Chapter 330

The hvee rounds screamed through the air, the speed creating flashes of light through the air as the air itself fluoresced, ripping into the building. Vuxten released the graviton gennies in his boots and jumped from the eighteenth story of the damaged skyraker. The rest of the squad following him, the lines of hvee rounds just missing the last one. Steel and high tensile macroplas shattered as the entire squad flew through the air, the power armor making it easy to jump the twenty-five meter gap across the street. As they moved their smoke/hash/prism generators went to work, filling the air with high concentrate thermal masking white smoke, tiny mosquito sized robots that put out the EM signature of a suit of power armor, and laser scattering prisms suspended in droplets of water.

The Precursor machines on the ground opened up on the squad, most of their rounds passing through the spoofer images, confused by the EM counter-warfare suites in the suits. A few rounds tagged warsteel armor here and there, bouncing off in a shower of sparks.

Vuxten hit first, glanced up, blinked twice, and jumped again, the macroplas and support beam shattering under the power in his armored legs.

The rest of the squad followed, three of them somersaulting in mid-air to get the best deployment of their masking rounds.

The Precursor machines cut off fire as the last Telkan Marine passed through the middle of the street.

Three time's a pattern, Vuxten though to himself as he hit feet first on the macroplas window of the skyraker. His heavy 40mm grenade launcher and his 66mm rocket launcher were deployed as the graviton boots spun up, anchoring him in place. He put one hand on the building, giving him the three points of stabilization his training had always insisted on.

471 threaded the firing computations, keeping an eye on the heat and the graviton generator in the left boot, since it was kicking a little bit.

Below the squad, that were now up near the sixtieth story, the Precursor machines were pushing down the main avenue, hoping to ambush 3rd Armor's Warsteel Maidens Regiment. Mostly heavy armored vehicles, with minimal air defense systems that were proving largely ineffective against the Telkan's armor.

The entire squad fired their loadouts of 40mm and 66mm before jumping for the next point.

Straight up the side of the skyraker as flickering holograms and em-scatter decoys jumped across.

Highvee rounds shrieked through empty air, hitting the holograms and the em-flux.

The Telkan went straight up twenty stories then kicked off across the street. Below them semi-smart munitions saw the weak points in the Precursor battlesteel armor and came howling in. Explosions started climbing for the sky as the autonomous war machines took heavy fire from the Telkan Marines.

Below them the Precursor machines pushed into the intersection. Above them was just hash, the chaff, microprism, em-gnats, and thermal masking smoke making it nearly impossible for them to see, much less aim with any accuracy.

It grated on the two larger one's electronic nerves that the stubborn feral biologicals could apparently see through their countermeasures while the best of his scanners could see nothing but a solid wall of jangling swirling confusion.

They knew those power armor clad ferals were up there somewhere, but they couldn't target them with area denial munitions without risking bringing the entire skyraker down on the street. While the heavier vehicles would survive, they would be badly damaged and pinned in the wreckage, and the AWM's weren't willing to take the chance that trapping the AWM's under rubble wasn't part of the feral's war plan.

They were tenacious, innovative, but worst of all, their weapons were effective.

Vuxten looked down and saw through the countermeasures that the Precursors had given up firing at the squad he was leading. He looked up and jumped straight up, using the graviton systems in his gloves and boots to hold tight to the wall at the end of each jump.

He and his men were at the one hundred twenty story mark.

Only four hundred and ten stories to go.

The lighter units of the AWM's passed through the intersection, picking up speed now that the ambush by the annoying light power armor units was over.

The two squads of Telkan Heavy Weapons Specialists opened up on the heavy units when they tried to cross across the four lane avenue intersection. Heavy 30mm shells raked out from each of the four drones per side, all firing at an angle so any misses would slam into the bottom of the skyraker rather than hit the troops on the other side.

The two hellbore drones on each side fired armor penetrator 'shells' rather than use the full on atomic blasts inside a city.

