Chapter 293 (2/2)

Age had made phonetic drift an issue and his armor could only translate a handful of words.

”Warning... danger... prison... not... die... warning.”

His Fifth Most High turned to him. ”What do you think it was saying?”

”It is warning to other primates, undoubtably,” the Grand Most High said, thinking. He stared at the door. ”If we open the door, is what is inside a benefit to us as well as a danger to the humans or is it dangerous enough that both ourselves and the humans will regret opening this door.”

”It feels like some kind of vault to me, not a redoubt,” the Second Most High Gunner Officer said slowly. ”I dislike this, let us return to the ship.”

”The battle goes badly. The Terrans were much better prepared than we expected,” The Grand Most High said. ”Their weapons are more powerful than we were led to believe, their defenses stronger than our intelligence warned us of, and they are much more adept at warfare than even the worst case simulation had predicted.”

”Because whoever prepared the data were incompetents,” the Sixth Most High of Intelligence Analysis stated. ”This was a venture commissioned by idiots, prepared by the mentally defective, undertaken by fools, and manned by the ignorant.”

”Still, that does not assist us in this endevour,” the Grand Most High said.

”Our choices are simple. We retreat back to the ship, try to gather the lost ones, and try to get off this planet and either surrender or escape or we try to open this facility,” the Sixth Most High of Intelligence stated.

”Or get blown out of space by rabid lemurs wildly firing superweapons in all directions while they laugh,” snorted the Second Most High Gunnery Officer.

”Can anyone else feel that?” the Most High Medical Officer asked, moving toward the door. ”It's coming from the door.”

The Grand Most High focused on the door and moved up next to the Most High Medical Officer.

Yes.

He could feel... something.

”Yes, I feel something. I am not sure what,” the Grand Most High said, slowly approaching.

Beside the door was a heavy lever in the down position. In the middle of the big heavy door was a spiked wheel. It all gleamed with a light coating of some kind of thick lubricant.

”Should we open it, Grand Most High?” the Second Most High of Engineering asked.

The Grand Most High stared at the door for a long time, thinking hard. ”If whatever it is is something that the Terrans fear, then perhaps we should leave this where it is.”

The others all nodded.

Together they turned around and headed back, stopping in front of the empty ones and gathering them up, marching them back to the ships. The Grand Most High had ordered the tanks to return and most of them were starting to return when one fired its main gun. The Grand Most High saw on the scanners that the hologram of the armored human was back.

The tank crew had either panicked or thought they had seen a valid target and fired.

At the door.

The Grand Most High ordered that the tank cease fire as it clattered forward, its tracks spewing out sulphuric compounds behind it.

It kept firing as it roared up the steps and slammed down onto the huge dias before the door.

It fired its main gun point blank at the hologram.

And hit the door.

The hologram vanished and there was a long moment of silence.

The tank exploded, shards of battlesteel flying out into the ugly barren landscape. Lightning coursed across the front of the facility buried in the dormant volcano, reached up toward the massive gas giant hanging in the sky, and raked across the buried facilities exposed section with enough fury to leave the warsteel white and smoking.

”Prepare for liftoff,” the Grand Most High snapped. He heard the ship's engines start to labor, trying to lift off. The ship shuddered and managed to get of the surface, the protective fields spinning up even as the ship tilted upward at the bow and started to move.

”The shield is missing,” the navigator said.

”Make for space, keep us in the grav-shadow of the gas-giant. Go to full stealth, we'll try to ride the battle out, wait for the stars to return, and make for home,” the Grand Most High said, feeling his guts loosen strangely.

The ship managed to slip away from the massive moon, sliding through the strange torus of plasma around the massive gas giant, staying in the grav-shadow from one of the further out moons.

On the moon itself the warsteel front of the door began to glow. First a dull red, almost lost in the light of the star and the light reflected off of the gas giant, then bright red, then yellow, and finally white. It began to slowly sag, soften, and then rivulets of molten warsteel began running down the face, obliterating the runs, streaming across the dais to flow across the sulfuric ground.

The door began to deform, bulging out in spots, until it folded slightly and flew free from the frame, flying through the hellish atmosphere to land in a pool of sulfuric acid.

A figure stood in the door, wreathed in purple and white and blue lightning.

He vanished in a puff of purple and black smoke.

Not that anyone noticed.

The battle was too furious, there was too much jamming, too much EM interference, too much combat going on throughout the entire Sol System.

The Lanaktallan were losing. Their landing forces were being wiped out. Their aerospace forces were being devestated. Their orbital support ships being wiped out of the sky.

The only thing that still kept them in the running was there was just so many of them.

The Corporate Fleet was wiped out, the remains mathematically insignificant.

The Military Fleet was down to less than 10% of their forces.

The Executor Fleet was less than 30%.

The Lanaktallan would have fled, the casualties having racked up to the point where even their war stallion implanted memories were screaming at them to fleet, to rout.

But the stars were gone. There was no where to go.

But ringing across the system came the offer.

SURRENDER OR BE DESTROYED