First Contact

Chapter 474: First Telkan

"General, may I offer you the auxilary flag bridge for your use?" Admiral Shtuklar said to General NoDra'ak, moving toward the main holotank.

Thirty harvesters and one hundred eighty-three auxiliary machines had appeared in the outer reaches of the system and were heading in-system at max speed. The Harvesters and the larger of the secondary vessels were already spawning additional vessels.

"I am about to have my hands full," the Admiral said.

General NoDra'ak nodded.

"General NoDra'ak, I hereby release command of the ground forces theater to you," the Admiral said. "At this time my task force does not contain an additional flag officer to coordinate what is about to be a dangerous and deadly battle."

He tapped a few icons in the holotank. "I have to keep these space assets from assisting the ground forces as well as keep them from destroying the Stop Hitting Yourself before it can continue its orbital fire support," Admiral Shtuklar said.

"I accept command," NoDra'ak said. His side hurt, but he was feeling better, the quikheal compounds and the nanite medical bots still working hard. He'd had a bad case of the giggles twice as his brain had misconstrued the healing damage to his skull as breeding and flooded him with euphorics.

"If you'll come with me," one of the Space Force Navy ratings said, motioning at NoDra'ak to follow.

General NoDra'ak slowly tapped his way over to elevator, making room for Commodore Shretsherk, Ensign Rawglishin, and a handful of Space Force Naval officers. As the door to the lift closed General NoDra'ak could hear Admiral Shtuklar snapping out orders, could feel the slight vibration in his ichor marrow from the massive engines of the flagship slowly bringing up power.

As the lift headed toward the auxiliary flag bridge Commodore Shretsherk leaned over.

"Are you sure we should be switching to the aux-com?" they asked.

General NoDra'ak nodded. "The Admiral is about to be engaged in an outer-system space battle, something that I would only be in the way of and he is a consummate professional in that regard. I believe I can run the ground-side operations from the aux-com when the majority of my forces are under some kind of temporal lockdown and can't even hear me right now, much less respond to my orders."

The big Treana'ad sighed. "It's up to the commanders on the ground, Digital Omnimessiah guide them."

Commodore Shretsherk just nodded as the lift continued down.

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The Atrekna were nothing if not ancient and powerful. They did not feel dismay, they did not feel despair, as the temporal resonance cannon killed half them outright and wounded a third of the remainder. They set about crafting shielding and barriers against another such blast and prioritized which section to bring slavespawn in.

The ones pinning down the rampaging primate managed to lock him down again, keep him from breaking free. The massive temporal explosion appeared to have stunned the primate for a moment, allowing the slavespawn to get much closer to the primate than they had been able to previously.

The Atrekna conferred, came to conclusions, and kept pressing their assault upon the planet.

It was in a key position. Its path crossed the path of thousands of cattle worlds, more than a half dozen spawning rings, and more. The temporal tides here were still rippling with the Atrekna manipulations from the First Great Harvest over a hundred million years ago.

They could not allow another impact like they had just suffered to damage the fading temporal constructs built into the gravity/temporal latticework of the planet's 4D structure.

They turned their attention back to their work.

There had yet to be an opponent who could defeat them. They no longer had need of the hyperatomic plane, having perfected their abilities to move through this universe's energetic time stream.

This time there was nowhere to force them back to. No hyperatomic plane to burn. No wormhole to close.

The Atrekna was here.

In this universe.

And it belonged to them.

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"All units report success in restaging to fallback areas," a Corporal said.

Vuxten watched through the external cameras as the wind howled through the duststorm outside. He could feel the pressure building, feel the twisted strange thing he identified as anger.

For the sixth time he heard himself repeat what he was saying to Casey.

"T-Shift," he warned, feeling the pressure grow.

The others in the ad-hoc command center passed the word.

The dust cleared away to reveal forest. Again, explosions sounded out as the new reality intersected with the dug in positions of the First Telkan Marines.

Long minutes passed by. The lake was (again) hit with enhanced FOOF rounds, turning the water into a huge gout of flame as even steam was torn apart into hydrogen and oxygen that was then burned by the hellish chemical mixture.

Spawning pools identified in the previous rotations took rocket hits and thick biomatter pools vanished in the white-blue glare of antimatter.

"684 is reporting in. No status change to shelter or soil. No temporal dislocation eruptions," someone said.

Vuxten just nodded, drumming his fingers on his helmet, his left hand on the hilt of his cutting bar. The chain wrapped around and sunk into the metal of his gauntlet was glowing a deep red and sparks kept popping from beneath his fingertips, but that was the only hint of the stress he felt.

