You fight because you feel there is no choice.
I fight to rage against the darkness.
We are not the same. - Private Samuel Lerxit, Solarian Iron Dominion Armed Forces, Active Army, Mar-gite Siege of Cygnus-Orion, colorized
Vice-Tyrant Admiral Kra'akenwulf had one of his four hands against the armaglass of the Show Bridge, staring into the inky blackness strewn with pinpricks of stars. There were flashes here and there as the massive Mar-gite constructs hidden by distance. Even then, if he squinted, he could see some of them, their massive size negating distance's ability to hide them.
A bright white flash with an electric blue core suddenly devoured one of the Mar-gite constructs close enough and large enough to be the size of the last part of his thumb. When the flash cleared there was the strange feeling of his vision being pulled at, like foam being pulled down a bathtub drain.
Then it cleared up.
He moved over and looked at the holotank.
There was discussions between the two massive automated super-heavy combat ships.
Vice-Tyrant Admiral Kra'akenwulf shook his head. They were bigger than super-dreadnaughts, bigger than monitors, bigger than anything he had ever thought possible outside of the Precursor Autonomous War Machines.
He had seen one once. Its cores dead. Drifting endlessly. It was old tech, not worth risking violence with any of the autonomous robots still inside the continent sized hulk. It had been nearly 8,000 miles long, fifteen hundred miles thick, six thousand miles wide.
The massive Odin was nearly eight hundred miles long and fifteen miles wide. The barrels of the guns extended from the open jaws of the screaming skull were measured in the tens of meters. The whole thing bristled with guns.
Having seen the Mar-gite try the spear trick, Vice-Tyrant Admiral Kra'akenwulf also had learned that Odin's battlescreens were dark purple and black, with heavy runic script.
Twenty spears had hit the massive warship in one massive, convulsive attack. Not one had even managed to get the powerful battlescreens to even flicker.
In the holotank there was a flicker.
"Communications request from Odin, sir," he heard.
"Put it through," Vice-Tyrant Admiral Kra'akenwulf ordered.
The tank rippled and what stood there would have made Kra'akenwulf take a step back or perhaps even become physically ill not very long ago.
Again, the cutesy looking anime girl dressed in a white uniform with a blue jacket secured by a white belt. Her face was bloodless and slightly blue, with skin torn away to reveal the teeth of her jaw, the socket of her eye, and her skull on one side. Her uniform was damaged on that side, scorched and torn. She held a crop in one hand and stared with burning red eyes.
"Your ground forces need reinforcements," the girl said, her voice bubbling and choking.
He could hear the whistle of a punctured lung.
"They are calling for reinforcements and considering calling up the last of the reserves, yes," Kra'akenwulf said.
"I can deploy troops," Odin said. "I have three Armies ready to go. Mission configurable drop pods as well as dropship and striker support."
"Three armies? Why not just one Army?" Kra'akenwulf asked.
"Ground forces, Admiral. Pardon. Mistranslation. Updating," the girl said. She ducked her chin for a second then looked back up. "Three Field Armies, each with five Corps. One for each planet."
"Musashi has deployed troops, as have the Neko Marines and the Empire," Kra'akenwulf said. He held up his hand to show he wasn't done. "But planets are large and the Mar-gite have landed billions of troops."
He heaved a deep breath.
"I accept your generous offer," Kra'akenwulf said.
Odin merely started at him for a long moment. Finally, she used the tip of her crop to push the brim of her hat up slightly.
"Be warned, Vice-Tyrant. I do not bring cat-girls whimsical in their violence. I do not bring the short baked clones of Musashi. I do not bring the troops of the Empire. I do not bring what you have seen with the others. I am older than Musashi," she leaned forward. "What I bring is terrible to behold."
"Save my people, Odin, and I will worry about the price I must pay afterwards," Kra'akenwulf said.
He faintly heard behind him the officer on sensors report that another large group of Mar-gite constructs had just warped into the system.
"Save as many as you can," he pleaded.
The living dead anime girl nodded. She closed her eyes for a second, her command lancing out into the massive battleship's computer system.
Deep inside the labyrinth that made up her internal spaces, objectives, maps, weapon training, armor training, vehicle training, was all hot loaded into the brains of the Marines inside the ship. The Marines went to warming up as they were slotted into the droppods, the dropships, into whatever else was needed.
Kra'akenwulf watched as Odin suddenly began firing pods.
May those who come after me understand what dark purpose led me to making the decisions I make here, Kra'akenwulf thought.
