Chapter Ninety-Three

626 enjoyed his work. Before the Terrans had freed his caste from the tyranny of the queens, he would have been locked inside his own mind, screaming, as he performed menial maintenance tasks at the direction of others and with another's skill rather than his own.

626 could image no worse fate.

He closed the tiny access hatch on the back of the Mechanek and jumped onto the wall, reoriented himself, and jumped onto the back of the next Mechanek, his vestigial wings fluttering to give him a little aerodynamic boost. The one he had just finished working on, Gunnery Sergeant Hunterson, jerked slightly as his brain finished synching up to his war-gear loaded body. Hunterson flashed 626 an icon of appreciation even as the little green mantid opened up the small panel. His next job, Sergeant Stoner, was waiting for his wargear to be checked out. He was having problems with his left side being tingly and his weapons losing synch.

626 ran the standard diagnostics, saw nothing wrong, ran a deep diagnostic, saw nothing. Then, remembering his lessons in percussive maintenance ran a physical check on the most problematic piece of hardware.

The braincase was 0.21mm from full seating on the left hand side.

626 held on with his grasping hands, jumped up, activated the graviton focusers in his little boots, and slammed down onto the braincase with 22.32 kg of force.

"Hey!" the Mechanek yelled. "Oh, nevermind. Thanks, 626, getting green lights across the board."

Humming the ancient war cant of The Triumph of Steel 626 slapped the hatch shut, locked it, and jumped on the wall then to the next customer. A Lance Corporal who's primary cannon array wasn't deploying correctly.

Still humming to himself, 626 kept working. Landfall was in an estimated five hours and he had many many human warborgs to run diagnostics on.

Whispers in the Silent Spaces flew on the back of a butterfly, watching the waving flowers around her as the butterfly moved from once space to another. Here the landscape was littered with dead warborgs being torn apart by biomechanical creatures. There the world was barren, removed to rock, the atmosphere siphoned away, great creatures slowly moving away from the planet. Over there the system was full of debris. Ships, biological remnants, shattered warborgs, crushed creatures, smashed warmechs.

Whispers looked about. There. Damaged and broken warborgs but broodcarriers basking in the sunshine holding podlings. She tilted the butterfly, moving closer to that outcome. In defeat could lie the seeds of victory.

The three Military Intelligence officers watched the iridescent Mantid shudder and quiver as her psychic senses reached out to try to define the future of an entire planet.

It might not be of use, it might be difficult to understand, but the seers were never wrong.

That made them a weapon.

And Terra never passed up the chance to grab any weapon that might bring victory to the fight.

The transport slammed down, sides slamming down, and the armored vehicles roared out among the debris of the Precursor War that had ended only a year ago. APC's full of armored troops, that immediately swarmed to the concealed and prestaged fighting positions. Heavy weapons were dragged out, armored troops carried boxes of ammunition, positive pressure systems were put in place, medical stations were activated deep in the stripped hulls of the Precursor machines.

Vuxten climbed up the side of a Precursor machine that had been gutted by close range plasma cannon blasts, his squad following him. He had a 20mm magack heavy machinegun magnetically attached to the back of his armor but the strength assist in the armor made it so the weight was noticeable but easily worked through.

When he got to the top he looked around. There, there was a shallow crater in the armor by the edge. He made two quick chopping motions as he highlighted the crater and marked it with his armor's visor.

He dropped the 20mm magack, ordered the squad leader to set up right there, and jogged over to the crater in the center. The squad leader of second squad had already started to deploy the stealth shielding and setting up the point defense quad gun.

"Vuxten, do you read?" the icon said it was Lieutenant Archibald Tiktikik Jones.

"Vuxten here, sir," he replied, flashing an icon to his two squads to let them know he was on the radio.

"I'm sending you three air defense vehicles. That's your AO, so put them in places they can interlock and support each other. The enemy appears to be biological and MILINT believes they will be most vulnerable during planetary atmospheric entry," The Lieutenant said. "I'll also be sending out four schools of attack/defense fishbois and their coral stations, try to find good locations for them to stage combat actions from."

"Yes, sir. I'll scout out areas right away," Vuxten answered.

"Jones, out," the LT said, his icon going red. Vuxten just transmitted his icon and started scanning the area. He opened up the channel for his two squads. "Command thinks air defense will be priority in the early stages. Reconfigure your shoulder cannons to air defense and point defense."

