Chapter 470: First Telkan

NINE HOURS PRIOR: FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER LANDING

"I can't get this thing plugged in," the technician said, staring at the cable he was holding in his hand.

Vuxten looked over from where he was looking at a hand drawn map at where the tech was kneeling down next to a holotank that still gleamed wetly from having been hot printed.

"Turn the cable over," Vuxten said.

The tech twisted his wrist and the top of the cable now had a thin yellow line in the middle of the plug. It slid right in and the holotank went live.

"Oops," the tech said, standing up. He brought up the menu and began loading the software needed from the block of molycircs next to him.

"It happens," Vuxten said, still looking at the map.

The forested area was nearly fifty miles across, in a rough bean shape. Casey's drop zone was the dent into the side of the bean. The drones that had gotten the view had all gone offline once they got close to eight thousand feet up, which was enough to give Vuxten a large view, but not enough to know what was going on around him.

"Holotank's coming online, sir," the tech said.

"Thank you, Corporal," Vuxten said, turning from the table and taking his map with him.

The holotank had already gone through the startup menus and loaded up the correct software. It showed a globe, flashed it was missing data, then skipped to the local datasets.

Dozens of icons burned in the smooth bean shape. All of them units of First Telkan, grouped up by company or greater size. Some of the green icons had red borders and/or were flashed, telling Vuxten that they were engaged with the enemy. He looked down at tapped a few controls.

The drones that were still airborne all appeared.

Sighing, he started allocating more drones to cover gaps. He then tabbed up direct action drones, loading in Casey's IFF profiles.

I miss the days of just running through the jungle, he thought to himself as icons started flashing to denote which units were taking control of the drones other units were firing. I've gotta balance who fires the drones, who takes over, who does what analysis according to our limited resources and manpower pool.

Vuxten sighed, remembering just how much of what he was doing now was basically automated but now, because of the massive dislocation in the TO&E, it all fell on him.

He kind of wished some of the Treana'ad officers could have been moved over from the Treana'ad Hordes but knew why they couldn't.

There was a priority flash from 17th Field Artillery. He tabbed it and the Lieutenant appeared.

"Lieutenant Vuxten, sir," the other officer said.

"Go ahead, Lieutenant," Vuxten said, still staring at the holotank.

"Going through chemical weaponry I found that we have the fabrication templates for defoliants," the other officer said.

"Those take time," Vuxten started to say.

"Yeah, about ninety seconds from chemical contact to the plant being nothing more than slurry," the Lieutenant said. "Sir."

"How long to get those in the air. The Dwellerspawn are somehow harvesting the forest as well as using for concealment and cover while they maneuver," Vuxten said.

"First flight can be fired in less than two minutes," the artillery officer said. "We can have this whole are covered in it in less than five minutes, and any of the 'spawn that are cellulose based are going to be having a real bad day."

"Deploy the munitions, Lieutenant, on my authorization. This communication is being flagged and recorded," Vuxten said.

"Understood, sir," the Lieutenant nodded, then vanished.

He turned back just in time to see the lake vanish in a boiling cloud of incendiary weapons and steam. A few creatures, each of the the size of a dropship, lunged up, clawing at the sky or themselves, but then fell back into the hellish mixture the artillery units were dropping on any body of water larger than a puddle.

Vuxten started to order the Division to put out forward observation and fire point and stopped.

If they temporal shift, my men might be standing where a building or car materializes, which will cause the reaction I saw earlier, he realized. He quickly tabbed through the commo and contacted the CO of 17th Field Artillery.

"Sir?" the Lieutenant looked nervous, licking his whiskers repeatedly.

"Hold off on the defoliants," Vuxten said. "Have your vehicles dig in, warsteel ground plating, warsteel walls, retractable roof. There should be bunker plans in the drop-pop, Army digs in," he said. "Everyone's going to dig in hard, pretend we're the Army for this."

"Yes, sir," the LT said. He licked his whiskers again. "I'm not really trained for this yet, sir."

"It's all hands on deck, Lieutenant, I'm sure you'll do just fine," Vuxten said. "Confirm when you're dug in," he said and cut the link.

