ShipCore 2.0: A LitRPG Adventure, page 15
Szizsielia feared. Before she could close her mind, a poisonous burst arrived through her remaining thought links with her children that had been further from the detonation.
She shrieked in agony before losing consciousness, and her children rose in anger.
USD: A few days later
Location: 92 Pegasi, SMS Grazhdanin, CIC, en route to Theta Corvi jump point
Corporate Intelligence Officer Fallon walked onto the bridge in his new Solarian Officer’s uniform and headed directly for the captain’s command seat. The massive CIC room had three tiers of consoles, with the captain’s dais set in the center rear, where he could observe all the officers and crewmen below.
The ship was not on alert, so only about a quarter of the seats were manned, mostly engineering stations that oversaw the continuous maintenance of the massive vessel. It was nearly state-of-the art for a post-collapse ship, and the electronics and systems showed no major ongoing issues.
One crewman was taking a nap.
Fallon frowned, but it was not his place to discipline the crew and the Captain was present and allowing it, so he focused on his purpose.
Captain Rolks Walker noticed him approach and stood. “Commander, welcome aboard. Would you care to join me in my office?”
“Of course, Captain.”
Watching the interplay from his watch station, Bridge Officer Lieutenant Lavigne frowned. He had never seen the commander on the ship before, and he was sure he knew the faces of all the officers aboard that were above him in rank.
CHAPTER 17
AFTERMATH (PART 1)
USD: A few days after AMCN-AADN5 detonation
Location: Nu Crateris System, Dedia IV, Near Tifara
Elis raised her hand in a fist, and the small column came to a halt. Her HUD had picked up some type of movement on the next hill and signaled a warning to her. The combat bots reacted immediately to spread out in a line abreast beside her, taking care to stay behind whatever rocky cover was available.
Their support unit was almost a kilometer back and picking its own path through the hills accepted her remote sign to halt without her needing to speak. The tank had its own scouts spaced around it to prevent an ambush, but Elis’s team was still the spearhead.
“Nameless, what do we got?”
[Notice: Degraded optical telemetry available. Observation from orbital altitude impossible. Correlating movement and MK4B telemetry data and drone sensory data. Possible small-medium Rexxor pack units ahead.]
“Send one drone ahead. If they have a pack, try to pull it back to lure them into the open.”
After the bomb had annihilated the Rexxor hive, the ‘war’ had stopped near the city. The smaller number of fauna that had been spread out between the city and the front lines had been aimless and the militia had easily retreated behind the safety of the walls with all their refugees in a matter of days.
It wasn’t as simple as that in the outlying settlements.
The sky had filled with dust, and although the prevailing winds had blown most of it to the northeast, there was so much of it that the ash had swamped the entire area. It was not as radioactive as Elis had feared, but it had turned the once green landscape into a nearly perpetual gray haze as the sun tried and failed to illuminate the countryside.
The furthest forward combat drone darted forward down the hill and toward where she had spotted the movement.
The smaller combat drones were capable of quite fast movement, even if the planet’s gravity slowed them. They were certainly faster than she or Booper could run.
As it reached the valley between the two hills, one spike-spitter came out from behind a rock to take aim at the charging orb of metal.
“Contact.”
Elis raised her pulse rifle, the HUD automatically helping her adjust her aim by taking into account the wind and bullet drop, and she pulled the trigger.
A spike flew off the thing’s tail at the same moment, but Nameless directed the bot to swerve at just the right time and it impaled the ground harmlessly a few meters away.
The spike-spitter was not so lucky. The small burst of energy burned through the alien’s carapace, blasting a devastating hole through its chest cavity. It fell to the ground almost immediately in a dead lump.
“One spitter, down. Figure out what’s on the other side, Nameless.”
[Affirmative.]
The Rexxors near Tifara had attacked savagely for several days after the AMCN had gone off. Elis figured they had sensed the main hive die somehow, and that had made them angry.
Except, after the first few frontal assaults, they had changed tactics. Instead of rushing the walls madly, they had stayed at the peripheral, sniping at the guards, probing for vulnerabilities, and even aiming at the shuttles.
Shuttle two took a hit while landing, and had almost crashed. Now it had been grounded for three days under repair by the remaining militia engineers.
It had required that they send out their own forces outside the walls to push back the Rexxors.
The fact that their orbital eyes and ears had been shut down because of the amount of ash and dust in the skies had hurt their recon ability badly. Even the newly freed air units that had been supporting the front line had been of little help as their atmospheric engines had clogged and sputtered in the deteriorating conditions.
Alex had informed her that Dedia was likely going to experience a small ice age with several degrees of cooling because of it.
Elis watched the bot reach the other ridge, then carefully raise its hover thrust upward to peek over.
[Notice: Hostile forces detected.]
Elis’s HUD blipped and filled with dozens of red dots on the other side of the hill.
She immediately called their backup tank for indirect fire support.
“Red-Star to Apricot-Alpha, read immediate coordinates from TacMap and fire for effect. We are hardened and behind cover. Just don’t drop it on our heads, over.”
