Behold: Humanity!: Total War, page 14
Another nuclear blast, this one in the 30-kiloton range, slammed into the lead heavy assault vehicle, blowing it into scraps as if its eight inches of armor were little more than tissue.
There was no choice. The town beyond had to be of immense military or cultural significance for the ground forces to devote so much firepower and manpower to defend it. The buildings and the defending unit had to be destroyed in order to prevent the unit from staging a counterattack, supported by the base on top of the mesa, into the city and disrupting what had been an excellent harvest.
The orders were sent.
Push through, break their lines, defeat them in detail.
Casualties were of no significance. The data did not lie.
Ralvex swore as he saw all the weapons mounted on either side go to rapid fire. The enemy had shifted his vehicles, less than half were still moving, into a wedge and were streaming up the draw. What Ralvex hoped were the last of his airmobile vehicles all jumped for the air. He saw a couple dozen get jacked by spider-mines jumping up onto them and detonating, but over a hundred took to the air, firing their weapons at the emplaced weapons. Battlescreens flickered and sparked and the guns all oriented on the air-mobile units even as Ralvex combined his overwatch drone's feedback with his LIDAR and RADAR systems that were able to see through his masking grenades' output in order to target vehicles.
The vehicles finally hit the upward grade and Ralvex tagged the base of the ravine.
"Get 'em, Stampy!"
**STAMPY HELP**
The sawed off 80mm hellbore cut loose with another 25kt blast, detonating on one of the vehicles in the middle. The fusion reactor in the vehicle went off as Stampy's weapon cycled, liquid nitrogen spraying the chamber to cool it. The blast threw the other vehicles against the ravine walls, crushing them like papier-mâché against the rock. The integrity fields, still present, flickered, howled, sparked but held.
A heavy HV round punched through the smoke and slapped Ralvex in the upper right pauldron, but the graviton anchor kept him in place even if it did howl. The pauldron, like the rest of his armor pieces (except the backside), stayed firmly in amber.
Ralvex fired back, holding down the lever, hosing for a full second back at the origin of the round, his onboard computer immediately telling him where the round had originated from.
He dropped an EM-spike flashbang and jumped to a new position a split second before a barrage of HV rounds hit where he had been, the EM-spiker going off with a sharp crack that emulated the EM-discharge of a breached micro-fusion plant.
Ralvex set his footing, holding the autocannon with one arm, trusting his tired but still functional smartgun harness, his other hand driving a grav-spike into the rock along with his boots.
Hanging off the side of the cliff he hosed a full two second burst then jumped down, hit the ground, dropped another EM-spiker, then onto the other cliff to repeat the action.
His armor was heating up, leaving him panting and sweating as he fired, moved, fired again, moved again. Dropping EM-spikes at random intervals, adjusting his cyclic rate back and forth, swapping the tracer color to red then green then amber then red again in a random pattern with the cyclic rate.
The Precursor vehicles were still advancing.
**TIMMY HOT** the little warboi beeped the warning it had to reduce the cyclic rate of its dual guns. The barrels were starting to glow red.
--swapping barrels-- 525 said, the cover on Ralvex's back snapping open. The little mantid dropped off Ralvex's back as he jumped past Timmy and onto the ravine wall again, firing as soon as he was locked in.
The advance was being slowed. The enemy had revealed dug in firing positions on the cliff walls. Analysis had shown there were at least eight firing positions that were able to be quickly recovered after each destruction.
The enemy was taking casualties, but not enough.
Push through. Destroy the building complex beyond.
Ralvex tabbed a piece of stimgum and two pieces of regular gum, chewing at them as he dropped down into the middle of the road, behind his battlescreen, and cranked the cyclic rate up. The Precursors were flooding up the road, ignoring the casualties the Big Mommas' little offspring were inflicting on their rear ranks. They were under the elevation of most of the weapons, the 155s and 60mms having to fire high parabolic arcs.
The right upper arm strut started flashing red as the vibration increased and somehow picked up a harmonic that rattled Ralvex down to his bones. His left boot graviton generator started whining and fluttering, trying to keep up with the harmonic.
