Chapter 125: (Telkan) (1/2)
TARGET!
FIRE!
SHOT OUT!
HIT! TANGO STILL UP!
rang out across the entire BATACNET, each tank maneuvering superficially individually but as one rapidly shifting interlocked whole. Daybreak had come, passed, and night had fallen again. The entire surface of the planet was dotted with fires, some slowly going out, others blooming into life. The air was full of ash, scorched pollen, and burnt spores.
Out in the ocean missiles corkscrewed down out of orbit, deploying submunitions by the hundreds, all of which dropped into the ocean to fall through the water until they detected enough mass, which they detonated.
Not normal explosives, but 'fuel-water-charges' which used the highly pressurized seawater as fuel to burn, expanding a bubble measured in the hundreds of meters, then the icy cold pressurized water slammed back into the bubble, creating a massive shockwave.
Whole swarms of insects took off from mushroom hives only to be intercepted by missiles that blew them apart in chitin shattered blasts.
Subtlety, fanciness, sleight of hand, all of it had been thrown away as the two dominant forces on the surface of Telkan went at it with everything they had. The undersea thinking arrays, all that was left, fought to retake the surface while the surface dwellers burned and scorched away the plant life and directed their assault on the ocean at the same time.
For the surface dwellers, they had heard the voice, firm, with a warsteel core, speak out.
”This was our home, and I would rather the Terrans burn it to liquid rock than allow that obscenity to squat victorious upon its bones.”
The gloves were off.
Biological weapons detonated, releasing drifting clouds of viral and bacterial weapons that shredded apart the jungle, collapsing cell walls, destroying nucleus, whatever it took to destroy the weapon that had destroyed Telkan.
In orbit General Nodra'ak looked at the holotank and blinked slowly.
”Madame Director, did I hear you clearly?” he asked.
Every other holographic representation of Terran military commanders in the system blinked and struggled to hide their shock.
”Yes,” was all Madame Director Brentili'ik stated, lifting her chin in a motion that she learned carried weight with Terrans. ”You heard me correctly, General.”
Admiral Howell stared at the holotank of both planets.
Every single shelter was at yellow. They could be launched, they'd have atmosphere, but the food stocks were incomplete, the waste disposal systems were inadequate, the water treatment and storage was fine for planet-side but space had a tendency to sip away at everything.
They could be launched, could get to orbit, maybe even light off the jumpspace drives, but not one of them would reach the target planet.
”It will take centuries to repair your planet, decades with a full Elven Royal Court, Madame Director, if we go to full warfare,” General Takilikakik, commander of Telkan-1 and Telkan-2 logistics and support said slowly.
”Those minor earthquakes are going to get worse. The creatures are boring tentacles into the ground to create new fault lines and to agitate existing ones, correct?” Brentili'ik asked. She barely understood the whole thing. Plate tectonics was not on the scholastic list and she'd only had an hour to brush up on them. ”This world, both worlds, will be completely destroyed with those creatures providing the basic imprint of life, correct?”
Admiral Howell nodded slowly, staring at the seismic projections. ”Six days before the seismic disturbances reach a resonance. After that the planet will be wracked by earthquakes for decades, volcanic vents will spew ash and gasses into the air to replenish and rebuild the atmosphere, the seas will be heated. After a period of time the ash in the upper atmosphere will reduce the planet's atomspheric temperatures into a deep ice age for a few thousand years, then it will completely rebuild the landscape as the glaciers retreat.”
”They will destroy our homes,” Brentili'ik stated, putting her fists on her hips. ”More than destroy it, they will erase us as if we never existed. Somewhere, out there,” she gestured toward the sky. ”There is or was a creature that would have laid new life down on the planet, including newly genetically altered versions of my people.”
”And in a few million years, you won't be able to tell your people even ever existed, correct,” General Takilikakik stated, nodding. ”You are correct, Madame Director.”
Brentili'ik laid her ears flat. ”And if you were to go to total war, blot the Jungle and its servants from our planets, how long would it take to restore the planets?”
General Vost stared at a holodisplay, twiddling with the data. ”Will a full Royal Court, even if the entire planet was covered in lava with an atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide with a temperature at the surface is 1272 °F and a pressure of 95 b it would be livable within ten years, completely reconstructed as if none of it happened within sixty.”
Brentili'ik thought for a few moments. ”And if I told you to leave the ruins of the cities, rebuild them for the Telkan people, leave the scars upon the land to remind us of why we fight? As if we were Terra?”
