LIGHTNOVELONLINE Nova Wars - Chapter 84
Six years. Six years we fought.
Our hive-ship got off two orbital shots before it was taken down by lunar mass driver shots from what we had mistakenly assumed was only orbital cargo mass drivers. Support and landing craft ran into a veritable wall of aerospace fighters launched from bases hidden in the landscape all over the area.
Then we encircled to besiege a city that had been mistakenly identified as heavy industry.
They were right.
Its industry was death.
For six years, six years, we fought there. Hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions were killed in that hard gritty sands of that desert.
Then the Hive Queen Klok
And then it happened.
I remember it clearly. What happened.
I wish I didn't. - Klak.nark
The weeks went by slow for Vak.tel.
Patrols, most of them on foot or riding in one of the technicals.
Bombardments, two to five times a day, all of them with enough time to get under cover.
Maintenance. Oh, Lord, the maintenance.
Trying to find somewhere cool to rest.
What made it worse was the fact that someone left a length of wire unsecured but close to a dataport. Some enterprising warboi was able to 'flicker' the pulse of electricity down the wire to generate juuuuust enough magnetic field flickers to hot-jump across the 1/2 inch airgap and get into the nutriforge system.
Which was now bricked and only put out feces flavored chocolate pudding with chunks of corn and chocolate.
Which meant everyone was now eating the MREs out of the bags.
Vak.tel was honestly getting tired of Turkey Surprise. The shitty alcohol tasting compressed fruit cake patty just wasn't worth it.
Then the other nanoforges got hacked. Most of it was ammo problems, which Chernobog could handle. The worse was turning the toilet paper wetnap towelettes into sandpaper, leaving everyone to only use the MRE toilet paper.
Which was pretty much trying to use cheap flimsy crepe paper.
The misery was ramping up.
But Vak.tel had hit the 'fuck it' stage and he just rolled with it.
"It is what it is" was Vak.tel's standard go-to saying.
Three weeks since they had gotten to the firebase and the only thing Vak.tel had done was foot patrols, fast patrols in the technical, maintenance, and hide from the ever-present solar hammer of the sun.
Anything within line of sight of the firebase, the Telkan owned. Day or night, thanks to night vision, they owned the territory.
Except, as Vak.tel had learned during foot patrols, what looked like flat ground simply was not. There were subtle hills and valleys, rises and depressions, hidden areas, clumps of rocks.
Still, if the firebase could see it, they could kill it.
The problem was, outside of the line-of-sight, the Terrans owned the desert. Supply vehicles got ambushed or blown up. Aerostrikers got knocked down on the regular. Sometimes by shoulder or drone fired missiles, but more than once by small arms and light machineguns.
Which meant that everything got shoveled into the mass grinders.
There was good news, after three weeks of bullshit, as far as the LT, the Gunny, and those who Vak.tel secretly believed were goddamn morons were concerned.
Chernobog's knee and fire control systems were finally repaired.
Everyone else felt a sense of accomplishment, like things had finally turned around.
Vak.tel just had this feeling that there was another boot that was going to drop.
Right on his head.
Which is why he wasn't surprised when he was outside, next to his assigned foxhole, sleeping under a slight overhang of the overhead cover and on top of a wadded up bag of camouflage netting, he was woken up by a light tapping on the bottom of his boot.
He opened one eye, relaxing his grip on his battered, dusty, and beat up magac rifle.
It was Cipdek, standing there with an expression that looked like he'd found a dead scorpion in his boot.
"What?" Vak.tel asked.
"Message drone got through. Overhead the LT telling the Gunny to get us into our power armor," Cipdek said.
"Oh Lord, he's got a plan," Vak.tel groaned, getting up. He looked around. "Go tell Sergeant Kringik, get the rest of the squad up. I'll meet you all at the morgue."
Cipdek nodded, hustling away but keeping to the shade even though the sun was approaching the western horizon. Vak.tel got up, taking the time to crack his neck, before heading over to the morgue. The temp dropped straight down to 85F as soon as he stepped in.
The armorer was already bringing out the cases that the power armor was stored in. Combination armored, maintenance, and fairy-day cage to make sure the armor wasn't hijacked by a wandering warboi.
"Gimme a sec, I'll have your armor out," the armorer said.