Ralvex kept traversing it right to left, not even bothering with the smartlink cutout, just laying down a steady string of nearly 2,500 rounds a minute, the gun shrieking, his ammo pack howling, and the creation engine actually starting to whistle like a teapot.
The entire front of the Precursor force dissolved into shrapnel as the APHEX rounds hammered everything, sometimes punching clear through two vehicles to detonate inside a third. The first of the massive ones recoiled slightly as the heavy rounds slammed into its front, punched through the armor, and started detonating inside.
**STAMPY HELP!**
The mini-hellbore round hit the largest leading one dead between the forward sensor nodules that looked like massive compound eyes, the directional shaped nuclear blast exploding deep into the massive vehicle.
For a second there was only a smoking hole between the eyes as Ralvex's rounds bounced and howled off the heavy facial armor, the armor around the hole smoking white and dripping.
Then the middle of the massive vehicle hunched up, light started leaking from the cracks, it seemed to almost swell.
It exploded, sending a mushroom cloud up into the sky.
Ralvex hit the graviton anchor, ignoring the beeping as he kept laying fire into the onrushing Precursors.
He didn't know how he knew, but he knew.
This was it.
The chamber suddenly slammed shut and the overheated bolt warped, jamming the chamber. The puff of liquid nitrogen to cool the barrel instead hit the warped metal and the weapon immediately went dead in Ralvex's hands.
**TINY TIM HELP!** the other warboi chirped out, adding a little tune as it opened up with its twin guns, the barrels and one bolt carrier replaced by 525, who scrambled across the street, hot footing it across the shimmering nearly-liquid asphalt.
Ralvex slung the dead weapon aside and dropped the overheated ammo-forge. He jumped next to Stampy and grabbed the ammo forge off of the cradle, swinging it onto his back and locking it in place. 525 scrambled up his leg, signaling little icons of boots with flames under them, and locked himself into the clamshell to check all the autonomous weaponry as Ralvex grabbed his last 20mm autocannon.
"BRING THE FUN!" Ralvex yelled out, clamping down on the firing grip and cutting loose with 600 rounds a minute. The autocannon roared, lashing at the smaller vehicles clambering around the dead giant one. On the top of the mesa the guns were firing and signaling *DANGER CLOSE* and *ACTION FRONT* as they swept any Precursor machine that crawled up the face of the mesa back off to land, shattered, on the reddish sands of the desert below.
The fire back was intensifying as 525 ordered up more masking grenades. Lasers were starting to get through the smoke, a particle beam ripped at one of the 'fighting positions' that Ralvex kept jumping to, and Ralvex took a light anti-vehicle laser hit to the hip but the armor piece stayed a stubborn amber on his HUD.
**STAMPY HE--OUCH** Stampy chirped, tilting forward as the lower half of one leg blew away. Stampy crouched down so he was level again. **STAMPY HELP**
**ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC** flashed across his visor and Ralvex just snarled, keeping up the heat, taking two steps closer to the flashing and howling battle-screen.
The blast hit the wreckage of the big one, which was being slowly pushed up the ravine, and the mushroom cloud clawed for the morning sky, for a split second the explosive hellfire outshining the morning sun.
The second round hit the wreckage before the blast cloud from the first could even fully form, before the shockwave could travel the quarter mile to Ralvex. The third hit right afterwards.
The shockwave hit, the battle-screen lighting up brightly and crackling. Sparks started showering from the right hand projector and the left hand one started smoking even as Ralvex kept up his fire. The screen spluttered and flickered as the blast wave passed by, rolling over Stampy and Tiny Tim's battlescreens. As soon as it passed the little robots dropped the shields and resumed firing. Stampy's minihellbore was out of ammo, the compressed deuterium darts used for fusion depleted, but it still kept shooting the 10mm HV-magac rounds from the single gun left on the side of its head.
An HV railgun round slammed through the battlescreen and Ralvex took a step back, the barrel of the autocannon dipping for a split second before his training slotted in and he yanked it back up into position and kept firing.
--still fight?-- 525 asked.
