Chương 195: Nova Wars - Chapter [Bacardi] 151

The Late Mar-gite Siege fighting was something I volunteered to do. Why not? I was good at it. -Yethy Tearloss, Veteran of the Mar-gite Siege of Cygnus-Orion Resubmit in 90 days for further Disapproval - Every military ever I just wanted left alone. - Enraged Phillip, Digital Omnimessiah Era Breaker had always been exactly what you saw on the tin. A little above average for a Kra'at Descent Human at seven-foot fifteen-centimeters tall. He had a sculpted body with a twenty-four inch neck, flexed arms, calves.

A seventy inch chest, forty-inch waist, thirty-eight inch thighs. He weighed in at four-hundred pounds and could bench press over a half ton in one point five gravity. Short cut blonde hair, startling blue eyes, and a chin a dwarf could forge armor on. He was expressedly, undeniably, without a doubt, obvious to everyone who saw him... Human. From a young age he'd been almost a cliche. A rambunctious, rowdy, and oftentimes hyper little boy.

As a teenager he embraced sports as much as academics, embracing the Kra'at Founding Tyrant's philosophy of "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards" and that one should sculpt their intellect as fiercely as their body. He got high marks in school, both in advanced studies and in physical education.

He was a Drive on his Juggerball team and a Theorist on the Mathlete team. In other words, he was a cliche of humans in the Kra'at Systems. From sixteen hundred humans to billions by the time Johnathon Josie Breaker was born. When he was five his little sister was born. She was the apple of his eye and for the first two years of her life he carried her everywhere. To Johnny Breaker, she was absolutely perfect. The universe existed just to create his wonderful younger sister.

She would tease him about being so fit, about pushing himself in every thing. Telling him that the wars were over. The Kra'at Systems had no been involved in a war in 10, 000 years and everyone agreed there would never be another major war. Breaker didn't care. It wasn't about war. It was about always striving for perfection. An unattainable goal that invited one to reach out and push oneself just a little more.

When he was twenty-five, after completing his education, he started everyone but his baby sister by joining the Kra'at Systems Military Services. Specifically the Planetary Guard of his homeworld. Dalkanea. His sister went to every graduation ceremony. In time, with her own children to see Uncle John complete another school. Advanced Infantry Training. Orbital Drop School. Striker Insertion School. Ranger School. Special Services School. Underwater Infantry Specialization Training.

It didn't matter if all he was getting was a single certificate, she was there with her husband and her children. Her husband joked to his friends that his brother-in-law was the only man he knew that he prayed never actually had to do his job. Which is why, when the Mar-gite Constructs came across the wall, his brother-in-law didn't argue. He dragged the most precious thing in Breaker's reality into the shelter by force even as she pleaded with Staff Sergeant Breaker to come with her, to guard the shelters.

"Don't throw your life away, Johnny! Don't be a hero!" He wished he had possessed the snappy answer Civilian Volunteer Az'zkykrmo'o. That it was his to throw away. Now he was slamming shotgun shells into his 8-guage as fast as he could. He held it out one handed and pulled the trigger, Demon's Breath rounds gouting FOOF made fire straight into the face of one of the new creatures.

It had a conical body, like a bullet on its side, with dozens of articulated biomechanical tentacles radiating from the bullet-like body. The mouth was full of black teeth, surrounded by blue eyes, with deeper inside nothing but a red glow. They died like anything else when shot point blank center mass with a Demon's Breath round. He slapped four rounds in, cocked it once, and fired again, blowing a hole clean through the Mar-gite and splattering the next one with FOOF and shredded Mar-gite meat.

Breaker had his head tilted so that his shoulder pressed the button on the mic he'd clipped to his gear.

"... metric butt ton of Mar-gite all over us," he shouted over the din. A Mar-gite dart glanced off the car he was standing next to, making a high pitched whining sound as it arced up into the sky. Breaker answered with a shot. He slapped two more shells into the feed.

"... need close air support. Danger close. Marking with orange smoke!" he called out. He kicked one back, yanking his foot back before the Mar-gite could stick on it, then fired once. The smart systems were down, so he didn't have the adaptive smart grav-kick system that would come on when he kicked out. That meant he needed to yank his foot back or, better yet, not use a reflex that was going to get him killed.

"Roger, meep meep meep," came through the static.

"Reinforcements for street level meep meep and danger close meep meep air support incoming. Mark with orange smoke." Breaker just blinked hard in frustration even as he acknowledged the air support. The radio channels were full of hash. The so-called 'unjammable' paired spooky particle or quark systems were nothing but howling static with screams and the sounds of people begging for mercy twisting through the sounds.

But Breaker was an educated man, and knew that the same kind of thing had happened during the Second Precursor War, according to historical records, and there were some unverified reports of it happening during the Second Mar-gite War and the Mar-gite Resurgence up on the Confederacy.

