First Contact

Chapter 369

Chapter 369

The alert came across the datalinks on, first, the emergency broadcast channel. Then it was cancelled then broadcast across the General Command Frequency. That was cancelled and then the System Most High came over the Government Mandatory Announcement Channel on all of our datalinks.

I don't remember the exact words but he was panicking. I can remember, still, how he had foam around his jowls, how his feeding tendrils spasmed, how his eyes rolled in all six sockets. How his words were tumbling over one another and he babbled out over and over variations of 'we're all going to die.'

I was moving before my military police escorts, trotting away, toward the motor pool.

My tank was there. 15-281-31. My faithful tank.

I reached the motorpool when everyone else was still running in circles. I had stopped by the armory and found it empty, abandoned. I got my armor, which was to protect me from hull fragments spalled off by any hit that did not penetrate the armor but deformed the interior to spray shards of metal through the crew compartment. I had no personal weapons, a tanker I did not need them.

The motor pool was empty as I trotted through it.

I remember plas sheets blowing by in the winds. One stuck in my mind, a plas info-sheet informing everyone that possession of Terran media was considered subversive and would be punished harshly. It scraped across the plascrete, whispering.

It was then I heard it.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

The shockwave hit me hard, but my armor possessed psychic shielding and I managed to keep my feet, staggering.

My tank waited. 125 tons of hovering death.

I went through the checklist, walking around outside of it. I activated and deployed the weapons. The tank had no ammunition, the weapons were disabled, but still, I deployed them and ran through function checks. When that was done I climbed in and went through each position, each station, activating them and running the proper preventive maintenance checks and services.

Once I needed to go get transmission fluid for the right forward number one nacelle fan gearbox.

Twice more I heard it.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

The day was clear. Sunny, warm, a pleasant breeze.

I looked to the sky. Not for contemplation, but out of curiosity.

How long until the Precursors arrive?

Not long.

I returned to the motor pool master maintenance building, going through offices, until I found the keys to the munitions locker and the weapon locker.

I set about making my tank ready to fight.

When I had finished activating the weapons, arming them, loading the munitions bays, I sat beside the tank, waiting.

THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE

I shuddered, a trickle of blood oozing from my nostril.

My Company Commander galloped by, tearing at his own mane with his hands, ripping at his own face, screeching as he kicked and lunged down the road.

My helmet clinked and I activated the communications channels.

What I heard filled me with relief.

"This is Armored Host Most High A'armo'o. All troops, to your tanks. I am with you."

--Excerpt From: We Were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a Memoir.

Vuxten checked the six Telkan that were crouched down on the gantry, their missile launchers bobbing slightly as they compensated for the movement of the massive mining machine. He double-checked their infra-red laser guidance systems against the points that Sergeant Casey had pointed out.

"Team One, fire," Vuxten ordered.

Two missiles launched, driven by graviton accelerators, the solid fuel rocket motors kicking in less than five meters from the launcher. The missiles went hypersonice less than ten meters from the launch point, streaking out to exploded against the battlesteel axles of the grinders.

Both axles exploded. The grinder sections stopped moving, one partially falling in.

"Give me a second," Glory said. She shifted her arm a few times. "OK. It's coming loose."

Vuxten looked up. The massive mining machine was still chasing the Confederate and Lanaktallan military forces. Its sheer bulk forced them to engage the other Precursor machines as they went, face t face, with no finesse or maneuvering.

As Vuxten watched a Lanaktallan tank took a hit the cupola jumping off the ring, green and orange flames billowing out from around the ring-seal, the hatches exploding off.

It didn't die alone. The two Lanaktallan tanks flanking it gutted its killer with precise plasma rounds.

"All right," Glory said. She looked up at Vuxten. "How's it going out there?"

"Not good," Vuxten admitted. "They're taking hits. A couple Terran tanks got knocked out a few minutes ago."

"Get me loose and I'll gut this big bastard," Glory said.

"Team Two, fire," Vuxten ordered.

Three missiles this time. The driveshafts for the massive grinders blew apart and the grinders, these ones cone shaped, went still. Glory shifted again, managing to get one arm out. She flexed her fingers, her arm and hand scraped and gouged.

"Much better," she said.

Vuxten ordered the other three teams, one at a time, to fire at the specific points Casey had pointed out. When it ended, Glory managed to get both arms free, bracing her hands against the massive housing cover. She pushed her way out until she was sitting on the edge of the housing, looking at her legs.

"Man, I'm all scratched up," she complained. She looked up at Casey. "So, champ, what's the plan? Gonna show a girl a good time?"

Casey laughed. "Plan is, blow this big bastard up and run like hell," the Terran said.

471 popped up an image of an explosion with a bunch of greenies flying away all blaming each other for blowing up the breakroom toaster.

"So what do you..." Vuxten started.

Below him, deep in the machine's hulk, circuits finally passed self-check and were powered up. Initial checks reported that the machine was engaged in xenospecies conflict.

The higher function thinking array lobes responded to power up with a single broadcast that blasted out around it.

YOU SHALL BE DEVOURED BY THE HIVE!

Vuxten staggered at the shriek, his helmet clamping painfully around his ears.

--word of the digital omnimessiah protect me-- 471 broadcast. Vuxten could see all the green mantids were flashing the same thing as their psychic protection cranked all the way up to max and added something called 'signal interrupt' to the protection.

Addox opened his faceplate, the sides retracting into his helmet, showing his sweaty face. Vuxten could see that Addox's eyes were bright red, his lips were peeled back from his teeth in something that couldn't even charitably be called a grin, and a nerve was spasming on his cheek.

