First Contact

Chapter 935: Edge of Twilight

My people knew that the Confederate Armed Services controlled most, if not all, of their battlefield assets with massive strange-matter particle supercomputers in a vast interlocked network that allowed military units on other planetary bodies in a stellar system to react to actions on a different planet.

My people spent years and untold amounts of treasure and man-hours to figure out a way to break that combat information and coordination network. We sought to figure out how to jam quantum communication, paired spooky and strange-matter particles, and everything else involved in that overlapping and complex battlefield tactical network.

Have mercy upon us.

We succeeded.

For a few moments, only a few, the Terrans and their allies were thrown into confusion. My people pressed the attack, sought out engagements, thinking that this was it. The secret to victory. That we could do what none other had done and defeat the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems in open battle.

Then we heard it over com channels that suddenly opened up across the entire theater.

A female primate saying "CASCADE DATA FAILURE: REVERTING TO LOCAL CONTROL" and then there was a split second of silence before we heard it.

The scream.

Not of fear. Not of terror. Not of alarm.

Maybe it wasn't a scream. Not as my people know it.

It was a blood curdling vocalization of pure and unrestrained joy and malice.

Six hours later Captain Manuel G. Trucker drove his tank through the planetary command center and ran over the system offensive coordinator laughing "I'M GOING TO RUN YOU OVER! EVENTUALLY!" while his tank company reduced the entire intelligence coordination base to burning rubble.

The slaughter was... awe inspiring.

I survived by curling up in a ball and screaming "NOT THE FACE!" when the Terran infantryman yanked me through the sidewall of the APC I was riding in before they pulled a grenade off my own harness and threw it into the breached APC.

I spent 2 months in an internment camp, Treana'ad spirit healers helping me get over the night terrors that left me screaming in the dark. Memories of "GOTCHA!" and those armored hands closing on my power armor's shoulders leaving me urine and sweat soaked, staring blindly at the ceiling and screaming.

So, you want my advice on how to break apart the Terran Confederate Armed Services battlefield tactical information network?

Here's my advice.

Don't.

The vast supercomputer arrays that control that network are merely strings of logic and unfeeling code. It merely computes and uses predictive analysis to determine the most optimal way of defeating you with the least amount of infrastructure damage, the minimum amount of collateral damage and casualties, and the bare minimum amount of deaths on both sides.

You will face the Terran battlefield tactical information, analysis, control network. A thing of pure logic that controls the most fearsome military machine the known galaxy has ever seen.

Underneath it all lies a sheer malevolent pleasure and joy in combat that it takes a starship full of those supercomputers to keep it under control.

My advice?

Leave the Terrans and their allies alone.

See, they want you to try to jump them. They have sexually erotic dreams about your people attacking them. They gain a psycho-sexual thrill of the idea of pitting themselves against you.

Destroying your armies.

Burning your cities.

And taking your life.

Because this, this is the real truth: Nobody wants that battlefield and theater tactical information and control network to collapse more than they do.

From the newest hatched Treana'ad warrior caste, the most cunning Digital Sentience, the half-baked clone warrior, to the youngest green mantid, to the most battle hardened Terran.

They want you to disrupt that network.

Because then, what happens, will be nobody's fault but your own. - Interview of Street Sweeper Second Class HrukNarfak, former Powered Scout Armor Infantryman First Class, Military Intelligence.

The 17th Warmek Regiment Regimental Operations Officer was droning away, using a laser pointer and a chalk-tipped pointer stick to highlight whatever he was babbling about for the umpteenth time.

Ret.lek was busy doodling an Atrekna with a bunch lemur penises chasing it, barely paying attention, but still awake, as the Regimental Operations Officer went over what Kilo Company, 9th Battalion, 12th Brigade had accomplished the day before.

Ret.lek had heard it back when the Battalion had run their After Action Report Briefing.

He hated this part.

Come back. Turn in your datachip or datacube or datawafer or what the fuck ever.

Tell the Platoon Leader or the CO what happened in an official statement.

Go to the Company After Action Report Briefing and give any clarifications needed.

