It didn’t take long for Jordan and the others to push through the crowd and find their nearest military facility. It was a small recruiting office that doubled as a defense coordination center in times of emergency. The Pioneers showed up to see the entire operation in chaos, with many staff members talking into multiple phones simultaneously while typing on their computers. This flurry of communication caused the office to be louder than most battlefields, and it took Markus a bit of time to find and flag somebody who looked like they were in charge.
He was an intelligent-looking, brown-haired man with an angular face and permanent frown lines who looked to be in his mid-forties. Hazel green eyes darted around with frenetic energy, examining and typing into chat boxes that no one else could see. This activity marked the man as one of the Codex-wielding battlefield coordinators, and the moment Markus patted him on the shoulder, his eyes broke from the unseen message and fixed on the Pioneers with manic intensity. They didn’t need to say anything before the man commanded in a terse, nasally tone, “Connect. Now.”
Markus and the man connected their Codices, and the older Pioneer used that portal to connect everyone in his charge to the brown-haired man. Once they’d given their permission, the veterans and the younger men could receive messages and waypoints from the coordinator. He would also know their Class, and the total number of Capacities and Attributes. He wouldn’t know their specific stat or ability information, though he could request that, but he would have a general idea of their strength. The coordinator perused the information and pursed his lips, his words grateful, but his tone exasperated, “Thank the Maker, we have some decent fighters. I’ll be working you hard.”
Markus raised an eyebrow, questioning, “What’s your rank, again?”
The man’s hazel eyes narrowed, “The General will be working you hard. I’ll be acting as his eyes and ears.”
A waypoint appeared on their HUDs, with the man continuing his commentary, “The line needs reinforcing right here, ASAP.”
Markus nodded, and the Pioneers didn’t linger as they filed out of the office and dashed toward the marker. Coordinators like that were how the Pioneers marshalled and directed veterans and other fighters who weren’t currently reporting to a specific superior officer. The Federation of Pioneers was looser in its structure than any other branch of the military, and it used these institutions and people to work around that and impose order when it needed to.
The sounds of gun and blaster fire grew louder as the group approached the fighting. The turrets on top of the city’s towers and streets had swiveled toward the city's edge, the installations spitting a rain of orange and green death at the Kharnidd foe. Jordan was awestruck as he watched the streams of ordinance streak across the emerald-tinged sky, the attacks landing on an enemy he couldn’t see yet. The heavens glittered as more lasers streaked down, bathing the whole world in their light as they smote the distant Xenos. These new attacks must have come from the satellite weapons overhead.
As Jordan and the others turned the corner, they finally saw the battlefield. And their jaws dropped.
The entire countryside was smothered in a sea of seething black bodies. Pinpricks of violet and azure light bobbed up and down within that sea, like countless tiny stars on a vast night sky, and Jordan needed to blink a few times before he registered what he saw. These were Thralls. Waves and waves of Kharnidd Thralls and Drones were throwing themselves into the gunfire of the city’s defenders. Their screams and the smell of their charred flesh crashed over the Pioneers in a wave. Soldiers had taken up positions along the perimeter, blasting away at the Xenos from the safety of Ankara’s rooftops and upper floors. Kharnidd bodies already carpeted the area on the shield's edge, but the monsters were undeterred as they scrabbled over the corpses of their comrades to rake their claws against the barrier. Their attacks created a continual grating noise, like a million nails on a chalkboard, further disturbing the defenders.
The Pioneers were on the ground level, and they reflexively pulled out their blasters and started shooting at the enemies before recognizing that they should join their comrades. Pivoting, they ran into a nearby office building and ascended the internal staircase. As they did, the squad internally reviewed what they remembered about the Kharnidd.
Daniel had given Jordan and his friends all the information he had on the Kharnidd . Jordan had been sorely tempted to give his father and the other veterans the document, but he knew doing so could threaten his friend’s cover. While he agonized over what to do and wondered if his father would even need the doc, the military had put out the Kharnidd training manual. That solved his problems, and Jordan shifted to ensuring that every Pioneer and soldier he knew read that manual backward and forward. Even while exulting in their victories, the Pioneers had been studying diligently, so they all had a strong baseline of knowledge. That knowledge looked something like this.
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All Kharnidd began their lives in one of three stages: Builder, Drone, or Irregular. As the name would suggest, Irregulars came in various shapes and sizes, and the total number of Irregular variants was unknown. However, they represented less than 10% of the baseline Kharnidd population. 70% of the Kharnidd began their lives as Drones, a fact hammered home by the gargantuan mob of them right outside the city. They were easily mistaken for Thralls, since they were the original forms of their Epsilon class cousins, but Drones were smaller and leaner than said cousins. They only had one azure colored eye, denoting their status as lowly Zeta class fighters, but even higher class fighters underestimated Drones at their peril. Mobs of Kharnidd Drones had been known to take down opponents of a higher class. They fought with an intensity and a lack of self-preservation that allowed them to overwhelm many opponents before they could effectively fight back. A notable weakness was their lack of intelligence and that same lack of self-preservation, both of which resulted in sky-high Drone fatality rates.
