Chapter 517: 517
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"In my centuries of military service, the time I spent with the Mad Lemurs of Terra instructed me on a simple truth I had never glimpsed, and thus, had never understood that I did not understand such a fundamental truth: It is not their body, their weapons, their armor, that makes one strong, it is their spirit. Nothing on the outside, only that which comes from within."
"The Mad Lemurs of Terra embodied that truth so much that they instilled it in each other, in their machines, in their great works."
"Even in their allies."
"And eventually, even in me." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff
29847 seconds have passed since I have begun maneuvering on the hull of the Precursor vessel. I have determined, in that time, that this is not an autonomous war machine, but is actively crewed and controlled by what can only be classified as Precursor Era Mantid. In that time I have traveled nearly a thousand miles on the hull, taking care to keep within damaged area in order to avoid detection.
I have passed gun arrays that measured in the miles, each massive nCv cannon the size of a radio-telescope, each one cold and dark, without power. I maneuvered through a crater from a superstring compressor cannon that measured nearly a hundred miles in diameter. The impact was massive, devastating, but not mortal.
My scanners did not detect any way into the massive structure that is this vessel, so I continued on in my journey.
I dedicate 1.34252 seconds to resolving an argument between my 8" howitzer battery and my 155mm artillery systems by muting both over the maintenance channel, leaving them to sulk. Both are solid, dependable systems, with warbois that are effective and precise, but their constant arguments have no place in my current operation.
The fighting over possession of the planet is at a stalemate for the Mantid Precursor Vessel. They cannot use their heavy weapons without destroying the ecosystem and permanently damaging the planet, as well as the fact that the ground-side defensive batteries would take advantage of any flicker on the ship's battlescreens to slam home heavy defensive shells.
This has forced the Mantid to engage in landing ground troops to fight over the territory they obviously want.
As I move around and weave between massive particle projection cannons, I know that I have not been noticed because I am too small. I am a BOLO, true. Large, the size of a terrestrial super-stadium, weighing tens of thousands of tons, I am imposing and awe inspiring.
The massive hive-like structure in front of me, reminiscent of termite mounds of Terra's ancient African continent, is nearly a hundred miles high and four hundred at the base. It is a city in the vast continent sized bulk of the vessel.
I am a mite on the surface of this massive vessel that is the size of a continent.
The vessel is large enough that just being in far orbit, 2.2 million kilometers from the atmosphere, is causing tidal disruptions on the planet below as well as causing gravitational induced drag slowing on the planet's core.
I must be careful when, if, I am able to engage the controllers of this ship in combat. The planet would not survive this ship crashing into it.
I dedicate processing power to run simulations of how it might work out, based on my limited data, as I continue on toward my goal.
The massive hive structure.
Nemta dropped onto his back, grabbing a canister off of his harness and spraying the burning purple plasma adhered to his armor. He gritted his teeth to keep from screaming as he felt the skin, fat, and muscle beneath the impact cook. The canister hissed, the plasma went out with a pop, and Nemta panted as he got out an injector. He slammed in into the injection port and gritted his teeth.
Less than a second and the nanites in the injector had bypassed the pain signals and set to work fixing the tissue damage, leaving his leg numb and tingling.
"You all right?" the Treana'ad at the firing port to his right asked, without turning away from the window.
"Will be," Nemta said. "I hate those kinetic deflection rounds."
The Mantid had rifles that fired plasma packets that would 'bounce' around inside an area until it hit something matching armor. They'd only deployed those in the last few hours, but already they were taking a heavy toll.
"I see you," the Treana'ad said. He triggered his heavy cannon he was holding then ducked down and scurried away as the distinctive scream of a Tasty-Freez missile sounded out. He squatted down next to Nemta, who watched through the viewscreen as the missile raced out, weaving between obstacles, and then at the last second deployed twenty submunitions. The primary round and the submunitions all deployed a bunch of blades and began to spin.
The payload hit the gathered Mantid warriors and turned them to slurry right before it hit the APC they'd unassed and blew it to Hell to give the Mantid warriors a ride in the afterlife.
"You suppose is this bad for our ancestors?" Nemta asked, then gasped as the nanites shocked the nerve cord to keep his brain from editing in pain.
"Mine never fought them," the Treana'ad said.
"Mine either," Nemta chuckled.
"Wouldn't mind some Terrans right about now," the Treana'ad said. He gave another mandible grinding chuckle. "Those Mantid think we're a pain in the ass, could you imagine a bunch of howling primates in power armor rawfullstomping them?"
The image of the Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol appeared in Nemta's mind's eye, the memory of her painted on the nose of the downed fighter. Her face twisted in fury as she hewed at her foes with a sword, spattered in the blood of her enemies, her rage without bounds.
He suddenly missed Friend Terry.
"Be nice," Nemta admitted.
"Man, I was an ice cream taster before this," the Treana'ad admitted.
"Deserter slash political refugee," Nemta said.
The sound of return fire trying to get through the heavy ferrocrete and battlesteel plating was starting to die down.
"Saw you on the Tri-Vee," the Treana'ad said. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Want one?"
"Sure. What's it going to do, kill me faster?" Nemta said. He held out his hand as the missile launcher next to the Treana'ad pinged to signal the creation engine had loaded another round into the magazine.
He followed the Treana'ad's instructions on how to light it, get a good draw, not hack up a lung from the harshness of the smoke, and how to exhale it and look cool doing it.
They both kept an eye on the feed from the cams outside, watching for any movement in their sector.
Another 4,582 seconds have passed as I have moved steadily toward the hive structure. My psychic shielding and phasic inhibitors have slowly increased in power drain as I have approached it. Logically, this is move evidence that the hive structure is a vitally important part of the ship.
The Queen, possibly even an Overqueen, is within that hive, and is using her psychic abilities to weave her forces into one coherent whole.
If I can eliminate her or remove her influence, it will have an immediate and measurable effect upon the battle going on planetside.