Macroplast windows thrummed as they flexed from the explosions. Dirt and dust and weather deposited grime puffed out from the skyrakers as the impacts of the 60mm hellbores slammed into the larger AWM's.

In a split second the entire intersection was a burning hellscape.

The Telkan Marines Heavy Weapons Section didn't let up, they were all kneeling down and firing their shoulder mounted rocket packs, wetprinting reloads, while the heavy gunners were braced behind their battlescreens, the heavy 60mm autocannons roaring as they lashed at the Precursors with high explosive armor defeating anti-matter cored rounds.

Vuxten looked down as he paused at the two hundred story mark.

Third and Fourth Squad had broken the back of the Precursor assault and were now breaking contact, dropping smoke and jammers and quickly exfiltrating along their preplanned routes.

Even if you reach the Warsteel Maidens, you don't have the firepower to do anything but die, he sneered before looking up.

He jumped up again, the squad following him.

Just another day in Paradise, he thought.

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

Vuxten hopped off the back of the tank he'd been riding on, his squad following, the massive 1,000 ton behemoth not even noticing the fly-weight of the eight Telkan Marines jumping off. His knee twinged as he stood up and headed toward the power armor section.

He planned on having a talk with the maintenance crews again.

The 40mm grenade launcher kept jamming.

He'd been promised repeatedly that the new design would fix the problem, but it was still there. After the third or fourth 40mm round rapid fired off the shell casing would expand and get stuck in the breach, only ejecting partway, and the carrier section would ride forward, pinching the shell casing between the carrier and the barrel, requiring manual extraction.

Vuxten understood it in the original power armors from the Second Telkan War, but the new suits were supposed to have been designed by Terran Procurement.

He saw a couple of the armor techs staring at him and ignored it.

He'd taken a heavy high-v round straight the chest. He'd been lucky the angle had been bad, the impact hadn't even registered through the kinetic lining, but it had damaged the first couple of layers of the warsteel laminate.

He had a set of concentric rings on his chest.

Again.

The Forward Operations Base was still only half set up. Any armor that needed immediate repair or had not been checked out, the operator had to stand in the frames outside so that the repair technicians could look at it.

He waited in line, chewing his last allotted stimgum for the next two hours, waiting his turn up in the frame.

When his turn came, he put one boot then the other in the foot rests, feeling the sides flip up and hold his foot securely, then stepped in and let the grippers take hold of forearms. From the sides came the sections to hold him still.

"Any injuries your medcomp didn't pick up, sir?" A Terran female asked, sitting next to the frame. She was one of the ones who chose to have her eyes go solid white when she was using VR sight.

"No," Vuxten said.

"All right. You've got some h-vee hits registered, so we'll go into maintenance position nice and slow. You tell me if there's any pain. I'll also stop if your heartbeat goes too high or too low or any other medical emergency symptoms occur," she said.

His suit went dark and MAINTENANCE MODE floated up in his vision.

471 was making his report, a full quarter of it devoted to the greenie equivelant of calling the 40mm grenade launcher a complete and total piece of shit that could be replaced by a blind Rigellian duck throwing rocks with its beak.

His arms slowly pulled up and his feet spread out till he was in the X-position. He saw his suit functions flicker by.

"You're favoring your knee, sir," she said.

"Injured it during First Telkan," he answered. "Building fell on me."

The female technician laughed and after a second an image appeared on Vuxten's screen.

It was an elderly looking Telkan, dressed in a Telkan Marine dress uniform, laying on the floor, with the caption: "Help, I've fallen, and I can't get up." The lower half of the picture was a far shot of a collapsed pile of wreckage. "And there's a building on me." with "Worker Vuxten, you have been fined 2 days pay for unauthorized relaxation" at the bottom.

Vuxten laughed at that.

