifted several meters into the air.
Then the tail tightened.
The clone's neck stretched.
Vertebrae separated.
The head remained caught in the loop while the body fell away.
Another flying creature landed among the undead.
Its wings folded forward.
Not around itself.
Around three clones.
The black membranes tightened.
I watched shapes moving beneath them.
Then came the sound.
Repeated impacts.
Wet tearing.
When the creature reopened its wings, one clone was missing half his face.
Another's chest armor had been peeled open with the flesh beneath it.
The third had been torn in half.
The remaining undead attacked.
Hands seized wing membranes.
Rifles struck bone.
One clone climbed onto the creature's back while another group held it down.
It tried to take off.
Eight undead hung from it.
The wings beat once.
Twice.
On the third attempt, one wing tore free near the shoulder.
The creature collapsed.
The undead descended on it.
The long tail whipped hard enough to cave in a clone's helmet.
Another was knocked backward with his ribs crushed beneath his armor.
Then a clone caught the tail.
Another joined him.
They pulled in opposite directions from the creature's body.
The segmented spine extended.
Skin tightened.
Then the tail came free with several vertebrae still attached.
The creature thrashed.
The clones beat it until it stopped.
On the wall, the B1s continued firing into the sky.
None of them were touched.
When the last flying creature fell, fourteen undead were no longer combat effective.
I replaced fourteen.
~~~
By midday, I stopped thinking of the attacks as isolated incidents. Something about the fortress was drawing them.
The next creature came alone.
It was smaller than the others.
Human-sized.
Thin.
Almost delicate.
It walked out of the forest upright.
Its skin was translucent.
I could see its organs.
Or what remained of them.
Most had turned black.
Several were swollen beyond their normal size.
A network of blue veins spread beneath the skin like cracks beneath ice.
The face had once belonged to something intelligent.
Two eyes.
A nose.
A mouth.
Now the eyes were cloudy and sunken.
The lips had rotted away.
The exposed teeth clicked constantly as it walked.
The undead clones raised their rifles.
The thing stopped.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then its chest opened.
Not metaphorically.
Its ribcage spread apart.
Bones pushed through the skin and unfolded like the legs of an insect.
Inside the open cavity was a mass of pale sacs.
They inflated.
The B1s fired.
The first bolts struck its chest.
The sacs ruptured.
A gray cloud exploded outward.
Three undead clones disappeared inside it.
The nearest camera immediately lost visual clarity.
When the cloud dispersed—
The clones were still standing.
But their armor had changed.
The white surface was covered in black pits.
Then one clone's breastplate collapsed inward.
The material had been eaten through.
So had the body beneath it.
His chest cavity simply opened.
Another lost part of his jaw.
A third's left side dissolved from shoulder to waist.
The creature continued forward.
Its exposed ribs scraped along the ground like additional legs.
The B1s maintained fire.
Bolts burned through the transparent flesh.
The creature's body blackened.
Still it moved.
The undead charged.
One clone reached it and drove a rifle through the open ribcage.
The creature folded around him.
The ribs closed.
Their sharpened ends punched through the clone's armor from every direction.
Chest.
Back.
Throat.
Abdomen.
The corpse was pinned inside it.
Other undead grabbed the protruding ribs.
They pulled.
One snapped.
Then another.
The creature released the impaled clone and struck with its arms.
Its fingers had grown together into hard, curved blades.
One passed through a clone's throat.
Another opened the abdomen of a second.
The undead ignored the damage.
They surrounded it.
A clone caught one bladed arm and forced it backward until the shoulder dislocated.
Another struck the exposed elbow.
The arm broke.
Three more pushed the creature down.
Then they began dismantling it.
The translucent skin tore easily once they had leverage.
One clone pulled the remaining arm free.
Another stomped repeatedly on the open chest.
The sacs inside ruptured under his boot.
Gray fluid sprayed across his legs.
Acid ate into him immediately.
He continued stomping until both legs failed beneath him.
