"The enemy's here! Prepare for battle! Prepare for battle!!!"
An alarm shrill enough to almost rupture eardrums mingled with screams from the loudspeakers, distorted by sheer terror. Like the final lament of a dying beast, they echoed madly through the towering Shell of metal and stone that enclosed Suiyang's last Hive City, now scarred by devastation and smoke.
Red alarm lights and flickering emergency lamps bathed the already dim, oppressive interior, thick with the smells of machine oil and despair, in an ominous bloody glow.
Millions of Imperialis Militia soldiers wore filthy, threadbare uniforms that had gone too long without maintenance. Exhaustion, fear, and one last trace of numb resolve mingled on their faces as officers of every rank drove them onward with hoarse exhortations, curses, and even lashes. Like a colony of ants being herded along, they shouldered assorted Lasguns, projectile weapons, and crudely made explosives hastily handed out to them, stumbling toward the crumbling defensive lines around the Hive City's perimeter.
Footsteps, clattering metal, stifled sobs, and heavy breathing merged into a clamorous torrent that tightened the heart.
Beyond the city, at the farthest edge of the visible wasteland, a writhing, boundless mass of "black" was swallowing the horizon.
It was neither night nor a storm, but people.
Countless silent figures advanced with stumbling yet determined steps, like pus and blood spilling from a wound in the earth, slowly flooding across the scorched ground toward the Hive City.
The air itself seemed to congeal beneath that vast, soundless pressure, leaving only the Alarm screaming futilely against a backdrop of deathly silence.
Only when this "black" tide reached the edge of firing range could the defenders make out its leading wave.
These were not the well-equipped rebel forces they had expected, but a vast crowd of ragged, skeletal civilians,