Chapter 359

The huge machine gave a massive roar as it rotated to face the fleeing tanks of 14th Regiment, 3rd Brigade. Two tanks were brushed by the battlescreen the goliath brought up, one of them lurching forward pouring smoke as its own battlescreens collapsed and the thick battlesteel armor was vaporized from the warsteel hull.

The other exploded.

3rd Brigade, Thunderpunch, drove straight into the flanks of the massive mining borers that were turning to head toward the Great Herd, their heavy main guns opening fire even as Vertical Launch System tubes opened up and the tanks fired rockets back along their line of retreat.

The battlescreens of the leviathan didn't even flicker as the missiles detonated on the battlescreen.

Vuxten saw Casey standing up, shading his one eye, squinting as he looked at something in the leviathan's direction.

"471, what is that thing?" Vuxten asked, reaching down to pat the hilt of his cutting bar to reassure himself it was there.

--deep level excavator-- 471 answered. --mining gear not wargear--

"I think it's whatever it wants to be," Vuxten said, wishing he could wipe his mouth. As it was sweat was running down the back of his neck from the long minutes of hustling ammunition to the tanks.

A'armo'o fired the last of the 'snowball' rounds, yelling 'SHOT OUT!' as he did so. His gunner mashed the button with one hoof and the autoloader whined as it pulled a plasma round out of the ammunition bay in the belly of the tank.

"All Great Herd Units, follow me. We will get behind that monstrocity and show it our strength," A'armo'o commanded, making sure to sound more confident than he felt. "Load war shot, full power."

"But Most High, there could be civilians that could be," one of his commanders protested.

A'armo'o noted that the self-same commander had just driven his tank over neo-sapient civilian protestors a mere sixty years prior while helping put down mass civil unrest on a planet in the Inner Systems.

The irony was not lost on A'armo'o.

"GET IN THERE AND FIGHT, DAMN YOU!" A'armo'o roared, doing his best to imitate the human generals.

"As you command" the commander said softly, switching off.

Eighth Most High Shu'urdu'u clenched his jaws on the two wads of cud he had jammed against his back teeth and ordered up the plasma rounds himself.

"I will fire the gun," he told his gunner. "As Most High it is my responsibility," he said. "Prepare to attack."

His crew nodded, turning their attention to their own tasks as Shu'urdu'u kicked the cover off of the firing button and lowered the gunner's scope in front of his eyes.

The machine leapt into view and Shu'urdu'u swallowed thickly. The machine was massive, cables as thick as groundcars, girders as thick as houses, tracks wider than his own tank. It slowly ground forward, crushing anything into its way to thin gray powder.

"144th, Dismount," Captain Starpunt ordered, dropping off the back of the tank and slowing to a jog. The massive nanoforges had buttoned up, plunged into the river, and used the thick liquid to do a rapid cooldown. They had managed to claw their way up the bank and were digging into the wreckage of the city's industrial section.

She watched the rest of 15th Sustainment drop off the tanks, running, then slowing to a walk, then stopping.

Except Sergeant First Class Casey, who was still standing on the back of one of the Lanaktallan tanks.

"Casey, get off there!" she snapped.

"Ma'am, I see something. Permission to investigate," the man requested.

"What do you see, Casey?" Captain Starpunt knew Casey had longer in service than most equipment, including Space Force vessels, and knew the man's instincts were razor sharp.

"Not sure. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I see something," he said. He reached back on his loading frame and grabbed his weapon. "Permission to check it out?"

Starpunt thought for a moment.

think too long you're wrong... floated up in her mind.

Her instructor at East Point Military Academy.

"Just don't get killed. That's an order," she said.

"Roger, ma'am. Casey, out," the Terran said. He jumped off the side of the tank as it turned to run along the length of the kilometer long machine, going down on one knee and shading his eye.

Vuxten saw the human's action and tabbed his commo. "Ma'am, one of the humans is on something," he said. "Can't tell what though."

"Which human?" his Company Commander asked.

"The one eyed one. The big one who always wears a loading frame," Vuxten said. Vuxten realized he was suddenly drawing a blank on the big human's name despite having interacted with him repeatedly. He looked at the human and blinked and noticed that the human had suddenly stopped broadcasting his ID. "Case Steel or something like that."