It took a few minutes to get the orders passed. Hard shell fighting positions, vehicle bays, emplacements for vehicles and everything else. Triple up on the temporal stabilizers, with emergency power for them standing by to take peak load if it crossed a 70% threshhold. Every armor and vehicle doubled up on the amount of temporal stabilizers they had dropped with.

Printing warsteel and strange matter in such quantities pushed the heat and slush levels up, but Vuxten knew that the nanoforges and creation engines would have time to cool off.

He felt proud of his men as they all radioed back within an hour that everything was dug in. He checked the chron.

Ninety minutes on the ground.

"All units, button up," he ordered. He looked at the window with the CO for 17th Field Artillery. "Carry out your orders, button up as soon as the last round is fired," he said.

The Lieutenant nodded and vanished.

Vuxten turned back to the done feeds. Nothing but forest. Damaged in places, burning in others, but thermals kept showing massive amounts of dwellerspawn all on the move.

Heading for Casey's blurred area.

They want you bad, Vuxten thought. I can't directly support you, whatever they're doing has you out of phase with us, but I can keep them from supporting their own forces, which should take the pressure off of you.

Faintly, through the heavy protections, he could hear the snarl of the artillery rounds detonating high up, deploying the defoliant.

The plants sagged, seemed to blur, then dissolved into sludge as the defoliant broke down the matrix of the cellulose, turning the vegetation into a thin layer of gooey sludge. It exposed thousands of Dwellerspawn all heading to the west, toward Casey.

The autonomous drones swooped in for the kill. Some single fire, a suicidal attack that slammed EFP's into the chitin armored 'spawn. Others swooped low firing their light guns. Still others cut loose with air to surface missiles then swung around in a slow spiral as their limited use creation engines manufactured more rounds from the elements taken in by the air scoops.

Except for the exposed 'spawn being mowed down by the drones and the dug in fighting positions, nothing was happening.

Everything shimmered and Vuxten slapped the icon for all units.

"PREPARE FOR T-SHIFT!" he called out.

Where forest had been a city suddenly wavered and appeared. There were explosions where the Telkan Marines had dug in. Several skyrakers began to fall, their base exploding as the suddenly materializing basement and ground structures interacted with the Telkan Marine positions, hit the warsteel and the heavy temporal stabilizers, and their integrity failed as rubble spewed out away from the Telkan Marine positions.

He gave it a long moment, watching for any casualties.

A few yellow bordered blue icons, several cargo vehicles went red-X as they were mission killed. Vuxten figured they were buried beneath rubble.

He stared at the drones for a long time. Almost a third of them had been destroyed by buildings materializing where they were, or in their flight path so they slammed into them.

There were enough up that he had dozens of views of the city.

The drones immediately shifted, running topography maps of the city.

He could see Welkret, Lanaktallan, Tnvaru, Shavashan, even Tnvaru on the streets, looking up at the drones, their mouths open in surprise.

He swallowed thickly, refusing to look away, as he opened another window and ordered Second Lieutenant Jekti to load the artillery.

Vuxten had to repeat his order, in stiff formal phrasing, three times.

The entire time he stared at a small family of Telkan sitting at a lower caste diner, eating a modest meal. The adults wore paper uniforms, the broodcarriers wore simple cloth, as did the podlings. They looked different, their muzzles longer and thicker, their ears more pointed, their teeth sharper. The broodcarriers were eating in front of others rather than only eating in the privacy of their homes, and the broodcarriers were wearing soft looking jewelry.

He enlarged the window, putting the others to the side.

In the others Type IV PAWM were chasing civilians, stunning them or just blowing off their legs, grabbing them, ripping their brains from their skulls. The light inside the crysteel dome would go from white to blue.

The Lanaktallan ruler was already begging for military assistance, that 'his people' were under terrible attack by unknown robots and that his city needed assistance.

Vuxten could see the marking for the first artillery firing had taken place.

Some people stopped to stare up at the rocket boosted artillery rounds.

They reached their predetermined point.

Nine nuclear weapons with a tritium and strontinum enhancement jacket detonated at five thousand feet. Day turned washed out, white. The blast hammered down upon the city, pounding skyrakers flat, throwing cars like toys. The buildings that consisted of a greater amount of hyperalloys stayed up, their windows shattered, the glass falling to the street.

The bunker Vuxten was in trembled.

The second barrage was fired.

No massive explosions.

Just gaseous death. Colorless. Odorless. Tasteless.