Vak.tel just nodded, moving over to lean against the table where everyone worked on cleaning, repairing, or doing maintenance on their weapons.
The LT came in, saw the armorer getting the power armor ready, then left without noticing or acknowledging Vak.tel standing next to the table.
"All right, your armor's ready," the armorer said. He looked at Vak.tel as he moved up. "I've got all the I/O ports disabled via dip-switches, your radio is air gapped from the rest of the systems," the armorer shook his head. "Wasn't easy to figure out, but I managed it."
"Know what's going on?" Vak.tel asked.
The armorer shrugged. "Something stupid, I'm sure."
The armor beeped twice when it opened up, then pinged softly till Vak.tel got in and it closed around him. For a second claustraphobia wrapped its tentacles around him but he kept his tongue against the roof of his mouth and controlled his breathing. He felt the smart-cable twist and the neural interface plug squirm into place. Then there was the barely felt purr of the locking rings spinning into place.
The armor went live around him.
The assistant armorer waved and Vak.tel moved over.
One genuine accept no subsitutes actual Madame 318 with gunny harness and double-heat sink equipped ammunition nanoforge. It has counter-magnetic systems wrapped around it to keep the iron filings and ferrous crystals from adhering to the weapon.
Vak.tel moved away, going up to the nanoforge. He punched in the codes and pulled free adaptive desert camouflage strips. He wrapped the M318 as he left the armory, moving out to stand next to where Chernobog's full conversion heavy warframe was sitting.
"You ready, Chernobog?" someone asked.
"Ready," came the deep rumbling voice, vastly different from the high pitched voice that Yuri used when he was in his smaller form.
Vak.tel sat down on a crate, checking over the M318, his magac rifle, and his magac pistol. He doublechecked his grenades, standard anti-matter HE with a phasic kicker.
It was nearly a half hour before everyone was gathered up around the LT.
Vak.tel was surprised to see that the Telkan who had originally been guarding the base were in their armor. While Vak.tel was moving over to the group a little green mantid ran up, completely clad in engineer's armor, and climbed up on his back.
--am here 621 reporting-- appeared on his HUD.
"What's up?" Vak.tel asked.
--am engineer we ride together to victory shiny and chrome-- 621 said.
"Welcome to the club," Vak.tel said. He saw a small window appear in the upper left of his vision and schematics for his armor, then the smart rig, then the weapons appear and quickly move through everything. Vak.tel stood there in the group waiting for the LT to do something more than stand there plugged into a drone that had deployed a high power antenna array.
--weapons good armor good rig good-- 621 said.
"Thanks," Vak.tel said.
--you ready for this--
"Whatever happens, it can't be worse than sitting here another month," Vak.tel said.
--just wait-- 621 answered. --assigned to you permanently now just got here hour ago from training--
"What?" Vak.tel said.
--now on i am your engineer even outside of simulation-- 621 said. --been training on your gear for two months--
"Never worked with a greenie before," Vak.tel admitted.
--heresy telkan marine without greenie is sad marine you see-- 621 said.
The camouflage nets were moved aside and Chernobog stood up, slowly rising to his full twenty-meter height. The chains rattled, the spears and chains clanking against the heavy armor of the massive full conversion cyborg. Chernobog took two steps then knelt down behind the gathering of Marines.
The LT disconnected from the drone, which moved around behind him.
"All right, listen up," the LT said.
Despite the armor not moving Vak.tel felt like everyone leaned forward slightly.
"We're moving to the staging area," the LT said. "We'll be linking up with the rest of the battalion as well as a battalion of First TMEF."
"What are we doing?" someone asked.
"Not sure. We'll find out when we get to the staging area," the LT said. "It's full finger on the trigger."
The three technicals pulled up, as well as the other five working vehicles. Telkans in full power armor were inside, the guns loaded and put in place. Four Telkan began moving through the gathered Marines, handing out additions to the armor.
Vak.tel noted that the armor for First Telkan Marine Expeditionary Force was all heavy and bulky, with thick plates and a feeling of restrained power. They all had a four pack rocket launcher on one shoulder and a single tube belt fed grenade launcher on the other.
One of the armorers put a harness on his back.
"What's that?" Vak.tel asked.
