First Contact

"As soon as those racks are welded on, I want them loaded toot sweet! Get those nano-forges templated up, make sure they're in proper position!" a human in a powered loaded frame yelled out. Ekret shook his head as he looked away from the scar faced one-eyed human, wondering why the Terran wore an eye patch instead of having his eye replaced by a cybernetic implant.

Around him 1st Recon Division (New Metal)'s vehicles were being rapidly worked on. Green mantids climbed through the hatches allowing access to the hover-fan nacelles. A thousand vehicles, all lined up just behind the berms, all shut down and smelling of scorched metal and burned propellant. One hundred ninety-seven fusion reactors had to be pulled, four hundred nineteen main guns needed replaced, three thousand two hundred fifteen hoverfans or nacelles needed replaced with each of the 12 hoverfans on each tank needing maintenance.

Ekret had been a tanker for over 2/3 of his life, for decades, and he had never seen a refit take place so quickly. The spot for each tank had been marked out, the parts already stacked up in the order of importance and maitenance order. Complete wiring harnesses in some cases, hydraulic systems in other places.

It was as if things were actually going according to The Book, according to the Way Things are Supposed to Be.

Beings with 15th Ordnance Battalion (Old Blood) were working with power loaders and in some cases with bare hands to load ammunition, check over weapons, everything else needed. 19th Digital Warfare was replacing the RAM banks and cypher molycircs then loading the warbanks with growling snarling warboi hashes.

"TEN MINUTES AND YOU BETTER BE RUNNING TO EIGHTH INFANTRY, AMMO RATS!" the one eyed human bellowed out, lifting up and slapping the frame filled with massive barrels into the rack welded onto the back of Ekret's heavy tank.

Ekret saw his crew running for the tank, Cheapshot in the lead.

"Boss, these guys are like really really angry," Bouncy, the tanks enhanced virtual intelligence said, appearing as a face of blue and silver on one of the monitors. "They're ready to go and chew everyone up who so much as looks like a target."

Cheepeek jumped up, turned around, and gave Heslettek the electronic wafare officer a hand up then gave Sselssen a boost up. 749 and 841, the two Mantid engineers, swarmed up the side, wearing their armor and carrying tool trays on the top of their abdomens.

"CLEAR FOR FIRE TEST!" one of the mechanics yelled out.

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Ekret jumped into the hatch, standing up on the seat so he could hold onto the coaxil gun, which had been replaced with a 20mm single barrel autocannon. The tank suddenly started to vibrate as the fusion plant was fired up. The fans squealed for a moment before the synthetic superlubricant was spread evenly enough.

"FAN TEST!" the mechanic yelled.

The scout tank gave odd rocking feelings as each fan was tested individually, then in pairs, then adding one fan each time until all twelve fans were roaring, keeping the plenum chamber pressurized, the graviton assists making it so the tank was lighter even though it massed the same.

"AMMO LOADED! YOUR CLEAR ONE ONE NINE!" the ammo guy shouted. He jogged off to the side, heading for where 8th Infantry was waiting.

"All units, this is One One Nine, warplan confirmation check," Ekret said. He pressed the icons and waited. Tank Six Two Five came back with bad computer system CRCs and Ekret waited.

He was impressed. The mechanics had it replaced in under eight minutes.

"All right, you all have your orders. Company commanders, take charge. Make sure you launch your drones at the correct times or you'll lose commo out there," Ekret said as the tank slowly rotated and then started moving.

The chatter on the com-links was confident, something that Ekret was glad for. Too many times over the years his crews had been concerned that their equipment would fail, that they wouldn't be allocated ammunition or food or even water enough to accomplish the mission, or that the mission would be little more than suppressing some poor bastards who just didn't want more debt piled on top of decades or even generations of already existing debt.

Ekret gritted his teeth together as his tank roared across the sand, heading for the edge of the algae covered water. He knew the theory, could even give you the math of surface tension versus air pressure versus weight displacement, but still, being in a massive tank and hurtling toward the water at nearly two hundred kilometers an hour made a being's sphincters tighten up.

