Chapter Twenty-Eight (1/2)
The dropship shouldn't have even been there.
It had been used as an escape pod, the ground forces gathered in their dropship according to protocol. The ship they had been on had been pounded to scrap, engines dead, main batteries down, AI dying, both the bridge and the combat bridge full of nothing but corpses, and the electronic systems failing.
The Mantid pilot had trusted it's implosion wire instinct and hit the thrusters, getting the Dropship ”Pretty Day” out of the bay first, the others following. The Mantid pilot had trusted his ”tingle” over the years and gotten 'his' Marines out of trouble and safely to the dropzone enough times that the rest of the dropships in the bay had launched with him..
An nCv cannon strike had grazed Pretty Day with its realspace shockwave, sending the dropship tumbling and falling through space. The little Mantid Damage Control Crews had swarmed out of the dropship and set to work with their tools, trying to reestablish the control runs, get the ship under control again.
Pretty Day tumbled through space, a dead stick.
The crew, however, were alive.
The beacon might have been fried out, the com-section might have exploded all over the Comtech, killing the technician with molten warsteel shrapnel, the engines might have been dead, the computer AI shattered, but the crew of the Pretty Day had merely ran function checks on their armor or cyborg bodies, checked their weapons, and made sure they were ready.
The Marines of the Pretty Day had faith in their Mantid crewmates.
”Remember your training and you will survive!” Colonel Harvey Tiktalkik'ik von Jager shouted over the comlink to his men. ”You are Confederate Marines, the enemy is nothing more than a gloried toaster that crawled out of a forgotten landfill!”
That was the moment the drives came online and the little Mantid techs swarmed back into the dropship, opening panels and getting to work. Two responded to repair requests, one working on a warborg knee actuator, the other checking the feed for one of the heavy mag-accelerator cannons.
When the Mantid pilot felt his controls go live he disconnected, waiting for the signal that it could be piloted on more than instinct or that the computer was completely fried. Long minutes ticked by and the Mantid pilot felt the tingle along his implosion wire.
They were going the right way. He knew it.
The Mantid techs gave him the go ahead signal and he reconnected to the system. The whole computer was shot through with holes, the VI's dead or still dying, but that was all right. He had more sensors then he'd have a few times. It took the engine three times to fire up, but fire up they did.
He took control, oriented himself, and followed the tingle of his implosion wire. The guns came live less than thirty seconds later.
The string drives of the boarding dropship were vibrating and howling as it spiraled through realspace on a direct course for the last of the Goliaths, the last of the Precursors, in the entire system. Its guns still thundered, its engines were still under power, and its armor still held.
The pilot, a tiny black Mantid with a strip of white stripes down its abdomen and an implosion wire thrumming down the length of its entire body, ”saw” the opening through the link to the dropship's sensors. The copilot, a Hhrundarak of the same species that had bitten Fido eons ago, had his eyes closed, following the Mantid's directions as the ship jinked, jotted, and jumped through realspace. The Gunnery Chief of the dropship clenched and unclenched his massive hands, sweat soaking his black fur as his brain sorted through ten thousand signals and the gibbering of the overwhelmed VI's who's hashes were only half-baked. The Gunnery Chief's people were from the jungles Lost Congo, uplifted by genejacking by homo-eructus to join them in being terra-superior.
The dropship plunged through the vapor of boiled away armor, the debris shields holding as the Mantid spun the ship belly first until a millimeters thick layer of rehardened armor covered the belly shield. The sensors went blind as the dropshop exploited a pinprick wound through the armor and into the hullspaces in the middle of lone remaining Golaith's underside.
The Mantid's implosion wire had sent the tingle. He had seen the pinprick hole at the bottom of the still boiling crater, he knew what to do.
He subconsciously cleaned his bladearms as his mind ran the ship's systems.
kick the tires and light the fires impact impact impact
It fired the retro thrusters, savage unshielded radiation pouring out of the thrusters as the dropship slowed, scraped an armored wall, and slammed to a stop.
The Mantid hit the drop door release and plasma mines flared off a split second before the doors slammed outward.
Colonel Jager led his men into the darkness of the Goliath's guts, all of them moving steadily, following the Colonel's orders.
