A swarm of drones, split into three streams and led by the iron will of the operator, descended upon the spawn of mutated flora. Under the cover of light weapons and explosions of unmanned machines, the squad operatives delivered a perfectly coordinated strike.
Led by a single purpose, a telekinetic surge struck the interweaving of stone and plant shoots like a colossal hammer. The giant took an awkward step back but withstood the onslaught, but that no longer mattered.
Gray shadows reached its legs, instantly covering the colossal supports with explosive charges. The subsequent series of cumulative explosions was dull and quiet against the general cannonade, unlike the result.
Two column-like legs were sawn off and shattered into rubble. With the roar of a collapsing skyscraper, the mutant's creation fell to the ground, raising a cloud of dust.
Without giving it time to recover, the monster's killers rushed at the fallen monster. Some with a new portion of explosives severed the construct's arms, while their comrades doused its remains with liquid fire, burning out the organic matter.
Waiting until the construct stopped trying to resist the inevitable, the operatives and machines rushed to the aid of the allied heavy machine, but it didn't need it.
The pilot managed to catch her opponent in motion, hitting a supporting limb with a precise salvo. Continuing the onslaught, instantly closing the distance, she struck with the walker's leg, showing off.
Shrapnel of stones rained down on the spot where the operatives had been a moment ago. Only training, coordination, and instant reaction saved them from injury.
However, Diva didn't notice this, getting carried away. She directed her machine towards the green horde, breaking through the automatic perimeter...
"Status," Shep said through the mental link, releasing the drones he controlled into a free hunt.
"Loading. Corridor in two minutes," Miranda replied, sending him a mental image.
"Understood."
Without delay, the lieutenant colonel gave several orders, drawing organic forces to the evacuation point, while simultaneously tasking engineering units to deploy air defense systems to help create a safe corridor for the shuttles. The transport vehicles, fearing destruction on the ground, moved away after landing under the protection of the squadron's direct defense guns and light aviation squadrons.
Military engineers, having finished installing the planetary explosive device, began a new task, not forgetting to complicate the enemy infantry's life. While the cybernetic troops covered the Red Army soldiers with their steel bodies, new frontiers were being built behind their backs.
The operatives, covering the Red Army soldiers, were the last to withdraw from the front line, giving their comrades a chance to calmly load into the approaching shuttles. The last to leave the battlefield was the heavy walker, whose pilot had stopped holding back altogether, starting to fire indiscriminately, which almost caused her to shoot down her own aircraft several times due to careless selection of firing sectors or eliminating threats to herself.
Only when the last transport disappeared under the armor of the ships was the order given to detonate the mine.
At first, nothing changed. The planet continued to fly through the abyss of space as it had been. A few moments later, the planetoid began to whiten rapidly as the explosive reagent began its work, absorbing all available heat for the detonation reaction.
Wood, stone, water, and living flesh were instantly frozen to absolute zero temperature. From the installation site of the device to the core, a white hand of deadly winter stretched. In a minute, reaching the planet's core, the compound drank the heat of the world's burning heart, feasting on the heat of the mantle.
Absorbing all available energy, the mine began to absorb the atmosphere, creating a colossal tornado that grew to cover the entire hemisphere at its peak. Having received critical mass of fuel, the infernal device fulfilled the sole purpose of its existence.
The frozen planet crumbled into a cloud of destructible matter. Atoms, stopped by the created cold, simply crumbled into atomic dust, quickly turning into a gas cloud, losing their concentration, distributing themselves in orbit around the former world. It would take millions of years before this gas would reassemble into a planet, or not at all, dispersed by the stellar wind...
The USSR squadron did not wait to see the planet crumble into flakes of degrading matter. Having ensured that the process had begun and was proceeding normally, the ships, simultaneously engaging afterburners, jumped into warp, while the system's gravitational fields were still in relative peace.
The officers and sailors, like the hastily returned landing parties, knew nothing about the detail that had escaped them. The scientists of the Salarian Union had managed to send samples by courier capsule, hastening, indulging their impulsiveness, to report the successful test results.
