(A/N: Was moving apartments but I am now back with your regular random chapter updates)
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The Executor swung first. The Warhammer swinging in a horizontal arc, the singularity generator at its head distorted the air, warping reality as it passed. Daimon brought his lightsaber up and caught the Warhammer mid-air. The shockwave tossed hundreds of battle droids into the air.
The machine's adaptive barrier started to shimmer, adjusting to the strength of the strike in order to counter it next time. Daimon's free hand came up, and he released a powerful Force Push, causing the Executor to skid backwards several meters giving the soldier's room to push forward.
"All armor units—push through the breach!" Daimon ordered across the comms.
Heavy walkers pushed forward, their cannons blasting apart the droid lines now thrown into disarray by the fight between Daimon and the Executor. Coalition troops poured through the breach, a few Republic volunteers moving with them, taking advantage of the open gap.
However, the Executor didn't retreat, instead it lunged back towards Daimon. In a blur of speed unnatural for something so massive, it brought the Warhammer down in a vertical strike. Daimon caught it with his saber again, sparks flaring between them as the Warhammer scrapped against the lightsaber. The Executor tried to bring its secondary arm-mounted blade around, but Daimon twisted, letting the hammer slide past, then stepped inside its guard. His saber plunged between the armor plates on its shoulder.
The Executor staggered but its barrier shifted to envelop the damaged area, sealing it in, and its remaining arm punched forward with enough force to shatter a tank. Daimon caught the strike with his other hand, the impact sending a shockwave behind him, causing the soldiers behind him to brace. Though, the shockwave was too strong and forced some on the ground.
Next, Daimon used his Force enhanced speed to get into the Executor's blind spots, delivering blow after blow to its various joints. After several blows to its joints, he then sliced a clean arc up through its chest. The Executor froze for a few seconds, then its core exploded, causing a massive blast that destroyed a few surrounding droids and coalition soldiers.
"Continue Forward, to the AI core." Daimon ordered through the comms. They didn't have time to crawl over the dead bodies of their fellow soldiers. The more time they wasted, the more people died and the more adaptive the Abominor would get to their tactics.
The path led to a narrow canyon of steel and circuitry that was filled with Abominor defenses. Turrets emerged from the walls, filled the choke point that it was protected with plasma fire. But with the null-fields collapsing, Jedi and Balance Keepers were able to move unhindered, redirecting bolts into the emplacements and clearing the way.
Ahead was the planetary command nexus, a towering structure wrapped in conduits with its upper levels vanishing into the clouds above. Around its base, Prime Executors moved between the last remaining Abominor defensive lines, forming the last defensive ring protecting what was behind them.
Above, Daimon had the fleets deliver coordinated orbital strikes, shattering the outer barricades and punching holes in the enemy's formations. Coalition armored division rolled through these breaches, supported by Varraxian mechs flooding the lower streets.
Through it all, Daimon advanced through the chaos of battle uninterrupted. Every Prime Executor that got in his path was intercepted by Imperial Order Elites or Ascendants equipped with the weaponry to take them down.
Eventually he reached the base of the structure, where the final anti-Force emitter remained. He walked directly into the field and gripped the emitter with both hands. With one strong squeeze, the emitter was shattered, getting rid of the last defense that the Abominor had against Force Users.
Behind him, a few Ascendant commanders and Empyrean Guards approached him waiting for further orders. "I'm going to the cortex," he said. "Cover the streets. Don't let them regroup." The Ascendants nodded and saluted as they turned to give orders to the rest of the coalition forces.
Daimon began his ascent into the massive structure, accompanied by his Empyrean Guard.
The ascent up the command structure was nothing like scaling a normal tower. Every surface was filled with conduits, armored shutters, and retractable plating that opened and released swarms of defensive drones and groups of droids. Some drones came in tight clusters that split mid-air into three-bladed weapons, while the droids were equipped with plasma cutters, optimized for close-quarters ambush.
This didn't slow them down at all, instead they moved even faster. The drones were disintegrated in an instant by the Empyrean Guards and their cyber warfare AI that was built into their armor. The AI would hack into and deactivate the drones. Those that didn't get deactivated were dealt with by the Empyrean Guards.
Halfway up, the structure started to shake, not from the battle below the tower, but from the AI itself, reacting to Daimon's continuous advance up the tower. The entire structure started to be reconfigured, with balconies retracting and armored shutters closing. The tower was being sealed to prevent Daimon from advancing up the tower.