The tank hit with a spray of seawater and a fountain of slurried algae, sliding for a moment before Sselssen managed to straighten the tank out and put on the speed. The thirteen tanks of Divisional Headquarters Company hit the spray and followed Ekret's tank sliding across the ocean, spraying algae from under the fans.

--fan nine running hot compensating-- 749 flashed.

--fixing ignition wire on launcher two came undone-- 841 flashed.

"That's to be expected, they replaced our wiring harness in like twenty minutes," Ekret told the newest crew member. He tagged Heslettek to get his attention. "Keep an eye on the sonar, we're running loud and that means they're gonna hear us coming."

*roger* Heslettek flashed, concentrating on their screens.

"Boss, we've got a long way to go. You might want to take a nap," Bouncy said. "I can watch the sonar and drive while everyone else sleeps."

Ekret yawned. The stims he'd been popping had worn off over an hour ago and he was feeling the last 42 hours of combat. It was still night, but they were racing toward the dawn.

"All units, switch off and try to get some sleep. eVR awake only, get some asleep," Ekret ordered. He closed the hatch on the tank, buckled his seat harness, and closed his eyes.

The vibration of the tank lulled him to sleep.

"BOSS! WAKE UP!" Bouncy called out.

Ekret snapped his head up, bouncing his helmet off the back of his chair. "I'm up," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a plastic ration tube.

"We've got contacts. Waking up the others," Bouncy said. "He just appeared on the sonar and he's coming in fast."

"WAKE UP, METAL HEADS!" Ekret bellowed out over the company command channel. He heard thumps and groans and profanity. "Contact, enemy contact."

Ekret hit the button for the hatch to open. It whined as it opened up and rain poured in. The seat lifted up as Ekret undid his harness and climbed to his feet, his hands automatically reaching out for the handles on the coaxial gun.

The day was dim, the clouds low and reddish-gray, lightning flickering in the clouds. The rain was bitter, tasting of burning metal and ash.

"Boss, put on your mask," Bouncy said.

Ekret pulled the mask up from where it had dropped on his chest, put it against his face and inhaled sharply. When he looked up he wondered how he'd look to someone else. His eyes, nose, and mouth were completely covered by the heavy black plassteel, the lenses were red, tubes went from the sides of his mouth to the pack on his side, which was connected to the tank's internal air. The sterilization field crackled around his waist, keeping any pollen or bacteria or viruses from entering the tank.

He looked around, seeing nothing but rain swept slowly undulating algae covered ocean. His implant showed him that there were four large masses rising from the depths of the ocean, attempting to intercept his tank company.

"Sergeant Major Mukren," Ekret snapped.

"Suh?" The commander of HHC 1-1-12 asked, his voice calm and collected.

"They'll be surfacing behind us, have your platoon give them a face full of main gun," Ekret said.

"Yes, suh," The being replied.

Ekret looked back, seeing that the rear four tanks were turning their turrets to face backwards. The racks added by the engineers were barely cleared by the barrel but the engineers had designed well at General Tic-Tak's orders.

The creatures surfaced and Ekret gasped at the sight. They were huge, coiled shells that water, algae, and seaweed poured off of, the shells spiked and twisted. It looked like a horned snail, layers of armor over the forward part, as the front of the creatures surfaced. There were huge sphincters as large as Ekret's tanks on the sides and as he watched they began to open and what looked like massive hornets began buzzing out of the nests.

"GIVE IT TO 'EM!" the Sergeant Major roared.

The rear four tanks lifted in the front, the driver's increasing the fan speed in the front four nacelles. The guns, no longer firing solid shot, but rather full blown atomic penetrators, fired, the tanks rocking forward, the driver's keeping the leading edge of the plenum skirts from hitting the water or algae, feathering the fans and keeping up the speed, lifting the front of the tanks again.

Four bright streaks, eye watering actinic bluish white, connected the tank barrels to the giant shells that had crested the water only twelve miles behind the hard running hovertanks.

