Chapter 544: -4th & 10 (1/2)

”The one thing that the Great Herd never managed to do was push the Mad Lemurs of Terra against the wall. Many believe the Atrekna Archeobiological Attack did this, but I disagree.

”Nearly all of the weapons employed by the Confederacy and the Mad Lemurs of Terra against the Atrekna already existed, at the most they were improved or tweaked. The Atrekna were beaten by horrific weapon systems that the Mad Lemurs of Terra and the Confederacy already possessed.

”It chills me to think what they would unleash if truly pushed against the wall.” - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

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P'Kank stared at the holotank, moving slowly in a circle to bring the other holotanks into his field of vision. Around the planet all of III Corps was on the move, heading for objectives that were sealed orders until the previous objective was completed and the new one opened up.

It was a hell of a way to run a war, but his own intel section had suggested that doing it in such a way, having the communications specialist carry hard-copied orders that went in a decision tree format to hand to commanders might prevent the Atrekna from seeing the battleplan and warplan unfolding or being able to predict it.

P'Kank was Treana'ad enough to admit that the intel trooper had been right and he had been wrong. He had doubted that it would work, had been concerned that too vague orders would be conflicting or confusing.

But using hypersonic drones to deliver new message packets was working like a charm.

All of the III Corps was on the move. Either engaged in battle, moving to the next battle, or strengthening the logistics chains to support a battle.

In the past, before the Confederacy's military reorganized after the Mar-gite War, III Corps had been limited to roughly 15,000 troops.

Now, it was over 2.5 million.

With the reinforcements from the Hesstlan people, with no outside reinforcements, P'Kank had been able to push the number up to 3.2 million troops.

A staggering number to any pre-superluminal flight society, but in a galaxy of interstellar warfare, a billion troops could barely occupy a hundred thousand planets, much less prosecute a war.

Not to mention that for every 1 combat troop the Confederacy's military needed 7.6 support personnel. It was far down from how things had gone in history, where between 7 to 11 support personnel were needed, but nanoforges and creation engines had both freed up logistics and mandated an increase in other specialties.

P'Kank had also seen that the ratio of officers to enlisted and non-commissioned officers often went skewed in militaries that did not keep expanding their units.

Everyone had heard of the militaries that had as many as 2 officers per enlistedbeing.

P'Kank shook his head to dispel the musings on ratios, focusing on the map.

His initial combat forces had been engaged with the enemy nearly 13 hours, advancing rapidly to the next objective once they had completed an objective.

For the last two years he had pulled the units out, or had them artificially reduce their effectiveness, at the 12 hour mark.

He leaned forward, looking at the Atrekna bases, those heavily fortified and dug in structures of crystal and psionic energy.

Satellite imaging was clearing after the phasic enhanced atomic blasts.

Six of the island bases were completely unprotected now, their phasic battlescreens were gone and the wet-navy ships and grav-strikers were pounding them with guns normally mounted on spaceships. Even the ballistic indirect fire weaponry had bores measured in the meters.

P'Kank watched as one of the battleships, built and assembled by the Hesstla people themselves, fired its guns in a careful sequence to ensure that the keel didn't warp. The satellite image was crisp and clear enough that P'Kank saw huge chunks of crystal, the size of a small warehouse, fly into the air propelled by the massive explosions of the huge shells.

P'Kank turned and looked at the holotank showing 2nd Telkan, who were slamming into the enemy all over the north side of the pangea continent. Pulled down to battalion strength for each task element, they were backed by Second Armor Division and First Armor Division as well as First Infantry. 9th Field Artillery Division was pounding everything with rockets, indirect fire, and swarms of missiles.

That section of the battle was well in hand.

P'Kank turned to another holotank, spinning it while he looked at it with his head cocked slightly. The Leebaw Commando were everywhere, dotted all over the place. He happened to zoom in and saw that an underwater fortress went from spawning out amphibious units to suddenly gone. There was the icon of up close visuals and he tapped it.

The screen popped into existence, showing the timestamp. P'Kank checked it, saw it was two hours ago. He hit x5 speed and watched carefully. The Leewbaw Commando were wearing protective gear, were at the bottom of the ocean, six miles below the gently rippling ocean surface.

They were stealthily applying charges to the fixed points on the huge cystalline structure.

He fast forwarded at x20 to the Leebaw Commandos exfiltrating, instead watching what went on. P'Kank knew he knew little about amphibious and oceanic warfare and he wondered how the small shape charges, barely qualifying as limpet mines, could effect such a massive structure.

He went to x1.25 and watched as the Commandos entered their stealth vehicle. He fast forwarded again when he saw they were changing position, getting nearly three miles away. He dropped back to 1.25 when he saw the Commandos were looking at a viewscreen.

A touch of an icon brought it up.

It showed a bunch of windows in window, all of them of the mines being recorded by cameras smaller than plankton and sent back via phospherance twinkles to the lines of plankton till it hit fiber-optic concealed as kelp.

The limpet mines went off with a surge of bubbles. P'Kank rewound it and looked at the type, then frowned when he opened up the window.

FOOF enhanced density collapsed DU explosively forged penetrator with a phasic jacket. It had a second FOOF kicker.

P'Kank noted that it heated the water in a five meter radius up to 5,000C withing a hundredth of a second then quit, the water cooling according to pressure and surrounding temperature.

Huh, it's 3C down there, P'Kank mused.

He played the video again.

The furious 'bubble' of steam expanded out, then collapsed so fast that P'Kank had to run it on x0.25 speed to even realize what he was seeing.

For a second, he wondered what was going to happen. He saw a few cracks in the crystal, not much. Then the boiling water 'bubble' appeared again, the crystal actually catching on fire for a split second.

The 'bubble' collapsed again.

P'Kank stood to his whole height, swearing when he saw the whole goddamn thing implode.

He rewound it and watched again.

Bubble. Bubble vanishes, revealing a few small cracks. New bubble.

Fortress implodes.

P'Kank touched his implant, bringing up the pressure at six miles down.

He blinked at what his retinal link threw up.

He queried again.

Sixteen thousand pounds per square inch.

970 bar.

8 kilotons per square inch of force being pushed against the fortress.

P'Kank nodded to himself.

The cracks. It compromised the structural integrity and the Leebaw Commandos let the ocean do the rest of the work. The 'bubbles' of superheated water collapsed like 16,000 psi driven sledgehammers into the cracks and the structure failed.

P'Kank knew there were no survivors among the Atrekna in that fortress.