Chapter 936: The Setting Sun

Chapter 936: The Setting Sun

Whatever it is that you want to hear from me, I won't give you.

I know that you work for the political activist foundation pushing for war into the Terran Tomb Worlds.

You speak of the Terrans themselves being gone, thus their words are ripe for the picking. Undefended except for automated systems. Unable to resist the might of the Concordiant.

You, like everyone else who are banging the war drums, all conviently forget of the other member species of the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems.

Thirty-two years ago I faced the Treana'ad War Hordes.

They will defend the Terran Tomb Worlds.

And any of our people you send there will die, as almost all of us did. - Survivor the Flowers Among Leaves system assault.

You think you're tough because you've beaten everyone that came before. Tough enough that you can take on the Solarian Hegemony?

Do you know who the Solarians have beaten but allowed to remain under their own rulership?

No, of course you do not.

Because they wiped them out, dusted and planetcracked their worlds, novasparked their suns. They left no evidence of their foes.

There are no former enemies of the Solarian Hegemony ruling their own star nations left to ask how t hey were beaten.

The closest you will find are the Mantid and the Treana'ad. Allies of the Solarians.

You cannot find enemies of the Solarians to gather critical intelligence on the Solarians for one simple reason.

Because the Solarians wiped them from existence. - High Clanmaster Ym'rklak, speaking against the decision to attack Solarian Space, 1273 PG

Isn't that cute. You took over three other interstellar organizations and now think you're the baddest boy on the block because now you have twenty-two extra worlds.

You just attacked a United Systems colonist convoy. You killed and/or ate the beings on board. You gleefully broadcast what you have done. You then attacked the world they were going to join their brethren upon and did the same.

Now you think that you, with your fifty-one systems, are ready to take on the Terrans.

My Brother in the Digital Omnimessiah's eyes, I have but one question for you.

What are you people called? For I wish to record your name so that future historians know you existed.

Because, when the Terrans are done with you, even the light of your star will be extinguished. -- Treana'ad Scholar Kil'LokYawk, to his captors. Species unknown - Extinct. 2853 PG

The wind made an eerie moaning noise as it wound through the city, blowing debris along empty streets that were strewn with cars, rags, and other flotsam and jetsam. Skyrakers creaked, some loudly, their battlesteel and endosteel superstructures designed to sway in the wind and vibrate slightly to reduce stress.

The sounds of heavy machinery and the thud thud thud of warmek footsteps were the only sounds aside from the moaning of the wind and the painful groans of the skyrakers.

"Anythis, Wrecker?" the XO, Warboss, asked over the comlink.

"Nothing," Wrecker AKA Ret.lek said. He stopped at an intersection and looked around.

The streets were empty.

"This planet had a population of seventeen billion Terrans," Ret.lek said. "What happened the bodies? There should at least be skeletons."

"Before it shut down the World Engine did casualty recovery," the XO said. "Disease prevention and management protocols. A human body is full of bacteria and viruses that, when dead, can spread massive plagues and diseases."

"Even dead, you hate everyone," Ret.lek chuckled.

The Terran XO nodded with a grin. "We are the malevolent universe's wrath made manifest."

Ret.lek turned and moved down a main boulevard, following an instinct.

"I thought there was only an under strength task force here. Why's the Navy and Space Force still duking it out?" Ret.lek asked. He paused at the corner and leaned forward to look one direction then the other.

"They didn't use to use flashgates in vacuum last conflict and the flashgates were a lot smaller. Apparently they're using big enough ones in orbit and in the stellar system to move entire task forces in," the XO said. "It's like the Slorpies doing the rapid temporal duplication, only they're moving actually existing material and manpower across thirty-three systems."

"And space combat involves too much distance to just throw a nuke through and destroy the shipyards," Ret.lek guessed.

"Right. In vacuum, a flashgate has nearly no signature. If the ships come through unpowered, they get an hour or two of maneuvering and prep before Space Force can microjump onto them. We're wiping them out with minimal casualties, but it looks like they're digging in for a war of attrition," the XO said. "They've got to fighting back in orbit, so nobody has orbital supremacy. They're mainly targeting surveillance sats, so they can open flashgates on the surface without taking an orbital strike."

"Or they're flashgating into the middle of one of our formations so we can't orbital strike their forces," Ret.lek said, remembering the battle that had landed him in the hospital for two weeks.

"Bingo," the XO said. The XO went silent as Ret.lek broke line of sight and the point to point laser commo trail was broken.

Ret.lek thought as he moved up to the next intersection. It felt good to be doing a scouting mission, under his own power and decisions, instead of hooked into the massive supercomputer arrays handling almost everyone else's actions.

In open battle, the Enemy stood no chance. Hell, half the time a lot of the troopers, even the power armor jawks, were zoned out or asleep.

Which meant that the Enemy was seeking battles that would break the Battlefield Tactical Network and force the Confederate forces to go to local control.

Which didn't mean the Enemy won. They just managed to inflict a few casualties.

But after two months, it was starting to add up.

The Confederacy was still winning, but Military, Naval, and Defense Intelligence had no idea how deep and wide the Enemy's war material stocks and asset pools were.

For all anyone knew, the Enemy had only lost a fraction of a percentage of their fighting strength.

Which is why atomics and nuclear weapons were now authorized to throw through a flashgate, to at least damage or destroy the gate system.

The XO's big 100 tonne warmek turned the corner, reaching out and slapping down a small repeater on the corner of the building.

"You know, these guys aren't like the Atrekna or the Lanaktallan," Ret.lek mused when the channel came back.

"Right, but what's on your mind?" Warboss asked, turning around and backing up the street, his weapons ready.

"We keep throwing nukes and atomics through the flashgates, right?"

"Right."