DING. Skill Progression: Raise Undead (Lv 3→4).
When the creature finally stopped moving, six undead were destroyed beyond use.
Nine more were damaged.
I replaced them.
Fresh bodies were raised.
The number increased to two hundred.
~~~
The fourth attack came shortly after.
Then the fifth.
Then the sixth.
No two creatures were alike.
One was an enormous worm covered in humanlike arms.
The arms pulled it forward through the mud.
Every hand clawed at the ground independently.
Its mouth was hidden beneath the front of the body.
When it reached the undead line, the head lifted.
The mouth opened underneath it like a trapdoor.
Three clones were dragged below the creature by grasping hands.
One emerged from the opposite side missing both legs.
Another never came back out.
The undead killed it by climbing onto its back and tearing the arms off one after another until the creature could no longer move.
They then forced rifles into its underside and fired directly into the mouth.
Another creature resembled a deer only at a distance.
Six legs.
Antlers.
Thin body.
As it approached, the resemblance fell apart.
The antlers were made of exposed bone that continued down through the skull and out beneath its jaw.
Verderan faces were embedded along the creature's neck.
Not complete heads.
Faces.
Eyes closed.
Mouths moving.
All of them breathed independently.
When the B1s shot the animal, every mouth screamed.
The creature accelerated.
It reached the undead faster than anything before it.
The antlers punched through two clones simultaneously.
It lifted both bodies and carried them several meters before throwing them aside.
An undead clone caught one antler.
The creature twisted.
The clone's torso rotated farther than his pelvis.
His spine broke.
He held on.
Three others seized the remaining antlers.
They pulled the head down.
A fifth clone stepped onto its neck.
Another grabbed the lower jaw.
The animal kicked.
One hoof crushed a clone's chest completely flat.
The others kept pulling until the head separated from the body.
The embedded faces continued screaming for several seconds afterward.
Another was little more than a mound of flesh crawling on hundreds of fingers.
No visible head.
No eyes.
No mouth.
Just a moving heap of skin covered in pores.
The B1s burned holes through it.
Nothing happened.
The holes closed.
The undead surrounded it.
Then the pores opened.
Thin strands erupted from the body.
Hundreds.
They wrapped around wrists.
Necks.
Rifles.
Legs.
The creature pulled.
One clone disappeared into the mass.
His body sank beneath its surface as though pushed into deep mud.
For several seconds I could see the outline of him struggling beneath the skin.
Then the shape stopped moving.
Another clone was dragged halfway inside before others caught his legs.
Both sides pulled.
The body separated at the waist.
The upper half vanished.
The lower half remained in the hands of the undead.
The clones eventually killed the thing by physically ripping it apart into smaller sections and carrying those sections away from one another.
Even separated, the pieces continued crawling.
The B1s burned them until nothing remained but black tissue.
~~~
By late afternoon, the clearing no longer looked like grassland.
It looked butchered.
Blood from a dozen species soaked the earth. Pieces of monsters lay everywhere. Limbs. Sections of organs I couldn't identify. Clone bodies mixed among them. White armor had become stained so heavily that some corpses barely looked like Republic soldiers anymore.
Every encounter was the same.
Something came out of the forest.
The B1s opened fire.
The creature survived long enough to reach the clearing.
Then the undead met it.
There was no fear on either side. No retreat.
The monsters tore the clones apart because the clones could not feel pain.
The clones allowed themselves to be torn apart because damage that would stop a living soldier meant nothing until their bodies physically stopped functioning.
I watched one undead clone continue fighting after losing his lower jaw and most of his throat.
Another crawled forward using one arm after both legs had been crushed.
And every time enough were destroyed—
I replaced them.
Five lost.
Five raised.
Eleven lost.
Eleven raised.
Twenty-three damaged beyond usefulness after one particularly large creature reached the line.
Twenty-three new clones stood minutes later.
The army never shrank. The B1s remained above it all.