General Vost nodded. ”Twenty-two years with a full Elven Court. You'd need to leave the Court in place for a couple hundred years to prevent ecological or climate collapse or disaster, but your people could live here.”
”And how long until the ships can make the journey without losing any of my people?” Brentili'ik asked.
”Two days,” General Takilikakik stated. ”Evey day afterward will increase livability and ease distress.”
”Our planets, our homes, are being ripped apart, distress is going to happen irregardless,” Brentili'ik said. She shook her head. ”How long until the Elven Queen is ready?”
”If she isn't Born Whole? If she learns on the job and fights it as a war with only her citedal? Two days,” General Vost said. ”For Born Whole? She'll need nine days.”
Bentili'ik nodded. ”Then, yes, you heard me correctly.”
She turned as if she was facing each of the soldiers. Each of the, to her, frightening Terrans, so resolute in their determination.
”I hereby, as the representative of the Telkan people, give the Terran Space Force and Terran Confederacy permission to go complete and total weapons free,” Brentili'ik said slowly and carefully. ”I hereby give permission for the Elven Queens and the Terran Genetic Warfare Division to engage in operatons on Telkan-1 and Telkan-2.”
Brentili'ik closed her eyes for a moment, when she opened them she stared at the officers.
”This is our home.”
”And we want it back.”
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On Telkan-2 the units of First Armored Division (Old Metal) fought against the massive insects, following Trucker's strategy. Lieutenant General Watts led his men from the massive main battle tank Boots On, hammering at the giant insects, pulling them around until the Bolos opened fire. 2nd Marine Scouts (Telkan) moved fast through the jungle, following the massive nutrient pipes to the thinking arrays and then marking them before running.
VII Corps (Old Metal) was one of the most powerful Corps in the Terran Armed Services. Normally a Corps only had three divisions, with V Corps being the exception of six, while VII Corps had ten divisions to its name, including 'cloned' units such as 1st Cavalry and 2nd Armored Divisions, which were part of III Corps and just replicated.
While the fighting was furious on Telkan-2, the overwhelming firepower of VII Corps had allowed them to hold the jungle at bay more effectively than on Telkan-1.
When the signal came to go guns free for a split second it was like all of the Terrans on the planet took a deep breath.
The remaining psychic arrays felt the Terrans pause, felt them almost go still, and misunderstood what they were seeing and feeling. They interpreted it as fear, as resignation, as acceptance of their eventual and unavoidable destruction.
Followed age old genetic program that had worked every other time they immediately pressed the attack. Flooded the skies, the seas, the entire surface with insects.
This time it wasn't the jungle that exploded in effort.
It was the humans.
Outnumbered? Yes. Outgunned? No.
”Normal” High Explosive Armor Defeating rounds were unloaded, dumped into the creation engines to be reclaimed, and ATAD (ATomic Armor Defeating) rounds began loading into the magazines. Gamma warheads were formed and racked into the missile racks instead of tungsten rod or explosives. Standard mag-ack ferrous coating rounds were unloaded and collapsed density depleted uranium were loaded.
Across both worlds the ammunition loadout changed from weapons that the ecosystem could easily recover from to full throttle weapons normally only used on enemy planets.
Even as the earthquakes became noticeable the humans loaded their guns, cranked up the battle-shields, and took aim.
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”Are you sure about this, Madame Director,” General Takilikakik asked the Telkan female.
Brentili'ik shook her head. ”Do I have a choice? Do my people have a choice? We can't just run away, can't just cower.”
”Trying to stay will put your people in great danger, Madame Director,” Tik-Tak said, rubbing his hands and forearms together. ”What about your broodcarriers and podlings?”
”There's no guarantee that the shelters will finish in time to launch before that, those, that stuff figures out a way to get to them. You've already detected insects moving around under the ground and have had to use seismic charges to collapse their tunnels. There's no guarantee of anything,” Brentili'ik said. ”We have to hold off several days and as we've seen today, things change rapidly.”
Tik-Tac nodded slowly. ”Indeed, Madame Director. They do.”
Brentili'ik looked at the holotank of the continent the logistics base was sitting square in the middle of and found the small icon for First Scout Marines (Telkan) and reached out with trembling fingers and touched it.
”It's our world.”
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The grenade launcher on his shoulder chuffed out three rounds, each grenade hitting an insect full in the face, leaving a smoking crater under the armor as the EFP blew through the crab-like insect to exit out the back.