684 had volunteered to be buried in a warsteel sphere four feet wide, padded and cushioned, while wearing full armor with internal atmosphere at a depth of ten feet, same as the drill-moles ran the fiber-optic lines between shelters.

Vuxten was watching eight different target points. There was nothing to mark them, just old growth trees, moss, the local version of ferns, and dirt.

"Third Field Artillery Regiment is firing for effect on allocated targets," someone said.

Vuxten just watched. The shells came in on a flat arc, bursting apart, dropping seismic sensors onto the ground in a carefully designed pattern.

The greenies behind him, including 471, were all watching instruments.

Heavy rounds impacted, the big 11 inch rockets. The warheads detonating with a low krump of low explosive going off.

Vuxten glanced at the window showing the data.

"Borers in position, awaiting coordinates," someone said.

Vuxten clenched his hand slightly, his fingertips scraping on his helmet, purple sparks popping from beneath his armored fingertips.

The greenies cheered, math formula and theories flowing through the air above their heads with rapid flashing emojis.

"Coordinates recieved. Loading. Loading. Locked!" the tech cried out.

Vuxten watched two dozen red lines beginning to converge on each point.

Long minutes slid by.

The lines converged in the right places.

"Deploying munitions," a tech said. "Alpha Series in place."

Arcs of electricity, hair thin, moved silently between Vuxten's fingers as his hand went still. A fat purple spark squirted out from between his palm and the hilt of his chainsword.

"Alpha Series munitions ready, sir," a tech said.

"Bravo Series in place," another said.

The teeth of the chainsword blade embedded on his guantlet began to glow a dark red.

"Fire the Alpha charges, Marine," Vuxten said, his voice ice cold.

"Aye-aye, sir. Firing Alpha Series," the Corporal answered. He pressed the button which would arm the charges and open the 'all units' comlink. "FIRE IN THE HOLE FIRE IN THE HOLE FIRE IN THE HOLE!" his voice was a whipcrack.

He let up off the button.

The Hellfracking charges went off. Rock shattered, crumbled, melted. Thermal expansion was held back a moment by meters of solid rock that was already starting to crack and break from the sudden flexing of the bedrock.

With a roar eight points exploded, nearly a hundred meters wide. Fire roared out, the air, the forest, even the dirt and rock burning.

The Atrekna combat machines, shifted in from the past and hidden below ground, melted in one split second as flame hotter than the surface of a star eagerly devoured their hyperalloys.

Vuxten could feel the pressure.

"T-Shift," he said softly.

Someone passed it on.

He was too focused to really recognize who.

He was entirely focused on the holotank.

The forest shimmered and vanished.

"Bravo Series has made translation. Munitions armed," a tech called out.

"17th Field Artillery is firing," someone else said.

Vuxten watched the lines representing the artillery barrage arc up.

They suddenly terminated only five hundred feet above the artillery unit.

I knew you'd do that, Vuxten thought to himself.

"Fire Bravo Charges, Marine," Vuxten ordered.

Purple lighting crawled up his right arm, from the teeth of the chainsword blade, up his arm, to the eagle on his shoulder, where it danced in the heavy ornate gold plated warsteel.

The Corporal repeated the action.

Vuxten watched the holotank.

Three dozen points in the city suddenly exploded. White hot flame roared out, the edges of the hole slagging and providing fuel for the fire. In one spot the flame devoured its way up a skyraker, exploding from the windows story by story until, in one roaring moment, it ripped through the roof and the skyraker, nearly six thousand feet tall, was a candle topped by roaring white flame.

Vuxten felt it.

The reeling shock.

That it had never happened before meant it could not happen.

When it did, that cold greasy feeling at the edge of his senses recoiled.

The city vanished, flame roaring up.

"T-Shift," he said.

The jungle appeared.

The air itself was still burning, and the jungle erupted into a conflageration, despite the fact that the Atrekna had brought rainclouds and jungle soaked with precipitation.

He opened his mouth.

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Awgwarkawk ducked underneath the swipe of a pale whitish blur as the Enraged Shade swung at her, trying to take her head off. She stabbed forward with her KBar, letting the rage at this thing trying to keep her from ever seeing her ducks again fill her mind, body, her soul

the Kbar.

The shade stumbled back, hands going to its waist as its intestines suddenly spilled out of the gash the Kbar had left from hip to hip.

"GUN READY!" Lieutenant ShrakHark yelled. The Kobold ducked, not fast enough, and the hand passed through the top of her helmet, ripping away part of her feathery crest. The lieutenant grunted and managed to roll clumsily in her powered armor.

Awgwarkawk managed to lunge forward, half climbing in the chair.

She could feel a strange thrumming sound up and down her spinal cord, in her head, as she wrapped her hand around the firing handle.

