Rhea pressed the attack, leaping forward, swinging wildly, but Khrusos withdrew his legs, and their tips reformed.
A tentacle bashed into her side, and she was sent flying across the room. She struck the wall and landed on the floor.
Khrusos was already rushing toward her.
She got up and narrowly jumped out of the way. Khrusos crashed into the wall.
Rhea cut off portions of the closest limbs, but another leg impaled her thigh, skewering her to the marble floor. She cut off the leg and retreated with the tip still embedded in her thigh. Limping.
She deactivated her Ban’Shar and slammed her palms into the metal spearing her thigh, shoving it through. Her nano machines sealed the hole, drawing on the surrounding material, so that her overall thigh circumference thinned. She’d have to replenish the lost nano machines sometime. The marble floor wouldn’t help her, but one of those severed metal tentacles would make a good candidate…
She swerved toward one of them, but Khrusos was already leaping toward her.
Rhea bounded forward, using the lower gravity to her advantage, and maneuvered between those tentacles and legs so that she was underneath the thorax. Then she leaped high and stabbed the blade into the underbelly.
In response, Khrusos splayed his legs wide, crashing his thorax into the floor, crushing Rhea between the metal and the marble. He lifted his heavy body, and Rhea remained on the floor, her blade sliding free. She started to get up, but before she had made it to her feet, Khrusos was already smashing his thorax down onto her once more. He did this again and again, battering her.
Her body was continually shrieking, as her nano machines digested materials to repair the damage to her servomotors.
She heard a shout from her right as Khrusos was lifting his body for yet another slam attack.
“Hey asshat,” Miles said. A steady stream of plasma bolts slammed into Khrusos’ side at near point-blank range. Miles had collected Burhawk’s rifle and was unleashing it from almost right underneath the big cyborg.
Khrusos sidestepped, momentarily taken off guard by the attack, and then swiped at Miles with one of those legs. The blow sent Miles flying across the room. He hit the marble wall so hard that a blood stain was left behind on the surface. When Miles slid to the floor, he didn’t get up.
Miles had likely killed himself, but the act had brought Rhea the time she needed to escape from underneath Khrusos. The big cyborg slammed his body down once more, but Rhea vaulted free. She was smaller and lighter than before, thanks to the battering she had taken, and was very easily able to vault onto the closest legs of Khrusos. In three quick bounds she had clambered onto his back, and she stabbed her combined blade down, sinking it deep into the cyborg’s dorsal quarter. She ran forward, dragging the blade, widening that gash.
In response, Khrusos leaped upward, intending to repeat what it had done to her on the floor, with the ceiling.
But Rhea was expecting that, and she pulled the blade free and leaped off. Khrusos succeeded only in bashing himself against the bare ceiling.
Rhea deactivated her Ban’Shar to hit the floor rolling, and then clambered to her feet. Khrusos landed amid several of her fallen robot allies, crushing them. Min, Horatio and Burhawk were also nearby. It was sheer luck they weren’t trampled as well.
She sprinted across the room, toward the far side, while Khrusos slowly approached. He seemed more cautious after that last attack.
Meanwhile Will continued shooting the cyborg from the side, but wisely didn’t get too close to Khrusos, unlike Miles.
Maybe I should get nearer, Will sent over a mental channel. Looks like Miles might have done a bit of damage when he closed the range.
No, Rhea replied. You’ll just kill yourself for no reason. Any damage Miles did has already been repaired. Look at Khrusos. Nothing can stop him. Stay back! And that’s an order.
Like I take orders from you, Will quipped, but thankfully he didn’t get closer.
She paused next to one of the metal tentacles she had severed, and wrapped her palm around it, letting nano machines flow into it, intending to use some of its metal to replenish herself.
To her surprise, the nano insects immediately vacated the material, returning inside her empty-handed.
What’s wrong? Will asked when he noticed her shaking her head.
I can’t take repair materials from the limb, she replied. It’s like something is repelling me.
And then Khrusos leaped at her, forcing Rhea to abandon the tentacle. She jumped wide and activated her Ban’Shar in shield mode this time. A tentacle slammed directly into one of the plasma disks. While the tip of the tentacle disintegrated, the momentum shoved her well back, so that she caused far less damage than she would have liked.
As the severed tentacle retracted, she deactivated her Ban’Shar and grabbed on. She pulled herself upward, and leaped between the tentacles, swinging between them, intending to pull herself behind that head and onto the thorax once more. But as she moved from tentacle to tentacle, wrapping her hands around each, she sensed something she hadn’t noticed before.
Inside each tentacle, beneath her palms, she perceived the pulse of machine life. It was not something she felt with her hand, but her mind. Thousands of individual entities, power sources drumming with energy. Integrated with the circuitry inside that limb, like her own.
That meant Khrusos had nano machines inside him, technology that was running on a communication band her mind-machine interface could readily understand. Ganymedean technology. Likely there were trillions of them inside him. He had taken the Ganymedean technology and increased the iteration limit. It seemed that although Khrusos had outlawed nano machines, he had no qualms about using them for himself.
That would explain the transformation she saw, changing from steps and platform, to the iron monster before her. The reorganization needed at a micro-structural level essentially required the technology. That would also explain how he was so readily
