Kaylee flopped backwards into her chair, releasing a hiss of pain as she did, fortunately, that pain was coming from her legs and not from anything more vital, by the grace of what could only be assumed to be God she had managed to avoid catching any flak during her sprint to the van, Laura had been slightly less lucky with something getting a nip on her. Kaylee was personally not entirely certain that it was one of those ‘biomorphs’ but Laura was pretty shaken up so Kaylee had dropped her off at the nearest hospital before driving home herself, now she was slumped in her apartment staring up at the roof and the fan that slowly rotated above her. Sitting up, Kaylee directed her attention to her desk, more specifically the computer that sat open on her desk, the screensaver at the moment was just a screensaver, a still image of some idyllic stream in the middle of a dark pine forest, opening a new document, she sat for a moment, staring at the glowing screen for several minutes she maintained that position, trying to think of what to write, she growled in frustration and slammed the computer shut and leapt out of her chair.


    “Alan, wake up.”


    <Bzzt… How can I assist you commander?>


    “What do we do?”


    <Elaborate>


    “There is a giant spider monster making babies in the forest right on top of an alien arsenal what do you think I want to deal with?”


    <The Biomorph infestation is a serious threat. Unless it is eliminated shortly it will continue to exponentially…


    “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Kaylee jutted in, but how are we planning to DEAL with it?”


    <In previous engagements the on-ground commanders primarily utilised overwhelming force against freshly landed biomorph concentrations through either sustained bombardment or defeat in detail. In the event that biomorph forces reached a critical mass then biosphere destruction is the primary means of suppressing the threat.>


    “Holy shit did we give the bugs a planet nuke?”


    <No, any such data store was specifically designed to be easily destroyed, such sensitive information would have been destroyed upon re-entry, the warchive you have allowed to be captured was more likely to contain specialised units that would have been immensely useful in ongoing operations.>


    “Am I sensing condemnation Alan?”


    <I am simply stating that your operational failings have left you unable to recover technology that would have been invaluable to further operations.>


    “Operations that I still know NOTHING about, what the hell are you even doing here?”


    <As I previously stated, I have no access to any of the Autowar military intelligence, therefore I am unable to recall any information on planned operations.>


    “Well that’s fucking brilliant how the hell you aren’t just gonna invade us?”


    Alan replied in his normal flat tone; <The Autowars do not invade, we exist to prevent the spread of the Biomorphs along with other exponentially growing threats, by pure necessity we land on any planet that has been infected and we eliminate any threats that we encounter, we gather the necessary resources, and we move on to the nearest planetary bodies.>


    Kaylee nodded slowly, it really wasn’t that much of a convincing statement and she couldn’t really get any convincing proof that these robots wouldn’t be a problem, but so far Alan hadn’t been a problem and the bugs absolutely had been. Resigning herself to the fact that she might have to keep working with the machine, at least until a better option made itself apparent.


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    “So what about something more surgical, a small force that can get in and get the job done quickly and quietly?”


    <While such operations have been attempted, such operations are rarely deployed as they are rarely an effective means of eliminating Biomorph threats.>


    “Well, what about just getting the warchive? Then we can try to use something that we get to come back at em.”


    <Such an operation may be useful. If it can be successfully conducted.>


    Laura smiled as she rose to her feet and strode to the doorway.


    ….


    Garrett watched as the alien woman came to terms with the nature of her enemy, as far as he could tell the reaction had been completely genuine, at this point he began to wonder what exactly his situation in this strange limbo was, for some reason, he couldn’t really tell what this was all for. The woman seemed to have been trying to get information, though that quite apparently hadn’t gone the way she had planned. Garrett lent forward in the enclosed space and rested a gloved hand on the Alien’s carapace-coated shoulder. She stared at him through bloodshot eyes, for a moment the two stared at each other for several seconds, the silence broken only by the steady hum of the oncoming monsoon and the periodic crack of lightning. Sitting back against the rough wooden wall, Garrett spoke.


    “What is this place, really?” The alien jumped like someone had jabbed her with a tazer, she stared at him, the pain in her eyes draining away to be replaced with shock.


    “What?” She spluttered. “As I said this is a hollow that is commonly…”


    “No” He interrupted, “What is this place? Everything is off.” She stayed silent, the cogs clearly churning behind her head.


    “Nidi, who is the highest-ranking human on this planet?” Nidi continued to stare at him, and then she spoke.


    “I needed to know. I needed to know what you knew of the enemy”


    “And what have you found?” Garrett asked his tone even.


    “Whilst you and your world is plagued by machinery, you seem to be unfamiliar with this particular scourge, the weakness of your weapons is something that the machines would never tolerate such lacking equipment.” Garrett opened his mouth to retort, only to close it when he thought of his bullets bouncing off the robots that thing was probably on par with a BTR in terms of armour, the minimum weaponry that implied was like a punch to the gut. Steeling himself he continued; “So what does that make us?”


    Nidi exhaled, “I do not know, we have never met other beings besides the Machines and the Guardians, I do not know how we are supposed to deal with such things.”


    Garrett smiled slightly. “Well, we don’t seem to be going anywhere, so how about you tell me what you can and we’ll figure it out from there.”


    Nidi’s face hardened, “I can just show you.”


    There was a jolt and Garrett swayed, as if gravity had, for a moment been thrown off centre, fortunately, it just as quickly righted itself, his stomach settling down. Nidi stood up in the suddenly much larger space, Garrett stood up as well as Nidi raised her hand. There was a woosh as dust was suddenly whipped up from nowhere the dust coalesced in the centre of the room in a tornado of dust.


    “We will begin from the beginning.” Nidi intoned; her eyes half closed as she raised her hand. The tornado coalesced as a flat ‘table’ the surface twisted into a topographic map. Leaning forward Garrett could see a series of tiny structures, dozens of tiny structures hung from trees, for several seconds the map slowly rotated between the two. The peace was suddenly broken as the land suddenly erupted in ‘fire’, and in the centre of the fire stood a figure, the recording sped up, the flames vanishing in a blink, on the other hand, the figure remained, now moving as a blur, the landscape churning, the trees were flattened and the ground torn up as new buildings rose from the scorched and churned earth, from these buildings came a torrent of tiny creatures that continued their progenitor’s work, grinding the surface down into nothing. Garrett’s eyes widened and his heart dropped, he recognised the designs, the semi-organic machinery that crawled and flew over the crumbling landscape, the commander especially was the most familiar, with its massive steel limbs, he spoke:


    “I do however recognise this technology, my friend  was merged with some of it.” The alien became completely still, the colour slowly draining out of her face at those words and she slowly stepped around the table and stood over him?


    “What do you mean?”


    “My friend, her name is Kaylee, she somehow ended up with a robot arm. As far as anyone can tell it isn’t harming her, or any of the other people who got struck with bits of metal.”


    Nidi ran a shaking hand through her hair, a completely dead expression on her face.


    “Oh, Garrett” stated “Was that wrong?”