Chapter 915: Edge of Twilight

Chapter 915: Edge of Twilight

The Mantid fear nothing. In every conflict they have either triumphed or survived. Even the ferocity of the Precursor War, they endured even as they and the Lanaktallan fled the carnage.

They have nothing to fear from anyone. The Omniqueen understands this is a law of the universe as firm as gravity.

But those ancient Mantid, hidden away for millions of years, had not learned the lessons that modern Mantid have learn.

Red eyes at night

The prudent take flight. - Musings on the Second Precursor War

I have been engaged in combat for just over 3600 seconds. While Nekonya's fireplan is suboptimun compared to the mathematically precise fireplan that I would have come up with, our joint gestalt points out the wisdom in it.

"TEACH THEM WHAT FEAR TASTES LIKE!" Nekonya howls out as my guns rake the furthest ranks, my speed moves up to 30 mph, just a touch faster than the Mantid can sprint.

I could tell that the Mantid were screaming. Not in terror, not in fear, but in rage.

Not that we were killing them.

That we were defying their will. The will of their Omniqueen.

Defying that they were the masters of the universe.

Phasic warfare is within my memories, but far back in the memory banks that contain the fragmented and often confusing records of the First Terran-Mantid War AKA The Glassing War. Very rarely is there a phasic enemy that can withstand the might of the Dinochrome Brigade.

Phasic enemies usually come in two types: Communal Minds where those linked in can easily communicate as well as share memories and information. Linked Minds where every creature is bound together into the same thought patterns.

The Mantid followed the Linked Minds with guiding overminds of the Speakers, High Speakers, and various flavors of queens.

The overminds made the linked mind more robust, more easily to handle the loss of large amounts of population as well as keep trauma from paralyzing or killing members of the linked mind system.

This enabled the Mantid during the Glassing War to throw in hundreds of thousands or millions of troops against the Combine without the linked mind shattering or freezing up due to the combat where the majority of Mantid combat troops were killed.

Additionally, warriors and speakers act as buoys to the system, anchoring points for those linked that are nearby, within range of the warrior and speaker's abilities.

This means there is a very flexible system with multiple structural points to prevent failure.

Linked together, I can feel Nekonya's plan.

Use the linked mind itself as a weapon against the Mantid.

Not to try to cause it to collapse and leave the Mantid paralyzed. That had never worked.

But we know two things about the Mantid that the enemy does not realize.

We realize, now, that the 'servitor caste' is capable of independent thought. True, green mantid servitors use a limited linked mind to increase their intellectual capability into supra-genius territory when using telemechanics and using mathematics, but that means that the green mantids can create their own linked mind if given the opportunity.

The other piece of data is very important.

What the Speakers and Queens feel, everyone feels.

I smash through more industrial complexes as I continue to chase the Mantid.

Now, the sound of Nekonya's laughter is chasing them even as my guns obliterate the far ranks.

It is an effective strategy.

If they try to hold position. They die on my battlescreen. A useless, hopeless thing that they cannot fight, as they do not possess the firepower to drop my battlescreen and they know it.

If they charge me, they die on that same battlescreen.

If they try to run to the side, my port and starboard infinite repeaters, far more than what I have on my bow or aft hull, are brought into play and shred them quickly and easily.

My mortars are dropping FASCAM rounds in front of them. Something they can see and now understand.

They can only flee, face first, into a minefield.

They can only flee into my forward field of fire.

The center of the mass of Mantid, which is growing in size as more groups are swept up in my advance, knows that to be on any of the outside ranks is nothing but death.

Nekonya is right.

This will break their morale beyond what the Speakers and Queen can hope to keep intact.

My satellites are almost done deploying, and I can see that our strategy has forced what Nekonya knew it would.

Every Mantid on the planet is heading straight for me. I had landed in one of the center inland seas of the protocontinent, meaning I am near the center of the massive continent.

The Queens and the Speakers must send everything they have at me.Fôllôw new stories at novelhall.com

Thousands, tens of thousands of armored vehicles roar toward me in jagged sawtooth formations, streaming lines of vehicles, or just in clumps. APC's and troops transports are loaded with Mantid. They have no air support, but already long range missiles are arcing toward me.

My point defense swats them out of the sky without even ticking up their heat or slush.

The herd in front of me has thinned and I roar forward, exploding the last of them with my forward battlescreen, lunging up to nearly 90mph as I crush any building that I cannot detect life signs within.

The Enemy will come me.

And be destroyed.

-----

Space was full of howling missile drives, silently streaking torpedoes, coherent light, and powerful energies. Reality itself warped and flickered, in some places tearing to begin leaking dark matter to patch the rip.

The huge Omniqueen's ship was inside the angle of the Dakota's turning radius, meaning that the huge ship could cut inside the angle, shortening the distance. It would slowly bring the Dakota in range of more of the Omniqueen's guns.

The Omniqueen stared at the icons of the Hated Ship as the range slowly ticked down.

It had to die.

She wanted it dead.

And her wants superseded the needs of the vermin on that ship.

The air seemed to turn into fragments of shattered mirrors that showed the inside of her command center as they slowly rotated in mid-air, sparkles like tiny shattered crystals puffing away from them.

