Jason quickly recovered and went on the offensive, swinging at Alex and landing a hit on one of his tentacles. A swipe from a Berserker threw Alex back as Jason landed another overhead hit, then warped out, revealing the second Berserker behind him. The robot quickly fired its laser.

Alex wrapped himself in his tentacles and absorbed the shot, but the Berserkers attacked simultaneously with their tentacles, which Alex quickly captured with two of his. Jason warped in behind him and dodging the other two limbs landed a pair of parallel slashes across his back, sending arcs of blood flying.

The Berserkers, sensing a shift in Alex’s weight and balance hit him in the gut with their claws, sending him flying into a wall of rock. He hit the rocks hard, with pebbles and dust flying in every direction. Calculating that an opportunity was there, one of the Berserkers dove into the dust cloud and disappeared for just a few moments.

An intense glow suddenly pierced through the obstruction as Alex growled. After a streaking flash of red light, half of a Berserker went flying towards Jason, who jumped out of the way, tripping and landing on his back as the robot’s remains tangled his ankles while skidding to a stop.

Alex warped in on top of the broken Berserker half, tentacles flexing, their edges pulsing with plasma moving like the teeth of a chainsaw, fang revealed in an irritated snarl.

A Berserker jumped to Jason’s defense and missed, kicking the scraps of its former partner off to the side. With a whir, it received three rapid, glowing slashes that nearly cut it open. A streak of red light surged from the ground and came crashing down on the machine, slamming it into the rocks and sand.

Alex’s claws sunk into the Berserker’s face, shorting out the robot for good, his fangs gleaming in the moonlight. Just as quickly he surged towards Jason who now had no room to hide, or robots to save him from an attack. His blades could barely keep up with the flurry of slashes and stabs aimed at his torso and knees, and he quickly found himself jumping away from an armed tentacle blade going for a debilitating strike.

...

Mai lounged at the controls of a jet, lazily piloting it by running her fingertips over two trackballs on each armrest of the pilot’s bucket seat. Her eyes flashed.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Not well,” responded Jason’s voice. “It’s like fighting an angry octopus with chainsaws for tentacles, and also on fire.”

“Yeah, well, that’s kind of the point of us prototypes,” she laughed soundlessly. “Just do your best to stretch it out.”

On the plateau overlooking the ruined city, Alex’s attack tore one of the capacitor swords from his hand, sending a long arc of blood flying through the air.

“Ow! Fuck! No promises...” he groaned via his AI link to Mai.

He warped in at a relatively safe distance from Alex, deeply frustrated and gritting his teeth.

“Quit holding back! Show me what you can really do!” he shouted as he warped out sending out an energy wave at Alex’s head.

The charge missed just as he warped back in to deliver another unsuccessful slash. The third exploded across Alex’s chest and knocked the cyborg to the ground, giving Jason a much-needed break. The glow in his eyes began to short out as he struggled to keep his energy levels consistent.

“All right,” Alex said, dusting himself off as he rose to his feet. “Let’s do it your way. But remember, you asked for this.”

His eye sockets lit up, his tentacles flexed, their edges once again igniting with a red and orange plasma fire that rotated like the teeth of a chainsaw. An intense shockwave of energy erupted from his body.

Jason suddenly noticed himself being pushed back slightly. His eyes returned to normal and widened in shock as he realized the full implications of what was about to happen. That intense radiation pressure could only mean one thing. His opponent was holding back a lot more than he thought.

Alex vanished with a crackle of electrical sparks. An instant later, Jason was sent flying into the air like a rag doll. Alex briefly warped into focus well above Jason and whipped a fiery, glowing tentacle to unleash a lighting burst which sent Jason rocketing to the ground. He hit hard enough to bounce twice before another exploding charge kept him airborne.

Jason skid through the rocky sand, finally coming to a rest. He looked up to see a snarling Alex incoming, a tentacle armed and at the ready to deliver another devastating blow. Blocking it would be impossible, he realized.

...