The first charge went off, driving the inverted battle-steel liquid penetrator into the shell, which shattered but held as the penetrator drove twenty meters into the shell. The atomic charge followed next, hitting the open space and exploding. Armor exploded out, vaporized biologically extruded and folded ceramisteel streamed out from the hideous wound. The wasps's wings burst into flame and the thermal pulse heated their guts into steam that screamed through the cracks in the wasps's armor.

But the shells weren't completely penetrated.

"HIT 'EM AGAIN, BOYOS!" the Sergeant Major bellowed out.

A second shot, this time the atomics slammed into the spongy flesh before detonating.

The snails screamed as the internals suddenly converted to atomic steam, the spiralling shell proved less help as the 250 kiloton blast rammed spongy tissue deeper into the spiral of the shell as well as outward, blowing a massive section of the flesh out the bottom of the snail even as the internal was compacted into a solid mass in the smaller spaces inside.

All four of them began to sink, the sea around them boiling, the algae swept away for nearly two miles around and four mushroom clouds reached for the sky with ravening fingers. The clouds rushed back in, covering the clouds.

"Bouncy, you see anything?" Ekret asked.

"No, boss," Bouncy answered.

"How about you, Heslettek?" Ekret asked.

"Got phantom echoes, but there's a cold layer down there that's bouncing our sonar," Heslettek answered. "Apparently that's normal."

"All right, everyone keep eyes up," he checked his chron in his retinal display.

"We've been asleep ten hours?" Ekret asked Bouncy.

"Well, yeah, boss, you guys were all exhausted and there wasn't anything but water and algae for me and the guys to watch. You would have all fallen asleep at the wheel if me and the boys didn't take our turn at watch," Bouncy said.

Ekret nodded. "All right, you warbois did good," he yawned and looked around.

Two hours and almost four hundred miles of nothing but water and algae passed. He ordered the warbois to get some sleep, rehash, recompile, do sector checking, virus checks, and memory sorting.

"Got islands coming up, boss," Heslettek. "Waking up Bouncy."

"Anything major I should know?" Ekret asked.

"These islands aren't on the maps and they're volcanically active," Heslettek answered. "Lots of stuff below us, lots of solid formations."

"That's Three-Three's target, they're about three hours behind us," Ekret said. "Our drones still holding station?"

"Roger," Heslettek said.

"All right, we're going to go right by. Tell Three-Three to got ahead and past the islands with atomics on their way out," Ekret said. "Bump up the speed by about ten mikes and swing around the islands, Slippery," Ekret told the driver.

The tank angled slightly, swinging wide around the islands, each a high peaked island with no beach, just a smoking top that belched ash and gasses into the atmosphere.

"Yeah, definitely put an atomic into each of those," Ekret said slowly. "Telkan's being xenoformed."

Time slid by slowly. Once in a while one of his companies made enemy contact but the creatures weren't ready for the kind of war-shot that Madame Director Brentili'ik had authorized.

A part of Ekret wondered if the world was xenoformed to be more comfortable to the Lanaktallans or the Telkans. The Telkans were small, furry people that would be able to handle colder weather. One thing Ekret had noted, talking to every Telkan he could meet, is he had yet to find one that had lived outside the city unless they were servants helping take care of manors or estates or luxury resorts.

"Boss, we're coming up on the target," Bouncy warned. "We've got tons of signature's rising."

Ekret checked his datalink. His Division was all getting close to the targets, three regiments were slowly circling fifteen miles out.

"All right, as soon as we hit them, they're going to completely lose it," Ekret said. He opened the main command channel. "First Recon, GUNS FREE! MAKE YOUR RUNS!"

Sselssen/Slippery goosed the fans, bringing the speed up from eighty miles and hour back to just over a hundred and sixty. The fans howled as Ekret led the way, the other tanks of the armored company spreading out, all heading toward the blinking dots on the surface.

"Cheapshot, check the munitions," Ekret ordered.

"Getting good readings, they're warmed up and ready to go," Cheepeek answered.

