ShipCore

USD: 8 Hour contact mark with Hadenic forces.

Location: Nu Crateris, Hades, Heaven’s Fire II, Rexxor CIC

Heeler’s tentacles moved rapidly over his consoles as he directed his local units to focus fire on the nearby Hadenic creatures storming out of the narrow tunnels lining the line his flotilla had taken.

The Hadenics had been waiting for them, and had been ready.

He had expected this, but the sheer number of them was staggering. The short distance between their exposure from the tunnels to the ships meant that a single lapse in fire control would allow boarders the chance to swarm an unwary ship.

That had happened several times already; was already happening again as Heeler noticed a flock of the winged Hadenic things flare over one of the destroyers nearby, allowing a swarm of thousands of smaller creatures it had been holding to dive into the ship’s hull plate.

He directed a laser cannon from the Heaven’s Fire itself to scour the ship. The transport creature was turned into a falling, burning cinder almost instantly, but the damage had already been done.

Despite cooking the friendly hull with the energy, the little creatures had already bored their way through the hull and were inside the ship.

He could feel the rage and anger from his brothers inside as they began a battle of tooth and claw against the rotten flesh of their invaders.

Like the other boarded vessels, there would be no reinforcements coming to save them. One ship had already faltered and was falling back, its remaining defenders holding a delaying action at vital control nodes needed to detonate the ship’s reactor.

It did not please him to see his brothers lose a fight, but the ship’s destruction would be a necessary sacrifice. The Hadenics had not yet developed a method to usurp and repurpose the ships, but giving them one to study would be a disaster.

A growl escaped his shell as he shook a tentacle. Not that there would be any survivors to study it. It was time for them to die.

The end of the tunnel was near; the Hadenics had sealed it by growing their cancerous flesh over the entrance. To the point where it would be nearly impossible to breach it even with the fleet’s firepower.

“It will soon be time to move, brothers,” Heeler broadcasted with his mind. There was a chorus of agreement, and the mental noise began to rise.

A combined surge of laser energy flashed out from the fleet, scouring an enormous crater into the tunnel blockage. Hundreds of waiting Hadenic creatures that had been waiting to ambush the landing force in the nooks and crannies screeched out as they were vaporized.

Heeler directed the ships to continue their bombardment until the lasers ceased digging into the blockage, the molten rock and flesh having turned into a slagged mess that was quickly beginning to cool.

Dropping a landing force into that months earlier would have been unthinkable, but their tactics had evolved alongside their enemy.

The troop transports lowered themselves from the formation, slipping underneath the escort flotilla that was still unleashing a torrent of PDC-K and PDC-L fire at any larger Hadenic units that emerged from the countless tunnels that lined the artery’s interior.

A sudden bleep on Heeler’s console confirmed the landing had begun. A dozen large pods exploded out of the bows of the deployment ships, the trajectory taking them straight into the molten slag. The pods’ D-fields shoved the material aside like an invisible bubble, and then the pods themselves unfolded like a budding flower.

A single large Rexxor expanded out each pod, their soft flesh expanding rapidly like balloons as they were finally released from the pressurized insides of the pod.

Each one grew until it fit into the nearly 100-meter diameter area the pod had cleared, turning itself into a living fortress that would replace the D-field’s job of keeping the molten metal away.

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Arms sprouted from tentacles where needed, and the landing creatures began to feast on the cooler rock to use it to build a wall between it and the molten material.

It all only took a few minutes, and then the second wave of landing pods shot out, arcing past the covering fire of the fleet to land in the cleared area.

The pods were smaller and carried teams of combat and construction Rexxor and their drone assistants. Already Hadenic spawn had begun to dig their way through the floor in an attempt to attack the landing force, but hunters sought them out quickly to infiltrate their tunnels and destroy them.

The construction teams deployed their mining equipment, partly to feed their large breaching brother more material to form a barrier, and partly to begin the process of digging into the Hadenic nest.

Heeler growled in satisfaction as the plan unfolded without complications. A new order went to the Heaven’s Fire II itself, dropping the ship out of formation and on course for landing in one of the central landing areas.

The battle cruiser was one of the largest ships, other than the ground force deployment barges in the flotilla. It was his personal vessel and a symbol of Rexxor power. Landing it here meant that there would be no retreat.

He would emerge from the vessel’s shell himself, and lead the ground forces to the Hadenic brain, as planned.

The plan relied on his personal appearance, after all.

***

USD: 12 Hour contact mark with Hadenic forces.

Location: Nu Crateris, Hades, Heaven’s Fire II Landing Zone

Heeler slapped a tentacle against the side of his shell as he watched the ground bore spin through the rock at a breakneck pace. The mix of lasers, rotary head, pressurized water systems for spraying the rock back out the rear of the tunnel, all combined into a single machine that was capable of digging through the corrupted rock at a human’s running pace.

[Measurement: 340.5 meters to compartment breach.]

Such a slow speed was agonizing, but clearing a tunnel large enough for a central column of Rexxor to march through was a necessity.

All around them the sounds of combat erupted as the smaller brothers infiltrated the Hadenic’s tunnels and purged them of crawlers and other growing creatures, but the primary force was still waiting for the tunnel to breach the Hadenic Brain compartment.

Engineers crawled along the tunnel, rolling out the heavy super conducting cable from the Heaven’s Fire that connected to Heeler’s shell. The cable was a necessity, granting him local access to the dozens of Computronic modules that made up nearly half of the Heaven Fire’s mass.

Even if he held one module inside of his body, the others would amplify his abilities greatly.

And that was the only way they would be able to achieve the victory he sought.

A shrill telepathic whine filled the air, a sound that was only heard when the Hadenics were in a panic. Heeler’s tentacles shifted as he felt their mental braying turn into a shout.

The meaning of the mental noise was incompatible with the Rexxor’s mind language, but it still conveyed a message. The prey was near. It was afraid.

All around, the combat intensified, and Hadenic scurriers attempted to breach their tunnel head and halt the digging.

Automated emplacements combined with the turrets mounted on patrolling nestlings’ backs kept the creatures at bay, and the few larger ones the turrets couldn’t easily handle were quickly dispatched by heavier weapons or the larger brothers themselves.

Heeler growled. If the computer mind had measured wrong, he would find a way to chastise it.

[Measurement: 220.3 meters to compartment breach. Acoustic sensors indicate a large force has gathered on the other side.]

The warriors began to crowd around him as more filed into the tunnel to await the breach. The evolved forms of the original nest triumvi pushed to the forefront, their large bodies and heavy armor best suited for the frontal assault.

Behind them, nestlings scurried, their small anti-personnel turrets gyroing around manically as their simple GAI units sought targets to engage. Even larger Rexxor armed with quills and other ranged weapons took up the rear, mixed in with piloted tanks and heavy weapons platforms.

Some of the Hadenics were the size of starships, so those platforms were key to taking them out from the ground. Each one had a massive railgun that could punch through battleship class armor plates while still fitting through the tunnel.

The ammunition was limited, however, and had to be ferried in by the smaller brothers that formed a chain to the tunnel’s entrance and the Heaven’s Fire II.

It was an intricate dance of flesh and steel, all bent towards the singular purpose of war and specialized for their enemy.

[Measurement: 100.2 meters to compartment breach.]

[Initiate: Hadenic Brain Compartment Breach Protocol.]