Three Square Meals Ch. 127

***

"Let's go," John said, striding down the ramp. "Time to activate psychic speed."

Sakura noted his shift in tone and the harder edge to his voice. "Is everything okay?" she asked, while tapping into her reserves of energy and accelerating her body.

While it looked like they were walking cautiously with weapons held at the ready, they were now travelling ten times faster, blurring their image as they rushed down to the lower decks.

"The plan worked; the Kirrix are throwing everything at the girls," he explained, leaving the ramp and crossing the broad landing on the same level as the nest. "Thousands of Trankarans have died already... we've got to move fast to rescue the rest as quickly as we can."

John recognised the familiar layout of the dreadnought, the design identical to the alien flagship that he and Alyssa had stormed on Carolus III. Sheathing his sword on his back, he unslung his Tachyon rifle and brought it up to his shoulder, checking to make sure the ammo count read 100 on his GUI.

"Switch weapons," he said, glancing at Sakura. "The Hive Queen will probably shield the nest guardians and we can take them out much faster with Tachyon rifles."

She slid both ninjato into place on her back and reached for the sleek custom-designed firearm. "Are we gunning down the Hive Queen too?" she asked, flanking him as they entered the huge corridor that led towards the nest.

He considered it a moment then nodded. "It's got to be quicker than hacking through a hex barrier."

They hurried down the corridor, approaching the towering doors that led into the nest chamber. John expected to hear the anguished moans of Trankaran prisoners, but it was as silent as the grave, with no sounds drifting through the sealed doorway. He considered using X-Ray vision to see what lay beyond, but the last time he'd used that ability near a Hive Queen, she had detected his presence, and he wasn't sure he wanted to give up the tactical advantage of surprise.

Suddenly the doors slammed open, revealing dozens of nest guardians poised to rush through. The Kirrix defenders froze for a moment in surprise, soulless compound eyes locking onto the two interlopers who were about to invade the nest. Reacting quickly, they launched themselves forward, powerful legs catapulting them at the intruders in a wave of red carapaces.

John reacted faster.

"No," he stated, holding his hand palm up towards the charging horde.

The wall of telekinetic force slammed into the guardians, catching them mid-air and hurling them back into the nest chamber. As the stunned Kirrix were battered senseless and sent sprawling across the floor, John and Sakura followed them inside. Their Tachyon Rifles sounded like they were talking to each other, the short barks coming in pairs as they double-tapped the guardians.

"Hex shields up, the Hive Queen knows we're here," John said to his partner, summoning his own psychic shield as he methodically executed the nest guardians.

The surviving Kirrix defenders were now surrounded in glowing yellow hex-barriers of their own, the guardians recovering from the shocking ambush and springing to their feet. Despite their recovery, it didn't slow the slaughter, with John and Sakura brutally mowing down the red-carapaced squad. John aimed his rifle at the last one, then squeezed the trigger, the first shield-busting round slamming into the yellow hexagons and shattering them with the impact... clearing the way for the second to gut the Kirrix warrior in a messy explosion of blood and entrails.

"Reloading," Sakura said, ejecting her spent magazine. "That was the last of them."

John shook his head. "We fought a lot more last time... and I don't think this group was intended for us."

She slotted a fresh magazine into place, her brown eyes sweeping over the hundreds of Trankarans manacled in rows. They refused to meet her gaze and looked down in shame, their stomachs grossly distended with vile Kirrix spawn.

"We need to make that bitch pay," Sakura snarled, her calm composure shattered by the horrific sight of so many broken civilians.

John narrowed his eyes and stared into the far reaches of the chamber, spotting something big lurking back there in the gloom. Activating his enhanced vision, the nightmare of claws and blades was exactly as he remembered the last Hive Queen, this one reacting to his mental presence in the same way. It chittered in fright, then threw up a defensive ward to block his psychic surveillance.

He drew his runesword and projected his will through the blade, slashing through its hastily erected psychic defences. *I still see you...* he muttered with a grim smile.

***

Alyssa, Dana, and Rachel kept up a steady stream of tachyon bolts, cutting down drones by the hundreds. The blonde matriarch could sense the horde of red-tagged enemies converging on their position, the Kirrix increasingly desperate to stop them from penetrating deeper into the dreadnought. Amidst the massed ranks of drone marines and the lumbering juggernauts, nimble creatures approached, leaping over the slower troops in their path.

*Incoming Nest Guardians!* Alyssa warned her two companions, using telepathy now for faster communication.

*Shit! Those fuckers are bad news,* Dana cursed, switching to the underslung Punisher rail beneath the tachyon barrel. *At least we've got the right gear this time!*

*They're circling us,* Alyssa murmured, turning to follow the lightning-fast soldiers that were rushing to their flanks.

She sent her phalanx of telekinetic weapons to intercept them, the glowing blades hacking at the dodging guardians. When she did land blows, they weren't strong enough to penetrate the hex-barriers, the Hive Queen quickly repairing any cracked hexagons.

*John, be careful!* she called out in alarm. *This Hive Queen is nearly as strong as that first one! She must be connected to the Hive Mind!*

*Here they come!* Rachel exclaimed, aiming her rifle down the corridor as the lead guardian sprinted around the corner, using the wall to spring off and maintain its momentum.

