First Contact

Chapter 367

Chapter 367

The ship dropped into the Oort Cloud, beyond the Kuiper Belt, from hyperspace. It let the energy bleed off the hyperdrives as it used a crawler drive to move slowly away from its entry space. It fired a single drone with a faux-hyperdrive and massive scanners, then shifted position. It shut down all emissions, used a graviton generator to eliminate its mass profile and gravatic signature, and slowly moved into a diffuse cloud of H2O crystals and waited.

A patrol appeared less than three days later, nosing around, scanning the area tightly. After a few days of searching the patrol left.

The ship stayed silent and dark.

Twice more patrols appeared, spreading out, looking for whatever had appeared briefly.

The third time they found the probe as it accidentally leaked a power signature. The ships leaped on it, opening fire on it and destroying it. They then backtraced it to the position the ship had entered on, over two light seconds from where it currently drifted, slowly absorbing H2O crystals.

For a month the ship drifted, using powerful passive sensors, moving through clouds of frozen gasses and liquids, absorbing what it could until its storage tanks were filled.

The ship oriented, seeking out the lone inhabited planet in the system, and engaged its hyperdrive.

It streaked back into existence just at the gravity well limit and activated its powerful engines and deployed its heavy duty screens.

Through the system the alarm went out. The ship's profile could only be from one species. The markings on the hull corresponded with the organization that every being in the planet feared.

The ship powered down through the atmosphere. The computers had located a suitable landing spot and drove hard for it. A mere two thousand feet above the ground it decoupled the reentry shielding, filling the air with chaff and flares and EM scatter, and dropped to the ground. Powerful retrorockets flared, slowing the craft down, baking the land beneath it to a hard almost concrete.

The ship set down. It immediately shifted. The engines were pulled into the hull and powerful grinders ripped apart the machinery. The hull flattened, extended out, put down pylons, and shifted shape.

Inside the ship circuitry engaged. The cloning bank activated, creating a single body. The body was clothed, placed in a comfortable command chair by robotics, and a neural jack thumped into place at the base of the being's skull. Neural templates were loaded up in less than a minute.

The system sent a jolt of electricity through the being's nervous system and gave the body a kick to the chest to start the heart and lungs.

Commander Jane Marcus Prastini opened her eyes, looking around quickly. She looked down, noted her body was male this time, and closed her eyes, adjusting her thinking. She knew it was random, but sometimes it felt to her like the system was loaded to produce males more than females when her body spawned.

She blinked several times and sat up, looking at her control board. A few upgrades since the last time she'd used it which was, according to the chronometer, eighty-two years ago. A long cold-sleep, sure, but not too bad. She looked up at her screens, saw they were blank, and quickly brought her interface online.

It took her less than fifteen seconds to put her interface together. She knew she had to work fast, so she went with the bare bones. She'd customize it later.

According to her topography map, made by the ship as it dropped in, she was a half-mile from a delta that was covered in vegetation to the north-east, mountains twenty miles to the west, ocean to the east, rolling plains and the beginnings of suburbs and cities to the south-west.

As she was looking over the maps she was already issuing commands to her system. She needed more work droids, so she ordered six of them up in the queue. She needed point defense online, so she set one of her four working on building that. Two of them she set working on building a cloning banks with a basic issue nanoforge system. The last one she set to building intake pipes out of the delta that would pull in water and biomass, run the biomass through grinders, and dump it into the biomass tanks.

She knew she didn't have long. The first five minutes were the most crucial in her profession.

And the being in command of the military forces on the planet was a priority target. Countering and eliminating him was more important than even seizing the real estate.

Still, Jane worked fast, allocating her precious biomass, mass tank contents, and quickly setting jobs out for her worker drones.

Jane's ship had been on the ground ninety seconds and she'd been awake for sixty of them.

The clock was running.

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Sma'akamo'o was the Planetary Defense Most High, a job he had come to regret taking the last two months. First there had been the hyperspace signal out in the Oort Cloud. While the Executor Most High had insisted that Sma'akamo'o's equipment must have been in error since the signal was so brief and weak, Sma'akamo'o knew it was the Terrans.

When he had found the probe, the Executor Most High had been furious at being proved wrong.

Still, Sma'akamo'o had had that feeling. You know the one. That one you get when you are walking alone and suddenly know someone or something has decided that you're the victim on the Predator is Right gameshow that you didn't know you had signed up for.

"It looks as if the ship broke apart just south of the Ta'amista'ar Delta," the Executor Security Most High was stating, his head lifted up as he gazed down his long nose at everyone.

"I will reserve judgement until aerospace craft run a search pattern in the area," Sma'akamo'o said. He pointed out at the flickering and grainy holotank where several diamonds were moving toward the area.

"You act like an elderly Telkan broodcarrier, seeing Terrans under every piece of furniture and behind every door," Lo'opado'o sneered.

Sma'akamo'o turned slowly, his hooves clattering on the floor. For a moment he looked just like every other Lanaktallan. Then the side of his face flickered, had resolution lines flow through it. The prosthetic hologram vanished.

The entire side of his face was a mass of scar tissue. A crude cybernetic eye, the best Lanaktallan cybertechnology could provide, stared at Lo'opado'o.

"At least I have seen them," Sma'akamo'o said coldly. "You may judge my caution after your first battle with Terran Confederate Space Force."

The other Lanaktallan drew back slightly as Sma'akamo'o reactivated his prosthetic hologram and went back to staring at the holotank. The Most High had fought the Terrans three times and survived the experience. The fourth time was legendary. He had managed to force a Terran carrier group to jump out of the system through geometry, careful maneuvering, and denying them access to any of the gas giants, losing only 14% of the ten thousand ships he had sent against the forty Terran ships.

A grand victory that his scarring rubbed in the faces of his rivals.

The scars on his flank from where he had suffered an injury at the hands of the Terran infantry were visible to all as he stared at the holotank.

"This world is resource poor. A single Terran ship presents no threat," Lo'opado'o stated. "The asteroid belt is mined out and any rare noble gasses have been removed from the gas giants. The most this planet has is some scattered iron deposits."

"Give me a geological makeup of the Delta and the mountains," Sma'akamo'o ordered.

The functionary threw up the data and Sma'akamo'o stared at it. He turned to Lo'opado'o and pointed at the holotank with one whirring and clicking cyberarm that replaced the arm that had been burned away when the armored vehicle Sma'akamo'o had been riding in had taken a glancing hit from a Terran tank.

"No resources? Then what do you call that?" Sma'akamo'o asked.

The Executor Security Forces Most High leaned forward, squinting at the icons, then shook his jowls and laughed. "Petroleum? Unrefined bio-carbon?"

Sma'akamo'o pointed at the delta itself. "Brackish water, a mixture of seawater and fresh water after the fresh water's journey down from the mountains, laden with chemicals from industrial and urban runoff."

"So? What, the Terran might build some plastic armor and rush us with a plastic sword?" the Corporate Security Most High, one Eye'likmo'oney sneered.

Sma'akamo'o held back his temper. It had been getting worse over the last year since he had been released from the hospitals. His stomachs, all four of them, churned with acid as he pulled out a wad of medicud.

"Plastic for wiring insulation, ablative soft armor, soft internal structures," Sma'akamo'o answered. He looked back at the busy functionaries. "I want a seismic reading."

It took less than thirty seconds for the earthquake monitors to come online. Normally used to warn of infrequent earthquakes out in the ocean, the techs were cranking up the sensitivity.

"Look at that. Heavy industrial drilling. The ship did not 'break up' but instead made landing," Sma'akamo'o said.

"Who cares? One ship? You yourself fought ten times that number and emerged victorious just eight months ago," Eye'likmo'oney said, his voice dripping with condescension.

