Chapter 914: Edge of Twilight

Chapter 914: Edge of Twilight

Whatever exists outside of her control exists without her consent. - Comment on the Mantid Omniqueen, Second Human-Mantid War, 138PG

My wants, desires, and whims supersede your pathetic 'needs'. - Belief of every Mantid Queen, Overqueen, and Omniqueen

"It's over, the Humans have your scent. They won't stop. They can't stop. They never stop. Not until you're dead. They will chase you to the ends of the universe, and beyond. And if that means they die as well, "There is room in this grave for you too." isn't a boast, it's a promise. Written in the oceans of blood and the piles of skulls of their enemies.

So choose your path carefully, before you poke the lemurs and turn that silly looking, drunken, jam smeared hedonist into a raging, wrath filled engine of destruction that will walk through hell itself just for the opportunity to rip out your throat with his bare teeth." - Extract of a speech by Sleeps with Both Eyes Open, Mantid warrior caste survivor discussing the defeat of the Mantid forces after the Glassing of Terra, as recorded by interviewer u/Bergusia

"Victory or Death. Either is fine." - Terran Descent Humanity

I have been on dry land for 268.14 seconds.

In that time my infinite repeaters have eliminated 22,576 black carapace mantid combat servitors, 4,918 mantid warriors, 6 mantid speakers.

I have completely emerged from the ocean and crossed the beach, moving from low speed to a combat cruising speed of 72 mph.

Compressed air clears the Hellbore, truly a weapon of Hell now, and I load the chamber.

My Kentai Command, Nekonya, rejoices at the huge press of Mantid warriors and combat servitors that rush toward us, firing their weapons.

My battlescreens register the hits of their weapons and my subprocessors immediately identify the energy profiles of the projectiles, passing the data on to other coprocessors, which then compare it to the information in my databanks.

Plasma rifles in the 40 watt range. Plasma cannons in the 40mm barrel diameter, non-nuclear generated. Rockets and missiles with light graviton drivers moving the missile at MACH-4 with poor flight maneuverability. Rocket and missile warheads are all omnidirectional plasma blasts, generated through deuterium compression and detonation. Phasic enhancement is light, Class II at best.

Primitive weapons that were obsolete during the First Human-Mantid War.

The enemy troops rely on phasic battlescreens in the low 5 watt range, centered around warriors and speakers only. They wear no armor, not even plasteel or battlesteel, not even woven combat fibers.

They cannot even stop the slugs from my kinetic shock weapons. Each hit splashes ichor and liquefied chitin across the surrounding survivors.

While the Enemy is able to rout the primitive peoples of this planet, they will find a Mark XXIX BOLO combat machine is far beyond their capabilities.

Out of habit I check my status.

Six 200mm Hellbores, arranged in 2 triple-turrets with independent targeting mode. 80 infinite repeaters of various types, including 12 kinetic shock weapons complete with creation engine ammunition loaders. The creation engines are currently at 9% heat and 2% slush. Twenty-two 60mm mortar tubes, four eleven-inch-six pack rocket pod launchers. 48 point defense dedicated laser nodules. Six 54-inch Vertical Launch Rocket Systems used for orbital denial, fully loaded with atomics. Additionally I possess 4 drone launchers and 12 EW attack hash bays that are completely intact and loaded. My eight tracks are all 99.92% and at correct tension, running gear is 99.85% ready for battle. graviton systems are ready to be engaged.

I am a Mark XXIX, nearly obsolete by Confederate Armed Services Standards, due for hull and computing systems upgrade into a Mark XXXII chassis.

But I far outclass, just by myself, anything these primitive and ancient Mantid can field.

With Nekonya, my Kentia Commander, my Born Whole commander, I outclass the Mantid by an almost unimaginable factor.

The Mantid attempt to flee as I lunge forward at 72.23 miles per hour, my tracks crashing like rolling thunder, my guns pounding their massed forces. A Treana'ad Warrior could sprint out of my way in time to avoid what Nekonya has ordered.Follow the latest novels at novelhall.com

"TRACK THE INFANTRY!" she yells, almost bouncing up and down in the command couch.

She is a rainbow butterfly with a warsteel spine dancing around the burning fire of my wrath.