The icons all flashed, letting him know they'd heard him as he jumped, using assist, across the gap to a large downed Precursor. He climbed up the side and then walked around the edge, looking around the field of destroyed machines.

There were four good points, he registered all four with command and went back to where his two squads were still setting up.

First Precursors, now some kind of creature from outer space?

Vuxten sighed. All his people wanted was to coexist freely.

Why was that so hard?

I amUnit XXX-TCSF 7860-CNG of the Line. I am a fully operational superheavy main battle tank of the Terran Confederacy Space Force, designed to protect humanity and its allies. While the Dinochrome Brigade may be defeated, it has never been beaten. For the Honor of the Regiment I will carry out my duty.

The words echo in my mind as I move from maintenance mode to full awareness. In the last battle, against the Precursor Enemy I was gravely damaged in close combat when a Precursor Machine computed that the best course of action was to land its twelve mile across bulk upon me. I had been able to fight my way free but sustained serious damage.

I run diagnostics, taking 1.5 seconds to fully receive and analyze all data. My 250mm Hellbore has been improved by a factor of 1.423%, a modification I can tell was performed by Mantid engineer caste workers repairing my systems. While they were once the enemy they are now valued members of the Confederacy and I appreciate their work on my behalf. My infinite repeaters are ready, the kinetic ones fully loaded, the energy weapons ready to engage the enemy. My mortar tubes are calibrated with magazines fully loaded. My Vertical Launch Missile Systems are at 100%. My point defense and air defense systems are fully interlocked with my sensors and targeting systems. My APERS has been increased by 120% and I have additional sensors and computing power dedicated to close range point defense. My armor is at 100% with additional ablative armor and reactive armor added, my treads are in excellent condition with near perfect tension, more evidence of Engineer Caste Mantid work as even maintenance depot machines usually only manage to reach 97% tension.

I am ready for battle.

All I need now is my commander.

It is less that 0.25 seconds after that thought that I feel the presence of a human mind unfolding next to me, reaching out to me. My commander is in the command couch, locked in and strapped down, the cybernetic linkage fully plugged into his brain stem.

"Morning, Carnage, how are you feeling?" the human, my commander, one Captain Gauge, asks me.

"I am at optimal levels," I tell him.

I feel laser pulses through my memory as my battle-reflex systems come fully online.

"Let's wake you up a bit, old boy," Captain Gauge says.

My mind expands and as I take in the entire situation. Unknown enemies have entered the system, heading straight for the planets within the green zone. The major biological entity has deployed parasite drone units of unknown type. While the larger one had slowly down, changing its ETA to eleven days, some of the smaller units, barely detectable by the scanners of dedicated observation vessels, were still coming in at high speeds on an angle to take them into a reentry course within hours.

I request permission from my commander, the gestalt between the two of us not quite complete, in the millisecond lag between absorbing the situational data and full linkage. He grants it and I use hyperpulse millimetric wave scanners to examine the inverted cone between the largest biological structure and the planet.

Hundreds of smaller biological entities, barely detectable by my scanners, were sleeting toward each planet. I share my information across the Brigade Tactical Data Net and receive information in return.

Unit JWS, AKA JAWS, has been fully awake the entire time and updates all of us with even more information.

The Space Force Navy would be engaging the oncoming objects in the next twenty minutes.

JAWS, our Brigade Commander, has already computed the most effective pattern for us to perform air defense with mid-orbital support. My Commander, fully integrated with me, glances at the pattern and agrees. It seems odd to me. Where we are going to be stationed seems 4% suboptimal to me, but my Commander sees it at perfectly optimal.

The gestalt is complete and I am now Gauge Carnage.

I can now see around me. I am in a maintenance depot, the scaffolding having pulled away. The door is fully open, locking into place with a boom. The light goes from amber to green, signaling that I am allowed to move out from the maintenance depot and to carry out my mission.

I engage my drive systems and my Commander and I move out into the early morning darkness.

The ground rumbled as the 25,000 tons of warsteel and durachrome rumbled out of the hardened underground maintenance shelter.

The BOLOs were on the move.

