First Contact

Lieutenant General Trucker was in the zone.

It was a state particular to tankers, although Trucker had heard fighter jocks came close, where everything was just perfect, hooked together, into one whole. Target, tank, main gun, crew, man and machine, the howling of the engines, the clatter of the tracks, his own crew meshed perfectly with the machine.

But Trucker took it further. The entire battlefield existed in a weird spot in his brain, a quirk of genetics, upbringing, experiences, and just... something. The battlefield in his head was clearer and more up to date than the one in the gestalt to the point that the gestalt had long ago learned to use Trucker's internal imagery for error checking. Beyond the battlefield he could feel the rest of his unit's tanks, reached out to the crews of the tanks and drove them further than they or the tanks ever considered going.

A cursory examination of Trucker's record showed that while he may have been defeated he had never been beaten and it was the most expensive tanks the enemy had ever tried to buy. One particular battle Trucker had been driven from the field as a Company Commander but inflicted so much damage on the enemy that pushed him out of the sector that the enemy government had surrendered even as the smoke cleared from that battle.

An interesting note in his file was that he had tried out for BOLO commander, applied to be a member of the Dinochrome Brigade.

The results of that were simply listed: INCOMPATIBILITY with no other records to be found anywhere in Space Force records.

If you asked a BOLO they simply refused to answer.

Not that they had any problem working with him, they just didn't want him connected in.

If one had talked to Trucker about 'the Zone' and to a BOLO or BOLO commander about 'battle reflex mode' you'd notice they spoke in much the same way.

Only Trucker's eyes glowed with a particular fire.

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FIRE!

SHOT OUT!

HIT! TANGO DOWN!

rang through the tank's hull as the air system tried its best to filter out the raw smell of modern combat, of molten metal, scorched synthetics, human sweat, burning plastics, overheated molycirc, and green mantid chitin flake.

Trucker stood in the turret hatch, hands on the 20mm quad barrel autocannon, raking it across airborne targets. His cybernetic eyes were open, the linkage to his optic nerve working, but his brain was running the entire battlefield.

"Bravo six niner alpha, adjust heading two degrees port, you're getting close to delta's firing arc," Trucker snapped, raking his weapon across another 'crawler'. "Delta one six eight romeo, switch to APERS and shotgun those airborne units out from in front of one one one."

He didn't consciously hear the 'rogers' 'affirmatives' and the sometimes jokingly 'aye-aye, sir' coming back at him, even though he would have known in a nano-second if someone had given any answer.

Part of his brain was a few miles ahead of his tanks, as if the battle had been advanced by several minutes.

"Sigma six six two niner actual, drop back behind golf, you're running too hot on your slush, lettum leapfrog and go to energy weapon point defense," Trucker snapped. "Watch your starboard we got nests coming up, 100 mikes, up high."

FIRE!

SHOT OUT!

HIT! TANGO DOWN!

There was nothing on the planet that could stop his tanks unless he let it. Not yet anyway. He intended of carving a road of churned up mud and plant compacted down into concrete behind him all the way to the Forward Operations Base.

"All units, watch your heat, air's full of dandelion thermal spikes," he warned.

"General Trucker, sir?" The voice was Telkan, that odd high register they used. It read "VUXTEN 1st MARINE (TELKAN)" on his datalink retinal display.

"Trucker here, go ahead, Vuxten," Trucker said, not bothering to seperate channels. "Get on those nests in the trees, Delta Six Two Two Actual, use napalm!"

TARGET!

FIRE!

SHOT OUT!

HIT! TANGO DOWN!

"I can have my men mount the tanks, use our flamers to burn off the seed and spore coating," the voice said.

"Clear it with... DAMMIT CARTWRIGHT! I SAID NAPALM NOT ANTIARMOR! GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER OR GET TO THE MEDICS AND GET THAT HEAD WOUND TAKEN CARE OF! ... your CO and get on it," Trucker said. He made a circular motion with his hand, spitting over the side of his tank, and tossed the assignments of which Telkan Marine to go to which tank in the safest and fastest patter. "ALL PEARHEAD BOYS, INCOMING CRAYON EATING LITTLE BROTHER! They'll be using fire, don't lose your gripping hand clench."

Trucker had already ran the numbers. Burning off the coating would raise the heat for approximately six seconds but after that the heat would drop off geometrically.

"Vuxten," Trucker snapped. A bug swooped by and Trucker pegged it square with tobacco juice, sending it tumbling to the ground.

"General, sir?" The Telkan sounded nervous.

"Signal when you're in position and don't fall into the tracks, that would be a bad thing, Marine," Trucker said. He was slammed against the side of the hatch as a massive caterpillar rushed out of a broken Precursor tank and his own tank, Cry Little Sister, just ran it over in a shower of gore.

