Chương 39: Nova Wars - Chapter 34

Confed soldier, Confed soldier where have you been? Been to the stars and back again. Confed soldier, Confed soldier how did you go? In a Space Force dropship flying low. Confed soldier, Confed soldier what did you see? A million Mar-gite staring back at me. Confed soldier, Confed soldier what did you do? I killed those Mar-gite for me and you. Confed soldier, Confed soldier how did you get back? In a BobCo branded body bag. Confed soldier, Confed soldier could they keep you down?

When the Terrors return I'll be back around. — Confederate military cadence, 2PW Era, as recorded by Klutzy_Sherbert_3670, military historian. Commodore N'Skrek stood on the bridge, watching the unthinkable happen. We're losing, went through his mind as he watched the tactical repeater holotank update again. The fact that constructs were getting close enough to the planet to unroll and shed literally tens of millions of Mar-gite toward the planet wasn't the worse thing.

It wasn't even that millions of the Mar-gite survived entry into the atmosphere to make landfall. It wasn't even that the planet had once held 24. 6 billion Confederate citizens eighteen hours ago. No, what was worse was what was happening in the rest of the system. Those huge Mar-gite constructs.

Mega-Constructs, Giga-Constructs, the new Tetra-Constructs and the new Petra-Constructs were warping in, slowly rolling for a period of time as they soaked up solar radiation, then they shimmered and vanished, jumping to the next point. From this system they could reach over fifty systems. Commodore N'Skrek knew that even as he watched another warp out that there was no stopping the huge amount of Mar-gite from reaching those stellar systems. It wasn't clear how they traveled at superluminal speeds.

It wasn't even clear how fast they went or their actual range. There was no way to drop them out of superluminal with artificial grav shadows extending through known hyperbands, from stringspace to jumpspace. There was no way to intercept them. Every single construct that wavered and vanished would reach their destination. To top of off, some warped out, then reappeared for a moment on the sensors only one hundred light days out, immediately being lost.

Scout ships had reported that those ones were just coasting toward distant stars. Their surface black and pebbly, absorbing EM radiation and almost invisible except for a shadow against the starfield. Cold and silent, they would drift for decades or centuries before arriving at their destination. The tactic they had used during the Mar-gite Resurgence after the Second Mar-gite War.

Or perhaps the tactic they had used during the first and second war to ensure they'd still make inroads into the Cygnus-Orion Galactic Arm Spur. He snarled as he sat another Petra-Class Super-Construct waver and vanish.

"Bogey one-three-six-five is unrolling," tactical stated, even as Commodore N'Skrek watched it happen on the tactical display. It immediately began shedding landing clusters. Hundreds, thousands of Mar-gite in a ball. Once the out layer burned off and the speed dropped far enough, the survivors would burst free of the carbonized shell, spreading their arms out, spinning as they fell, controlling their descent.

True, nearly a fifth of the Mar-gite hit the ground and died, moving too fast even for their tough bodies to handle. That just meant the survivors had food. Fleet was trying to evacuate the civilians, trying to get as many people off the planet as possible, but they lacked the sheer hull space. The other hope was the population could get into deep shelters and hide, waiting for relief or rescue. The Mar-gite never burrowed too deep into solid rock.

Not enough payback for the energy expenditure, even if they reached the hidden shelters that had filled the entryways with solid ferrocrete. But there wasn't enough of Fleet. And there wasn't enough shelters. Commodore N'Skrek looked at Vice-Admiral of the Warsteel (Upper Decks) Shrawvanawsh. The Rigellian female looked sick as she stared at the data.

The icons for the shipboard Marines of the adhoc Task Force Ugly Baby were slowly contracting as they were forced, step by step, to retreat as more and more Mar-gite made landing on the massive super-continent. A forward node went dark and Commodore N'Skrek knew that meant the Marines that were part of that node were dead. The node hadn't slid back to the ring where the other three were moving toward.

"The planet is lost," she said, her voice sick. She looked up.

"I'm not wasting any more Marines. I have a bad feeling I'm going to need them later," she said. She reached out and tapped an icon.

"Sound the retreat," she ordered.