Ahead of them, a set of gates slid open revealing an interior chamber. Daimon walked in, aware that this was a possible trap. Still, he walked in and at the center of the chamber, a Prime Executor waited on him. But unlike the others, its body was ornate, plated in black alloy engraved with symbols. Four arms held different weapons, a glaive, a hammer, a plasma cannon, and a bladed shield.
Behind them the door slammed shut.
"I am Arch-Executor Omega," spoke the machine. "Your destruction is statistically inevitable."
"I see," said Daimon. "You've calculated an end. Let's see if you're right."
With that said, the duel started instantly. Omega's plasma cannons shot beams at Daimon forcing him to weave between the shots as the glaive swept in low towards him. He redirected the strike into the floor, then spun around into its guard, but the shield came up, throwing him back.
The hammer followed, shattering the ground where he'd stood a moment before. The machine pressed its advantage, its attacks chaining together in an inhuman rhythm. It was a perfect fighting rhythm that didn't hesitate or waste any time.
But Daimon had something to throw the machine off. By using something no AI could predict—Imperfection. He stumbled on purpose after avoiding a strike, inviting the Omega to come closer. And just as he wanted, the machine moved forward to capitalize on him stumbling.
Smiling, Daimon clenched his fist, summoning the Force to increase the gravity around Omega. Its limbs jerked under the pressure, scattering its cannon fire around the chamber. After that, Daimon closed the gap, bringing up his Force-enhanced saber and delivering a strike that peeled away Omega's armored plates. Omega tried to counter, bringing its glaive around to parry, but Daimon shifted, putting his saber away from now and delivering a bare-handed strike to Omega's chest. The impact, filled with the Force, punched through the frame of the machine and sent it crashing into the wall.
Before it could recover, Daimon reignited his saber and forced it into the back of its head. The light in Omega's optics went out instantly as the door in front of them slid open. He didn't waste any time and proceeded forward followed by the Ascendants.
This time, they stepped into the core chamber.
The space was filled with a massive sphere of crystalline alloy surrounded by energy beams. Around it, hundreds of humanoid shapes were wired into consoles, their consciousness merged into the machines.
Daimon approached the core. The voice of the planetary AI filled the entire room. "You are a fault. You who wield that chaotic energy will end up consumed by it. You erase our perfection and call it a liberation."
Daimon didn't open his mouth at all as nothing he said would change ideology of the Abominor, nor did he want to. Billions of souls were taken by these machines, and this was the moment he would avenge them.
He placed both hands on the core, invading the cortex's mindscape. For an instant, he stood in an infinite black grid where the AI's presence towered above him as a construct of light and angles. Using his will, he fought the AI overpower it, causing it to reshape the space, turning it into a labyrinth of logic, traps of infinite recursion, throwing all sorts of calculations at him.
However, Daimon's will was the winning force. He tore through the illusions, shattering the endless calculations, stripping away the layers until he stood before the AI's central awareness, a cold, geometric singularity.
Reaching his hand out, he grabbed hold of it and crushed it, watching as the grid dissolved into a white light. Back in reality, the cortex cracked along a thousand fault lines. The energy started to surge in an uncontrollable state, bursting various conduits placed around the structure. Outside, the entire planetary defense network went dead. In the streets, droid froze mid-step or collapsed entirely. The sky rained down droid fighters, forcing the ground forces to seek cover or watching as the Force Users formed barriers above them to protect their allies.
"All forces, this is Emperor Daimon." he said grabbing everyone's attention over the comms. "The planetary AI is gone. Finish it."
From orbit, the Imperial and Coalition fleets shifted their bombardments to remaining surface bastions. On the ground, allied troops moved forward, cutting down the last pockets of resistance. Columns of smoke rose all over Velon-3 as the capital of the Abominor fell.
Daimon stepped away from the shattered core and contacted Admiral Caedus. "Caedus," he said over the comm, "Prepare recovery teams. I want every scrap of data pulled from what's left."
"Understood, my Lord." replied Caedus as he sent down recovery teams.
The war that had taken billions of lives was now over and the empires that made up the Unknown regions could shift to a peaceful time and now worry about being annihilated by machines. But this was not the end of their problems as now, they had to discuss the post-war distribution of space and such. Something that was on the mind of thousands of politicians.