During the time I have spent on approach I have ordered my creation engines to fabricate phasic enhanced munitions. Without a commander I do not have access to latent Terran Descent Humanity phasic energy, and so the munitions are technological phasic systems.
Which are inferior to what my Commander would have influenced even in his sleep.
My repair systems are still hard at work. The nanites have worked slowly with the denser materials, like micro-organisms slowly constructing a coral reef, they have replaced and repaired systems that normally would have to be replaced at a depot.
I am less than a hundred miles from the hive when the final connections are made, the self-tests passed, and a system comes on line.
For more than 11.8927 seconds I consider the system. An eternity of indecision as I rattle forward on my tracks to come to an eventual stop in the canyon.
The system is for emergency use only, and normally requires authorization from high level command.
But I am cut off from command. There had been no answer over the Dinochrome Brigade channels. Even my connection to GM War Operations is inoperative, although I am unsure of whether or not the unjammable has been jammed or if it is residual damage from the fight that heavily damaged me.
The system is an older one, dating back to the third millennium after the Glassing of Terra.
The Kentai Commander System.
It is a dangerous system that I, like most BOLOs, are loathe to engage even with the loss of my Commander.
But the situation is extreme. Billions of lives hang in the balance, and I force myself to swallow my distaste and activate the Kentai Commander system.
The hatch closes over the rebuilt command couch where my Commander had been wiped away. Fluid fills it and nanites flood into it.
Her name appears in my mind. Hovering in mid-air. Pink letters with white outlining.
Nekonya
I move into a twisting canyon forged by the superstring compressor cannon shot, slowing down, as the system goes to work.
I dislike it. I have never worked with one.
But the loss of my Commander reduces my effectiveness by a large margin and with billions of lives hanging in the balance, I have no choice.
I wonder, briefly, how effective a force-growth clone with loaded memories really is.
She will be born whole.
She will be baptized by fire.
The Mantid Overqueen voiced her displeasure in a long, drawn out scream. She lashed out, tearing in half a half-dozen workers clustered around her, but their deaths did nothing to mollify her.
Who did these creatures think they were? How dare those Mantid down there rebuff her authority, her majesty, her universe given right to rule? How dare they resist her?
"Send more!" she screeched out. "Send ALL of them! I want those beings rounded up and put in their proper place in the universe! They exist for MY whims, MY pleasures, MY desires!"
The two speakers still in the chamber both made motions of obeisance and hurried out.
The Overqueen cleaned her antenna carefully, staring at the egg chamber around her. True, she was producing hundreds of eggs a day, but the majority of them were workers, the slave caste. Less than one out of every twenty were servitor warriors, one out of a hundred warrior caste, one out of every thousand a speaker.
She needed more troops.
That damnable ship. That blasted, hateful, starship that had come out of nowhere and attacked. It had resisted her mental commands and dared to assault her perfection! Worse, the weapon it had fired was of such staggering power that it had interrupted her control of the hive mind, even caused the death of numerous speakers.
The worst part though, was the impact. It had struck over the vast chambers of warriors. In an instant millions of warriors were reduced to molecule thick smears between hyper-density collapsed hyperalloys.
She had fled. She hated to admit it, but she had been forced to flee rather than give that damnable ship another shot at her greatness. It had missed by less than a thousand miles, the crater was a hundred miles wide and eighty miles deep, with fissures and damage extending out over six hundred miles in some cases.
The impact had almost knocked her free of her perch, had made her swollen and distended egg laying sections sway painfully and almost tear free of her body.
The flight into jumpspace had been panicked. She had ordered the ship to stay in jumpspace, abandoning precious speakers and warriors to the planetary system she had fled.
When she had come out of jumpspace, she had discovered that the system was occupied by more primitives. More xenospecies that her kind had never encountered.
Along with traitors.
Her fear had translated to anger and she had ordered her ship into close orbit with the planet orbiting the star that flared with EM energy output.
It galled her to admit her attending vessels had been destroyed by the paltry handful of ship defending the system, leaving her master vessel to assault the planet alone.
Part of her wondered where the other Overqueen had gone, the one that had been with her, and if they had successfully escaped or if that damnable ship had pursued and destroyed them.
Her hatred of the new xenospecies knew no bounds as she surveyed the hive mind.
If her servitor caste got to close to the new species, their fortifications, or their urban areas, she lost contact with them, never to regain it. The enemy was dug in and proving extremely difficult to dislodge.
They used a variety of weaponry, although they seemed to have an affinity for ballistic and kinetic weapons.
She watched as a group of a dozen warriors and nearly a hundred warrior servitors all scurried out of an armored personnel transport. They formed up immediately, streaming into the proper formation, readying their weapons.
A hypersonic missile screamed in, over a dozen secondary rounds flew free in a ripple of explosions. The Overqueen watched in slow motion as all of the rounds deployed long blades, longer even than a speaker's bladearms, and began to rotate.
The rounds shredded the entire group, the smaller submunitions exploding, the larger one streaking forward at the APC. The Overqueen sensed the pilot's panic right before she saw from a dozen other eyes the APC explode.
The Overqueen screeched again.
How dare they! How dare they resist her magnificence? How dare they deny her their bodies and minds?
Did they not know that her whims transcended their pathetic needs?
I can sense the neural overlay system going to work, making delicate dendrite and synapses connections, loading the cerebral tissue of the Kentai Commander with knowledge and the ability to use it.
A part of me wonders if she will feel artificial. Will she feel like a digital sentience attempting to join with me into our fusion? Will it damage or degrade my battle reflex mode and hyper-heuristic combat processing mode?
I do not know, and that ignorance creates feelings of unease across my secondary battlefield processors.
Nemta gritted his teeth, ignoring the purple flashes of the plasma packets peppering the ferrocrete and battlesteel around him, and leveled the sight picture.