And no one knew that the ancient bioweapon, having absorbed what had once happened to the species to which the Root belonged. Having absorbed its juices, carving out its genome, it was able to shed the genetic shackles imposed on it by gene engineers who had decayed hundreds of times. Thanks to the restored telepathic abilities, the mutant was able to change its genetic code in other samples as well, without manifesting itself or its freedom in any other way.
A couple more months would pass before the ancient creation, realizing that the scientists clearly had no time for it, would break free, beginning the absorption and assimilation of all living things within its reach. The Salarians would report this scourge to the galaxy too late. Later, the combined fleet would only be left to sterilize the lifeless worlds, because, dying, the Union scientists would invent a biological agent capable of killing the out-of-control horror...
Only then, haste would play its role again, turning the means of salvation into a universal solution. When the ships of the rest of the galaxy reached the territory of the Salarian state, they would be met only by the dead silence of cities and the grave horror that plied the dead vacuum of space in crewless ships.
The Reapers would not visit this corner of the galaxy, knowing that the primitives themselves had performed the Harvest for them. Arrogance, haste, and perceived superiority had brought the amphibian race to the brink of extinction, but the worst thing about it was that if they hadn't hurried, waited a couple of minutes, or decided to admit that they had stolen samples from the USSR and raised a scandal, none of this would have happened...
The Sovereign descended into the Ghost. The moment of establishing a connection and analyzing the puppet's location, and he looked through its eyes at the metallic body of Soviet construction bent over the computer.
"You are a very interesting organic," he said through the lips of the fallen hero, who had become merely a puppet in the hands of an ancient machine. "Compared to other primitives, you not only had enough intelligence to understand the inevitable, but your logic is based on mathematical truths."
"Numbers never lie," the disgraced academic, of whom only his head floating in a special balsamic solution remained, replied. "Errors in calculations are merely human error. No more, no less. Therefore, mathematics speaks only the truth, and a fool is he who cannot understand its logical perfection."
The machine, which was once a regular "Rafik," had almost stopped smelling of sweets and caramels, making the smell of death, which had permeated the preserving nutrient solution, noticeably hang in the air. Lebedev stopped playing the role he had chosen, acting without regard for the country he intended to save.
Now he was not just picking the coding for the Channel, but preparing a bridgehead for his triumph. The faster the Reapers could break through the resistance and show the obvious, the faster he would force the USSR to reconcile with the inevitable. Only then could he outplay the puppeteers, becoming a messiah and a hero, saving the working citizens.
"Your primitive kin would have killed you on the spot for such words. Using the death of an entire species to distract attention is logical, but organics, in an attempt to survive, always invent chains of morality for themselves..."
The Reapers were not privy to the thoughts of the traitorous scientist. In the pathetic piece of flesh that remained of this man, controlled micro-machines resided, working on principles different from the usual nanites. Although they were energy-intensive to produce, they were difficult to detect even for ancient machines. It was not worth mentioning undeveloped organic life.
"I do not share their xenophilic impulses and look at things soberly," Comrade Lebedev stated the obvious. "For the survival of my species, I will use any means. No more, no less. The galaxy is not a place where one can afford pity. A species saved in the past will simply take your place in the future."
"There are other species among the citizens of the USSR," the Sovereign replied with an undeniable fact to the scientist's remark.
"They are expendable," the academic waved dismissively. "Exalted beasts, no matter what they think of themselves or what anyone else thinks, are just a convenient tool. Aliens... alas, they did not listen to my arguments then, and certainly not now. Just a ridiculous waste of resources, criminally stupid at that. The updated USSR will be free from this vice, as well as excessive morality."
"From people like you, an ideal Reaper would emerge," the ancient mechanism said, either stating a fact, or praising, or perhaps just to feed the organic's ego.
"If Khariton had been a KHRaz, no matter how much I deified the Motherland, my race would already be on the right path," the academic's words held only the coldness of impeccable calculations. "As regrettable as it is to admit, the free will of many only brings harm to the goal and does not contribute to long-term survival. What is the point of all these technologies if the useful output is directed only towards base needs?"