“Roger Red-Star. Firing for effect, ridge to mass.”
A spike flew up from behind the other hill and clipped the forward combat bot, sending it falling and spinning. Barely recovering, it sped its way back toward her.
The ridgeline blipped red.
“Nameless, get ready for company. Booper, we might need you.”
The bipedal war bot was still quite a far way back escorting their armored support unit, but a “Boop” of acknowledgement came and Elis could see its icon surge forward in their direction.
The moment the hostile aliens crested the ridge, Elis and the combat bot team opened fire. The advanced FedTech weaponry was extremely effective, and the drone’s power cores mean they effectively did not have to worry about reloading.
After a brief butchering, the Rexxor fell back, something they had never done before the main hive had been destroyed. Elis would have much preferred if they had continued to shove themselves into the kill-zone for her.
Thankfully, that’s when the hail of artillery shells arrived. The support-fire tank could step its fire angle and muzzle velocity in a way that the shells would all land nearly at the same time. The result was a massive, obliterating explosion that covered the entire area.
The damaged drone had fallen into a ditch near the bottom of the two hills, and when things had stopped shaking, it lit off its thrusters and headed back over the ridge.
As soon as the drone crested the hill to check on the bombardment’s handiwork, Elis’s HUD flashed. The red blips quickly turned gray, showing nearly 95 percent of the Rexxor had been eliminated.
“Good kills, Apricot-Alpha. We’re moving forward again.”
USD: Around the same time
Location: Nu Crateris, Dedia IV Orbit, Tears of Fire, CIC
Alex had read what the effects of what dropping a 200-megaton bomb into the ground would be before pressing the button. She had, on an intellectual level, understood what it meant, and the challenges the colonists would face in the aftermath.
She had allowed more experienced heads to convince her. It was their home, and their people that were dying, and it had seemed like the only effective way to end the conflict.
But seeing the effects was different from theoretically understanding them.
Already a massive dark cloud had spread out from the explosion site, covering several thousand square kilometers in a never-ending storm of black ash that would likely circle the planet.
The radiation spike had ended quickly, most of the energy being released as gamma-rays due to the anti-matter nature of the explosion. Yet the missile was not perfect, and fissionable material had released more long-lived waste into the dust.
Everyone on the planet would need to take radiation blockers for decades or risk an alarming rate of cancers and other effects.
All the crops and food being grown inside the city would die from lack of sunlight, and the once green landscape had already turned into a devastated gray wasteland in the few spots that cloud cover thinned, allowing the optical sensors to penetrate.
She had pressed the button. That made her partially responsible. She wouldn’t accept total guilt, but she still felt horrible.
Something in her chest ached. It was an emotion she had never felt before.
The consolation was that the attacks on the army had stopped. Only a few Rexxor had needed clearing between the walls and the refugees, and a successful fallback into the walls had been carried out in haste.
There had been no reports of anyone being killed or harmed from the blast directly, although windows across the city had shattered from the shockwave. The citizens of Dedia Prime had taken to the bunkers and protective walls with little resistance, having quickly understood the danger.
She had already drawn up a new plan to build a large, tanked orbital that could produce vat-grown food with a steady supply of raw materials. Even with a rapidly built thing with the help of Nameless, it didn’t seem like the standard spacer infrastructure could scale up to supplant the now sudden loss of the crops on the planet in the short term.
She wondered if the government had considered the implications of that mess, or if they had enough stores for everyone?
A beep turned her attention from the display of the black clouds below to her HUD. Nameless had finished a new computronics module. She carefully considered how best to use it.
USD: Several hours later
Location: Nu Crateris System, Dedia IV, Near Tifara, Entrance to Szizsielia’s Hive
Elis looked down the gradual slope that bit into the hillside. A heap of the smaller Rexxors was piled to one side of the entrance. They’d had to stack the bodies because the creatures had been in such a frenzy, they had blocked the way in.
Pulling out a smaller handheld launcher, she fired a flare into the darkness. Light flashed down the tunnel as the flare quickly flew through the dark space. Nothing showed up on her infrared sensors, but that might have been because the walls of the cave were covered in a thin layer of mucus that was giving off its own heat.
“Fuck, this is some real nasty alien shit.”
“Red-Star, this is Apricot-Alpha. We have dug in and are entrenched on the nearby ridge. Over.”
“Copy that, Apricot-Alpha. Still figuring out what they want us to do about this cave. Analysis shows it could lead to another Rexxor Hive network.”
The tanker on the other end of the comm took a breath. “God, I hope not. We might have got all the civvies out, but if they hit us like they did Prime…”
“Yeah, well, keep the guns pointed over here, in case they rush out. It’ll be a killzone ‘til the entrance collapses.”
“I’m more worried about there being more than one entrance. Got eyes out for any flankers, Ertan knows they turned into wily bastards on us.”
Elis agreed. That was always a concern. It was just that she was sitting on one of the entrances, so it felt like the highest priority.
