Nova Wars

Use your bayonet, thrust into the joints and then fire your weapon to blow open a cavity to allow you to withdraw the bayonet.

Never, and I repeat, never use your bladearms. The Terran will rip it off and stick it through your empty head. - Treana'ad Warrior Training, War of Terran Aggression, -25 PG

Hetmwit saw the strange looking creatures, built like strands of gel twisted together with organs inside, ripple out a wave of force that made the air inside the compartment ripple like gelatin tapped by a spoon. He saw Wrexit and Imna freeze in place. Saw the robots go still.

It felt like something grabbed at his brain, like tentacles grabbing and squeezing his brain as his phasic shielding jumped to 195%. For a second he could smell and taste the crantu berry muffins his mom always baked on rainy days.

Then the tentacles seemed to slip away. The load on his psychic shielding dropped to 8%. The taste and smell went away.

He ducked down behind the console, holding his weapon.

"Captain, we're in trouble. Multiple phasic enemies, type unknown, we need extract," Hetmwit said.

"Roger, Tango-Actual, Tango-Gamma enroute. Six mikes by map," the Captain replied, his voice full of molten iron.

There was another ripple. His phasic shielding jumped to 145%, he could taste tenga-berries for a second. The tentacle seemed to brush his mind then slip away.

He closed his eyes, swallowing. He wasn't sure why he wasn't being grabbed by the creature's obvious psychic powers, but for some reason he wasn't.

He peeked over the console.

Imna and Wrexit were being lifted up, being dragged toward the large middle creature. The robots were staring with cold red eyes at the creatures.

As he watched one of the robots had three inch spikes suddenly erupt from the shoulder pauldrons of its armor as its eyes suddenly went a hot amber. It took a slight shift forward as Hetmwit recognized the robot as Super Slugger.

It was thrown against the wall by a weird ripple in the air.

One of the ones that was red with black streaks on its twisted cable body suddenly turned toward him. There was no sense of 'forward' on its body, but for some reason Hetmwit felt like it was staring at him.

The tentacle grabbed at his brain but missed as he ducked down.

Imna struggled against the power that grabbed her, that stilled her limbs, that stopped her from moving.

A weird ripple passed through the air.

"Immie," her mother said, taking her hand.

They were walking through Golden Leaves Broodcarrier Park, Immie holding her mother's hand.

"You're nineteen. In college now. Soon, you'll want a family," her mother was saying.

"I know, momma," Imna said. She moved closer to her mother, pulling her mother's arm over her shoulders. She could smell the comforting smell of her mom. "I had a nightmare."

"It's OK, you're here now," her mother said, hugging her.

"I dreamed I was forced to be a soldier, a Telkan Marine, and that you and daddy were gone," Imna said.

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

"That's why you shouldn't eat sweets before bedtime, sweetie," her mother laughed. She hugged Imna again. "Put such terrible things from your mind. We're Citizens and wealthy enough you don't have to do anything more than a year of public service to be a Citizen," she laughed again. "Our family is above forcing our children into armor to die on some battlefield."

Thunder rumbled again, getting closer.

Imna stared at the broodcarriers playing in the sunshine, lounging about on smooth flat rocks, sitting on benches. All of them were fluffy, plump, content looking. Several waved at her and Imna realized they were roughly her age.

"They're pretty, aren't they," Imna's mother said.

"Yes, momma," Imna smiled and waved back at a broodcarrier sitting on a bench with a sandwich.

"Our family doesn't need to use the public broodcarrier services. We can provide for broodcarriers, make sure they live in the comfort and luxury they deserve," her mother was saying.

Thunder rumbled again and Imna frowned.

"You don't have to risk dying on some forgotten battlefield," her mother repeated. "Our family has worked hard over the decades, centuries, to provide for our family members," her mother's words sounded strange.

"I want to help people, make Telkan, make the world, a better place," Imna said.

A chill breeze blew in, making Imna shiver, but nobody else seemed to notice.

"You can, sweetling, by ensuring you help with the family's vision and legacy," her mother said.

Over by a rock she saw a strange creature. Furry like her, flat face to her pointed muzzle, ears at the side compared to how hers were on the upper rotation of her head, black fur with silver highlights compared to her warm browns. It had on heavy military armor, the faceplate was clear, letting her see him clearly. He was crouched down behind the rock, holding tight to a scary looking rifle, looking at her with wide eyes before the creature ducked down.

A shadow moved by the rock, drifting over to it.

Hetmwit looked over the console at Imna and realized with horror that one of the red twisted things was drifting over toward him, its lower body a bowl-like structure with dangerous looking short tentacles hanging down from it. It was holding out one strong, powerful looking arm made of exposed thick reddish muscles that had black bone/chitin pushing through the muscle to create dermal spikes. There were six fingers on the hand, all six opened and held out toward Hetmwit.