The final 20% were known as Builders. Builders were Kharnidd aristocrats, possessing an intelligence surpassing that of the Drones and most Irregulars. They were the commanders, the directors, the brains of the Xenos war machine. Broadly speaking, Builders, and their higher forms, avoided close combat and sought to destroy their enemies from afar, assuming they fought at all. Thanks to their much lower fatality rates, they made up a disproportionate share of the higher classes of Kharnidd. They, alongside a minority of intelligent Irregulars, were the only Kharnidd types to receive a name from the beginning of their lives. They would often earn a second name by the time they were Greater Psykers or Mentalists. But that brought up another concept. Evolution.
When they accumulated enough power, the Kharnidd could Evolve into higher forms, an improvement similar to human class increases. However, the Kharnidd transformation was more fundamental. Their physiques were altered, sometimes to an extraordinary extent. When Thralls became Greater Thralls, they got even larger and gained wings. When Greater Thralls became Reavers, they gained an extra set of arms. No matter what, every Evolution resulted in the Kharnidd getting an additional eye. There were other, even more radical changes that could occur. While Drones could become Thralls, they could also become the quadrupedal Hunters when they Evolved. This was known as an Alternate evolutionary path, or Alternate Evolution, whereas the Drone to Thrall transformation was a Mainline Evolution.
Mainline Evolutions were broadly characterized by two things: Psionic Capacity continuity and lesser physiological changes. The latter was self-explanatory. The physical change from Drone to Hunter was much bigger than the change from Drone to Thrall. However, there was a change to Psionic Capacities in that transformation as well. Hunters, of course, had the Hunter’s Domain and the Rapid Cloak, neither of which they possessed as Drones. But when Drones became Thralls, they kept their Empowered Claws and gained Enforcer. If they continued that Mainline path, they would gain one new ability per Evolution while retaining their old ability set.
But even Alternate paths had their own Mainline versions. Hunters could become Greater Hunters, or they could become Skulkers or Goliaths. The stronger the Kharnidd got, the more options open to them for Alternate paths. Fortunately, the abilities of each Kharnidd were wholly determined by their form. The instant you saw a Kharnidd, you knew its moveset. Assuming you knew the form, that is. The Pioneers mentally reviewed all the forms they’d learned about, trying to remember their abilities and weaknesses.
They reached the top floor of the building and spilled out onto the rooftop. There was already a group of soldiers there, and one of them hailed the group in an accented voice, “Welcome to da’ party, pal. Go post up ova’ ‘dere.”
He gestured toward an open portion of the building before returning to shooting at the enemy. Jordan looked at his father curiously, wondering how the old man would react. Markus had been a Colonel in his day, and there was no way this goofball outranked him. Unsurprisingly, however, he watched as his father and the other veterans saluted and moved to do as the man said. Jordan and his rookies did the same, and they all began pounding away at the enemy.
They mostly found themselves shooting fish in a barrel, as the Drones and Thralls continued scratching away at the shield while heedless of the casualties they were taking. Their dead bodies began to form small hills ringing the edge of the barrier, but the manic enemy was undaunted as they climbed up those hills and threw themselves into the jaws of death. To the uninitiated, it might have looked like a suicidally expensive strategy, but Jordan and the others knew that the Kharnidd had hordes of Drones to spare. Every enemy that scratched against the shield strained the barrier’s energy reserves, softening the target for more powerful combatants that were doubtless hiding in the hillsides.
Numerous projectiles were being thrown out from the cover of said hillsides, with large stones and pieces of houses being hurled telekinetically toward the city’s defenses. SAMs shot out from the city and collided with the attacks, with the turrets also doing their best to shred the projectiles as well. The Pioneers were also shooting at the hidden attackers to alleviate the pressure on the defenders, with mixed success. Jordan watched Markus regularly take out several Psykers, and Greater Psykers with his long-range rifle. Peralta and some of the others saw some success. But most of the other soldiers failed to do much damage to the distant enemies, so they focused on the Drones and Thralls instead.
The sky lit up with the clash of the great armies, the world quaking as they traded countless blows in the blink of an eye. Skybound lasers sliced downward like heavenly swords, yet the Kharnidd only fought harder. Many of the men found themselves screaming in rage and fear as they fired wildly into the sea of enemies, the humans trying to match the fury of the Xenos with their own. And then, the Kharnidd flipped the script. Behind the hills, portals suddenly expanded, growing so large that the red-edged openings peaked over the battered green slopes.
Then, from the depths of those portals, they emerged.