The com-link crackled. "Scout Team Sigma-Niner-One-Two, continue on mission," some genius from Division Operations Command ordered. "Adhere to ROE."

Ret.lek rolled his eyes as the XO moved up.

"OK, we're the heavies and the slowest. We're not supposed to engage first, only return fire, and break contact as soon as possible," the XO said.

"Right," LC Norgulk said.

Ret.lek just nodded.

"So, Wrecker and I will step out. That'll draw fire. But before that, the rest of the lance breaks left and right, goes up three blocks to flank the parking garage. When we draw fire, you guys step out and support us," the XO said.

The LC nodded. "Sounds good." He gave the orders and headed south with another mek.

"Ready, Wrecker?" the XO asked.

"Yeah, lemme load my warbois and..." he trailed off. "Hang on."

The XO raised an eyebrow and waited.

"Those flashgates, we know that radiation, light, and electromagnetic pulses can get through. Electronics can travel through without losing signal, right?" Ret.lek said, typing quickly.

"Otherwise the magtak system would break loose and the cars would go everywhere," the XO said.

"Right, so..." Ret.lek started.

"Warboss, we've got problems," the LC suddenly said.

"What?" the XO asked, holding up two fingers to signal Ret.lek to wait.

"System's warning me I'm leaving the boundary of the mission zone and is threatening with turning over operational control to BATACOPS," LC Norgulk said. "We can't go a full block in either direction. Looks like a recent update to our mission operation profile."

"That pencil necked little clicking gecko Blevan cock sucker," the XO swore. "Gonna make a pair of boots out of the little lizard fuck when we get out of here. All right, come on back, we'll do this the hard way."

"Hang on," Ret.lek said, still working. He looked up. "Gimme ninety seconds for the warboi hashbrown to finish frying, then another two minutes for the eggs to finish cooking, and we'll show them a new trick."

"Oh Digital Omnimessiah preserve us, a private with a plan," Norgulk said.

"Screamer missiles loaded up with EM warfare warbois?" the XO asked.

"Fire them through the gates. Every time when we faced the Atrekna, when they'd jump and have a unit in two places at once, warbois would go crazy and chew their their data fences," Ret.lek said. "The flashgates should do the same. Any redundancy error checks should be already on the fritz. I just gotta add something."

"What?" the XO asked, watching Ret.lek dig his dog-tag chain out of his shirt. "What's on that?"

"Memento," Ret.lek said. He flicked the bottom off of a medallion, revealing a dataspike. He plugged it into his mek. "It's from my habber gang days."

The XO just nodded slowly.

It took close to two minutes and the help of his greenies, but the software got baked into the warboi green eggs and hash. His greenies flashed the data over to the other meks and the other meks started frying up warboi hashes.

"Ready," Ret.lek said.

"Everyone ready?" the XO asked. "We'll come out, fire the screamers, run the full EMCOM bandwidth with warboi leashes, see what happens while we all go for our targets."

"They're gonna be shooting at us," Corporal Danzler said.

"Then shoot back, dumbass," the XO said. He lifted the arms of his 100 tonne Geist and made a pumping motion. "Let's do this."

Ret.lek took two fast steps out into the boulevard, turned and leveled his PPC's, even as his SRM launcher covers snapped open and he fired a full two dozen screamer and flasher EW missiles at the parking garage. The XO stepped out next to him, doing the same.

His battlescreens cracked into existence, ripping the facing and macroplas windows out of the skyraker on his left. The XO's battlescreen tore apart the facing of the building on the left.

The heavy man made lighting from the PPCs boomed out, slamming into the 250mm railgun emplacements, shattering the ferrocrete the forward bunker was made out of and sending it exploding out into the street. He caught something good and the whole backside of one of the railgun emplacements exploded, lifting the bottom of the next story upward in a soft bow.

The whole section collapsed and Ret.lek saw the heavy support beams below puff out ferrocrete dust as cracks appeared up and down the beams.

The screamers lanced out, the warbois shrieking in excitement. They saw dozens, thousands of open ports, doubled ports, and ports where the defenses were suffering cyclic errors.

A pair of bullet trains whipped out and into the tunnels, moving at over 500 mph.

Which might have well been standing still to the electronic reflexes of the warbois, who shrieked with joy and jumped to the open ports on the rail cars, the cargo, even the engines. They were smart enough to hunker down or sneak silently through the datalines, easily avoiding the laughingly simple Noocracy ECM warfare programs.

They vanished into the tunnels and were gone, licking their chops at what might be at the other end of the train ride.

Others saw open ports on the other side of the flashgate and jumped. The other saw nothing but waving grain but steered the missile through anyway.

Reappearing hundreds of miles away, shrieking that they wanted attention.

Ret.lek didn't know any of it.

He was stomping forward, ignoring the rush of heat, and pounding the Noocracy position with heavy weapons. His autocannon's reloader whined after he put a long burst across the fifth story, the heavy shells flashing out and blowing apart the support columns.

The rest of the lance was adding their own firepower, striking the leading edge of the parking garage structure's levels, hitting the support columns.

For a moment, the Noocracy troops thought that maybe the Confeds just had really shitty aim and were grateful.

Then, with a slow groan, the parking garage started to collapse, pancaking down, the upper levels first, each level slamming into the next, adding that level's weight to the next impact.

Dust billowed out, making the battlescreens snarl and flare.

OPERATIONS PLAN UPDATING flashed on Ret.lek's screen.

The ROE suddenly updated.

"Oh, now we're allowed to engage the enemy without being fired on first. How magnaminous of that jumped up little garden gecko fuck," the XO snarled. He took a deep breath and exhaled. "Let's get a move on, ladies."

Everyone nodded and sent their machines moving forward.

Is it weird I was hoping a kaiju would jump out? Ret.lek wondered to himself.