Jason remembered sitting on a boxy couch in Milburn’s office with a glass of scotch. In the curved window behind him, methane rain fell on a frozen valley. A very faint outline of Saturn was barely visible in the hazy, dark bluish, and butterscotch sky. Across the room, Milburn casually sprawled in an armchair with his glass, in front of two prominently framed books on a shelf: Man After Man and All Tomorrows.

“Now you see, this, this is what these prototypes are really like,” the scientist mused. “They’re humans we turned into monsters, then wrapped in almost indestructible composites to fight our enemies for us. We take the loners, the exploited, the abused, the ones for whom these upgrades are a solution to whatever demons haunt them.”

Jason nodded, pretending to understand.

“Push them a little too hard, you become nothing more than a target in their eyes, just an obstacle to break through,” Milburn continued. “Inside them is a simmering rage we’ve been using to our advantage for centuries. That’s why you, my friend, need to make sure you’re smart enough not to end up on the wrong end of that rage.”

His memory came to an abrupt end as Alex’s tentacle connected, smashing him into a boulder, his arm cracking and bending at an impossible angle, broken. His capacitor sword fell beside him, stabbing itself right next to his head.

Slowly, he peeled himself off the rock and shakily found his footing. With a pained grunt, he cracked his arm back into place.

Mai listened to the explosions and Jason’s pained groans and grunts with escalating annoyance and frustration.

“Just hold on a little longer...” she sent over the link, knowing that her partner was no longer listening.

On the projection walls of the cockpit, the outpost was now on the horizon. The jet slightly accelerated.

...

Christine breathed a sigh of relief in the data center as the terminal quietly pinged.

“Upload complete,” she said.

“Steve, can you verify on your end?” asked Dot.

“Stand by...” said Steve’s still distorted voice. “We have the data.”

“Good. We’re moving out.”

Christine and Dot rushed towards the heavy drop ship guarded by a small team of Octobots. Several fighters and bombers spiraled overhead, ready to provide cover at a moment’s notice. As they approached, Dot’s eyes pulsed and the bay doors of the drop ship began to lower.

“How’s Alex doing?” asked Christine.

“He’s not responding yet,” said Dot.

Christine stopped as Dot continued toward the spaceplane. The cyborg noticed her hesitation and turned back to her with a stern expression.

“I’m staying behind to help him, you can return to the Dragon,” she said. “The machines know what to do.”

Christine said nothing but shot a fierce and determined look in reply. Dot glanced away and up, closing her eyes and rapidly exhaling through her nose. She opened her mouth but was almost immediately interrupted by the interceptors overhead, which banked to surround and fire on an invisible target.

Several laser bursts in rapid succession broke down the cloak around a sleek bomber variant. It attempted to fire back while evading incoming blasts, with a stray hit activating the spaceplane’s shields.

Dot quickly dug into a combat stance and warped out. A powerful positron blast erupted, lighting up the sky with a shower of explosions, sending the enemy jet spinning.

Dot landed on the ground, shot back by the recoil of the blast, her feet carving grooves into the rock and sand. Her tentacles were armed and fully deployed, helping her stop and reset for another shot. Their accents glowed a turbulent violet, as did her eye sockets and markings. Behind her, a Berserker jumped in to shield a stunned Christine, following the cyborg’s orders.

...

Jason, glowing with an orange aura warped in, trying to land a slash on Alex and missing, the energy from his sword quickly dissipating. He tried to accelerate with another attempt but failed to even fire a charge. As a final resort, he attempted a backhanded stab at the cyborg.

His sword was redirected with an armed tentacle as Alex’s claws snapped shut around his wrist. His other hand was kept at bay by yet another tentacle as an unpowered one easily lifted him off his feet, briefly suspending him in mid-air. His eyes met Alex’s.

Alex’s eye sockets narrowed.

“We’re done here. You wasted enough of my time,” he punctuated.

His fourth tentacle, armed and ready to do damage, floated ominously under Jason, targeting his spine. The plasma around it accelerated and the tip stabbed into the cyborg’s back. Jason’s mouth opened in a silent scream as his aura shorted out and his eyes flickered for a few seconds before returning to normal.

Alex let him drop to the ground. His eyes tried to focus as they kept flickering in and out, but after just a few more seconds, his pupils went blank.

...