"And lost thirty times their number just in armored vehicles," Sma'akamo'o answered. He looked up. "How much longer till the aerospace scouts are over the area?"

"Ninety seconds, Most High," the technician answered.

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Jane saw the three groups of ten aerospace fighters, all in wedges, heading toward her as her basic sensors came on. A glance showed she had six point defense and two anti-air batteries up. She checked the status of her resource tap drill and ground her teeth. Three thousand feet to go, the drill chewing up a hundred feet a second.

The pipeline from the Delta was almost finished, but she had a feeling she better use her biomass or lose it. She ordered up four squads of infantry, Born Whole templates, basic armor and weapons, and watched as the forcegrowth tanks started burning through the biomass. She'd be almost dry, but it might be worth it.

The heavy military nano-forge, a Class-VII, wouldn't be complete and online for another three and a half minutes.

Too late.

She looked over her board, looked at her map, then looked at her base, and nodded.

It would have to do.

The enemy areospace were less than thirty seconds from visual range.

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The enemy base appeared on the holotank. A low squat building, odd looking, with slanted edges. Another building that gave no clue as to what they were.

The air defense pods started firing, multi-barrel kinetic weapons that fired shards of metal at the aerospace recon fighters. Two launched missiles.

Close range point defense knocked the missiles out of the air.

One aircraft exploded, then another, then another.

Then it was the Terran's turn to take enemy fire.

The missiles were launched, almost all of them were knocked out of the air. One hit a robotic drone that was carrying a stack of piping, the other hit the side of one of the buildings and exploded, scorching and denting the armor. A team of ten soldiers ran out of one building, all of them firing their magnetic accelerator rifles at the aerospace fighters.

Then the recon craft were past, hitting their afterburners to open the range up.

Sma'akamo'o nodded slowly.

This was new. There should have been dozens of Terran military around. The only military he had seen was the ten soldiers that had jogged out of the building.

Something weird is going on. This is new, and with Terrans, new is bad, Sma'akamo'o thought.

"Order an attack upon that base," Lo'opado'o ordered. "A mere company of tanks should do the job," he sneered.

"Send in powered armor infantry," Sma'akamo'o ordered.

"You waste resources," Lo'opado'o said.

"Wasting resources is why I'm alive to even apply my knowledge on Terran military operations to the defense of this planet," Sma'akamo'o stated.

"Tanks and infantry will be ready in two hours," one of the techs said.

"And then we will wipe these Terrans from the face of the planet," Eye'likmo'oney laughed.

---------------

Jane was still working fast. She had survived the first five minutes, even had shot down almost a dozen enemy aerospace craft. She'd ordered drones to recover the wreckage and throw it into the grinders, with orders to examine the molycircs to try to determine the enemy wavelengths.

She had her Nanoforge up, had linked it to the cloning bank, so that now the clones would come out wearing Type-II armor and carrying Tier-II weapons.

Water was pumping in from the Delta. Filtered for biomass and industrial chemical contaminates and then used to cool reactors in the buildings. The biomass went straight into the cloning lab, the chemicals went to the nanoforge.

Finally, the drill had reached the petroleum. A mixture of industrial chemicals and biomass, she had the crude pumped out to storage tanks. She had the mass and resources to build a vehicle nanoforge.

She set her drones to work, three to build the building, the other nine, her limit, to building defense systems.

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Sma'akamo'o watched as the dozen tanks, backed by fifty powered armor infantry, charged the Terran base.

The Terrans had their defenses up and the tanks were shredded by anti-armor fire, the power armor shredded by infantry dug into heavily armored fighting positions. In the middle of the fight one of the fighting positions had a hatch open in the top and deployed a rapid fire heavy minigun.

The attack was destroyed.

"You are giving the Terrans too much time to dig in," Sma'akamo'o said. "You need to swarm them under now. Every minute they'll get stronger, tougher, with more troops, vehicles, and weapons."