"Engineer housing, battlescreen emitter enhancer, six pack rocket pack with dedicated nanoforge, engineer nanoforge," the armor said. He slammed both fists into the shoulder hooks, setting them firmly, before moving on to the next one, dragging a power-dolly behind them.
"We'll be mostly on foot, the staging area is eight miles off. We'll be moving at unlocked speed, so command figures we'll be there in fifteen to twenty minutes," the LT said.
Vak.tel managed to keep from sighing.
"Third squad, over here," Sergeant Kringik said, waving.
Vak.tel moved over to stand next to Sergeant Kringik in the assistant squad leader position.
Not like Vak.tel was ever asked to do anything but point and shoot.
"I want you guys to keep a good spread. We're left center, so keep your weapons on safe," Sergeant Kringik said.
"I've got a missile launcher," Vak.tel said.
"It'll be on remote control for anti-air and counter-battery and interception fire," Sergeant Kringik said.
"Great," Vak.tel grumped.
It only took nearly a half hour for the LT to get everything together. Twice Chernobog activated searchlights mounted in the eye-sockets of the skull on his chest, panning them over the reinforced platoon before shutting them off.
"All right, that's our signal. Platoon, move out," the LT ordered.
Moving out, everything was silent as the group thudded along, heavy power armor boots thudding into the dirt of the desert. Vak.tel noticed, with some startlement, that Chernobog's steps were nearly silent even though big rings of dust erupted around its massive feet.
"Weird," Vak.tel said.
--what--
"Chernobog's pretty much silent," he said. "How's that work?"
--counter-wavelength sonic emitters to flatten the acoustic wave-- 621 said. --easy peasy want see waveform--
"No, gotta keep running," he said. He could feel himself sweating. "Can you do anything about the heat?"
--sorry running thermal camo reduced emissions--
"All right," he said.
The route was somewhat looping to avoid what Vak.tel had learned was cactus patches, then a field of wreckage where pop-wasps and mecha-scorpions were known to lurk, a quick detour to avoid some battlesteel cobras. Through a debris field and two impact areas. Finally they reached the staging area.
Vak.tel felt relieved that they weren't the first group there.
He was startled to see there were four other Chernobogs. Yuri went up to each, silently slamming his forearm against theirs, before returning to the back of the formation. The HUD left Vak.tel known exactly where to stand.
After three weeks of not being in armor, it felt weird, almost invasive, to have his HUD tell him where to stand, what path to take, where to look. He could feel his armor use subtle pressure sleeve variances to get him to shift unconsciously.
He decided he really didn't like it.
The rest of Kilo Company showed up within minutes, and the battalion filled in rapidly.
Each time the newcomer Chernobog moved up to the already present ones and silently clashed forearms with the ones already there.
Vak.tel noted that the massive full conversion cyborgs were all different, their chassis packing different weapons, different configurations, even different appearances.
All of them brutal and intimidating.
His armor beeped to let him know something was going on.
He had a circle in front of him, starting to slide away along a line.
"Figures, they don't even tell us anything," Vak.tel grouched, hustling forward to get inside the circle. "Stupid BATTACNET."
He ran in formation, picking up speed. The Chernobog were at the back of the formation, the technicals and other vehicles in between them.
Light streaks started appearing in the sky, arcing away. The Chernobogs suddenly opened up, chainguns ripping fire at the night as their point defense systems went live.
Within minutes it was a constant roar around him, even as his own armor started firing off rockets from the backpack.
--tanks joining looks like full assault-- 621 said.
"Really?" Vak.tel asked. "Against what?"
--city-- 621 said. --general has sworn to take the city this time no escape for all the humans-- there was a pause. --hate this simulation--
"You've done this before?" Vak.tel asked.
--yes-- 621 answered. --standard training simulation you do not use any more--
"No. Which scenario is it?" Vak.tel asked.
--siege of furnace creek-- 621 said. --mantid invasion of terra--
He was silent for a moment. "Wait, we're not playing the Terrans or the Confederacy?"
--no--
"How did it go for the Mantid?" Vak.tel asked.
There was silence for a moment. The interceptions were happening closer and closer as the flight times were reduced due to the troops getting closer and closer to the city.
--not good--
It flashed on his visor.
ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC