Nova Wars

(Author's Note: Due to 'problems' we're switching Vak.tel's name to Vaktel. That should stop some problems)

His name was the complex mathematical equation involving thermal transference of a mixture of inverted hydrogen atoms in a distilled H2O solution with a saturation of at least 9% that was able to be scaled according to solution volume. His friends usually called him "Heat" which was fine with him.

He had been born in the Wrathful Mercury greenie creches, educated and apprenticed in the great Wrath Forges of Mercury and the Hate Forges of Mars. He had joined the Solarian Iron Dominion Marine Corps when he was three and had just graduated and finished a year of training on Punished Pluto when the Bag had gone down.

He was known as 621, which was the melting point of inverted spooky particle lead atoms and it pleased him greatly to have been assigned that number.

Now he was assigned to a Telkan that actually came from beyond the Sol System. He was excited and nervous at the same time, as this was the first eVR exercise he had taken part in since he had been transferred from Punished Pluto to the Dominion Strike Force.

He had to admit, the particular eVR recreation exercise made him nervous. He knew what had happened historically and knew it was a Ko-Bash-Mary Scenario for anyone on the historical Mantid side. Only one commander in history had managed to accomplish the objective.

Colonel Manuel Trucker, in command of 2-66 Armor Brigade, Second Armor Division (Old Blood), had powered through the Terran assault and destroyed the city beyond in a shocking victory that still had analysts trying to figure out how or if he had cheated.

621 kind of wished he could bring up the data and the replays of that famous eVR exercise.

He had his hands and bladearms busy keeping the roving and heavy electronic warfare and counter-electronic warfare from ripping apart the armor, keeping the electronic counter measures and the electronic counter-counter measures working effectively. The BATTACNET was functioning at top performance, meaning everyone around him was moving in a carefully synchronized ballet organized by powerful supercomputer server arrays.

That's when he saw it.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

It had only enough time to flash up on the HUD, not even fully spinning up the brightness before 621 slammed the atomic warfare protocols to full life.

Vak-tel felt the armor go sludgy feeling on him at the same time as he saw the words start to brighten up.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

Before Vak-tel could even react the whole world went white as nearly a dozen tactical thermonuclear warheads went off in a line only three miles away, each slightly overlapping the ones to the north-by-northwest and south-by-southeast.

The flash of the overlapped 340kt blasts hit the ranks of III Corps instantly. The radiation cascade was immediately afterward, a howling firestorm of dirty spooky-tritium enhanced thermonuclear weapon driven radiation.

At the same time the BATTACNET crashed under a massive assault and the communication channels filled with garbage.

There were orders to retreat, to advance, to rout, to open fire, all crashing over the communications network, with cloned headers and encryption keys.

"TAKE A KNEE!" the LT shouted over his loudspeaker even as the green mantid with him lased the Gunny and the Section Sergeant's armors with a commo laser. The web spread out within a second as the entire platoon went down on one knee, one fist pressed against the ground, helmet facing down, one fist back to keep the weapon clear.

Orders across the commo-channel were garbage and 621 locked them out, focusing on the laser commo from Sergeant Kringik and Staff Sergeant Lurpok, adding Vak-tel's laser commo into the relay to the rest of the squad as backup for Sergeant Kringik.

Glancing up real quick, Vak-tel saw it coming even in the dark, the way the sand suddenly seemed to waver.

621 saw it and alerted the rest of the greenies even as the others warned him.

499 told everyone to jam the grav-spike as hard and as deep as they could. Chernobog was standing up and moving forward.

The thermal shockwave hit first less than 3 seconds after the detonations, and Vak-tel could hear his alarms wailing as his heat spiked. His battlescreen flared as it tried to mitigate the thermal pulse and 621 dumped as much power as could be spared from the grav-spike.

Vak-tel closed his eyes as he lowered his head.

"BRACE FOR IT!" Chernobog roared, taking the last of three huge steps to put himself in front of the platoon before going down on one knee and crossing his arms over his torso.

The shockwave hit just shy of six seconds later and his armor's grav-spike howled as a 2.1 psi overpressure wave hit him. His HUD went down, came back up, went down again as 621 dumped all the power to the battlescreen and the grav-spike. The battlescreen held, but not by much, only the waveform analysis by 558 allowing the greenies to keep the battlescreens up.