"Bah, they have access to water and petroleum," Eyelikmo'oney said. "So what?"

"See, they're gathering the wreckage, taking it back to dump it. You let them set up one of their damnable nano-forges," Sma'akamo'o told them.

The other two Most High waved their hands, ignoring the problem.

"Send in more tanks. Back them up with a flight of grav-strikers and a battalion of infantry," Lo'opado'o ordered.

Sma'akamo'o watched as they sent more troops in.

He quietly ordered the nearby military base to full alert, to fire up even the tanks.

If any Executor tried to stop the officers, the officers were to summarily execute them on the spot.

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Jane cursed as the fast recon drone showed the nearby Lanky military base light up. Someone wasn't waiting for escalation.

"Gonna zerg me, eh?" she asked.

She prioritized power generation, mass reclaimation, and the vehicle nanoforge upgrade, adding two more nanoforges to the building to build advanced weapons and ammunition for the vehicles.

Her console started beeping and she cursed again.

More tanks, backed up by air support and infantry.

Moving quickly she gave the orders to the Born Whole clones, sending them through the tunnels to the bunkers, making sure the nanoforges printed out anti-armor weapons.

"You think this is my first time?" she giggled, the sound completely at odds with her male body.

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Sma'akamo'o watched as the tanks, strikers, and infantry were destroyed. He watched as, again, the Terran seemed to prioritize gathering the wreckage. As he watched another two pipelines to the delta were being built and a long one, miles long, was heading for the cliff that dropped into the ocean.

He frowned.

A light tank rolled out of the building, armored Terrans running from one building, getting in, and moving it to patrol the border of the military encampment. He could see solar collectors being built, and as he watched, a basic petroleum refinery was finished, the robotic drones rushing over to build another refined petroleum generator.

The Terrans were building the base right before his eyes and his idiotic co-commanders were just letting the Terran do it.

"Use atomics," Sma'akamo'o said, his voice horrified.

"On our own planet? That close to an urban center?" Lo'opado'o asked, horrified.

"You don't have much longer. Use atomics or kinetic kill weapons from orbit," he said.

As he watched two robotic drones started flattening the ground.

With a sinking feeling he realized that a striker runway was being built.

"Use atomics," he whispered.

The other two Lanaktallan ignored him.

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Jane laughed as the seawater started flowing in. It had everything she needed to get the heavy duty reactor online. Pulling fuel from the water, refining it, then running the water through for cooling. Her air assets were starting to be manufactured, one light striker craft every three minutes being assembled by the nanoforges.

She grinned, cracking her knuckles, and set to giving orders.

Her base was well defended. Now was the time for the counter-attack.

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Sma'akamo'o watched the planet dwindle behind him from the comfort of his suite aboard his warship.

He knew the planet was lost. His two peers had ignored him, ignored his advice.

When six hours had passed and the Terran had reduced the four nearby military bases to wreckage and sent in reclaimers to gather up the debris and haul it back, he knew that the Terran had won.

He shook his head as the lights flashed to warn that the ship was about to enter jumpspace.

He'd remember the way the initial structures had looked.

If he ever saw them again, he'd use orbital kinetic kill and atomic weapons.

If you let them land, let them dig in on your planet, it is their's. You have lost, he thought to himself.

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Jane laughed, spinning in her chair, as the first of the heavy warmechs left the massive nanoforge supplied warmech construction bay. The eVI creches were up and running. She'd have to give any orders more than 'kill everyone around you', but that was fine. She had her nuclear dampeners up now and her base shields could even bounce a rod from god.

Full offense time.

She smiled as the bay doors of the warmech factory opened. The massive 500 ton warmech strode out of the construction building on two thick legs, the armor painted red and white gleaming in the sunlight.

She looked at the plaque on the wall and laughed again.

CONFEDERATE MILITARY AUTONOMOUS WAR FACILITY

--CREATE, COMMAND, CONQUER--