Mai was desperately trying to regain control of the jet, badly damaged by Dot’s shot.

“Jason, you idiot!” she growled in rage. “Where is my fucking air support?! Quit dying and help me!”

The jet barely stabilized itself as it fell, opened a cargo hold, dropped six human-sized spheres, then climbed and zoomed away as three interceptors broke off to pursue it.

The ejected spheres bounced on the rocks, correcting themselves as they tumbled towards the heavy drop ship. They finally came to a stop, surrounding Dot, Christine, and the Berserker. For a few moments, they sat motionlessly.

Slowly, the spheres unlocked and revealed six faceless, spiky-haired, dark humanoids with six spindly and sharp extra limbs running down their backs. Their arms were unsettlingly long. Their eyes glowed with hollow green circles, showing no hint as to their targets, expressions, or emotions. They resembled military cyborgs but their faces were utterly blank save for their eye sockets. There wasn’t even a nose, much less a mouth.

Dot, surging with electricity, summoned several Berserkers to surround Christine just as the humanoids charged at them with significant speed, hopping on all fours, aiming for both the cyborg and the human. They collided with Dot and her squad of Berserkers, and while there was a lot of scraping of armed limbs, no damage was taken on either side as the combatants pushed off each other and reset.

Two Berserkers fired lasers while Dot sent out an energy wave at the humanoids. The humanoids dodged at high speed and warped out to attack. Two of them landed on a Berserker, though only to be thrown back by its combat-ready limbs.

Another humanoid was quickly impaled on Dot’s armed tentacle in mid-air the moment it warped in to deliver a slash. She almost immediately retracted her limb, and used the same tentacle with edges ablaze in violet plasma to behead the creature before it could fall to the ground.

She warped out and reappeared to send a debilitating wave at another attacking humanoid. The creature was shoved in range of a ready and waiting Berserker which sliced it in half with a laser at full power, generated from a focal point between its combat tentacles. The two halves wetly popped down on the ground, the separation burnt to a charred crust by the beam.

Dot whipped around just in time to land a slash across the chest of a humanoid that lunged at her from above. As it fell, a Berserker landed on top of it with a crunch, sending arcs of blood flying in the air.

Yet another humanoid latched onto the third Berserker and stabbed the machine with all of its extra limbs. It sent a massive burst of green electricity, shorting out the Berserker and bringing it down. Aiming at Christine, who scrambled for a gun, it tried to launch itself but another energy burst from Dot sent it flying while slicing the Berserker in half.

It crashed into the rocks. As the humanoid recovered, it saw Dot’s tentacles entwined with the extra limbs of one of its comrades. It tried to take off but a tentacle armed with red plasma came down from above, severing it at the waist. The Humanoid raised its top half only for the same tentacle to pierce its chest and deliver a charge powerful enough to blast a hole in its torso, killing it.

Meanwhile, Christine finally got a railgun and aimed for the last humanoid still zigzagging around the crew. She fired off round after round as it zigzagged closer and closer to her, avoiding Berserker fire and tentacles. It managed to pin her down, its faceless head within arm’s reach of Christine’s visor.

Christine squeezed off three rounds into the creature as its clawed, cyborg-like hand grabbed the top of the gun. The shots had little effect as her target blithely ignored the serious damage caused by each shot and kept on attacking.

“Christine! Drop it!” she heard Alex shout.

Her hand released the handle and an instant later Alex’s armed tentacle slammed into the Humanoid like a missile, sending the creature flying and Alex skidding slightly backward from the recoil of the impact.

The humanoid landed in a heap, the gun dropping on top of it. It scrambled for the weapon and shakily stood up, twitching as if it was being zapped with electricity. The green circles it had for eyes shorted out before coming back on.

Suddenly, the humanoid stood up more confidently and looked at itself as if it had no idea what was happening. Shakily, it tried to touch its face, then locked eyes with Alex and Dot. The cyborgs were fully powered up, their tentacles armed, their eye sockets on fire, Alex’s glowing red while Dot’s raged with violet light. Christine got back on her feet behind them as two Berserkers assumed defensive positions around the human.

The humanoid quickly grabbed the gun, pointed it under its chin, and fired a round that effectively decapitated it, its body falling while spraying a red, viscous liquid.

