Chapter 470: First Telkan (1/2)
NINE HOURS PRIOR: FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER LANDING
”I can't get this thing plugged in,” the technician said, staring at the cable he was holding in his hand.
Vuxten looked over from where he was looking at a hand drawn map at where the tech was kneeling down next to a holotank that still gleamed wetly from having been hot printed.
”Turn the cable over,” Vuxten said.
The tech twisted his wrist and the top of the cable now had a thin yellow line in the middle of the plug. It slid right in and the holotank went live.
”Oops,” the tech said, standing up. He brought up the menu and began loading the software needed from the block of molycircs next to him.
”It happens,” Vuxten said, still looking at the map.
The forested area was nearly fifty miles across, in a rough bean shape. Casey's drop zone was the dent into the side of the bean. The drones that had gotten the view had all gone offline once they got close to eight thousand feet up, which was enough to give Vuxten a large view, but not enough to know what was going on around him.
”Holotank's coming online, sir,” the tech said.
”Thank you, Corporal,” Vuxten said, turning from the table and taking his map with him.
The holotank had already gone through the startup menus and loaded up the correct software. It showed a globe, flashed it was missing data, then skipped to the local datasets.
Dozens of icons burned in the smooth bean shape. All of them units of First Telkan, grouped up by company or greater size. Some of the green icons had red borders and/or were flashed, telling Vuxten that they were engaged with the enemy. He looked down at tapped a few controls.
The drones that were still airborne all appeared.
Sighing, he started allocating more drones to cover gaps. He then tabbed up direct action drones, loading in Casey's IFF profiles.
I miss the days of just running through the jungle, he thought to himself as icons started flashing to denote which units were taking control of the drones other units were firing. I've gotta balance who fires the drones, who takes over, who does what analysis according to our limited resources and manpower pool.
Vuxten sighed, remembering just how much of what he was doing now was basically automated but now, because of the massive dislocation in the TO&E, it all fell on him.
He kind of wished some of the Treana'ad officers could have been moved over from the Treana'ad Hordes but knew why they couldn't.
There was a priority flash from 17th Field Artillery. He tabbed it and the Lieutenant appeared.
”Lieutenant Vuxten, sir,” the other officer said.
”Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Vuxten said, still staring at the holotank.
”Going through chemical weaponry I found that we have the fabrication templates for defoliants,” the other officer said.
”Those take time,” Vuxten started to say.
”Yeah, about ninety seconds from chemical contact to the plant being nothing more than slurry,” the Lieutenant said. ”Sir.”
”How long to get those in the air. The Dwellerspawn are somehow harvesting the forest as well as using for concealment and cover while they maneuver,” Vuxten said.
”First flight can be fired in less than two minutes,” the artillery officer said. ”We can have this whole are covered in it in less than five minutes, and any of the 'spawn that are cellulose based are going to be having a real bad day.”
”Deploy the munitions, Lieutenant, on my authorization. This communication is being flagged and recorded,” Vuxten said.
”Understood, sir,” the Lieutenant nodded, then vanished.
He turned back just in time to see the lake vanish in a boiling cloud of incendiary weapons and steam. A few creatures, each of the the size of a dropship, lunged up, clawing at the sky or themselves, but then fell back into the hellish mixture the artillery units were dropping on any body of water larger than a puddle.
Vuxten started to order the Division to put out forward observation and fire point and stopped.
If they temporal shift, my men might be standing where a building or car materializes, which will cause the reaction I saw earlier, he realized. He quickly tabbed through the commo and contacted the CO of 17th Field Artillery.
”Sir?” the Lieutenant looked nervous, licking his whiskers repeatedly.
”Hold off on the defoliants,” Vuxten said. ”Have your vehicles dig in, warsteel ground plating, warsteel walls, retractable roof. There should be bunker plans in the drop-pop, Army digs in,” he said. ”Everyone's going to dig in hard, pretend we're the Army for this.”
”Yes, sir,” the LT said. He licked his whiskers again. ”I'm not really trained for this yet, sir.”
”It's all hands on deck, Lieutenant, I'm sure you'll do just fine,” Vuxten said. ”Confirm when you're dug in,” he said and cut the link.
