Chapter 358 (1/2)
”Find the goddamn frequency shift they're using,” Staff Sergeant Stafford yelled out over the com-link to his greenies. ”They keep getting a split second through our screens!”
The nearby heavy mining robots were taking cover behind the mechanical corpses of their previous brethren and firing their heavy mining laser at the tanks of Thunderpunch. Every full second or two worth the firepower managed to get a split second of the laser through the screens as the heavy duty lasers, used to mine rock deep in the crust, flickered through hundreds or thousands of wavelengths a second.
A laser ripped into the side of 4-3, Staffod's tank, scarring the warsteel but not penetrating. The ablative battlesteel in that section had already been torn away by the massive heat transfer of the laser weapon.
Stafford replied with a half second burst from the quad-barrel, the heavy mass reactive armor defeating discarding sabot antimatter core rounds, just listed as API in the upper right of his vision, ripped huge divots in the cover the handful of mechs were using. One mech cartwheeled away, its upper torso shucked out like an oyster and the metal burning from the reaction to the antimatter.
--working-- 582 answered. --shifting algorithm complex multiphasic atomic decay randomization core seed hash--
”Do your best,” Stafford answered, pulling the gun around and raking a handful of mechs that had broken cover and were rushing toward the next cover. The actinic white flash of the rounds hitting blew off chunks of armor, reducing two to scrap and collapsed in a heap.
Five made it to cover.
The four green mantids inside the maintenance spaces of the tank clustered around the battlescreen projection system, trying to determine how the Precursor mining machines were managing to get through the frequency of the battlescreen. It had to be tuned to allow visible light and some EM emissions on order to let the tank 'see' and communicate, but the lasers were all amplified, nearly coherent light that should have been drained away or blocked by the battlescreen.
Yet every time a hundredth of a second kept getting through out of every second, which meant gigawatts of power getting through to the tank's armor. Additionally, roughly 16.5254% of the strikes that got through were on the correct frequency to affect the molecularly bonded battlesteel ablative armor. Huge chunks were being blown off by the energy transfer, or deeply slagged, in many cases all the way down to the warsteel hull.
884 was running communication to the other greenie tech teams in other tanks, trying to figure out what was going wrong. In Colonel Dremsal's tank one greenie, 439, was coordinating with Corps Support Command trying to get the issue handled.
If the vulnerability exploit spread to other Precursor vehicles, there could be trouble.
Colonel Dremsal was inside the tank, running his commander's gun through the automated system, the side of his helmet blistered and cracked from a brush by the expanding thermal bloom of one of the mining beams.
”13th Evac, how much longer?” he asked over the commo, focusing his fire on a pair of mining machines moving forward on treads, using the massive laser enhanced drillbit to cover the smaller machines moving with it. The shells from the TC's gun blew large chunks away from the drillbit, which kept rotating up more spiral teeth to take their place.
”How the fuck are mining machines giving us this much trouble?” his driver, SGT Esten asked, holding onto the control bars for his own external gun.
”Because if we fire the main gun the backwash will kill those people,” PFC Zuckermann said, his hands holding onto the 'oh-shit bar' above his head instead of holding onto his gunnery station. He had his external gun on automatic, providing point defense.
”Loading the last up. Dropship Glorious Fat Duck is going to go to warmech mode as soon as we crossload the last patient. Her starboard anti-grav is out, so she'll be walking with a limp,” Old Iron Feathers answered, not breaking stride from where he was carrying a Lanaktallan filly with a broken leg into the dropship. He'd already injected painkillers, antibiotics, and sprayed a quickset cast on the leg after applying coagulant. The filly was laying her head on Iron Feather's shoulder, sleepily blinking her two side-eyes.
”Let me know when you've got them buttoned up. I need my main guns back,” Dremsal said.
”Soon as we lift off, you're clear,” Iron Feathers said, handing the filly off and turning to move back out of the dropship. ”Our armor can handle backwash.”
Dremsal went to answer when his helmet switched channels on a priority.
”Dremsal, you still alive?” Trucker's voice was tight, nearly blotted out by the roar of the main guns.
”Hanging tight, sir,” Dremsal said.
”You've got support coming, but that's beside the point,” Trucker said. ”As soon as the dropships button up, I want you to scatter and scatter hard, get at least a half mile between you and that shelter,” Trucker snapped. ”You've got crazy seismic all over the place, I'm surprised you can't feel them.”
The hull rang and Dremsal shook his head.
”Just hang on,” Trucker yelled. ”The Great Herd's charging to the rescue. Go to local control, I'm wiping the fireplan in exactly one hundred fifty seconds from now. Make sure you update me via datalink when you can.”
”Roger that, sir,” Dremsal said. The seconds counting down was moving ooooh so slow.
”Black Betty, blow your track-five before it tears apart your running gear!” Trucker yelled right before the datalink dropped. ”Psycho-Ex, drop back, I can see you spilling slush from...”
Dremsal checked the 360 view again. They were still crossloading patients from the smoking dropship.
He wondered where the Great Herd was at as more vehicles pushed their way through their shattered brethren and advanced on the static tank line.