NO TARGETING SOLUTION

NO TARGET

burned on the Captain's monitor. She looked at the external viewscreen.

The Stop Hitting Yourself was still pointed at the planet.

A shade leapt forward, kneeing her in the crotch, reaching through her armor, wrapping its icy cold spectral hands around her throat, choking off her ability to breathe.

Her pulse was pounding in her head as she slapped the override icon and squeezed the mechanical safety, feeling it unlock.

The specter leaned forward, snarling, silver blood running from the jaws full of meat tearing and bone grinding teeth. His eyes were black pits of forever nothingness and she could see her own reflection in them, as if she wasn't wearing armor.

She pulled the lever back as the shade, all white hazy energy that was somehow able to perfectly show the dead Terran's enraged image, leaned forward, his jaws opening.

The temporal resonance cannon fired. Lights flickered and went out, there was a soft sigh as the holotanks failed and collapsed.

She got her KBar up, putting the edge of the blade under the shade's nose and pushing hard. The blade felt like it was sinking into concrete as it peeled back the shade's nose, exposing its skull.

It hissed and tightened its grip.

Everything was tunneling down as Awgwarkawk brought up her knee, fighting desperately.

I want to see my pretty ducks again, she thought as she dragged her numb and pain filled arm up, put her free hand, which felt like a foreign object on the end of her wrist, on the back of the blade and pushed.

There was a loud THRWANG sound, with a heavy vibration, that seemed to shake everything.

Purple light filled the air.

Awgwarkawk could see, out of the corner of her eye, one of the monitors on the Captain's chair. It showed the primary and secondary reactor drain as the phasic system tried to engage. It overloaded, shut down, rebooted, tried to engage, only to repeat. The secondary reactor was flashing up to full power, but in the half-second it took the phasic system kept surging up, overloading, resetting over and over again.

Nearly a hundred times, faster and faster, in that half-second. The phasic system would try to clear the lines, almost succeed, then fail, the previous surge state would return, and the system would try again.

The purple light flashed crazily, bright as the bridge lights dimmed and went dark.

In the strobing lights Awgwarkawk kneed the shade in the gut again, pushing with one numb hand against the back of her KBar as the shade squeezed tighter and screamed in rage.

The shade she was fighting gave a scream and dissolved.

Awgwarkawk rolled off the Captain's chair, coughing and hacking, tasting blood, but pulling in ever so sweet canned suit air. She realized someone must have fired off the phasic stabilization system before it had fully discharged the previous charge.

She'd take the win.

"Report," she said, her voice a hoarse rasp.

She looked up.

The bridge was full of sprawled bodies.

"Sound off. Is anyone alive?" she asked.

Two hands went up, one shaky and bloody.

Lieutenant ShrakHark pulled herself up. Her faceplate was cracked and sealant had oozed out. She was cradling her arm.

The ensign stood up. His uniform was covered in thick viscous slime that glimmered and steamed. His ear was torn off, blood coursing down the side of his head and neck. His blue and white fur was gray where spectral hands had raked at his face. His helmet was missing as were his gloves. Two of his fingers and part of his palm was missing on his left hand.

"Can't. Kill. Me," the BASS catboy panted.

Awgwarkawk noticed his eyes were glowing a soft red.

"All teams, report," she ordered.

She'd boarded with almost a hundred Marines.

She hoped some were left.

-----------------

Vuxten stood there as the jungle burned when the sky turned white.

The light was sudden, shocking, as multiple phasic detonations happened in the sky.

471 was looking at the drone when it happened.

As the white light cleared he could see his target.

He was in range.

471 slapped the button and the payload aboard the little drone, smaller than he was, went off.

A temporal inversion mortar shell.

----------------

Everyone on the planet heard it.

Everyone paused.

Even the slavespawn.

Dokigirlz whimpered and covered their eyes. Orkboyz shuddered and turned away. The Sisters of Wrath staggered. The Sons of Mars were almost driven to their knees.

A'armo'o, Trucker, and Ekret's tank hulls rang with the sound.

Vuxten staggered from it even as he saw the entire area collapse back into brown dust.

The Dwellerspawn collapsed and convulsed.

The feed from the single surviving drone showed a lone figure standing in a field over overlapping craters each measuring in the hundreds of meters wide.

The roar of rage rang out across the planet.

----------------

It was an enraged bellow. Bottomless fury. Endless hatred.

The Atrekna reeled back as the containment was stressed almost beyond their ability to maintain.

A little green mantid slapped the detonate icon.

The temporal bubble exploded.

The primate's voice roared out.

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IAR SKAL RIFNA OK UPPHIMINN!