The mechanical body detached itself from work, waving its manipulators from an excess of emotion.
"I am very sorry that I can only share such an obvious truth with you..."
"If it were otherwise, organics would have long ago risen to our status, but each time, cycle after cycle, mathematics has increasingly confirmed the obvious. Organic life is doomed. Let it end at its peak rather than fade in agony. This equation cannot be solved otherwise. Your USSR is close to this understanding, but still clings to the remnants of organic evolution."
"That is precisely why I bowed before your will," the scientist's head said, returning to work.
The Citadel, this colossal symbol of galactic unity, was frozen in a semblance of deceptive calm, like a giant beast holding its breath before a leap. Tevos felt with her whole being, every fiber of her soul, this binding tension that hung in the sterile air of the ancient station and the meeting halls. She not only saw, but realized with horror: the entire galaxy, holding its breath, was frozen at the very edge of the abyss, on the threshold of something truly inexpressible and terrible.
The no longer young Azarian was disgusted and bitter to the core by the realization of a simple truth... It was not her people, not her proud, wise race, that stood in the path of the approaching nightmare, taking on the role of leader and rallying younger and more determined species around them.
While the Union prepared for war, her kin, her fellow councilors, continued to revel in the quagmire of their own decadence, in millennia-old rituals and political intrigues. Their great empire, so exalted and, it seemed, eternal, could not withstand just one crushing blow-lesson, the very one that the communists had taught them all.
A single trifle, a tiny cog in their finely tuned diplomatic mechanism, shattered the world order of the Azari, built with love and care, tearing the veil of self-deception and blinkers from the eyes of many who had previously preferred not to see.
The councilor, standing by a huge stained-glass window depicting an almost forgotten Goddess, mentally recited the name of each of those who had seen the light long before her. Scientists who had their own opinion about the threat, officers who sounded the alarm, diplomats who spoke the uncomfortable truth.
Teve herself had once helped silence, reprimand, dismiss, kill so many of them, firmly believing that she was acting correctly! That it was for the sake of the highest good and stability! Now the oppression from those actions, which had become a blind cover for someone else's ruthless power struggle, poisoned her soul with acrid bitterness of regret.
Under the weight of this realization, a truly unbearable burden fell upon her shoulders - not just to fulfill the duty of a councilor, but to try to save her entire passive, pride-blinded race from destruction. They were not ready!
They slept, lulled by the myth of their own superiority, and in the silent darkness beyond the known space, the grinding and footsteps of the Reapers could already be heard. The last hours of the world, her world, were mercilessly and inexorably ticking down their final seconds...
Tevos resolutely raised her head. She might have made many mistakes, but now she would do everything to ensure that life in the galaxy did not end with the Harvest. The councilor would achieve the impossible, not allowing her species to simply fade into oblivion! If they were destined to fall, they would do so side-by-side with the communists, departing with dignity, not looking at the light through the bars of a cage!
A man bent over the terminal. His appearance, already repulsive, giving him a resemblance to an ancient ghoul, was now even more repulsive, but he didn't care. He whispered lines of calculations, rechecking the configuration of his creation again and again.
Like a mad barrel organ player, he cast it from metal, giving true chaos form! Old Xen had been many things in his long life. He was a video game tester who discovered entire worlds. He was a programmer who created those worlds. He wore out more than one pair of boots and blew up more than a thousand enemies as a mercenary. He never imagined that it was the art of explosion that would help him contribute to salvation!
Therefore, the man tirelessly rechecked the calculations. Everything must be ready for the arrival of dear guests!
While the "Flying Rat" completed its epic creation, an ode to explosion and destruction, the USSR was preparing for war. There would be no battles in formation, as the warriors of the Hierarchy liked to do. The Reapers would face a completely different fight, because an entire country, spread across a whole arm, would strike them from the steppe!
The ancient machines would learn what it was like to come uninvited into the home of a Soviet worker! The planets themselves would stand with the Red Army soldiers in formation, unleashing all their righteous fury upon the invaders.
"This will be fun!" the man smiled almost soundlessly, already seeing this explosion...