A burning tingling flowed up his arm and Vuxten looked down at his stubber and stared.

The smouldering eagle had gone from a dull red to white fire, the engraving lighting up, and the weapon feeling... different... in his hand.

"What's going on?"

At General General No'Drak turned and looked at the gathered humans. He tagged his link and brought all of the Mantid and Lanaktallan into the channel.

"Do not move. If you have to, move slowly," he texted out.

Every Terran eye in the command center was burning bright red. The humans had gone stock still for a long moment, then began to move again. No'Drak could see that some of the humans were clenching and relaxing their fists. He could see muscle spasms in cheeks, along the jaw, on forearms. Sparks were dancing in some Terran's hair, across their knuckles, or small tiny arcs were travelling up and down arms. Their armor was matte black with the glowing logo of Confederate Space Force on the shoulder and to No'Drak's eyes it looked like the Space Force and Confederacy logos were shining brightly.

He used his command links to check the Terran's vitals.

Pulse and respiration was dead level. Blood pressure cold. Psychic dampeners in the helmets, both protective for the user and those around them were maxed out. Some were failing already. Cyberware reporting rapid fire nerve pulses.

"Keep your hands away from your weapons," he texted. He clicked into the command channels.

"All non-Terran Descent Human personnel report to the armor areas for modular armor addition," General No'Drak said, keeping his voice carefully leveled. "This is a non-discretionary direct order from the theater commander and is to be performed immediately.

He watched down at the work room.

"All Terran shift supervisors, morale and psychic check upon all personnel," No'Drak ordered.

YOU SHALL BE DEVOURED BY THE HIVE

roared out and Trucker spit over the side of his tank. He looked around, spinning the commander's lift in a 360 to get a good look at the battlefield as the barrels of his quad-barrel cooled off. A tenth of his tanks were smoking, either from enemy hits or their nanoforges running hard enough that they'd overheated and were blowing white clouds of vapor as the cooling systems went to work and the slush was reclaimed.

He spun around again, slowly, looking at the shattered wreckage Cry Little Sister was pushing through. He used him implant to tag the machines he was seeing. While it was true that every Precursor vessel put out the same designs on the big machines, the smaller machines often were custom built, function over form, rapidly designed by the Precursor manufacturing systems.

But they always followed a pattern that Trucker could vaguely touch on.

It was obvious that the ones that had landed were Type-III, but he was seeing wreckage from the ones that had surfaced that didn't match the Type-III Precursor ships that had attacked. His implant tagged them, tentatively, as Type-II.

HHC was out of the fight, not due to damage, but the enemy had been defeated in their Area of Operations.

"All units full stop," Trucker said. He waited till Cry Little Sister came to a stop and climbed out.

"Red Comet had dismounted," Trucker heard his communications specialist say, alerting everyone to the fact that his boots had just hit the ground.

Trucker walked over and took a look at the shattered armor and pieces. He tapped his helmet, ordering it to record what he was looking at.

"Have 208 come out here. I want his opinion on this junk," Trucker said. He knelt down and picked up a piece of hardware. He felt the way it was cold in his hand, almost feeling malevolent.

As he watched arcs of psychic energy crawled down his arm, wrapping his fist and the chunk of molycirc in his hand in faint flickering lightning.

The chunk of molycirc sighed and dissolved into dust.

208 jumped off the side of tank, the wings on his armor snapping open. 208 glided next to Trucker, arcing up and dropping to the ground.

--what what boss man-- 208 asked, seeing Trucker dump the dust out of his hand.

"Check those molycircs. Don't try to telemechanic them. Just check them," Trucker said. He reached out and grabbed a chunk of armor, looking at it. He angled it, examining it. "Huh, not exactly battlesteel. This is a laminate, not solid battlesteel."

208 reached out with a probe and tapped the molycirc block, rocking it out of the housing, humming a little ditty to himself.

Trucker turned when 208 gave a loud screech and jumped back, pulling around his rifle and firing at the block. The green mantid engineer, a Technical Specialist Grade Seven, pulled a tiny implosion grenade off his harness and threw it, forcing Trucker to dodge to the side.

The grenade went off as 208 climbed up the side of the tank, still screeching. Two of the other greenies popped out of the maitenance hatches, firing rockets at the wreckage, screeching.

Trucker stood up, shaking slightly at how he'd been close enough to the tiny implosion charge that he'd felt his boots loosen. He heard the chatter over the channels of the tankers of 3rd Armor Division Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC) wondering just what was going on.

Dozens of greenies were firing rocket launchers into the wreckage of several different Precursors.

It took Trucker a minute to parse what the greenies were broadcasting. It was so fast, so furious, but at least it was repeated over and over in some variant.

--free we die free we never submit ever again--

"CEASE FIRE!" Trucker roared out over the greenie channel. "CEASE FIRE!"

The fire petered out.

Trucker walked over, looking at the little greenie, who gave the impression of foaming at the mouth, red faced icons flashing between its antenna.

"Mantid make," Trucker said. It wasn't a question.

--no no no-- 208 said.

"Omniqueen make."

--yes--

Trucker reached up and touched the side of his helmet.

Smokey No watched as Trucker ordered his men to back off from multiple Precursor wreckage and use the quad-barrels on them.

YOU SHALL BE DEVOURED BY THE HIVE

Vuxten staggered to the side, putting his hand against the side of his helmet. He looked up and stepped back, realizing that somehow Casey was standing in front of him, kneeling down.

"This thing didn't come with the others," Casey said.

"It's been here all along."