Massive Disaster 4-22 (Patreon)

VI-SEC SURVEILLANCE: 20:58:03 LOCAL

The feed flickered online as the camera detected movement beneath its sensors, time stamp a bright blue in the lower right corner. The wide-angle lens captured Residential Courtyard Delta; twin suns painting everything in a bright Arkadian gold that made the marketing materials look honest.

Audio pickup caught the high-pitched shriek of a six-year-old chasing her micro-drone through bio-engineered grass. Her mother sat three meters away on the bench, datapad forgotten in her lap while she watched. The drone buzzed and dipped as she giggled after it, the thing gravity-defying and designed to occupy the minds and attention of little children.

AMBIENT AUDIO: NORMAL 

PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC: MINIMAL 

ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS: CLEAR

A man jogged past the mother and child at 16:59:14, off-duty Iron Legion shoulder patches on the man’s black t-shirt all in silver. The mother glanced up at him and nodded and the soldier nodded back, jogging 

The courtyard hummed with the white noise of a colony that believed in its own safety. Climate regulators whispered through hidden vents. Transport streams murmured three klicks out. Children laughed somewhere beyond camera range.

Digital snow sliced across the feed — three, twelve, thirty-six jagged horizontal lines corrupting the screen even as the audio itself maintained integrity.

TIMESTAMP: 21:02:17

The mother's head snapped up, a frown on her face as all the lighting suddenly died, street lamps and all. The city's hum had shifted frequency.

SIGNAL INTEGRITY: DEGRADING 

BACKUP SYSTEMS: STANDBY

At 21:02:19, VI-SEC-RESIDENTIAL-7 cut to static. Pure white noise that scraped against audio limiters. Three seconds of digital screaming, then black.

VI-LAB-INTERNAL-7

TIMESTAMP: 21:02:22

Research & Development Lab Seven materialized in perfect detail, all white and blue like the rest of Victory as engineer Leo Vasquez hunched over Workstation Three, the man spitting everything but slurs at a recon drone array. "Come on, you piece of— point three microns, my fucking dick.” His fingers moved, twitchy but practiced, skittering across haptic interfaces as he tried to adjust the issues building up into a headache. “Again." 

All at once, the lights died without warning — standard primary illumination at least — along with  climate control units and fabrication systems. All together, it all sputtered into silence, each one with the signature whine of dying capacitors. Leo's head jerked up, confusion sharp on the young man’s features. "What the hell? Power fluctuation?" He blinked brown eyes, hesitantly peering through the dark. “B… but that shouldn’t knock out…”

Emergency protocols engaged almost immediately, the building’s backup lighting bathing the entirety of the lab in a low pulsing azure glow.  "Warn-ing. Pri-mary po-wer fai-lure. Back-up gen-er-ators… activat-ssshhhhhkrrrr-ing…"

Leo moved fast, the scientist defaulting to his training as he grabbed for the hardline unit mounted beside Emergency Station Two. "This is Lab Seven to Hub Control. We have a total power outage on a priority grid. Repeat, total outage. Do you copy?"

Nothing but static answered, the man blinking as his heart rate picked up.

Through reinforced transparisteel, the evening sky maintained normal coloration. Then orange bloomed over the city center, soft and growing. Light that reflected off cloud formations in ways that suggested something burning far below.

Leo's eyes widened behind safety lenses, the man taking a half-step toward the window, then a few more. After a second, he was pressed up against it, mouth falling open. "That's not a generator overload…"

TIMESTAMP: 21:03:08 

The window flashed white, and the camera feed went along with it; audio limiters suddenly engaged as Leo dropped to the floor screaming. The shockwave hit with the sound of hundreds dying all at once, window glass giving way in a hail of death. Building foundations shuddered, equipment racks all toppling to the floor as the feed died mid-scream, cutting to the particular black that meant total system failure.

VI-LAB-INTERNAL-7: OFFLINE 

SIGNAL RESTORATION: UNKNOWN 

The camera's auto-tracking locked onto the descent vectors as dozens of black angular drop ships cut through Arkadia's cloud cover, heat shields glowing red. 