Go to the Battalion After Action Report Briefing and give any clarifications needed.

Go to the Brigade After Action Report Briefing and give any clarifications needed.

Now he was sitting in the Regimental one.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but four days ago the new Regimental Commander had ordered all of the artwork removed from the meks, from coolant vests, from helmets, and even off of the weapons.

Ret.lek had found out that the Regimental Commander had been Confed side of the Great Gulf the entire war, and he knew he shouldn't judge the other being, but he felt contempt for the Colonel even as he was silently fuming at having to remove the artwork that he'd sported for years.

Even the mek names had been scrubbed and the helmets had call-signs removed because call-signs were no longer permitted. Rank and last name only.

Ret.lek sighed and glanced around to either side of him.

His Lance Commander had his eyes open, his stylus moving on the surface of his datapad, but Ret.lek could tell the other mekjawk was asleep. PV2 Jo'ortketi wasn't even pretending, his chin down, eyes closed, ears relaxed.

"Are there any questions or clarifications anyone from Kilo Company would like to put forward at this time?" the Regimental officer asked.

Someone yawned. Someone else busted ass loudly. The Kilo Company CO, a feline trooper with a scar above his eyes, shook his head.

"No, sir," the Captain said, blinking his large eyes.

"Now, let's move on to..."

Ret.lek just tuned it out, drawing a picture of a lemur penis with squiggly lines off of it that he labeled "Atrekna Yummy Aura" with Atrekna caricatures running for it with their hands outstretched and hearts over their heads.

Man, war sucks.

-----

Ret.lek folded his deck of cards and put them in his top left pocket as the autopilot function, overseen by the mechanics of Third Shop, walked his mek backwards into the maintenance cradle.

His armor wasn't even pockmarked.

Hell, he hadn't even had to cycle his battlescreen projectors.

He waited until the green light came on and cracked his canopy.

Like the other mekjawks, he climbed down the ladder and trudged out of the Third Shop bay while their meks underwent their one hundred hours of operation maintenance cycles.

Each mek was in the proper maintenance cradle or lined up in neat rows by lance. The greenies were already moving along Greenie Highway to wherever they spent their off time. The mechanics were all busy, shouting at each other, running diagnostics, or swapping out parts.

Despite the appearance of chaos, Ret.lek knew it was all choreographed and by the numbers.

Not like the days of having four mechanics in a beat up skimmer show up with a box of tools to work on his beat up mek in the middle of an agri-field of grain.

Ret.lek sighed as he walked past the gate guards, two infantry guys that looked like they were asleep standing up and their brains were still automatically going through the motions.

It was raining, and despite regulations, Ret.lek just jammed his hands into his pockets and slouched his way out of the motor pool, hat pulled low.

Chow hall was still open and he stood in line with the other mekjawks, silently waiting to get his tray and just point at the food and grunting. He got himself a fizzystim at the dispenser and just shuffled over to a table with others and sat down. He ate mechanically, staring at his plate.

"Fucking bug hunt," one of the other mekjawks at the table snarled, suddenly looking up. "Sixty-two years of slambashing with the fucking Slorpies on fifteen planets, and now I'm a glorified backup system in case somehow my radio goes out and all four of my greenies suddenly suffer strokes."

Ret.lek nodded. "They spent all that damn time training us when they could just put a random potted plant in the seat of my mek and get the same results."

The others all nodded.

There was grumblings of agreement from the other tables around Ret.lek's table.

"It wouldn't be so bad if Tactical Operations Control made just one frigging mistake," another jawk said, tapping his fork on the ceramic plate. "All I'm asking for is just one mistake. But nooooo, it's gotta be optimized perfection all the way across."

"Best favor the Slorpies ever did us was futzing out the BATACNET," another jawk at the table next to Ret.lek grumbled.

"My mek fired two missiles where the warbois jumped out to run off down the power lines," another said. "I swear they yelled 'so long, sucker!' right before they jumped into that open port."

"And the Lankies thought they could beat these people," another grumbled.

