Chapter 311: (The War)

Planet Slatmurt - Neo-Sapient/Near Sapient Space Border

Two Weeks after Case Omaha

Three Months after Initial Red Dots in Hesstla System

The mess hall was full of chattering, the clattering of cutlery on dishes, the clink of glasses, and here and there laughter. It was a quikbuild structure, put up by ants almost as an afterthought, a place for beings to eat and relax a little while. Treana'ad made jokes and puffed at their cigarettes underneath air circulators/filters. Mantid talked about the last drop and how it was better/worse than this one. Rigellian females talked and sang as they ate, their conversation often about the beauty of an oiled brown feather. The Telkans stared around them at everyone talking and laughing.

They were three days into a hard drop.

Task Force Angry Duck, Sixteenth Army, V CORPS (MIXED), and 1st Telkan Marine Division, First Regiment had arrived barely in time to hold off the wave after wave of Precursor metal from overwhelming the planet. Rather than leave when the math said, they kept bringing in additional waves while the previous forces retreated. They were making heavier use of drop-troops, going for the ground pound to secure victory. Space was still contested, with Task Force Angry Duck joined by Task Force Black Hammer, the latter following the Precursor vessels when they ran for it.

Ground was still anyone's game.

The world was rich in iridium and lithium, gravity well spun crystals with atmospheric doping making the material a hard sought resource.

Which meant whoever wanted it had to take it.

The Precursor Autonomous War Machines were a mix of Type-I, Type-II, and Type-III Hybrids. A nasty mix with a whole passel of tricks up their metal sleeves.

The Telkan were on their first offworld combat deployment. They were doing well, up to the standards of Confederate Space Force, their casualties low. Most of all, they knew when to call in for close air, artillery, or infantry support when things started to get dicey.

A single Telkan came into the mess hall and the rest of the Telkan went quiet. The fur on his ears, around the tip of his muzzle, around his eyes, was all silver. He walked with a limp, one eye and one ear were black warsteel replacements. The Telkan went back to eating, quietly, as the new arrival went through the chow line and got a tray of food before moving over to sit with the handful of Terran Descent Human officers sitting at the table.

Colonel Iisak nodded to the Telkan officer, who nodded back and went to clearing his tray. The human noted that the Telkan's fur had the slick plastic look of someone who had just gone through the showers to wash away hours of suit-sweat. While the Telkan was eating the other officers made small talk, mostly about the condition of their units and how well the fight was going.

Finally the Telkan officer pushed back his tray and picked up a long stalk of greenish red plant to nibble on.

"How's it look out there, Lieutenant?" Colonel Iisak asked.

"Looks like we've got them on the run," The Telkan said. His voice was rough and coarse, like he'd been chewing gravel all day. "Third Armor's rolling on drop points the AWM's are using, pushing them back to the Graveyard. My Brigade is rotating back for some R&R."

The Colonel nodded. The Graveyard was where a dozen of the larger Precursors that were able to come into the atmosphere had landed and then had been disabled by General Trucker's heavy tanks and atomic strikes from 8th Infantry during the initial landing of V Corps. The dead AWM's were still spitting out smaller war machines, but now there was the opportunity to push them back into the Graveyard and then the Harvester Class AWM's could be handled.

"How's the weather?" General Hwrawkar asked, setting down her glass of juice. She was in charge of a Regiment of fast attack grav-strikers and, like most pilots, almost obsessed over the weather.

"Starting to cool off. Had some bad black rain yesterday, lots of heavy metal in it," the Telkan said. "Wasn't too bad on the way back."

The Rigellian nodded, closing her eyes and bringing up her command console with her implant and ordering the mechanics to double-check the radiation shielding on all the strikers.

"How's our hosts?" The sole one star General asked. He knew the answers his staff had given him, but it was always good to hear from another source.

Plus, the young Telkan male was a newly minted officer. Sure, he could fight, he could inspire his troops, but leadership was more than yelling battlecries and pulling the trigger.

"Still staying low," the Telkan said. "It's all too much for them still."

"Their females and young are fragile," Hwrawkar mused, opening her eyes. "Something I can empathize with."

The male Telkan nodded.

"How are your men?" General asked, keeping his voice mild.

"Morale was a little wobbly when those city sized Harvesters landed but it's firmed back up now," the Telkan said. "We've taken pretty low casualties, all things considered."

"How are the new suits?" Colonel Krikitaki, Ninth Maintenance Brigade, asked mildly.

"Still shaking out. The new psychic shielding makes everyone's teeth tingle," the Telkan said. He shook his head. "Funny that I fought most of the Telkan Wars with bare minimum shielding."

"Type-III's push psychic assaults harder than the other two," General Hwrawkar said. She tapped one black talon against the side of her glass. "I'm just glad that you are as resistant to psychic attacks as we are. It is rare."