"We have to retreat from the system, regroup at Naskana's Star," she said. It wasn't in the next line of planets that the Mar-gite could reach. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. It was past those fifty systems. The next set. Nearly two hundred.

As Commodore N'Skrek saw the command to retreat flashing down, saw the dropships being shed from the handful of ships that were still managing to hold onto the high orbitals of the doomed planet, the Admiral spoke again.

"I'm really starting to hate losing."

"GET ON 'EM, GET ON 'EM!" Captain Nakwel bellowed out over the comlink. The lines were full of static, full of screeching, warbling, atonal static. The air was full of chaff, motes, single-cell organisms large enough to see with the naked eye, EM flares, UHF screams, VHF howls, AM/FM bellowing. 8814 had his hands full keeping the visors clear on the whole squad's armor.

The only greenie in the entire unit (2218 had died over six hours ago when the standard Telkan Marine Corps armor he had been riding detonated in a last minute -fuck you- to the entire universe) he had to balance the entire unit's worth the armored suits that were so old he didn't have a single specification on them that he had not pulled out of the armor itself. It was a Helreginn Heavy Assault Mark II suit. Bigger than even the Telkan Marine Heavy Assault suit.

Rather than being a close fit to the body, Jaskel's feet were slightly above the knees, his hands, inserted into tactile feedback gloves, were above the elbows. The head was low, no real neck, the shoulder plates totally obscuring any view and providing the baseplate for some serious weaponry. 8814 blew the clotted coolant from the line with a burst of air from inside the heavily armored greenie housing, then ordered the waldo to reattach it before Gunny Zolpad's heavy M318 seized up from the heat.

He had never been in battle before. Neither had Jaskel. Now both of them had over a hundred hours in direct combat. Jaskel leveled the heavy Pontiac Wrathbringer rotary auto-cannon, which, honestly, was older than anything he had ever head of, and triggered it. The six barrels rotated around the core bolt, firing 15mm warsteel jacketed antimatter slugs at nearly eight thousand rounds a minute. Jaskel moved it back and forth, right to left.

The entire front wave of Mar-gite exploded into sound, fury, light, and scraps of burnt meat. The oncoming horde just screeches that atonal warbling screech and kept rushing forward. The Wrathbringer was beeping, the barrels overheated to the point where even the chromium warsteel was glowing softly. Five of the six ammunition forges were burnt out, the last one had its slush at nearly 80% and the heat at 105%. But Jaskel kept firing. A beeping caught his attention and he glanced up.

STATUS UPDATE RETREAT TO RALLY POINT X-8174A The HUD map overlay, nearly transparent, showed that he needed to move a full five kilometers back. His radar showed that the whirling nightmare above him, of counter-battery artillery pressed into artillery service, of howling artillery shells, strikers, aerospace fighters, point defense systems, and exploding Mar-gite was still raging. But two icons were being highlighted. Dropships.

His HUD beeped again and he stared, his hands still automatically hosing the oncoming Mar-gite that seemed to just never end. TEMPLATE UNLOCK FAB IMMEDIATELY IMMEDIATELY AUTHORIZATION FOR USE"Uh, buddy, did you get those templates?" Jaskel asked. --roger roger-- 8814 said. --decrypting and digital omnimessiah gravity and inertia preserve us--"What are they?" Jaskel asked. --atomics gravs phasics-- 8814 said. --total war munitions with authorization and lockout bypass--"Whose authority?" Jaskel asked.

--fleet command-- Jaskel swallowed thickly even as he steadily backed up, still keeping up the fire. Ammoforge #3 dropped heat enough and 8814 dropped a warmed up nanite pack into it. --fifteen seconds to switch-- he warned. --fabbing up rounds in the rocket launcher--"Payload?" he asked. --700-900 kilotons phasic burst graviton ignition antimatter--"Are they crazy? I thought we were supposed to be... saving... the planet," the last few words were spoken in shocked whispers.