471 was holding on with one blade-arm in the socket, swinging out to fire his micro-launcher into a cloud of moths that was spiraling in on Vuxten. His micro-rifle fired off, popping dragonflies as he swung back in and locked his other bladearm back into place.
Vuxten kept his hands on the handles of the heavy rotary autocannon, sweeping it across the insects that were rushing the walls of the logistics base. Battle-screens rippled, sparked, screamed, and glimmered. Ablative shells on the insects burned away as they crossed the screens, leaving the streamlined hard carapace insects to try to charge across the field of fire.
The mines were all gone, the creation engines under the ground that supplied the regenerating minefield overheated and overslushed. The APERS strips on the walls were depleted, those engines steaming with heat rippling off of them.
Around him the artillery had lowered their barrels with the battlecry ”ACTION FRONT!” firing canisters of ultra-dense flechettes straight into the faces of the insects.
Vuxten eased off the trigger, hearing the nanoforge built into the ammunition hopper whine.
His nano-forge managed to wet-print off another six-round stick of 40mm grenades and his launcher fired them off.
First Telkan was on the walls, manning the guns, next to the cybernetic infantry.
Without the intelligence arrays controlling the hive-mind the insects had reacted with instinct, going for the nearest enemy. In some cases they attacked their own kind, but for the most part they charged the human fortifications. Insects burrowed up out of the ground around the shelters, abandoning their futile attempts to bore through warsteel. Burrowed out from under hills. Erupted from the sewers and maintenance tunnels beneath the ruined cities. Swarmed out of the lakes with wet carapaces. Pushed free of the genesis plants whipping antenna and clashing mandibles. Swarmed into the air from hives and nests.
It was as if both sides knew that this was it. One way or another the fate of both planets would be decided in one big convulsive battle-royale to the death.
Vuxten didn't care, he just kept tapping the trigger on the heavy eight barreled autocannon he was manning, spitting out fifty to a hundred rounds a tap. His missile launcher beeped with reloaded satisfaction and Vuxten felt the launcher fire. He wasn't paying attention to his two should mounted weapons, they were tied into the integrated battle net.
Every minute or two there would be a bright eye-watering flash, sometimes bouncing over the horizon, other times within sight, and a boiling cloud would rise up, like the fist of an angry god. Vuxten had felt himself shiver in fear the first two times, now he just knew that it was one more next or large creature that wouldn't be back.
A 'dragon' came swooping in, followed by five of their fellows, and Vuxten pulled the gun around, following the dotted line in his vision, doing his part in the fireplan, and hitting the trigger. He knew it was going to go solid blue before it did, his reactions meshing up.
The rounds from his gun raked into the dragon's wings, shredding them, ripping at them, destroying their aerial lift capacity.
A missile fired from one of the warborgs hit a dragon in its open mouth, the head vanishing in a bluish white flash. Vuxten's rocket pack let all four of the missiles go in a rush, hitting the body of another, blowing out its abdomen so its guts dropped out before the body crumpled.
One managed to get close enough to vomit up its own guts on the wall, covering two of the warborgs. Both borgs just jumped up, out of the mess, then dropping back down to clear the wall with a twitch of their battlescreens, going right back to firing their heavy weapons.
Vuxten was glad it had the warborgs, who were nearly invulnerable to that kind of damage. He'd lost two of First Telkan to an attack like that.
The heavy chrome cyborgs were all wielding heavy weapons, heavy laser weapons that ripped out in nearly one solid bar of light as the barrels rotated through, plasma guns that kept up a steady stream of fire, and something new, something that Vuxten had never seen before.
It was in the atomic class, some kind of weapon that as soon as the beam of whitish blue fire hit ripped apart everything around the impact point in a haze of molecular particles. Nobody but the warborgs were allowed within fifty meters of any of the heavy infantry using the weapons, nobody from First Telkan was allowed within a hundred meters.
Vuxten had no idea how it worked, only that it was used on the bigger creatures.
”KIAJUS INCOMING! MANY MANY KIAJUS!” rang over the headset.
Vuxten swallowed thickly.
--ugly ugly ugly-- 471 said, slamming a bladearm against the 40mm launcher to get it to close. --stupid stupid design stupid designer-- the 40mm slammed shut again.
Vuxten checked his HUD, there were over a dozen of them coming in, eight from the ocean, two from the city ruins, two from the jungle.
All heading for the Logistics Base.
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