novelnext Chapter 935: Edge of Twilight
Chapter 935: Edge of Twilight
Chapter 935: Edge of Twilight
My people knew that the Confederate Armed Services controlled most, if not all, of their battlefield assets with massive strange-matter particle supercomputers in a vast interlocked network that allowed military units on other planetary bodies in a stellar system to react to actions on a different planet.
My people spent years and untold amounts of treasure and man-hours to figure out a way to break that combat information and coordination network. We sought to figure out how to jam quantum communication, paired spooky and strange-matter particles, and everything else involved in that overlapping and complex battlefield tactical network.
Have mercy upon us.
We succeeded.
For a few moments, only a few, the Terrans and their allies were thrown into confusion. My people pressed the attack, sought out engagements, thinking that this was it. The secret to victory. That we could do what none other had done and defeat the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems in open battle.
Then we heard it over com channels that suddenly opened up across the entire theater.
A female primate saying "CASCADE DATA FAILURE: REVERTING TO LOCAL CONTROL" and then there was a split second of silence before we heard it.
The scream.
Not of fear. Not of terror. Not of alarm.
Maybe it wasn't a scream. Not as my people know it.
It was a blood curdling vocalization of pure and unrestrained joy and malice.
Six hours later Captain Manuel G. Trucker drove his tank through the planetary command center and ran over the system offensive coordinator laughing "I'M GOING TO RUN YOU OVER! EVENTUALLY!" while his tank company reduced the entire intelligence coordination base to burning rubble.
The slaughter was... awe inspiring.
I survived by curling up in a ball and screaming "NOT THE FACE!" when the Terran infantryman yanked me through the sidewall of the APC I was riding in before they pulled a grenade off my own harness and threw it into the breached APC.
I spent 2 months in an internment camp, Treana'ad spirit healers helping me get over the night terrors that left me screaming in the dark. Memories of "GOTCHA!" and those armored hands closing on my power armor's shoulders leaving me urine and sweat soaked, staring blindly at the ceiling and screaming.
So, you want my advice on how to break apart the Terran Confederate Armed Services battlefield tactical information network?
Here's my advice.
Don't.
The vast supercomputer arrays that control that network are merely strings of logic and unfeeling code. It merely computes and uses predictive analysis to determine the most optimal way of defeating you with the least amount of infrastructure damage, the minimum amount of collateral damage and casualties, and the bare minimum amount of deaths on both sides.
You will face the Terran battlefield tactical information, analysis, control network. A thing of pure logic that controls the most fearsome military machine the known galaxy has ever seen.
Underneath it all lies a sheer malevolent pleasure and joy in combat that it takes a starship full of those supercomputers to keep it under control.
My advice?
Leave the Terrans and their allies alone.
See, they want you to try to jump them. They have sexually erotic dreams about your people attacking them. They gain a psycho-sexual thrill of the idea of pitting themselves against you.
Destroying your armies.
Burning your cities.
And taking your life.
Because this, this is the real truth: Nobody wants that battlefield and theater tactical information and control network to collapse more than they do.
From the newest hatched Treana'ad warrior caste, the most cunning Digital Sentience, the half-baked clone warrior, to the youngest green mantid, to the most battle hardened Terran.
They want you to disrupt that network.
Because then, what happens, will be nobody's fault but your own. - Interview of Street Sweeper Second Class HrukNarfak, former Powered Scout Armor Infantryman First Class, Military Intelligence.
The 17th Warmek Regiment Regimental Operations Officer was droning away, using a laser pointer and a chalk-tipped pointer stick to highlight whatever he was babbling about for the umpteenth time.
Ret.lek was busy doodling an Atrekna with a bunch lemur penises chasing it, barely paying attention, but still awake, as the Regimental Operations Officer went over what Kilo Company, 9th Battalion, 12th Brigade had accomplished the day before.
Ret.lek had heard it back when the Battalion had run their After Action Report Briefing.
He hated this part.
Come back. Turn in your datachip or datacube or datawafer or what the fuck ever.
Tell the Platoon Leader or the CO what happened in an official statement.
Go to the Company After Action Report Briefing and give any clarifications needed.
Go to the Battalion After Action Report Briefing and give any clarifications needed.
Go to the Brigade After Action Report Briefing and give any clarifications needed.
Now he was sitting in the Regimental one.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but four days ago the new Regimental Commander had ordered all of the artwork removed from the meks, from coolant vests, from helmets, and even off of the weapons.
Ret.lek had found out that the Regimental Commander had been Confed side of the Great Gulf the entire war, and he knew he shouldn't judge the other being, but he felt contempt for the Colonel even as he was silently fuming at having to remove the artwork that he'd sported for years.
Even the mek names had been scrubbed and the helmets had call-signs removed because call-signs were no longer permitted. Rank and last name only.
Ret.lek sighed and glanced around to either side of him.
His Lance Commander had his eyes open, his stylus moving on the surface of his datapad, but Ret.lek could tell the other mekjawk was asleep. PV2 Jo'ortketi wasn't even pretending, his chin down, eyes closed, ears relaxed.
"Are there any questions or clarifications anyone from Kilo Company would like to put forward at this time?" the Regimental officer asked.
Someone yawned. Someone else busted ass loudly. The Kilo Company CO, a feline trooper with a scar above his eyes, shook his head.
"No, sir," the Captain said, blinking his large eyes.
"Now, let's move on to..."
Ret.lek just tuned it out, drawing a picture of a lemur penis with squiggly lines off of it that he labeled "Atrekna Yummy Aura" with Atrekna caricatures running for it with their hands outstretched and hearts over their heads.
Man, war sucks.
-----
Ret.lek folded his deck of cards and put them in his top left pocket as the autopilot function, overseen by the mechanics of Third Shop, walked his mek backwards into the maintenance cradle.
His armor wasn't even pockmarked.
Hell, he hadn't even had to cycle his battlescreen projectors.
He waited until the green light came on and cracked his canopy.
Like the other mekjawks, he climbed down the ladder and trudged out of the Third Shop bay while their meks underwent their one hundred hours of operation maintenance cycles.
Each mek was in the proper maintenance cradle or lined up in neat rows by lance. The greenies were already moving along Greenie Highway to wherever they spent their off time. The mechanics were all busy, shouting at each other, running diagnostics, or swapping out parts.
Despite the appearance of chaos, Ret.lek knew it was all choreographed and by the numbers.
Not like the days of having four mechanics in a beat up skimmer show up with a box of tools to work on his beat up mek in the middle of an agri-field of grain.
Ret.lek sighed as he walked past the gate guards, two infantry guys that looked like they were asleep standing up and their brains were still automatically going through the motions.
It was raining, and despite regulations, Ret.lek just jammed his hands into his pockets and slouched his way out of the motor pool, hat pulled low.
Chow hall was still open and he stood in line with the other mekjawks, silently waiting to get his tray and just point at the food and grunting. He got himself a fizzystim at the dispenser and just shuffled over to a table with others and sat down. He ate mechanically, staring at his plate.
"Fucking bug hunt," one of the other mekjawks at the table snarled, suddenly looking up. "Sixty-two years of slambashing with the fucking Slorpies on fifteen planets, and now I'm a glorified backup system in case somehow my radio goes out and all four of my greenies suddenly suffer strokes."
Ret.lek nodded. "They spent all that damn time training us when they could just put a random potted plant in the seat of my mek and get the same results."
The others all nodded.
There was grumblings of agreement from the other tables around Ret.lek's table.
"It wouldn't be so bad if Tactical Operations Control made just one frigging mistake," another jawk said, tapping his fork on the ceramic plate. "All I'm asking for is just one mistake. But nooooo, it's gotta be optimized perfection all the way across."
"Best favor the Slorpies ever did us was futzing out the BATACNET," another jawk at the table next to Ret.lek grumbled.
"My mek fired two missiles where the warbois jumped out to run off down the power lines," another said. "I swear they yelled 'so long, sucker!' right before they jumped into that open port."
"And the Lankies thought they could beat these people," another grumbled.
"These guys here? They've spent like a thousand years consolidating, doing R&D, building up their military, and from what I've heard the only mek we lost was when the street collapsed and dumped a Storm Crow into an abandoned and forgotten sub-basement parking garage," another jawk said.
1.25 megatons apiece.
