Chapter One-Hundred (Vuxten) (1/2)
General Imak Takilikakik was an anomaly in the Terran Space Force Marine Corps. It wasn't that he was overweight. It wasn't that he had a double-chin and was balding with watery brown eyes. It wasn't even that he was a human who had been orphaned and then raised by Treana'ad.
He didn't have a combat action badge.
Two-hundred and thirty years as a Marine and he had never seen combat. The closest he had come to it was when, two days after he had left the planet, his personal foxhole had been hit by an enemy rocket that had killed four other Marines.
Most beings thought that it was his lack of Combat Action Badge as to why he kept butting heads with the combat commanders. The rumor that he disliked combat troops because he had never seen combat always went through the upper ranks.
But not through the lower.
General 'Tic-Tak' as he was known, had the best hospitals, his logistics bases were the most supplied, his medical personnel were the most highly trained, his engineers and mechanics were the best out there with plenty of parts already crafted and rarely needing to run his creation engines.
Tic-Tak also had the best and safest things that command didn't approve of. His narcobrews were the richest with the most variety. His heavy alk never made anyone blind. His smoke'n'chaw peddlers had the best from the Old Systems. His ice cream was the thickest, the richest, with the best fruit and always with real Terran moo-moo milk. His brothels always had the cleanest joy-boys and coin-girls willing to do the dirtiest things. Tic-Tak's men stayed bribed, avoided too much greed, and rarely busted a being just for their species.
Even the MP's admitted that Tic-Tak ran things the best. MI and CID had embedded so many people into Tic-Tak's staffs that the joke was always 'How many Marine does it take to change the poster in one of Tic-Tak's staff rooms? The only one, the rest are all Military Intelligence and Criminal Investigations Division.”
Even steel teethed warborgs preferred Tic-Tak's area of operations to even R&R vessels.
General Tic-Tak knew how his fellow leaders viewed him. They were right. He didn't have a Combat Action Badge, he didn't understand the first thing about combat (which he admitted, even to himself, the possibility of scared his hair off), didn't know a damn thing about most of the Fleet and the Corps's weapons, and was never going to be some great military leader with a stack of victories high enough to make the Cult of the Blade take notice.
He didn't care.
When he had been told that Telkan-1 and Telkan-2 were lost, he had protested, stating that there was no evidence the enemy was even going to be making landings in force. He had known that this was going to be beyond his capability. Part of him had panicked immediately at the thought of trying to figure out how to stop germs from entering the atmosphere.
He had breathed a sigh of relief when Colonel Harvey and Colonel Kosey had been brought in to handle the combat operations.
He lived in fear that someday he might have to save someone with a gun. He'd privately believed he'd probably shoot himself in the dick except he wasn't a sharpshooter.
Sure, he could usually figure out how to feed every being in the refugee camps with less than half the rations they needed, but actually do anything but hold his rifle and scream in terror?
Yeah, it wasn't happening.
Which is why he felt so relieved looking over his operations center, a twisted bread dough pretzel in one hand and a narcobrew in the other.
His engineers were going over the configuration schematics for the shelters. He knew there were eight different shelter designs in use, which would require a separate team for each of them to reconfigure the anti-Precursor design for biological hazard protection.
He had no idea how to do it.
But he had men who did.
He wandered through the operations center, watching everyone work. Here the team he had assigned to making sure that podlings and broodcarriers suffered minimal discomfort if they had to be exposed to 3G to 5G accelleration. Anything higher unacceptable and he was offering bonuses in alk, herb, and sweaty time to any team who figured out how to safely get below 3G without sacrificing protection or lengthening the amount of time they would be in atmosphere.
There another team worked to figure out how to make the rations last longer. Podlings and the three sexes all had trace nutrient needs that different from the others in the group. The goal was something that the nutrigel/paste dispensers could churn out that had variety, taste, texture, smell and was fully nutrient loaded.
Tic-Tak knew he wasn't the brightest leader out there, but by the Burning Chrome Egg, he surrounded himself with the best and made sure they had access to best.
There was a minor argument between the three competing teams overseeing the reconfiguration and he steered himself over there, gesturing at a Captain to bring over the tray of narcobrew and stimsticks.
”...to keep any environmental hazards from entering the shelter while keeping the external ventilation, power, and waste disposal lines open,” one team member was saying.