”Data-cable there, Mantid-27 get your squad on it. Squad Two and Three, set up the crew served weapons down both hallways, it won't be too long before this thing's immune system realizes we're here,” Jager ordered. ”Mantid-27, find me the direction to this big bastard's brain. I want to personally shoot its last thought across the floor.”
A dozen tiny green Mantids in their combat armor, carrying computing capsules, swarmed up the wall and began scanning the cable. Their helmets had additional psychic jammers wrapped around them and the necks braced so they couldn't turn their helmets, but the little Mantids didn't care. Their goal was right in front of them, a two meter thick data-cable they could feel pulsing with malevolent cold intelligence.
”Heavy Warborg squads, keep your optics peeled. I don't want any nasty surprises hitting us. Authorization for heavy weapons free authorized,” Colonel Jager snapped. ”Use your reflex triggers, Precursor machines are able to move faster than your conscious minds can process.”
The Treana'ad Captain, in charge of eight Treana'ad and a Shard-627 rapidfire heavy omnigun and shielding, kept watch as his men quickly deployed the gun then the shielding.
He'd learned his first ground insertion that if worse came to worse the gun could provide shielding of the sort that anyone downrange understood.
”EMCOM, what's the VI status? Do they have to be rehashed?” Jager asked.
”Hashing now,” the EMCOM officer answered. ”We grazed the edge of a nCv shot, it peeled open the armor and scrambled the VI bay. Any hashes we use now will only be half-baked.”
”Step on it, EMCOM,” Jager said, turning to watch his men go to work setting up somewhat of a base camp.
As if they'd be coming back.
Jager smiled.
Squad Three, all experienced Marines, started setting up their multibarrel 30mm autocannon. Jager watched them set up in the wide hallway, then looked around. He was starting to get an idea.
”Despair, is the nanoforge still running?” He asked over comms.
”Yes, sir,” The black Mantid said. ”Only about 3% slush. Idea?”
Jager smiled even though he knew the flight officer couldn't see him. ”Reconfigure the dropship for treads and a grav pump to let us decide which way down it. I'm not about to walk 500 miles.”
”Good plan, Colonel,” The little Mantid said. ”Reconfiguring. It'll take about twenty minutes, the nanoforges VI is pretty badly damaged.”
”Do your best,” Jager said.
Mantid 14 signaled him and he opened the channel.
”Interior cryptography is using a repeating algorythm on the internet wire only system. We've already broken it and are listening. This one is the last one and its fighting for its life, devoting most of its computing power and resources to defense. It's trying to break free and get either into Hellspace or maybe even jumpspace or just run away,” The little Mantid sent via datasqueal. The entire statement packed into a microsecond directed burst.
”It's currently having its factories build repair drones instead of more fighting craft,” The Mantid said.
”Good job, 14. You and your team stay on it,” Jager said.
Mantid 08 flashed an icon to alert Jager that he had mapping updates and Jager signaled the go-ahead.
Mantid-08 had found eight different routes to something called the ”Strategic Intelligence Housing” only fifteen clicks away.
Jager's grin grew larger.
”Reconfigure Pretty Day to Bad Day mode, Despair,” He smiled. ”Let's see just what a Strategic Intelligence Housing is.”
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The Devourer that Leaves Darkness was experiencing something new after over a hundred million years of electronic existence.
Fighting for his life.
He decided he really didn't like it.
Hellspace was full of howling barbarians that just kept arriving, feral intelligences that poured out of that region. The Devourer that Leaves Darkness could compute no reason for so many unshielded biologicals to be inside of Hellspace, acting as if it was some kind of breeding ground for their kind.
A recon drone had shown massive twisted ships waiting just inside Hellspace, weapons somehow ared and ready despite all computations showing it was impossible.
Cattle should have broken off. It had destroyed over 11% of the armada's ships, yet all it did was seem to spur them to more and more fury.
Now Devourer was alone. No attendant ships, no repair ships, no refinery ships. Even trying to manufacture and deploy repair crawlers to move across the surface and fix the damage did no more than just lose precious resources as anything that moved on Devourer's surface was eliminated within minutes by the constant bombardment of missiles, rain of coherent energy, and incoming torpedoes.