It was infuriating, but in a Brion kind of way. Braen felt a smile dragging the corners of his lips upwards. He roared a battle cry, hearing it answered all across the battle field. The enemy was strong and clever and there was nothing else the Brions asked from life.
A worthy battle. It has been too long.
After that, there was nothing more than the next enemy and then the next, every step taking him closer to the Fearless and freeing Naima from its poisonous shadow forever.
In the middle of dodging blows and diving between sharp blades, Braen was struck by the realization that it was the literal opposite of his last fight with the monster. Then, it had been only the two of them on a dead world, locked tooth and blade against each other in a duel only one could survive.
Now, it was thousands of bodies throwing themselves at him, trying to pin down his spear and drag him to the ground. And his brother warriors were with him, fighting with a ferocity Braen had not seen in a long time. The androids wanted to trample them, tear them to pieces. It was clear from their red eyes.
Braen didn't have to use his imagination to determine the specifics. They told him of their plans in every voice that could be heard, variations of the Fearless' deep thundering bass.
Every word made Braen smile even wider, the valor squares on his neck singing a disruptive tune to the androids, making it harder for them to communicate with each other and the Fearless. They came at him in waves, pouring over him with their mass and swords and empty promises.
"We'll stomp you to the cold, hard ground of Darius. Snow shall be your shroud and ice shall be your coffin. We will spread you out on this field as far as the eye can see. Stretch your skin, spray your blood, trample your flesh to tiny pieces."
Nothing of that brought fear into Braen's heart. Enemies had always tried to discourage him and it was always a sign of desperation.
It was right what they said, that every next incarnation of the Fearless was different. If the monster thought it was succeeding in dampening his spirits, Braen had never been so sure of his victory.
There was nothing left of the proud, arrogant creature he'd fought before. The Fearless he knew had mocked him until its dying breath, not needing worthless words like it was spouting at him now. It was the monster who was afraid and Braen knew he'd cut that fear into its black heart with his spear. The wound Tieran had inflicted on the next incarnation had only made it worse, creating a paranoid, scared enemy.
He'd see it with his very own eyes before the day was done.
Through the eerie death chant of the androids, he fought to reach the Chali mothership, but the army clearly only had one purpose – to stop him. If not to kill him, then at least wound, slow him down.#p#分页标题#e#
There was one lone thing that angered Braen. The Fearless was the most dangerous being in the galaxy. If anyone was capable of fighting its own fights, it would have been the Fearless, but apparently it disagreed.
That was to be expected, but not admired. The Fearless were notorious for putting their lives – life – before any notion of honor or fairness. After all, it couldn't be expected from a being who only ever served itself and longed to live forever and lord over all that was available to it.
For all his hatred of her, Braen wondered if Sinetha had actually done him a favor in the end. While the Fearless had clearly studied his methods of fighting, so had Braen studied the androids’ after Alona’s attack. The androids who weren't actively controlled by the enemy were easy pickings after seeing Alona fight and witnessing the way it moved.
That was the problem with artificial constructs. Ultimately, they followed a code, a regulation that determined their actions. The general grinned, thinking that perhaps a day would once come when someone created an AI perfect enough to be creative in the way living beings were, who understood the value of mistakes, the inevitability of being wounded from time to time.
A being who could analyze not only patterns, but the inner workings of a mind that didn't apply logic to everything.
That day is not today.
After half an hour, the levity of a good battle was gone and fury had taken over. Under any other circumstance, Braen would have loved to test himself against the androids, but they were doing better at their task than he was at his.
Line after line, they blocked his path with a stubborn wall that could stab him. There was never any reprieve, which wasn't a problem for a Brion, but there was also no advancing.
His spear cut at their thin, powerful bodies. Every strike had to be perfect not to waste them on just denting the surface of the sturdy outer shell. And even then, there were always more to take the place of the fallen ones. Like an army of undead, they came at him without any signs of slowing down.
The androids were armed with a variety of blades, all different to make Braen account for all of them. The swords aimed to cut into his throat every time he turned, coming from unseen places between two enemies.
The army worked together so flawlessly it was almost like fighting a hive mind, which the Fearless perfectly imitated. Every link in the chain of his attack was aware of the others, compensating where the rest were lacking.
The short swords sneaked closer to him, sometimes crawling under the feet of the fighters, aiming to strike at his feet and bring him down.
It was hardly a battle anymore, but a test of endurance and attention. Like the hardest conceivable training program that did not end, not before he turned it off.
Braen knew there was a limited amount of enemies. There had to be, even if the Fearless had managed to create more in the time it took the general to get to him. But time was the one thing he didn't have.
Every second brought Naima closer to danger and Braen couldn't allow that to happen. So far, none of the androids had spoken about her, which he considered a good sign.
He was deep in the battle focus, an amazing place in the middle of a great fight when all the naturally heightened senses of the Brions took on an even more perfect form. The way the Fearless kept targeting him with the entirety of its army meant that Braen hadn't stopped from the second he hit the ground running.
The pressure on him was so insane he had to count down seconds to the slightest of breaks to breathe in. It also meant that his warriors would have an easier time picking off androids around him, which they were doing admirably so far.
The spear in his hand had not stopped moving for a moment, his speed so great there were times he didn't see his own hand strike before it had already landed.
The androids kept coming and he cut them down mercilessly, stomping on their fallen bodies, making his way to the Fearless over the wasteland of broken Chali toys. Their raging red eyes looked at him from all sides, trying to pin him down. The light in them didn't go out until Braen made sure nothing functioned anymore.
There were torsos somewhere behind him that were crawling, dragging themselves on with their nails to grab on to his legs and pull him under the superior mass of the enemy, trampled under the feet of other androids and Brion warriors.
Once, one of them had managed to grab on and it nearly cost Braen his life. He struck the hands from the rest of the body cleanly, earning himself a deep cut in the left shoulder for it. His armor was so damaged the colors no longer showed, but the mothership was coming closer too, inch by agonizing inch of ground.#p#分页标题#e#
"General," the comm link spoke in his ear, "the Chali fleet has arrived. The Uthers are engaging."
It went quiet after that, the tech not waiting for a response. Above his head, Braen could make out the telltale light show of an orbital battle.
Soon, debris started to fall down and he put it to good use. The androids, much like the Fearless itself, had no sense of self-preservation when they weren’t risking anything. The army kept coming long after it was obvious what he was doing.
Whenever a suitably large enough piece was falling, Braen timed his actions to make sure he dragged as many enemies as he could to the spot where it landed. Even then, the crushed pieces of the androids tried to kill him, reaching out with fingers that were no longer attached to an arm.
He sensed the change in the air before it happened. All at once, every android seemed to wince, like they were switched off for a fraction of a second. Braen and his warriors made good use in that and the army fell in droves, but they got back up again. This time, there was a cruel smile on their lips to match the red eyes.
That was a bad sign, if there ever was one.
With the voices of thousands, the Fearless said: "Welcome, Miss Jones."
Naima.
Braen knew that the Fearless didn't need to have him hear that. He knew it was done on purpose to rile him up. He knew it was a trap, as well, but none of it mattered. If the enemy was stupid enough to try a Brion's patience when his gesha was in danger, it didn't know anything about him.
With a mighty roar, the general doubled his efforts. The androids weren't fighting with the same fervor as they had before. Some of them even seemed to make a path for him, moving to turn their attention to his warriors.
Braen didn't stay to watch. Every last one of the men and women he'd brought could handle themselves, especially against Chali toys as more and more of AIs took over. Making sure he didn't fall for a sneak attack, the general rushed ahead to the mothership, his only wish to reach the enemy before it could do anything to Naima.