Chapter 10: The Planetary Scream
The city of Aethelgard, usually a symphony of light and stone, had become a cacophony of screams.
The city of Aethelgard, usually a symphony of light and stone, had become a cacophony of screams.
The enemy didn’t march from the horizon. They didn’t descend from the sky. They birthed themselves from the pavement.
In the Courtyard of the Sun, the obsidian tiles shattered outward. Black fluid geysered into the air, solidifying instantly into jagged, chitinous shapes. These weren’t the lumbering Titan Hollows of the Nightside—those slow, mountain-sized beasts that required siege weaponry to fell. These were smaller, faster. They were the planet’s white blood cells: frantic, numerous, and singular in their purpose.
Champion Ignar spun his staff, a blur of orange fire. He swept the legs of a dozen Hollows, his heat turning them into ash instantly.
“They are weak!” Ignar shouted, blasting a leaping shadow out of the air. “They break like glass!”
“There are too many!” Champion Vesper’s voice whispered from everywhere and nowhere. She was a grey blur, her bone daggers severing heads with surgical precision. For every one she killed, three more clawed their way out of the rupture.
They were weaker, yes. A single blow from a Spire guard could shatter them. But they didn’t fight to win; they fought to overwhelm. They threw themselves onto spears just to weigh down the wielder. They clogged the streets with their bodies, a rising tide of necrotic biomass.
“Perimeter collapsing in Sector 4,” Dan’s voice roared over the tactical net. He was hard-linked into the Centurion-X, standing at the base of the Council dais like a lighthouse of lead and fire. His rotary cannon spun, a continuous line of tracer fire sawing through the horde.
“AlterTerra! Tighten the ring!” He had pulled the squad back from the Frontlines the moment the seismic alarms triggered, ceding the jungle to save the heart of the city. Now, the heart was bleeding.
Captain Vance and her squad of cyborgs formed a semi-circle around the entrance to the Spire, their heavy weapons thumping a rhythmic bassline to the high-pitched shrieks of the aliens.
“Commander!” Vance yelled over the comms. “We’re running hot! Barrels are warping! We can’t kill them fast enough!”
“Hold!” Dan gritted his teeth, feeling the phantom recoil in his own shoulders. “Ambrosio needs time!”
[Orbital support unavailable,] the AI reported, its voice tight. [We are drifting out of optimal alignment. At this distance, kinetic strikes would take too long and lack precision. I can’t cover you without risking the city.]
“Then we hold until the end,” Dan roared, stepping his mech forward to shield a group of retreating guards. “For the Matriarch!”
The horde surged. They didn’t strike with power; they struck with weight. Hundreds of the smaller Hollows threw themselves at the Centurion-X, clogging the joints with their bodies, scratching at the sensors. Dan’s neural link flared with claustrophobic panic as the black tide buried him.
They were buying seconds with blood.
The Internal War
Inside the ship’s lab, the battle was silent, but far more violent.
Matriarch Valerius arched off the table, her restraints straining against her enhanced musculature. Her violet skin was graying, the bioluminescent streaks flickering like dying neon.
Councilor Lyra stood pressed against the bulkhead, her hands covering her mouth, watching the procedure with terrified eyes.
“She’s crashing!” Ambrosio III yelled, his hands slick with sweat as he adjusted the retro-viral flow. “The host rejection is spiking. Her cells are committing suicide!”
[It’s not rejection,] the AI corrected, its avatar hovering over the Matriarch’s thrashing form. [It’s obedience. The planet is commanding her to die. But we are in orbit, Junior. The Song is faint here. The vacuum acts as an insulator. She has a chance.]
Valerius couldn’t hear them. Even dampened by the void, she was drowning in a sea of noise.
The Song of Teegarden b—the melody that had guided her people for generations, that had told them when to plant and when to harvest—was now a shriek. It was the sound of a mother rejecting her child.
DIE, the planet sang. RETURN TO THE SOIL. YOU ARE BROKEN. YOU ARE WRONG.
“Valerius!”
Ambrosio III leaned over her, his eyes fierce. “Lyra! Talk to her! She needs an anchor!”
Lyra rushed to the table, grabbing Valerius’s burning hand. “Matriarch! Valerius! Look at me! Do not fade into the song! Stay with us!”
“I… cannot…” she gasped, blood trickling from her nose.
“Screw the world!” Ambrosio grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him. “The world wants you dead. We want you alive. Choose!”
He grabbed a headset—an old, analog audio jack—and jammed it into her ears. “AI, play the Static Pulse! Maximum gain!”
White noise erupted in Valerius’s ears. It was the sound of the Epilogue’s dead drive, the sound of the void. It was ugly. It was discordant. It was human.
It drowned out the Song.
Valerius gasped, her eyes snapping open. The connection was severed. She was alone. Deaf to her god. But she was alive. She squeezed Lyra’s hand, her grip bruising.
“It is silent,” Valerius whispered, tears streaming down her face. “Lyra… it is so silent.”
“I am here,” Lyra wept, pressing her forehead against the Matriarch’s hand. “We are here.”
[Seismic activity decreasing,] the AI reported, its voice dropping in volume. [The planetary scream is fading. The antibody response… it’s stopping. The planet thinks the anomaly has been neutralized.]
“Synthesis complete,” Ambrosio breathed, checking the vitals. “She’s stable.”
But on the screens, the battle raged on. The Hollow Ones hadn’t stopped. The planet might have lost its lock on Valerius, but the antibodies were already deployed, and they were hungry.
“They aren’t stopping,” Lyra cried, looking at the tactical feed. “The city is falling!”
“The planet stopped screaming at me,” Valerius rasped, sitting up. Her movements were fluid, powerful, the Altamura graft knitting her strength together. “But the command remains active for the horde.”
The Counter-Song
Valerius slid off the table. She stumbled, her legs heavy, but Lyra caught her.
“The silence,” Valerius rasped, looking at the screens where the battle raged. She didn’t understand the scrolling data, but she understood the rhythm of the fight. “The Static Pulse… it cut the string. It blinded the planet to me.”
“It jammed the signal,” Ambrosio nodded.
“Can we cast it?” Valerius asked, gripping Lyra’s arm. “Not as a shield, but as a shout? If we scream that silence at the horde…”
“We can synthesize the frequency,” Lyra realized, her eyes widening. She turned to Ambrosio. “The Matriarch’s vitals… the pattern of her resistance. If we invert the planet’s command signal using the static as a carrier wave…”
“We create a feedback loop,” Ambrosio finished, his fingers flying across the console. “A dissonance field.”
[I can’t broadcast it from here,] the AI warned. [The ship is too far out. The signal will degrade before it penetrates the shield.]
“The suits,” Valerius said, pointing to the tactical map where Dan and the AlterTerra squad were fighting. “The Sky-Walkers… they are made of the same metal as this ship. They are echoes of this silence.”
“She’s right,” Ambrosio said. “The Centurion-X and the AlterTerra frames have localized comms arrays. We can beam the data packet to them and have them blast it out at close range.”
“Do it,” Valerius commanded.
Lyra placed her hand on the console, guiding Ambrosio’s adjustments, blending the biological data of the Aethelgardian resistance with the harsh, digital static of the Terran tech.
[Uploading to ground assets,] the AI announced. [Commander, brace for audio surge.]
On the surface, Dan’s HUD screamed a warning.
[BROADCAST INITIATED.]
The speakers on the Centurion-X and every AlterTerra suit erupted. It wasn’t a scream of fear. It was a screech of electronic and biological defiance—the Static Pulse, amplified and weaponized.
The sound hit the swarm like a physical wall.