Chapter 289

It had taken the Executor Fleet nine hours to reach Terra from where they had dropped out of hyperspace into the Sol System. Normally they should have been able to drop inside the system, nearly to the planets, but some kind of system, or maybe just a natural aberration, had caused the ships to drop out of hyperspace between the Oort Cloud and the ninth planetiod.

From the second they'd made their entry to realspace to the time they'd reached their planetary goals, the massive unending tide of Executor vessels had been under heavy fire. Before they'd crossed the orbit of the sixth planet the majority of the Grand Rest Most Highs were obliterated, killed by fire from the Oort Cloud by an unseen enemy fleet. The fleet heading for the fourth planet had been hammered down to less than 30% of its initial strength by a fleet that seemed to move as if it was controlled by a single mind. The fleet heading for the second planet had run face first into a fleet of only thirty ships that had put out enough firepower and launched enough parasite craft that less than 20% of the fleet had survived to be engaged by the orbital guns.

Of the one and a half billion ships thrown at the Sol System in three great waves, less than ten percent reached the orbits of each of the inner planets.

By the time the Executor Fleets reached their targets, the ships of the Corporate and Military Fleets were nothing but spreading debris or dead junk.

Hardly any of the Lanaktallan Executor Fleet reached the orbit of Terra compared to what had been slated to destroy the planet, half of the them warships instead of troopships. There should have been two and a half million troopships to land on TerraSol itself, to release five billion soldiers of the Great Herd onto its surface. Instead only a hundred thousand managed to arrive and drop their troops before getting obliterated.

'Only' three hundred million and some change made it to the surface alive from the Executor Fleet.

More than the Corporate and Military Fleets combined.

Of the ships still in orbit, some tried to cluster together and help defend one another.

They died.

Some tried to run.

They died too.

Some attempted to crash through the shields even though their ships massed too much and were too large to pass through planetary defense shields.

They died, breaking apart like a toy boat made of matchsticks thrown against a brick wall.

Some struck their drives, dropped their shield except for debris shields, fully expecting to be slaughtered but unable to see any way out.

They were shocked that they were spared.

Across the Sol System the Executors came in hard and fast.

Most of the remaining Grand and Great Rear Most Highs had realized something terrible when the stars had flickered and vanished.

They weren't getting out of this attack alive unless they could defeat the Terran fleets, silence the huge gun batteries, destroy the defense systems, and crack the planets.

So they pushed the attack.

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The ships landed on the largest continent on the southern hemisphere. They'd identified a priority target during their emergency planetary landing. What was obviously a vast solar collection farm, the mirrors visible from space. The ships set down, most of them bobbling strangely. The pilots had a hard time landing, most of them looking through the sensor systems and frowning.

Just black below them, and of course the collision alarms wailing because the ship's image was being reflected by the solid mass of the mirror. Rather than individual mirrors, the dropships settled on nothing but polished glass.

The first troops trotting out of the dropships hit the glass and began to slip. It was slick as... well... glass. The ships themselves were surrounded by heat and the heat from the engines was reflecting back up into the ship and around it.

Still, one hundred fifty thousands troops ran out from sixty troopships, all that was left of nearly ten thousand ships that had exited hyperspace and into the Sol Systems.

"Where are we?" the Grand High Executor asked, looking around at the glass as he carefully moved across it. A few hundred yards away a Infantry Eightieth Most High had his troops try setting off some plasma grenades on the glass to try to break through it. The reflected heat made most of them whinny in pain and clatter to the side, away from the unmarred glass.

"According to the data passed by our spy when we came into orbit, a place called Botswana, in Africa," his intelligence specialist said. "The city of Gabaroni is in the middle of the solar collector."

"I don't think this is a solar collector," the Engineer Most High said, looking at the datapad in his hand.

"What is it?" the Grand High Executor asked.

"It's been polished to a mirror brightness somehow and smoothed, but it looks like glass from orbital weapons hitting silicon dioxide particles," the Engineer Most High said. "It extends literally to the bedrock some sixty feet below us and is somehow hardened."

