Chapter 525: Resurgence (1/2)
”A normal being will tell you, you cannot fight a planet, you cannot fight the tide, you cannot fight the changing seasons. A Mad Lemur of Terra will tell you to: hold my beer.” - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff
Yrklik stared at what looked like the edge of a soap bubble to his senses. An iridescent barrier that was thin but distorted what was beyond it. He could see a city in the distance, see grass and trees, see the road he was standing on surrounded by his warrior caste and servitor warriors that made up his attack group.
According to his psychic senses there was nothing beyond the soap bubble, but he watched as a bird above circled, half of its path entered the soap bubble before it exited a handful of seconds later.
The Overqueen had ordered him to enter the city, assault it with his force of two hundred warriors and five thousand servitor warriors. He had no vehicles, vehicles seemed to attract record numbers of anti-vehicle munitions as well as air strikes by strikers performing close combat runs so low that the graviton engines tore up the ground. He had no artillery, that had vanished in the white light of an atomic strike. He had no air support, none of the warrior caste devoted to air power survived longer than a half hour before being ripped from the sky.
Three weeks.
Three weeks he had been fighting for possession of the planet. Three and a half weeks since he had been thawed from his eternal slumber.
Three weeks and he still felt chilled. Still felt a lingering stiffness and chill in his ichor.
Three weeks of fighting with exactly jack and shit to show for it.
Yrklik considered himself lucky. Most of the Speakers that he had landed with were dead. He had been engaged in pitched battles twice and come out on top.
The primitives and mind-blank were extremely tough fighters that did not react with fear and panic to the psychic assaults of the Mantid warrior caste, or even the Speakers.
While normally, by himself, he should have been able to overwhelm the planet, the entire planet seemed to be full of psychic static. He could barely control a few hundred yards around himself, could barely keep the servitor caste at ease, could barely communication with his own people.
Of course, just his luck, he could still communicated with the Queens and the Overqueen.
**What is taking you so long?** the Queen in orbit asked.
**There is a type of psychic barrier here,** Yrklik answered. **As we approached artillery dropped and deployed submunitions and now there is a psychic barrier between the city and my troops.**
**Can you physically enter it?** the Queen snapped.
**Well, yes, but...** Yrklik started to explain.
**THEN ENTER IT AND ASSAULT THE CITY, YOU MORON!** the Queen yelled, making his shudder and his head wince with pain. Anxiety spiked as his limbic system pushed him to follow the queen's commands and his intellect told him to stay away from that bubble.
There was just something about it that gave Yrklik the heebie-jeebies.
**As you command** he answered automatically. He reached out to his men. **Move out**
The Queen stayed in contact with him as his men gathered around him, servitors on the outside, warriors on the inside clustered around the massive figure of the Speaker.
The Queen watched through a thousand eyes as the Mantid warriors started moving in perfect unison, all in step, and rushed through the bubble.
She lost contact instantly, as soon as the cross the thin permeable membrane. They didn't die.
They just vanished.
Screeching in fury the Queen ordered Yrklik to answer her, screaming over the psychic network to the point the Overqueen had to reach out and quiet her.
Groundside, Yrklik rushed through the membrane, holding his breath as if it would help, and charged nearly a hundred meters before he realized something.
The touch of the Overqueen and the Queen was gone. He couldn't feel her in there.
His anxiety suddenly released and he came to a stop.
The warriors stopped with him.
The servitor caste warriors stopped and looked around.
**this sucks** Yrklik heard.
**tired of this bullshit** he heard another voice
**this warrior has a pattern on his abdomen that looks like two Urgulaurth pooping on a rock**
there was some giggling.
**Do you hear that, Speaker?** Warrior R'Nerkak asked.
**shhh***
**oh crap**
**great now what do they want**
**fuck this I wanna go home**
^^d=√((x_2-x_1)²+(y_2-y_1)²) ^^
**anyone got anything to eat**
**check out that rock**
**hey does anyone see my rifle**
^^ cos(TD/24) = -(tan)(tanL) ^^
^^T× (MET × 3.5 ×W) / 200 ^^
Yrklik stood silently for a long moment. The voices were small, tiny, compared to the roar of his fellow speakers and the all consuming voice of the Queens. There was a multitude of them, chattering at one another. He reached out to the warriors, stopping them from acting, telling them to hold still, maintain their calm, and center themselves.
**If you can hear and understand me, raise your right bladearm** Yrklik said
For a second nothing happened. A few started to raise their bladearms but were poked or kicked by their fellows and dropped them. The babbling fell to a whisper and then silence. A bird called in the distance and he could faintly hear the krump of mortar rounds hitting the ground.
He repeated his request, ending it with ”if you kindly would.”
He stood up to his full height in shock as all the black and green carapaced servitors suddenly raised their right bladearms.
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I am less than fifty kilometers from the base of the master hive. It has been within range of my guns since I landed as a Hellbore is a line of sight weapon. The vacuum provides no attenuation to the power of my main guns, my VLS and indirect fire weapons have nothing to stop them.
But to attack to early is to lose the fight.
That does not mean I was idle. As Nekonya, my Kentai Commander and I move forward I am still extremely busy and the two of us are already engaged in the fighting.
My databanks possess a huge wealth of data. From the mad infantry charge of the Hamburgler against the forces of Grimace of the Maddened Purple to the tactics of the Hittites and Ramses at the Battle of Kadesh as well as the tank tactics of the First Global Conflict and the tank battles of the War of the Box.
Of course there are massive data files pertaining to the Human-Mantid Wars. From tactics to equipment, I have it all in my databanks.
We slow at one point to give the creation engine time to dry-print pieces of hardware we need.
I remind Nekonya that Mantid engineers make some of the best security software in the Confederacy, to which she reminds me that these are Lanaktallan War Mantids.
She is proven right when we discover the entire computer system of the vast hive ship is a trusted network that only requires a single unencoded login to gain access to.
Children's toys have more security.
Twenty minutes later I have penetrated their computer network and Nekonya and I move through their databanks stealthily. While our physical bodies are parked next to a vast array of near-C velocity cannons, all facing toward the outer system, our minds rove the computing systems of the vast ship.
What we find is chilling.
The ship is ancient at its core. Its superstructre laid down over a hundred million years ago. It was refurbished and finished within the last five years and loaded two years ago with millions of eggs as well as Mantid in cryosleep.
The ones in cryosleep are all veterans of the Mantid-Lanaktallan- War.
The ship houses massive egg chambers, twelve queens, and a single Overqueen. There are millions of mantid onboard the ship. There are also nine hitherto unknown species on board used as a food supply, dwelling in vast areas inside the ship that are the size of megaplexes.
While Nekonya and I are loathe to sacrifice those poor beings who make up little more than a larder, we both agree that the most vitally important are the residents of the planet below. Citizens of the Confederacy who are under attack.
An additional problem rears its head as we look over the ship itself.