Existential Threat: Chapter 1 Part 2 of 2 (Patreon)

“Advance by fireteams,” Luke called out, giving them time to prepare.

“Fireteam one advance,”

Jynx, Moose and himself moved forward in ground eating lopes, coming to a crouch.

Luke scanned and checked the advance, watching ahead of the lighter bots. The calls of moving and covering at the back of his mind. Weeks of leap-frogging and the rich mix of air fed into his net-suit reducing the effort.

He used his rounds conservatively, corralling Adraxi and placing his rounds among the most effective units that were focused on the lighter bots at the front.

Breaking their fire the bots moved up, bots reclamation systems repairing them. The medics working with only the most severe cases, using nanites like spray-foam over damage, reloading new silver ampules.

Luke checked his map as he ran forward, trusting the others to cover him. “Dropships are bringing armored reinforcements.”

“Nice, we got a good push going on,” Moose said.

“Yeah groups are working together, nukes make it all the easier,” Fin said.

“King!” Someone yelled out.

The mottled eight-legged tank fired its main turret into the advancing bots, rising to expose its secondary turrets, spitting out tracers that cut through bots.

Luke selected V-2 (APFE) the Armor piercing Fusion Explosive struck hit the heavy tank’s armor, the penetrator in the middle activating the fusion payload, which detonated, hurling the penetrator through the beast as the equivalent of one hundred and forty tones of explosive went off inside the beast. It’s turret and legs blew out, the fireball melting the ground as it collapsed.

Luke kept firing. Pockets of infantry disappeared, misses caused the ground to fountain up, like some beast rising in an ocean.

Nothing shot or twitched.

>Loading AP rounds

“Advance!” Luke rose up, jogging toward the rise.

“Hold at the rise, cover the incoming armor,” Command Chat called out.

Luke threw up a marker. “Hold at the rise.”

“Gotcha,” Jynx said, barely sounding out of breath.

Luke got to the rise, using one hand and an arm to move forward till he couldn’t get any further without peeking his head over.

“How’s things looking?” Luke asked on local, kneeling and shuffling forward.

“They’re broken up but advancing, smoke’s thinning out too,” a gunner commented, firing in bursts at unseen enemies.

Luke raised his rifle and looked over the rise.

The valley spread out into an Adraxi-consumed forest Luke’s 12.7 mm AP shells laid down a line of tracers ripping through Adraxi groupings.

His missile block clicked into position, red markers turning flashing orange, interceptors ripple-firing as he added his fire to the line.

Space the shots, hundred meters between. His rifle’s blast threw back the dirt around him as he Kaalimed his fire, extending it out with each pass.

>Loading V-3 Area Denial (AD) rounds

His ammo counter blinked red as the ammunition feed sucked everything back into his storage switched and loaded him again.

Dropships howled behind him, missiles cutting out into the sky.

“What they firing interceptors for?” Luke asked on local, his V-3s blotting out four hundred meter wide sections of the ground ahead. Fireballs threw out blast waves clearing trees, Adraxi and even crabs if it was a near-hit. Anything within the fire ball was unrecognizable.

He hit a king crab, unable to even see where the parts had gone.

“Adraxi launched nukes back at us,” a medic said, using her repair tool to fill a hole in a bot’s head, ejecting an empty ampule and loading another from her belt before grabbing her rifle.

“Huh,” Luke never stopped firing.

“Any second now they’ll call the ad-“

“Bots, push forward by squads! Alphas first, then Bravos, check displays, Heavies hold,” Command Chat interrupted Jynx.

“See.”

Luke snorted. They’d got the flow of the fight, the push and pull.

“Changing to one’s again,” Luke ducked down, changing ammo types, the ground rumbling, a tank moving up between him and Shiro.

Thick blow-out armor, auto-turrets mounted on all four sides. It settled to the ground, driving arms into the stone. A chromed looking rail-cannon that ran through the turret, the rear of the weapon sticking out the rear.

“Fuck me, they brought the hell-bores.”

“Well, that modified Harvester is what, three kilometers away?” Fin guesstimated.

“You think?” Shiro asked.

“Shit I’d try it, if we can hit them from here,” Luke shrugged as his weapon went green.

Dropships came through the smoke, creating eddies that swirled behind them, interceptors mounted under their wings and their upper turret replaced with a large pod of the small and fast missiles. Their twin mounted heavy machineguns fired over the troops into the forest beyond.

“Shit they’re tearing them up,” Shiro whistled.

“Hit anything that makes it past their fire, command is having the bots get stuck into firing positions and hold,” Luke read the symbols with half an eye. V2’s fired at a rate of hundreds per minute laid waste to the forest as the dropships released the armor mounted to their bellies, and turned, their machine gun turrets firing all the way back into the smoke.

Dozens of tanks rolled up to the rise, their turrets rotating, and lowering, aiming nearly straight at the harvester.