Gunships tore through the upper atmosphere alongside them, engines screaming as theyignored powerless sky-cars and residential sectors, their flight paths vectoring directly toward financial squares, VI facilities, high-value targets.

Someone had provided them with targeting data.

ARKADIA-NEWS STUDIO-CAM-PRIME 

TIMESTAMP: 17:04:12

Dust caked on her face and hair, the brown-skinned woman sitting in front of the camera drone gripped her desk, knuckles white against polished composite. "—peat, we’re getting reports of explosions in the Providence downtown.” Words rushed out of her mouth as the graphic behind her flashed "CITY-WIDE BLACKOUT: ATTACK UNDERWAY?" in red letters. “There has been no official statement from Victory Innovations or Arkadia's colonial government, but we advise all residents to shelter in place, stay away from windows, and—"

Her voice cracked on the last word as someone shouted off-camera. The studio's structural supports transmitted a tremor that registered on audio pickups as low-frequency vibration.

"Jesu-!" Professional composure shattered, raw terror replacing media training as she looked back at the camera. "We're being told the building next to us is—oh my go—!"

The massive window behind her exploded inward. Glass and fire and the sound of civilization ending early. Anya's face caught the explosion's illumination for exactly point-seven seconds before the feed cut to black.

"SIGNAL LOST" flickered in center frame.

STREET-LEVEL-SECURITY-GRID ACTIVE 

PROVIDENCE DOWNTOWN CORE

Deployment commenced with mechanical precision. Blood Pack mercenaries hit the ground hard, krogan and vorcha troops roaring as they deployed war machines that chewed through ferrocrete barriers with hydraulic teeth.

Eclipse commandos rappelled down skyscraper faces, their black exo-harnesses moving with the fluidity that meant military-grade enhancement. They stormed corporate offices through windows that had never been designed for entry.

Batarian slave squads swept residential towers, their objective parameters clear from movement patterns. Not just elimination. 

Acquisition. 

Breaking the colony's spirit by stealing its people.Electric blue light pulsed outward from Victory Innovations tower core. Wave propagation registered on every sensor array in the city as defensive systems came online.

Every VI facility flickered to life, kinesis barriers materializing in hexagonal patterns that shimmed and held. From main headquarters to the smallest research outposts, the buildings wrapped themselves in energy that bent light around their edges.

Stasis-emitter fields surged around critical laboratories, air shimmering as localized spacetime warped into defensive walls that made physics scream.

IRON-LEGION-BARRACKS 

INTERNAL-CAM-DELTA-7 

Blue emergency lighting died, replaced by the steady white of backup fusion cores dotted all along Providence coming online. Rookie Legionnaire Jax was halfway into his VEST, the armor snapping into place as the suit hummed to life, HUD flaring across his vision with system diagnostics.

"All systems nominal." The automated voice carried that designed calm that was still reassuring even when things were going to hell.

"Holy shit," Jax breathed.

"Alright, you heard her!” His squad leader barked the orders, voice echoing off Legion barracks walls. “Full gear! We're live, people! Go! Go! Go!"

The Legion deployment registered on every security camera in a six-block radius. Powered armor clanked down corridors that had been dark minutes before. Weapons systems came online with the whine of capacitors charging to lethal levels.

Outside, the first Blood Pack war machine hit a VI kinesis barrier and bounced off in a shower of sparks and frustrated roaring.

The battle for Arkadia had begun.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Across the entirety of Providence, systems that had waited in darkness for many many months felt the trigger pulse through their systems. 

And if a non-sapient device could feel satisfaction, they’d be nothing but smiles.

Surface-to-air missile pods, disguised beneath park benches and embedded in skyscraper rooftops, split their ferrocrete shells with all the patience of children on Christmas morning. The first salvo launched with a tight whump-whump-whump, white smoke trails screaming skyward as kinesis-tipped warheads found their marks. Eight gunships died in the first sixty seconds, blooming orange against Arkadia's twin suns.

