Chapter 9 NINE

One Bergon down. That was the plan. Four seconds per target. Quick and efficient.

They were twelve seconds in and the first one was still standing.

Then the other four arrived.

They did not come from the same direction. That was their coordination. The first had been a distraction, absorbing the formation's attention and best soldiers while the remaining four positioned themselves.

One came from directly above, folding its wings at the last possible moment and dropping its full weight onto a cluster of four soldiers in the centre of the formation. The impact crater it left was three feet deep. Parts of the soldiers who had been standing there were scattered across a twenty foot radius. An arm still in blade formation lay ten feet away, fingers still twitching with residual conversion energy.

The third Bergon came from underground.

Nobody had been briefed on that.

It erupted through the concrete twenty feet inside the formation line, scattering soldiers like debris. Two of them took flight from the force. One hit the perimeter wall and did not get up. The other converted mid-air to a winged configuration and pulled himself level but the Bergon was already tracking him before he landed. It chased the soldier in the air and ripped one of the wings off, leaving him crashing onto another soldier that had transformed his hand into a punch press. It spun him rapidly, spilling his insides around the field.

The fourth moved along the ground at a speed that should not have been possible for something its size. It targeted the soldiers who were already damaged first. The frozen one. The burning one. The one still pulling himself out of the crater. It did not waste energy on the ones still fully operational. It was prioritising. Finishing what had already been started. Systematic and cold and completely without mercy.

The fifth did nothing.

It stood at the edge of the dust and watched.

Leo could not take his eyes off it.

"Xavier." He pushed through the mind link one more time. The signal went out and came back empty. Not disconnected. Empty because no one was there to receive it.

He had known Xavier for eleven years. They had trained together every single day since age seven. Xavier had been the one to show Leo how to convert his hands to cannons when the instructors said his configuration was too unstable. Xavier had been the one who stayed up with him the night before the oath ceremony when Leo could not sleep from nerves.

Xavier was gone in under a minute.

“Soldiers, mark the seventh formation.” The remaining soldiers started their next formation, forming a large circle and in the center, a smaller group of stronger soldiers.

The plan was to put the Bergons into the circle. As the smaller group fought from within, the larger circle fired from all ranges.

Leo stepped into the formation ring and felt nothing except a cold and total focus settling over him like a second skin. His hands shifted to twin compressed air cannons. Maximum pressure that could puncture vehicle plating at close range.

The formation commander had lost his targeting head. It had been sheared off in the underground eruption. He was operating on instinct now, roaring orders from a partially converted neck stump, refusing to go down easily.

"Complete the formation faster! Rotating coverage! Nobody fights alone!"

The surviving soldiers formed a moving circle, each one covering the blind spot of the one ahead. Every arm had a different configuration. Blades. Shields. Drills. Cannons. Energy projectors. The most powerful combat style ever formed.

Four Bergons circled them slowly.

The fifth still watched from the edge.

Leo tracked the nearest one through his cannon sights. Locked the targeting. Calculated trajectory. Accounted for movement speed. He had run this calculation ten thousand times in training against every known target profile.

The Bergon looked directly at him.

It already knew.

It moved left exactly half a second before Leo fired. The compressed air blast hit empty space and detonated against the ground, cracking the concrete in a ten foot radius. The Bergon did not retreat. It moved closer. It was now inside his minimum firing range, too close for the cannons to be effective, exactly where it wanted to be.

Leo converted fast. Cannons to blades. Blades to shield. Trying to find a configuration that worked at this range against something that had already calculated his next three moves.

The Bergon raised one claw.

It was the size of Leo's entire torso.

It swung.

Leo dropped and converted his legs to spring coils and launched himself backward fifteen feet, landed, converted back to combat stance. His left arm was gone below the elbow. He had not felt it happen. The L-Band pain suppression system had caught it before the signal reached his brain. He looked at the clean edge where his arm ended and converted the stump immediately to a single rotating blade before the Bergon could read the hesitation.

No hesitation.

Xavier had taught him that.

Around him the formation was deteriorating. Soldiers fighting with missing parts. Some fighting on fire. One soldier had converted her entire body to a defensive shell and was being used as a battering ram by the Bergon that had picked her up, driving her into other soldiers at full speed.

The fifth Bergon finally moved.

It did not go for the formation.

It turned its head slowly toward the tree line.

Toward the tree where Ken had been standing.

It could not see Ken. But it was looking directly at him with those light absorbing eyes and Leo watched it from across the battlefield and felt something he had not felt since Xavier went silent.

Fear.

Not of the Bergon.

Of whatever the Bergon had just sensed behind that tree that was making the most terrifying creature he had ever seen pause before it moved.

What was standing in that tree line?

Leo had no answer.

The fifth Bergon took one step forward.

Then another.