The Mantid are chaff before my whirlwind.

-----

Dufnasb had been one of millions of his people that had lived in the great public habitation blocks only a month ago. His life had been one of pablum entertainment, bland but available nutrients, and the ability to buy modest consumer goods. He had lived off of the Standard Individual Living Wage for his entire life, educated to be iconoliterate with basic problem solving, never leaving his hab-block.

After all, the hab-block had stores, resteraunts, entertainment facilities, all within his desire.

He had drifted through 23 years in a haze. Never really wanting for anything, never really desiring anything he could not acquire. The media he consumed never showed him anything that he could not acquire, never showed others enjoying anything beyond his reach.

He had no need for a mate, no desire to procreate, and often wondered what possessed his mother to produce him when there was no real need to procreate outside of the Population Planning Administration's guidelines.

It didn't bother him that he was not on the 'population expansion' list.

Creches and artificial wombs could handle that.

After all, there were 1.2 billion of his people, much more than was needed. 75% of the population was not in employment, education, or training. Robots and mechanized systems handled labor, algorithms and AI's handled everything else.

A month ago, his biggest worry was whether or not the online retailers would be stocking anything that had caught his attention with the advertisements carefully designed to make him desire the product.

But that was then.

This was now.

The first warning was the sight of the massive spaceship getting close enough it could be seen with the naked eye.

The government had responded by ordering everyone inside that could have seen the strange object in the sky.

After all, space exploration was a waste of resources that could be spent to support people like Dufnasb and the 1.2 billion like him.

Then had come the strange whisper into everyone's heads.

YOU BELONG TO ME

The government's response was to tell everyone that they had not heard that whisper.

Then had came the night where it looked like a meteor shower across the sky.

An unscheduled meteor shower.

The whisper sounded again, but louder this time.

YOU BELONG TO ME

The falling stars had turned out to be dropships.

The doors had dropped open and huge insects had left the ships.

Immediately a blanket covered the entire planet. The minds of the population suddenly stilled, numbed.

YOU BELONG TO ME

This time it couldn't be ignored.

The population wailed inside their own minds as a single Speaker overwhelmed the entire planet.

Well, almost the entire planet.

4.5% of the population was not overwhelmed.

Dufnasb had been part of that small section of the population.

Something inside of him. Something dormant. Something asleep. Something drugged by his food and water and air, numbed by his constant media feed. Something lulled into slumber by wanting for nothing or even able to grasp any concept that might suggest there was more to life.

The blanket rolled silently, invisibly, over most of the hab-block.

Dufnasb had been eating a snack bar, drinking a drink, and playing a simple match game on his dataslate when the blanket had reached him.

They were doing something different.

Dufnasb frowned.

They were running!

Not toward Dufnasb and the four others that were all that remained of his 20 man team less than an hour ago.

They were running away!

The factory complex, nearly three hundred feet tall and two miles wide, suddenly exploded into debris and Dufnasb stared through the periscope, his jaw hanging open and his mind refusing to believe what he could see.

It was huge.

The size of a stadium, it was sharply angled, a forward and rear turret, and bristling with weapons that lashed at the fleeing insects. It had eight massive tracks, each at least twenty meters wide. It was jet black, a light drinking black, and covered in burning red runes. Chains hung from it, swaying back and forth, and the six cannon barrels on the turrets glowed with a sullen malevolent glow.

Strangely enough, Dufnasb could see the painting of what looked like a furry biped in a jumpsuit with a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other painted in a cartoon style on the side of one turret.

The guns on the front began firing at the insects furthest away as it slowly pushed through the wreckage of the factory.

Dufnasb just stared at the new arrival.

-----

The Mantid warriors on the other side of the factory complex were still for nearly 2.452 seconds when I crash through a factory and destroy nearly 4,000 targets in 1.248 seconds, before any of them can react.

My fire pattern is not one I would have chosen, which would have been mathematically precise, targeting the most heavily armed, command and control units, the most heavily armored, before dropping down to other targets.

Nekonya's targeting profile that I carried out was different.

My infinite repeaters rake the outside of their ranks, the furthest away, working inward once the furthest Mantids are killed. My mortars pound the outside ranks and sow FASCAM rounds beyond those ranks in case any try to run away. I slow to 15 mph and crank up my battlescreens. The Mantid flinch away from the fire, shifting toward me.

