Chương 211: Nova Wars - Chapter 167

You made the basic mistake everyone else makes, didn't you? You saw they use projectile weapons and couldn't believe it, didn't you? Were the jokes you made funny? Did you get some good laughs? Maybe a sensible chuckle or acceptable chortle out of it? When did it stop being funny? When the first kinetic rounds hit your starships, bypassing, as if by magic, your impressive battlescreens, your majestic armor, to slam into the internals with near infinite kinetic energy?

Was it when bomblets made the fields and roads impassable? Was it when craters ate into your armor until the internals were torn apart? When did it stop being funny? Because it doesn't look like you're laughing now. - Mantid Prime Diplomat to Noocracy Embassy"Status change. Task force arrival," Tactical Seven reported. Admiral Breastasteel nodded. Probes and reconnaissance units had pulled back to up to five light years out, using sensors to examine the 'records' of visual light for the system.

That gave away the standard system entry headings as well as what vessels came from where. An old trick, pioneered by the Treana'ad (at least according to them), where you could track ship movements that had happened months or years ago, in order to build a solid database of naval movements. Breastasteel had gathered nearly a hundred years of data and turned it over to tactical and intel to be analyzed. So, the new task force that had arrived was not a shocker.

"Task Force was previously identified. Task Force Gold-Niner-Two," Tactical said. Breastasteel just slowly walked around the tank. Operations were coming into the fifth day. Ground operations, coordinated by Rippentear, were going well. Right now, the whole operation in the system depended on the Nookies not being able to land reinforcements to any of the nine different battle spaces. She thought for a moment.

"Tell Task Force Bitter Orange and Task Force Granite Lever to carry about Warplan Echo-Nine," she said, nodding to herself.

"Have Task Force Bronze Puma play the stalking horse to pull them in."

"Roger, ma'am. Transmitting orders." The strategy was to pull the Noocracy vessels further into the system by showing them what looked like barely stealthed vessels ahead, while having two task forces following them. She'd read the after action reports from the Confederacy about when the Nookies had fooled both a Confederate and a Dominion vessel into destroying each other without ever having broken stealth.

But since active combat was engaged, she had no problem doing high powered 'pings' to check the subspace foam and interdimensional foam for any lurkers. She had also made sure to deploy at least five times the firepower for any given reinforcements. Which was why the system was strewn with wreckage. She had taken some casualties, but she'd been able to keep it down further than NAVINT had predicted.

"Any luck on pinning down Task Force Ice Lemon?" Breastasteel asked.

"Negative. Their ETA should have put them here eight hours ago," Tactical started to say.

"FLASHGATE! BEARING ONE SIX TWO BY ONE NINE NINE! EIGHT THOUSAND MILES!" the Tactical Operations Officer interrupted themselves. Breastasteel cursed. That was basically behind her flagship and the slowly moving task force and almost straight up. The perfect ambush position.

"Bogey ID'd as Task Force Ice Lemon from the All Have Been Eaten Here Now system," Tactical called out.

"They're launching parasite craft." Breastasteel nodded.

"Inform Rippentear I'm transferring the flag to him," she stood up, reaching behind her back to touch the handles of her pickaxes.

"Wake the Marines up." Tactical began relaying her orders as she closed her eyes. I knew you'd do this. I knew you'd try to jump me. Your pride, your species pride, can not tolerate me boarding your ships and running roughshod over you. You have to do it back, not only what I did, but better*, preferably where you then eat everyone, * she thought. She smiled slowly. Which means you are extremely high ranking, probably a Transcendant or better, her smile began to show hints of teeth.

What you don't expect is for me to board you*.

"*Inform the Marines, I'm on my way," she smiled. 0-0-0-0-0 Rippentear looked over the battlespace again. Planet-side the troops were grinding their way to victory. There was no lightning fast operation to bring about total victory by a squad of thirteen men. No holodrama quick victory. Just stacking the bodies until one side or the other buckled and broke. Five days in and the Noocracy was still in control of large sections of the megalopolises.

The plains and the (now) burning forests were in his control, but the ground campaigns had unboxed the meat grinder and it was time to feed it.

"General, Admiral Breastasteel has transferred the flag to you. Her ship is being boarded by Noocracy troops," one of his staff stated. RIppentear just nodded. He flicked his fingers, the context system in the holotank reading his requirements and backing out of the planetary view to show the entire system. So far it was exactly how Breastasteel had foreseen it going down, right down to the Noocracy trying to board her ship. Their language has only Eater and (To Be) Eaten, Rippentear thought.