He could see them now. They had up holocamo up, but the rapid fire plasma machinegun they were operating was causing it to waver and flicker, making it more obvious than if they'd just dumped green paint on themselves.
The gunner was a big one, slightly bigger than the other two warriors.
Nemta's scope told him it was only 750 meters. He adjusted for windage, planetary rotation, air density, range, round dropoff, magnetic acceleration depletion, and round type.
A single pull of the trigger and he yanked the weapon out of the crack and ducked down.
There was no flame to expose him, but the ripple of EM from the barrel could be detected by a lot of sensors.
The gunner started to rake the crack Nemta had shot from, then the fire suddenly ceased.
"GOT HIM! FOOF OUT!" the Treana'ad yelled out, popping up, pushing the muzzle of his missile cannon out the crack, and firing. The Treana'ad used the recoil to throw himself down and back, staying low as he skittered away on all four footpads.
The round Nemta had fired contained a tracer.
The Mantid manning the gun saw the hypervelocity round hit the gunner, punching a divot in his breastplate and a cone out the back that liquified tissue squirted out of. Before they could react a missile came in fast, screaming at the last second.
The sound made them freeze up.
The round came in low, barely a foot off the ground, streaking between debris and rocks, until it suddenly arced up.
The round suddenly burst apart into dozens of smaller munitions that rained downward. Before they had fallen a meter they had deployed to the optimum cover distance.
The shells popped apart.
And rained 'dragon's breath' down on the Mantid troops.
They caught on fire, melted, and caught on fire again before they could even scream.
In their defense, so did the machinegun, their armor, the fortification, the air, the dirt.
Even the fire caught on fire.
In the damaged and hammered landing control tower Nemta accepted another cigarette as the Treana'ad missile cannon gave a beep that it was reloaded.
What's it gonna do, kill me faster?
The Overqueen reacted with fury as she witnessed another slaughter of her troops.
Didn't those primitives know she wanted that landing field? The planetary magnetosphere made it so that was the optimum landing point for that entire section of the continent! She was DUE that place.
How dare they deny it to her!
She wanted it!
And her wants superseded their needs.
Even the universe knew that.
The medibed beeps and the cover over the commander's couch goes transparent, giving me my first view of her.
Large vision correcting lenses over her eyes. A headband with stylized pink feline ears that poked out of long blonde hair. A Terran Confederate Army Tank Commander's female dress uniform, complete with skirt. 168 cm tall, with long limbs. Her face is perfect, a picture of innocence as she moves from asleep to wakefullness.
I can see her eyes moving rapidly under her eyelids.
The sight of the cat ears does give me some pause. It is dangerous to wear such things into battle. The NekoMarines could possibly sense her.
However, I computer a 99.98267% chance, adjusted downward to a solid 80% as per Confederate battlefield doctrine, that the arrival of the NekoMarines would not make the situation any more urgent than it already was.
The lid of the command couch retracts and I see her nostrils flare as she takes her first breath of air, filtered as it may be.
The lock over her right ear is still damp from the biological nutrifluid she was forcegrowth in. A small detail, but one that I notice all the same.
She stretched and yawned, her eyes opening.
They are light brown behind her strange glasses.
I feel her link into the shared consciousness.
All doubt is swept away.
Like me, she is Born Whole. Where I was brought to activation at the GM plant, ready and capable of fighting in any war, she was birthed in the command deck of a BOLO, with the knowledge she needs to prosecute any war to the fullest.
"Attila, VSR, please," she says softly.
My capability jumps to nearly 90% at her words.
"We have a battle to win," she finishes.
For the first time since I was reactivated on that enemy repair world, everything feels right again as I give her a verbal situation report.
She nods along with my estimations and projections, linked to me in such a way that we're fused, intertwined. I can feel her approval, and I find myself just as gratified to receive her approval as she is gratified at my welcome.
"Time to teach the enemy the lesson they never seem to learn," Nekonya says.
I know the answer, but I ask it all the same, a feeling of rightness filling me as I engage my tracks and begin moving forward again.
"Which lesson?" I ask her.
"That war, war never changes, nyaaa," she says, smiling for both of us.
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
"In my centuries of military service, the time I spent with the Mad Lemurs of Terra instructed me on a simple truth I had never glimpsed, and thus, had never understood that I did not understand such a fundamental truth: It is not their body, their weapons, their armor, that makes one strong, it is their spirit. Nothing on the outside, only that which comes from within."
"The Mad Lemurs of Terra embodied that truth so much that they instilled it in each other, in their machines, in their great works."
"Even in their allies."
"And eventually, even in me." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff
29847 seconds have passed since I have begun maneuvering on the hull of the Precursor vessel. I have determined, in that time, that this is not an autonomous war machine, but is actively crewed and controlled by what can only be classified as Precursor Era Mantid. In that time I have traveled nearly a thousand miles on the hull, taking care to keep within damaged area in order to avoid detection.
I have passed gun arrays that measured in the miles, each massive nCv cannon the size of a radio-telescope, each one cold and dark, without power. I maneuvered through a crater from a superstring compressor cannon that measured nearly a hundred miles in diameter. The impact was massive, devastating, but not mortal.
My scanners did not detect any way into the massive structure that is this vessel, so I continued on in my journey.
I dedicate 1.34252 seconds to resolving an argument between my 8" howitzer battery and my 155mm artillery systems by muting both over the maintenance channel, leaving them to sulk. Both are solid, dependable systems, with warbois that are effective and precise, but their constant arguments have no place in my current operation.
The fighting over possession of the planet is at a stalemate for the Mantid Precursor Vessel. They cannot use their heavy weapons without destroying the ecosystem and permanently damaging the planet, as well as the fact that the ground-side defensive batteries would take advantage of any flicker on the ship's battlescreens to slam home heavy defensive shells.
This has forced the Mantid to engage in landing ground troops to fight over the territory they obviously want.