Nearly thirty seconds later the impact of that hated weapon shook the entire command center, the shock absorbers screaming with the intensity of the sudden shock.

Seconds later reports came in.

Like the first shot, the second shot had blown clear through over a thousand miles of armor, inner spaces, interior armor, integrity shields, and everything else. The hole was nearly two hundred miles wide and was nothing but raging, out of control surges of energy. Everything for nearly three hundred miles was dead, killed by what was virtually a 9.9 earthquake backed by a sleet of radiation that normally came from a star.

She snarled in hate.

She hated that ship. Hated the beings on it.

O'Brien just nodded.

Red Shirt Lyfe.

-----

What's dead should stay dead, Yar-38173 thought to herself as she fully materialized again, coming up from being up on one knee, her cutting bar in one hand and the short magac SMG in her other fist. Her combat vacsuit was power assisted and it hummed as she smoothly came up to her full height, firing at where she knew the Mantid warriors were.

They were all just turning away from where they had managed to kill the dozen primates. Sure that the battle was over and victory was there.

Yar's magac blew apart three of them even as she rose up into a crouch, throwing herself forward.

"VICTORY OR DEATH!" she howled, firing with one hand.

"EITHER IS FINE!" the two thousand men and women who had just materialized in the huge cavern roared out in answer.

The warriors screamed as they were cut down.

More warriors answered their death screams, turning back around and rushing back toward the chamber that was only a mile or so from a primary atmospheric exchange.

Yar ignored the blood running from her nose and ears as her brain struggled with her experiences. She steadied her magac SMG on the forearm of the arm holding the cutting bar, the SMG's stock marked with nine notches to signify queen kills.

She could feel her old life, her life as Jenny Marcus Martinez, being eaten away by the memory overlay of her past experience fighting, killing, dying on the Mantid ship.

It didn't matter.

Only one thing mattered.

This was it.

One way or another, this was it and she intended on doing her part of finish it.

Victory or death. Either was fine.

Warriors poured in through the dozens of passageways that led into the vast chamber normally used for the warriors to exercise and rid themselves of cryosickness. Ensign Harold James Earl stepped forward into a pack of them, his 12-gauge shotgun roaring as warsteel pellets ripped through the warriors psychic battlescreens and destroyed whatever they hit. The rest of the battalion deployed their heavy weapons, fired grenade and rocket launchers, and added their own small arms fire to the fight.

The Mantid warriors screeched their hunting cry.

They were met by the howling hunting cries of the primates.

The dying continued.

-----

Pikark felt the Dakota tilt as it swerved through the shoals of dead-drive missiles, avoiding the majority of them and taking the ones that went off on the forward shields. The lights flickered slightly as more power was pushed into the shields.

They were in range of the Omniqueen and her daughter's psychic power now, and he could taste blackberry wine and salted bacon on his back teeth as he watched the psychic shielding tick up to 62% load.

He was satisfied with the numbers, since he was pitting the technological against the biological.

An Omniqueen could exert her will across half a stellar system, the fact that the Dakota was still in the fight gave a tinge of rage and disbelief to the Omniqueen's psychic touch.

One trick pony, Pikark sneered.

"PIKE SHOT LOADED!" Worf called out.

"FIRE AT WILL!" Pikark answered back.

Reality shattered in front of the Dakota as the heavy superweapon fired. Lights flickered, shattered pieces of mirror floated through air. For a split second his Spock was replaced by a version with a goatee before reverting to normal.

"Direct hit! Still oncoming," the Worf said. He looked up. "Captain, we're at the pre-arranged spot."

"Uhura, tap on the mirror!" Pikark ordered.

"Aye, Captain," Uhura answered, tapping out the frequency.

The hypercom deep in the hull, adjusted and modified, hummed to life.

The signal was sent.

-----

The Omniqueen felt a thrill of victory after something made the Hated Ship heel to one side and its speed drop.

"GET THEM! GET THEM GET THEM GET THEM!" she screeched across the omnimind.

She felt the ship tremble slightly and knew the engineers were putting more power to the remaining engines even as the ship rotated to bring up fresh guns.

Before she could say anything else she heard it through the overmind, saw it through the eyes of the High Speaker manning the station.

"STATUS CHANGE!" the High Speaker squealed.

She could see that.

Another portal to the burning hyperatomic plane had opened up.

The ship that came through wasn't much different. The metal was brushed, not twisted and blackened. Runes in Mantid sigils were spread across the hull. The hull was the same design.

It was the runes on the prow of the saucer section that were the most different, that silently spoke the loudest about how different the ship was.

Not that the Omniqueen understood what it meant.

All she knew was that another of the Hated Ship had arrived and was maneuvering to pin her between the two vessels.

"KILL THEM BOTH!" she screamed.

-----

Pikark tapped his fingers on the arm of his command throne. The heavy rings on his fingers were as utilitarian as they were decorative.

"Mantid ship targeting locked, Captain," his Sulu said.

Pikark nodded.

"Open fire," Pikark said, reaching up and stroking his goatee.

-----

The massive hull of the Omniqueen ship was caught between two vessels.

One was charcoal black, twisted and covered with burning red mantid runes.

NX-80102DX DAKOTA

The other was structurally identical, only shining brushed warsteel instead of charcoal black.

ISS-80102DX DAKOTA