They have nazzpak*, which is their personal honor and position on the food chain. Breastasteel was running rampant on the sector commander's subordinates, the only way he can regain his nazzpak is to kill and 'eat' Breastasteel himself. * If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He gave a snort of amusement. Not that he'll try eating her for real. They found out the hard way that eating us isn't advisable.

Too many enzymes in our system hate everything else, he shook his head. We have enzymes in our system that break down our own tissues, why would anyone suspect we'd be safe to eat? Rippentear remembered seeing the video of a Ornislarp rushing forward and gobbling up a Terran infant during one of their invasions a few decades before Terra ended up in the bag. Yes, the infant died a screaming death slowly dissolved and drowned by acid, but the Ornislarp died screaming as poisons and acids went to work on it.

His stomach churned at that memory. The video had been scraped out of archives by some over-achieving Telkan electronic warfare specialist and had made the rounds through the fleet. The memory also made his fists clench. The Ornislarp and the ones surrounding it had all been laughing while they mocked the dying infant in its last tortured moments. The video had made sure that the viewer understood just how much pleasure the Ornislarp took from the infant's suffering.

Which is why he was so relieved that after five days of fighting with nearly twelve million troops, he was glad there was no reported war crimes, and as far as the dog-brain VI overwatcher could tell, no recorded war crimes. But it was a whirlwind of measure and counter-measure down there. Five days of bitter fighting where both sides were being pushed. The Ornislarp were near-peer to the Confederacy, in some places surpassing them.

They certainly had more troops that the Confederacy and they had planned for this war, done a decades long buildup for it. They were also, previously, only fighting on one front. The fighting was still ongoing, which meant it still needed coordinated.

"Turn over coordination of planetary battlespaces to their respective officers, inform them that I am taking over system coordination until Admiral Breastasteel is able to resume her duties," he said. He turned his attention back to the map of the stellar system. Like usual, it's up the grunts to pull their victory out. 0-0-0-0-0 ONE HUNDRED HOURS EARLIER The battlescreen went down with a ka-rack he could feel in his bones as Pan'nikk whirled in place, just like he'd learned to do over the last few hours.

The glaser ripped at his light armor, peeling up several layers but not penetrating beyond the ablative laminates. Still, his own return shot blew away the camouflage from the Ornislarp crew served weapon position. The rest of the Ornislarp chose that moment to raise up from where they'd been hunkered down in the ditch.

Rifles and light rapid fire laser weapons all snapped out at him, but he was moving fast, erratically, skating behind cover and letting it take the hits but moving before it was completely shot away. The crew served weapon vanished in an explosion as rockets slammer home, fired by the assault suits a mile behind him almost ten seconds prior. Drones hammered the ditch even as mortar rounds fell shrieking. Still, Pan'nikk kept moving. Speed was life. If he stopped, he was dead.

His armor beeped and his battlescreen spun back up. He ran forward and jumped over the ditch, ignoring the dead and dying, bouncing up the hill with long loping bounding leaps. When he crested it he tabbed a three second pan of what was beyond even as he opened the channel.

"Enemy armor and infantry in the open. Fire mission," he snapped.

"Fire mission," was the answer. The voice was almost totally synthesized. Pan'nikk was used to it. There had to be a division worth the armor rushing forward, toward the upraised highway that Pan'nikk had crested. Pan'nikk knelt down next to the outside vehicle guide wall, using the time to bleed off his heat and catch his breath. His motherbox counted three-hundred ten tanks in the divison, only two-thirds of what the Dominion fielded and half-again what the Confederacy fielded in a unit of the same designation.

The motherbox also listed nine thousand infantry fighting vehicles and eleven thousand support vehicles. An additional estimate of 25, 000 troops. In other words the six mile wide three mile deep space was full of enemy.

"Infantry in the open. Vehicles in the open. Requesting fire mission," he repeated, seeing the icon flash for the telemetry being uploaded.

"Move to minimum safe distance," came the reply.

"I'm good," he stated. He was at least a mile away.

"Fire mission authorized. Firing for effect," came back the voice. He blinked with what streamed up his visor. ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC He cursed and ducked his head, going into the protective position. Everything went white and he felt a massive sledge hammer crash into him repeatedly. His battlescreen went out and he was aware of a tank cupola whirling away after having crashed into him. Another hit sent him flying through the debris cloud.