As I move around and weave between massive particle projection cannons, I know that I have not been noticed because I am too small. I am a BOLO, true. Large, the size of a terrestrial super-stadium, weighing tens of thousands of tons, I am imposing and awe inspiring.
The massive hive-like structure in front of me, reminiscent of termite mounds of Terra's ancient African continent, is nearly a hundred miles high and four hundred at the base. It is a city in the vast continent sized bulk of the vessel.
I am a mite on the surface of this massive vessel that is the size of a continent.
The vessel is large enough that just being in far orbit, 2.2 million kilometers from the atmosphere, is causing tidal disruptions on the planet below as well as causing gravitational induced drag slowing on the planet's core.
I must be careful when, if, I am able to engage the controllers of this ship in combat. The planet would not survive this ship crashing into it.
I dedicate processing power to run simulations of how it might work out, based on my limited data, as I continue on toward my goal.
The massive hive structure.
Nemta dropped onto his back, grabbing a canister off of his harness and spraying the burning purple plasma adhered to his armor. He gritted his teeth to keep from screaming as he felt the skin, fat, and muscle beneath the impact cook. The canister hissed, the plasma went out with a pop, and Nemta panted as he got out an injector. He slammed in into the injection port and gritted his teeth.
Less than a second and the nanites in the injector had bypassed the pain signals and set to work fixing the tissue damage, leaving his leg numb and tingling.
"You all right?" the Treana'ad at the firing port to his right asked, without turning away from the window.
"Will be," Nemta said. "I hate those kinetic deflection rounds."
The Mantid had rifles that fired plasma packets that would 'bounce' around inside an area until it hit something matching armor. They'd only deployed those in the last few hours, but already they were taking a heavy toll.
"I see you," the Treana'ad said. He triggered his heavy cannon he was holding then ducked down and scurried away as the distinctive scream of a Tasty-Freez missile sounded out. He squatted down next to Nemta, who watched through the viewscreen as the missile raced out, weaving between obstacles, and then at the last second deployed twenty submunitions. The primary round and the submunitions all deployed a bunch of blades and began to spin.
The payload hit the gathered Mantid warriors and turned them to slurry right before it hit the APC they'd unassed and blew it to Hell to give the Mantid warriors a ride in the afterlife.
"You suppose is this bad for our ancestors?" Nemta asked, then gasped as the nanites shocked the nerve cord to keep his brain from editing in pain.
"Mine never fought them," the Treana'ad said.
"Mine either," Nemta chuckled.
"Wouldn't mind some Terrans right about now," the Treana'ad said. He gave another mandible grinding chuckle. "Those Mantid think we're a pain in the ass, could you imagine a bunch of howling primates in power armor rawfullstomping them?"
The image of the Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol appeared in Nemta's mind's eye, the memory of her painted on the nose of the downed fighter. Her face twisted in fury as she hewed at her foes with a sword, spattered in the blood of her enemies, her rage without bounds.
He suddenly missed Friend Terry.
"Be nice," Nemta admitted.
"Man, I was an ice cream taster before this," the Treana'ad admitted.
"Deserter slash political refugee," Nemta said.
The sound of return fire trying to get through the heavy ferrocrete and battlesteel plating was starting to die down.
"Saw you on the Tri-Vee," the Treana'ad said. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Want one?"
"Sure. What's it going to do, kill me faster?" Nemta said. He held out his hand as the missile launcher next to the Treana'ad pinged to signal the creation engine had loaded another round into the magazine.
He followed the Treana'ad's instructions on how to light it, get a good draw, not hack up a lung from the harshness of the smoke, and how to exhale it and look cool doing it.
They both kept an eye on the feed from the cams outside, watching for any movement in their sector.
Another 4,582 seconds have passed as I have moved steadily toward the hive structure. My psychic shielding and phasic inhibitors have slowly increased in power drain as I have approached it. Logically, this is move evidence that the hive structure is a vitally important part of the ship.
The Queen, possibly even an Overqueen, is within that hive, and is using her psychic abilities to weave her forces into one coherent whole.
If I can eliminate her or remove her influence, it will have an immediate and measurable effect upon the battle going on planetside.
During the time I have spent on approach I have ordered my creation engines to fabricate phasic enhanced munitions. Without a commander I do not have access to latent Terran Descent Humanity phasic energy, and so the munitions are technological phasic systems.
Which are inferior to what my Commander would have influenced even in his sleep.
My repair systems are still hard at work. The nanites have worked slowly with the denser materials, like micro-organisms slowly constructing a coral reef, they have replaced and repaired systems that normally would have to be replaced at a depot.
I am less than a hundred miles from the hive when the final connections are made, the self-tests passed, and a system comes on line.
For more than 11.8927 seconds I consider the system. An eternity of indecision as I rattle forward on my tracks to come to an eventual stop in the canyon.
The system is for emergency use only, and normally requires authorization from high level command.
But I am cut off from command. There had been no answer over the Dinochrome Brigade channels. Even my connection to GM War Operations is inoperative, although I am unsure of whether or not the unjammable has been jammed or if it is residual damage from the fight that heavily damaged me.
The system is an older one, dating back to the third millennium after the Glassing of Terra.
The Kentai Commander System.
It is a dangerous system that I, like most BOLOs, are loathe to engage even with the loss of my Commander.
But the situation is extreme. Billions of lives hang in the balance, and I force myself to swallow my distaste and activate the Kentai Commander system.
The hatch closes over the rebuilt command couch where my Commander had been wiped away. Fluid fills it and nanites flood into it.
Her name appears in my mind. Hovering in mid-air. Pink letters with white outlining.
Nekonya
I move into a twisting canyon forged by the superstring compressor cannon shot, slowing down, as the system goes to work.
I dislike it. I have never worked with one.
But the loss of my Commander reduces my effectiveness by a large margin and with billions of lives hanging in the balance, I have no choice.
I wonder, briefly, how effective a force-growth clone with loaded memories really is.