0-0-0-0-0
Buildings had collapsed during the long hellish night and with rising sun it was almost as if the weight of the breaking dawn was too much for other buildings and they began collapsing. Volunteer Az'zkykrmo'o had counted at least four atomics going off, the high-tech advanced polymers and alloys of modern construction resisting the weapons to some extant.
It was no longer around repelling the Mar-gite and keeping them from damaging anything.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
It was about saving the people in the shelters.
Not that Volunteer Az'zkykrmo'o was thinking about any of that.
The Log Base at 12th and Broadsword had turned out to be a NoGo. Before Azzy's little squad could reach it they got overrun by the Mar-gite.
Azzy had been one of the Volunteer Conscripts that had moved through the cleared parking lot and shot the Mar-gite point blank in the center of their central mass. True, it overpenetrated and hit the concrete underneath, sending shards slashing at both the Mar-gite and the victim.
But he'd seen it didn't matter.
"But, Sergeant, what if they're alive?" Vee Dizzy asked.
Staff Sergeant Breaker stared at Dizzy for a long moment before shifting his rifle to his left hand. He reached down with his right hand, grabbed the end of the 'arm' right below the closed calcite orb that protected the eye, and yanked.
With a biological sticky sound it ripped up.
Embedded in the Mar-gite was a Puntimat.
Or rather...
what was left of her.
The fur at the 'edges' where her flesh met the Mar-gite's was stripped away, as was the flesh. Azzy could see veins and tendrils of tissue. The cilia on the underside held her tight, had bored into her flesh. Her uniform fell off of her, the back of it having been dissolved by the Mar-gites digestive fluids. Her stomach bulged and the thick 'tongue/beak' inside the Mar-gite's mouth pushed its way out, the teeth unfolding.
Her eyes were open, her mouth worked soundlessly.
Breaker threw the Mar-gite down on its back.
Several of the squad made gagging noises and started to turn away.
"LOOK AT HER!" he shouted. He pointed his rifle at her. "LOOK AT HER! SHE'S STILL ALIVE! SHE FEELS EVERY BIT OF IT!"
He pulled the trigger.
The Puntimat's head exploded.
He pulled the trigger twice more, blowing apart the Mar-gite's brain case.
"You do them no favors thinking you can save them," he snapped. He pointed at the carpet of them covering the parking lot. "Get to work. Every second you stand here jacking off is another eternity for those poor bastards being dissolved."
Now Azzy moved through the dusty morning, catching up to Dizzy, who was standing by the wall that had been slowly built by the automated systems once they were turned back on.
"You all right?" Azzy asked.
Dizzy shook his head. "No."
"Good day though," Azzy said. His detector beeped and he looked down.
Heavy rads.
Digging into his top pocket he got out his pack of self-lights. He lit up a red and deeply.
"How is it a good day?" Dizzy asked. "We lost half our squad. The only reason this logistics base is operational is because the Neko-Marines helped protect it."
Azzy exhaled out the reddish tinted smoke, which signified his rads were still high. "I'm still alive."
Dizzy looked at him. "But, it's more than us. It's everything."
Azzy shook his head. "Don't overthink it. Right here? Right now? There's only us. That last firefight? Where Breaker was yelling he'd transmit to final? You know what that meant?"
Dizzy shook his head, digging out his own pack of reds. "No."
"It means that were are going to be overrun and killed to a man and he was going to live mic it the whole way so that military intelligence and command could figure out where things went wrong and prevent it from happening again," Azzy tapped the long thin ashes off and watched them whisk away in the dusty air. "We were losing before the Neko Marines showed up."
Dizzy closed his eyes and lowered his head. "What hope do we have?"
Azzy took a deep breath and exhaled, smiling. "For each breath."
"There has to be more," Dizzy protested.
Azzy shook his head. "There isn't. Not for us. There's only each breath," he paused, exhaling pinkish looking smoke. The meds in the red doing their work. He looked around. "There's only the next breath, until there isn't."
Dizzy hung his head. "I didn't think it would be like this when I volunteered."
"My family is in the shelters, just like yours," Azzy said. He looked around. "We have to stop the Mar-gite. Have to give the shelters the time they need to expand, to fill up."
There was a low rumble and the ground shook.
"I pray those poor bastards who live in that sky-raker were already in their shelter," Azzy said.
Dizzy lowered his head again.
Yee appeared out of the dust. She had her rocket launcher over one shoulder and a soft purse-like bag hanging from a strap.