Trucker spotted something on the ridgeline almost twenty miles away, a dot of color that didn't belong. He squinted and brought in with 20X zoom. He blinked twice, putting a marker on it.

"BOLO Domitus, I want two main gun rounds on that point I just marked on ridgeline Zulu," Trucker snapped.

BOLO Domitus raked the ridge with sensors as he pulled his barrel into play. He couldn't detect anything but that moss and sheer rock but both he and his Commander, Captain Edgemont, didn't bother to say anything.

The Hellbore fired and the entire ridge exploded as the 120kt blast liquified the giant flatworms on thousands of tiny legs that were just starting to pour over the edge of the ridge and into the jungle below. Domitus/Edgemont fired again into the fireball.

Domitus computed that nearly 200 of the worms had been killed outright.

"GO TO RAPID FIRE, DOM!" Trucker yelled. "SLAG THE RIDGE!"

Domitus/Edgemont started firing, targeting the ridge from one side to the other.

A fat winged creature slammed itself against 3/68-132's battlescreen, exploding into smokey liquid that showered through the tank's screen and over the side of the tank itself. The battlescreen winked out. The number of attacking insects multiplied as if the BOLO's main gun had driven them into a frenzy and Trucker dropped all pretense of proper com protocol, his mouth and datalink trying to keep up with his brain.

The BATTACNET squealed as Trucker's brain hit it like he'd driven his tank into it.

"Gin and Juice, get on Martian Lover's flank, his starboard screen went down. All units, watch for fat aunt bugs," Trucker snapped. "Vuxten!"

"Yes, sir?" the Telkan asked.

"Get three men on Martian Lover, clear the starboard NEVERLAND! BLOW YOUR PORT THREE TRACK YOU GOT JUICE ON IT MELTING YOUR RUNNING GEAR! battle-screen projectors with flame throwers ASAP," Trucker said, whipping the gun around and taking a narrow squirt of acid on the hatch instead of across the face. Burning droplets landed on his arm, sizzling through the active camouflage but not even marring his warsteel arm. He swapped out the ball rounds for APERS canister shells with 25% size quad loaded bb's.

"Yes, sir!' Vuxten answered.

Trucker whipped back around, opening up with his quadbarrel, sweeping a swarm of beers out of the air with the pellets.

"Sixteen Tons, alter course three degrees starboard, crush those speedbumps. All forward units, go to rapid fire, high-ex, pave that road!" Trucker snapped.

"Trucker, Nodra'ak here," came a priority com. Even with the tank's massive com-array it was full of squealing and static.

"TARGET, Smokey, go ahead. LIBERTY BELL GET ON THAT DAMN DRAGON!" Trucker bellowed.

FIRE!

SHOT OUT!

TANGO DOWN!

General Nodra'ak didn't take offense to Trucker's language, tone, or even his nickname. He could hear the roar of the battle through Trucker's link.

For a moment Nodra'ak was jealous of the big burly human.

"Status?" Nodra'ak asked.

"Still rolling, Smokey, they still hatin'," Trucker answered back. He cut loose with the cannon again, slashing at the trees where he'd seen something and watching gore and shreds of masticated plastic shower out of the treetops. "Two klicks out."

"Keep on rolling, Trucker," Nodra'ak said and switched channels.

Trucker saw/felt Vuxten's Telkan Marines jumping from tank to tank like frogs across lilypads, each time one or two staying behind to prepare to start playing their wrist mounted flamethrowers over the massive radiators and heat sinks.

Finally, .1 seconds before Trucker estimated they'd be ready, the Telkan Marine signalled he was ready.

"ALL UNITS! CEASE FIRE, TEN SECONDS! RUN 'EM DOWN!" Trucker roared over the comlink. He knew some of his men would be near deaf. "VUX, FLAME OUT!"

The tanks immediately ceased fire, even the automated point defense systems stopping. As one the Telkans started bathing the heat dissipation systems with flame, quickly switching to the next. Trucker noticed the practiced way they carried it out and notched up the Telkan's experience. Small greenies jumped off the Telkan's armor, deploying microflamers as they rushed the smaller heat sinks to clear them off.

Fifteen seconds and it was done. The ones on Martian Lover's side finished the clearing the battlescreen projectors. "ALL UNITS, GET READY!"

He could feel the jungle around him flex and swell. He gave a 360, marking targets as quickly as he spotted them.

"HOOOOOLD!" Trucker said, still holding down the pedal to rotate his command seat he was standing on.

The jungle inhaled. Trucker kept marking targets, assigning the Telkan's without thinking about it.