Now that they had found the source of the Rexxor attacking Tifara, Elis wondered what the militia HQ and Lieutenant-Colonel Wesley were going to have them do. Looking back into the darkness, Booper let out an unhappy broop sound. If it desired, the bot would just barely fit inside the height of the cavern, which added an extra worry to Elis.
If the cave was that tall, then there was a reason for it, she was sure. That meant they might meet one of the larger Rexxors that they had only seen on the front line at Dedia Prime. Elis shivered in her suit; she didn't want to meet anything worse than they already had. They were nasty enough already. Her radio buzzed to life with a call from command.
“Red-Star, this is Tifara-Alpha. A company in force is en route to your location. Brass wants you to scout the tunnel and get some mappings if possible. ETA for company arrival is three hours.”
Elis bit back a curse. She didn’t like the fact that they had been sent so far afield, and now they wanted to her to go cave-crawling with fucking aliens?
“Red-Star to Tifara-Alpha, you realize my boss is going to be really upset if you get us killed and she has one or two dozen of those nukes in orbit, right?”
“Tifara-Alpha Actual to Red-Star. Take it easy on the scouting. No need to push through if there is resistance, but if you can get some acoustic mapping done, it will speed things up. It’s possible we will drop a bunker buster on it and knowing where the core is will assist.”
“Red-Star to Tifara-Alpha. Roger that. I’ll see if I can have a map tied up with a bow for you when the company gets here.”
Elis flipped her radio comm off and looked up at Booper.
“Broo-oo-p.”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s go back to the tank first. We need some proper gear for this.”
CHAPTER 18
AFTERMATH (PART 2)
USD: Thirty minutes after entering Szizsielia’s Hive
Location: Nu Crateris System, Dedia IV, Near Tifara, Szizsielia’s Hive
Elis paused at yet another intersection. Her acoustic imager had been feeding her back miles and miles of tunnels that seemed to snake out like long strands of angel hair pasta. Shit, Alex’s food craze was starting to invade her thoughts.
They all seemed to converge toward one central point, but that section hadn’t shown up on the map yet.
What had caused her to stop was the fact that they had already moved deep into the system. They had passed multiple intersections with no contact. The mucus lined walls dripped slime quietly in every direction. She had left mobile Sentri turrets and a few defense bots at each intersection, but a growing unease and continued to bite at her.
She raised a hand and signaled a stop to her robot companion.
“I don’t like this. Let’s pull back and exfiltrate.”
An agreeing “Boop” from Booper echoed through the cavern.
They didn’t make it to the previous intersection before a sudden litany of red markers lit up on her seismic sensors.
“Fuck, it is a trap! Booper, pick up the pace.”
The command was superfluous. The robot was actually slowing itself down to keep pace with her, even though it had to sometimes duck slightly when the tunnel ceiling lowered.
Ahead of them a Sentri turret blared out rapid-fire bursts, the motorized servo whirling angrily as it twisted and turned to point down the multiple entry points to the area.
Elis could read the red dots, a biting realization that they would not make it out. She dialed her comm, punching a high-powered comm packet out, detailing their distress and requesting backup. It was questionable whether it would reach anyone with so much rock overhead.
As they reached the intersection, Booper’s miniguns blasted the Rexxor that had just reached the turret. The large shells blew holes in the smaller doglike creatures, sending them hurling away in a mess of gore, but then a spike slammed into the turret, silencing the gun completely.
Looking at the map, there was no way they were going to make it out the way they came. Elis realized they must have hidden in the walls, staying silent and waiting the entire time they had been exploring.
“Booper, AM mini-charge, max power. Collapse the tunnel.”
“Broooop?”
She could barely hear its response through the head pounding racket of the guns blasting away, but she was grateful to see the robot’s central chassis prop open and then fling a round orb into the chamber.
Elis didn’t wait. She began running back down the tunnel, deeper into the cave system. Ahead, a thin line of the red dots appeared, but it was still much thinner than what was behind them.
Stretching her legs, she ran as fast as she could in her power armor, but Booper quickly caught up. She reached up and grabbed one of the miniguns and pulled herself up to ride along.
A spike coming from behind impacted the ceiling near them in a cloud of exploding rock and dust, but before she could turn and return fire, the AM charge went off.
A massive overpressure wave washed over Elis and Booper, and the bot staggered and nearly tripped. Booper caught itself, though, and they continued to careen down the tunnel. The mucus in front of them had caught fire as the oxygen was rapidly consumed and her MK4B suit switched to internal reserves.
Multiple small Rexxor tried to jump out at them randomly, and Elis had to switch to assisted aiming while firing her rifle one handed while Booper’s free minigun blasted anything that appeared in front of them.
She lost track of time and everything else in their desperate charge. She realized she’d gone through an entire rifle magazine when her gun spurted out-of-ammo warnings at her.
Soon after Booper’s minigun clicked empty as well, and she barely flipped herself around to set herself on the now empty arm to allow the bot to continue clearing the way.
Booper was flinging them down the tunnel as fast as it could, and the jarring gait threatened to dislodge her. More than one Rexxor had gotten close enough to try to claw out the robot’s legs, but powerful steel kicks sent the smaller ones flying.