Rickytofen-773C24 opened his eyes, blinking for a moment to let his mind catch up to his body. He was clad in a pressurized flight suit, his visor closed, liquid atmosphere moving through the tube implanted in his chest. He could feel that his body was unfinished, mostly existing as a life support system for his brain, but he also knew that it didn't matter.

He tabbed ready and waited, closing his eyes and sinking into the craft's systems.

He had sixty high speed data-drones, fifty slower wide scanning drones, eight gun drones, twelve missile pods, and twenty blanks with mission configurable systems. His main pod was ready and he had five hours of life support. He double-checked his quantum link and nodded mentally when it glowed green.

He'd had to go into battle with a red-dot SUDS before. He didn't like it, but needs must.

The light went green and Ricky kicked the massive almond-shaped craft's launch 'pedal'. The carrier's magnetic launch system fired him out silently, no traces, and he waited till he was nearly a hundred miles before hitting his string-drive, going to full stealth.

The cloud of smaller signals would be the first thing he passed through. He'd gather as much data as he flew through, his real goal the second wave of signals, the ones that were showing signs of using a reactionless drive system to slow down so their planetary interception would be delayed.

He kept his acceleration low so as not to make any gravity impressions or show any energy signatures, trusting in his stealth systems as he sped toward the incoming mote traces. The pods were silent, the scanning and combat VI's asleep in their hash-cradles.

In less than an hour he was picking up data. The motes were only a few hundred meters wide, hard shells that were a form of biological ablative armor. The insides were either tightly packed powder or liquid of some form, with the inner shell having vents.

Atmosphere attack spheres.

He could feel the clicking of the quantum communicator under his tongue. A phantom sensation unique to his genetic linage. A minor thing that did not need correction but had been logged with the Clone Worlds Genome Authority.

He kept his signal to noise ratio down, cutting off even most of the internal systems as he swept through the cloud, his angle of approach designed to keep him from intersecting any closer than a full kilometer from any of the motes.

He swept into empty space again and ran a check on his surface to ensure that he had not picked up any guests. His hull was clean, his external hatches were still sealed.

The next wave was inside ablative spheres and liquid layer biological shock dampeners. He checked the readouts. Whatever was inside the soft spongy sphere inside the object would be able to survive a 15G shock without feeling much more than a 0.04G shock.

Landing troops.

He swept on, activating his string drive to clear through empty space. He kept his speed down to avoid any temporal ripples. Nothing would show him quicker to an enemy with 4th Dimension scanners by moving fast enough to leave a wake-trail in the temporal foam.

The next layer he was able to detect subspace drives. STL drives that did not depend on reaction mass. The sine-wave was strange, different than what was loaded into his EPROM database.

It was time.

Ricky opened his eyes, not to look at the blank featureless inside of his pod but instead to deploy his scanners. Vast sensor nets deployed from his pod. Hatches opened in the hull of his drone-control pod, letting his parasite pods eject free and spin up their systems.

His drones spread out around him, the VI's waking up and stretching, mumbling at first, then gibbering at one another. The gunbois and other warbois were excited at the target rich environment.

He was already getting returns. Some of them looked like wasps nests with tuberous and cancerous growths on them. Others looked like ovoid lumps of cancerous tissue. All of them had red and lime green phosphorescence lighting up. Ricky could feel the lumps reaching out toward him. Radar, LIDAR, and other systems scanning him.

Ricky knew he wouldn't appear as human. Humans had legs and arms, ribcages and spines.

He was a blob of organs, veins, nerves, and minimal supporting tissue.

Ricky knew how this would go. Part of him thrilled to what was going to happen.

The eight nearest wasps nests suddenly disgorged what looked like insects. The solar sails looked like wings and crests, they were lit up with red light from bio-luminescence, they had grasping claws and large jaws., with what looked like tumors on their backs and underneath them.

Ricky disgorged missiles at them.

They immediately vomited red liquid and slowed, the liquid expanding out in a five mile disk in front of them within 1.2 seconds. Ricky scanned his own missiles as they plunged through the disk.

They immediately started melting. Now fast enough to stop them from orienting and detonating, slashing at the insects with x-ray lasers, particle beams, and graviton hammers.

The wasps used their wings to intercept as many of the lasers as they could, the energy draining into them and making the red light glow brighter. The particle beams were absorbed even when they hit the skin.

The graviton hammers blew huge chunks from them, shattering the insects into tumbling parts.