The Palgret swallowed thickly, ducking back down behind the console. Hetmwit could hear the two Telkan mumbling over the comlink. He looked at the timer. Seventy seconds had passed since the Captain had informed Hetmwit that he was coming to Hetmwit's rescue.

Hetmwit froze as the creature came around the corner. The four eyes were red with a tight cluster of blue sparkles in the middle, sideways ovals with pinched ends, two lower, larger ones and two upper, smaller ones.

The eyes focused on him and the creature gave a screech, pointing with one hand.

The air rippled and for a second it felt to Hetmwit like someone was grabbing the top of his head.

The fingers slipped off of him and the creature screeched again, the whole body twisting left and then right as if it was looking for him.

Wrexit's mother wrapped him in a hug, pulling him into her lap. She ruffled his hair with one hand as she opened up the book with the app on the dataslate with the other.

Wrexit made happy noises as he closed his eyes and sunk into her embrace.

He loved his mommy.

"Can you read this, Wrexie?" his mommy asked.

"Yes, momma," he said. He was only five, but he read the words on the scratched up viewscreen, sounding out the bigger ones.

"You understand those words, sweetie my love?" she asked.

"Yes, momma," he said. When she asked him what different words meant, some of them with three word parts (syllables, they were syllables), he told her.

Each bit of praise made him feel warm and fuzzy.

"You're such a good boy, Wrexie," his mommy said.

There was thunder outside the hab, shaking the cracked, scratched, and discolored macroplas window.

"We can't go to the park if it's raining, sweetling, I'm sorry," his mother said.

"It's OK. I love you," Wrexit said. "I don't mind staying home with you."

He looked up at her with eyes full of the innocence of a child that still thinks the whole universe loves them just because they exist.

"I love you too," his mother said, hugging him tight.

Hetmwit chanced a glance.

It drifted closer.

Hetmwit traded the rifle in his hands for a two handed grip on his Cutting Bar Mark-Two. He looked at the plump smiling face of the Terran infant, focusing on the smiling cherubic face.

It blocked out the lights as it moved in front of him.

He closed his eyes, gathering his courage, remembering those frantic moments when he rescued his mom and sisters and the littles from the apartment hab-block.

Thunder rumbled as Imna looked at her momma, who was staring off into the distance?

"Momma?"

Wrexit looked up at his mommy and saw she was staring off into space.

"Mommy?"

Hetmwit squeezed the grip and the cutting bar roared to life, the chain snarling and clattering as it moved around the bar. He lunged up, putting the power of his legs into the thrust.

The hanging down tentacles scraped along his armored forearms as the chainsword's blade ripped into the bottom bowl of the creature. Bodily fluids sprayed out, across his face and visor, as he came to his feet, the cutting bar ripping all the way through the bowl, into the upright fluted-column-like body of the creature.

It screamed, loudly, the sound clawing at his mind as his phasic shielding jumped to 205%, his vision tunneled down to a pinprick, and tentacles squeezed at his brain.

But the cutting bar came free in a spray of shredded tissue and smoking body fluids.

He reacted just as Captain Decken had trained him to.

He rolled away, diving clumsily, his rifle clattering against the deckplates and the back of his armor as he flung himself behind another console.

A sudden screech from everywhere all at once, all around her and through her and from inside of her mind, made her jerk. Everything dissolved.

She tried to hold tight to her mother, but she dissolved into thin greasy strings and slid through her fingers.

She blinked as reality returned around her, barely catching herself as she landed on the hard deck plating of the alien space station.

Wrexit heard the scream that shattered the shabby little apartment and his mommy started dissolving.

He screamed, trying to hold onto her as she turned into wet spaghetti in his hands and dissolved as she slipped through his fingers.

For a moment he saw it all.

The lives of the wealthy and powerful. The comfort and ease of the rich and priveleged. The petty power and pleasures of the LawSec men. The ease and comfort of the valued corpo-drone. The security of the industrial worker. The desperate scrabble of the lower rungs above him.

He threw his head back and screamed, a desire to burn it all, break it all, smash it all filled him.

Imna heard the scream as everything came back.

Wrexit was next to her, shaking his head, looking up, the scream stopping and growling across the open channel.

The robots, spikes protruding from their armored shoulders, the top of their heads, down their backs, took a single step forward, aiming their weapons.

There was another wobble in reality and Imna froze again. Wrexit growled, kept growling, but the wobble stilled him.

The robots were stilled before they could pull the trigger all the way.

Hetmwit stared at the little infant's face, where it was bordered by a wreath. It was still visible, the gore and bodily fluids strangely missing it. The static charge had cleared his visor with a burst of steam. He felt the tentacles try to wrap around his mind, for a split second he heard his father's voice calling him, but then the voice vanished as the tentacles slipped away from his mind like they had tried to grab his helmet only to find no purchase.

He looked at his chrono.

One hundred fifty seconds had passed.