"Damn, your left shoulder mounted indirect fire weapon is jammed. Looks like a known issue. I'll have Third Shop see if they can figure it out, you're the tenth Telkan to come through with a jammed launcher," she said, her voice filled with annoyance. "All right, the damage to your outer fragmentation deflection plate is largely cosmetic. Looks like only the first two layers cracked. The fabs are working overtime to keep the Lank tanks running, so it might be a while before we can replace your chest plate."

"All right," Vuxten answered, sighing.

"Your right shoulder servo is showing signs of wear, looks like some slippage in your left boot gravity generator, and your out of stimgum," she said. "All right, I'm gonna pop your shell. Ready?"

"Ready," Vuxten said. He felt the weird twinge of the system disconnecting from his nervous system. He panted a few times, getting covered in sweat, when the power shut off to the environmental, then the suit clamshelled opened.

Vuxten stepped down, wincing slightly as his left knee took the weight, and stretched real quick.

"Heh, I forgot you Telkan guys run nude in your armor," the technician laughed. She pointed at a box. "Auto-fit jumpsuits are right there."

Vuxten nodded, panting, feeling sweat slick his fur, as he moved over to the box and grabbed and adaptive camouflage armor-weave jumpsuit and pulled it on. His suit was grabbed by the loading system and whisked off into the FOB's main maintenance building. 471 was sitting on the shoulder, despite the General's mandate against that, waving at everyone and flashing a smiley face with a hat and cigar between his antenna.

He'd just finished sealing the suit, putting his mag-ac pistol in the holster, and heading toward the FOB when a power loader came lurching from between two vehicles.

Vuxten gritted his teeth. After 14 hours on mission, the last thing he needed was some one eyed Terran psychopath wrapped in a robotic exoskeleton to lunge out of the shadows.

"Hey, Lieutenant, there you are," the Terran said.

"Hello, Sergeant," Vuxten said, giving the human the side-eye as the Terran walked next to him, the frame whirring, whining, and hissing.

"Trucker, the Lank, and your CO is over by the water purifiers. Your CO wanted me to find you, and Trucker and the Lank want to see me," he said.

"What about?" Vuxten asked.

"Something stupid, I'm sure," the human chuckled. He looked at Vuxten. "Say, sir, wanna hear a joke?"

Vuxten nodded warily. Human jokes could range from harmless and silly ones that would make podlings giggle to horribly lewd and profane ones that would make a joygirl faint.

"All right, so, this human guy, he and his wife have a kid, right?" the human said.

"Oookay," Vuxten wondered if that was the whole joke.

"So, the kid goes to kindergarten, the first year of school, and the kid does super super well," the human said, stopping for a pair of heavy grav-lifters to go by. "The dad, he tells the kid: Well, Johnny, since you did so well, daddy will get you a present. What do you want?"

The trucks went by and Vuxten followed the Terran as he crossed the muddy street, staying far enough away that the mud splashed by the loading frame's heavy feet didn't splash him.

"So the kid, the kid looks at his dad and says: I want a pink golf ball, daddy," the human said. He looked around the corner, then continued as he kept walking. "So the dad looks at the kid and says: Son, are you sure? I'll get you a new VR playroom or even a little robot dog."

The Terran slowed down, "But the kid says: No, daddy, I just want a pink golf ball. So the dad, he gets the kid a pink golf ball, and the kid runs off with it, laughing and excited. But the dad never sees him play with it. So the next year, the kid goes to first grade and... oh, there's Trucker," the human NCO waved and hurried up.

"Sir," the human nodded.

"Sir," Vuxten said, wondering if that was the whole joke.

Trucker looked at the NCO. "Sergeant, the Most High and I have a question about the main gun ammunition for his tanks," Trucker said.

"Why ask me? Isn't that a job for Class V Fabrication?" the human asked.

"We're asking you," Trucker said, spitting on the ground.

"Lieutenant, come here," Vuxten's CO said.

Vuxten went over and the Terran Colonel waved at him to follow her into a corner. She looked at him. "Did you guys see anything weird up on the tops of those skyrakers?"

Vuxten relaxed slightly. She just wanted a personal briefing.

Could be worse, he thought.