“Artillery inbound, forty seconds!” Command chat registered. “All tanks, fire.”

Luke staggered against the shock wave, several dozen lines of red cored white lanced through the air, a blink and it was as gone as fast as it burned. The auto filters scaling back.

A shiver rose from the middle of his shoulders, tensing every muscle, raising the hairs all the way up to the base of his skull and covering his head.

“Holy shit,” Moose summarized.

“Fuckers got blinded,” Jynx forced out. Adraxi rolled on the ground holding their eyes, he fired two shots into the area, and checked the harvester.

Shells ejected out the back of the tanks, smoking, melting metal.

Tank heat plants opened, radiating air-distorting waves.

“Keep up the pressure, thirty five seconds till arty,” Luke snapped his mind back to the moment, checking his arcs and firing at clumps of red-outlined Adraxi markers. The Adraxi push just limited numbers, most confused and blinded.

“Tanks, fire,” A gruff voice came over local chat.

Twenty The hell-bores nuclear payload sent a shockwave through the tank, its grounding supports absorbing the shock as all the power of four hundred and eighty thousand megawatts of energy were directed out the cannon’s barrel, pure focused energy.

They had to make the barrel forty centimeters wide, not for the round, but so that they could spread out the energy that it had to contain.

All the noise one heard was from the cannon firing and the hiss as energy burned through everything in its path.

He could command artillery that dropped nuclear storms upon his foes, fired nuclear fusion bombs that cleared out hundreds of meters. He’d seen the ship version hellbores, there was little to see but the impact and the melted furrow burned into a scrap asteroid.

This seemed wrong it seemed terrifying burning through the planet’s atmosphere but fuck if it didn’t feel powerful.

A laugh escaped Luke’s lips. Fuck with us now Adraxi.

“Brace, brace brace!”

“Here we go again,” Fin sighed.

“Bored with the arty?” Luke held his rifle with his righ arm, leaning forward and bracing with the left.

“They get all the fun!”

The laughter was blasted away by light and noise going on for several seconds.

“Recover!”

“Dirt’s never gonna come out at this point,” Moose complained.

Dirt fell from Luke’s armor, artillery rounds continued their rolling barrage just past the front-line.

Flashes bloomed into thundering mushrooms, waves of force distorting their fellows.

“Hold positions, orbital strike incoming,” Command Chat interrupted everyone.

“Rods from the gods coming in,” Luke said.

“Love a good light show,” Fin said.

“Forty minutes, thought we’d be in here all day,” Moose said.

“Fourth mission of the day, we got anymore after this one?” Shiro asked.

“Nope, off for the rest of the day, though we’re on repairs tomorrow.”

“Kinda wished it went longer,” Moose muttered.

“I’m up for a few more games, there’s a few human on human fights going on if you wanna join?” Jynx asked.

“That could be sweet, anyone else?”

“I’m going to knock off,” Luke said, tilting his head up at the streaks that cut through the atmosphere above.

“Got some work to catch up on,” Fin grumbled “Want to get ahead.”

“I’ll stay for a few games. We have that training mission next week right?” Shiro asked.

“Yeah, it’ll be human on human, that’s all I know,” Luke said. The Adraxi push had slowed to nearly nothing.

The streaks of light could be followed by the streamers of vapor, connecting with the Harvester. Light blossomed into dust in the tens, then the hundreds.

“And there we go,” Shiro said.

“Been hearing people saying that we’re training against one another because the next group we fight isn’t going to be Adraxi but one another,” Moose was quiet, contemplative.

The silence stretched.

“If they attack us,” Luke let the tired but determined threat hang there.

“If they want to fight, I’ll give them a fucking fight,” Jynx growled.

Murmuers of agreement ran through the chat.

“Just wish that they weren’t all being such idiots. Guess that’s what happens when people who never fired a round in anger, or are holding onto their position for no other reason than to fulfill their ego, get power,” Moose said,

The wall where the purple smoke of Adraxi spores and the wall of burnt out spores advanced, slowly, then faster and faster.

“Nice, Command posts are pushing back the spores. Should be an easy cap,” Luke shifted as much as his net suit would let him.

[Victory]

“Good game everyone, nice coordination and communications. Well played and easily won. You’ve earned your rest troops,” Foster’s voice passed through the general chat.

“Alrighty, I’ll catch you all later, good game and work, made that easy,” Luke said.

“Good game, did well on keeping everything supplied and coordinated advance,” Jynx said.

“Agreed,” Moose said.

“Catch you later,” Shiro said.

“Peace!” Fin yelled.

Luke went through menu’s his vision clearing as his vision cleared and his helmet opened, smelling the hot plastics, the cool air of the heat management system and the smell of fresh metals and fabrics. Thinking on what Moose had said.

The Federation and Sol are pushing more than ever since we started selling Sphere World tech to our allies. He let out a breath through his nose. Trying to figure out the future was a fool’s game.