Chapter 285: (TerraSol) (2/2)

It was the ”Tasty-Freeze Missile” that the Treana'ad loved. A small missile, without even an explosive warhead. Instead the missile came in hard and fast, waiting until it was within a couple dozen meters of the target before deployed a handful of blades that made the missile rotate at high speed. The warsteel tip and the blades destroyed anything it touched, spraying blood, flesh, bone, and armor fragments across the battlefield.

Dropship's battlescreens flared, rippled, and failed. Armor held for only a few minutes, an eternity in combat, and then the dropships began exploding as missiles impacted home and blew their guts through the armor and into the interior spaces of the dropships.

Some of the Lanaktallan began breaking, unable to handle the fast high pitched shriek of the Tasty-Freeze or the laughing rockets or the steady pounding of the magac guns. They broke from their fortifications, galloping out onto the icy surface. War Stallions never break under fire.

But they weren't War Stallions.

Roving patrols of Treana'ad chased them down.

The Lanaktallan had devoted ten times the amount of attackers to Terra itself than any other planet, even the massive industrial planets of Mars and Mercury.

A handful of the first wave got through, less than five thousand of the troop carriers made landing.

The initial waves were slaughtered before they could even mount a coherent defense.

The Second Wave, the Military Wave, came in hard, warships protecting the troop carriers as they threw themselves against the Terran defenses. Logic and experience stated that the Terran defenses should be low on ammunition, would be forced to conserve ammunition to face the Executor Wave, but the Terran guns fired as if there was no tomorrow, only the battle at hand.

They landed on all eight 'continents', including the two polar continents.

All of their experience and 'memories' only told them how to fight on a single overarching mega-continent and the scattered islands on the rest of the planet as that was how most of the worlds inside the Green Zone were set up.

The polar continents were wreathed in fog and steam that seemed to get thicker as the ships roared down. They expected to find little to no resistance.

Like Titan, every chunk of ice big enough to stand on with one foot was armed. The fighting was thick and heavy as the Terran forces went at the Lanaktallan, most of whom didn't even get off of their ships.

The other six continents the ships kept screaming down out of the skies with orders to shut down the planetary defense screens, shut down the antimatter and nuclear suppression field generators. The Corporate Fleet had manage to transmit landing zones, but those zones were full of nothing but death and destruction. Panicked radio messages had screamed about giant birds in one landing zone, another one had just stopped transmitting, the ships sitting in the middle of jungle as the vegetation slowly began to wrap the dropships in its leafy fist, the others had all shrieked about being under heavy attack.

The Military Fleet made its landings. Thousands of targets, dozens, hundreds of ships driving for each landing zone.

Less than half of them made it to the landing zone. The flight paths were a rain of debris and armored bodies falling from the skies.

Even intra-atmosphere missile attacks were swept aside by point defense systems with thick enough firepower to rake dropships from the sky. Only the sheet weight of numbers allowed any of the troopships to make landing. In many places less than a handful reached the landing zone, touching down just as hypersonic missiles roared in and hit, executing top-down attacks and scattering pieces of the troopships and the troops themselves over the area.

Lanaktallan military theory often stressed that no race would use atomic weaponry or other heavy weaponry upon their own soil, knowing that they would have to live on the planet they had hammered with atomics.

The Terrans didn't seem to care.

Atomic blasts registering in the megatons, normally used in ship to ship engagements, detonated on the surface of Terra or in airbursts only a few thousand feet up.

It was as if they didn't care. They'd destroy the planets themselves in this fight.

In orbit, a few of the Lanaktallan Most Highs wondered if they'd even have to bother dropping the planetary shields to destroy the planet, the Terrans seemed bound and determined to destroy it themselves.

The few dropships that managed to land in cities found themselves under attack from all sides. From the broken and shattered skyrakers came rockets, weapons fire, missiles, and even just debris hucked from a great height.

More than a few Lanaktallan troopers, sent out to secure the landing zone, were crushed by filing cabinets or desks thrown from the 200th story of a skyraker. Infantry Highs or Most Highs ordered rocket attacks on the buildings to suppress any fire from them.