"Sergeant First Class Casey," the Captain said. "Take Second Platoon, follow him. Be careful and don't get killed, that's an order."

"Yes, ma'am," Vuxten said. He switched channels, picking up Lieutenant Plenux. "Lieutenant, get your men, follow me," inspiration struck him. "IFF off. Laser commo only."

Vuxten jumped off the side of the tank, feeling his knee twinge as he landed, holding the stubber up with one hand, slowing down from the run to crouch behind a piece of rubble. The men of Second Platoon ran up, taking cover. Lieutenant Plenux, a fellow Telkan, and Sergeant First Class Addox, a Terran, knelt down near him.

"What are we doing, sir?" Plenux asked.

"Casey's into something," Vuxten said. He pointed out the Terran, who was moving in the weird exaggerated motions of someone in heavy power armor.

"Is he wearing just a loading frame?" Plenux asked.

"Looks like it, sir," Addox said, bringing up his armor's magnification. "Although what the hell he's doing with a Pontiac I don't know. I didn't even know those were still in service."

"Pontiac?" Plenux asked.

"Old style minigun," Vuxten said. "Saw them used during Second Telkan. Heavy firepower."

"We're following him, aren't we?" Addox said, bringing his magnification back to normal. "Looks like he's heading toward that big culvert."

"We're on him," Vuxten said. He looked at Plenux. "Bring the men in by squad, keep your intervals, I don't want a lucky shot taking out an entire squad. Laser commo only."

Plenux nodded, starting to sweat. The last thing he wanted to do was screw up in front of Vuxten, who was more or less a living legend among Telkan.

Vuxten looked over the chunk of ferrocrete they were hiding behind that had been the solid floor of a skyraker only a few days before.

"What are you doing?" he wondered, watching the human.

A'armo'o had risen up out of his tank, grabbing the firing handles of his quad-barrel. He was running it in short, sharp bursts, ignoring the falling ammo counter. Part of him wished he was like the Terrans and could just ignore ammo usage, confident in the knowledge that after a few minutes it would all be back.

But now was not the time to be stingy.

The plasma packets detonated on the battlescreen and his gunner followed up with a direct hit from the main gun.

The battlescreen didn't even flicker.

"It's gotta have some weaknesses!" A'armo'o snarled as his tank brushed a massive chunk of ferrocrete and showered sparks. "If we don't figure it out, it's going to just gobble up the Terran tanks like a Shavashan and a bowl of shrimp."

Dremsal overrode the munition type, ordered the nanoforge to wetprint up the round he wanted, locked out his gunner and lifted his foot, unconsciously holding his breath. Less than five seconds later the round was loaded up into the gun.

Almost...

The tank kept moving, running down the length of the borer, less than a half mile between the two vehicle's battlescreens. The tank ground the ferrocrete and durasteel rubble under its treads, but still rocked slightly like a small boat in the middle of a lake.

Dremsal put the gunner's sight in overlay over what he was seeing.

The borer opened a hatch and robots started dropping out, firing wildly at the tanks of HHC as they fired back, their rounds impacting to little use on the thick armor of the borer.

Now!

He stomped the firing lever, grinding his teeth, a habit he'd had since childhood.

The massive cannon roaring as it fired the heavy munition. The battlescreen on the Precursor borer had flickered, reformed, and left a gap between two endosteel girders. The shot whipped through the opening, crossed the two meters between the borer and the battlescreen, and flew through the open hatch that several mining robots had just exited from.

The round exploded inside a fabrication bay, the antimatter HE detonating. Contrary to pure lab math, the H3 antimatter round (the fastest the nanoforge could wetprint safely) didn't explode on a 1 to 1 basis, but it was still a hellish explosion as one hundred grams of antimatter went off when the round hit and the magnetic suspension bottle failed.

The borer was designed to handle heat and pressure from the outside.

Not the inside.

It managed to hold together for less than second, but it was long enough to channel the blast forward and to the rear of the borer.

A 1.25 megaton blast gutted the borer, the grinding gears in the front exploding outward, the tracks blowing off, and energy boiling out of every opening in the borer.

A'armo'o let off the trigger of his plasma gun, keeping his thumbs on the barrel switch, letting the barrels cool as it spun. He couldn't see any way to get through the thick battlescreens that were scouring the dirt and destroying anything that wasn't thick ferrocrete street.

