Existential Threat: Chapter 21 Part 1 of 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 21:

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“Moose, give Hotel a little bit of help there,” Luke called out, the light of morning peeking through the stripped forest, illuminated by several hellbores firing.

“On it,” Moose bounded forward firing his machine gun, battering back the fire of the Adraxi, giving Hotel cover to re-organize and go on the attack.

The fighting had burned through the night, the city brought low by the rounds that missed.

A dance of movement, squads, artillery and weaponry. Luke had sunk into the heart of it. Reading the fight by the tone of his squad leaders, the movements on his maps.

“Slow it down on the push squad leaders, don’t want to be running into our own artillery,” Luke blinked against his gritty eyes.

The tubes were running hot and he wanted to rest them as long as possible incase of another push.

Tracers cut out of a small rise.

Luke fired back with several others, rounds covering the hill. Remains of the Adraxi drifted back to the ground. Luke watched the front and kept moving, the region into pock-marked craters.

He played the map in his vision, being just ten kilomteres away from the harvester the Dropships were out until they could provide them air cover. The ships dropped off their reinforcements, having to ride tanks, or movers up to the front.

“Here on your left,” Another Company leader contacted him directly.

“Good to have you, sit rep?”

“Ran into Adraxi using the tunnels, had to break them up and keep moving, lost about a fifth, left squads back to get what they can back online. We’re fresh.”

“Reinforce out tankers, chat to Item’s leader Akran and Juliette squad leader Yi, they’ve been slogging it out over there. We’ve turned the city behind us into a rough firebase, you need ammo, grab it there.

Luke narrowed his eyes, sensing movement he didn’t see. He raised his rifle, vision zoomed in, picking out an Adraxi running along a bank.

They were thrown back by the rounds.

“Understood, we got you.”

“Thanks Four-Five,” Luke bit back a yawn. “Akran, Yi, new company linking up with you, get them slotted in and aware.”

“Yes boss,” Yi said.

“Item copies,” Akran said.

“Straighten out your lines, curving in like a damn boomerang,” Luke muttered on command chat.

Units started moving, spreading out and coming into a line. Squads organizing back into formation.

“Ammo!” Someone yelled on local.

Luke checked his counters in the yellow, dropping to a knee.

“What’s on the menu?”

He locked in and fired, unleashing a stream of rounds, hosing anything that appeared to move, jumping from spot to spot.

“Vee Twos and threes.” The bot yelled over the fire, dumping the boxes in the mud and pulling on the ammunition feeders on Luke’s back.

“Nice, only the best.”

“You guys and gals are spitting it out as fast as we can feed the factories,” The man laughed, he slapped the boxes in place.

Luke’s counter started to go up as he went back to bursts.

“We got a wave incoming,” Ichika called out on the air-support channel.

“Hold your ground!” Luke called out on company chat.

Tanks engines howled, Bots ran through the mud, each finding the best fighting positions.

Luke checked his artillery, and the mass moving towards his front lines in the early night, the rain pouring on them all.

He threw up marker templates and keyed the artillery command.

“Get me a hammer dropped on these bastards, with a roll-up afterwards.”

“Time to hit?”

“Thirty seconds?”

“Can do, inputting.”

The rate of fire started to climb as the Luke’s ammunition counter stopped rising, the containers pulled back from his back and sealed back up.

“You’re good to go.”

“Might be best to get some cover,” Luke surfaced from his maps.

“You’re the boss,” The man grabbed his rifle and laid down at the edge of the creek Luke kneeled in.

“Hey Echo, alright, get ready to soften them up as they move forward, arty in twenty.”

“Sounds good,” Moose said.

“This thing is more of a grenade launcher than a machine gun,” Fin said.

“Its called awesome,” Jynx said.

Luke rolled his eyes.

“Shiro you been keeping an eye on the wounded?”

“All good, wounded are being replaced faster than we lose them.”

“Nice, supply Fin?”

“They turned the city behind us into a supply depot, dropships still won’t fly through the forests, get a tree in their engines. Movers have taken it up, but they’re getting bogged in mud here and there. Means we have a lot of runners moving up supplies.”

“I think we suggest to higher that it’d be a good idea to hit the clouds with silver bullets when we’re not fighting under it,” Luke stretched in his suit. “Here they come.” His voice conversational on the company chat.

Weapons fire climbed, Luke added in bursts, turning to full cyclic. Tanks fired co-ax and hellbores, bots machine guns adding to the streams of tracers cutting over the uneven woodland.

Adraxi ran and fired at the same time.

King crabs ran on shorter legs, staying low to the ground as the fired back.

A tank went up in a gout of flame. Bots torn up in a spray of tracers.

“Missiles, Missiles, Missiles!” Ichika grunted out.

“Interceptors online!” Luke yelled, a line of tracers connected him with the forward Adraxi forces.

Missiles fired out from the boxes on his shoulder, on the tanks dropped from the wings of circling Hellcats.

The thump of their engines pushed him into the ground.