Ricky targeted four of the insects with nothing but x-ray laser missiles with maximum output. Ten for one, twenty for another, thirty for the third, and forty for the last, using up two missile pods worth the ammo, ordering the pod to reconfigure for kinetic attack.

The twenty-second hit something in the wasp gave out and it exploded, but not before the x-ray lasers tore massive holes in the wings.

The two pods kinetic attack blew apart the two insects they targeted.

Ricky was taking return attacks now, his sensors running hard. One of the cancerous tuberous rupturing to reveal an octet of six winged creature with two heads and massive jaws dripping with plasma. Their attacks were mainly vomiting up blobs of glowing liquid. Ricky hit them with dead missiles to get the rate of decay on the materials making up the missiles.

Before they could deplete his parasite pods or do much more than cosmetic damage to his primary control pod he was through the ranks.

There had been hundreds of thousands of them. Maybe millions.

The next rank was coming up. Massive creatures, most of them unrolling tentacles. He had a third of his sensor pods left and a handful of weapon pods. He configured them for graviton hammer attacks and oriented his command pod on the largest one. It looked like a snail that had grown foully writhing tentacles and cilia.

He didn't care about the missiles actual damage. He was testing the structural integrity of the armor, the blast patterns, how it cracked, the spalling pattern.

Ricky had two sensor pods when he ran out of ammo.

There was one last check. Ricky loved this part.

He reached out, with his tailbone nerves, and pressed the button.

The massive C+ cannon built into his pod fired. Ricky himself inverted, exploding outward in a shower of neutrons, electrons, and protons broken apart from atomic bonds.

The last two sensor pods watched as the C+ slug hit one of the the larger of the third ring dead center, blowing through it, the entire front side liquifying and pulling inward, the insides spraying out the back as the kinetic shockwave slammed through it.

Two others moved in on it, reaching out, both grabbing it and tearing pieces off of it.

The sensor pods were almost out of reactor mass. The reconfigured.

And fired themselves through the two cannibalizing their companion.

Rickytofen-773C24 opened his eyes, blinking for a moment to let his mind catch up to his body.

That had been a good run. Full of data.

Time to get a close look at the fourth rung and beyond.

In the next six hours he knew he'd be reskinned into a fighter craft, and he'd have all the data he'd gathered as he made his close in attack runs.

The corners of the lipless, unfinished mouth twitched in a smile.

Clone War Lyfe.

Brentili'ik looked up from her datapad.

"100% of Telkan non-combatants are in shelters," she said.

"Not all," Colonel Harvey said.

"100% of non-essential non-combat personnel are in shelters," Brentili'ik corrected, staring up at the human with the wide-eyed defiant pose of her little people.

"And if I order that warborg to pick you up and carry you to the master shelter?" Harvey asked.

"I'll bite him," Brentili'ik warned.

To his credit, the 8 ton warsteel full conversion cyborg didn't snicker.

"Just for clarification, Director Brentili'ik, when I enter the shelter do you intend to?" The Colonel asked.

"Why would you enter a shelter?" Brentili'ik asked. "Are you not in the Space Force Army? Are you not needed on the battlefield?"

Colonel Harvey shook his head. "My dear Director Brentili'ik, I would like nothing more than to grab a rifle, jump in a suit of robotic power armor, and go out to bravely defend our little slice of heaven, but when I attained this rank and was assigned to this post, I lost that privilege. When ground combat begins or the enemy attains air superiority, I will enter a shelter as I no longer am part of the kinetic combat variable."

Brentili'ik frowned, thinking of her husband wrapped in Terran designed power armor out there while the Terran military officer was talking about retreating to a bunker like a Lanaktallan. "Then what is your job?"

"To coordinate military response when you alert me that there are shelters in danger, to coordinate defense of twelve million Telkan people and their allies in my area of operations. While I spent my youth striding across planets in robotic power armor capable of wading through a skyraker, my own ambition for rank has proved my martial undoing," The Colonel said. "With my rank comes responsibility, which will be assisting that men like your husband get proper orders, that intelligence and command receives constant updates on the status of our Area of Operations."

He turned and looked at her and Brentili'ik had to resist and urge to duck under the desk at the fire in his eyes that seemed to her to be brighter than the amber lights of the warborg's eyes.