That stopped when the buildings started getting dropped on the landing zones.

Lanaktallan on the ground tried to warn the ships in orbit not to designate any city landing zones.

The ships in orbit were blown out of the sky before they could transmit their findings to the Executor Fleet.

There was no over-arching command of the all the forces. There were too many ships for that, the Lanaktallan VI's and computer system incapable of performing such a task.

But still they kept landing, even if it was into a meat grinder or reinforcing troops that had been dead for hours.

After all, War Stallions knew no fear.

They were convinced that Terrans had to know fear. Had to be terrified by the sheer amount of Lanaktallan metal that was raining down on every world in their home system.

All they had to do was land enough troops, destroy enough cities and planets, and grief would consume them, defeat would sink into their minds, and the Lanaktallan would emerge victorious.

Someone probably should have told the Terrans that.

Because the Mantid had learned that if anything, a Terran just buckled down harder.

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The city had been attacked before. Even before the Glassing, it had been attacked. Wars had been fought around it, over it, because of it, and just to punish it. The Mantid had glassed it, but it was no different to those who loved the city than when it had been hit with atomic weapons even before the Extinction Agenda Attack.

They just rebuilt. Each time making it more beautiful even as it retained its heritage. From the melted steel framework left over after the Mantid attack the Iron Tower was rebuilt over the city. Its alleys had the best wine and cheese and bread. Its streets had the most luxurious shops. It had a history of artwork, of poetry, of fashion.

The history was thick enough to cover the blood that had soaked the streets since the human race had barely mastered iron.

The Lanaktallan troop ships slammed down around the city, intending on eliminating its ability to provide part of the planetary defense shield. Debris and bodies fell from the sky onto the streets and roofs of the city even as the ramps lowered. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, self propelled artillery vehicles, rocket launchers, and infantry poured out. They advanced into the city, carefully maneuvering through the winding streets that were silent.

The streets were empty. Flag waved from building fronts, tables were scattered with wine, bread, and cheese still on them. Music could be heard from buildings far away, never where the Lanaktallan were passing, but in front of, behind, or a block over.

The tanks clattered down the wide avenues, confident in their strength and firepower, the crews breathing a sigh of relief that the city was apparently undefended. The crews were unaware that it wasn't the first time that tanks had rolled down the streets.

The aerospace fighters screamed in and were met by missiles, exploding in the skies.

Lanaktallan hurrying to the launch sites found little more than a man portable mass driver or graviton driver.

The first few picked it up to examine it.

And triggered the grenade hidden under it.

Rockets were fired from alleys, from rooftops, always hitting the upper back deck of the tanks. Bottles of flaming alcohol were thrown from windows or alleys. Twice manholes exploded, the IED gutting the tank that had rolled over it.

Not enough to stop the advance, just enough to slow it, let it bunch up, as the Lanaktallan army moved deeper and deeper into the city.

In a wine shop a couple sat watching the Lanaktallan go by. The hologram at the front of the shop hid that the interior was full of customers watching the armored Lanaktallan go by. The battlescreen was the portable kind but still stronger than the ones sported by the Lanaktallan tanks.

”Happy five year anniversary, Jen,” the man grinned from where he was sitting at a table across from his wife.

Outside the last of the Lanaktallan forces trotted by, leaving the street empty again.

”If you think an invasion of cowtaurs is going to get me to leave our anniversary vacation early, you have another thing coming, Jarrad,” the woman laughed. She sipped at her wine then tilted the glass at the Lanaktallan outside. ”They have no clue, do they?”

He shook his head. ”Nope.”

She set down her wine glass and picked up the rocket launcher that had been printed from the kitchen's creation engine. The man smiled and grabbed the rifle leaning against the table. He stood up with his wife and the rest of the patrons of the restaurant.

”Vive la Paris,” the woman said.

”VIVE IRON FENCE!” the rest of the patrons, her husband included, called out.