”Then what do you suggest? Should we just have them running on canned air? What if we need to get into those shelters to protect them?” another shot back.
”Gentlebeings, gentlebeings, what is the disagreement?” General Imak Takilikakik asked mildly.
”We're trying to keep any external threats from reaching anyone inside the shelters. We're in particular concerned with tailored organisms designed to move through groundsoil and follow water seepage,” A third one said.
Tic-Tak looked at the schematic for a long time. The current consensus was to move the FTL drives underground via drill housings and mount them to the sides, providing access panels for maintenance system technicians.
Tic-Tak frowned. He lazily pointed at the FTL engines. ”How many of our Telkan brothers and sisters are rated for FTL drive repair?” he asked.
They all looked at each other and then at Tic-Tak as if he'd grown a second head. ”Uh, none, sir,” one said carefully.
”Show me a simulation of the reconfiguration stages until they get to their refugee planet,” Tic-Tak said.
He watched the shelter's wireframes shift, shift again, shift a third time, then the engines get added, then another shift. A launch shift. An orbital shift. An FTL shift. A post-FTL shift. Another orbital shift. A landing shift.
Tic-Tak shook his head, looking at the four engineer groups.
”Gentlebeings, gentlebeings, I am disappointed. This is the Corps, our motto is 'as few moving parts as possible' not the Navy's motto of 'can I add any more missions and equipment to this?' and you are not thinking straight,” Tic-Tak said. He put the simulation at the first stage, the current stage.
He made only a handful of alterations, then adjusted the engines. ”There, gentlebeings. I present to you the Shuttle-Block.”
Tic-Tak shrugged as all the engineers looked at him in horror. ”I am not an engineer. I am sure that you had much more elegant plans,” he said. He took a swig of his narcobrew, wiped the foam from his scraggly mustache, and shrugged. ”You handle the details of that reconfiguration. No more.”
The engineers stared at each other as Tic-Tak walked away. All he had done was pull the shelters into one long block, seal the entire thing with three meters of warsteel with no exits or entrances at all, and had the engines attach by wrapping straps around the the block-like warsteel wrapped shelters.
They immediately set to work, talking about how of course it should go to internal atmosphere as if it was a longjump ship right now.
Tic-Tak heard his datalink ping and opened a window in the corner of his vision as he watched one of his subordinates, a talented Rigellian, managed to find two unused creation engines and ordered them to be moved near the Telkan lines and configured for repair, refit, and reload operations.
”General Imak Takilikakik speaking,” He said, putting up his favorite wallpaper of himself sitting behind a desk on Terra.
”General, Colonel Harvey here,” the other man said. He was using real-time, which was fine, there was no chance of a stray turn revealing his logistics chains to anyone peering at the datachannel.
”Ah, Colonel Harvey, I assume you have called me with good news about how I was right and the enemy won't be making planetfall?” Tic-Tak said.
Colonel Harvey shook his head, resisting the urge to reach through the datalink and strangle the fat Terran. ”No, sir. They've landed in force. Meteoric drop-pods are landing all across the planet now,” he said instead.
”Oh. That is unfortunate,” Tic-Tak said. He pinged his engineers that they had one hour to complete the initial reconfiguration plan or it would go out as-is. ”I was hoping that I was correct.”
Harvey just sighed. ”No, General. We've lost a significant amount of territory to the enemy already. The newest drop pods contain creatures that exit the cracked pods and attack as soon as they can cross the crater.”
”Well, that sounds like a job for your men, Colonel,” Tik-Tac answered, feeling a cold chill on his back. He glanced around at all his men, looking for any not wearing their sidearms. He pinged them all to go get their sidearms and reluctantly pinged his assisant to retrieve his own from the armory.
Harvey swallowed. ”Yes, sir.”
”Let me know what my people can do for yours. We'll be quite busy, I'm sure you understand, with logistical concerns,” Tic-Tak said. ”For the Honor of the Corps, Colonel,” he said, and cut the link. He turned and snapped his fingers, pinging everyone's datalinks. They turned and looked at him.
”The enemy is making planetfall. Move to Readiness Two. Warm up the creation engines and nanoforges. All logistics commanders, ensure that the combat troops in your areas have one hundred and fifty-percent of unit commander recommended food, water, and ammunition per element. Alert all medical units to prepare for incoming casualties,” he said. ”Git 'er done!”