The flashgates turned white as Ret.lek leaned into it.
For only a half-second the flashgates stayed up. Ret.lek saw the bullet trains on the other side all shatter.
Even the gates that he hadn't put a missile through went white.
Explosive force, radiation, the thermal pulse, and the overpressure wave roared out of the flashgates. In several instances the tumbling wreckage of the bullet train engine that the Lipstick Round had detonated behind, flew through the gate.
A 600 watt EMP burst rolled out of the gates, accompanied by a sleet of hellish radiation.
Sparks danced on the surface of his armor. Ret.lek heard the counter-EMP piston thump heavily twice. His battlescreen, just starting to spin up, collapsed again.
"BATACNET update," the woman's voice said.
He glanced at the monitor on his left that showed the battlefield according to the BATACNET system.
It had 22nd Regiment and 31st Regiment spreading out their skrimish line to fill in the gap from 12th Brigade. His section was flashing "CONNECTION LOST" on it.
He had no more time to watch it as the flashgates vanished without disgorging any more bullet trains.
The EMP did great on some civvie electronics, but everything around him had military grade EMP shielding and was still in the fight.
Including the enemy.
He stomped the heat override and started shooting. Instead of holding the target to put the entire tenth of a second worth the PPC hellfire into a single target, he raked the traincars, alternating between each PPC in order. His point defense went to APERS, firing on the infantry as they scrambled, firing small arms, unguided rockets, and even grenades at him and the rest of the Brigade.
"CO's down, stepping up," the XO's growl came across the channel.
"Damn thing won't restart," Stomps swore. There was the whine of charging capacitors then the slow sad wind down of a failed fusion reactor restart.
"Get back to back! Get on your feet!" Ret.lek yelled.
He saw his Lance Commander start to stand up and take a 300mm railgun shot straight to the cockpit. The armor held but the big mek staggered and Ret.lek heard the LC cough, a liquid sound.
He ignored the pain in his chest-rings.
"They must have used flashgates to deploy sat-killers and take out the ground relays," the XO snarled. "BATACNET is useless."
Out of the corner of his eye Ret.lek saw the icons for 2nd Brigade, 2nd Hesstlan Armor Division go from standard box markings to tiny icons of smiling little bunnies holding a gleaming knife as the tanks suddenly lunged forward, going from fifteen miles per hour to nearly a hundred twenty.
He felt his transponder being queried by the tanks as they crested line of sight.
Ret.lek was too busy firing and moving. Rake the train as he moved left, his heavy warmek thudding. Kick the power armor across the horizon. Snap apart an infantry company getting their shit together with the pulse lasers on rapid fire, screw the heat build up.
**venting** 204 send.
The heat sinks suddenly hissed and steam poured out. His coolant reservoir levels dropped to zero, but his heat halved. He could see and sense through the cyberjack that one of the nanoforges was dedicated to producing cold coolant to pump into the heat sink arrays.
Four enemy tanks lined up, firing their 300mm railguns, one shot hitting his suddenly upraised forearm.
The armor and superstructure held.
He threw back four SRM's, watching the tanks explode as the armor defeating rounds penetrated the thick tank armor and the main charge exploded inside the armor, bulging it outward. Ret.lek knew that it bulged out inside and grinned.
Better hope your antispalling holds up, dickhead.
The Hesstlan tanks were firing, slamming heavy kinetic shells into the trains. More and more meks were getting to their feet, some dousing the others with plasma driven fire to cook off the power armored infantry holding onto them.
His heat was spiking as he took three steps forward and slammed his fist into the midsection of an enemy mek that had managed to stand up. The graviton energy that wreathed his fist turned into a twisting spike even as the fist went to 'sleepytime' mode and hammered a dozen punches into the mek's midsection in just over a second. The twisting gravity lance shredded the inside.
Something good exploded out of the back of the larger mek as it stumbled back.
Ret.lek punched it in the face, driving the meter-long grav-lance home.
It fell on its back, armor shattering off of it.
More meks were standing up and Ret.lek charged. There were three other meks with him and the quartet slammed into the enemy meks, using fists and kicks.
Ret.lek saw his heat dropping, saw the greenies were getting more and more systems back online.
