Existential Threat: Chapter 17 Part 3 of 3 (Patreon)

A part of him relieved as the civilians started coughing and spitting up the Adraxi spore. It made them easier to handle and get into the movers.

Shells zoomed overhead, Luke traced them by sound into the devil’s pillar mushrooming above. It looked like it was straight up even though the impact point was nearly two kilometers away.

They detonated, he couldn’t see any effect on the pillar, more shells followed, light followed with dull Klamp-thumps several seconds later.

The Adraxi are already starting to turn their drop pods into birthing facilities. We need to keep pushing, save as many people as we can.

He saw the map in his mind’s eye, the markers for the different settlements ahead of them. They had to be faster, move quicker, load them and get going.

He’d had to force more than his fair share along by looking intimidating, not telling them he wasn’t Aer, anything to keep the moving, keep them headed back to safety.

His eyes ran over the mushroom cloud, a terrible thing, its very use sending an ethereal fear up his bones into his brain.

Standing before it, while humanity knew the power of their weapons, quantifed them in numbers, in meters and kilometers, pounds per square inch. It quailed in proportion to what it did in reality. When we start dropping these all over the place, then the time for rescuing will be over.

He turned from the cloud, Orkarans piling aboard movers, others started trudging up the road, anything to get them to safety faster.

They’d been three days behind the Adraxi, and he wasn’t going to let another minute go by that he couldn’t use to help save more of them. The closer they got to the harvesters, the less survivors he’d find.

Luke gritted his teeth and pressed his eyes closed, the bodies in the streets of Ogus, those in the freighters, frantically trying to flee. The servos in his hand whined, he pressed a little bit harder and released with a huff.

A part of him, the part that had been tortured, that had been burned around and reformed on Ogus, in the battlefields against the Adraxi bared its teeth.

“I hope that whatever the Adraxi give prayer to, has mercy upon them, as I have none to give.”

***

Ken patted his hands to clear the dust, his body hurt more than he could remember another time. Everything felt slightly dulled. He rubbed the fur on his face, greasy with dried sweat, the metallic tang of rail-fire coated his tongue and nose.

He pulled out his canteen and drank from it, none of the tang or earthy taste he’d become used to over his life, the bite of something he’d never had before that made his tongue and mouth taste dry, the saltiness and sweetness blending with it.

The new-ness long lost as he pulled out a bar, chewing on it absently, looking at the remains of the city. Some hundred dwellings, the Aer didn’t allow any bigger, a covered market a place for people to meet more than sell their limited stores now missing most of one wall, a hole punched through another.

His eyes dropped to the dead, the ones they’d recovered from the rubble, the living and wounded went with the movers.

He’d taken a picture of each and noted where they’d been found. One of the few jobs they’d taken over from the humans.

Humans. Luke in his heavy armor was standing in a group of others, some short some big like him. Heavies. Ken mentally corrected himself. Each bot was scarred or marred in one way or another, nanites leaving a lighter color behind where they’d been used.

Several times he’d seen wounds that would have killed an Orkaran in armor hit the bots, showing their mechanical interiors. The humans would get up and keep fighting if they could, even without limbs, joking about it afterwards.

Even those with grievous wounds could be quickly repaired, or they came back in a new bot. If not for the visor showing their names I’d never recognize who they are.

“We heading out?” Per asked, sitting down next to Ken, he studied the human huddle, having heard her walk up for a few minutes.

“Soon, I think we’re waiting on the new fighters.”

“The humans hardly need us,” Per threw a stone at a broken home.

Ken flicked his ears in agreement, grunting as he’d heard the humans do, it felt novel and right. “They are efficient in the ways of fighting. I always feel that I am three steps behind what is happening and they are already planning five steps ahead of what is going on now.”

Per threw another rock, Ken watched where it landed, leaning against roofing timbers.

“I was talking to some of them, they said that this is their job.”

“A tough job,” Ken pitied them.

“They were not assigned to it as we were by the Aer, they chose to take it. They could have been like the engineer builders, the ones that fly above us and those that litter the sky with white trails,” She waved up at the cross-hatched sky with a pebble and tossed it, shifting her feet rock against rock, finding a new stone to throw.

“They even have miners, people that create food, they are paid to do so, they are bound to service for a time, but afterwards they might leave and do anything else they want. Most times they can leave their service as long as they have reasons.”