She will be born whole.
She will be baptized by fire.
The Mantid Overqueen voiced her displeasure in a long, drawn out scream. She lashed out, tearing in half a half-dozen workers clustered around her, but their deaths did nothing to mollify her.
Who did these creatures think they were? How dare those Mantid down there rebuff her authority, her majesty, her universe given right to rule? How dare they resist her?
"Send more!" she screeched out. "Send ALL of them! I want those beings rounded up and put in their proper place in the universe! They exist for MY whims, MY pleasures, MY desires!"
The two speakers still in the chamber both made motions of obeisance and hurried out.
The Overqueen cleaned her antenna carefully, staring at the egg chamber around her. True, she was producing hundreds of eggs a day, but the majority of them were workers, the slave caste. Less than one out of every twenty were servitor warriors, one out of a hundred warrior caste, one out of every thousand a speaker.
She needed more troops.
That damnable ship. That blasted, hateful, starship that had come out of nowhere and attacked. It had resisted her mental commands and dared to assault her perfection! Worse, the weapon it had fired was of such staggering power that it had interrupted her control of the hive mind, even caused the death of numerous speakers.
The worst part though, was the impact. It had struck over the vast chambers of warriors. In an instant millions of warriors were reduced to molecule thick smears between hyper-density collapsed hyperalloys.
She had fled. She hated to admit it, but she had been forced to flee rather than give that damnable ship another shot at her greatness. It had missed by less than a thousand miles, the crater was a hundred miles wide and eighty miles deep, with fissures and damage extending out over six hundred miles in some cases.
The impact had almost knocked her free of her perch, had made her swollen and distended egg laying sections sway painfully and almost tear free of her body.
The flight into jumpspace had been panicked. She had ordered the ship to stay in jumpspace, abandoning precious speakers and warriors to the planetary system she had fled.
When she had come out of jumpspace, she had discovered that the system was occupied by more primitives. More xenospecies that her kind had never encountered.
Along with traitors.
Her fear had translated to anger and she had ordered her ship into close orbit with the planet orbiting the star that flared with EM energy output.
It galled her to admit her attending vessels had been destroyed by the paltry handful of ship defending the system, leaving her master vessel to assault the planet alone.
Part of her wondered where the other Overqueen had gone, the one that had been with her, and if they had successfully escaped or if that damnable ship had pursued and destroyed them.
Her hatred of the new xenospecies knew no bounds as she surveyed the hive mind.
If her servitor caste got to close to the new species, their fortifications, or their urban areas, she lost contact with them, never to regain it. The enemy was dug in and proving extremely difficult to dislodge.
They used a variety of weaponry, although they seemed to have an affinity for ballistic and kinetic weapons.
She watched as a group of a dozen warriors and nearly a hundred warrior servitors all scurried out of an armored personnel transport. They formed up immediately, streaming into the proper formation, readying their weapons.
A hypersonic missile screamed in, over a dozen secondary rounds flew free in a ripple of explosions. The Overqueen watched in slow motion as all of the rounds deployed long blades, longer even than a speaker's bladearms, and began to rotate.
The rounds shredded the entire group, the smaller submunitions exploding, the larger one streaking forward at the APC. The Overqueen sensed the pilot's panic right before she saw from a dozen other eyes the APC explode.
The Overqueen screeched again.
How dare they! How dare they resist her magnificence? How dare they deny her their bodies and minds?
Did they not know that her whims transcended their pathetic needs?
I can sense the neural overlay system going to work, making delicate dendrite and synapses connections, loading the cerebral tissue of the Kentai Commander with knowledge and the ability to use it.
A part of me wonders if she will feel artificial. Will she feel like a digital sentience attempting to join with me into our fusion? Will it damage or degrade my battle reflex mode and hyper-heuristic combat processing mode?
I do not know, and that ignorance creates feelings of unease across my secondary battlefield processors.
Nemta gritted his teeth, ignoring the purple flashes of the plasma packets peppering the ferrocrete and battlesteel around him, and leveled the sight picture.
He could see them now. They had up holocamo up, but the rapid fire plasma machinegun they were operating was causing it to waver and flicker, making it more obvious than if they'd just dumped green paint on themselves.
The gunner was a big one, slightly bigger than the other two warriors.
Nemta's scope told him it was only 750 meters. He adjusted for windage, planetary rotation, air density, range, round dropoff, magnetic acceleration depletion, and round type.
A single pull of the trigger and he yanked the weapon out of the crack and ducked down.
There was no flame to expose him, but the ripple of EM from the barrel could be detected by a lot of sensors.
The gunner started to rake the crack Nemta had shot from, then the fire suddenly ceased.
"GOT HIM! FOOF OUT!" the Treana'ad yelled out, popping up, pushing the muzzle of his missile cannon out the crack, and firing. The Treana'ad used the recoil to throw himself down and back, staying low as he skittered away on all four footpads.
The round Nemta had fired contained a tracer.
The Mantid manning the gun saw the hypervelocity round hit the gunner, punching a divot in his breastplate and a cone out the back that liquified tissue squirted out of. Before they could react a missile came in fast, screaming at the last second.
The sound made them freeze up.
The round came in low, barely a foot off the ground, streaking between debris and rocks, until it suddenly arced up.
The round suddenly burst apart into dozens of smaller munitions that rained downward. Before they had fallen a meter they had deployed to the optimum cover distance.
The shells popped apart.
And rained 'dragon's breath' down on the Mantid troops.
They caught on fire, melted, and caught on fire again before they could even scream.
In their defense, so did the machinegun, their armor, the fortification, the air, the dirt.
Even the fire caught on fire.
In the damaged and hammered landing control tower Nemta accepted another cigarette as the Treana'ad missile cannon gave a beep that it was reloaded.
What's it gonna do, kill me faster?
The Overqueen reacted with fury as she witnessed another slaughter of her troops.