He grabbed the front armor of a mek with one hand, grabbed the biceps of the enemy mek with the other hand, and snatched its arm off before shattering its shin. It went down and Ret.lek beat its skull in with its own arm.
The BATACNET kept trying to get him to join formation, get in the skirmish line, and he ignored the warnings, slapping the overrides.
He grabbed an enemy light mek, in the fifty ton range, by the waist and straightened up, lifting it up over his head, and threw it at a cluster of a dozen cruise missile launchers.
They all exploded when the XO put a PPC round into the enemy mek as it bounced through the mobile cruise missile launchers.
"THIS IS IT! PUT 'EM DOWN, BOYS!" the XO yelled.
Ret.lek grabbed a bullet train engine, slightly disappointed that the other one decoupled so that he couldn't swing them around like numchucks, and ran down the line of train cars, the bullet train engine just above the slightly bobbing counter-grav lifted flat cars.
After a score of cars he was just holding handfuls of twisted hyperalloy.
A tank shot him point blank and he stepped back, his inertial compensator still in amber, then stepped forward, grabbed the cupola, and ripped it off.
He threw it over his shoulder and slammed his fist into the exposed center of the tank twice before turning and firing his SRMs at the other train cars.
He could taste blood, his chest rings hurt with a sharp stabbing pain that got worse when he inhaled, one eye was swelling shut, he felt itchy all over, and alarms were wailing.
But he was still laughing.
Best job I ever had!
-----
Man, war sucks, he thought through the anesthetic. He was down for next week while the quikheal and the nanites went to work putting back together his chest rings and repairing the surgical repairs on his lung.
Ret.lek looked up from the bed in the Battalion Aid Station as the Division Commander stomped in.
"Where's Private Ret.lek?" the Division CO asked.
Ret.lek saw the Regimental CO turn from where he was talking to the Company XO over by a Bingo Cola machine.
"Bed nineteen, sir," a medic said.
The Division CO stomped down, turning and putting his fists on his hips as he leaned forward.
"Who in the Detainee's ever growing ass crack authorized you fucking nukes, Private?" he snapped.
"Uhh..." Ret.lek said, trying to think through the anesthetic.
"Nukes. Not atomics. But megaton level, salted, EMP and radiation burst enhanced, full blown anti-matter and spooky particle hydrogen nukes!" the Division CO snarled. "Fired through a flashgate without even verifying your target!"
Ret.lek decided it was probably best to emulate 930. "Hurr..." he said.
"Who the FUCK authorized you to pack those rounds, much less fire them, Private?" The Division CO screamed. "Are you fucking crazy? Do you think you can just..."
"I did," the Regimental CO said, stepping up. "You got a problem with that?"
The DCO rounded on the RCO. "WHo authorized you, Colonel?"
"Milint. When my men took out that first flashgate bubble. I kept one private loaded in case the enemy pulled a flashgate flanking maneuver. You know, like they did!" the RCO said. He sneered at the DCO. "Don't you raise your spine rattles at me, you rat faced fuck. Don't you come in here screaming at my men like a brain damaged child, you slick sleeve wearing combat dodging shammer."
"You're just a disrespectful as you were the last time you served under me," the DCO snapped. "Always convinced you're right. Well, General Thaddeus isn't here to save you this time, Crutchman."
"That a threat, Dreeeet?" the RCO said, his voice dropping to a low growl as he leaned forward.
"Gentlemen!" the XO snapped, his voice rough, deep, and unmistakably Terran.
Half the wounded and most the nurses and medics flinched back.
"WHAT?" both high ranking officers yelled, turning to face the XO.
They saw his eyes were filled with a hot amber light and stepped back slightly. Ret.lek saw both high ranking officers suddenly force themselves to relax.
"You're confusing and scaring the enlisted, gentlemen," the XO said. He waved at the door to the recovery room of the Battalion Aid Station. "Might I suggest we take this outside, sirs? Perhaps call upon your seconds?"
The two officers stomped out and the XO gave Ret.lek a grin.
"One should come back. My money's on Colonel Crutchman," he said. "Don't worry, it isn't about you any more."
"Officers," Ret.lek sighed, laying back and looking up at the ceiling.
"We never change, kid," the XO laughed.