"Bouncy, watch the air, Hassler, watch the sonar," Ekret said. He slid an empty ration tube out of his pocket and put it in his mouth, starting to chew on it.

Three miles.

The entire world smelled of hot rotting algae and seaweed and sulfur from the active volcanoes that were moving by. Ekret reached up and grabbed the aiming handles on the coaxial, thumbing the arming stud and feeling the bolt rack a heavy war-steel tipped 30mm round into the chamber. He had no idea why it was nicknamed the Ma-Duece, but it was a single barrel heavy autocannon with a range of nearly five miles.

Two miles.

He could see the islands, high narrow peaks, getting closer.

Ekret chewed on the ration tube, concentrating on letting go of the handles on the backplace assembly and shaking his hands to ease the soreness. He wrapped his hands back around it.

"MANY MANY CONTACTS RISING!" Hassler called out.

"Wake up the warbois!" Ekret yelled, squeezing handles and putting his thumbs on the firing butterfly plate. He gritted his teeth on the plas tube, grinding it between his teeth.

"Warbois awake, boss!" Bouncy called out.

"Zhukov!" Ekret snapped over the laser commo back to the main base. Zhukov was an AI mentor who helped Ekret keep the Division together. A Digital Sapient with centuries of experience.

He was also too 'big' to fit in any of the tank's systems, so he'd stayed back in the base's computers.

"I am here, General Ekret," Zkukov answered.

"Tell the Division guns free and plot everyone an exfil!" Exkret said.

"It will be done, General," Zhukov said.

"I'm counting on your to get our boys out alive. There's still more battles to fight before Berlin!" Ekret snapped and cut the link.

Silvery fish shot out of the water, up into the air, and fluttered wings with a buzzing sound that Ekret could hear over the tank. They turned and arrowed in at the recon tank, hit the battle-screen and exploded into seared and burnt tissue.

"HERE THEY COME!" Hassler yelled.

"Launching payload one!" Cheapshot called out.

Ekret looked back just in time to see the massive chrome barrels, one from each of the three racks that were tilted at an angle, fired via magnetics out into the ocean. He felt his smartlink go live as he consciously synched up with the Ma-Deuce and the targeting reticle appeared in on his retinal display.

"Point two, five seconds," Slippery yelled.

A pod of misshappen creatures broached the sea, the algae slipping over them as they opened blowholes and exhaled.

Ekret thumbed the trigger. The gun was heavier than Ekret was expecting, thudding twice a second, far far slower than his old chaingun, but the shells were thicker, longer, heavier. With his smartlink he could make it so the gun only fired when it was over the sleek forms slicing after the hovertank.

The heavy rounds, 30mm HEAD (High Explosive Armor Defeating) rounds almost as long as Ekret's arm, blew huge chunks out of the creatures. Three rounds each was enough to turn the creature's midsections into shredded meat and leave them sinking into the ocean.

"Payload Two Out!" Cheapshot called out. "Point Three Twelve Seconds"

More depth charges were fired from the racks.

Under the water the chrome barrels extended out long wide blades, tilting them to spin the barrels and slow/speed the descent as more and more depth charges were launched by the tanks of First Recon Division (New Metal) and First Cavalry Division across the massive oceans of Telkan-1 and Telkan-2.

A massive nautilus crested the water, only to be hit by multiple rounds. It heeled to the side and another tank put two shots into the side.

It rolled belly up and filled the air with the stench of rotted seaweed burning in a dumpster.

The air was full of whirling airborne creatures. Two dozen came swooping down on 1-1-8, overloading the battle-screen and then impacting the side until the tank exploded.

The Sergeant Major put two atomic rounds into the side of the biggest of the islands, right at the water-line.

Ocean water poured through the hole, hitting the magma, and the explosion stunned or killed biologicals for nearly a mile.

Ekret's hands were starting to ache from firing the gun, hammering sea creatures as they surfaced.

One-One-Three exploded in the water, impaled on a huge horn of a creature rising from the depths.

"LAST ROUND OUT!" Cheapshot said.