"Plasma glass from orbital weapons?" the Great Most High Executor said, looking around. "You're sure?"

The Engineer nodded. "I'm sure, Great Most High. My men have sent out drones, having them run on echolocation rather than optical due to the reflective nature of the glass confusing the drones, but so far it extends at least ten miles around us and all the way down to the bedrock."

"How far to this Gabaroni?" the Great Most High asked.

"As far as we could tell, at least a hundred miles," The Great Most High of Infantry said.

"How far to the outside edge of the solar collectors?" The Great Most High Executor asked.

"Nearly two hundred miles," the Infantry Most High answered.

"Deploy the vehicles, run checks on the mechs and power armors. We can't dig emplacements in this glass so we'll advance upon the city and destroy to to eliminate this power center," the Great Most High Executor said. He looked off to the east where a glow was starting. "Sunrise is soon, we'll be able to see better in this terrible place."

"As you command," his staff said, spreading out and giving orders to their subordinates.

The Great Most High Executor stood there, watching as the mechs, the power armors, and the vehicles were unloaded. The glow on the horizon was getting larger, coming closer, and the Grand Most High Executor turned to stare at it. He could faintly hear a roaring sound that was getting louder.

He saw the sun peek up over the horizon and reflect of the mirrored glass, blinding him. He turned up the polarization on his face shield but it just got brighter and brighter. His suit started wailing alarms as the temperature went up and up.

Within moments it was past the temperature needed to boil water. Seconds after that it was hot enough to melt lead. Then hotter. And hotter.

The engines on the landing craft overheated within sixty seconds.

Before the sun rose completely over the horizon it was hot enough to melt steel.

By noon there was nothing left but a spreading pool of alloys.

The Great Glass Sea of Botswana was merciless.

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The two hundred ships came in fast and hard, at a bad enough reentry angle that smoke was pouring off their hulls, their battelscreens overloaded from the heat.

"Drop directly down over that city!" the Orbital Drop Most High yelled out, putting his ship into an almost straight down dive, ignoring his instruments screaming at him. He heard yelling as the three thousand troops in the back were slammed around, felt the ship shift as the cargo spaces full of armor, weapons, vehicles, and mechs shifted.

He didn't care.

He was completely absorbed with getting 'underneath' the enemy fire. Nearly fifteen thousand troop ships just in his Task Force had made it into the system before the stars had vanished and the astrogation system reported that the ships were in the middle of the empty space between galaxies with no stars for reference. Less then a thousand had reached TerraSol.

Only his two hundred ships remained of the thousands of dropships that had started to drop troops.

The amount of ground-fire is insane, he thought to himself. Every minute that went by it seemed like there was more air defense batteries coming online, as if some madman was building them even as the Lanaktallan were coming in.

He was close enough now that he was taking smaller missiles, obviously the shoulder fired ones.

"Straight at the city, they won't shoot us down over a populated area, it'll destroy their own homes," the Orbital Drop Most High said, jamming another wad of stimcud in his mouth. He looked as his instruments and saw he was only six thousand feet up and still dropping rapidly. His speed had finally dropped below the speed of sound on this world and he was breaking as hard as he could without injuring the troops in the back.

His armor was still ablating as he dropped below three thousand feet, hitting the retro brakes and leveling the dropship off at barely two thousand feet. He swept past the huge buildings, barely missing one.

"There, there's an open area right there," he told the remaining dropship. "Big enough for all of us."

It was inside the city and he wished he had ordnance he could drop on the city as he dropped further down.

The dropship slammed into the ground with a bone cracking slam, the forward struts buckling under the strain. He managed to keep control of the vessel as it slewed forward and finally came to rest only a foot from a thick wall.

"Out out out!" the drop-master in the ship yelled. "We've got a fire!"

Ko'olmo'o hit the pilot canopy, grabbing his pistol, and climbed out, tugging a face mask into place as he trotted down the extending steps. The dropships had Lanaktallan piling out, most of them on fire.

