Chapter 150: (Telkan) (2/2)

”You about ready to get to the real question yet, Vux?” Trucker asked, spitting in the bottle.

Vuxten nodded. ”Are you married, sir?”

Trucker shook his head. ”Nope. I'm a tanker.”

”I don't understand.”

Trucker sighed, spit, and looked back down at Vuxten. ”It's a tanker thing. Women get jealous of your tank, of your crew.”

”Oh,” Vuxten said. ”My wife worries about me.”

”And she always will,” Trucker said. ”Shit, that's going to be a problem.”

”What?” Vuxten asked.

”That.”

Up on the tank one of the green mantids climbed out of the commander's hatch, shaking a fist and flashing angry emojis at the mechanics working on the gears and pistons at the base of the cannon barrel.

”What happened?” Vuxten asked.

”They shorted out the autoloader lift for the gun. It can't bring the ammo up out of the magazine until it gets fixed. Those shells weigh almost four hundred pounds and we do not want to be hand-loading in the heat of battle,” Trucker said, shaking his head. ”That sucks royally. The whole loader wiring harness is going to have to be pulled and replaced and poor 854 is going to have to check the power leads and computer lines from the ammunition creation engine. He's going to be at it for hours.”

One of the mechanics yelled something back and the little green one flashed some rude emojis and jumped back into the tank.

”How did you know?” Vuxten asked.

Trucker shrugged. ”I dunno. I just knew. Been able to since I was a butterbar like you,” he looked back down at Vuxten. ”If you're going to ask me how to keep your wife from worrying, I'll tell you what I tell my boys: She's always going to worry about you. It's her job. There will be times where you won't take care of yourself too good and she'll have to. She worries because she loves you, and there's nothing more pure than that.”

”Oh,” Vuxten said. He'd hoped the big human would have had better advice.

Trucker suddenly turned around, putting his hand to his datalink. ”Hey! Watch zero point core seven on Big Iron, it's got a base crack!”

One of the mechanics on one of the heavy tanks waved.

”Yeah, it took a hit from one of the big crawlers. I'll bet it's cracked between the two power studs,” Trucker said.

”I've gotta go, sir,” Vuxten said. Trucker waved at him and Vuxten hustled out of the tank motorpool, waving to the tankers and mechanics that called out to him.

Walking back Vuxten got curious and checked the image bank, running a keyword search for Trucker. Hundreds of them popped up. A lot of them didn't make sense to him, but some did. The ones showing Trucker half hidden by the shadows staring with bright red cyber-eyes at privates or junior NCO's doing something wrong made him snort. Another common one was for a tanker to be saying something stupid in a close up then it pulled back to Trucker standing behind the tanker, almost completely transparent, with the tanker saying ”He's right behind me, isn't he?”

Vuxten got a couple of chuckles out of some he really didn't understand. ”Tri/quadbarrel go brrr” he didn't get. He didn't get ”Which would win: 750 tons of rolling death or one orphan pointy-boy?” with a picture of a main battle tank on one side and a screw laying on the ground on the other. The whole old man sitting in what looked like a very low tech tank saying: ”Aw, you've been in the field for two weeks? I've been in the same tank since Trucker still had all his parts.” one he understood.

When he got to the morgue he walked down the line, watching what everyone was doing. A few of his men were half in their suits being synched up to them, one was arguing with a mechanic about the reloader on his missile launcher with his green mantid flashing icons of frustration.

That one Vuxten went over to check out since it reminded him of something he'd noticed the last couple of weeks.

”I'm telling you, there's nothing wrong with your missile launcher's feed,” the mechanic was saying.

”And I'm telling you the links keep binding up in combat,” the Telkan told the human, not backing down. The Mantid flashed frustrated icons.

”Look, I've been a power armor tech since before we even found your world,” the human started to say.

”So you've been a mechanic since before this armor was designed, on the fly, during the Precursor War, by some engineers aboard one of the major fabrication ships, with exactly me for them to base the armor off of?” Vuxten said mildly.

The mechanic turned around, opened his mouth, then his implant pinged him with who Vuxten was.

”Every little brother here,” Vuxten pointed at the little green Mantid on the top of the other Telkan's head. ”will tell you that the grenade launcher feed mechanism is badly designed. That the inertial dampener punches you in the stomach if you jog left off of your right foot above a fifteen mile an hour job, that the graviton booster in the left boot has to be miscalibrated by two one hundredths of a G because it's not right.”

Vuxten waved at all the armors in the morgue. ”These were made as fast as possible for us. They left the ship in orbit to make parts for us just in case.”

”What do you want me to do about it, sir?” The mechanic asked, trying to keep the anger from his voice.

Vuxten sighed. ”What I would like we can't take the time to do,” he said.

The human frowned: ”What?”

”The armor's still in prototype phase,” Vuxten said. ”I'd like it if your men could take a look at the armor from the ground up. Check the wear on them, see if there's any mistakes, go over the problems with our little brothers, check the pilot logs for complaints.”