The Telkan officer nodded. He finished off the stalk of vegetable and nodded to everyone. "Gentlemen. Ladies," he said, standing up. He gathered his tray and went to the wash rack, clearing his tray before putting it into the shelving where it would be taken back and washed.

He thought it was funny that in an age of nantites, mass reclaimation systems, and robotics, washing pots, pans, and dishes was still done by hand in the Terran military.

Soldiers saluted as he made his way through the firebase, hastily constructed over the last two days while the Lanaktallan military forces had been refit to be able to fight next to the Terrans without the danger of the Terran weapons damaging Lanaktallan vessels by the mere act of firing.

He was walking behind a pair of Terran infantrymen, both of whom were mostly biological, when he saw it.

The three green dots at the base of their skull, subdermal LEDs that were roughly an inch wide, a quarter inch thick, with rounded ends, all flashed. The bottom went turned red, then the middle one lit up amber, followed by the top one turning amber.

"Soldiers, stand fast," the Telkan snapped, hurrying up to them.

The two infantrymen stopped, looking down at the Telkan officer and going to attention.

"Yes, sir?" the one on the left asked.

"Right now, are you suffering headaches or any other strange symptoms," the Telkan asked.

Both of them looked at each other and then down.

"No, sir," they both said.

"I need you both to come with me to medical," the Telkan said.

"May we ask why, Lieutenant Vuxten?" the one on the right asked after checking the Telkan's rank and nametag.

"Your SUDS telltales just went off green," the Telkan said. "Come with me."

Both men put their hands on the back of their necks and nodded.

Vuxten hurried down the passageway, stopping three times more when he saw Terrans with the same thing on their SUDS telltales.

Some soldiers were still green, some were flashing green.

Vuxten activated his comlink, tuning into the command channel.

"Base, get me medical," Vuxten snapped.

The comlink rang twice before it was answered.

"Captain Davis-Klikatik, 27th Med," a woman answered.

"Lieutenant Vuxten, 1st Telkan, I've got nine Terran soldiers with blown out SUDS," he waved at three other humans, stopping them. He glanced at the back of their necks. "Twelve now. We're under attack."

"It's happening all over base. There's a general recall for all forces not engaged with the enemy to pull back," the medical officer said, her voice tight with stress.

"Should I bring them into Medical?" Vuxten asked.

"Negative. Tell them to return to their muster area," the doctor said. "MedCom out."

"Vuxten, out," he said. He turned to the gathered up soldiers. "MedCom wants you to return to your barracks or muster area unless you get instructions otherwise," he said.

They nodded and Vuxten noted that their eyes were glowing amber. He filed the information away. He'd seen it before, during the war. Human's eyes often had a faint glow to them, but this was different.

"Yes, sir," they said, the small knot of them dissolving as they hurried to their garrison areas.

Vuxten tapped his comlink again.

"General Nagwark-Tambunta, 1st Telkan," the human voice said.

"Sir, this is Lieutenant Vuxten," he answered, hurrying toward the garrison area.

"What do you need, Lieutenant?" the General asked.

"We're under attack. SUDS are going one red two amber across the entire base. Have all human members of First Telkan checked," Vuxten said, squeezing by a blast door that was shutting.

"Hang on," the General said.

Vuxten noticed that the normally laconic Terran Space Force (Marines) General sounded irritated by the entire world existing.

"You're right. Vuxten, I need you to gather up all Telkan officers and meet me in Briefing Room Seven," the General said. "Don't fuck around brushing your fur, you get straight there, Marine, understood?"

"Yes, sir," Vuxten said.

The comlink shut off. Another surprise. Usually the General was a stickler for procedure.

He hurried faster.

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"General Papatonis wants 3rd Armor to break contact and fall back to Log Base Tembo," Trucker's radioman, Sergeant Soto, called out.

Trucker spit over the side, keeping the TC's gun on the target, ripping armor from the entire side of the Precursor machine. The quad-barrel found something inside of the machine and it's side blew out even as the top bulged and shed armor.

"Tell the General we're engaged with the enemy!" Trucker yelled out. "Fat Boy, hit that hill, three shots! There's a crawler behind it! BOLO Muttonchop, go to rapid fire on your hellbore at this angle! Second Regiment, Third Brigade, hot cycle your indirect fire forges, dump the slush!"

He knew if they disengaged it would allow the flow of scrap metal flowing out of The Graveyard to overwhelm 1st Lanaktallan Armor Division through the sheer weight of numbers. It would allow the heavier machines, who had led their attack with an orbital strike into the carefully laid minefield, to break out and bypass Log Bases Tembo and Log Base Shi, which would let them flank BOLO Unit XXIX-TCSF 4721-FGY, AKA Fergy, with enough force they might be able to disable or even destroy the self-aware supertank.

