Chapter 128: (Telkan) (2/2)
A part of Ekret wondered if the world was xenoformed to be more comfortable to the Lanaktallans or the Telkans. The Telkans were small, furry people that would be able to handle colder weather. One thing Ekret had noted, talking to every Telkan he could meet, is he had yet to find one that had lived outside the city unless they were servants helping take care of manors or estates or luxury resorts.
”Boss, we're coming up on the target,” Bouncy warned. ”We've got tons of signature's rising.”
Ekret checked his datalink. His Division was all getting close to the targets, three regiments were slowly circling fifteen miles out.
”All right, as soon as we hit them, they're going to completely lose it,” Ekret said. He opened the main command channel. ”First Recon, GUNS FREE! MAKE YOUR RUNS!”
Sselssen/Slippery goosed the fans, bringing the speed up from eighty miles and hour back to just over a hundred and sixty. The fans howled as Ekret led the way, the other tanks of the armored company spreading out, all heading toward the blinking dots on the surface.
”Cheapshot, check the munitions,” Ekret ordered.
”Getting good readings, they're warmed up and ready to go,” Cheepeek answered.
”Bouncy, watch the air, Hassler, watch the sonar,” Ekret said. He slid an empty ration tube out of his pocket and put it in his mouth, starting to chew on it.
Three miles.
The entire world smelled of hot rotting algae and seaweed and sulfur from the active volcanoes that were moving by. Ekret reached up and grabbed the aiming handles on the coaxial, thumbing the arming stud and feeling the bolt rack a heavy war-steel tipped 30mm round into the chamber. He had no idea why it was nicknamed the Ma-Duece, but it was a single barrel heavy autocannon with a range of nearly five miles.
Two miles.
He could see the islands, high narrow peaks, getting closer.
Ekret chewed on the ration tube, concentrating on letting go of the handles on the backplace assembly and shaking his hands to ease the soreness. He wrapped his hands back around it.
”MANY MANY CONTACTS RISING!” Hassler called out.
”Wake up the warbois!” Ekret yelled, squeezing handles and putting his thumbs on the firing butterfly plate. He gritted his teeth on the plas tube, grinding it between his teeth.
”Warbois awake, boss!” Bouncy called out.
”Zhukov!” Ekret snapped over the laser commo back to the main base. Zhukov was an AI mentor who helped Ekret keep the Division together. A Digital Sapient with centuries of experience.
He was also too 'big' to fit in any of the tank's systems, so he'd stayed back in the base's computers.
”I am here, General Ekret,” Zkukov answered.
”Tell the Division guns free and plot everyone an exfil!” Exkret said.
”It will be done, General,” Zhukov said.
”I'm counting on your to get our boys out alive. There's still more battles to fight before Berlin!” Ekret snapped and cut the link.
Silvery fish shot out of the water, up into the air, and fluttered wings with a buzzing sound that Ekret could hear over the tank. They turned and arrowed in at the recon tank, hit the battle-screen and exploded into seared and burnt tissue.
”HERE THEY COME!” Hassler yelled.
”Launching payload one!” Cheapshot called out.
Ekret looked back just in time to see the massive chrome barrels, one from each of the three racks that were tilted at an angle, fired via magnetics out into the ocean. He felt his smartlink go live as he consciously synched up with the Ma-Deuce and the targeting reticle appeared in on his retinal display.
”Point two, five seconds,” Slippery yelled.
A pod of misshappen creatures broached the sea, the algae slipping over them as they opened blowholes and exhaled.
Ekret thumbed the trigger. The gun was heavier than Ekret was expecting, thudding twice a second, far far slower than his old chaingun, but the shells were thicker, longer, heavier. With his smartlink he could make it so the gun only fired when it was over the sleek forms slicing after the hovertank.
The heavy rounds, 30mm HEAD (High Explosive Armor Defeating) rounds almost as long as Ekret's arm, blew huge chunks out of the creatures. Three rounds each was enough to turn the creature's midsections into shredded meat and leave them sinking into the ocean.
”Payload Two Out!” Cheapshot called out. ”Point Three Twelve Seconds”
More depth charges were fired from the racks.
Under the water the chrome barrels extended out long wide blades, tilting them to spin the barrels and slow/speed the descent as more and more depth charges were launched by the tanks of First Recon Division (New Metal) and First Cavalry Division across the massive oceans of Telkan-1 and Telkan-2.
A massive nautilus crested the water, only to be hit by multiple rounds. It heeled to the side and another tank put two shots into the side.
It rolled belly up and filled the air with the stench of rotted seaweed burning in a dumpster.