Vak-tel looked up slowly.

The sand was steaming in the night air, red hot bottomed craters were ahead, the clouds in the sky were gone, replaced by a long line of angry fists reaching for the sky that merged together into a wall of mushroom clouds nearly ten miles long.

Missiles were already coming in, streaking in from the city to be ripped at by the point defense. The massive cloud was rolling toward the platoon, missiles punching through.

Vak-tel noted that the point defense was a lot thinner. He checked his HUD.

14% slush and 84% heat on all of his nanoforges. His zero-point reactors were flatlined, overheated, and the two micro-reactors were struggling with heat.

His armor suddenly shivered as 621 ran a macro real quick.

Thin glass shards erupted off of his armor and fell to the ground.

"DIG IN!" came the CO's voice through the network.

Vak-tel stood up, pointing his wrist at the ground and activating the digger. It flashed, heat warning wailed, but he jumped down into the hole.

"Switching to emplaced," Vak-tel said, pulling the smartrig up so that he could lay the M318 along the burning hot sand.

Rockets, missiles, artillery shells were getting through. Chernobog was firing his big gun, a shot every two seconds, and his point defense was including even the smaller weapons on his chassis.

Vak-tel's rocket launcher in his back was firing counter-missile missiles as fast as it could wet-print them.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC streamed up just before three different atomics whipped through the point defense, clawed for air, and cracked off down the line.

Vak-tel ducked down, the thermal pulse making the sand steam again and the shockwave rolling over the top of the makeshift foxhole.

Still more went off.

"TURTLE UP!" the LT's voice was crackling, the laser web blocked by the sand.

The barrage went on and on, but Vak-tel watched his heat slowly lower since he wasn't directly exposed to the thermal pulse. Twice atomics detonated overhead, slamming him down into his foxhole, which was dug into the bedrock that had been exposed by the overpressure waves.

He looked up and saw that tracers were starting to whip overhead. 5.77mm, 20mm, 30mm, 10mm, all shrieking through the air and ID'd by his flickering and dancing HUD. His psychic shielding jumped to 22%.

That's small arms! Did they run through the blastwaves?

"HERE THEY COME!" Vak-tel heard Chernobog roar out.

He popped up, dragging the M318 with him and slapping it down.

The first thing he saw was the running shapes, coming straight at them, less then a hundred meters but barely visible with all the debris in the air. The second thing he saw was the red.

Dozens, scores of pairs of red eyes.

He started firing, the dust too thick to make anything out clearly.

The debris cloud let them get close, he thought.

His rounds were bouncing, howling off the armor they hit. He raked back and forth.

His pychic shielding jumped to 63%

Why aren't the AM6 rounds working? he wondered.

--shifting ammo-- 621 told him. --keep shooting through the belt--

Vak-tel nodded, fluttering the trigger. Five, breath, five, breath.

--clamp the gun-- 621 sent over the link.

"It'll overheat," Vak-tel said.

--and we'll be dead if you don't--

Gritting his teeth, Vak-tel clamped down on the firing lever, hosing the targets. He was aware his psychic shielding was at 80% and rising.

A glance showed Chernobog was grabbing Terrans off of his body and throwing them, sometimes ripping them in half or otherwise smashing them, other times stomping on them.

A grenade landed in his foxhole and he barely scrambled out in time.

It was complete chaos. Terrans were in with the platoon, in with the company, fighting at point blank range. Vak-tel tried to keep the M318 in play but a Terran got up on him, smashing it away with one fist while lunging forward with a vibroknife. Vak-tel blocked the vibroknife, almost falling back into the foxhole. Cipdek tackled the Terran off of him and all three of them went down.

A fist shattered his faceplate, a grasping hand ripped away his shoulder pauldron. He saw Cipdek get grabbed and his arm torn off. Vak-tel managed to get a hand under the Terran's helmet and push hard enough the Terran rolled away. Vak-tel grabbed for his pistol, drawing it and firing point blank under the arm of the Terran before it could get up. Another one came at him, swinging a chainsword, ripping into his shoulder plates.

He felt the rocket launcher pack drop off.

