Chapter 285: (TerraSol)

The Corporate Fleet had taken 60% casualties, but they had managed to get within weapon's distance of the red fourth planet. The planet was almost obscured by the strength of the planetary defense shields, by the ships rising to fight in the tens of thousands, by the munitions fired from the three moons and the planet itself that filled space with thunder and fury.

But millions of ships still swarmed to attack the planet, which was red on the visual scanners. The Most Highs, each in charge of only a few hundred ships, or a dozen of so lesser Most Highs, knew that there was no way that the planet could resist the thousands of troops ships that were even now driving hard for the surface, escorted by light attack craft, the shield able to rebuff anything much larger or moving much faster. The planetary defense shield flared as tens of millions of guns hammered at the shields of the planet and the three moons that seemed to be little more than heavily shielded gun platforms.

The first five thousand troops ships landed and began disgorging their contents. Infantry, tanks, armored personnel carriers, warmechs of all size. All intent on bringing down the nuclear and antimatter dampeners and the planetary shield generators.

The Most Highs rejoiced. They would land millions of troops onto the surface of the red planet known as Hateful Mars and tear open its defenses.

And then the Most Highs would glass it before planet cracking it.

With the massive troops landings it was now inevitable.

The ghosts of a billion Mantid began laughing.

They could have told them, the planet wasn't red due to iron oxide in the rocks.

It was from blood.

The Hate Anvils of Mars rang with fury as warmechs strode out to meet the Lanaktallan. The Joy of the nth Electron played from great speakers as tanks rolled out of their berths. Warsteel quivered and glowed red as the great furnaces roared hot and the aerospace fighters launched.

And row after row of warborgs took to the field.

The Lanaktallan found their landing zones under heavy attack from missiles and heavy weaponry. Ships exploded in mid-air, as they came in for landing, as they disgorged troops and war machines onto the surface of Hateful Mars.

Lanaktallan went to dig on only to discover that the very dust and sand hated them. Nanites in the ground turning the iron oxide infused sand into monomolecular tipped needles that ripped through armor and flesh alike, hundreds, thousands, millions of needles shredding Lanaktallan troops as the sand and fines raised up in a cloud to shred those who dared set foot upon Hateful Mars without permission.

Nanite suppression fields were turned on causing the dust and micro-fines to collapse back onto the surface. Nuclear dampeners were turned on after a handful of landing zones were hit with atomic weaponry. Battlescreens came up as missiles and rockets began pounding the landing sites.

For ever ship lost a half dozen more made it through the planetary defense shield.

The Lanaktallan knew that victory was at hand. The neural templates and memories they'd been pressed into assured it.

Then some of them began hearing whistling and ducked down, figuring it was another barrage of artillery.

It was worse.

From the sky, sometimes screaming, fell Lanaktallan armored troops that had been aboard the troopships when the ships had been destroyed thousands of feet above the surface. At first they were obliterated by the battlescreens, but all too soon the battlescreens failed. Then Lanaktallan hit the ground around the dug in troops, even those in armor bursting like a melon. Tanks and armored vehicles and even warmechs slammed into the ground, killing and maiming Lanaktallan troops.

The Lanaktallan soldiers huddled down in fear in their fighting positions.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. They were supposed to land on the planet's surface in vast numbers and win.

How could this be happening?

That question was being asked on Ganymede by hundreds of Most Highs. Their ships had landed on what appeared to be nothing but a planet wide battlefield. Abandoned and left to rot, there was even a damaged atmospheric membrane that barely kept a breathable atmosphere on the large moon.

At first, it had gone easy. The ships had managed to get past the somehow ornate pinkish planetary defense shieldings and land.

Half of them seemed to settle on top of some kind of cave. When they cut their anti-grav, the ground gave way under the ships and they fell into caverns.

There was silence for a moment as each Most High tried to gain control of their subordinates.

It was a Sixtieth High that saw it first. His troopship had slid sideways into a cavern and was now laying on its side. He was trying to get the ship upright but the thrusters weren't responding. He saw motion out the forward window and looked.

A round furry face with feliniod ears was looking at him. It had red stripes under its eyes, on its cheekbones, and a single line across the forehead over its eyes. It blinked at him, then lifted up one heavily armored hand to give a friendly wave.

The Sixtieth High frowned at the sight. A second later his eyes opened wide in horror as a chainsword, one of the horrific Terran weapons, roared to life and began sawing at the window, the feline featured female still smiling widely as she sawed the blade back and forth, the window starting to crack and craze as the red hot teeth clattered against the armaglass.

Other Lanaktallan on board the ships began screaming in terror as chainswords began to gnaw at the hyperalloy hulls of the landing craft. On one craft a desperate Lanaktallan NCO, who's brain was thrumming with the memories of War Stallions before him, pushed his shoulder against the door to hold it shut as a chainsword ripped open a gap and began sawing it wider, screaming the entire time. More and more chainswords were being pressed against the hull, all of them clattering and howling as psychically enhanced warsteel chains ripped into Lanaktallan hyperalloy.

His memories had no information on how to handle it.

The dropships that managed to get their troops loose had even worse luck. Bad enough that debris and screaming bodies were raining from the sky, but heavy weapons were crashing against the hulls and battlescreens of the dropships.

A thousand Lanaktallan went to gallop off the troopship.

Half of them were turned into chunky salsa by incoming rounds as soon as the doors opened. Half of them were blown up by spider-mines that jumped up and wrapped their legs around the upper torso of the victim, pressing tight against the chest before detonating their shape charges. Of the quarter left, half of THOSE fell into holes that opened up beneath them.

From the holes came the sound that the Lanaktallan would learn to fear.

"DOKI DOKI DOKI KAWAII!" and the roaring of chainswords and the thunder of magacs.

They would learn to fear those sounds for the rest of their lives.

Every hour of them.

On Titan the Lanaktalln ships swarmed the massive moon orbiting the gas giant, torn from the skies by the guns mounted on every moon and inside the atmosphere of the gas giant itself. Vast ripples kept appearing on the gaseous surface of the gas giants as the batteries inside bellowed out rage and fury at the invaders.

The Lanaktallan troops ships began making landings, tank-cradles managed to get through the heavy defenses, slamming down on the ice that seemed to make up the surface. Torpedoes fired from undersea settlements, fortresses, and factories swam silently through the inky ocean depths, following the signals, their warboi VI's muttering and growling to themselves as they listened closely to the thick ice above them.

The Lanaktallan ships slammed down, the bay doors opened and the ramps thudded onto the ice.

The warbois heard it, transmitted through the ice and to the water. They oriented on the sounds, whispered back to the controllers to hear that there was no friendlies making those noises, and silently swam upwards.

The Lanaktallans learned that the facilities they could see 'built on the ice' were the tops of the massive undersea arcologies and factoriums built on the face of Titan rather than her seas. That the mountains that heaved up out of the lakes of ammonia or out from the ice were, in fact, geological in nature.

Even as the torpedoes detonated beneath the ice, plunging the Lanaktallan ships and troops into the seas of Titan, the doors opened on the facilities.

Into the cold atmosphere of Titan came those who found the taste of nitrogen sweet.

The Lanaktallan had thought they knew the kind of attacks they would face from those who swept out of their assault sally ports, who blew holes in the ice so the armored troops could fight on the surface, of those who piloted tanks and aerospace fighters in the frigid atmosphere of Titan.

Perhaps before their own war against the Terrans, those who fought on and below Titan's surface might have used the mass waves the Lanaktallan had prepared for.

But the Treana'ad were a crafty people.

Unassisted they ran across the ice at 50 mph, mortars and rocket launchers on the abdomen of their armor firing, heavy mag-ac cannons firing from harnesses, running in discrete small formations, all coordinated.

To the Lanaktallan that survived the torpedo attack that blew huge craters in the crust of ice the Treana'ad warcry through the nitrogen heavy atmosphere chilled the blood.

"KALAMONDO!" roared out through the nitrogen as the Treana'ad roared out the name of the plain where the first battle of the Ice Cream War took place.

The Lanaktallan expected the Treana'ad to charge through the smoke and mist, to be like the Mantid warriors and rush forward to engage at close range, slashing with their bladearms and attacking with their psychic powers.

Instead the Treana'ad stayed back at just under the maximum effective range of their weaponry, delivering accurate and devastating fire even as they relayed the data to the undersea artillery systems or the surface installations.