Their rifles fired down from the walls whenever something approached.
Red plasma crossed overhead constantly.
~~~
Near sunset, the largest creature of the day arrived.
The forest announced it long before I saw it.
Trees cracked.
Whole trunks bending and breaking.
The ground trembled beneath the fortress.
The B1s turned their rifles toward the sound.
The undead formed a line.
I watched from the wall.
Then it emerged.
It stood nearly twelve meters tall.
Four massive legs supported a torso shaped like a swollen human ribcage.
There was no skin over most of the body.
Only exposed red muscle crossed with thick bands of black connective tissue.
Its ribs were external.
They curved outward around the torso like the bars of a cage.
Inside that cage—
Something moved.
Dozens of smaller bodies.
Partially digested creatures trapped inside the chest cavity.
Some were dead.
Some weren't.
Limbs pushed between the ribs.
A paw.
A hand.
Something with claws.
All moving weakly.
The creature's head sat too low between its shoulders.
Almost buried inside the chest.
It had one enormous eye.
No visible mouth.
Then the ribs spread.
The entire torso opened.
That was the mouth.
The trapped bodies inside began sliding downward.
The B1s fired.
Hundreds of bolts struck it.
Muscle burned.
Chunks tore away.
The creature continued forward.
One leg came down.
Three undead clones disappeared beneath it.
When the foot rose again, white armor was embedded in the ground.
Dozens surrounded each leg.
They fired upward.
Climbed.
Struck joints.
One clone was kicked hard enough to cross half the clearing before hitting the fortress wall.
Another was caught beneath a closing rib.
His body folded in half.
The creature lowered its torso.
The ribs opened.
Six undead were pulled inside.
The ribcage closed.
For a moment I could see them moving between the bars.
Then the internal muscles contracted.
Armor cracked.
Bodies compressed.
One helmet burst free and fell to the ground.
The undead outside continued climbing.
The thing shook violently.
Bodies flew away.
Some struck the ground.
Some struck trees.
One lost both legs on impact and immediately began crawling back.
The B1s kept firing.
The creature's eye ruptured.
Black fluid poured down its face.
It moved blindly.
The undead swarmed its front leg.
Twenty of them.
Hands seized exposed muscle.
Fingers dug into tissue.
They pulled.
A section tore free.
The creature collapsed partially.
Its knee struck the ground.
The undead climbed faster.
One drove both arms into the ruined eye socket.
Another joined him.
Then another.
They pulled at whatever tissue they could reach.
The creature's head twisted.
The entire eye cavity widened.
Something inside snapped.
The head sagged.
The body still moved.
The ribs opened again.
A group of clones grabbed them.
One on each side.
Then more.
The creature tried closing its chest.
The undead resisted.
Arms broke.
Shoulders dislocated.
Hands were crushed between bone.
More clones replaced them.
They forced the ribs wider.
The opening spread.
Internal tissue tore.
The trapped bodies inside fell out in a wet mass.
Then the entire front of the torso split.
The creature collapsed.
The impact shook the clearing.
For several seconds, its legs continued kicking.
The undead descended on it.
Rifles became clubs.
Hands became hooks.
They pulled muscle from bone.
Crushed exposed joints.
Tore at organs.
The B1s stopped firing.
Eventually the movement ended.
Silence followed.
DING. Skill Progression: Raise Undead (Lv 4→5).
I stared at the remains of the creature.
Then at the forest.
The sun was almost gone. The trees beyond the clearing were still moving. Something else was out there.
I replaced the destroyed clones.
One after another. They stood. Picked up weapons.
Walked toward the clearing.
The damaged undead were removed.
Replacements took their places.
Two hundred fifty now.
The monsters had become more frequent as the hours passed. I had spent almost the entire day watching. Nothing had breached the fortress. No B1 had been damaged. The walls remained untouched. It should have felt like success.
Instead, I watched the tree line through the failing light.
Day two was ending.
Five days remained.