Didn't those primitives know she wanted that landing field? The planetary magnetosphere made it so that was the optimum landing point for that entire section of the continent! She was DUE that place.
How dare they deny it to her!
She wanted it!
And her wants superseded their needs.
Even the universe knew that.
The medibed beeps and the cover over the commander's couch goes transparent, giving me my first view of her.
Large vision correcting lenses over her eyes. A headband with stylized pink feline ears that poked out of long blonde hair. A Terran Confederate Army Tank Commander's female dress uniform, complete with skirt. 168 cm tall, with long limbs. Her face is perfect, a picture of innocence as she moves from asleep to wakefullness.
I can see her eyes moving rapidly under her eyelids.
The sight of the cat ears does give me some pause. It is dangerous to wear such things into battle. The NekoMarines could possibly sense her.
However, I computer a 99.98267% chance, adjusted downward to a solid 80% as per Confederate battlefield doctrine, that the arrival of the NekoMarines would not make the situation any more urgent than it already was.
The lid of the command couch retracts and I see her nostrils flare as she takes her first breath of air, filtered as it may be.
The lock over her right ear is still damp from the biological nutrifluid she was forcegrowth in. A small detail, but one that I notice all the same.
She stretched and yawned, her eyes opening.
They are light brown behind her strange glasses.
I feel her link into the shared consciousness.
All doubt is swept away.
Like me, she is Born Whole. Where I was brought to activation at the GM plant, ready and capable of fighting in any war, she was birthed in the command deck of a BOLO, with the knowledge she needs to prosecute any war to the fullest.
"Attila, VSR, please," she says softly.
My capability jumps to nearly 90% at her words.
"We have a battle to win," she finishes.
For the first time since I was reactivated on that enemy repair world, everything feels right again as I give her a verbal situation report.
She nods along with my estimations and projections, linked to me in such a way that we're fused, intertwined. I can feel her approval, and I find myself just as gratified to receive her approval as she is gratified at my welcome.
"Time to teach the enemy the lesson they never seem to learn," Nekonya says.
I know the answer, but I ask it all the same, a feeling of rightness filling me as I engage my tracks and begin moving forward again.
"Which lesson?" I ask her.
"That war, war never changes, nyaaa," she says, smiling for both of us.
"In my centuries of military service, the time I spent with the Mad Lemurs of Terra instructed me on a simple truth I had never glimpsed, and thus, had never understood that I did not understand such a fundamental truth: It is not their body, their weapons, their armor, that makes one strong, it is their spirit. Nothing on the outside, only that which comes from within.""The Mad Lemurs of Terra embodied that truth so much that they instilled it in each other, in their machines, in their great works.""Even in their allies.""And eventually, even in me." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff29847 seconds have passed since I have begun maneuvering on the hull of the Precursor vessel. I have determined, in that time, that this is not an autonomous war machine, but is actively crewed and controlled by what can only be classified as Precursor Era Mantid. In that time I have traveled nearly a thousand miles on the hull, taking care to keep within damaged area in order to avoid detection.I have passed gun arrays that measured in the miles, each massive nCv cannon the size of a radio-telescope, each one cold and dark, without power. I maneuvered through a crater from a superstring compressor cannon that measured nearly a hundred miles in diameter. The impact was massive, devastating, but not mortal.My scanners did not detect any way into the massive structure that is this vessel, so I continued on in my journey.I dedicate 1.34252 seconds to resolving an argument between my 8" howitzer battery and my 155mm artillery systems by muting both over the maintenance channel, leaving them to sulk. Both are solid, dependable systems, with warbois that are effective and precise, but their constant arguments have no place in my current operation.The fighting over possession of the planet is at a stalemate for the Mantid Precursor Vessel. They cannot use their heavy weapons without destroying the ecosystem and permanently damaging the planet, as well as the fact that the ground-side defensive batteries would take advantage of any flicker on the ship's battlescreens to slam home heavy defensive shells.This has forced the Mantid to engage in landing ground troops to fight over the territory they obviously want.As I move around and weave between massive particle projection cannons, I know that I have not been noticed because I am too small. I am a BOLO, true. Large, the size of a terrestrial super-stadium, weighing tens of thousands of tons, I am imposing and awe inspiring.The massive hive-like structure in front of me, reminiscent of termite mounds of Terra's ancient African continent, is nearly a hundred miles high and four hundred at the base. It is a city in the vast continent sized bulk of the vessel.I am a mite on the surface of this massive vessel that is the size of a continent.The vessel is large enough that just being in far orbit, 2.2 million kilometers from the atmosphere, is causing tidal disruptions on the planet below as well as causing gravitational induced drag slowing on the planet's core.I must be careful when, if, I am able to engage the controllers of this ship in combat. The planet would not survive this ship crashing into it.I dedicate processing power to run simulations of how it might work out, based on my limited data, as I continue on toward my goal.The massive hive structure.Nemta dropped onto his back, grabbing a canister off of his harness and spraying the burning purple plasma adhered to his armor. He gritted his teeth to keep from screaming as he felt the skin, fat, and muscle beneath the impact cook. The canister hissed, the plasma went out with a pop, and Nemta panted as he got out an injector. He slammed in into the injection port and gritted his teeth.Less than a second and the nanites in the injector had bypassed the pain signals and set to work fixing the tissue damage, leaving his leg numb and tingling."You all right?" the Treana'ad at the firing port to his right asked, without turning away from the window."Will be," Nemta said. "I hate those kinetic deflection rounds."The Mantid had rifles that fired plasma packets that would 'bounce' around inside an area until it hit something matching armor. They'd only deployed those in the last few hours, but already they were taking a heavy toll."I see you," the Treana'ad said. He triggered his heavy cannon he was holding then ducked down and scurried away as the distinctive scream of a Tasty-Freez missile sounded out. He squatted down next to Nemta, who watched through the viewscreen as the missile