Pop-up railgun turrets shed their streetlight camouflage, others unfolding as they rose from housings hidden as street art. They took a moment to whir up and then, without preamble, tungsten streams spat out at hypersonic velocities, turning advancing ground troops into noting but stains on the ground across several dozen feet.

The invaders adapted fast. 

Blood Pack YMIR mechs pushed forward, their mass accelerators chewing through ferrocrete barriers that had taken months to install. Jax's squad pressed against cover that disintegrated around them, powered armor registering impact stress through haptic feedback that felt too much like dying.

"J-Squad’s fuckin’ pinned!” A voice cracked through his comms, going almost unheard as the YMIR's rocket pod swiveled toward their position. “Shields at thirty percent!"

He felt his heart drop down into his fucking balls as that targeting laser painted their cover, that red dot meaning someone was about to erase J-Squad from the universe.

Then, the ground shook.

Not explosion-shake. Impact-shake. 

Something massive landing with the sound of civilization falling over.

“WHAT THE F-FUCK!?!”

Fifteen seconds earlier, deep beneath Providence, VI shield telemetry had crossed its threshold. Central Shield Integrity at 74% and falling. 

In two dozen hidden silos all beneath the shining city of Providence, sleek frames built for nothing but war hung in charging stations that had been patient for years. Angular plating caught emergency lighting as blue optics flared to life, one by one, spreading through the underground complex in waves of awakening programming.

The first unfolded from its charging cradle, servo joints moving with that particular fluidity that meant military-grade enhancement. Its Mag Rifle hummed as capacitors charged, air crackling around the barrel with barely contained energy. Mechanical hands gripped the weapon tighter than flesh ever could.

Hundreds of its brothers did the same.

The SPARKS — Strategic Platform for Autonomous Response and Kill — were ready for battle.

In Silo Seven, something larger began to unfold. 

Massive armored legs locked into place with heavy mechanical thunks that registered on seismic sensors three klicks away. Black and blue alloy configured itself into a predator shape, all knife-edge armor plates and insectoid limbs, cerulean light pulsing through segmented joints. Its main beam cannon swiveled, targeting data already flooding its processors through Network Adaptive Virtual Intelligence feeds.

These were not drones.

They were autonomous combat frames.

They were TITANS—Tactical Iterative Tripod for Assault and Neutralization.

And they were awake.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Back on street level, Jax looked up from disintegrating cover just as the YMIR's rocket pod achieved target lock. The targeting laser held steady on their position for exactly point-seven seconds before something silver and blue dropped between them and the Blood Pack mech.

A mech landed hard, absorbing impact through servo-assisted legs that bent and straightened with mechanical grace. Taller than the YMIR, more agile, built for precision rather than brute force. It didn't hesitate, didn't assess, didn't think.

It just opened fire.

The Mag Rifle discharged with a sharp tearing crack of railgun physics. Blue-hot metal, accelerated to hypersonic speeds, punched straight through the YMIR's cockpit and out the back in a spray of sparks and failure. The Blood Pack machine collapsed, servos dying with electronic screams.

Jax stared at the smoking ruin where a dozen tons of hostile machinery crumpled to the ground, dead as metal could be.

He didn’t stare for long, though.

Not as something else blotted out the twin suns.

One giant mech crested the five-story building behind them, the tripod anchoring its three massive legs to the rooftop with enough force to crack the side of the structure. Its central eye glowed blue and a single second later…

The main cannon fired.

A bright blue plasma beam, thick as a tree trunk, lanced down from the rooftop. 

It carved a molten line through advancing Eclipse commandos, turning them and the street they occupied into superheated vapor. The beam held for three simple seconds, wreaking hell, fire, and destruction across downtown Providence with discrete energy that was both simple and nigh-unstoppable.

Over the comms, Jax's squad leader's voice stuttered to life. "Wh-wh-what the fuck is that?"

Jax could only stare at the towering war machine, its cannon already swiveling toward the next target. "I think... I think it's ours."