They caught out missiles in the sky, close enough for the pressure wave to rock the ground in bots.

Interceptors crossed overhead, their engines casting shadows over the trees.

“The hell did that come from?”

“Harvester,” Sally’s split AI said.

“Great, now they have nuclear artillery too.”

Artillery shells fired at several times and different angles, landed as one, right in the teeth of the Adraxi, followed by wave after wave of barrages, marching through the Adraxi, killing most.

Some stumbled through, punch-drunk, others clawing out of the dirt.

Luke Fired at them.

“Advance!”

Squads started to bound forward again.

“Well that was fun, I’ll see what I can do about that tank,” the bot who’d reloaded Luke said.

“Good luck.” Luke rose up and jogged forward, in a few hours at most, the tank would be re-armed and built, on the front once again.

Dawn came, sunlight spilling through the trees, what was left of them. The black rain continued, washing the withered trees, green shoots stuck out defiantly from the ground, the planet fighting back against the Adraxi hold over it.

“Contact!” A squad leader screamed out, markers coming up.

Luke hit a mapped hotkey, turning those markers to artillery requests. The light went green as artillery pivoted and fired on the markers all before Luke hit the ground scanning away from where the fire was coming, watching for the flank.

Crabs, disguised as boulders, crouched down in the mud fired, Adraxi machine guns opened up.

Bots were cut down, others scrambled for cover. Two tanks were destroyed, still traversing their turrets.

One got off a round.

Luke fired into the biggest pockets of tracers he could find, leaving chunks and altered landscapes.

Artillery screamed over head as squads moved independently, gathering their wounded, pushing the attack and coordinating with one another.

A missile launcher hit another crab disguised as a boulder, punching through one side, splitting its shells as the explosion bloomed out the other side in a spray of super-heated plasma and gas.

Artillery markers popped up, Luke gave them a half-glance. Kirmani’s.

Luke focused on firing into the Adraxi, feeling the units shift and move.

“Oscar, Tango Sierra, hold position there, X-ray and Yankee push!”

Bots charged as tanks piled in the fire, finding firing positions, heavies machine guns covered their smaller brethren as artillery made land fall with ground shaking effect.

Rounds raked bot lines and missiles dropped from the sky, interceptors shot out to meet them, battering those on the ground, sending a few bots sprawling.

“Divers!”

Leave my fucking tanks alone!

Luke tapped the hellcat support line, some might call it aerial support channel. “One eight hundred divers.”

“On our way,” A wing leader snapped back.

“Copy!”

The divers swooped down, quad guns tearing up the ground.

“Getting pushed here,” Zulu said. Luke scanned the map, the red dots of Adraxi, diamonds for crabs.

“Mike, November, move to support Zulu. Engi’s get those auto’s up.”

Interceptors snapped out, cutting through the sky.

A wave of tracers cut over the bots and tanks. And first Orkaran is in the fight, reckless fuckers.

“X-Ray, Yankee, hold position, don’t get too far, form a firebase there, Oscar, Tango Sierra prepare to move up to them, check with one another.”

Divers targeted the Orkaran movers, nearly unrecognizable from their old role. Armor had been slapped on over every surface, the bed had firing slits cut into it for the machine guns poking out. Interceptor boxes or heavy turrets that belonged on a Dropship were strapped to the roof, dueling with the divers.

Luke’s bursts climbed into auto-fire as he raked Adraxi pushing against his own forces.

Artillery hammered the ground ahead slowing instead of stopping the Adraxi. Each round wiped out the noise of everything else, the ground jumping with each devastating impact.

“Hellcats coming in,” The wing leader said over local.

The turrets lowered their point of aim to the Adraxi on the ground, adding their fire to his own. Air-eating engines whistles turned into a growl and scream as heavy machine guns chattered, explosive rounds cracking off overhead as missiles were let loose like greyhounds from a gate, inhaling for a split second and then going off in a fzzzst racing to meet the divers.

A diver detonated over the trees, another crashed through them, exploding on impact.

Luke checked move markers by different squads and added in his own.

Auto-turrets rose up from the craters and cover they’d been setup in. Sweeping the skies for incoming enemy rounds and raking enemy positions.

A tank lanced a King-crab with its hellbore, cutting through it before its sublimation explosion filled the area, a secondary explosion of the energy that passed through, crashing into a boulder and venting itself.

“Recon is showing movement from here to the Harvester. You’ve run into their main force,” Kirmani said on the command chat. Luke added a sensor rod request and repeaters.

“Command has other companies creating firebases, we’re going to leap-frog companies forward, push where you can, but don’t get isolated.”

It wasn’t pretty or heroic, but it would get the job done.

“Rolling artillery barrage coming from on far, three minutes. Push up through it, organize your lines, dig in, once the firebases are up then we’ll move again.”

Sensor rods rained down upon the battlefield, skewering unlucky Adraxi.

Tanks fired at the caves like underground vines, punching through many as the caves collapsed into rubble filled ravines.