His mental image of the battlefield shifted and he suddenly knew that elements of 528th Infantry were about to be cut off by Precursors on the other side of the hills from him. The hills were heavy in iron and granite with a river in the middle that was steaming from the heat being dumped into it by the Balor just over the curvature of the planet.

"Little Boy! Pink Pearl! Steady Lad! Fire for effect, full Shake & Bake, on these coordinates!" Trucker shouted over his open comlink. "Give 'em six shots of Shake & Bake then hit 'em with a scoop of Rocky Road!"

The three tanks didn't even ask questions or doublecheck, their indirect fire crew member loading the fireplan Trucker had handed them nearly a minute ago and hitting execute.

"The General is insisting," the commo tech yelled.

"Tell the General that we regretfully inform him that we are ENGAGED WITH THE ENEMY!" Trucker yelled. "All Night Long, get in tight on Black Betty, they're about to lose their APERS strip! Cherry Fairy, hit that hulk again, there's some clanker crabs in it! Butthole Surfer, cycle your main gun, your compression chamber's whistling loud enough for me to hear it all the way over here."

Unnoticed by Trucker, or anyone else in 3rd Armor...

...the LED's flashed three times.

And went to a stack of red burning coldly beneath the skin.

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

A'armo'o watched Trucker's commands ripple through the hologram in front of him, how the battle shifted around him as if the Terran General knew what was going to happen. He watched as the General kept updating and filing fire plans that were executed sometimes up to two minutes later with devestating effect.

His Second Most High had fainted when Trucker had ordered one of the massive BOLO's riding his flanks to fire into the sky.

For a Balor to drop down out of the clouds and interference and straight into the firepower. The BOLO had gutted the Balor and it had crashed into The Graveyard.

The way Trucker orchestrated the battlefield and estimated enemy actions had proven too much for A'armo'o's second in command.

A'armo'o himself watched it with interest. His own men were engaged with the light units flowing from The Graveyard, trying to reach Log Base Hota.

"General Trucker has filed a fire and maneuver plan for your approval, Great Most High," the Terran Digital Sentience, a reconstruction of a famous and experience Terran armor commander by the name of Torgath informed him.

"The battle is moving too fast for me. What is your opinion?" A'armo'o asked.

"I question parts of it, as I have, but General Trucker appears to be a gifted commander. I would recommend following it," Torgath said, his voice stuffy.

"Then make it so," A'armo'o ordered.

There was silence for a second.

"Firing point defense systems, boss! Don't know..." T'Caw started to say.

The point defense guns opened fire just above the crest of a hill a mile away.

The Precursor striker vehicles popped over the hill just in time to run into a full barrage that tore them apart in a furious set of explosions.

"...why. Oh," T'Caw said. "Trucker?"

"General Trucker," A'armo'o chuckled as a set of Terran strikers roared by just overhead, their guns hammering and rockets firing from beneath their stubby wings.

This felt like a properly run war.

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"How are you feeling?" the Terran female asked.

Mo'owa'alkr was proud at himself that he didn't flinch back from her. He had thought that the amber or red light from the eyes was just from their warborgs or cybernetics, but this Terran female had biological eyes and they glowed a warm amber.

"I am slightly dizzy," Mo'owa'alkr said.

"That's the sedative," she said. "Your surgery went well."

"Surgery?" Mo'owa'alkr asked. The last thing he remembered was sitting in his fighting position and laughing.

"When you came in, we saw you had suffered some microstrokes. Precursor Scream exposure," the Terran said. "We had to replace two of your eyes. We tried to save them, but the blood vessels had ruptured throughout the entire structure."

"Oh," Mo'owa'alkr said. That explained the two black sections in his vision. He lifted up a glass. "May I have some more juice?"

"Sure," The Terran smiled and Mo'owa'alkr was proud of himself for not flinching. She handed him the glass. "There's a psych tech coming to talk to you. We're worried about shell shock or combat fatigue."

Mo'owa'alkr nodded, feeling slightly ashamed.

"Hey, now," the Terran said. "You did good for what you were facing."

"Really?" Mo'owa'alkr said. He felt almost desperate for her approval.

"Absolutely. You were outnumbered, outgunned, and under heavy psychic assault," she said. She patted his upper right arm. "Almost three hundred of your fellow troops survived with you."

"Oh," Mo'owa'alkr said quietly as the nurse left.

His Herd had been nearly five thousand strong.

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

It's been almost two weeks.

How much longer do you think they'll be gone.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT

Not that long.

I'm sure they'll be back.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

I'm letting Terrans still in the Tnvaru Systems know that we are offering them shelter and refugee status.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Same here.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT

I can't imagine doing anything else.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

I can't believe that the Unified Council thought that striking Terra would stop them.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK FREE FLIGHT

If anything, it'll drive them crazy.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS

Again.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---