"In it to win it. Play us a song," Ralvex snapped, bracing his feet and twisting at the waist to traverse his autocannon to rake the draw again. It was overheating, something going wrong with the cooling system of both the weapon itself and the ammo pack.
"I AM KRATOS THE DESTROYER I'M THE HARBINGER OF DEATH!" roared out over the speakers, the Preglassing War Lament echoing off the cliff faces and buildings to sound out across the mesa.
"Really?" Ralvex panted, sweat running down his face. The pain was all consuming, a fire, but he ignored it, concentrating on maintaining his fire.
--step off-- 525 sent a smiley emoji.
From out of the atomic fires the last one burst through the wreckage, flames wreathing its head, half of the spiderlegs in front of the jaws blown away, the jaw twisted and torn, teeth shattered, one eye a flaming pit of molten metal and circuitry. It ignored everything as it rushed up the draw on its treads and centipede legs.
"ALL THE GODS TREMBLE BEFORE ME AS THEY DRAW THEIR FINAL BREATH!"
With a roar the final one crushed the few crippled secondary machines between it and the enemy lines, rushing through the annoying smoke, slamming into the battlescreen and causing it to fail in a cascading hellfire of ravening energy, and slowly coming to a stop to analyze the situation as the heavy cannon fire stopped.
A single figure all in black stood at the top of the road. In its right hand was a long bar with black metal teeth that ran around the bar. Two little secondary machines limped up next to the lone figure, beeping little tunes even as the sonic assault continued.
Ralvex stood at the top, able to see the last of his battlescreen projectors protecting two LawSec vehicles behind him where a handful of male and female Hesstlan were crouched down with weapons that Ralvex had asked Cutter to drop during the night. They were dressed in makeshift combat armor, the best Cutter could wet-print, but determined to defend their little town.
Nemarlie might not be much of a town, but it was theirs, dammit.
"Ave Caesar morituri te salutant!" the lone armored figure between the frightened citizens of the town and the massive Precursor vehicle said, holding aloft the clattering chainsword with his single remaining arm.
-----
Staff Sergeant Utini stared at the wreckage around him as his tank slowly clattered south from the city. He could see dozens of spider-mines running on either side of him, the massive amount of Precursor wreckage littering the road and the surrounding desert. His driver kept having to weave between the craters of light hellbore blasts, but the particle screening on the light tank kept the radiation at bay.
"This place is dead. Looks like we missed it," Utini said, looking around, using her visor's magnification to search the area surrounding it.
"Got literally a dozen self-replicating minefield master control units out there. They're all complaining about heat and slush levels," his Commo Tech called out from inside the tank, her voice tight. "ID's say they're part of Cutter's inventory."
Utini swept around again. The spider mines were scuttling quickly from cover to cover, like he couldn't see them rushing between each chunk of debris.
The problem was, there was a lot of debris.
"Got a beacon, pretty chewed up. Second Telkan Marine Division," Utini said, magnifying the image to get a closer look. "Looks like Marine Corps drop cases."
"These guys ran into the Telkan Marines? That explains all this," Utini's driver, PFC Merrimot said, guiding the tank slowly into a set of four overlapping blast craters. "They pack four hellbore drones per weapons platoon."
Utini nodded, doing another sweep of the desert. "Just two canisters though."
"Probably buried the others or used them for cover. You know the crayon eaters. Waste nothing," his Commo Tech, Spec-Five Torgunsun said. "This area is hashed. Lots of chaff in the area."
"Marines ruin everything," Utini laughed.
"Looks like they pulled back into that ravine in the side of the mesa," Merrimot said.
"We're being scanned. LIDAR and RADAR, Confed," Torgunsun called out. "Looks like ranging and artillery systems."
"Make sure our IFF is squawking. These guys obviously have been in the shit all night. Locals said the entirety of the clanker forces left the city to hit these guys," Utini called out.
The ride was silent, just the crackling of the tank's protective fields and the clattering of its tracks. The tank had to slow down repeatedly to move around large piles of debris or push through them.