If they won the Second Precursor War with blown out commo, I can ride this whore to the stable and put her up broken and wet, he thought as he stepped to the side, letting the Mar-gite slam against the car, and then shot it from the side. The windows of the skyraker above shattered outward as a rippling sphere of clear gelatin with a weird creature floated out. Breaker let the shotgun fall on the sling, reaching back over his shoulder and grabbing the 40mm grenade launcher.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"FOOF FOOF FOOF!" Vee Yee screamed out as Breaker leveled the launcher. She fired the rocket almost straight up. Breaker could see the creature gathering phasic energy right before the FOOF hit, coating the whole globe, part of the sky-raker, and two bullet-buddies that had darted out of the hole. His 40mm hit with a shower of golden sparks and a purple snap. The phasic forcefield cut out and everything plummeted to the street level, trailing fire.

"Firing ground support. Meep meep. Incoming. Thirty Seirra. Meep meep." Breaker just nodded, gritting his teeth as he kicked one of the Mar-gite that were trying to grab one of his Volunteers. It staggered to the side and Breaker shot it through one side and out the other, blood, cartilage, calcite teeth, and worse suddenly vomiting out of the 'mouth', along with ruptured stomach tissue.

"HERE THEY COME!" the cameraman yelled, pointing at the sky. Breaker didn't look.

"REINFORCEMENTS INCOMING! CHECK YOUR FIRE!" He shouted out. What fell out of the sky made Breaker blink, breaking through his professional demeanor. Red felt puppets fell screaming from the sky to land in a heap, splattering on the pavement. Four smaller purple ones were floating down on parachutes and balloons. A tall wide eyed puppet with a tuft of hair on top landed via rocket pack, dropping the pack and raising a cavalry sword.

"MEEP! MEEP MEEP! MEEP!" it shouted. One of the purple ones with the curled nose lifted up a pistol.

"Music, maestro!" it shouted. Breaker didn't pay attention to the escapades of the puppets, turning his attention to his men. So far, he hadn't lost one in over twelve hours. A fucking record. FEEL YOU FROM THE INSIDE! roared out. The red heaps suddenly leaped up, roaring cutting bars and submachineguns in their hands. Breaker dodged a dart, seeing the Mar-gite prepping to eject it from the puckered orifice. Two of the fuzzy red felt creatures grabbed opposing arms.

A third sawed it down the middle, all three shaking and bobbing their heads wildly while laughing and growling in equal measure. Their sharp toothed grins were pasted on their faces as they dropped the pieces and rushed forward. He looked up just in time to see another set of biplanes dropping low, almost street level, their bellies roughly a meter over the tallest of the wreckage. Their guns started hammering and Mar-gite exploded.

They swept by and Breaker could see that they were still being piloted by cat-girls. The rear gunner/bomber was concentrating on the target lens between her knees, releasing the bombs right on target. The planes swept by, the last one streaming a banner behind it that read "THE ENEMY EXISTS TO BE DESTROYED!" on it. The streets around Breaker's ad hoc squad seemed, for a split second, to suffer no effect. The air went suddenly clear. The Mar-gite just vanished like a magician's trick.

A thermal pulse hit, drenching everyone, even the felt puppets, in sudden sweat. There was roaring sound and the air pulled toward the streets. Breaker could see the destroyed cars melting, the macroplas remnants of windows suddenly melt down, exposing structural members. It's clear. It's so hot its clear, went through his brain. The streets were boiling. The air was perfectly clear. Breaker shot the last Mar-gite inside their perimeter center mass and it went down in a heap.

"TAKE A KNEE!" Breaker shouted.

"MEEP!" the tall puppet shouted. Everyone went down. The streets were suddenly full of bluish white fire, roaring loudly. The skyrakers began to buckle toward the flames, which climbed up the sides. The air exploded in sparkles. Glitter that showered down as the air suddenly cooled and collapsed the superheated near-vacuum area. Ghostfire Napalm, Breaker realized. The skyrakers collapsed in on themselves as the near-vacuum pulled the weakened structure.

It took a few long seconds and the street was once again full of smoke, ash, dust, and debris. He shuddered for a second before mentally taking stock. He was alive. Uninjured. Breaker moved through the dust, finding each of his troopers. He hadn't lost anyone. He didn't see any severe injuries. He didn't see any Mar-gite either, for the first time in hours. It's bad. Real bad, he thought. He keyed the mic.

"Air support on target. Over." One of the puppets threw a catapult on the ground that suddenly grew to large size.

"Meep. Meep meep meep. Meep," the tall one said. The red ones piled into the catapult. The purple ones got in too. The tall one pulled the lever. They all screamed in glee as they flew away. The catapult disintigrated. One of his Volunteers looked at him.

"Sergeant? What was that?" Breaker just stared for a second.

