Chapter 253: (Hesstla) (1/2)

One thing Mukstet had grown used to that he thought he'd never be able to live with constantly, was the tingling itchy taste of blueberries on his back teeth from the psychic shield being cranked up so high that it caused random sparks to pop on metal surfaces.

But that consideration was far and away as he feathered the graviton engines and slipped to the side slightly, weaving around a copse of particularly large trees. It was still snowing, and would continue to snow for months according to weather services, the flakes full of heavy metal and other particles not normally used to create the core of the snowflake. His scanners were full of hash, even with the eVI compensating for it, but that was another thing he'd gotten used to.

Just like he'd gotten used to the growling, just beyond his hearing, that seemed to emanate from every TDH he got near.

Striker dismount teams had been altered, two TDH in combat armor, not warborgs, acting as gunners and dismount crews. All of them, no matter what their previous rank, considered Privates for the sake of the chain of command. Like most Telkans, Mukstet was slightly concerned about 'Terran Battle Madness', but at the same time, as a Telkan Marine, he was somewhat unphased by the fact that the Terrans had devolved to the basic 'kill motherfuckers and break their shit' mode.

Mukstet fluttered the portside engines and slid around a communications tower that was blackened and damaged, its capability destroyed weeks ago during the fighting to secure the commo bands.

Mukstet still thought it was interesting that the Terran military actually had ancient protocol to deal with Terran Battle Madness. Those species not suspectible to whatever it was driving the Terrans crazy took over leadership and logistics support positions while the Terrans all shifted to their basic infantry training and moved to combat arms.

He could understand that. Otherwise you'd be face to face with a huge angry primate telling it that it wasn't allowed to fight, which meant you had a reasonably good chance to be fighting that same primate over whether or not it was allowed to go fight.

Front Toward Enemy bubbled up in his mind through his datalink, followed by Pull Pin and Throw, both of them images of a Mantid or Treana'ad carefully arming a human, pointing it at clankers, and running away.

Off in the distance was a flash of an atomic cracking off. His rad detectors beeped through the spike before the rumble washed over him. His neural link let him know that it was a low yield low output tactical weapon in the 125kt range, a fairly clean neutron weapon from the looks of it, ground burst, which meant lots of uptake.

He saw his target and set up waypoint markers, secure in the knowledge that the three strikers following him would have the markers show up on their HUD. He slowed down, confident in Plamix's ability to run the EW and stealth systems, dropping over the road.

Burnt out cars, destroyed in Clanker strafing runs after the Goonygoogoos had done their brain harvesting, slid by under the hull of his striker. Plamix was good enough to keep the graviton eddies from whipping up snow as he slid between a burnt out semi-tractor trailer and a jumble of cars. The highway ran straight for almost five miles then curved to the east and Mukstet kept one eye on his stealth meter and dropped his speed a tick to reduce grav/air eddies.

His neural link tossed up an image of a tiptoeing Telkan, no caption, which let him know more than Kuplo's signal, that they were beyond the ad-hoc makeshift communications network the Terrans were using.

He slid around the corner and saw the goal. A massive highway interchange designed to handle heavy cargo vehicles for the six lane highways. The bridge was burnt and blackened but still intact. There was no vehicles underneath the bridge, something that normally would have kicked off Mukstet's paranoia, but he knew that three weeks ago it had been used as a makeshift fortification by elements of 3/67 Armor to let their tanks cool down.

The striker slid through the tank-sized gap with meters to spare on either side, moving under the bridge before Mukstet kicked the landing gear out and settled the striker down.

The graviton engines spun down and Mukstet exhaled explosively.

Stealth missions were a bitch and he cursed the universe for ever coming up with them. He was a Marine striker pilot, he preferred direct action.

Which is why this mission promised to be good.

”All right, everyone warm up the nano-forges for your ammo bays. Engineers, double-check the weapon systems and the psychic suppression systems for all non-Terran troops. Dismount teams, prepare for deployment,” Mukstet ordered across the command channel.

It only took a minute for everyone to signal back green.

Now comes the hard part, he thought to himself. The waiting.