It took a few minutes to get the orders passed. Hard shell fighting positions, vehicle bays, emplacements for vehicles and everything else. Triple up on the temporal stabilizers, with emergency power for them standing by to take peak load if it crossed a 70% threshhold. Every armor and vehicle doubled up on the amount of temporal stabilizers they had dropped with.
Printing warsteel and strange matter in such quantities pushed the heat and slush levels up, but Vuxten knew that the nanoforges and creation engines would have time to cool off.
He felt proud of his men as they all radioed back within an hour that everything was dug in. He checked the chron.
Ninety minutes on the ground.
”All units, button up,” he ordered. He looked at the window with the CO for 17th Field Artillery. ”Carry out your orders, button up as soon as the last round is fired,” he said.
The Lieutenant nodded and vanished.
Vuxten turned back to the done feeds. Nothing but forest. Damaged in places, burning in others, but thermals kept showing massive amounts of dwellerspawn all on the move.
Heading for Casey's blurred area.
They want you bad, Vuxten thought. I can't directly support you, whatever they're doing has you out of phase with us, but I can keep them from supporting their own forces, which should take the pressure off of you.
Faintly, through the heavy protections, he could hear the snarl of the artillery rounds detonating high up, deploying the defoliant.
The plants sagged, seemed to blur, then dissolved into sludge as the defoliant broke down the matrix of the cellulose, turning the vegetation into a thin layer of gooey sludge. It exposed thousands of Dwellerspawn all heading to the west, toward Casey.
The autonomous drones swooped in for the kill. Some single fire, a suicidal attack that slammed EFP's into the chitin armored 'spawn. Others swooped low firing their light guns. Still others cut loose with air to surface missiles then swung around in a slow spiral as their limited use creation engines manufactured more rounds from the elements taken in by the air scoops.
Except for the exposed 'spawn being mowed down by the drones and the dug in fighting positions, nothing was happening.
Everything shimmered and Vuxten slapped the icon for all units.
”PREPARE FOR T-SHIFT!” he called out.
Where forest had been a city suddenly wavered and appeared. There were explosions where the Telkan Marines had dug in. Several skyrakers began to fall, their base exploding as the suddenly materializing basement and ground structures interacted with the Telkan Marine positions, hit the warsteel and the heavy temporal stabilizers, and their integrity failed as rubble spewed out away from the Telkan Marine positions.
He gave it a long moment, watching for any casualties.
A few yellow bordered blue icons, several cargo vehicles went red-X as they were mission killed. Vuxten figured they were buried beneath rubble.
He stared at the drones for a long time. Almost a third of them had been destroyed by buildings materializing where they were, or in their flight path so they slammed into them.
There were enough up that he had dozens of views of the city.
The drones immediately shifted, running topography maps of the city.
He could see Welkret, Lanaktallan, Tnvaru, Shavashan, even Tnvaru on the streets, looking up at the drones, their mouths open in surprise.
He swallowed thickly, refusing to look away, as he opened another window and ordered Second Lieutenant Jekti to load the artillery.
Vuxten had to repeat his order, in stiff formal phrasing, three times.
The entire time he stared at a small family of Telkan sitting at a lower caste diner, eating a modest meal. The adults wore paper uniforms, the broodcarriers wore simple cloth, as did the podlings. They looked different, their muzzles longer and thicker, their ears more pointed, their teeth sharper. The broodcarriers were eating in front of others rather than only eating in the privacy of their homes, and the broodcarriers were wearing soft looking jewelry.
He enlarged the window, putting the others to the side.
In the others Type IV PAWM were chasing civilians, stunning them or just blowing off their legs, grabbing them, ripping their brains from their skulls. The light inside the crysteel dome would go from white to blue.
The Lanaktallan ruler was already begging for military assistance, that 'his people' were under terrible attack by unknown robots and that his city needed assistance.
Vuxten could see the marking for the first artillery firing had taken place.
Some people stopped to stare up at the rocket boosted artillery rounds.
They reached their predetermined point.
Nine nuclear weapons with a tritium and strontinum enhancement jacket detonated at five thousand feet. Day turned washed out, white. The blast hammered down upon the city, pounding skyrakers flat, throwing cars like toys. The buildings that consisted of a greater amount of hyperalloys stayed up, their windows shattered, the glass falling to the street.