When he hit the ground he rolled, pulling his arms in tight so they didn't get injured. Pieces of vehicle were raining down around him. The instinct was to curl up and scream. Instead, he scrambled up and hurried up the hill. The vehicles that had been abandoned on the highway were gone. The guide rails and walls were gone, same with the signs. His suit was editing out the debris and dust, but the visual was still grainy and hard to make out. There was simply eight overlapping craters in the ground.

"Enemy formation eliminated," he choked out.

"Roger," the voice said. He moved on, following the waypoints the Lieutenant set out for him. A few times he flinched as the grav-strikers came in barely fifty feet off the deck. They had their side doors open and their door gunners in position. Once the flight of grav-strikers had damaged ones in their flight, streaming black smoke. He'd tag targets and move on. He hit the far arc and moved forward, heading toward a woodline. It was marked for preservation if possible.

He was halfway across the mile of tarmac for the parking lot for the woods when a flight of six missiles came arcing out of the woods, heading straight for him. Thinking fast he grabbed one of the heavier looking vehicles, lifting it up on its side to interpose it between himself and the missiles. All six were EFPs, the liquified metal streams spearing through the vehicle as the charges went off.

Two hit his battlescreen but didn't get any penetration, most of their force ablated by the plasteel chassis and the open air distance.

"Back off. Fire support incoming," the LT said as Pan'nikk let the vehicle go and ran for another one. He reached the vehicle, a heavy refrigeration unit, and yanked it up. Eight missiles hit it. Unlike the media, there wasn't much of an explosion from the EFP driven warheads. Just a flash as the charge went off at the standoff distance. The whole top of the vehicle, which sold frozen treats, exploded as the superheated and melted osmium jets, surrounded by plasma, interacted with the coolant of the vehicle.

The jets punched through, hitting his battlescreen, but at less density. Mortar rounds, then artillery rounds, started pounding the trees. They immediately caught fire, some exploding from the sudden thermal transfer. Massive robot combat vehicles stood up. His motherbox ID'd the smallest of them as 20 tonners, the largest were in the Jagermech class.

"Fall back under cover. Will provide masking," the LT's voice said.

"Someone must have jumped the gun. We almost walked into that," Pan'nikk said.

"Affirmative. Excellent job, Sergeant," the LT said. More mortar and artillery rounds fell. Some exploded in the parking lot. Thermal and magnetic maskers. Pan'nikk broke contact, darting through the parking lot as fast as he could, heading back to the platoon. The Platoon Sergeant's icon blinked as he got close. It still seemed weird that the Dominion kept at least a two mile interval between suits. But he'd seen what they were capable of doing to everything within that range.

Pan'nikk was used to the Confederacy, well, used to Telkan numbers, where a platoon was sixty, for maximum weight of metal. The Dominion only used four six man squads with an NCO for each squad and then platoon leadership. But then, Pan'nikk had noted that the LT and the PLSGT reacted faster and didn't need so many assists to keep track of what was going on.

"Move over to combat engineering, the greenies want to scan your armor," the Platoon Sergeant said. Pan'nikk moved over to where the pod had reconfigured into a vehicle. A portal opened to reveal complex scanning equipment. There were a half dozen greenies moving around it. --no greenie-- one asked.

"Negative," Pan'nikk answered. To be honest, he'd always heard that they just second guessed everything so they'd been separated out thousands of years prior. --scanning-- another said. The beams flickered over him. He saw his combat logs being downloaded. Less than a minute later the greenies waved. --done-- they told him. He moved over to the waypoint flashing. He was about a half mile behind the serrated three deep line. The LT moved up to him.

"We'll be moving into the city as soon as the enemy elements are eliminated," the LT said.

"Luckily someone got too anxious and sparked a few missiles at you. It could have been bad if they caught us flat footed." Pan'nikk nodded. The LT's helmet lifted so he was looking up.

"NAVINT's wrong, you know," he suddenly said.

"About what?" Pan'nikk said, startled.

"They estimated that resistance would collapse at the thirty-six hour mark," the LT stated, his voice flat, emotionless.

"You don't think so?" Pan'nikk frowned.

"I believe that once the cannon fodder is swept away, that's when the real fight will begin. The real near-peer fight," the LT said.

"I do not look forward to the causalities we will sustain even as I look forward to the battle we will fight." Pan'nikk blinked.

"Put you suit on automatic. Get some rest." The channel went dead. Pan'nikk just stayed silent.