"HOOOOLD!"

The jungle erupted in creatures.

"GUNS FREE!"

The entire night went bright white as even the Telkans opened fire on the marked targets. The jungle's charge froze in place as it was met with firepower, then melted away, the rounds pounding into the jungle itself to explode spawning pool, blow up hives, and destroy nests that Trucker had somehow spotted.

"General Trucker?" It was Vuxten again. He was muffled, coming from far away.

"Speak up, crayon eater, I'm a CDAT!" Trucker yelled back. "SIX PACK PATTY, GO TO HIGH-EX!"

"Do you have current IFF datapacks?" The Telkan yelled.

"Negative negative negative, Vux, spit it to us. MARINE HOXNIK INCOMING SHOWER" Trucker said, using the glorified birdshot to clear the swarm of spotted insects off of the Marine at the back of Old West Hive. The Marine punched a fist into the air in thanks.

"Greenies are deploying surgical sterilization field generators. They're micro-gennies, they won't last, but they should get you to the FOB," Vuxten yelled.

"Good man, Vu... TASER FACE, put two rounds into that bulge, that's a bug! ... Vuxten, good man," Trucker spun the gun around, facing backwards, lifting the gun up. Right where he knew it would be was a bug swooping at his rear battle-screen, the abdomen swollen looking and leaking fluid. The 'shredder shot' ripped out its wings and it dropped to be run over by the tank following. Trucker kicked the lever, swinging himself to the right.

Trucker's implant beeped that the new IFF was loaded and the profile of literally hundreds of bugs poured into his brain.

But he was in the Zone and they got filed as fast as they were pumped out, quick annotations added by Trucker's brain, focusing on the best kind of tank munitions to use on them.

Vuxten's implant blinked in surprise as the CO of Cry Little Sister absorbed the data as fast as it could put it out, faster than even the tank could suck it up.

Vuxten himself knew he should be terrified, but this wasn't his first tank battle, and he understood the crawlies better than he'd understood the Precursors, was more proficient with his weapons and armor than he'd been with the Army Scout Power Armor, and even the way Trucker kept barking orders for other units over his channel didn't bother him.

The sun started coming up as 3rd Armored Division (Old Metal) hammered its way through the thickest part of the jungle, where the crawlers were inviolate and undefeatable, on their way to the Forward Operations Base.

Trucker intended on breaking the enemy's back in that quadrant. running over its spine with his tank treads if he had to.

--------------

Brentili'ik watched Colonel Harvey exercise. The human did it every day at zero-six hundred hours and eighteen hundred hours, working out for a full hour before showering, dressing, eating, and getting to work. She knew she should be used to it after seeing it for a year, but seeing it still amazed her. A day of weights, a day of running, a day of kinetic close quarters combat, then repeat.

She had begun to follow an exercise program herself. She considered herself in good shape to the person she had been when she had been scrubbing toilets, the fact she had access to more food in a single day than she used to have in week making it so she wasn't stressed about too much strenuous activity.

But the most she could 'work out' was twenty minutes for the day. She knew her husband, Vuxten, could work out for over an hour of grueling physical exercise, but the speed and power the human displayed always enthralled her.

It wasn't just the human's size. It was the raw power, the precision, the endurance, and the fact he could, during his eVR KCQC workout, strike hard enough to bruise his own flesh all wrapped up into something that made Brentili'ik understand why her husband drove himself the way he did.

He had role models that seemed to be more than mortal.

The last two days Colonel Harvey had added a half hour of KCQC after the other exercises even if it was KCQC day, switching from human looking opponents to the hideous creatures Brentili'ik's husband was fighting on the surface. She could see he would fight bare handed at some times, with a chainsword and at other times with a pistol and whatever he could snatch up from the eVR sim.

She couldn't imagine fighting an insect that outmassed her by a factor of ten with her bare hands. Humans didn't even claws but the damage a human's bare hands could do was astounding to her.

The insect reared back to spit gunk into Harvey's face and he sidestepped, grabbing a leg, twisting, slamming his back against the body and ripping the leg free in a shower of gore, slamming the point of the leg up into the underside of the insect's jaw and jumping away, turning in place to block an incoming flying bug, grab its wing and twist it clean off.

The simulation ended and Harvey stepped back, grabbing a towel off the holodesk and wiping his face with it. When he turned around he saw Brentili'ik staring at him.

He was used to it. Most non-Terran Descent Humans had a tendency to stare at a human who was in the middle of a workout. He wiped off and nodded to the Director as he went in to take a shower. He knew Telkan had sensitive noses and he doubted that she wanted to be in the room with a sweat covered human.