The air was full of whirling airborne creatures. Two dozen came swooping down on 1-1-8, overloading the battle-screen and then impacting the side until the tank exploded.
The Sergeant Major put two atomic rounds into the side of the biggest of the islands, right at the water-line.
Ocean water poured through the hole, hitting the magma, and the explosion stunned or killed biologicals for nearly a mile.
Ekret's hands were starting to ache from firing the gun, hammering sea creatures as they surfaced.
One-One-Three exploded in the water, impaled on a huge horn of a creature rising from the depths.
”LAST ROUND OUT!” Cheapshot said.
Ekret kept shooting at the massive creatures that was swimming after 1-1-2, but the rounds couldn't penetrate beyond the thick blubbery hide. The front of its jaw was cratered and bleeding from where 1-1-3's fusion reactor had detonated, streaming glowing bluish and greenish blood behind it.
Two torpedoes hit the creature mid-body, both of them in the 80kt range, blowing flesh and ichor into the sky.
The remaining tanks hit the throttle, spraying water and algae from beneath the skirts of the hover nacelles, fleeing where they'd dropped the chrome depth charges.
”MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE, TWELVE MILES!” Bouncy yelled.
Ekret kept shooting the coaxial behind them, raking the clouds of airborne creatures furiously flapping their wings to gain altitude in hopes of doing a long swooping dive to increase their airspeed. The sky was full of them, all of them screaming furiously.
The Sergeant Major put two rounds into another island right after they passed it, at a range of less than four miles. Cold seawater poured into the magma chamber, hit, turned to steam, and for a moment was compressed.
That was enough for the volcano to explode. The entire surface section vanishing in a cloud of ash.
”Oh shit shit shit,” Slippery yelled out.
The oncoming wave didn't look large, a swell maybe fifteen feet tall.
There was a loud boom below the water as the ocean rushed back in to hit the magma again.
Beneath the ocean the depth charges checked their depth, checked the distance to the ocean floor, then checked the distance to the psychic shield.
The thinking arrays sneered at the small barrels. Despite the ferocity of the defense of the Hive Queen on the continent, they were confident of their ability to destroy the feral intelligences on the surface.
Each barrel contained thorium antimatter, the pressure heating it as the barrels were squeezed by the water. The chromium battlesteel translated the pressure into heating the contents, causing the thorium to begin to boil inside the container, inside the magnetic bottle.
Just meters before they would have touched the psychic shielding on the suboceanic thinking arrays, both on Telkan-1 and Telkan-2, the barrels exploded as the magnetic shielding blew the barrels apart then failed. The water, deuterium rich, hit the thorium antimatter.
Over each thinking array antimatter blasts in the megatons took place, driving a wall of solid water straight into the psionic shielding with more force than the blast could have produced in the air.
First Recon Division (New Metal) and First Cavalry Division (Old Blood) ran for their lives across the ocean as it began to boil, steam rising off of it. The ocean rippled and flexed as the shockwaves beneath the water slammed into one another.
Brentili'ik felt the ground shudder beneath her and looked at the maps of Telkan-1 and Telkan-2. There were rings of red flashing in the oceans.
She felt herself slowly give a feral human smile, drawing her lips back from her teeth.
This is Telkan, not monster world, and you are. not. welcome. here, she thought to herself. Land or sea, I will have you exterminated as you tried to exterminate my people. I will burn you from my world even if I must pray to an Elven Queen to heal my world.
She turned and walked out of the command center, staggering slightly from exhaustion. The fighting had slowed, the newcomers having pushed the creatures and the jungle back from the bases, out in a circle from over each of the shelters.
She leaned against the wall at one point, closing her eyes for a moment, and almost fell from exhaustion.
”Madame Director, you shouldn't leave by yourself,” Colonel Harvey said from behind her. ”Are you all right?”
”I'm just exhausted,” Brentili'ik said. She pushed off the wall, stumbling to the elevator. Harvey followed her, waiting in the elevator as it went below ground. Once the doors opened, she followed the glowing line in her retinal display until she reached her goal.
Colonel Harvey stayed outside the door when she went inside.
Vuxten was face down on the small bed, one arm out of his coveralls, his feet bare. His fur had that crisped looking appearance that he always had after time in armor. There was stitches on the back of his head and he had a medical patch on each shoulder and on his lower back.
But Brentili'ik saw none of that as she undid the seal on her coveralls and stepped out of them.
She laid on the bed next to her husband, gathering her exhausted mate close, knowing he didn't move because he was bone weary and medicated up.
We are a small people, a peaceful people, but this is our world and we will not give it up, she thought furiously to herself, holding tight to her husband.