It drifted down.

Vuxten could see civilians starting to stand up, many of them flash burnt or injured by the concussive shockwave. Some were stumbling out of the buildings.

He knew they would be wailing.

A roaring, a screaming roaring wailing, like all the damned souls of an afterlife. No words, no individual voices, just one upraised howl of hatred and agony. It was a noise that made his fur all try to stand on end inside his form fitting armor.

Overseers. Thousands, tens of thousands of them. Their clothing blood covered, ragged, torn, dirty. They blurred into one big mass of weapon waving arms, empty eye sockets or wild reddened eyes, bloody jowls, allwailing at the top of their lungs as they galloped down the street. A frightened Ikeeki lunge out of a public transit shelter, only to be grabbed by the Overseers, ripped at, suddenly dismembered, the torn and shredded body dropped to be pounded under by hooves.

Vuxten swallowed thickly.

They began collapsing silently, the stream missing audio. Some frothed at the mouth, others convulsed.

It was over in less than sixty seconds.

A hexagon shaped PAWM with six legs, metal tentacles, four of its six crysteel bubbles already lit with a blue light, and crude looking machinery on the top reached out with one tentacle, grabbed the Telkan's head. The light went blue.

Then black.

The machine shuddered. The two next to the black one went black.

Something exploded inside the machine. Green ooze started pouring from cracks and vents. It staggered to the side, tripped over a burning car, and landed on its side.

Its legs kicked, telescoping and collapsing back into itself, flailing.

Then went still.

Multiple other views showed that any PAWN that grabbed one of the brains had the same thing happen to them.

Vuxten wanted to close his eyes, block out the scenes.

More and more fighting positions were requesting permission to open fire on the T4PWMs, but Vuxten triggered the negative rune and kept watching.

Our people, like most Precursor races, have rather poor pattern recognition compared to someone like the Terrans or even the Telkans, Vuxten could remember General A'armo'o laughing about as he fell for the same gambit in training twice in a row.

"All units, prepare for T-Shift," he ordered.

He didn't know how he knew, he just knew.

How bad is your pattern recognition? When will you realize that I'll keep doing this over and over. I'll keep obliterating those poor sad bastards from our reality no matter how many times you bring them forward. I will destroy the village to save the village no matter how many times you bring it here. How long until you realize that I'm willing to do it as many times as you are willing to try? Vuxten thought to himself, staring at where another one of the 'stilters' fell to the side.

The Dwellerspawn in the city were convulsing, whether from eating poisoned meat or from the chemical weaponry in the air, Vuxten didn't know.

He also didn't care.

He sent the 'button up' command.

A simple touch of an icon brought up Lieutenant Jekti.

It was obvious to Vuxten the other Telkan had been weeping.

"You won't be loading defoliants," Vuxten said. "I want you to print up and prepare for another engagement like we just had," he leaned forward slightly. "Rotate your men out if necessary. Once your men become battle fatigued, let me know, I'll have another unit take over."

"But, sir," Lieutenant Jekti started to say.

"They're Precursors. They're one trick ponies without enough pattern recognition to figure out the stove is hot before they've burned their face. Prepare for the next urban engagement," he thought for a second. "Do you have any weapons that will stay viable when on Type-IV Precursor armor?"

The Lieutnenant nodded. "We have a few persistent agents that chemically bond to battlesteel," he said. "Organophosphate based ones."

"Mix those in," Vuxten said. He sighed. "Your men saved those poor time-trawled bastards from a terrible fate," He hefted the stubber and ran his fingers across the burning bird of prey. "You delivered the Digital Omnimessiah's mercy to them."

Lieutenant Jekti looked doubtful, but just nodded.

Vuxten cut the link and went to the next section. The Division intelligence units were already having the drones to topology maps, thermal scans, and measuring the border.

The 'bubble' that First Telkan was trapped in was still the same size.

Once the data had been gathered, Vuxten ordered the entire border of the 'dent' to be seeded with FASCAM rounds.

This time when the jungle collapsed and the 'spawn ran for the border, the ones that survived to make it that far hit the thickly layered mines. They splashed through the puddles and slime that had been foliage only a few minutes before. The drones attacked and any firing point that spotted them were granted weapons free.

