The Powers That Be by Aer-ki Jyr (best pdf reader for ebooks txt) 📗

They were instead dropping right on top of the thickest concentration of enemy aquatic minions in their staging bases that were being fed by under the seafloor tunnels that were being blocked from orbital scans and thus undetectable by starships.

Oasu’kli and her guards ignored the immediate fighting that broke out as the Elarioni dropped on the aquatic minions with a rage not born only of defense, but one of disgust. Their forms were more agile than the large V’kit’no’sat races, but they were ugly and slow compared to the Elarioni…though not harmless. They were clearly not born of the water, but rather engineered to fight in it, but their forms were made from those of air and the void, and they did not belong here. None of them did.

The closest Hadarak minions were swarmed by the Elarioni infantry and lanced by the energy discharges in their staffs when they made physical contact…meaning the blasts shot into their bodies meters deep, and when they were targeted to the right places even a few shots was enough to down the larger minions…who responded by clouding the waters with toxins that would kill everything but themselves.

Wherever there was combat the ‘ink blots’ would appear, cutting off all vision as the little blue lights of the Elarioni disappeared inside it, then swam back out when the minion was dead. They didn’t need to breathe the water thanks to their armor, but anything else living in the ocean would die from it, V’kit’no’sat or otherwise. The Hadarak were attacking the oceans itself, and that only further enraged the Elarioni. They did the same to entire planets, ripping apart the land as predators rather than conquerors, but when it came to the water it was a personal matter for Oasu’kli and her kin.

For if one wanted to conquer the ocean, one did not destroy it in the process.

But the Hadarak didn’t care about the ocean or the planets they were infesting. They were out to destroy all major lifeforms and cared even less about the smaller ones. Several tiny fish corpses no longer than Oasu’kli’s fingers washed by as she swam through them, having been caught in the ink blots as they tried frantically to escape the fighting.

Angered she reached out to her guards telepathically, asking them to shield her for a moment as she mentally connected to the battlemap that was being updated from all the units in the field, sensing the location of their ocean brethren getting caught up in the fighting. She found the safe areas behind them and plotted out escape routes…then used the powerful jewel in her crown to amplify her telepathy in a manner the lower-level races would be able to comprehend.

Then in an act that Aquaman himself would have been proud of, she called on all the sea creatures within range to follow the invisible strands away from the danger that the command ship was now starting to produce with micro-drones popping out of its hull and flashing both lights and telepathic transponders marking the way away from the combat.

Oasu’kli pulsed her telepathy far louder, getting past their frantic evasion instincts and giving them direction they badly needed…and within seconds the bystanders all began to move, even those that had taken cover on the seafloor, and the Elarioni troops parted for them to pass by…but they did not allow the Hadarak the same courtesy as their numbers began to swell as they diverted from other areas and gathered to oppose them.

Which began pulling reinforcements away from the combat with the V’kit’no’sat…which was the point of hitting them behind the current battle lines.

Once the bystanders were on their way clear of the fighting and the toxic zones, Oasu’kli returned her focus to the waters around her and she and her guards descended lower and lower, beneath most of the fighting, as several Shark Bot-class drones accompanied them. They were a multi-tasking design that had enough speed to keep up with them, but could also fight on their own when needed…but mostly they were to support the Elarioni so they could fight in their natural manner without endangering their lives too much. The heavier fighting would be left to the warships, mechs, and larger drones, and Oasu’kli had been well trained in how to pick fights that could be won and avoid those that would get her and her people killed.

So the Shark Bots swam with them deeper and deeper, but eventually some minions moved out to intercept them from the seafloor nubs that surrounded the entrance to one of the tunnels that was basically a highway for minion reinforcements to continually pour out of from their growth fields elsewhere. If she could seal the tunnel it would do more to help the V’kit’no’sat than anything, but the road ahead was well defended.

There were growths all over the seafloor, and some of them began shooting little stinging missiles the size of needles towards them…but the Shark Bots intercepted them with sifting shields that allowed water to pass through but nothing solid, meaning they didn’t slow their progress through the water much, though they did pick up a dirty sheen to them from some of the suspended dirt that got caught.

Oasu’kli turned her group of 18 Elarioni further away from the combat, hoping to circle around behind the tunnel exit, but the minions were having none of it. They sent a group of eel-like attackers towards them, swimming through the water as little flexible corkscrews that would explode on contact with the hard points on their heads…and they had several, each which could detonate without killing the eel until the final one popped and with it a much larger charge inside the body.

One of those little impacts could put a hole in Elarioni armor if their shields were down, and would kill anything else of their size on contact…which was why carrying staff weapons