"These guys here? They've spent like a thousand years consolidating, doing R&D, building up their military, and from what I've heard the only mek we lost was when the street collapsed and dumped a Storm Crow into an abandoned and forgotten sub-basement parking garage," another jawk said.

"Yeah. Lost," Ret.lek snorted. "It just broke off the foot. The damn thing hopped back to maintenance on one foot on autopilot while the pilot was still asleep."

"You know why this is so boring, right?" An older salt said, pulling out a pack of smokesticks despite the fact he was sitting beneath the "No Smoking In This Area" sign.

"Why?" someone else asked.

"No Terrans," the old salt said.

"What?"

"No Terrans. Terrans futz up the system something fierce. Kilo Company got dropped in the shit and actually had to go to manual because the BATAC flipped out and crossloaded the wrong vehicle profiles," the old salt lit his smoke by puffing on it till the self-light went off. "Their CO is a Terran."

"I'm with Bravo, and we've got a Terran XO and nothing's gone wrong," Ret.lek said.

"It will. Trust me. If there's Terrans involved, something about the chaos hyper-mathematics go on the fritz and everything goes sideways," the old salt grinned. "He's the EX-OH, which means it'll take longer to go wrong, but when it does, it'll go completely sideways on all of you."

"Hmph," Ret.lek said.

"Trust me, jawk," the old salt said.

-----

Two days later Bravo Company was slowly moving across waving grain fields, the computerized agri-bots having already been ordered back to their barns. It was a warm day, some of the heavier meks were blowing steam to bleed off the heat. The entire Regiment was lined up, a half mile between each Brigade, a quarter mile between each Battalion.

On the far left of the Company, Ret.lek had just scooped up his cards and put them away so he could double-check his instruments. No particular reason, just this sudden urge, almost instinct, to check the readouts.

The sky was pure blue with thin strands of cloud spread here and there. Aerospace contrails were lacing the sky, but Ret.lek thought it looked peaceful up there.

A sudden twinkling in the sky caught his attention.

"Network on ground relay, recalibrating," a woman's voice said in his ear.

The stacked LEDs for his commo relay went from one blue bar to three green and an amber.

"Something just wiped out the satellites," Captain Stomps said. "Everyone wake up."

The cyberjack locked into the base of his skull gave a tingle.

Frowning, he looked around.

He saw it, barely, with the naked eye, to his left.

A faint heat shimmer/flicker.

Reflex kicked in and he was reaching for the manual override button with one hand even as his hand moved to slap his safety harness with the other.

Too slow.

Sideways rectangles suddenly opened up, the grain and horizon replaced by heavy industrial equipment, the blue sky replaced by smog and burning sooty clouds.

A counter-grav bullet train screamed out of each of the seventy-five rectangles. Each train pulled sixty flatbed cars. Each car contained either a mek, power armor troops sitting on the deck plate and holding onto a ring, or one or two armored vehicles.

One train caught Ret.lek's mek at nearly six hundred miles an hour.

The first three engines exploded against his battlescreen.

His battlescreen failed with a blinding eye-watering flash.

The next two engines hit his left shin.

The train was already breaking apart, 'derailing' and decoupling. Some of the cars were starting to tumble end over end, some spinning over the ground, shedding battlesteel and the cargo. Others were whipping through the air.

His hands hit the buttons even as he was thrown against the side of the cockpit, the left arm-rest digging painfully into the flesh over his chest rings.

He felt something go at about the seventh ring.

The harness yanked him up tight as his neural jack and helmet went live.

Ret.lek's reflexes kept him from going down on his side. Not by much, but his inner ear countered the suddenly off balance gyros. He put one knee down, got an arm up in time to block a troop car from hitting him. Instead the car shattered, sending screaming infantry showering around him.

One hit his cockpit and splashed into chunky salsa.

The macroplas held.

All four of his greenies were shaking their heads from a combination of shock and having been thrown around.

Both arms up, crossed in front of the cockpit, Ret.lek cut out the BATACNET, which was still trying to order his mek to keep walking forward.