The draw had been scoured clear by hellbore fire, the destroyed clankers thrown against the sides. Half-failed integrity fields crackled on the surface of the stone and an overloaded battle-screen flickered weakly in the northbound lane.
Merrimot slowed the tank as it reached the top of the ravaged highway.
Utini saw the lone black armored figure struggle to its feet, using one hand on the LawSec vehicle it had been leaning against, the weight of the armored figure pushing the car down on its shocks for a moment.
Helmets peeked up over the edge of the car and light weapon barrels were poking up.
"Hold your fire," the figure said, holding up his hand.
Utini noticed the voice sounded tired.
"You with Second Telkan?" Utini called out.
"Yeah. You with First Cav?" the figure called out.
"Yeah." Utini answered. Before he could say anything the one-armed Telkan spoke.
"You're late."
LESSONS LEARNED
Do'ormo'ot AKA Prisoner 4582143 trotted around the library, looking at the shelves. The sight of so many printed collections made him nauseous. Printed media was dangerous because it endured. While it couldn't be rapidly disseminated like electronic media the ideas contained within the printed media would outlive the creator by a factor of thousands where electronic media was quickly lost in the flood of new additions to the media.
One of the reasons the first thing the Executors did was add a connection to GalNet to any culture they met. From there it was easy to reason that printed media took up space and had no real value since it couldn't be quickly and easily stored. From there it was a simple task to slowly alter the now-electronic work to say what the Executor Council wanted it to say.
In the House of Wrath My Own, caught his eyes. The original Terran language that he saw quickly squirmed and twisted into Unified Species Council standard. A thick book. He lifted it up and opened it to a random page, his eyes focusing on a single passage.
It eventually became true that no matter what I did I could not slake my wrath, my thirst for violence and vengeance upon a universe that had wronged, not only me, but my entire species. That I was willing to crack planets, nova-spark suns, do whatever it took to feed my wrath, like coal to a furnace, just to feel something again. Every sight of the restored Earth was a wound to my soul, each exactly, painstakingly recreated, perfect restoration of Lost Terra was a wound in my soul, in the souls of all of my fellow men. How, then, were we to proceed when the healed wound still ached with pain? Destroying the marks, the history of what had been done did not actually make it go away, it just made it so you no longer were able to understand why you had a bleeding painful wound deep inside of you. I knew not, not then, what could be done to truly heal the wound and move forward from that terrible act.
Do'ormo'ot closed the book, shaking his head, ignoring the feeling of his stiff tendrils waving back and forth.
Nothing of value. Just an uncivilized brute complaining about losing something that does not serve the greater good, he thought to himself as he put it back onto the shelf.
He moved between the stacks and picked another book at random, not bothering to read the spine, just holding it in his hands and opening it to a random page to look at the words within.
wind was sweet, no longer carrying the taint of industrial pollution and rotting vegetation from dying kelp beds. I watched as my ducklings started fluffing the sand beneath the shade providing overhang, settling down to rest on the silver sand of the beach. For all my life the ocean sand had been black, oily to the touch, and burned my skin. Now, my ducklings could nest down for a nap on it happily and safely.
Do'ormo'ot snorted, closing the book and putting it back.
Absolute drivel, he thought to himself moving on. He pulled down another one and looked inside.
lost and adrift. Our culture, our society before the Great Awakening, was nothing more than slavish service to the queens. No art, no music, no poetry, just marching in lockstep to her will even as we screamed and screamed and screamed inside our own minds for our entire lives. Is it any surprise, dear reader, that we clove so firmly to Terra's chaotic, insane, and utterly glorious culture? We barely understood the concept of a song and they had millions, billions of songs, that spoke of emotions, deeds, or just plain nonsense. As I write this, dear reader, I wear a Jumpinart Ringstrober t-shirt, as their music spoke to me. I weep for my people, who have a hundred million years of history.
But no culture.
Do'ormo'ot felt his stomach twist at the words. They were almost heretical. What use were songs, and poetry, or even slathering dyes upon a surface in an attempt to recreate something? It was a waste of resources, a waste of time, a waste of labor.