Alyssa's telekinetic blades whipped past, moving to attack the drones that were clawing their way past the ghastly wall of Kirrix corpses. Several of the ochre-hued soldiers had cleared the grisly barrier and opened fire with their neutron guns, trying to catch the girls in a crossfire. The swords rose and fell, hacking apart those insectoid troops in a flurry of blows, the spurting blood from the frenzied butchery making the ground even more treacherous.

With their backs covered, the three Terran girls were able to focus on the charging guardians and they lit up the corridor with a storm of hyper-accelerated rounds. The bounding assault troops might have been fast, but there was nowhere for them to hide from that deadly hail. Sickly yellow shields were obliterated by the runic payloads, leaving horribly vulnerable carapaces exposed to the detonating rounds.

The guardian in the lead was hit in the leg, the limb exploding into scarlet shards and hurling the crippled insectoid spinning backwards. It's flailing body tripped the creature behind it, which fell forward, only to be struck square in the face by another round. The ensuing blast decapitated it instantly and sent the headless corpse crashing to the floor, where it skittered to a halt.

*20 rounds left,* Rachel warned her companions, between short controlled bursts.

*Reload now, we'll cover,* Alyssa answered curtly.

The brunette ejected the partially-spent magazine, then slammed a new one home while the blonde and redhead continued to spray the corridor with a hail of Crystal Alyssium bullets. As Rachel resumed fire and Dana took the opportunity to reload, Alyssa hurled a telekinetic blastwave down the corridor to knock back the surviving guardians. By the time Alyssa reloaded, Rachel had nearly expended her fresh magazine and needed another, but the charge had been dramatically repulsed.

The corridor looked like it had been pebble-dashed by a twisted madman, with smouldering carapace fragments left embedded in almost every square inch of the lacerated walls. Mangled corpses carpeted the length of the floor, the chitin deck plates splattered with obscene amounts of sticky green ichor.

"Damn that felt satisfying," Alyssa said with a tight smile, remembering how painful it was being skewered by one of the guardians in the last boarding action.

"So a big thumbs-up for the Tachyon rifles?" Dana asked, straightening and ejecting another spent magazine.

Rachel hefted the lethal weapon on her hip and gazed at it in awe. "Maybe size doesn't matter so much after all. I wouldn't go back to a Reaper Cannon if you paid me!"

Alyssa nudged the redhead with her elbow. "And you thought you couldn't innovate on Progenitor tech."

"I'm just getting started," Dana said with a feral grin.

***

"The Hive Queen sent the rest of the nest guardians after the girls!" John said to Sakura as they sprinted through the impregnation chamber. "Let's take her down fast!"

There was a dull roar and a virulent yellow beam lanced across the chamber, slamming into John's hex barrier. He gritted his teeth and anchored himself with a telekinetic net, his shield spinning wildly to buffer the beam and give him a chance to repair shattered hexagons.

Sakura snarled furiously and fired a long burst at the malevolent Kirrix monstrosity. Dana's rune-inscribed bullets exploded with each strike on the Hive Queen's shield, blasting gaping holes in the hexagons and quickly overloading the defensive barrier. A burst of bullets slammed into the Queen's right side, the detonation ripping both her arm and scythe claw from her torso in a fountain of green blood. The Queen hissed as she fought back waves of pain, and with her concentration shattered, the ugly yellow beam dissipated harmlessly.

The Kirrix leader hurled a swarm of telekinetic darts at Sakura, the glowing projectiles hammering into her shield in rapid succession. The swift rotation spread the damage, allowing the assassin to take the hits and repair her shields as fast as they were being assaulted. Sakura returned fire at the Queen's hastily erected replacement barrier, shooting on full-auto this time to batter the defences with a punishing barrage.

The hex-barrier collapsed a second time, the Queen's shrieks of pain reverberating around the chamber as hyper-accelerated bullets blasted huge chunks out of her carapace. The brutal impacts knocked her off her feet, the gaping holes torn through her abdomen spilling her clutch of eggs across the floor. She was so distracted by the pain that she didn't see John charging full-tilt towards her until it was too late and he rammed his runeblade into her thorax.

The sword cut through her like a hot knife through butter, the tip bursting out her back in a shower of blood. Now face-to-face with the Hive Queen, John could see the terror in her sinister black gaze, his own image reflected back in the hundreds of tiny opaque discs that formed each inhuman compound eye.

"Fear and horror," he muttered quietly. "This is what all your victims felt."

The putrid-yellow nimbus of power that surrounded the Hive Queen vanished in a flash, denying the grievously-wounded creature her borrowed psychic might. The belligerent elements of the Hive Mind had no desire to face another vengeful Progenitor and frantically abandoned the Hive Queen as they sensed her mortal terror. She screeched in anguish and tried to stab him with her remaining claw, but John stomped the limb into the ground, breaking it with a sickening crack.

John gripped her by the throat, his gauntleted fist turning the huge head from side-to-side as he examined her. "Why don't we see what the Hive Mind's been thinking about since you had your little chat with Alyssa?"