"It's a good school, daddy," Imna said, tapping the table's surface. In the hologram was her acceptance letter to the Hal'verak University on Telkan-2. "One of the best."

Her father just shook his head, his face full of disapproval. "It isn't the school, Drali'imna, it's your choice in major and minors."

Imna frowned. "But, daddy, it's a perfectly good track. I'll be middle administrative in civil service. I'll start where others would have to serve ten or twelve years before they were even considered for such service."

"Our family owns mines, starships, factories, and you want to work for the government? The same government that shows up after all of our hard work and demands seventy-percent of the money we make? Not the money we make after the bills are paid and our workers are compensated, but before we even pay the bills? That government? The government that is full of nothing but thieves and plotters?" her father snapped.

Thunder rumbled off in the distance.

Like her mother, Imna stepped back, her hand going to her mouth.

"Daddy, don't say such things," she said. A slight trickle of fear filled her stomach. "You know you shouldn't say such things."

"Dear, maybe you should go into your rec room, have a fizzybrew or two," her mother said. "Or maybe a fizzypop?"

Wrexit opened the fizzypop and set it on the table. HIs mother looked at it, her eyes filled with pain. Her arm was in a sling and her lips on the left side of her muzzle were still swollen.

His mother claimed she had fallen off the bus and that's who happened to her ribs and the groceries.

But Wrexit, even at ten, knew better now.

His mother lifted a little ampule, putting it under her nose and squeezing it.

The Lox vapors were bluish colored as they hissed from the ampule and his mother inhaled deeply, pulling the Lox into her lungs.

"Try not to use that too much, Mom," Wrexit said. "You don't want to get hooked."

"My ribs hurt," his mom said.

Wrexit glanced at his little sisters, who were sitting on the carpet watching the tri-vee.

"Besides, I know what I'm doing, Wrexie," his mother said.

Thunder rumbled off in the distance but Wrexit ignored it.

"I hope so, Mom," Wrexit said. He gritted his teeth for a second. "Mom, we only have you. Nobody else is going to come running to save us."

Captain Decken moved steadily forward. Unlike the sims and the tri-vee, he wasn't running.

You ran to close the distance if you were caught in open ground or were charging into the ambush done by an enemy with ranged weapons. If the enemy was built for close combat you kept the distance open and just advanced steadily.

The enemy was built for close combat. The chains hanging from the ceiling tried to grab him, twist around him, but their twisting grasp was nothing in the face of the power built into his Pontiac Gravestomper Mark-IX Individual Powered Protective Equipment System. The heavy power armor was not his original set, instead had been gifted to him by his prime self. It had been forged in the Hate Anvils of Mars and was infused with humanity's rage at the uncaring universe.

In one hand he held his engraved Gerber Cutting Bar - Close Combat Dual Purpose System Mark-Two, the engine revving as he swept aside the chains with the red hot warsteel teeth. In his other hand he held his Colt M2389A4 Close Assault Weapon System, the system linked up to the cybernetic smartgun system through his arm, into his brain, and displaying on his retinas the targets that kept swarming into the passageway to try to hinder his steady advance to come to the aid of his troops.

They had close up weaponry, jabbing spikes, grabbing tentacles, short range phasic powers.

The stubby submachinegun in his hand ripped them apart with white cored bluish-flashes of antimatter core Remington 25mm APDSWSAM-T rounds (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot Warsteel Anti-Matter with Tracer) rounds that he handed out with tight two-three round bursts into the enemy.

you can't save them whispered from behind him.

He ignored it, sweeping aside a creature that was all tentacles attached to a cone-shaped body that the wide end was a wide open mouth full of spiralling endosteel teeth that were designed to pull a victim into the blazing red energy at the back of the cone. It shattered, the red-hot teeth of the Mark-Two cutting bar shredding it even as the power of the blow destroyed its armor.

He yanked his arm free of the chains, the black chains that looked as if they were made of insect chitin exploded into fragments without even slightly hindering his movements.

More enemies swarmed in, some coming down the spiral at the far end of the hallway, and Decken raked them with the SMG, the bluish-white snaps of antimatter strobing light at the end of the corridor.

you will fail just like the initial landings on Anthill failed

He pushed the whisper away and kept firing.

He was two hundred seconds from reaching his men.

A long burst, twenty-three rounds, each of the targets eating two or three of the rounds, cleared the far end of the corridor where it started to spiral upward.

you'll fail them just like you failed to stand up to the Imperium

Five steps closer, his armored boots thudding on the reddish mat of fibrous tissue that covered the floor, swipes of the cutting bar to sweep away chains. A close up burst into a mass of enemy that were revealed when a hidden door suddenly pulled open, mucus attaching the edge of the door to the frame.

you cannot prevail against them

They were chaff before his scythe.

The enemy had no chance to stop him.

They were the Enemy.

And they only existed to be destroyed.