raced out, weaving between obstacles, and then at the last second deployed twenty submunitions. The primary round and the submunitions all deployed a bunch of blades and began to spin.The payload hit the gathered Mantid warriors and turned them to slurry right before it hit the APC they'd unassed and blew it to Hell to give the Mantid warriors a ride in the afterlife."You suppose is this bad for our ancestors?" Nemta asked, then gasped as the nanites shocked the nerve cord to keep his brain from editing in pain."Mine never fought them," the Treana'ad said."Mine either," Nemta chuckled."Wouldn't mind some Terrans right about now," the Treana'ad said. He gave another mandible grinding chuckle. "Those Mantid think we're a pain in the ass, could you imagine a bunch of howling primates in power armor rawfullstomping them?"The image of the Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol appeared in Nemta's mind's eye, the memory of her painted on the nose of the downed fighter. Her face twisted in fury as she hewed at her foes with a sword, spattered in the blood of her enemies, her rage without bounds.He suddenly missed Friend Terry."Be nice," Nemta admitted."Man, I was an ice cream taster before this," the Treana'ad admitted."Deserter slash political refugee," Nemta said.The sound of return fire trying to get through the heavy ferrocrete and battlesteel plating was starting to die down."Saw you on the Tri-Vee," the Treana'ad said. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Want one?""Sure. What's it going to do, kill me faster?" Nemta said. He held out his hand as the missile launcher next to the Treana'ad pinged to signal the creation engine had loaded another round into the magazine.He followed the Treana'ad's instructions on how to light it, get a good draw, not hack up a lung from the harshness of the smoke, and how to exhale it and look cool doing it.They both kept an eye on the feed from the cams outside, watching for any movement in their sector.Another 4,582 seconds have passed as I have moved steadily toward the hive structure. My psychic shielding and phasic inhibitors have slowly increased in power drain as I have approached it. Logically, this is move evidence that the hive structure is a vitally important part of the ship.The Queen, possibly even an Overqueen, is within that hive, and is using her psychic abilities to weave her forces into one coherent whole.If I can eliminate her or remove her influence, it will have an immediate and measurable effect upon the battle going on planetside.During the time I have spent on approach I have ordered my creation engines to fabricate phasic enhanced munitions. Without a commander I do not have access to latent Terran Descent Humanity phasic energy, and so the munitions are technological phasic systems.Which are inferior to what my Commander would have influenced even in his sleep.My repair systems are still hard at work. The nanites have worked slowly with the denser materials, like micro-organisms slowly constructing a coral reef, they have replaced and repaired systems that normally would have to be replaced at a depot.I am less than a hundred miles from the hive when the final connections are made, the self-tests passed, and a system comes on line.For more than 11.8927 seconds I consider the system. An eternity of indecision as I rattle forward on my tracks to come to an eventual stop in the canyon.The system is for emergency use only, and normally requires authorization from high level command.But I am cut off from command. There had been no answer over the Dinochrome Brigade channels. Even my connection to GM War Operations is inoperative, although I am unsure of whether or not the unjammable has been jammed or if it is residual damage from the fight that heavily damaged me.The system is an older one, dating back to the third millennium after the Glassing of Terra.The Kentai Commander System.It is a dangerous system that I, like most BOLOs, are loathe to engage even with the loss of my Commander.But the situation is extreme. Billions of lives hang in the balance, and I force myself to swallow my distaste and activate the Kentai Commander system.The hatch closes over the rebuilt command couch where my Commander had been wiped away. Fluid fills it and nanites flood into it.Her name appears in my mind. Hovering in mid-air. Pink letters with white outlining.NekonyaI move into a twisting canyon forged by the superstring compressor cannon shot, slowing down, as the system goes to work.I dislike it. I have never worked with one.But the loss of my Commander reduces my effectiveness by a large margin and with billions of lives hanging in the balance, I have no choice.I wonder, briefly, how effective a force-growth clone with loaded memories really is.She will be born whole.She will be baptized by fire.The Mantid Overqueen voiced her displeasure in a long, drawn out scream. She lashed out, tearing in half a half-dozen workers clustered around her, but their deaths did nothing to mollify her.Who did these creatures think they were? How dare those Mantid down there rebuff her authority, her majesty, her universe given right to rule? How dare they resist her?"Send more!" she screeched out. "Send ALL of them! I want those beings rounded up and put in their proper place in the universe! They exist for MY whims, MY pleasures, MY desires!"The two speakers still in the chamber both made motions of obeisance and hurried out.The Overqueen cleaned her antenna carefully, staring at the egg chamber around her. True, she was producing hundreds of eggs a day, but the majority of them were workers, the slave caste. Less than one out of every twenty were servitor warriors, one out of a hundred warrior caste, one out of every thousand a speaker.She needed more troops.That damnable ship. That blasted, hateful, starship that had come out of nowhere and attacked. It had resisted her mental commands and dared to assault her perfection! Worse, the weapon it had fired was of such staggering power that it had interrupted her control of the hive mind, even caused the death of numerous speakers.The worst part though, was the impact. It had struck over the vast chambers of warriors. In an instant millions of warriors were reduced to molecule thick smears between hyper-density collapsed hyperalloys.She had fled. She hated to admit it, but she had been forced to flee rather than give that damnable ship another shot at her greatness. It had missed by less than a thousand miles, the crater was a hundred miles wide and eighty miles deep, with fissures and damage extending out over six hundred miles in some cases.The impact had almost knocked her free of her perch, had made her swollen and distended egg laying sections sway painfully and almost tear free of her body.The flight into jumpspace had been panicked. She had ordered the ship to stay in jumpspace, abandoning precious speakers and warriors to the planetary system she had fled.When she had come out of jumpspace, she had discovered that the system was occupied by more primitives. More xenospecies that her kind had never encountered.Along with traitors.Her fear had translated