Chapter 631: War In Heaven (2/2)
Missing lower left leg. Face exposed. Missing left hand. Armor breach, upper left torso. Rings exposed, upper left torso.
She grabbed his wrist, activated his medical override, saw it fail when ”NO CARRIER SIGNAL” icon blinked on the telltales on her left wrist.
The well trained part of her knew the commo net was down.
She sprayed a liquid circulation bandage (with anesthetic) on the stump, repeated it for the leg.
”I've got you. I've got you,” Melinvae slurred. She injected the shot straight into the exposed flesh, ignoring the scream, using one hand to bat away the wounded troop's hand when he tried to stop her. ”I've got you, I've got you,” she said as she dumped water to wash away the worst of the mud. ”I've got you, I've got you,” she told him as she dumped stabilizing gel on the wound. ”Got you, I've got you,” she reassured him as she sprayed liquid bandage on the chest wound, on his face. ”Got you, I've got you,” she said as she sprayed armor sealant on his chest.
His visible eye opened.
An unholy choir of shrieking screams sounded behind her.
”DOC!” he screamed, lifting up one hand and pointing behind her.
Melinvae threw herself on top of her patient even as she grabbed his magac rifle from the mud. She rolled, still keeping her armored body on top of her patient. She looked up, raising the rifle even though her HUD was gone and her visor was cracked in two places.
In the air were two groups of eight Atrekna.
They were screaming.
Melinvae held down the trigger, hosing the left hand group.
Fire joined hers, tracers arcing up.
The Atrekna suddenly turned into purple mist in the air, their flesh and blood reduced to their component atoms.
Melinvae dropped the rifle in the mud, turning over to look at her patient.
His exposed eye was wide.
She stared through her cracked visor.
He blinked.
”I've got you, I've got you,” she said, turning back to work.
MEDIC!
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The crystalline citadel was partially collapsed, pink and gold crystal shattering and collapsing as the remnants of 5th Rifle Brigade, 5th Telkan Marine Division, advanced into the firepower of the Atrekna. Cones of phasic energy rippled across the battlefield, slamming into armored Telkan. Some were knocked down, some were knocked off balance, others kept moving grimly forward.
A Warbound roared in fury as a dozen rockets hit its armored carapace and returned fire with its 30mm dual barrel autocannon, the heavy rounds shrieking out to his the failing structures of the crystalline fortress. The Warbound kept stomping forward, ignoring the fact that half of it was on fire as the unexpended propellant from the rockets burned.
The Teklan podlings of the Church of the Digital Omnimessiah sang the Hymns of the Blessed Podlings in Ralvex's ears, their voices pure and sweet as he kept struggling forward through the mud and shattered rock.
ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC appeared in his visor but he paid no mind as he kept advancing even when the world turned white and his graviton spike howled with stress as the green mantid 525 kept Ralvex moving forward.
There was no going back.
There was no taking cover or taking shelter.
There was only forward.
The war for the planet was lost. Ralvex's briefing had made that clear. The Atrekna had established too deep of a beach head, had flooded the planet with Dwellerspawn and AWM faster than ever previously recorded, managed to establish their Elder Brains and the psionic network too quickly.
But, as General Rawgrakwa had said: This will be the most expensive planet the Atrekna ever bought.
The Brigade's target was merely known as Citadel Chronos.
It was heavily fortified, heavily guarded, with adaptive shielding. Its air defense was thick enough to swat even nanodrone clouds from the air. Its shields were good enough to even take God Rods with a smile. The walls shimmered with phasic energy thick enough that Ralvex had tasted blueberries thirty miles from the drop zone.
It had been attacked a half dozen times in the last six months as the sun dimmed from bright yellow.
Every time the commander had been forced to withdraw.
The General had asked for volunteers.
Ralvex had stepped forward.
Even as he stepped forward now, gritting his teeth past the phantom pain of the Fwoop Shot that shattered his phasic shielding for a split second and battered his body even as the alarms shrieked that his frontal armor was getting close to a blowout.
--i will ride this telkan to glory-- 525 sent across the channel.
”Shiny and chrome,” Ralvex agreed as he kept up the fire from the heavy Madame Three-Eighteen.
PSYCHIC PSYCHIC PSYCHIC appeared in his vision as he lashed the exposed structure of the citadel with his heavy weapon, the rate of fire turned so high the nanoforge screamed like a teenager out after dark at a summer camp, while the heat sinks whistled like teapots.
Ralvex paid no attention, putting one foot in front of the other, licking the blood from the where it had leaked from his nose to wet the end of his muzzle.
He was a hundred paces in front of the rest of the Brigade that was still alive.
Eighty paces from the crumbled crystal of the citadel's outer wall.
The psychic shielding suddenly clamped down so hard on Ralvex's brain that he groaned and staggered, going down on one knee as his vision tunneled down and his mouth flooded with the taste of electric strawberries.
Ralvex, through the agony in his mind, went into the recovery position. Down on his right knee, left fist pressed into the mud, head down, right arm holding the weapon upwards.
PSYCHIC PSYCHIC PSYCHIC
The scream washed over him, the phasic energy so thick the exposed ablative layers of his armor cracking into dust and puffing off of him, streaming from his overheated armor like a black powder shadow.
Ralvex could taste the absolute terror coming from in front of him.
With the pure sweet sounds of the Telkan Podling Choir in his ears he ground his teeth together and managed to look up.
The shielding was down!
His vision tunneling down, static flashing across his eyes as his optic nerve struggled to function past the psychic assault, Ralvex managed to struggle to his feet.
”STAMPY! ONE POINT FIVE BIG MOMMA ON MY TARGET!” Ralvex roared out as he took a single step forward, lowered Madame Three-Eighteen into her work position, and squeezed the firing grip.
”STAMPY HELP!” the little drone squeaked happily from five hundred meters behind Ralvex. The little drone struggled to aim, heavily damaged, the 80mm Hellbore smoking. It's dim VI could see where the tracers were whipping into the heavy crystalline structure.
Stampy fired the one round he had left, the recoil throwing him, twirling, up into the air.
He landed on his side as the 1.5 megaton blast hit home.
Ralvex struggled forward, into the blast, hearing the alarms wail, the warnings scream.
--GRAVITY-- 525 screamed out in victory.
Ralvex's visor flashed twice and he could see a massive phasic signature in front of him that had been revealed by the nuclear hellfire of the Hellbore shot.
The Elder Brain was still screaming in horror as Ralvex lashed it with his autocannon.
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Roca turned slowly and stared around her as vehicle and armor exploded, robot combat armor fled the field, and everything in the air seemed to suddenly develop a love affair with the ground.
She looked at her squad.
”OK, who did what?” she asked.