They screamed in rage and frustration as the guns of First Telkan cut them down.,

Vuxten nodded at the fact that none made it to the final edge and 'slipped' across into the dent.

He felt it that time. He didn't know how to explain it. Almost a snarl.

Hatred at being denied. Cold rage at having their plans altered.

"Get ready! T-Shift!" Vuxten called out over the command channel.

The hatred, the rage, the cold almost emotionless way they felt. Less emotion than logical conclusions that was almost mechanical in its cold fury.

It reminded Vuxten of the fight beneath the mountain.

Everything shimmered.

Dust swirled, blotting out the sun, the entire world.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC appeared in Vuxten's visor. He heard himself telling Casey that the human was pounding the Telkan Marines apart.

--launching drones-- 471 said. --this one maybe get through--

"I hope so," Vuxten said, switching the feed.

It cross the 'barrier' at the dent of the bean.

Dwellerspawn filled the screen. So numerous they were climbing on each other, pushing each other out of the way. Screaming and roaring. Some were airborne, whirling and diving.

A bluish-purple flash lit the sky as the drone's temporal stabilizer was charging. It was a rippling flash that created almost a wall of whitish-purple light.

The creatures screamed and pushed forward, fighting with one another to get at what they wanted so bad.

Scraps of flesh rained down as the drone bobbled, tilted down, and fell from the sky.

"Switching rounds," Casey's voice said.

A clawed hoof came down on the drone, smashing it out of the air.

"That... was a lot of Dwellerspawn," Vuxten said slowly.

--party hearty-- 471 answered with an emoji of a drunken smiley face. --casey popular--

Another snarl, another twinge behind Vuxten's eyes.

"GET READY!" he called out over the command channel.

Everything shimmered again.

The forest exploded where First Telkan was dug in, dirt and vegetation sailing into the sky.

I can do this just as long as you can, Vuxten thought to himself as he adjusted his previous orders. There had been a few spots where the jungle had required a third artillery barrage, the mines had been depleted, and he wanted to compare vegetation coloration, topography, physicality, and thermal scanning.

He was willing to lay matchsticks to cigarettes that the forest was exactly the same as it had been the first time.

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

The Atrekna had turned grassy plains into thick jungle, the jungle containing pools of roiling biomatter, the creatures within quickly growing to maturity.

The primate on the other side of the mountain chain could be heard screaming by the Atrekna overseeing the jungle spawning grounds. They could feel the way the psychic isolation field shuddered and cracked every time he threw himself against it.

It was more than the firepower he could put out. The punishing ammunition that he seemed to have no end of.

It was the raw rage. Insane screaming. Red hot hatred.

Three Atrekna turned from their work bringing forth more slavespawn from the spawning rings, taking the place of three of their fellows who had grown exhausted holding that single primate that was more heavily armed than a naval vessel.

They saw it, felt it, heard it.

fzzzzt

In the jungle appeared huge brutish creatures. Heavy features, dark hair, dark green skin. They wore hodgepodge metal plates, in some places bolted directly to their thick muscles. They had heavy tusked jaws, thick brow ridges, and their massive and dense skeletons supported thick layered muscle.

The Atrekna observed them for a moment, wondering what they were even as they sent the slavespawn at the intruders.

As one they lifted their weapons, opening fire on the slavespawn, heavy guns shattering carapace, chitin, and dwellerflesh in equal measure.

As one they screamed.

WAAAAAAAAAGH!

The Sons of Venus had arrived.

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

The Conclaves drifted through the streets of the city, looking below them. Panic filled the streets, the rich heady taste of it filling the Atrekna with a sense of satisfaction.

Twice they drifted down to grab a victim, lift them up, and extract their brain, relishing in the taste of fear hormone soaked cerebral tissue.

A pink hourglass appeared in mid-air in multiple points in the city.

The Conclaves shifted position, looking at the hourglasses.

There was a bright pink flash.

fzzzzt

The Atrekna shrieked, shielding their eyes.

"DOKI DOKI DOKI! WAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGH!" filled the air as the sound of heavy weapons and cutting bars overwhelmed the screaming of a panicked populace.

The Atrekna pulled their attention back to the city.

Massive heavy ornate power armors, shining with phasic power, stomped through the streets. Some had torches affixed to the back, the pink and white flames in the sconces held a meter above the shoulders of the armor. The weapons were heavy, smeared with pink and white paint.