As he watched more and more of the dropships caught on fire, as if their hulls were made of some kind of flammable material instead of battle-steel. "NANITE HAZARD AREA" kept flashing on his visor and he reached down and cranked up his nanite suppression field.

The Most High Drop Master trotted up, waving at the dropships, all of which were on fire. Some Lanaktallan were trying to put them out, but it just got worse, almost as if it was mocking the Lanaktallans fighting the blaze.

"How bad?" Ko'olmo'o asked, taking the plasma rifle the Most High was offering.

"Twenty percent of the troops are injured, ten percent of those badly enough they're out of the fight," the Drop Master, Lowenmo'o said, shaking his head. "I'm just glad we're on the ground."

"We've still got to take out the command and control for the defensive systems," Ko'olmo'o stated.

Explosions filled the air and Ko'olmo'o looked up in time to see fire light up the sky in streamers of color.

"Did someone get here before us?" Lowenmo'o asked, frowning.

"I don't think so. I saw crowds in the street. The sun set during our approach," Ko'olmo'o said. More detonations, with colorful explosions in the sky. "How many men do we have?"

"Roughly two thousand per drop ship, we made it down with 170 dropships, so almost 350,000 ground troops," Lowenmo'o said. He waved at the city. "We're in what looks like an industrial section, maybe. The City Center, where the defensive system coordination should be is that way about a mile or two through crowds."

Several warmechs tried to get out of the ship but caught on fire, the armor burning fiercely. All of the pilots punched out, ejecting even as flames managed to get under the armor and set the internal systems on fire.

"What is going on?" Lowenmo'o asked.

Ko'olmo'o noticed that the Most High Drop Master's sidearm was smoking and looked down at his own weapon.

His gloved hands had sunken into the plassteel and the frame was starting to smoke.

"CHECK WEAPONS!" he bellowed out over the command channel, overriding the other Most Highs, even interrupting the Task Force Grand Most High.

In the time it took him to finish the sentence his plasma rifle burst into flame.

He threw it away from himself, toward the burning dropship, then reached down, grabbed his pistol, and threw it afterwards.

The pistol burst into flame in midair.

"GET OUT OF YOUR ARMOR!" the Infantry Great Most High screamed. Ko'olmo'o looked around and saw that more than a few of the armored Lanaktallans were bursting into flame.

Ko'omo'o hit eject and the armor fell into two pieces, both pieces smoking. He trotted back and stared as his armor caught on fire.

It took almost twenty minutes to get everything under control. By that time all of the dropships, the tanks, the warmechs, the armored personnel carriers, the power armor, the weapons, even the power assisted frames, were all burning away.

Ko'omo'o realized it was hot, not just from the fire, but hot and humid.

And he was standing outside naked.

The nearly half a million strong Lanaktallan force had gathered instinctively into groups, the smaller males in the middle, the larger on the outside. There was a lot of nervous whinnying and clattering of hooves as the fires burned.

"Great Most High, there is a Terran here," the Most High of Recon Forces said.

"Then kill him!" the Task Force Great Most High said.

"Um, he's armored and armed, I don't know how I'd kill him, Most High," the Recon leader said. "He says he wants to see someone in charge."

"Ko'olmo'o, you will see what this Terran wants, since your usefulness came to an end when the dropships all caught on fire," the Task Force Most High said.

Ko'olmo'o felt his hearts sink. Still, orders were orders, and he followed the directions to the north side of the big area where the ships had set down, weaving between the piles of burning equipment. Finally he saw the Recon Most High standing next to a brown skinned human in a colorful outfit that almost hurt the eyes.

"I am Ko'olmo'o, Orbital Drop Most High," Ko'olmo'o told the human.

The human, who had brown hair twisted into braids and some kind of brown tube emitting smoke from one end as well as bright amber eyes, smiled, showing a lot of white teeth.

"I'm Eugene Santos, Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Nation State of Brazil," the human said. He gave a bigger smile. "Well, looks like all of you have a problem."

"Surrender and be destroyed!" the Most High of Warmechs said, trotting up behind Ko'olmo'o.