Harvey ground his teeth as the General cut the line. There was nobody else he'd want handling post-battle reconstruction, hell, even active combat logistics, but the man was just do so goddamn dense it drove Harvey crazy.
”Does he not take this serious?” Brentili'ik asked, staring at the holotank.
Harvey shook his head. ”It's not that. He's not a combat soldier. I doubt he even knows where his weapon is. But,” he held up his fingers to stop Brentili'ik's angry outburst. ”I'm willing to lay bets had knows where every single bullet and scrap of armor is located in the entire system.”
Brentili'ik was silent for a moment. ”I worry for my husband.”
Harvey nodded. ”I get it,” he waved the holotank and loaded up a schematic of the area hit the hardest. ”Your husband's there, isn't he?”
Brentili'ik nodded. ”First Telkan Marine Brigade (New Blood).”
Harvey turned to Brentili'ik and stared at her for a long moment.
”What?” She asked, feeling suddenly nervous about the way the human was staring at her.
”It's time, Madame Director, for you to learn to put on your protective gear and use the evac-lift and your emergency gear.”
”But I have too much to...” she started to argue and then saw Colonel Harvey's face. She swallowed. ”Perhaps you are right?”
Harvey nodded. ”Good. I want you able to put it on, in the dark, in the lift itself, in under thirty seconds. We will start practicing now.”
Brentili'ik sighed. She'd tried it on twice. Once to ensure it fit right, once to check to make sure it was still in working order. She sighed again and followed the big human in. It felt strange to have him watch her strip naked and put the suit on.
”Again,” he said after the first time. ”That was four minutes. You're dead. Do it again.”
She sighed as she started undoing the seals.
Vuxten heard Private Second Class Peklik cry out in fear and turned, seeing the other Telkan covered completely in spores. The other Telkan had nudged a seed pod and it had vomited yellowish-green spores all over the armor covered troop.
Vuxten turned and pointed the nozzle of the weapon he was carrying at his fellow troop. ”Stay calm, Private,” Vuxten snapped, and thumbed the trigger. Flame whooshed out of the nozzle, covering the armored Telkan. Vuxten kept it up to the count of three and released the trigger.
Lacey soot wafted down from the small suit of armor. He could see that Peklik was panting and opened his com-link. ”Breathe through your nose, trooper,” he snapped.
”Yes, sir,” Peklik said. His breathing changed.
”Everyone, watch your feet,” Vuxten said over a section-link that would go to both squads. ”Squad leaders, watch your men.”
He got back a chorus of assent and waved at his men to keep moving.
The only ones carrying flame throwers were four of the twelve Terran Marines and Vuxten.
The air was full of spores drifting down. Some glowed yellow, some green, a few here and there glowed red. The plants were twisted looking, greasy or waxy looking, with broad leaves covered in veins. Some were beginning to flower, others had tiny buds of fruit on them.
Three weeks ago it had been a park.
Now it looked like nobody had been there in decades.
Vuxten checked his HUD again. There had been eight 'knots' landing in the park, hitting where the pond had been. The biggest ones so far and this was in his unit's area of responsibility.
He knew his men were nervous, hell, he was nervous, but someone had to check it. LT Bent Spoon had told him that there shouldn't be any problem but he was going to send twelve Terran Marines, including four warborgs, with him just in case.
Up ahead the road had been reduced to a gravel road.
”Try not to brush against the plants too much. Warsteel's proof against most acids these things are giving out, but we don't want to take the chance of something new,” Gunnery Sergeant Wentmark said, his voice calm and even.
”Roger,” was all Vuxten said, squeezing the flamethrower slightly.
”Vuxten, take point,” the Gunny said.
Vuxten sighed and trotted forward a little, looking around steadily. He heard his first Sergeant's voice in the back of his head.
'keep your head on a swivel, Vux, and you'll be fine...'
The jungle hissed and creaked around them. Liquid pattered and there was the sound of something moving in the foilage but nothing showed itself. Each step was an exercise in nervousness and every soldier expected a puffball to erupt no matter how many troops had stepped there before them. A vine dropped down but a knife caught it, severing it, leaving the ends suddenly curling up and as acid dripped from the hollow spot, the saw toothed thorns pushing through the vegetative skin on the inside of the curls.
”I took my family here a month ago,” Private Fotlan said softly.