Ammoforge #1 was almost cool enough and 8814 prepped the nanite seed pod. His launcher beeped and the telemetry from Fleet loaded into his armor. All he did was stand there and confirm the launch, his brain shocked, as Fleet ordered him to fire, the Battlefield Tactical Network overriding his own suit's launch systems. The missiles fired in a ripple, all of them heading out in a fan and an upward angle.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC GRAV GRAV GRAV AM AM AM PHASIC PHASIC PHASIC all streamed by, flashing, each a different color, across the left side of his visor. 8814 switched the autocannon to ammoforge 3 and took the active one offline, dumping the slush and hitting it with open air to cool down. The suit's heat level was only at 63. 54%, but even then 8814 knew the heat was brutal, punishing to his Telkan. There were no orders to take a knee, no orders for protective posture.

The BAT-TAC-NET pushed the battlescreen hard in a wedge in front of Jaskel, even as he kept firing. His grav anchor sank deep at four points around him, under his feet, and slightly behind him, the tethers letting him still move backwards even as he kept shooting as the Mar-gite that still poured in a never-ending wave toward him. The missiles went off in a blinding purplish-white flash that his suit automatically compensated for. Huge mushroom clouds clawed for the sky as the overpressure wave washed over Jaskel.

His suit's heat didn't even tick, his armor held easily, and the battlescreen only acknowledged the massive blast by being visible was the overpressure, radiation, and the debris washed over him. The rest of the Company was behind him as the backwash came from behind, easily shunted by the shields, easily handled by the armor's systems. They lunged into motion even as his dedicated missile ammoforge rapidly refilled the launcher, filling the spiral 8-pack one at a time in as many seconds.

The suit's sensors showed him nothing but unmoving bumpy landscape in front of him, the nearest crater's edge was three kilometers in front of him. There were eight in all, spread in a semi-circle from the airbursts. The craters were almost eight hundred meters wide from lip to lip and almost a hundred meters deep. Around the craters was nothing but bedrock, dirt, and unmoving terrain.

"We're losing," Jaskel said, licking his lips. His armor's sensors could see the Mar-gite lifting up off the ground. Could see that for five kilometers in front of him the bumpy ground was starting to quiver. Pockets of Mar-gite lifted up. More joined them. They screeched as they rushed forward, through sound, from ULF to UHF, filling the entire bandwidth full of their screaming. His suit turned and ran, leaping and sprinting. The rest of the Company were running for the dropships.

His suit repeated the warning right as the 8-pack spiral launcher fired again. The dropships were landing. Kilo Company was running hard. His suit emptied the launcher again. Again, less than thirty seconds later, the Mar-gite on the outside of the crater rose up, screaming, and charged. They don't have artillery, air support, tanks, nothing, he thought as he ran for the dropship. His launcher emptied again and he heard the beeping as his armor started sucking in air to try to refill his tesseract mass tanks.

They have nothing but wave attacks, he thought. The dropship was taking off, BAT-TAC-NET doing all the work, making all the decisions. He jumped up, the dropship's grav system grabbed him, yanking him forward. If it wasn't for his armor it would have broken his back. The Mar-gite poured over the now empty LZ.

They have nothing, he thought, turning to stare downward as the dropship climbed for the sky, its point defense working overtime to clear the Mar-gite spiraling down through the atmosphere from its path, the battlescreens at full power to keep any that got through from grabbing the hull. They have nothing but wave attacks, he thought. He stared as they kept rushing by beneath the dropship, even as the door closed, heading toward a city of nearly 30 million living beings. and we're still losing.

Commodore N'Skrek watched as the dropships cleared the lower atmosphere.

"Execute Mercy-Shot," the Admiral ordered. She turned away from the holotank, looking sick.

"Once complete, break orbit. We've got to jump out." Commodore N'Skrek stood and watched, silent, his bladearms folded behind his back. On the holotank, the last four cities that the Marines had futilely spent their lives defending vanished as Fleet hit each of them with mass driver cannons. The Fleet, what was left of it, what hadn't been destroyed by the Mar-gite tactic of getting a 'spear' close, unrolling it, and engulfing the entire ship with Mar-gite, prepared to jump to hyperspace. The jump was short.

Only 150 light years. But it would take the fleet 250 light years into the border of the Confederacy. Commodore N'Skrek stared at the holotank. We're losing...