Vak-tel lunged forward and tackled the Terran, both of the going to the ground. He could feel the chainsword chewing apart the back of his legs as he pushed the pistol up under the chin and yanked the trigger. He rolled off the corpse before the armor's arms locked.

He saw the LT, front and side of his helmet missing, holding onto the shoulders of a helmetless Terran, who was holding the LT's shoulders.

Both men were screaming into each other faces.

Something exploded, blowing both men's torsos into chunky salsa as Vak-tel pushed himself up.

Another Terran tackled him and they rolled around, the Terran's forceblade jabbing at Vak'tel's armor while Vak'tel just tried to shoot whatever was in front of the barrel. Chernobog roared and fell over backwards, crushing three Telkan but a half dozen Terrans too. The Terran grabbed Vak-tel's visor, fingers punching through, and tore it away.

His psychic shielding was maxed out, making his whole mouth feel tingly and filling his mouth full of strawberries and MRE fruit cake.

He screamed at the Terran even as he got the pistol into the armpit. He pulled the trigger as the hand grabbed the end of his muzzle and twisted. Bone and teeth shattered, skin stretched and tore.

The dead Terran fell backwards, half of Vak-tel's muzzle in his hand.

Vak-tel fell to his knees and hands, blood pouring out of his face, his tongue hanging free into the sand.

He felt the chainsword enter his back, chewing through his guts, and out his chest.

SIMULATION ENDED

He jerked, hearing soothing music play, blinking as the phantom pain receded.

--got stomped on by big lemur-- 621 said. --you--

"Got my face literally ripped off," Vak-tel said.

He felt hands shifting his armor as the null-g pad slowly released him. A maintenance override opened his armor.

The smell and feel of shipboard recycled air had never felt or tasted so good to Vak-tel.

"Not bad," the voice next to him said.

He looked over and flinched back slightly from the human.

It had amber light in its eyes.

"Hey, hey, easy, easy. You did good," Vak-tel heard.

"I got killed," Vak-tel said. He shivered.

"Here, drink this, it'll help," the Terran said, handing over a can of fizzypop.

Vak-tel swallowed half of it in one long pull.

It did.

"You did good, buddy," the Terran said. Behind him Vak-tel's armor was being loaded onto a crate that was on a grav-dolly.

"We got stomped," Vak-tel said.

The Terran laughed. "Yeah, we all did when we did that one," he said. "I crapped out and drew that sim for the end of Basic Training."

"Really?" Vak-tel asked.

The Terran nodded. "Yup. It's the horrified realization you're playing the Mantid in that fuck fuck circus, I'll tell you what."

"The AM6 doesn't work against their armor," Vak-tel said.

The Terran shook his head. "Nope. Warsteel Mark One and Mark V are apparently still the best stuff out there."

"It seems like antimatter would work," Vak-tel said.

The Terran shook his head again. "Atomic bonding's or some shit is too strong in the mark one, the shell just cracks and the AM6 does its thing with the air instead of the armor."

Vak-tel shook his head.

"Then why train us like that?" Vak-tel asked.

"It isn't you whose being tested, or, rather, not just you," the Terran said, taking Vak-tel's arm. "It's how quickly your leadership reacts to a total fuck fuck circus. It isn't suffering no casualties, its how long you last," he shook his head. "Over a half million insane Terrans and nearly a million Screaming Ones flooded out of that ruin and ripped the Mantid apart."

"And then ate them?" Vak-tel guessed, half in jest.

"We don't like to talk about that part," the Terran said.

The seriousness of the tone made Vak-tel wonder if the Terran was kidding or not.

"The General has you guys signed up for medical checks, mental health checks, then seventy two off," the Terran said. He put his palm against the readout on the door and it lifted up, exposing a makeshift medical clinic. He let go of Vak-tel's arm.

Vak-tel took a single step.

"Hey, buddy?" the Terran said.

Vak-tel looked over.

"You did good," the Terran said.

Vak-tel believed him.

0-0-0-0-0

"Pass the beer," Vak-tel said.

Impton grinned and handed over a beer. The sixpack hissed and clinked.

"Was good," Impton smiled. "You have been to see the Chernobog."

Vak-tel nodded. "Was very good."