"Shut up, you fool," Ko'olmo'o snarled.

"Well, you're naked, but with the Carnaval do Brasi going on, it's not illegal," the 'Mayor' said. He squinted and looked up at the smoke in the sky from Ko'olmo'o's entrance. "Looked like you guys were pretty desperate to make it in time for the festivities, so once you were disarmed, I figured I'd extend you an invitation."

"We're here to destroy your world, you fool!" the Warmech Most High repeated.

"Man, you need a drink and to get laid," the Mayor, Eugene, said, shaking his head. He looked back at Ko'olmo'o. "Once the 'soup' disarmed you, since we chose non-lethal because all the blood and screaming and death might bring down the party, I figured I'd invite you to the End of the World party."

"Soooo, you're not taking us prisoner?" Ko'olmo'o asked.

"My cops are busy with the carnival," The human Eugene laughed. "The jails are going to be full of idiots, I don't have the space for cows from outer space."

"What is happening?" the Great Most High asked over Ko'olmo'o's datalink.

"I think we're being invited to a party," Ko'olmo'o said.

"Tell whoever it is to surrender and be destroyed!" the Great Most High insisted.

"Tough boss, huh?" the human Eugene asked.

Ko'olmo'o nodded, not surprised the human's datalink could eavesdrop.

"Wanna see what you're missing?" the Terran asked, turning his hand palm up. Before Ko'olmo'o could answer a startlingly clear hologram sprang from his hand.

There were dancers, giant animated colorful animatronics on hover platforms, people drinking intoxicants, others smoking intoxicants. Many beings of nearly two dozen races were obviously taking part in a huge public celebration.

"You don't have to fight, you know," Eugene said, slowly moving his hand so that everyone gathered could see it. "It's much better to enjoy life."

Ko'olmo'o stared at the image and linked back to the Great Most High.

"I'm going to take some men with me, make sure it isn't a trap," Ko'olmo'o said.

"I"m not giving up. We're here to destroy them," the Task Force Great Most High said.

"Well, I suppose we can keep trying but either our forces are going to planet crack this place and we'll be unable to get away because, oh, I don't know, our dropships are on fire, or..." and he paused for a second, "We're going to lose and either be killed or put in a prison camp."

"So you might as well enjoy the party till then!" Eugene said, making sure they could see the hologram again.

"I am the Great Most High of the Infantry, I'll send two platoons with you," one of the Most Highs said.

"All right," Ko'olmo'o looked at Eugene. "I will accompany you. No tricks."

Eugene laughed. "Oh, there will be tricks, but not the kind you are thinking of. There's deception, perfection, enjoyment, and debauchery, all awaiting you."

Ko'olmo'o just nodded as nearly a hundred Lanaktallan jogged up. They all looked nervous about the fact they were completely naked, but the human Eugene didn't seem to care.

"Let's go. It's only a few blocks to the edge of the partying. I had them clear the parking lot for you," Eugene said, turning and walking away while making a motion for Ko'olmo'o to follow.

"Come with me, my friends, to where the show and feast your eyes where the laughter never dies," Eugene said.

Ko'olmo'o glanced up, to where he could still see pinpricks of ships exploding in orbit, then back at Eugene.

"And we won't be harmed?" he asked the human.

"Not intentionally. Someone always gets drunk and passes out face first in a puddle," Eugene laughed.

Ko'olmo'o followed.

Either way, despite what the Great Most High thought, either they'd die when Terra was planet cracked, or the Terrans would win.

He agreed with Eugene.

It was better to party in your last moments than weep.

Over the next few hours the Carnaval do Brasi swallowed the entire Lanaktallan force.

Most of the Lanaktallan didn't remember till over two weeks after the invasion was all over that they were supposed to be invading, not shotgunning alcohol, smoking intoxicants, dancing with nearly or fully naked lemurs, or prancing about the street completely naked.

If they'd asked, they would have found out that they weren't the first to be devoured in such a way.

And they wouldn't be the last...