Chapter 378 (1/2)

Even with Great Most High A'armo'o ordering the armories to be opened, the tanks to be brought up to fighting shape, and the crews to report to their tanks, it was nearly an hour before the crew of my tank arrived. The Planetary Civil Defense Network had ordered everyone into the shelters, and GalNet News channels showed lines of beings orderly moving into the shelters, which had been expanded in the last two years of the war to fit not only the Lanaktallan, but the neo-sapients and near-sapients.

The reality to that apparent care for those often deemed 'lesser' was less about their lives and more to prevent the Terrans from arming them to create instant reinforcements.

Finally, my crew arrived, seeing that I had prepared the tank, ensured the maintenance checks had been run. I had even loaded the ammunition bays and prepared the weapons for combat.

An argument started between the driver and the tank commander about whether or not I should be allowed to join the crew. The company commander had last been seen smashing his face against the side of a crashed ground car and the battalion commander called the two arguing sides idiotic fools, none of which stopped the argument. Ultimately they went to the Brigade Most High, who had advocated most strongly that I be jailed for my crime of scoring a perfect gunnery score.

The Brigade Most High had listened to the tank commander's reasonings why his crew should suffer having a criminal in their midst as well as the driver's impassioned pleas to remove my corrupting influence from the tank.

Three hours later I watched as the tanks I had trained among drove away, leaving me behind. Including 15-281-31. My faithful tank. It was going into battle with a gunner who had scored less than 12% hits during the last gunnery range.

Not knowing what else to do, I went into the maintenance crew break room. The neo-sapient mechanics were there, all watching with horror as the Precursor Autonomous War Machines first took over the broadcast waves and then broadcast their own feeds onto the channels in order to spread terror and hopelessness.

City after city was being blotted away by orbital strikes. Sometimes two or three strikes upon the same city.

I knew that the Precursors were attempting to destroy the shelters beneath the city.

The neo-sapient mechanics all gathered around me, unsure of what to do.

Finally one voiced the question: May I go be with my family?

I used a pry-bar to break open the metal box where the electronic keys for the minor vehicles were, passing keys out to those who could drive. I urged them to bring their families back, load them all into the trucks.

Those that stayed behind, I asked to assist me.

The munitions lockers were hardened structures, underground, climate controlled, designed to handle a near miss from a heavy atomic weapon. Reinforced to (hopefully) resist the weapons of the mad lemurs of the Confederacy.

We moved furniture we took from a nearby building, they watched in fear as I broke open vending machines and food dispensers. Twice I used the cable and hood of a tow-tank to tear a food dispensing unit clean out of the wall. We worked together, far into the night, to load the munitions bunker with food, water, rough furniture. I even had two mechanics install an atmospheric reclaimation unit usually found in a heavy tank inside, just in case. I had two teams working feverishly to convert the dozen munitions bunkers that had formerly held plasma rounds and rockets into something that might protect them.

The neo-sapients urged me to come with them as I stood at the entryway and shut the heavy door that we had stenciled ”ALIVE INSIDE” upon, using Terran and Unified Standard Characters.

I shook my head, and told them that my duty was the defense of this world.

They argued that I had no tank, I could not help defend the world.

I just smiled, and waved goodbye as the fifty ton door shut and the locking mechanisms engaged.

When I trotted out it was raining a fine ash and I looked up at the night sky.

The clouds were burning.

I checked the load on my plasma rifle and my neural pistol, then checked my armor. I loaded up the maps and ran a search for what I was looking for.

Hab complexes.

I trotted over to the hovertruck I had used to commit theft of government property. I started it up, the number three fan motor screaming. Two neosapients and one near-sapient who had been hiding in the offices ran over and climbed on the truck, their faces obscured by their protective masks.

They would not let me carry out my mission alone.

Nodding, grateful for the company, I put the hovertruck in gear.

I turned it, oriented it, and drove.

Toward the burning city.

There were others there, I knew there were. The mechanics had told me of habs full of neosapients that had no where to go, that the hab complex itself had been labeled a shelter.

I had sworn to defend the Unified Council Systems.

And although I had no tank, I would not abandon my oaths.

The city was burning. It was a huge metropolis, and the unliving horrors from beyond the stars had targeted it repeatedly. We drove by those who had been caught out in the open by the kinetic blasts, their crumpled and often burnt bodies mute accusations that I had already failed in my duty.

We rushed for the first hab, using the massive weight of the armored recovery vehicle smashing aside rubble and wreckage alike.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE!

The roar of the Precursor Autonomous War Machines echoed through my mind. My fellow desperate crew members winced, but I had ordered them to install psychic inhibitors inside their helmets hours before.

I heard my fellow crew members weep, beg 'Overseers' to stop, to stay away, when they charged out of open doorways or alleys, rearing and screaming, their eyes bleeding, their ears and jowls often torn away.

I only had to order them to fire once.

Afterwards, they seized their courage and fired without the need for me to order them to.

A hoverbus lay abandoned and I ordered two of my men, and they were, looking back, indeed my men, to procure it and to follow me. It shuddered and was in need of maintenance, but it was public transportation for neo-sapients, which meant it was big enough that I could have loaded eight tanks, four end to end and two rows, into the bottom of its dual decks, and had room to spare.

We drove through the darkness, using the light amplification of our protective masks.

Flames flickered in the debris. Explosions continued further into the city. Ash rained down that tasted of scorched metal and burnt meat even through the filters of the masks. The sound of sentient suffering echoed off the buildings, a constant backdrop to everything.

We drove on, my crew and I.

Mal-Kar, a N'Kooran hoverfan mechanic, who, like me, could drive great unwieldy beasts. He had faith in me, for I had always treated him kindly and twice had defended him against accusations that he had purloined someone's lunch. He wore a modified tanker's helmet and spoke with quiet words.

Feelmeenta, a Hamaroosan electrical system specialist who had left behind her kits and little ones in the 'shelter' to hide in one of the offices to join me. I had ordered her into the shelter but she had laughed and told me that she was a near-sapient awaiting her people to send word for her to return, and that she would do as she wished. I knew better than to try to force her, Hamaroosa bit and pinched hard.

Julkrex, a Telkan gunny systems specialist, who had done the maintenance to my tank's gunner's sight, that I had not named when I had been rigorously interrogated. He had not returned to his people's homeworld, for reasons of his own, and I was glad to have him next to me as we drove into the burning city.

No better men existed than those who rode with me into that burning city, as no better men have existed than those you called brothers while fighting your own battles and wars.

Witness their names, readers, as you are witnessing mine.

We reached the nearest hab, using the recovery ball's gravitonic attachment system on the endosteel barrier over the entrance to yank it free. The neo-sapients within only saw armored and armed behings ordering them to board the hoverbus and did so meekly, as quick as they could.

I did not dispel their assumption we were ExecSec forces.

Twice I helped carry aquariums full of Leebawan tadpoles down to the bus.

It took nearly an hour to load the bus, an hour I felt often that we did not have as explosions rocked the city. Several times streaks of light connected the burning heavens to the hellscape ground and the shockwave rolled over us.

We headed back, the armored recovery vehicle in the lead, with our precious cargo of frightened and sobbing civilians.

I wished, more than once, I was inside my faithful tank, on the front line, protecting these people, these sentient beings like me, far more effectively than I could ever protect them driving a simple maintenance vehicle into the devestated city.

It started with only a few alerts. The vehicle was designed to recover disabled or damaged tanks from the front lines, and because of that, I was alerted whenever a tank was damaged or destroyed.

It started with a handful of alerts. Then more.

Then a steady cascade.

The Great Herd had millions of tanks on the planet.