A tank slammed into his shoulder, the tracks flying off of it, the battlesteel armor of the tank shattering, the vehicle exploding.

His own warsteel armor held, but he heard the superstructure groan in pain as a pair of aerospace fighters hit his crossed arms and exploded.

"LOAD THE LIPSTICK! FULL PACK! SHORT AND LONG!" Ret.lek yelled as the last of the bullet train whiplashed past him. He looked at the upper monitor and saw that most of the Brigade was down, explosions from the bullet-train cargos flashing everywhere.

An enemy infantryman stood up in the grain, pulled a rocket launcher off his back, and aimed.

Ret.lek didn't bother with finesse and just shot him with a medium pulse laser.

The enemy trooper exploded into pink mist.

**loaded** 336 sent.

930 sent an image of a little cartoon black duck jumping up and down on a large blue Terran male, stomping him back into a brass lamp with the transmission of **hurr dee lurr dee hurr**

Ret.lek ignored the BATTACNET and stood up, taking a step forward and kicking a suit of power armor as hard as he could.

The power armor's legs flew off.

"GET UP! GET UP AND FIGHT!" Ret.lek yelled over the Brigade commo link.

He tabbed up the start of the trails that the bullet trains had flattened in the grain and slapped them as direct fire targets, nap of earth 10 feet/3.1 meters. He used his thumb to snap the toggle into position and adjusted, flipping up the missile launch cover and putting his thumb on the rocket trigger. He tightened just enough that the covers retracted. One jammed for a second, a power armor trooper's leg stuck for a moment before the gears went to high torque and the battlesteel shredded against the warsteel.

Sucks to be you.

**interior jank** 772 said. **blown heatsinks**

**coolant leak** 204 reported. **cooling array two damaged**

**delta nanoforge cracked** 336 stated.

930 sent an image of a short fat cartoon man rubbing on a lamp and a ship full of treasure and gold coins landing on him while a red cartoon parrot pointed and laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, be careful what I wish for," Ret.lek snarled. He switched to the Brigade net. "TAKE A KNEE! ARM UP!"

The other bullet trains had curved to the north and south of the Brigade, pulling an entire U-turn miles long. The autoramps were deploying to allow vehicles to get off the railcars. Aerospace fighters were lifting up on counter-grav. Troops carriers were dropping their sides. Power armor troops were jumping free.

Around him and behind him the burning wreckage of the bullet train that had hit him had vehicles starting up, power armor troops standing up, and beings unassing damaged and/or burning vehicles.

Ret.lek stomped on some infantry that screamed for only a second as he took two more steps forward then went down on one knee, his left fist giving him a third point of contact to brace him.

He raised his arm up, shielding his cockpit. His mek was taking hits. Energy weapons and kinetic weapons, but nothing strong enough to do much more than ding the warsteel.

Except for shattering his spotlight as the macroplas shattered under a heavy machinegun burst.

Railgun shots, fired from what few tanks were operational, his his shoulders, but he ignored them.

there

"FOX FOUR FULL DUMP LIPSTICK OUT!" he shouted over the comlink.

Someone started to yell at him to not do what he was about to do, but Ret.lek was already in motion.

He hit the trigger, firing his full payload of SRM and LRM packs, when all he could see is a faint ripping distortion. The hypersonic rockets flashed out, all of them heading for the start of the trails. Heat flooded the cockpit and left him feeling like he was trying to breathe in an oven.

The flashgates snapped open.

The hypersonic Long Range Missiles whipped through at 6 miles a second.

Thirty LRM missiles.

Twenty-four SRM missiles.

Seventy-five open flashgates.

Fifty-four missiles made it to the other side, detonating. Sixteen hit the oncoming bullet trains.

They all detonated.

1.25 megatons apiece.

The flashgates turned white as Ret.lek leaned into it.

For only a half-second the flashgates stayed up. Ret.lek saw the bullet trains on the other side all shatter.

Even the gates that he hadn't put a missile through went white.

Explosive force, radiation, the thermal pulse, and the overpressure wave roared out of the flashgates. In several instances the tumbling wreckage of the bullet train engine that the Lipstick Round had detonated behind, flew through the gate.