Nekonya howls with glee as my battlescreen hits the first rank and they explode into steam and component atoms without even shifting the energy requirements.

The Mantid become aware they are trapped between the merciless fire of my infinite repeaters and mortar fire on their outside ranks and my battlescreen. My treads churn ichor muddied dirt beneath them as I slowly advance.

On the electronic warfare front Nekonya and I are not startled to discover that the local information and data nets are trusted networks. Daemon investigation shows that the local sapient species attempted space exploration, discovered Hellspace, and withdrew to their own system. One war, 148.23 years ago was the last conflict they had faced. They have no armor, no infantry, no aerospace assets.

They have no military. No martial traditions.

A few thousand years and the species would more than likely regress and degenerate like most other species, becoming non-sapient.

The VLS rockets I had launched upon making landfall up the beach have reached their destinations and the warheads deploy solar panels, shutting down their primary reactors, deploying massive sensitive antenna to look down at the world below them. Other rockets are still manuevering and I predict that in 2183.42 seconds I will have complete stealth satellite coverage of the planet.

Already I can see the burning sparks of high phasic energy from Mantid Speakers and High Speakers.

I launch another ripple of VLS, these configured for long endurance hypersonic delivery stealth systems.

All with phasic targeting.

Neither the Mantid nor the local species have armor or aerospace assets.

I deploy semi-autonomous long-life drones to act as air support.

The enemy around me reduced to slurry I simply cross the storage lot, grinding everything beneath my treads, and push through the next factory.

Beyond are thousands of Mantid, which are all beginning to flee.

The furthest is 1.95 km from my forward prow.

My infinite repeaters and mortars go to rapid fire even as my aerospace drones set up for close air support attack runs.

Nekonya points out there is a defensive line, made merely of dirt and ceramacrete pushed into a berm, between this area and the smouldering city beyond. Zooming in I am able to identify the local species in the flesh for the first time and load them into the 'civilian non-combatant' files.

The Mantid flinch back from the furthest ranks being slashed to pieces by my infinite repeaters, ion bolts, plasma bolts, projectiles, and high impulse lasers all shredding the furthest Mantids. The mortar shells crackle above them, deploying FASCAM munitions as well as white phosphorus and jagged chunks of battlesteel shrapnel.

Those closest flinch away, are hit by my battlescreen, and try to flinch away from me.

Nekonya's tactic is brutal and barbaric, but highly effective, and I feel and reciprocate her fierce joy as the Mantid huddle up, unable to run, unable to advance.

They can only stare at my advance and scream.

I cut loose with a burst of phasic disruptors and watch the Mantid convulse. Their psychic network is broken and the Mantid scream in terror that is all their own as my guns and battlescreen wipe them away like a hand wipes away water droplets from a window.

"NYAAAA!" sounds out as Nekonya orders me to fire two of my Hellbores over the heads of the Mantids, on a trajectory that will impact on a near-orbital Mantid transport ship.

The Hellbore rounds blow a channel 128.476 meters wide in the Mantid ranks, scouring the ground down to the bedrock, which cracks and smokes.

I allow a thin line of Mantid to flee.

Nekonya and I know they will flee toward their brethren. Their psychic link disrupted.

And for the first time, feeling fear.

We continue forward, pursuing those running. My guns going silent as we simply follow.

A warsteel cliff preceded by a wavering semi-transparent curtain of death.

The Mantid scream in terror and denial as they run.

And I follow.

They are the Enemy.

The Enemy only exists to be destroyed.

-----

Dufnasb stared in disbelief as the huge machine slowly moved away, following the insects. It was no longer firing its weapons, just following the fleeing insects.

Later, in life, he would remember this moment.

Still staying behind cover, behind the berm, he did something he had not done in a month.

He cheered.

He was the only one for a moment. Then the others joined in.

They stood up, waving their weapons over their heads, cheering, as the massive machine slowly moved away, chasing the insects.

Dufnasb shouted himself hoarse, hugged his surviving comrades, and wept with joy.

They might not have won by themselves, but they were still alive.

And Dufnasb had come to value his life.