"I have no idea, kid. I have no idea." The radio popped and Breaker touched his earpiece. 0-0-0-0-0 Jane nodded as she tabbed up two more airfields. She prioritized decrypting napalm and gun rounds, sticking with chemical reactions. The weird friends the starfish appearing Mar-gite had brought along this time seemed to be able to disrupt anything smaller or more complex than 5nm circuits. Which meant she was sticking in the 25nm range or large.

Hell, you could see some of the circuit traceries with the naked eye for the chipsets her fabs were rolling out. Integrated circuits, microchips, not nanochips or molecular circuitry. She grabbed a cold Countess Crey Strawberries and Titty Milk, guzzling down the whole can and tossing it over her shoulder to land in the grinder on the back wall, even as she typed with one hand. Prioritizing air support. Odin had flashed her data to put out the Felt Marines. She hadn't needed them.

She knew she would own this planet within hours. But Odin wasn't her. Had never seen her work. Her first orbital cannons were reporting hits on Mar-gite clusters approaching the planet. The docks reported gauss cruisers launching, their main guns able to hit at astronomical distances, nothing more high tech than standard 25mm microchips and non-polymorphic code in archiac 64 bit architecture. Deadtec.

She grabbed a juice box, the heat of the inside of the command pod making it so her naked body was covered in sweat. Everything not microchips was shut down, tossed in the grinder, and ignored. She could do this with 8-bit and cathode ray tubes if she had to. Hell, she HAD won wars during the Second Precursor War with nothing better than micro-vacuum tubes, microchips, Cathode Ray Tubes, and physical machinery rather than hard light framework and nanite-forged spray matter.

There was a beep to let her know that the air defense guns for sector seven were now live. Her dumbots rushed for sector either to build the defense guns, their treads spewing loam and vegetation behind them. If she had to, she'd rip this world down to the bedrock, encase the shelters in warsteel armor, then Gennie-Gecko the whole thing so the shelter survivors could exit out into Eden. Another shelter was reporting damage to their main access door.

She copied the coordinates, swept her viewpoint to the Felt Marine Deployment Catapult System, and put in the new coordinates, then tabbed two companies. She put two flights of cat-girl biplanes into an attack run to clear the streets with ghost-napalm. The nice thing about the paired spooky particles is that she could hold off on the napalm igniting and do it all at once, once it was layered properly. The Felt Marines were loaded.

She could tell by the celebratory colors of the balloons on the NCO's landing systems. She ignited the ghost-napalm and launched her Felt Marines at the target. More request. She tossed the requests onto the left hand monitor, popped her keyboard in half, and tasked a half to each monitor. She kept glancing back and forth, letting her eyes wetware naturally move them together just enough so they looked like one large screen. Orders were typed in at 125 words per minute. Orders were clicked at a rate of 6. 5-11.

2 clicks per seconds. She wasn't in The Zone yet. But she was getting there. Another beep. Infantry company, Planetary Defense Force (Regular) pinned down by Mar-gite with Type-2 Phasic Support Units and Type 5 Phasic Assault units. She fired two companies of Felt Marines and tasked a B-52 for a close in bombing run supported by Sloppy-Width Camel biplanes.

She also send a Coppertone phasic/temporal crackerjack weapon with full sub-munition load that would detonate three point five seconds before the Felt Marines entered terminal glide pattern and the B-52 got below 2, 000 feet. A quick double-check showed that the maximum skyraker hieght was 1, 500 feet. Only 150 stories. Everything else had been flattened by atomics. A tank company was under heavy assault by Mar-gite standard biomechanical assault forms, starfish pattern.

The tanks had heavy NBCARN (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, Antimatter, Radiation, Nanite) protection. She detonated a dirty neutron atomic, sleeting the area with enough radiation that she saw the Mar-gite were melting as her drones did a high speed flyby with high speed lens cameras. Digital cameras were useless, too much rads. Optical lens, silver-backed film, then algorithms written in 64-bit to pack the image into a 3, 200 dpi bilevel image that was tapped back to her with rapidfire morse-code clicks.

Binary for the win. Jane grabbed a wad of gravy soaked turkey meat and jammed it in her mouth as she kept clicking. She was dug in now. Time to go on the offensive. 0-0-0-0-0 Breaker jumped out of the back of the transport then counted his people as they dismounted. Twelve hours. Twelve hours and he hadn't lost anyone. He closed his eyes and gave a quick prayer to Chromium Saint Peter. 0-0-0-0-0"Did you say something?"

The matron turned from where she was kneading dough to make biscuits, taking a drag off of her cigarette before tapping it into the ashtray. When she put it back in her cupid's bow mouth and pulled her fingers away she left specks of raw dough and fingerprints of flower on the cigarette.

"What?"

"Did you say something?"

"Nope."

"Huh. Weird." The matron just grunted and went back to kneading the dough as the tired looking man stared at the snowy night outside the window.