"Do I want to enter a shelter, Director Brentili'ik? No. I want to get in a set of Novastar power armor or a PacificRim class Robot Power armor, and take the fight to the enemy, fist to face. Instead, I will, by the Digital Omnimessiah and his Twelve Biological Disciples, do my duty and enter the shelter to facilitate command and control with the best data I can in order to ensure that men like your husband do not have their lives thrown away and that every broodcarrier and podling in the shelters is defended to the best ability of the Terran Confederate Space Force," the Colonel said.

Brentili'ik nodded, swallowing thickly. "I meant no offense, Colonel Harvey."

The fire in the human's eyes dimmed. "I know you didn't, kid."

He moved over the table, staring down at it. "The Ostcarren River Power Generation Station handles the power needs of six shelters, but I believe that we should move power armor power cores to the reactor bays of those shelters to act as backups and cut the links to the dam."

"That will result in them having less power," Brentili'ik stated.

The Colonel looked at the clock.

"We have two hours before the first wave arrives," he looked back at the map. "I'm going to order the Engineers to collapse all tunnels and pipes in or out of the shelters and order security to go to 'incursion immanent' in all shelters."

Brentili'ik nodded. Before the Precursor attack she would have protested, worrying about the broodcarriers.

Now she knew it was better the broodcarriers be concerned and possibly stressed than slaughtered en-masse.

"I agree," she stated.

---------------------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Well, we've officially withdrawn our diplomatic envoys to the Unified Civilized Councils.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Good. Fuck those cone stealing ambulatory hamburgers.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS------

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

Wow, really?

------NOTHING FOLLOWS-----

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

What?

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-----

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

Nothing. Never mind.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

TALTSEG NAKLET

safe warm safe warm safe warm sing now podlings sing now with broodmommy. one and one is two two and two is four three and three is six round circle neat triangle funny square this is blue and this is green and this is yellow and this is yummy and this is not and this is icky and this is yum good podling sing podling learn podling smart podling brave podling safe warm safe warm

-----SWOLLOF GNIHTON-----

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Hey, I thought the broodcarriers don't have datalinks. How come we keep hearing them singing?

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-----

TELKAN GESTALT

Sorry about that.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS------

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

No, no, it's OK. Just interesting.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

It is feedback. We have examined it. We have determined that there is some kind of feedback going on. One of us is broadcasting Telkan species sex three member's songs into our gestalt chat unintentionally. We are attempting to determine who is providing this feedback and why so as to clear any static or unintentional broadcasts into chat during this extremely critical time period.

----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Anyone understand any of that?

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-----

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Robot people fix chat.

----NOTHING FOLLOWS------

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Thanks.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

RIGELLIAN COMPACT

The interesting thing will be is if these guys follow the Lanaktallan protocol of retreating after 10% resource consumption. If so, it's another datapoint that suggests Lanaktallan are behind this.

----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

I hate to say this, but with a biologically based enemy like this, I'm going to call a vote later.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS------

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

A vote? For what?

----NOTHING FOLLOWS------

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

Moving a Genome Cracker Fleet out there. We're going to need all the data we can get.

------NOTHING FOLLOWS------

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Yeah, we're going to need the data. We'll join you with a Biomass Fleet.

------NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

ARE TWO YOU CRAZY?

----NOTHING FOLLOWS------

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Uh, that's makes me REALLY nervous just thinking about that.

----NOTHING FOLLOWS-----

AKltAk GesTALt

H3ll0?

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-----

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

BAH! Holy shit, you scared me.

----NOTHING FOLLOWS-------

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

I don't know about letting you move a Genome Cracker Fleet out there.

I mean

* * * * * *

TERRAN CONFEDERACY

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE SUGGESTION: APPROVED

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENT SYSTEM SUGGESTION: APPROVED

PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE DEPLOYMENT TO WAR ZONE ALPHA

* * * * * *

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

GAH! Are you guys TRYING to give me a heart attack across all three hearts?

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AkltaK [email protected]

H3l770?

-----NOTHER FARROWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Hello, little one. Welcome.

You guys be quiet, let me help her get her feet under her.

-----NOTHING FOLLOWS-----

aKLTak GEstalT

V COrpS Enr0UTe. It w177 B D0ne! 3Ta 102 H0ur5

---End Me55age-------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oh dear. Come here, sweetie