He was snarling at the massive machine, glaring at it, willing it to expose a weakness to him so he could take its mechanical life.

Vuxten saw Casey duck into the culvert and hustled up, jumping down into the ferrocrete trench drain, splashing through the water. He heard his men follow, heard someone stumble and curse.

Casey had torn away an endosteel grate from the mouth of the pipe, tossing it to the side, and was moving into the ditch itself.

"Sergeant, what's the plan?" Vuxten asked, hurrying to catch up.

"Huh, didn't see you," Casey said, turning slightly. "Least I don't have to radio back if this pans out."

"What pans out?" Vuxten asked, following Casey through the huge ferrocrete pipe. The water was knee deep, swirling darkly, shimmering with a thin layer of petroleum.

"That thing's battlescreens don't react to ferrocrete," Casey said. He looked out the far opening, where burnt out cars were still parked neatly. "At least, I don't think so."

"And what are you going to do by your lonesome?" Vuxten asked, his officer mouth speaking before his brain could catch up. He winced slightly.

"Well, sir, I figured I could get a good look at it, maybe ID some stress points for a close air support run or even manage to get a frequency reading off the battlescreen from inside, since, if I'm right, that thing is running dual screens," Casey said, kneeling down in the muck. "There's no way that it has point defense, APERS systems, or even too many robot buddies. That's a gnawer, not a combat vehicle. Its got heavy battlescreens to keep high energy particle sleet out working on unshielded moons."

The rest of Second Platoon stopped in the water, waiting silently. Vuxten checked the marker. Forty-five total. Platoon Leader, Platoon Sergeant, two Section Sergeants, and five squads of eight men.

He ran the numbers in his head. One squad with a portable 80mm mortar, four squads each with one heavy autocannon, two men per squad with rocket launchers. Each squad led by a Terran.

More firepower than he was used to leading.

"What happens if your wrong?" Vuxten asked, tabbing up a piece of stimgum.

--poof-- 471 offered helpfully.

"The battlescreen tears us apart," Casey confirmed.

Vuxten nodded.

"That thing will eat anything that can't get out from in front of it," Casey said. "The tanks can't get through the battlescreens. Maybe a BOLO could, but it would be one hell of a fight."

"I thought a BOLO could take on a starship," Plenux said.

"That thing's as big as a starship and designed for heavy mining," Casey said.

The water started shivering weirdly, then began to steam.

"Here it comes," Casey said softly.

"Get ready, men," Vuxten said over the command channel.

"A'armo'o, Dremsal, you two read?" Trucker's voice was shot with static.

"Sir," Demsal snapped, shredding a handful of machines with his quad-barrel.

"I am here," A'armo'o said.

"You've got movement, a debris cloud, heading your way from a Jotun a couple miles away," Trucker said. "Too much metal in the debris cloud, I think the Jotun's got some new tricks. You're about to get hit in force and hit hard"

"Roger," Dremsal said. He kicked the button and the seat whined as he dropped down, the hatch closing over his head. He switched to the Brigade net. "Get ready, we're about to get sandwiched and not in a fun way," he warned his men. "Button it up, Thunderpunch."

The primary machine, a robotic machine that usually ripped away parts of mountains, that shattered medium sized asteroids, saw the lead tank clatter across the street. It computed the distance, the attenuation from the debris in the air, and fired its main mass excavation cannon.

Turning in the street to face the oncoming cloud, visible down the industrial boulevard, HHC 2-8 managed to get its hatch closed, bringing the main gun around toward the dust cloud approaching when the beam lanced out. It struck the battlescreens and detonated.

A 2.25 megaton blast washed over the entire brigade.

The fireball itself was 1.75 kilometers in radius. The 20 psi overpressure blastwave, powerful enough to crack and collapse ferrocrete, washed out three kilometers, slamming over the entire Thunderpunch Brigade, crashing into the borers from the flanks. Damaged buildings collapsed and fires erupted six kilometers away.

The fireball climbed into the sky.

Historically, it would have been a disaster. Most of the tanks were hit on the flank, rather than taking it head on with their barrels pointing backwards. Some had their guns facing forward.