A 600 watt EMP burst rolled out of the gates, accompanied by a sleet of hellish radiation.

Sparks danced on the surface of his armor. Ret.lek heard the counter-EMP piston thump heavily twice. His battlescreen, just starting to spin up, collapsed again.

"BATACNET update," the woman's voice said.

He glanced at the monitor on his left that showed the battlefield according to the BATACNET system.

It had 22nd Regiment and 31st Regiment spreading out their skrimish line to fill in the gap from 12th Brigade. His section was flashing "CONNECTION LOST" on it.

He had no more time to watch it as the flashgates vanished without disgorging any more bullet trains.

The EMP did great on some civvie electronics, but everything around him had military grade EMP shielding and was still in the fight.

Including the enemy.

He stomped the heat override and started shooting. Instead of holding the target to put the entire tenth of a second worth the PPC hellfire into a single target, he raked the traincars, alternating between each PPC in order. His point defense went to APERS, firing on the infantry as they scrambled, firing small arms, unguided rockets, and even grenades at him and the rest of the Brigade.

"CO's down, stepping up," the XO's growl came across the channel.

"Damn thing won't restart," Stomps swore. There was the whine of charging capacitors then the slow sad wind down of a failed fusion reactor restart.

"Get back to back! Get on your feet!" Ret.lek yelled.

He saw his Lance Commander start to stand up and take a 300mm railgun shot straight to the cockpit. The armor held but the big mek staggered and Ret.lek heard the LC cough, a liquid sound.

He ignored the pain in his chest-rings.

"They must have used flashgates to deploy sat-killers and take out the ground relays," the XO snarled. "BATACNET is useless."

Out of the corner of his eye Ret.lek saw the icons for 2nd Brigade, 2nd Hesstlan Armor Division go from standard box markings to tiny icons of smiling little bunnies holding a gleaming knife as the tanks suddenly lunged forward, going from fifteen miles per hour to nearly a hundred twenty.

He felt his transponder being queried by the tanks as they crested line of sight.

Ret.lek was too busy firing and moving. Rake the train as he moved left, his heavy warmek thudding. Kick the power armor across the horizon. Snap apart an infantry company getting their shit together with the pulse lasers on rapid fire, screw the heat build up.

**venting** 204 send.

The heat sinks suddenly hissed and steam poured out. His coolant reservoir levels dropped to zero, but his heat halved. He could see and sense through the cyberjack that one of the nanoforges was dedicated to producing cold coolant to pump into the heat sink arrays.

Four enemy tanks lined up, firing their 300mm railguns, one shot hitting his suddenly upraised forearm.

The armor and superstructure held.

He threw back four SRM's, watching the tanks explode as the armor defeating rounds penetrated the thick tank armor and the main charge exploded inside the armor, bulging it outward. Ret.lek knew that it bulged out inside and grinned.

Better hope your antispalling holds up, dickhead.

The Hesstlan tanks were firing, slamming heavy kinetic shells into the trains. More and more meks were getting to their feet, some dousing the others with plasma driven fire to cook off the power armored infantry holding onto them.

His heat was spiking as he took three steps forward and slammed his fist into the midsection of an enemy mek that had managed to stand up. The graviton energy that wreathed his fist turned into a twisting spike even as the fist went to 'sleepytime' mode and hammered a dozen punches into the mek's midsection in just over a second. The twisting gravity lance shredded the inside.

Something good exploded out of the back of the larger mek as it stumbled back.

Ret.lek punched it in the face, driving the meter-long grav-lance home.

It fell on its back, armor shattering off of it.

More meks were standing up and Ret.lek charged. There were three other meks with him and the quartet slammed into the enemy meks, using fists and kicks.

Ret.lek saw his heat dropping, saw the greenies were getting more and more systems back online.

He grabbed the front armor of a mek with one hand, grabbed the biceps of the enemy mek with the other hand, and snatched its arm off before shattering its shin. It went down and Ret.lek beat its skull in with its own arm.

