Existential Threat: Chapter 18 Part 1 of 1 (Patreon)

Chapter 18:

13/07/2242

Foster looked out of the command center, dropships carrying tanks, containers and bots burned for the mountain range, Hellcats surrounding them protectively.

Supports on its way now Luke.

He studied his Army commanders, each with the better part of nine hundred thousand under their command. Not including the air units.

He spared Ichika a look with her flight commanders, just three of the twenty people in the conversation with him inside the command post, the others at different command posts or on the net.

“Alright, we’ve rung their bell twice on the ground, now they’re going to start paying attention to their newest neighbors. We’re encountering heavy resistance against the Eastern Drop Carrier. First, through to fifth armies I want you to find ways down to support the elements in the south. Clean up that last harvester and orbital scans show there’s several locations we can use to cross the mountains easily. Sixth to  Twelfth Army will continue to push the Eastern mountains between us and the drop Carrier. Adraxi have created defensive positions and we need to clear them out and get across. Thirteenth to Twentieth Armies, you have the un-enviable job of clearing out the islands and then pushing west to hit the Drop Carrier. More armies are making landfall every minute, but it is a slog across this place. Adraxi are breeding like, well Adraxi,” The rough joke garnered a few chuckles. “We can’t let up now. With those harvesters down we still have their ground units to deal with. These bastards are smart. We’ve had supposedly feral Adraxi reform and hit us in the ass already. Leave none of them alive.”

His eyes flicked between generals nodding. “Reinforcements are dropping constantly. Work with them, there are still billions of Adraxi out there.”

“Supply situation?” Seventh Army commander asked.

“You all know the supply issues we are running into. Thankfully the locals have some ingenious ways to get around with a lack of resources that we’ve put to use. We have a constant supply drip coming from the fleet, but I want everyone focused on what we can do down here on the ground. Adraxi breed as well in water as they do on the ground. That Drop Carrier is spreading like wildfire. The First Harvester had consumed three islands before actions on the ground orbital bombardment support could put it down.” Foster grabbed onto the front of his tunic. “I know you want the fleet to smash these ships into the ground. We have to take out the defensive stations and weaken the ships themselves. If we don’t then we have to devote so much fire power to each target that the other ships don’t have to throw as much to stop the fleet hitting them. Then they can grow up more grunts instead of missiles, or worse their damn diver creatures. We still don’t have full command post coverage. This is where we knuckle down.”

“Understood sir,” Seventh Army commander said.

“As you move to your staging positions I want you seeding firebases. Twentieth to Twenty fifth armies will be focused on moving through the terrain and clearing out any remaining Adraxi. We know they like to hide their bio-printers. Clear them out so we don’t have a small army trying to stab us in our ass.”

“We’ll get it done.”

***

Dana stood infront of her chair, watching the hologram of the planet Orkana, of the system Orkanis.

Hellcats and drop ships burned through atmosphere, entering and exiting. They stayed clear of the harvesters, and Drop Carrier, getting below their horizons and spreading out to their areas of operation.

Hellcats flying so low they were complaining about the trees scuffing up their paint engaged the new divers, gathered detailed sensor information and engaged Adraxi forces in the open.

Rail cannons across the fleet kept up their monotonous fire, seeding the planet with A-bombs detonating over the cities, towns and areas where Orkaran lived. Other rounds contained repeaters, creating a temporary networks, boosting the command post signal. Leblanc and her people picked out the highest and hardest terrain features to land them on.

Other rounds were packed with sensors giving updated target data the crudest, compressed and depleted materials were flung free from their orbital insertion vehicle, spreading out and arcing to crash into Adraxi defense systems, laser, spitter and nuclear. An endless barrage. Her fleets orbited the planet, spread out to cover the entire planet, several Adraxi landings had already been reduced to craters, guns targeting the larger landings.

Atmospheric entries littered the upper atmosphere, contrails of dropships and hellcats transitioning from carrier to ground and back. Ash rained over the areas where repeaters and A-bombs went off. Purple fog covering the Adraxi controlled areas.

Where one could see the ground it was left untouched, or ravaged.

Though it took half a day to push the landing.

“Ground forces are requesting evacuation for Orkaran civilians,” Ayambe said.

“We’re going to need somewhere for them to go,” Dana looked around the symbols.

“One of the large freighters has been converted to a mass transport with medical facilities. Four others are being converted too.”

“Seems that supply is become omniscient.” They’d been one step ahead, anticipating her needs before she knew them. Dana checked the ammunition counters, they hadn’t fluctuated even with the constant bombardment of the planet.

Once the civilians were cleared then she’d be able to use her strongest weapons.

She keyed a chat with Diego.

“What’s the status of the Orkanis Sphere World?”

“We’ve re-sealed the station, got the factories up and running again, the supply people took that over to make supplies needed for clearing the planet. There was thankfully a lot of water, air and other stuff in storage so we can use that to hold people. The habitable decks are under spin to the Orkana normal. We just fired everything back up and its mostly working.”

“What else?”

“The Orkaran Aer caste blew out the old Sphere World servers under the command center, killing it. Then they gutted the station, took some yards, ships and ran. That’s who were in the Ilsun system. Sally is pissed.”

Diego dropped his voice lower, signalling his words were between them.

“They turned their home planet into a resource world, faming for food and mining for materials this place is a fricking paradise compared to what we’re seeing on the ground. We’re rebuilding the servers for a Sally clone to get in and clean it up, pull out the information we need, should have profiles on the creatures to make healing them easier.”

“Let me know what you find out from the info dump, we’ll have the large freighters transporting wounded and Orkaran to you as soon as possible.”

“Understood, I can get that setup and hand over to one of your commanders. Been keeping Commander Rellick in the loop.”

“Understood, guess you want to get back to your shiny new Dreadnought?”

“Ah, wouldn’t say no, and most of this is just admin.”

“And you’re famous for your patience with administrative paperwork.”

“Just the case.”

“Very well, start taking your ships back out into the cold again, once you are sure things are good and in Miss Rellick’s hands you can jump out bots, can you and Jung-Su sort our watch rotation so we have two fleets active at all times?”

“Can do.”

“Thank you Diego.”

Dana cut the channel.

“Klinsky, get a rotation set up to take the freighters back to the sphere world and back again based on Orkana gravity.”

“Supply has got one dialed in.”

“Well they really do think of everything,” Dana raised an eyebrow to Ayambe. Leblanc still expressionlessly moving through firing solutions, trying to pick out a weakness in the Adraxi pattern.

“The orbital docks were smart, they’ve already got factory runs going to build more items here instead of worrying about collecting them from across known space. Masterful bit of command and communication,” Ayambe said.

“Sphere World tech makes supply much easier to deal with, but engineers and supply officers, they keep us rolling so we can worry about the fighting instead of how hard we fight,” Dana said.

“Phoenix ships are moving away from the Sphere World, they’ve submitted plans to transition through Dark Space sites back to their holding pattern,” Ayambe said.

“Understood,” Several of her own ships, mostly smaller craft that didn’t have the railguns or the power necessary to drop spinner orbital impactors, Corvettes and Destroyers had taken up positions around the Sphere World.