Torpedoes slammed into the ice, plunging the Lanaktallan into the icy seas where they were hit by subsurface war machines. Artillery and rocket attacks pounded any Lanaktallan landing craft that were lucky enough to find solid ground.

Within half an hour the Lanaktallan had learned to fear one sound in particular. Not the war cry, not the pounding of armored Treana'ad footpads, not even the crack of the magacs or the fluttering sound of incoming artillery.

It was the "Tasty-Freeze Missile" that the Treana'ad loved. A small missile, without even an explosive warhead. Instead the missile came in hard and fast, waiting until it was within a couple dozen meters of the target before deployed a handful of blades that made the missile rotate at high speed. The warsteel tip and the blades destroyed anything it touched, spraying blood, flesh, bone, and armor fragments across the battlefield.

Dropship's battlescreens flared, rippled, and failed. Armor held for only a few minutes, an eternity in combat, and then the dropships began exploding as missiles impacted home and blew their guts through the armor and into the interior spaces of the dropships.

Some of the Lanaktallan began breaking, unable to handle the fast high pitched shriek of the Tasty-Freeze or the laughing rockets or the steady pounding of the magac guns. They broke from their fortifications, galloping out onto the icy surface. War Stallions never break under fire.

But they weren't War Stallions.

Roving patrols of Treana'ad chased them down.

The Lanaktallan had devoted ten times the amount of attackers to Terra itself than any other planet, even the massive industrial planets of Mars and Mercury.

A handful of the first wave got through, less than five thousand of the troop carriers made landing.

The initial waves were slaughtered before they could even mount a coherent defense.

The Second Wave, the Military Wave, came in hard, warships protecting the troop carriers as they threw themselves against the Terran defenses. Logic and experience stated that the Terran defenses should be low on ammunition, would be forced to conserve ammunition to face the Executor Wave, but the Terran guns fired as if there was no tomorrow, only the battle at hand.

They landed on all eight 'continents', including the two polar continents.

All of their experience and 'memories' only told them how to fight on a single overarching mega-continent and the scattered islands on the rest of the planet as that was how most of the worlds inside the Green Zone were set up.

The polar continents were wreathed in fog and steam that seemed to get thicker as the ships roared down. They expected to find little to no resistance.

Like Titan, every chunk of ice big enough to stand on with one foot was armed. The fighting was thick and heavy as the Terran forces went at the Lanaktallan, most of whom didn't even get off of their ships.

The other six continents the ships kept screaming down out of the skies with orders to shut down the planetary defense screens, shut down the antimatter and nuclear suppression field generators. The Corporate Fleet had manage to transmit landing zones, but those zones were full of nothing but death and destruction. Panicked radio messages had screamed about giant birds in one landing zone, another one had just stopped transmitting, the ships sitting in the middle of jungle as the vegetation slowly began to wrap the dropships in its leafy fist, the others had all shrieked about being under heavy attack.

The Military Fleet made its landings. Thousands of targets, dozens, hundreds of ships driving for each landing zone.

Less than half of them made it to the landing zone. The flight paths were a rain of debris and armored bodies falling from the skies.

Even intra-atmosphere missile attacks were swept aside by point defense systems with thick enough firepower to rake dropships from the sky. Only the sheet weight of numbers allowed any of the troopships to make landing. In many places less than a handful reached the landing zone, touching down just as hypersonic missiles roared in and hit, executing top-down attacks and scattering pieces of the troopships and the troops themselves over the area.

Lanaktallan military theory often stressed that no race would use atomic weaponry or other heavy weaponry upon their own soil, knowing that they would have to live on the planet they had hammered with atomics.

The Terrans didn't seem to care.

Atomic blasts registering in the megatons, normally used in ship to ship engagements, detonated on the surface of Terra or in airbursts only a few thousand feet up.

It was as if they didn't care. They'd destroy the planets themselves in this fight.

In orbit, a few of the Lanaktallan Most Highs wondered if they'd even have to bother dropping the planetary shields to destroy the planet, the Terrans seemed bound and determined to destroy it themselves.