*John, wait!* Alyssa called out in alarm, but he'd already stepped into the Astral Plane.

Standing in front of the ravaged creature in his spirit form, John could sense the fear and hatred pouring off the malignant beast. Its broken body was surrounded by a muted yellow aura, but it was a feeble thing now, a mere shadow of the psychic potential the Hive Mind had gathered against him only moments earlier. As he studied the felled creature, he was reminded of Kirzuxa, the ancient Hive Queen he had encountered on the Mhoirad's tragic homeworld. This was no wizened ancient though, the Hive Queen before him was in the peak of health... or at least she had been up until a minute ago.

Seeing no need to be subtle, he sharpened his willpower into a psychic wedge and rammed it into the Hive Queen's mind. She tried to fight him for all of a second, until the fleeting contact with his mind left her gibbering in terror. With her mental defences sundered, her mind was his to plunder at his discretion, but a flicker of doubt made him pause. The last time he'd tried this had been a trap by his guide and he had absolutely no intention of being caught helpless like that again.

As John was considering his options, Alyssa soared across the Astral and skidded to a halt beside him. *Why didn't you wait for me?!* she asked crossly, a flicker of panic in her eyes.

*My guide's locked away, he's not a danger anymore,* he said to calm her down.

The blonde crossed her arms over her chest. *So why are you worrying then?*

He didn't have a good answer to that, so wisely decided to stay silent and concede her point.

*Why don't you let me go in there instead?* she asked, turning to examine the hideously ugly Hive Queen. *I'm not trying to sound arrogant, but I've had a lot more practice at this than you.*

*It's going to be bad in there and you've seen too much of that ugliness already,* he replied, cupping her cheek in his hand. *Stand guard for me instead... just in case.*

When she reluctantly nodded her agreement, John turned his attention back to the Hive Queen. He could see Sakura standing beside him too, the Asian girl watching him with a pensive frown. Above her, flickering yellow lines arced across the ceiling, momentarily catching his eye. John studied them curiously, realising that the gossamer-like threads all arced away from the Hive Queen and out across the chamber. From those millions of faint psychic connections, he could see a few hundred slivers spiralling down towards the Trankaran hosts slumped dejectedly on the floor.

*What is it?* Alyssa asked, turning to stare at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.

*The Hive Queen's psychic network... I can sense it.*

She looked at him in surprise. *How?*

John shrugged. *I've no idea.*

Before they could discuss it any further, one of the Trankarans arched his back and let out a bloodcurdling scream that reverberated shrilly across the Astral Plane. His body contorted in a paroxysm of agony, the neonate Hive Lord quivering in his bloated guts as it prepared to rip its way clear of the host. The intensity of the Trankaran's horrifying last moments leeched the colour away from him, leaving a dark shadow in the Astral.

Alyssa cringed in horror at the dreadful spectacle. *No, not now! We were so close!*

John whirled around, tightening his grip on the Hive Queen's throat as he smashed his way into her subconscious. Her shrieking cries whirled around him as he was drawn into her mind, the grating screams setting his teeth on edge. In the moment that he was submerged in her thoughts, John knew that the Hive Queen was named Irnaxxa... and she hated him with every fibre of her being.

*The feeling's mutual,* he muttered, gritting his teeth to ignore her terrified litany of curses.

Glancing up at the wall of memory hexagons, he wondered if there was some way he could hijack Irnaxxa's control of her brood. If he could lull the hatching grubs into some kind of temporary hibernation, it might give Rachel enough time to treat the infestation and save the doomed Trankarans. He grimaced in frustration, realising he hadn't got the faintest clue how to subtly manipulate the Kirrix psychic network like that.

But there was one thing he was very good at.

*Girls, give me everything you've got...* he rumbled, gathering his psychic might.

Eldritch zephyrs coiled around his arms and he dropped to one knee, drawing back his fist as he prepared to unleash his rage. John's eyes blazed with an incandescent blue light, the brilliance flaring brighter and brighter as Alyssa, Jade, and Edraele poured vast amounts of power into him. He'd never felt anything like it, the intoxicating sensation of handling that much eldritch energy making him howl in fevered anticipation.

He teetered on the brink of euphoria and madness, feeling like he could unmake worlds on a whim.

*John, let it go!* Alyssa screamed in warning, feeling his mind cracking under the strain of holding that much raw power.

Slamming his fist into the misty floor of Irnaxxa's mind, John unleashed the gathered energy in a devastating shockwave. The psychic tsunami instantly vaporised every memory hexagon in the hive Queen's subconscious, then railed against the stifling confines of her shattered mind. John remembered what it was like, piggy-backing Xar'aziuth's hijacked connections to the deep astral, and simply did the same to the Kirrix network.

Dazzling blue pulses roared down the feeble yellow connections, like a lightning strike pumping a billion volts down a household power line. For a nanosecond, a million Kirrix minds quailed before his titanic psychic might... until the terrifying immensity of that contact was more than they could endure. He sensed that moment of obliteration, when every last Kirrix in Irnaxxa's doomed fleet was wiped from existence.

And it felt good.

Then the darkness claimed him.