Brentili'ik hit the air system, not because it stunk, but because to her it smelled like she should be shouting for Vuxten to get out here and her broodcarriers to get the podlings to safety. Not like Harvey was going to attack, but like he was stopping an attack.

She shrugged and went back to looking at the poster that Morale, Welfare, and Recreation had put in for approval. Data was coming in from armor databanks now that the Marines were with the tanks, flooding MWR and Propaganda with images, video, and clips.

It was her husband again. Standing on the metal back deck of a massive tank, one hand on the side of the turret, the other hand holding up his rifle. The caption "TERRASOL SENDS HER SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF METAL"

She swiped away the caption and changed it. "TERRASOL SUPPORTS TELKAN!" at the top and "BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN BATTLE!" at the bottom.

The next one slid up and she almost gagged. It was her husband standing it front of a massive creature coming at him, both his shoulder weapons firing, same as his rifle, the little green mantid that was his constant companion firing a tiny rifle over Vuxten's shoulder. The caption read "I FEAR NOT!" as the creature, it's teeth bigger than her husband, charged him.

A hand suddenly crashed down, pinning the creature's neck, and a massive fist slammed into the insect's head, TCMC PEACOCK stenciled in white paint on the arm. The caption floated up "BECAUSE TERRASOL IS WITH ME!"

She flicked the video into the approved even as she swallowed her fear.

The next video was of a tiny green mantid with a rifle dancing to a Terran battle song, moving like it was mechanical, like a tiny green robot. It read "417 - HIP HOP SOLDIER" for the caption. Approved.

A warborg being dragged by two Telkan Marines while three little green mantids stood on the warborg's chest, one working on it, the other two firing tiny weapons. "ALL IN TOGETHER!" Approved.

"Take a break," Harvey said, dressed in a clean active camouflage uniform, his pistol belted at his waist.

"This needs done," Brentili'ik said.

"It'll..." Harvey started.

The lights went red, flashed three times, then went steady. A siren started howling. An explosion shook the room.

Over Breantli'ik's datalink came the message "FACILITY BREACH!" in flashing red in her retina display.

"Madame Director," Harvey started formally.

Brentili'ik was already sprinting for the evac-lift.

"It's time," He finished, drawing his pistol and chambering a round as soon as his smartlink synched up. He started firing into the holodisplays, moving over to one and tapping out a quick code.

The tables went dead as the databanks melted down. All that was left was the facility's basic eVI.

"Any nearby units, this is Telkan-1 command! We are in need of immediate assistance. Multiple breaches, across multiple levels," Harvey transmitted, looking at a map of the facility. Twenty-two breaches and the bugs were pouring in. The facility only held 200 troops and already a 10th of them were down.

"All personnel, evacuate!" Harvey called out, repeating it three times. He turned toward the lift, where Madame Director Brentili'ik was standing up and sealing her hood.

"HARVEY! COME ON!" Brentili'ik called out, reaching out to him.

The wall next to the grav-lift, which was armored warsteel rather than the wall's durasteel, exploded inward and Brentili'ik saw insects swarm in.

Brentili'ik looked dead at Harvey as the human leveled the pistol toward her even as bugs swarmed at him.

He fired once, smashing the controls.

The door slammed shut.

Gravity grabbed her and flung her up.

--------------

NET PUSH NET PUSH NET PUSH

TELKAN-1 CIVLIAN COMMAND UNDER HEAVY ATTACK! FACILITY BREACHED! EVAC IN PROCESS!

ALL UNITS PLEASE RESPOND! ALL AVAILABLE UNITS PLEASE RESPOND!

NET PUSH NET PUSH NET PUSH!

--------------

The message hit Trucker's brain and he snapped the map of the area into his conscious mind even as he shouted for Line Drive to shift places with Dead Run. He was 12.65 kilometers away.

He wasn't closest. The closest unit was 599 Infantry. They were 5 kilometers away.

Leg infantry.

The jungle was thick between 3AD and the facility, but there was the wreckage of a Precursor fight between 599 and the facility.

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"HHC CO, HHC BRIGADE, THREE AD, ON CRY LITTLE SISTER!" He roared out. "DOM! ARCHER! WITH US! BLACKHORSE ALPHA COMPANY, MOUNT THE SKY! 1ST MARINE TELKAN, MOUNT THE TANKS!"

He felt Sister turn as he raked the treeline with his quadbarrel. The Marines were jumping onto the back of the massive tanks.

"FLANK SPEED, PILEDRIVERS AND BLACK HORSE!" Tucker yelled. "XO, GET PEARHEAD HOME!"

Vuxten landed next to Trucker up on the top of the cupola, his battered magack in his hand.

"Let's go get your wife, Vux," Trucker growled.