“They wanted to fight?” Ken’s ears dipped and straightened, tapping his fingers on the rock he sat.

“You did.” Per rolled a rock in her hands. “I did,” She said, quietly, throwing the rock lazily, searching for another.

“I did to take down the Aer, so that we might live a better life. Then I did it to save us from the Adraxi.”

“This is not their first fight against the Adraxi, there are even other humans that wish to fight them.”

Ken pressed his fingers into the stone. “So now we have to worry about their enemies as well.”

“Is that so bad? They are the ones that have helped us.”

“For us to help them, we would need to be as good as them. They are going to give us the Sphere World, how much must they have to give us such a thing freely? We would need to learn how to fight, then would they not be scared we would attack them?”

“Well we could join them, take a job with them,” Per said.

“A job with them?”

“They hire people, ask them to join them, they offer them money and benefits to do so, then they train them up for their task.”

“They have no Orkaran among their ranks.”

“We fight alongside them brother, is it so hard to think they would hire us? That we might learn the ways to wage war, the human way to pilot starships and mine?”

Ken opened his mouth and closed it. “I have been focused on what we do next, on our actions. I did not think of the future.” He looked at the group of humans breaking apart, trading fist bumps, one hip checked another. They chose to be here.

Even in the chaos the humans kept their heads, communicated in terse words that were starting to mean more to Ken but seemed to be another part of language between humans beyond their normal conversations.

“They are another race, from another star system, but I feel closer to them than most of our own people. I trust leader Luke to watch out for us, I trust Scalia to throw out a joke, for Shiro and the medics to heal our people. I don’t want to let them down and want us to prove ourselves.”

Ken pushed off the timbers, leaning his hands on his knees, his helmet facing him on the ground, rim down as Moose had told him.

His rifle next to him, an extension of himself, something never out of hand’s reach as the other humans had drilled into him and his people, snatching away weapons from those too far from them.

He touched stipling on his armored vest where shrapnel that would have torn through his clothes and him merely marred the surface. How he’d kept fighting, shooting, not wanting to let the others down, even if he died.

“An Orkaran Legionnaire,” He tapped the helmet, looking up at the sound of a heavy walking down the street.

“Reinforcements in ten minutes, then we’re heading to the next town,” Luke said.

“Yes squad leader,” Ken rose, pulling energy from somewhere, clamping his rifle to his chest and pulling on his helmet.

“Good man,” Luke patted him on the shoulder. “All good for food and water?”

“The water tastes good.” Per said.

“Engineers added in some basic vitamins, salt and sugars that worked with your biology.” Is that what you’re eating?” Luke pointed at the last of the bar in Ken’s hand.

“Yes,”

“You got enough for everyone?”

“We have different kinds, there should be enough,” Ken nodded.

“I’ll see if we can get you anything more substantial than that.” Luke tilted his head, listening, Ken’s ears moved in his helmet, detecting the murmurs of movers approaching.

“Nice, we’re getting two more squads of regulars with your fighters. We’ve got more settlements to save.”

[Victory]

[You have Captured Orkana-Harvester One]

“Eat that you Adraxi fucks!” A bot yelled in the distance.

“Gert Rickty rekt bitches!”

Luke shook his head. “That should really open up the air corridor to bring down reinforcements. Command is going to level part of the mountain range to create a corridor between us and the nearest landing area so we can get ships and more.”

“Level?”

“They’re going to fire weapons into some of the small rises, break them apart so that the Harvester over here can’t shoot down our ships easily.”

“We got civvies coming in!” Kaalim called out on the general chat with a marker.

Luke started jogging towards the road where the marker was laid down. Ken followed him, Per behind, shoving her helmet on, clamping her rifle down.

The road ran straight through the town,  people let out cries as they saw Orkarans on the building wearing armor and holding weapons.

They moved into the town.

“Load the old, the young and those coughing up spores on the movers. The others get them moving up the road staying to one side towards the facility,” Luke said.

Ken nodded and set to his work.

Luke tilted his head to the side, standing still, moving slightly, talking to someone on a different channel.

“New orders.” He broadcast on the general channel. “We’ve got armor and squads heading for us, they’ll drop in and we’re to push for Mining City Thirty Four Bravo direct. Recon is saying that there are Adraxi in the area, they picked up weapons fire.”