Part Seventy-Nine (2/2)
Nobody would enter the shuttle.
An hour later his desk com-link beeped for attention. When he answered it a human voice said, in perfect Unified Standard: Open the desk drawer, you insipid drooling cowtaur.
Furiously he yanked open the drawer.
The explosive charge blew shredded hamburger out the window and all over the airfield.
Tanks started running over explosives. The lucky ones just destroyed the track. The unlucky ones were cored out like a county fair apple. Crews that tried to walk back just vanished. Their bootprints just vanishing. Sometimes the lead tank was blown up, other times the last tank, sometimes the one in the middle.
Some of the peacekeepers would have deserted except there was nowhere to go.
The armada commander was furious. It had been eight days and nobody had seen a single human but his casualties were mounting. He was being mocked! He knew it! He ordered all his forces to take over the ruins of the starports, to dig in around it and fortify.
He watched with satisfaction as his peacekeeping forces did as commanded.
Still his ships broadcast their message of peace and pacification.
Surrender and be destroyed.
His men were on a hair trigger. Violence had broken out in the ranks. Troops refused to go out and patrol the countryside, unwilling to be one of the casualties that were sure to be inflicted. An enlistedbeing rolled a hand grenade into the command tent of the deployment officers. A firefight broke out between the officers and enlistedbeings when the enlistedbeings were ordered to make foot patrols through the tall grass to search out any Terran that might be hiding in the grass.
And still there was no evidence that Terrans were anywhere on the planet.
The armada commander was beginning to despair. How was he supposed to prove the supremacy of the Unified Military Forces if he couldn't even find any Terrans to suppress?
Then the reports came in. The structures in the villages were back.
Peacekeeper vehicles roared in. By the time they got there, the villages were engulfed in flame again. The smoke rising high into the air. Shuttle commanders ordered their men into the smoke. The smoke was thick and seemed to interfere with the peacekeeper's armor visuals. Transmissions were staticy and broken up.
That's when the screaming began. Images began flooding in.
Terrans.
Terrans in heavy armor, some wearing helmets, some without. Heavy kinetic weapons in one hand, swords with terrible toothed chains that ripped through the peacekeeper armor as if it was tissue. They were in the smoke, killing everything. The ones without helmets had bestial expressions of rage as they roared their battlecries and slew every peacekeeper that had entered the smoke.
The peacekeepers in the encampments where the spaceports and manufacturing facilities stared in shock at the static filled and broken up transmissions. The Terrans showed no mercy, neural-bolts doing nothing to the howling and rampaging warriors.
Then the peacekeepers manning the outside perimeter heard it.
A roar of rage.
From the tall grass they thundered out, heavy armor covering them, jet black with just the Terran Confederacy symbol of a planet being crushed by a human hand. Shoulder and back mounted weapons thundered, chainswords howled as they ripped through tank armor as easily as they tore through peacekeeper armor, heavy kinetic weapons in their hands roared as the shells caused anything they hit to explode.
The armada commander stared in shock, trying to process what he was seeing. It was only a few, less than a dozen, in the villages, only a couple hundred at each of the encampments, but his men were being slaughtered as if they were made of tissue wrapped ground meat.
At the 10% casualty mark the ground forces commanders, those still alive, sounded the retreat. By all known conventions of warfare the Terrans should have broken off, should have stopped their attack rather than expend resources to further prosecute an already won battle.
Instead the humans, if anything, increased their advance. As if the fact that the peacekeepers were retreating somehow moved the dial from 'battle' to 'full on slaughter' as they chased the peacekeepers down. In several cases they boarded the shuttles with the peacekeepers, slaughtering the screaming and panicked peacekeepers inside the very shuttles that were supposed to carry them to safety.
Shuttles began exploding in mid-air as Terrans proved to have anti-air capability in their armor. Shoulder fired missiles streaking through the air to destroy some of the shuttles as they lifted off in panic.
Tanks vanished in explosions from shoulder fired missiles. Artillery vehicles were torn apart with kinetic weapon fire, chainswords, or just plain armored fists.
The tactical net staggered and went down from the sheer carnage on the surface.
More and more shuttles were taking off and the armada commander breathed a sigh of relief. It looked as if all the shuttles sent to the villages would be recovered. One by one the remaining shuttles managed to lift off, more and more escaping being knocked out of the air by the Terrans's highly effective anti-aircraft missiles.
Still, on the ground, the Terrans were rampaging through, killing any peacekeeper they encountered. Most of the peacekeepers had panicked, attempted to run out into the grass.
There they discovered the females.
Waiting.
With vibroknives and hot coals.
The tall grass echoed with screams.
Shuttles began to dock and the armada commander breathed a sigh of relief.
Then the reports started flooding in.
Terrans were aboard the shuttles and came out firing their weapons. They cared nothing for hull breaches, often deliberately decompressing entire ship sections by firing missiles or just shooting the hull until their fire tore through it.
The armada commander watched in horror as one by one each of the twenty ships in his armada were marked with the ancient arcane rune for ”I Have Been Boarded” that the computer had to recall from deep storage memory. A rune so old it wasn't even taught any more.
He was still trying to figure out how to repel the boarders, with all of his peacekeepers on the planet, when the hatch to the flag bridge blew inward, propelled by a kick from an armored Terran, and heavy magack rounds shredded everyone on the bridge.
The shuttles arced away from the ships, heading in a slow and leisurely reentry path. All of the shuttles were inside the atmosphere when, one by one, the ships exploded as their reactors went critical and self-destructed.
The shuttles landed and the Terrans got off, walking back into the tall grass. As night fell the outline of the shuttles softened, then began to dissolve as the reclaimation nanites of the creation engines reclaimed the materials of the shuttles.
By dawn the houses in the villages were back. The manufacturing facility was slowly being created. The starport was slowly being reconstructed.
The villagers returned, going out behind their homes and digging up sealed heavy containers. They removed their armor, cleaning it and putting it in the containers. Weapons followed. The containers were closed and buried again. The women exchanged bloody active camouflage for a bath and a clean dress.
The men put on floppy hats.
The women put on bonnets.
The animals were led from the heavily shielded shelters and were glad to be back in the sunshine. Many needed milked.
Above them the satellite beeped out the same signal over and over.
DANGER DANGER DANGER! CONFEDERACY MILITARY DECOMMISSIONING PRIMITIVENESS THERAPY WORLD - NO ENTRY TO NON-MEDICO PERSONNEL - DANGER DANGER DANGER!
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS HERE. NO ORBITAL PERIHELION CLOSER THAN 500KM. ATMOSPHERIC ENTRY IS FORBIDDEN.
CONFEDERACY MILITARY DECOMMISSIONING PRIMITIVENESS THERAPY WORLD. Patients can have extreme bouts of violence in response to unauthorized contact. AUTHORIZED MEDICO PERSONNEL ONLY
Contact Confederacy Medico Orbital Station Control Beacon on Hydrogen 2-1 transition frequency (1420.405751786 MHz) for more information.
DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!
WARNING WARNING WARNING
DO NOT ATTEMPT COMMUNICATION WITH SURFACE PERSONNEL.
CONFEDERACY MILITARY DECOMMISSIONING PRIMITIVENESS THERAPY WORLD. PATIENT CAN HAVE VIOLENT RESPONCE TO UNWARRANTED COMMUNICATION. Unregulated contact with patient can have adverse affects on therapeutic seasons. AUTHORIZED MEDICO PERSONNEL ONLY
Contact Confederacy Medico Orbital Station Control Beacon on Hydrogen 2-1 transition frequency (1420.405751786 MHz) for more information.
WARNING WARNING WARNING