Time seemed to take forever to tick by. Each second seeming to take longer and longer. He had to admit he was worried about the piece of equipment in one of the belly weapon bays. Still, it was an order from the Admiral in orbit, who had finally managed to make contact with the troops on the ground after nearly two months of being out of contact.

She had identified the method of the enemy's arrival, how they were making insertion, and had informed groundside that reinforcements were on the way.

Digital Omnimessiah knew they could use them.

--everything green. good to go. awaiting signal-- 973 reported.

”Popping stealth drone,” Mukstet warned everyone. He reached out with a muscle he hadn't been born with and a panel opened on the side of the striker. The drone slid out instead of being magnetically fired, rolled in midair to deploy the thin wing membranes, and coasted away, using the planet's EM field and gravitational field to move.

The drone's view was in the upper right corner of Mukstet's vision and he closed his eyes, watching the drone he knew Kuplo was piloting. It moved down the highway, weaving between burnt out and damaged vehicles, most with the roofs ripped apart, humming quietly to itself. The limited VI onboard was eager to be sneaky, excited to be quiet, as it shifted and slowly banked into the woods. It knew that it was deep in enemy territory and was excited to be part of the plan.

The drone wove between the trees, gaining altitude so it had to bank around branches.

Finally it could see the target and banked to slowly circle it.

A large open area, with apparently nothing in the field. A closer look showed that the snow was churned into mud and that mud sprayed up at odd times for apparently no reason. One in a while there were the hints of purple flashes, hints of purple sparks, and a suggestion of shapes.

The drone settled down on a branch with a good view, letting its wings droop down and snow start to cover it as it watched with the optical lens only, forgoing its complex and myriad sensors, using only the analog system in the optical lens.

I see you, Mukstet thought to himself.

He settled back, waiting, the engines on standby, the nano-forges warmed up, his crews ready.

He knew this wouldn't win the war, that one battle might turn the tide of the war if the aftermath was properly capitalized upon, but a single battle winning the war was a thing of Tri-Vee specials.

But it wouldn't hurt.

The chronometer burned in the corner of his vision.

1634LT-52.8535

--------------------------

Admiral Karen Grwarga Thennis, Commander, Task Force Tiamat, watched as the TCSFNV Scrooge McDuck disconnected from the battlecruiser TCSFNV Popeye and began moving back toward the gas giant where the TCSFNV Daisy Duck had already vanished into. The two massive extractor-refinement ships had done their jobs, bringing matter in for the battered ships of Task Force Tiamat to use to fuel the nano-forges and creation engines to carry out repairs and reloading.

”Time to enemy arrival?” she asked, setting down in her crash-couch.

”Three hours,” Commodore NGwark said without looking up from her instruments. She was keeping an eye on the twisted gravity of the 'eddy' between the planet and the moon, watching for certain grav-streams to start increasing and 'kick' to use her words.

”Any answers to our distress calls?” Admiral Thennis asked, glancing at the ship's chronometer and her own.

They were slightly out of synch, slowly widening over the last...

Oh, man, how am I going to explain it in reports? she asked herself. I hope this works.

She looked around the bridge of her battlecruiser, noting the wear. How the battlesteel deck plating had slight ripples from the constant foot traffic on it. How the solid keyboards, normally held for backup in case the holokeyboards went down, had the letters and numbers and icons carefully repainted and restenciled.

The main display flickered slightly as two technicians lowered it. Most of the red 'pixels' on the display were black, long use having made them give it up.

She glanced at her DCC board, which one of her crewmembers had attached to her crash cradle... weeks? months? years? battles? ago to allow to her not have to rely on data-packet switching.

All green across the board. The damage from the fire on Deck 19 had been repaired. The matter tanks were filled, the nano-forges and creation engines deslushed and cooled down to the lower edge of operating temperature.

Commodore Navtren leaned back, rubbing her swollen stomach, then shook her head, looking at Admiral Thennis.

”No response to our distress calls. The hypercom is undergoing the same problems we are, it's completely compromised,” she said. She winced. ”Damn, he kicks. Anyway, the Marines are still holding the power plant and are expecting to be able to repulse the enemy in two hours.”

Admiral Thennis nodded.

”All right, let's get ready. We can keep this up as long as they can,” she said.

She looked at the ship's chronometer again.

1634.41LT - 52.8535

Then at her own.