The few dropships that managed to land in cities found themselves under attack from all sides. From the broken and shattered skyrakers came rockets, weapons fire, missiles, and even just debris hucked from a great height.

More than a few Lanaktallan troopers, sent out to secure the landing zone, were crushed by filing cabinets or desks thrown from the 200th story of a skyraker. Infantry Highs or Most Highs ordered rocket attacks on the buildings to suppress any fire from them.

That stopped when the buildings started getting dropped on the landing zones.

Lanaktallan on the ground tried to warn the ships in orbit not to designate any city landing zones.

The ships in orbit were blown out of the sky before they could transmit their findings to the Executor Fleet.

There was no over-arching command of the all the forces. There were too many ships for that, the Lanaktallan VI's and computer system incapable of performing such a task.

But still they kept landing, even if it was into a meat grinder or reinforcing troops that had been dead for hours.

After all, War Stallions knew no fear.

They were convinced that Terrans had to know fear. Had to be terrified by the sheer amount of Lanaktallan metal that was raining down on every world in their home system.

All they had to do was land enough troops, destroy enough cities and planets, and grief would consume them, defeat would sink into their minds, and the Lanaktallan would emerge victorious.

Someone probably should have told the Terrans that.

Because the Mantid had learned that if anything, a Terran just buckled down harder.

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The city had been attacked before. Even before the Glassing, it had been attacked. Wars had been fought around it, over it, because of it, and just to punish it. The Mantid had glassed it, but it was no different to those who loved the city than when it had been hit with atomic weapons even before the Extinction Agenda Attack.

They just rebuilt. Each time making it more beautiful even as it retained its heritage. From the melted steel framework left over after the Mantid attack the Iron Tower was rebuilt over the city. Its alleys had the best wine and cheese and bread. Its streets had the most luxurious shops. It had a history of artwork, of poetry, of fashion.

The history was thick enough to cover the blood that had soaked the streets since the human race had barely mastered iron.

The Lanaktallan troop ships slammed down around the city, intending on eliminating its ability to provide part of the planetary defense shield. Debris and bodies fell from the sky onto the streets and roofs of the city even as the ramps lowered. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, self propelled artillery vehicles, rocket launchers, and infantry poured out. They advanced into the city, carefully maneuvering through the winding streets that were silent.

The streets were empty. Flag waved from building fronts, tables were scattered with wine, bread, and cheese still on them. Music could be heard from buildings far away, never where the Lanaktallan were passing, but in front of, behind, or a block over.

The tanks clattered down the wide avenues, confident in their strength and firepower, the crews breathing a sigh of relief that the city was apparently undefended. The crews were unaware that it wasn't the first time that tanks had rolled down the streets.

The aerospace fighters screamed in and were met by missiles, exploding in the skies.

Lanaktallan hurrying to the launch sites found little more than a man portable mass driver or graviton driver.

The first few picked it up to examine it.

And triggered the grenade hidden under it.

Rockets were fired from alleys, from rooftops, always hitting the upper back deck of the tanks. Bottles of flaming alcohol were thrown from windows or alleys. Twice manholes exploded, the IED gutting the tank that had rolled over it.

Not enough to stop the advance, just enough to slow it, let it bunch up, as the Lanaktallan army moved deeper and deeper into the city.

In a wine shop a couple sat watching the Lanaktallan go by. The hologram at the front of the shop hid that the interior was full of customers watching the armored Lanaktallan go by. The battlescreen was the portable kind but still stronger than the ones sported by the Lanaktallan tanks.

"Happy five year anniversary, Jen," the man grinned from where he was sitting at a table across from his wife.

Outside the last of the Lanaktallan forces trotted by, leaving the street empty again.

"If you think an invasion of cowtaurs is going to get me to leave our anniversary vacation early, you have another thing coming, Jarrad," the woman laughed. She sipped at her wine then tilted the glass at the Lanaktallan outside. "They have no clue, do they?"

He shook his head. "Nope."

She set down her wine glass and picked up the rocket launcher that had been printed from the kitchen's creation engine. The man smiled and grabbed the rifle leaning against the table. He stood up with his wife and the rest of the patrons of the restaurant.

"Vive la Paris," the woman said.

"VIVE IRON FENCE!" the rest of the patrons, her husband included, called out.