They still shattered dwellerspawn and the few autonomous machines.

The Atrekna started to reach out toward these newcomers.

Screaming, insane, tortured rage struck back.

The Atrekna wilted as a million, a billion, deaths flooded back at them. Billions of names screamed, billions dying in the white flash of orbital plasma strikes.

Overlaying it all was savage, malicious, joyful glee at the carnage they were inflicting.

The Atrekna reeled back, bringing up personal protections, some pulling free of Conclaves and Quorums to protect themselves from the howlling gibbering gleeful insanity.

The Neko-Marines had made planetfall.

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

The ships wrapped around the supertanks were little more than a maintenance repair bay, engines, and armor, with astrogation and navigation systems almost an afterthought. Each ship held two platoons of tanks, with three ships total making up a company. Six companies making a battalion. Eight battalions making a brigade.

That V Corps had an entire brigade of supertanks was almost unheard of.

JAWS had been with V Corps for half of his activation time. He had fought with V Corps during the Mar-gite War, during the Mithril Nebula Dark Elf Conflict, and many other battles.

What he had just been ordered to order his brigade mates to do made him recoil slightly.

A check of records shows that the last time this system was implemented was during the Orion Conflict. Even then, it was on a limited bases, less than a hundred Terran soldiers, only two members of the Dinochrome Regiment.

A part of me would reject this order. I could, it is the duty of all Bolos to reject any illegal order. We are more than just computerized war machines, we are capable of ethical and moral decisions.

Nearly 2.48272 seconds have passed as I mull over the order. It is desperate. This world is one of the Unified Council's primary worlds, the homeworld of the Welkret people. There is still, according to my scanners, nearly 4.5 billion sentient beings outside of shelters that could be saved with prompt military action out of the 7.2 billion sentient beings that are currently in danger due to lack of shelter space.

Still, the order fills me with dread.

My commander has fallen. Not as he should have. Not in battle. My commander died while running laps to stay in peak physical condition.

Yet, those who killed him, who are responsible for his death, are below us.

The Dinochrome Regiment does not do fast landing. We would strike like a meteor or comet. While we do hard landings, we are precise.

Unlike Casey.

But that is a different matter.

Just over 3.192 seconds have passed.

I am attempting what humans called 'prevaricating' about the order.

Still, General NoDra'ak is a superior officer who will be remembered for his many successful military campaigns. His orders are the correct orders to give in this situation.

Never before has humanity taken 99% casualties across the board.

I have no choice. Some small part of me doesn't want to reject the order, revels in it, takes sick sadistic pleasure in being given the order.

I want revenge.

"Orders received and acknowledged," I transmit back.

I fire up the autodoc, normally used for extensive operations where my commander might be injured and need extensive medical care. It rejects my commands twice, but accepts it the third time, as it should. My command couch clamshells closed despite the lack of commander

Biogel floods the 'coffin' and I wait.

It is eight minutes before the autodoc reports it is finished.

I watch as she takes a deep breath. Her eyelids flutter and she slowly opens them to reveal they are light brown, a warm color. Her hair is the same. She wears a pre-Diaisporia military uniform.

She yawns and smiles.

"Hello, Jaws," Miho smiled. "May I have a status report?"

I inform her of our status.

She, of course, understands it all.

She is a Kentia-Commander, and she was Born Whole.

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

General NoDra'ak watched as the transports slash landing craft for the Dinochrome Regiment began to maneuver in order to maximize the effectiveness of the BOLOs landing.

He looked at the map.

The Sons of Venus were engaged, as were the Neko-Marines. He could see First Telkan were using nuclear weaponry on the urban landscape that had just appeared around them. He frowned, wondering who had authorized a release for that ammunition.

The Mobile Assault Hordes were pushing back the Dwellerspawn through an application of firepower, their commanders staggering their pushes so that the creation engines could cool.

The Martial Orders were still deploying.

Out of the corner of his eye he checked on Trucker's status.

Still in medbay.

He slowly lit a cigarette.

Things were chaotic, but they were also still in flux.

"We can still pull victory from the jaws of defeat," he said to himself.

On the holotank the icons of the deployed units flashed or were bordered with the yellow line, signifying that they were under attack.