Chapter 360: (Memoir)

During the waning days of the Unified Council, I was tasked with contributing to the defense of a small world. In the years gone by, I have largely forgotten the name the Council had labeled it with. I know it as Dulmara, as the natives renamed it.

History doubtfully shows little in regards to that battle. A protracted campaign that lasted, to me, forever that ranged across the entire megacontinent. I share with you the academic text:

The Siege of Dulmara was one extensive battle during the Second Precursor Wave during the Great Collapse. Terran and Unified Military Council forces banded together in the face of overwhelming odds to defend the civilian populace of 6.4 billion. At the end of the fighting, only 2.9 billion remained for the declared 'victory' where Unified Military Council and Terran Space Force military units authorized the use of atomic weaponry in atmosphere in reckless disregard for civilian life. This was not the first, nor the last time the Terran Confederacy used atomic weaponry in such a way as to put civilians in danger. The native species of Dulmara were left with a planet that had suffered massive ecological damage as well as a near total collapse of industry and agriculture.

That is it. That is all that appears in textbooks.

Those words, so easy for an academic to write, were not so easy when I was there.

I was but a lowly Tank Gunner Fifteenth Class, part of the Great Herd of A'armo'o, which was later renamed The Atomic Hooves. It was my first military deployment, and I had arrived with the tanks a fairly inexperienced gunner.

I gained my experience on the killing fields of Dulmara.

When we landed it was to reinforce the System Great Most High, who was concerned by the fact that the Terran Confederate Space Navy was operating nearby, establishing what was obviously a forward operation base to keep up operational tempo in Unified Council Territory.

We were barely there long enough for the tanks to be offloaded and readied for combat when the Precursors attacked.

I remember those days vividly. Some nights too vividly.

I can remember the rich smell of dropped patties when the internal waste system of the tank broke down on the second day, forcing us to scoop them out with chunks of plas and throw them from the hatches during our infrequent breaks. The smell of plasma round propellant, how it clung to my hide, to my armor, to the inside of my sinus cavity. The sweat, the urine, the flat taste of recycled water.

The fear.

The Precursors brushed aside the combined space fleets of the Unified Executor, Unified Corporate, and Unified Military forces like so much grain before a broom. They landed, in force, intent on stripping everything from the planet to fuel their unliving war machine.

Orbital strikes bloomed new suns on the surface of the planet, smashing down skyrakers like an angry child smashing a toy. Barely two thirds of the population reached the survival shelters.

The rest were on their own.

Out of General A'armo'o's twenty thousand tanks, less than half of us remained within days.

Half of the civilian population was dead with my comrades.

It was night when we heard the terrible news.

Terran Confederate Space Force was coming.

They announced themselves with HEAVY METAL INCOMING and I remember feeling despair. My tank was damaged from fighting the Precursors, most of the infantry was dead, and our air support had been swept from the sky like so many birds.

The bellow of HEAVY METAL IS HERE sounded like the death knell of the world.

Instead of attacking us the lemurs attacked the Precursors, acting as if the Lanaktallan war machine was not even present. No vessel that did not attack them was attacked. Those foolish enough to attack were wiped from the skies.

Then we saw it. It looked like stars falling. Drop cradles carrying tanks. Drop pods full of infantry. Aerospace fighters sweeping into the atmosphere to bring the fight to the Precursors.

I was present when the great General A'armo'o received notification that the Terran tank commander, General Trucker, wished to speak with him. I escorted the General, who was then known as Great Grand Armor Most High.

It was then I saw my first Terran.

More machine than lemur. Glowing red eyes. Large in stature and bulk. Cybernetics and adaptive camouflage. I have no words to describe the lemur commander. He was authority and competence made manifest.

I envied his men.

Our tanks were battered, damaged, beaten upon.

His were too, but it seemed almost as if it was the natural order of the universe that the lemur's tanks would be damaged.

I watched as General A'armo'o spoke to the lemur, shocked at how formal the lemurs were.

I would learn, in the following weeks, that formality was a thin veneer over their savagery and fearsomeness in combat.

--Excerpt from: We were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a memoir.