Chapter 517: Resurgence - Girlz Und Boloz (2/2)
The worst part though, was the impact. It had struck over the vast chambers of warriors. In an instant millions of warriors were reduced to molecule thick smears between hyper-density collapsed hyperalloys.
She had fled. She hated to admit it, but she had been forced to flee rather than give that damnable ship another shot at her greatness. It had missed by less than a thousand miles, the crater was a hundred miles wide and eighty miles deep, with fissures and damage extending out over six hundred miles in some cases.
The impact had almost knocked her free of her perch, had made her swollen and distended egg laying sections sway painfully and almost tear free of her body.
The flight into jumpspace had been panicked. She had ordered the ship to stay in jumpspace, abandoning precious speakers and warriors to the planetary system she had fled.
When she had come out of jumpspace, she had discovered that the system was occupied by more primitives. More xenospecies that her kind had never encountered.
Along with traitors.
Her fear had translated to anger and she had ordered her ship into close orbit with the planet orbiting the star that flared with EM energy output.
It galled her to admit her attending vessels had been destroyed by the paltry handful of ship defending the system, leaving her master vessel to assault the planet alone.
Part of her wondered where the other Overqueen had gone, the one that had been with her, and if they had successfully escaped or if that damnable ship had pursued and destroyed them.
Her hatred of the new xenospecies knew no bounds as she surveyed the hive mind.
If her servitor caste got to close to the new species, their fortifications, or their urban areas, she lost contact with them, never to regain it. The enemy was dug in and proving extremely difficult to dislodge.
They used a variety of weaponry, although they seemed to have an affinity for ballistic and kinetic weapons.
She watched as a group of a dozen warriors and nearly a hundred warrior servitors all scurried out of an armored personnel transport. They formed up immediately, streaming into the proper formation, readying their weapons.
A hypersonic missile screamed in, over a dozen secondary rounds flew free in a ripple of explosions. The Overqueen watched in slow motion as all of the rounds deployed long blades, longer even than a speaker's bladearms, and began to rotate.
The rounds shredded the entire group, the smaller submunitions exploding, the larger one streaking forward at the APC. The Overqueen sensed the pilot's panic right before she saw from a dozen other eyes the APC explode.
The Overqueen screeched again.
How dare they! How dare they resist her magnificence? How dare they deny her their bodies and minds?
Did they not know that her whims transcended their pathetic needs?
I can sense the neural overlay system going to work, making delicate dendrite and synapses connections, loading the cerebral tissue of the Kentai Commander with knowledge and the ability to use it.
A part of me wonders if she will feel artificial. Will she feel like a digital sentience attempting to join with me into our fusion? Will it damage or degrade my battle reflex mode and hyper-heuristic combat processing mode?
I do not know, and that ignorance creates feelings of unease across my secondary battlefield processors.
Nemta gritted his teeth, ignoring the purple flashes of the plasma packets peppering the ferrocrete and battlesteel around him, and leveled the sight picture.
He could see them now. They had up holocamo up, but the rapid fire plasma machinegun they were operating was causing it to waver and flicker, making it more obvious than if they'd just dumped green paint on themselves.
The gunner was a big one, slightly bigger than the other two warriors.
Nemta's scope told him it was only 750 meters. He adjusted for windage, planetary rotation, air density, range, round dropoff, magnetic acceleration depletion, and round type.
A single pull of the trigger and he yanked the weapon out of the crack and ducked down.
There was no flame to expose him, but the ripple of EM from the barrel could be detected by a lot of sensors.
The gunner started to rake the crack Nemta had shot from, then the fire suddenly ceased.
”GOT HIM! FOOF OUT!” the Treana'ad yelled out, popping up, pushing the muzzle of his missile cannon out the crack, and firing. The Treana'ad used the recoil to throw himself down and back, staying low as he skittered away on all four footpads.
The round Nemta had fired contained a tracer.
The Mantid manning the gun saw the hypervelocity round hit the gunner, punching a divot in his breastplate and a cone out the back that liquified tissue squirted out of. Before they could react a missile came in fast, screaming at the last second.
The sound made them freeze up.
The round came in low, barely a foot off the ground, streaking between debris and rocks, until it suddenly arced up.
The round suddenly burst apart into dozens of smaller munitions that rained downward. Before they had fallen a meter they had deployed to the optimum cover distance.
The shells popped apart.
And rained 'dragon's breath' down on the Mantid troops.
They caught on fire, melted, and caught on fire again before they could even scream.
In their defense, so did the machinegun, their armor, the fortification, the air, the dirt.
Even the fire caught on fire.
In the damaged and hammered landing control tower Nemta accepted another cigarette as the Treana'ad missile cannon gave a beep that it was reloaded.
What's it gonna do, kill me faster?
The Overqueen reacted with fury as she witnessed another slaughter of her troops.
Didn't those primitives know she wanted that landing field? The planetary magnetosphere made it so that was the optimum landing point for that entire section of the continent! She was DUE that place.
How dare they deny it to her!
She wanted it!
And her wants superseded their needs.
Even the universe knew that.
The medibed beeps and the cover over the commander's couch goes transparent, giving me my first view of her.
Large vision correcting lenses over her eyes. A headband with stylized pink feline ears that poked out of long blonde hair. A Terran Confederate Army Tank Commander's female dress uniform, complete with skirt. 168 cm tall, with long limbs. Her face is perfect, a picture of innocence as she moves from asleep to wakefullness.
I can see her eyes moving rapidly under her eyelids.
The sight of the cat ears does give me some pause. It is dangerous to wear such things into battle. The NekoMarines could possibly sense her.
However, I computer a 99.98267% chance, adjusted downward to a solid 80% as per Confederate battlefield doctrine, that the arrival of the NekoMarines would not make the situation any more urgent than it already was.
The lid of the command couch retracts and I see her nostrils flare as she takes her first breath of air, filtered as it may be.
The lock over her right ear is still damp from the biological nutrifluid she was forcegrowth in. A small detail, but one that I notice all the same.
She stretched and yawned, her eyes opening.
They are light brown behind her strange glasses.
I feel her link into the shared consciousness.
All doubt is swept away.
Like me, she is Born Whole. Where I was brought to activation at the GM plant, ready and capable of fighting in any war, she was birthed in the command deck of a BOLO, with the knowledge she needs to prosecute any war to the fullest.
”Attila, VSR, please,” she says softly.
My capability jumps to nearly 90% at her words.
”We have a battle to win,” she finishes.
For the first time since I was reactivated on that enemy repair world, everything feels right again as I give her a verbal situation report.
She nods along with my estimations and projections, linked to me in such a way that we're fused, intertwined. I can feel her approval, and I find myself just as gratified to receive her approval as she is gratified at my welcome.
”Time to teach the enemy the lesson they never seem to learn,” Nekonya says.
I know the answer, but I ask it all the same, a feeling of rightness filling me as I engage my tracks and begin moving forward again.
”Which lesson?” I ask her.
”That war, war never changes, nyaaa,” she says, smiling for both of us.