"Sergeant Breaker said we're getting support," she said. She moved up and sat down on an empty plastic crate. She reached into the bag, pulled and held out a wire headset. "He wants us to put these in our helmets."
"What is it?" Azzy asked, pulling off his helmet with his upper hands and taking the wire mesh with one of his lower hands.
"Sergeant Breaker and Clicker both said its some kind of phasic shielding. Guess its because of that weird thing I killed," she shrugged.
Azzy was pretty satisfied with how easy it was to put the wire mesh into his helmet and hook it into the battery. He slapped his helmet on and could faintly taste berries. His retinal link, which now had five hair thin lines (3 up and down, two across) in it, showed that it was only at 20%.
"Wow," Azzy blinked. "That's... uh..."
"Lanaktallan are more susceptible to psychic attacks," Yee shrugged. "I'm Puntimat, something about my thoughts being too silly or slippery or something."
Azzy snickered.
"Shut up," she laughed, shoving him.
There was the atonal shrieking sound of grav-strikers behind them.
"Man, that gives me the heebie-jeebies," Dizzy said.
"Just grav-strikers," Azzy said. "Gonna need close air support sooner or later." He dropped the butt of the red down and stepped on it, one of his grav-hoofshoes throwing a purplish-blue spark.
"Got fun for a bit, didn't it, Azzy?" Yee said, pulling her rocket launcher down into her lap.
"That's one word for it," Azzy chuckled.
"Well, it was definitely exciting," Yee laughed.
"You should report to mental hygiene," Dizzy said softly. "What was I thinking, volunteering."
Azzy sighed. "I was thinking that someone has to protect my family. If I'm not willing to do it, how can I ask someone else to potentially die for them?"
Yee nodded.
Double Vee came jogging up, bandoleers of 40mm grenades hanging from his body armor. He had two heavy packs thrown over his lower flanks.
"Did you guys hear?" he asked.
"Hear what?" Azzy asked.
"We're getting reinforcements," Double-Vee said. He opened his mouth right as the reporter and the cameraman came looming out of the dust.
Double-Vee's mouth slammed shut and Azzy almost bit his tongue closing his mouth.
"I'm going live in a few minutes," the reporter said. "I know you're about to go out on patrol," she said.
"How do you know?" Double-Vee said.
She just smiled.
"She uses the directional mic on the camera to eavesdrop," Yee said, her face contorting in disgust.
The Hesstlan male, Vee Diggy, wandered up right at that moment, one finger stuck up his nose.
"I'd like to interview you. Maybe your family will see it," the Hamaroosan reporter said.
Azzy could see the red light showing the camera was live.
"How about me?" Diggy asked, slapping one hand against the medic bag hanging by his side.
The cameraman turned just in time for Diggy to pull his finger out of his nose and shake his hand sharply. He hawked, then spit on the ground.
"Dust," the Hesstlan said. He spit again. "Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. I'm still alive so far," he looked up. "It's bad up here. I hope you went to the shelter like you were told," he looked back at the camera. "Little brother: be glad I locked you in the closet so you couldn't come," he looked back up. "You'd have never made it."
He turned around and walked back into the dust.
The camera swung around just as Breaker came out of the dust. "We'll be moving out. Get to the gate."
"I'm coming," the reporter said.
Breaker looked over his shoulder as he walked away. "I won't task any of my men to dedicate any effort toward your protection."
Azzy hustled after Breaker, following until they reached the big truck. Again, his hoofshoes scraped and scrabbled as he climbed in the back.
The rest of the squad climbed in. Breaker leaning against the cab, pulling on a pair of goggles.
Azzy's retinal link alerted him in blinking numbers that his onboard phasic protection just jumped to 42%.
"Got room?" came a rumbling voice.
Azzy looked over to see four humans that didn't look... well... right.
"Sure," Breaker said. He looked around. "Everyone check your phasic protection boosters."
The four humans climbed up at the back.
"Imperial?" Breaker asked.
"Negative. Dominion," one said.
Breaker frowned. "How did you get here so fast."
"Heard there was a fight," one said. He shrugged. "Kaga dropped us off."
"Oh," Breaker said.
Azzy leaned over, noticing that Breaker seemed a bit thrown off. "What's the big deal? They're humans like you."
Breaker shook his head. "Kind of," was all he said.
As the truck pulled out, the electric motors making a whining sound, Azzy heard one of the new humans.
"We're Solarian, kid."