Vuxten waved his hand toward his own armor which still had the red circular splotch with the rings and the X inside it. ”Just do your best, that's all we ask, Senior Tech.”

The human looked mollified. ”Nobody said they were prototype suits,” he mused. ”I'll check with your Division command to see when you have to go out next. It'll take you off the line for a couple of days.”

Vuxten sighed. ”My men need rest anyway.”

”We'll avoid any major changes so you don't have to completely retrain,” the Tech said.

”Just see if you can fix the shoulder launchers,” Vuxten said, nodding. ”Those are the big ones. My little green brother has to kick on mine if I've been running it hard in combat to get it to close and he says it's a design flaw.”

The Tech kept from sighing. He could blow off the Telkan's complaints if he really tried, but trying to claim that experienced mantid engineers didn't know what they were talking about would raise some eyebrows.

”We'll check those first. Hopefully it's an easy fix that we can just engine up the parts,” the Tech said.

”Thank you,” Vuxten said, turning away. He saw the tech out of the corner of his eye put his fingers on his implant and subvocallize. Almost as one the techs immediately started checking out the shoulder launchers of the armors they were working on.

Within ten steps everything suddenly changed.

The mantids as one hid behind the armor cradles, flashing signs of awe and fear. The human techs suddenly stood up and looked around. Shadows seemed to grow and twist and Vuxten saw several shadows, shaped like twisted and contorted humans, slide across the floor with a faint scream that he could barely hear. The lights flickered, several showering sparks as they blew out.

The far door opened and a robed figure entered. It was a slender figure that moved forward slowly. The mantids all shivered, more than a few bending forward to put their bladearms against the floor and flash runes and emojis that Vuxten didn't understand.

She left footprints of blood behind her. Her hands seemed to drip blood onto the floor.

The Telkan pressed against the wall, joining the human techs.

Vuxten stood in the middle of the room, watching her approach. When she was a third of the way to him it felt like someone had hit him with a firm pillow in the face but he just snarled, lifting his upper lip from his teeth, refusing to move.

The figure stopped in front of him and he looked up. Her eyes were burning purple fire, her skin was gray, she had flames scarred into her face that were filled with flowing ebbing and surging purple energy, and her throat was sliced open revealing her windpipe, blood leaking from it down her neck to disappear into the robe. She had strange markings on her cheek that Vuxten had been told were her rank and her system identification number.

”Brother Vuxten,” the woman gurgled. A shadow slid from under her robe, twisting and reaching out to one of the techs, who drew back, flinching, as it screamed and then tattered apart.

”Sister,” Vuxten said, nodding his head.

”My Lord requests your presence. Garb yourself in holy warsteel and bring your faithful one, brother,” the woman gurgled. A light blew out by the door in a shower of purplish sparks and a thin electronic scream.

”I will be there, sister,” Vuxten nodded again. The woman touched his forehead and his datalink pinged that the file was loaded. It had weight to it, almost made his knees buckle, but instead he straightened his back and snarled.

The female human nodded, turned, and slowly left, leaving behind bloody footprints. The door shut and the lights went back to the normal, the shadows slid back into the correct shapes, and the pressure seemed to lift. The human techs all gave sighs of relief and the mantids got up, scurrying into groups of three or four to touch antenna.

Everyone was staring at him as he walked to his cradle. 471 already had the armor open and live. Vuxten stripped off his suit and climbed in, wincing slightly as the jack slammed home into the cybernetic linkage at the base of his skull. The armor whined slightly as it closed and Vuxten waited until the function check and then 471's checks were finished.

Everyone stared and he could hear them whispering as he left the motorpool. He followed the directions on his cybereye, leading him up to the wall.

He was there less than a second when the heavily armored dropship dropped down in front of him, its retro rockets firing hard. The big hatch on the side opened up and Vuxten saw a dozen of those massive humans in the heavy armor with the thick plates standing inside. The one in the middle was massive, big even for these humans.

”Come, brother,” one of them said, moving aside slightly.

Vuxten jumped across the gap, twisting and somersaulting so he landed facing outward. The dropship kept the sides open as it roared upward.

He didn't ask questions as the logistics base dwindled then vanished as the dropship banked and accelerated with the scream of mistuned drives. 471 was quiet on the linkage, only flashing a rune that didn't translate on the upper right corner of his vision.

”Brother Vuxten,” the biggest one suddenly said as the craft shuddered through the sky.

”Yes, brother?” Vuxten answered.

”I am served by oracles and seers,” the figure stated. ”They have foreseen that shelter 371A4 will malfunction and surface early. They have seen you at my side. Only you of all the Telkan people.”

Vuxten felt his blood run cold.

That was the shelter his family was in. His broodcarriers and podlings.

”Fear not, brother, for we shall be with them,” the massive figure stated.