For the Precursor that fired the round, it computed a 74.524% chance that the majority of the feral's tanks would be destroyed.

The ghosts of a billion mantids howled with laughter.

They knew that the humans had built tanks that could withstand being inside the fireball of a megaton level blast before they'd even developed faster than light drive.

Before they'd even developed battlescreens.

When they'd still used refined petroleum products to fuel their tanks.

Battlescreens howled as they fought the detonation, sparks flew as the radiation washed over the tanks, and the tanks heaved as the ground beneath them shook from the atomic blast.

The Precursor machine felt the equivelant of smugness. Yes, the borers had been flipped onto their sides, but the feral's vehicles had no chance of withstanding a point blank atomic detonation of the strength just delivered by...

"GUNS FREE!" Dremsal yelled out.

Vuxten saw ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC flash on his visor and nervously glanced up at the top of the pipe only a few meters above his head.

HHC 2-8 fired back, the battlescreen cleanly visible, still inside the fireball.

The return shot was only 12.5 kilotons.

Where the Precursor's shot had been omnidirectional the return shot was squeezed, focused down to deliver the majority of the released energy to a spot less than a handwidth wide.

The vehicle's battlescreen collapsed.

HHC 2-11 fired.

The vehicle had armor measured in the tens of meters.

2-11 blew a hole half the distance and twenty meters wide and cracked armor for nearly fifty meters around the impact point.

The vehicle responded by ordering its ancillary vehicles into combat. Vehicles that it had been insulted that the Jotun had ordered it to shepherd and guide.

It was still reeling from the first two shots, barely able to restore its battlescreen, when more hits started coming in.

The last three borers never even had a chance to right themselves when Dremsal's tanks from Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, gutted them, firing anti-matter penetrators into their exposed bellies.

"IT'S A DIFFERENT FIGHT NOW, ISN'T IT, ASSHOLES!" Dremsal yelled as he kicked the lever to lift himself back up out of the tank.

There was no way he'd be running atomsmasher and hiding inside the hull.

He loved the tang of radiation on his dental work during the fight.

A'armo'o was aware he was just staring. His driver had cut the power to the forward fans so that he could scrape the edge of the fan against the dirt to stop forward movement.

Even then the blast had pushed his tank ten feet back and almost overloaded the battlescreen.

The mushroom cloud from the initial blast was still climbing when A'armo'o saw ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC appear in his vision.

He'd barely gotten inside the tank when the tanks of 14th Regiment, Third Brigade, started firing back.

"A'armo'o, you got incoming buzzbombs!" Trucker's voice cut into the comlink. "Get yer guts off the ground and get mobile!" the Terran's voice was tight with stress. "CAS is fifteen mikes out, you gotta fight!"

"UP THE TANKS!" A'armo'o yelled out over the command channel and the tanks of the Great Herd lifted back up on air cushions. "POINT DEFENSE!" He slapped the switch, pulling all the external guns but the main gun from local control and into a computer controlled network to provide point defense against incoming artillery, missiles, and mortars.

His driver boosted the tank, sliding forward on the air cushion.

Less than ten seconds later his tank cut loose, weaving a deadly web of light with the point defense.

The buzzbombs were gray colored, pebbled looking, to blend in with the ground. They were running hard on anti-grav systems with a missile reactionless drive, less than five meters of the ground. They started exploding, the point defense of the tanks raking the heavy anti-armored vehicle bombs out of the sky.

But there was still more.

"BUTTON UP, HERD! INCOMING CROCKETT!" came Captain Starpunt's voice over the channel.

A'armo'o's visor warned him.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

The missile came from behind him, barely skimming over the top of the Great Herd's tanks. It passed the lead buzzbomb at a half mile from the lead tank, went another couple hundred meters.

The warboi aboard the guidance system squee'd with delight and exploded.

The 55 kiloton blast shredded the buzzbombs, half of them exploding with sympathetic detonations, the rest of them smashed by the shockwave.

Sparks shot off of A'armo'o's communications console was the radiation wave rolled over his tanks, making his battlescreens sparkle.

Vuxten clenched his teeth as cars started tumbling by, some of them on fire, some of them torn into pieces.

"Here it comes," Casey breathed.

The battlescreens of the massive ore extractor slid over the culvert.