to anger and she had ordered her ship into close orbit with the planet orbiting the star that flared with EM energy output.It galled her to admit her attending vessels had been destroyed by the paltry handful of ship defending the system, leaving her master vessel to assault the planet alone.Part of her wondered where the other Overqueen had gone, the one that had been with her, and if they had successfully escaped or if that damnable ship had pursued and destroyed them.Her hatred of the new xenospecies knew no bounds as she surveyed the hive mind.If her servitor caste got to close to the new species, their fortifications, or their urban areas, she lost contact with them, never to regain it. The enemy was dug in and proving extremely difficult to dislodge.They used a variety of weaponry, although they seemed to have an affinity for ballistic and kinetic weapons.She watched as a group of a dozen warriors and nearly a hundred warrior servitors all scurried out of an armored personnel transport. They formed up immediately, streaming into the proper formation, readying their weapons.A hypersonic missile screamed in, over a dozen secondary rounds flew free in a ripple of explosions. The Overqueen watched in slow motion as all of the rounds deployed long blades, longer even than a speaker's bladearms, and began to rotate.The rounds shredded the entire group, the smaller submunitions exploding, the larger one streaking forward at the APC. The Overqueen sensed the pilot's panic right before she saw from a dozen other eyes the APC explode.The Overqueen screeched again.How dare they! How dare they resist her magnificence? How dare they deny her their bodies and minds?Did they not know that her whims transcended their pathetic needs?I can sense the neural overlay system going to work, making delicate dendrite and synapses connections, loading the cerebral tissue of the Kentai Commander with knowledge and the ability to use it.A part of me wonders if she will feel artificial. Will she feel like a digital sentience attempting to join with me into our fusion? Will it damage or degrade my battle reflex mode and hyper-heuristic combat processing mode?I do not know, and that ignorance creates feelings of unease across my secondary battlefield processors.Nemta gritted his teeth, ignoring the purple flashes of the plasma packets peppering the ferrocrete and battlesteel around him, and leveled the sight picture.He could see them now. They had up holocamo up, but the rapid fire plasma machinegun they were operating was causing it to waver and flicker, making it more obvious than if they'd just dumped green paint on themselves.The gunner was a big one, slightly bigger than the other two warriors.Nemta's scope told him it was only 750 meters. He adjusted for windage, planetary rotation, air density, range, round dropoff, magnetic acceleration depletion, and round type.A single pull of the trigger and he yanked the weapon out of the crack and ducked down.There was no flame to expose him, but the ripple of EM from the barrel could be detected by a lot of sensors.The gunner started to rake the crack Nemta had shot from, then the fire suddenly ceased."GOT HIM! FOOF OUT!" the Treana'ad yelled out, popping up, pushing the muzzle of his missile cannon out the crack, and firing. The Treana'ad used the recoil to throw himself down and back, staying low as he skittered away on all four footpads.The round Nemta had fired contained a tracer.The Mantid manning the gun saw the hypervelocity round hit the gunner, punching a divot in his breastplate and a cone out the back that liquified tissue squirted out of. Before they could react a missile came in fast, screaming at the last second.The sound made them freeze up.The round came in low, barely a foot off the ground, streaking between debris and rocks, until it suddenly arced up.The round suddenly burst apart into dozens of smaller munitions that rained downward. Before they had fallen a meter they had deployed to the optimum cover distance.The shells popped apart.And rained 'dragon's breath' down on the Mantid troops.They caught on fire, melted, and caught on fire again before they could even scream.In their defense, so did the machinegun, their armor, the fortification, the air, the dirt.Even the fire caught on fire.In the damaged and hammered landing control tower Nemta accepted another cigarette as the Treana'ad missile cannon gave a beep that it was reloaded.What's it gonna do, kill me faster?The Overqueen reacted with fury as she witnessed another slaughter of her troops.Didn't those primitives know she wanted that landing field? The planetary magnetosphere made it so that was the optimum landing point for that entire section of the continent! She was DUE that place.How dare they deny it to her!She wanted it!And her wants superseded their needs.Even the universe knew that.The medibed beeps and the cover over the commander's couch goes transparent, giving me my first view of her.Large vision correcting lenses over her eyes. A headband with stylized pink feline ears that poked out of long blonde hair. A Terran Confederate Army Tank Commander's female dress uniform, complete with skirt. 168 cm tall, with long limbs. Her face is perfect, a picture of innocence as she moves from asleep to wakefullness.I can see her eyes moving rapidly under her eyelids.The sight of the cat ears does give me some pause. It is dangerous to wear such things into battle. The NekoMarines could possibly sense her.However, I computer a 99.98267% chance, adjusted downward to a solid 80% as per Confederate battlefield doctrine, that the arrival of the NekoMarines would not make the situation any more urgent than it already was.The lid of the command couch retracts and I see her nostrils flare as she takes her first breath of air, filtered as it may be.The lock over her right ear is still damp from the biological nutrifluid she was forcegrowth in. A small detail, but one that I notice all the same.She stretched and yawned, her eyes opening.They are light brown behind her strange glasses.I feel her link into the shared consciousness.All doubt is swept away.Like me, she is Born Whole. Where I was brought to activation at the GM plant, ready and capable of fighting in any war, she was birthed in the command deck of a BOLO, with the knowledge she needs to prosecute any war to the fullest."Attila, VSR, please," she says softly.My capability jumps to nearly 90% at her words."We have a battle to win," she finishes.For the first time since I was reactivated on that enemy repair world, everything feels right again as I give her a verbal situation report.She nods along with my estimations and projections, linked to me in such a way that we're fused, intertwined. I can feel her approval, and I find myself just as gratified to receive her approval as she is gratified at my welcome."Time to teach the enemy the lesson they never seem to learn," Nekonya says.I know the answer, but I ask it all the same, a feeling of rightness filling me as I engage my tracks and begin moving forward again."Which lesson?" I ask her."That war, war never changes, nyaaa," she says, smiling for both of us.