Ekret kept shooting at the massive creatures that was swimming after 1-1-2, but the rounds couldn't penetrate beyond the thick blubbery hide. The front of its jaw was cratered and bleeding from where 1-1-3's fusion reactor had detonated, streaming glowing bluish and greenish blood behind it.

Two torpedoes hit the creature mid-body, both of them in the 80kt range, blowing flesh and ichor into the sky.

The remaining tanks hit the throttle, spraying water and algae from beneath the skirts of the hover nacelles, fleeing where they'd dropped the chrome depth charges.

"MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE, TWELVE MILES!" Bouncy yelled.

Ekret kept shooting the coaxial behind them, raking the clouds of airborne creatures furiously flapping their wings to gain altitude in hopes of doing a long swooping dive to increase their airspeed. The sky was full of them, all of them screaming furiously.

The Sergeant Major put two rounds into another island right after they passed it, at a range of less than four miles. Cold seawater poured into the magma chamber, hit, turned to steam, and for a moment was compressed.

That was enough for the volcano to explode. The entire surface section vanishing in a cloud of ash.

"Oh shit shit shit," Slippery yelled out.

The oncoming wave didn't look large, a swell maybe fifteen feet tall.

There was a loud boom below the water as the ocean rushed back in to hit the magma again.

Beneath the ocean the depth charges checked their depth, checked the distance to the ocean floor, then checked the distance to the psychic shield.

The thinking arrays sneered at the small barrels. Despite the ferocity of the defense of the Hive Queen on the continent, they were confident of their ability to destroy the feral intelligences on the surface.

Each barrel contained thorium antimatter, the pressure heating it as the barrels were squeezed by the water. The chromium battlesteel translated the pressure into heating the contents, causing the thorium to begin to boil inside the container, inside the magnetic bottle.

Just meters before they would have touched the psychic shielding on the suboceanic thinking arrays, both on Telkan-1 and Telkan-2, the barrels exploded as the magnetic shielding blew the barrels apart then failed. The water, deuterium rich, hit the thorium antimatter.

Over each thinking array antimatter blasts in the megatons took place, driving a wall of solid water straight into the psionic shielding with more force than the blast could have produced in the air.

First Recon Division (New Metal) and First Cavalry Division (Old Blood) ran for their lives across the ocean as it began to boil, steam rising off of it. The ocean rippled and flexed as the shockwaves beneath the water slammed into one another.

Brentili'ik felt the ground shudder beneath her and looked at the maps of Telkan-1 and Telkan-2. There were rings of red flashing in the oceans.

She felt herself slowly give a feral human smile, drawing her lips back from her teeth.

This is Telkan, not monster world, and you are. not. welcome. here, she thought to herself. Land or sea, I will have you exterminated as you tried to exterminate my people. I will burn you from my world even if I must pray to an Elven Queen to heal my world.

She turned and walked out of the command center, staggering slightly from exhaustion. The fighting had slowed, the newcomers having pushed the creatures and the jungle back from the bases, out in a circle from over each of the shelters.

She leaned against the wall at one point, closing her eyes for a moment, and almost fell from exhaustion.

"Madame Director, you shouldn't leave by yourself," Colonel Harvey said from behind her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm just exhausted," Brentili'ik said. She pushed off the wall, stumbling to the elevator. Harvey followed her, waiting in the elevator as it went below ground. Once the doors opened, she followed the glowing line in her retinal display until she reached her goal.

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Colonel Harvey stayed outside the door when she went inside.

Vuxten was face down on the small bed, one arm out of his coveralls, his feet bare. His fur had that crisped looking appearance that he always had after time in armor. There was stitches on the back of his head and he had a medical patch on each shoulder and on his lower back.

But Brentili'ik saw none of that as she undid the seal on her coveralls and stepped out of them.

She laid on the bed next to her husband, gathering her exhausted mate close, knowing he didn't move because he was bone weary and medicated up.

We are a small people, a peaceful people, but this is our world and we will not give it up, she thought furiously to herself, holding tight to her husband.