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

Nakteti looked out at the night from where she was leaning against the railing of the roof of the massive building she was standing on. Behind her the Sweet's shuttle was going through the pre-flight checklist. She rested her forehead against the top of the railing, holding onto the lower middle railing with her catching hands and the bottom railing with her gripping hands.

Major Carnight moved up next to her and leaned against the railing. Nakteti reached out with her left gripping hand and took his.

"So they're gone?" she asked softly. "The whole world is abandoned?"

Major Carnight nodded. "Looks like it."

"How long ago?" Nakteti asked.

Carnight shrugged. "I'm not sure. Decades for sure, maybe even centuries."

"By why leave it all running?" she asked. Again Carnight shrugged as she continued. "Who's running the Confederacy? Who's making policy? Who's making the decisions?"

Carnight shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe nobody?"

"Someone has to be making the decisions," Nakteti snarled squeezing tight with her catching hands. "You can't expect me to believe something as huge and complex as the Confederacy is just cruising right along with nobody at the wheel."

Major Carnight stared at the lights of the aircars moving through the sky, the groundcars sliding along the street. All of them on automatic as if someone was driving the. Windows lit up, he could see Tri-Vees changing channels or showing movies.

Shadows moved in front of the windows, programmed into the smartglass.

"Except someone is at the wheel," Major Carnight said. He reached up with his free hand and tapped his datalink. "There's a vote right now, mandatory voting in eighteen hours with yea, nay, or abstain, about a five point six percent decrease in wormhole transit rates for Coreward War refugees like yourself. Right now, standard Terran Descent are voting. The Clones voted yea, the BASS voted yea, the Pubvians had 80% abstained but the vote carried with another twelve percent voting yea, the Treana'ad..."

He trailed off.

"What?" Nakteti said as Major Carnight stood straight up.

"That's... that's impossible," he said. He tapped his datalink then looked around. "OK, I've refreshed it twice, and it's still insisting," he looked down. "Either a fucking miracle has happened or the entire system just stroked out."

"What? What's wrong?" Nakteti asked.

"The Pubvian's voted. Like, sixteen billion Pubvians registered their vote after getting a twenty-four hour extension," Major Carnight said. He looked down at Nakteti. "I have a request."

"Just ask," Nakteti said, reaching out and taking both of the human's hands in her four. "Whatever it is, just ask."

"I need you to take me to Pubvia, in the Pubvian System. It should be in your astrogation system," he said.

"Of course, whatever you need," she said, looking up. "But why?" she asked, tugging him toward the shuttle. "We'll go now. Just... why?"

Major Carnight looked down at her.

"Because the Pubvians were xenocided by the Mantid in the opening phases of the Terra/Mantid War."

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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

We've got another division shaking down. That'll be three divisions total. Our first Space Force class will be graduating in three days.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMIL

Excellent.

We're stretched a little thin with the Case Omaha and we're glad you

>THEY'RE SO FLUFFY HAS ENTERED THE CHAT

>THEY'RE SO FLUFFY HAD CHANGED THEIR NAME TO PUBBIE STOMPER

>PUBBIE STOMPER HAS CHANGED THEIR NAME TO FURRY THREE WAY

>FURRY THREE WAY HAS CHANGED THEIR NAME TO THAT SHITS NOT FUNNY TERRASOL

>THAT SHITS NOT FUNNY TERRASOL HAS CHANGED THEIR NAME TO PUBVIAN FEDERATION

MANTID FREE WORLDS

YES! OH, BY THE DIGITAL OMNIMESSIAH, YES!

WELCOME BACK!

Digital Omnimessiah bless whatever has caused this wonderful miracle amid all this madness and chaos!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN FEDERATION

Hello. It's been a while.

And I see things have changed.

>Pubvian Federation reaches out and touches Mantid Free Worlds gently.

I am both sorry for the loss of so many of your people and gratified to hear of your freedom from tyranny.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DOKI DOKI DOKI!