A'armo'o grabbed the round being handed to him and passed it down, breathing heavily. His arms hurt and his waist ached, but they didn't have much time to reload the ammo hopper in his tank. His communications technician passed up a plasma round and A'armo'o handed it to the Terran, who turned and handed it to another one so it could be tossed in 'the grinder' to be reclaimed.
There were four Terrans standing on the back deck of his tank, passing rounds, one on top of the cupola. There were Telkan powered armor troops being handed rounds so they could catch up to the vehicles and hand the round onto the back deck.
Reloading under movement was something so outside the scope of A'armo'o's experience part of him giddily wondered if he'd been killed and didn't know it. It was unsafe, wasteful, and clumsy.
But the time they'd spent traveling was being put to use.
He could see four of the big Terran power armor troops holding onto the side of one of his tanks while the mechanics pulled the entire hoverfan fan drive motor out, dropping it on the ground for someone else to toss into the grinder. Five tanks had been repaired in less than six minutes using such methods.
The smooth, practiced, almost blase way the Terrans did the refit and reloading on the move should have frightened A'armo'o. He knew he should be alarmed, should be scared.
But all he cared about was getting as much done as possible as he passed down another round, which felt cold even through his body armor's gauntlets.
”How long to the river?” he asked his driver.
”Three minutes!” the driver yelled back, grinding the wreckage of a burnt out groundcar under the fans of the tank.
A'armo'o passed it on to the Leiutenant Colonel in charge of the Combat Sustainment Battalion that was working to bring his unit up to the best fighting shape they could.
”SIX MORE ROUNDS!” Captain Starpunt, the Commander of 144th Ordnance, yelled out over the channel, hustling forward with another tank round. The round she was carrying was hydrogen slush.
SFC Casey ran by, carrying two six-pack pods of 155mm mortar rounds, one in each hand, his power assist loading frame hissing as he ran. Captain Starpunt felt the urge to trip the big one-eyed man, who was acting like it nothing more than a spring day.
Vuxten heard the call that only six more rounds would be put out by the nanoforges and nodded to nobody in particular, panting inside his armor. The tank rounds were massive, forged out with handles on the sides, and he could only carry one at a time due to the sheer bulkiness of the munitions. He reached the back of a tank and passed it up to the human on the back, who passed it to next human, who passed it to the one on the cupola. The one on the cupola sprayed something on the handles and knocked them off before handing the round to the Lanaktallan half out of the tank.
The human on the back handed the plasma round to Vuxten. Vuxten turned around and ran back to meet someone carrying another round forward and someone waiting for the plasma round to run it to the reclaimer.
He was covered in sweat like he'd been in combat for the last ten minutes instead of just running fast enough to keep up with the tanks.
While ferrying heavy duty main gun rounds back and forth.
”Is that not dangerous?” Ga'alawpi'in asked, pointing at the icons that showed the Telkan Marines and the troops of 15th Sustainment flowing back and forth between the self-propelled heavy nanoforges and the tanks of the Great Herd.
No'Drak nodded, tapping the cigarette against his bladearm. ”It is.”
”Why do you permit it, then?” Ga'alawpi'in asked. ”Does it not risk troops that may be required for upcoming combat?”
General No'Drak noticed that the Lanaktallan's tone had changed over the last ten minutes and he turned slightly to look at the Great Herd officer.
”Two men have been injured, one badly enough he'll need medivac'd out, but in the last ten minutes they've reloaded nearly half the munitions in two hundred tanks,” No'Drak said. ”If they stopped, it would have only taken three to four minutes, but that would mean that the tanks of the Great Herd would have been unmoving for that time, and that's movement they'd never get back.”
”And who's to say the injured soldier wouldn't have been injured without the operation?” General Pulgrak asked. ”His knee servo blew out and his leg folded the wrong way, shattering his knee and breaking the end of his humerus. It could have blown while he was walking to the chow hall.”
Ga'alawpi'in nodded slowly. ”While many feel the Great Herd cares not for casualties, and indeed, many commanders do not, I have learned in Great Grand Most High A'armo'o's shadow that each lost soldier causes a loss of combat effectiveness that far outstrips a single being's efforts.”
No'Drak nodded. ”Notice that the injured soldier transferred to sitting on the self-propelled nanoforge to run operations there and maintain the system, freeing up an ambulatory soldier to do the lifting and carrying.”
Ga'alawpi'in nodded, turning his attention back to the data. He pointed at the large fuzzed area. ”I dislike that we have no data for this area.”
No'Drak nodded. ”Once the Telkan Marines cross the river, they plan on sending a Scout Company to check that.”
Ge'ermo'o pointed at the datastreams. ”Trucker's datastream just jumped to nearly triple the bandwidth. More analysts are logging on.”
”Something's happening,” No'Drak said softly, putting the cigarette between his mandibles. He could smell his own stress pheromones. ”What do you see that I don't, Trucker?” he asked, staring at the icon for HHC 1-1 3AD, which was amber and flashing to denote ”I am engaged in active combat”.
Trucker grunted as he was slammed against the edge of his hatch, his body armor taking the blow. The tank slid a meter to the side, the battlescreen indented almost to the hull of the tank, shooting sparks. The battlescreen projectors howled and something gave a loud metallic KRING! sound.
But the screen held.