The BATACNET kept trying to get him to join formation, get in the skirmish line, and he ignored the warnings, slapping the overrides.

He grabbed an enemy light mek, in the fifty ton range, by the waist and straightened up, lifting it up over his head, and threw it at a cluster of a dozen cruise missile launchers.

They all exploded when the XO put a PPC round into the enemy mek as it bounced through the mobile cruise missile launchers.

"THIS IS IT! PUT 'EM DOWN, BOYS!" the XO yelled.

Ret.lek grabbed a bullet train engine, slightly disappointed that the other one decoupled so that he couldn't swing them around like numchucks, and ran down the line of train cars, the bullet train engine just above the slightly bobbing counter-grav lifted flat cars.

After a score of cars he was just holding handfuls of twisted hyperalloy.

A tank shot him point blank and he stepped back, his inertial compensator still in amber, then stepped forward, grabbed the cupola, and ripped it off.

He threw it over his shoulder and slammed his fist into the exposed center of the tank twice before turning and firing his SRMs at the other train cars.

He could taste blood, his chest rings hurt with a sharp stabbing pain that got worse when he inhaled, one eye was swelling shut, he felt itchy all over, and alarms were wailing.

But he was still laughing.

Best job I ever had!

-----

Man, war sucks, he thought through the anesthetic. He was down for next week while the quikheal and the nanites went to work putting back together his chest rings and repairing the surgical repairs on his lung.

Ret.lek looked up from the bed in the Battalion Aid Station as the Division Commander stomped in.

"Where's Private Ret.lek?" the Division CO asked.

Ret.lek saw the Regimental CO turn from where he was talking to the Company XO over by a Bingo Cola machine.

"Bed nineteen, sir," a medic said.

The Division CO stomped down, turning and putting his fists on his hips as he leaned forward.

"Who in the Detainee's ever growing ass crack authorized you fucking nukes, Private?" he snapped.

"Uhh..." Ret.lek said, trying to think through the anesthetic.

"Nukes. Not atomics. But megaton level, salted, EMP and radiation burst enhanced, full blown anti-matter and spooky particle hydrogen nukes!" the Division CO snarled. "Fired through a flashgate without even verifying your target!"

Ret.lek decided it was probably best to emulate 930. "Hurr..." he said.

"Who the FUCK authorized you to pack those rounds, much less fire them, Private?" The Division CO screamed. "Are you fucking crazy? Do you think you can just..."

"I did," the Regimental CO said, stepping up. "You got a problem with that?"

The DCO rounded on the RCO. "WHo authorized you, Colonel?"

"Milint. When my men took out that first flashgate bubble. I kept one private loaded in case the enemy pulled a flashgate flanking maneuver. You know, like they did!" the RCO said. He sneered at the DCO. "Don't you raise your spine rattles at me, you rat faced fuck. Don't you come in here screaming at my men like a brain damaged child, you slick sleeve wearing combat dodging shammer."

"You're just a disrespectful as you were the last time you served under me," the DCO snapped. "Always convinced you're right. Well, General Thaddeus isn't here to save you this time, Crutchman."

"That a threat, Dreeeet?" the RCO said, his voice dropping to a low growl as he leaned forward.

"Gentlemen!" the XO snapped, his voice rough, deep, and unmistakably Terran.

Half the wounded and most the nurses and medics flinched back.

"WHAT?" both high ranking officers yelled, turning to face the XO.

They saw his eyes were filled with a hot amber light and stepped back slightly. Ret.lek saw both high ranking officers suddenly force themselves to relax.

"You're confusing and scaring the enlisted, gentlemen," the XO said. He waved at the door to the recovery room of the Battalion Aid Station. "Might I suggest we take this outside, sirs? Perhaps call upon your seconds?"

The two officers stomped out and the XO gave Ret.lek a grin.

"One should come back. My money's on Colonel Crutchman," he said. "Don't worry, it isn't about you any more."

"Officers," Ret.lek sighed, laying back and looking up at the ceiling.

"We never change, kid," the XO laughed.