The crew stood in stunned silence. The cyborgs powered down and retracted their tentacles.

“... come in, ground team, come in! Is everyone okay?” rang out Steve’s voice.

“We’re ok Steve,” replied Dot. “Do we have bogeys incoming?”

“Nothing that I can see. You should be clear. What’s going on?”

“What the hell just happened with that thing?” asked Christine, shaking in disbelief.

“I have no idea, but there’s no way it’s anything good,” said Alex, shaking his head.

He walked over to the fallen Humanoid, closely followed by Dot. Under the glow of one of his hand markings, a long, green QR code next to an inscription reading “_v 7.3.33” lit up under the top right extra limb. Dot noticed the same thing, biting her lower lip. She brought her eyes up to meet Alex’s gaze. On her face was a mix of horror and disgust.

...

Jason lay unconscious in a pool of blood, his eyes blank, limbs in an awkward heap. Mai, wearing her usual armor stopped just a few steps away from his body.

“Jason? You still alive?” she asked, although her tone made it obvious she was checking in as a matter of procedure rather than concern.

Jason groaned as his pupils flickered back on. He sat up with a pained yelp as his spine loudly cracked back into its place and fused, remaining seated while rubbing his lower back.

“How long was I out?” he asked groggily.

“Just long enough to mess up the plan. Turns out that little pain in the ass Milburn wanted us to grab is a prototype, and a pretty strong one too.”

Jason shook his head while trying to suppress a laugh.

“You know, I thought you’d be a lot angrier,” he said, “I mean, I’ve heard stories that when Alex would screw up on a mission, you’d go nuclear.”

“It’s because I knew what he was capable of. I don’t expect more of you because you’ll never amount to much. We tried to break him a thousand times over and he just came back meaner and more determined. He stopped playing with you for a minute and almost tore you in two. Just imagine what would’ve happened if he actually wanted to kill you.”

She smiled evilly.

“And I, for one, would’ve loved to see that...” she added.

Jason winced from the verbal lash but got up to follow her as she headed towards their hidden drop ship.

“You know, I get the feeling that the rumors about the Red Dragon and Gray Wolf aren’t just rumors,” he mused aloud.

Mai scoffed while he looked up to see the spaceplanes with Alex, Dot, and Christine reaching into the sky and heading into orbit, leaving thick contrails as their rocket engines fired at full throttle.

...

A small group of Rexx commanders watched Alex and Dot take down the humanoids on a loop, views from several spy cams projected on different parts of a huge screen shaped like a compound eye hanging in the middle of a very large wall.

They resembled enormous centipedes which walked with the front halves of their bodies upright to free six limbs, each with six with tentacles capable of fine object manipulation. The back halves of their bodies moved on six pairs of spider-like legs curving to a sharp point and reinforced by obvious mechanical plating. They saw the world through two pairs of large, green compound eyes located where one would expect faces to be. On the top of their heads were two wiggling antennae.

They seemed particularly interested in the videos until the claw on the end of an Octobot’s tentacle smashed one of their organic spies. After a few tense moments, the remaining screens quickly started turning black in rapid succession. Fascinating, but not enough information, they agreed. All thanks to those accursed machines the humans employed.

The Rexx hated humans, that much was obvious, of course. As their civilization declined, the humans expanded relentlessly outward, pillaging their sacred sites, building entire cities on worlds they once explored and planned to re-colonize. The meddlesome bipeds were always a few steps ahead, although the Rexx commanders didn’t exactly know what the humans were.

They’ve seen a few variants, ranging from absurdly vulnerable bipeds in life support suits to demonic entities with glowing, killer tentacles who tore through their living weapons with disturbing ease. To add to their confusion was the discovery that humans turned inanimate objects into walking, thinking weapons. It was a deeply offensive and disgusting thought to the Rexx mind.

Machinery acting and moving like flesh and blood! Unthinkable! Blasphemous! Even worse, the jet-black bipeds with red marks on their faces seemed to control those evil inanimate objects by thought alone. Doubly offensive. They must be driven back at every opportunity. The survival of their species depended on it.