The bunker Vuxten was in trembled.
The second barrage was fired.
No massive explosions.
Just gaseous death. Colorless. Odorless. Tasteless.
It drifted down.
Vuxten could see civilians starting to stand up, many of them flash burnt or injured by the concussive shockwave. Some were stumbling out of the buildings.
He knew they would be wailing.
A roaring, a screaming roaring wailing, like all the damned souls of an afterlife. No words, no individual voices, just one upraised howl of hatred and agony. It was a noise that made his fur all try to stand on end inside his form fitting armor.
Overseers. Thousands, tens of thousands of them. Their clothing blood covered, ragged, torn, dirty. They blurred into one big mass of weapon waving arms, empty eye sockets or wild reddened eyes, bloody jowls, allwailing at the top of their lungs as they galloped down the street. A frightened Ikeeki lunge out of a public transit shelter, only to be grabbed by the Overseers, ripped at, suddenly dismembered, the torn and shredded body dropped to be pounded under by hooves.
Vuxten swallowed thickly.
They began collapsing silently, the stream missing audio. Some frothed at the mouth, others convulsed.
It was over in less than sixty seconds.
A hexagon shaped PAWM with six legs, metal tentacles, four of its six crysteel bubbles already lit with a blue light, and crude looking machinery on the top reached out with one tentacle, grabbed the Telkan's head. The light went blue.
Then black.
The machine shuddered. The two next to the black one went black.
Something exploded inside the machine. Green ooze started pouring from cracks and vents. It staggered to the side, tripped over a burning car, and landed on its side.
Its legs kicked, telescoping and collapsing back into itself, flailing.
Then went still.
Multiple other views showed that any PAWN that grabbed one of the brains had the same thing happen to them.
Vuxten wanted to close his eyes, block out the scenes.
More and more fighting positions were requesting permission to open fire on the T4PWMs, but Vuxten triggered the negative rune and kept watching.
Our people, like most Precursor races, have rather poor pattern recognition compared to someone like the Terrans or even the Telkans, Vuxten could remember General A'armo'o laughing about as he fell for the same gambit in training twice in a row.
”All units, prepare for T-Shift,” he ordered.
He didn't know how he knew, he just knew.
How bad is your pattern recognition? When will you realize that I'll keep doing this over and over. I'll keep obliterating those poor sad bastards from our reality no matter how many times you bring them forward. I will destroy the village to save the village no matter how many times you bring it here. How long until you realize that I'm willing to do it as many times as you are willing to try? Vuxten thought to himself, staring at where another one of the 'stilters' fell to the side.
The Dwellerspawn in the city were convulsing, whether from eating poisoned meat or from the chemical weaponry in the air, Vuxten didn't know.
He also didn't care.
He sent the 'button up' command.
A simple touch of an icon brought up Lieutenant Jekti.
It was obvious to Vuxten the other Telkan had been weeping.
”You won't be loading defoliants,” Vuxten said. ”I want you to print up and prepare for another engagement like we just had,” he leaned forward slightly. ”Rotate your men out if necessary. Once your men become battle fatigued, let me know, I'll have another unit take over.”
”But, sir,” Lieutenant Jekti started to say.
”They're Precursors. They're one trick ponies without enough pattern recognition to figure out the stove is hot before they've burned their face. Prepare for the next urban engagement,” he thought for a second. ”Do you have any weapons that will stay viable when on Type-IV Precursor armor?”
The Lieutnenant nodded. ”We have a few persistent agents that chemically bond to battlesteel,” he said. ”Organophosphate based ones.”
”Mix those in,” Vuxten said. He sighed. ”Your men saved those poor time-trawled bastards from a terrible fate,” He hefted the stubber and ran his fingers across the burning bird of prey. ”You delivered the Digital Omnimessiah's mercy to them.”
Lieutenant Jekti looked doubtful, but just nodded.
Vuxten cut the link and went to the next section. The Division intelligence units were already having the drones to topology maps, thermal scans, and measuring the border.
The 'bubble' that First Telkan was trapped in was still the same size.