First Contact

The entire bay was filled with shouting, clanking, grinders running, the sparking of welders, the hiss and whine and thudding of powered work chassis, and so much data moving around that Vuxten's datalink kept clicking. The tanks in the bay were massive, ranging from 250 tons to 750 tons of metal and wrath, cannons all the way up to 15-inch guns, the tanks were battered and scarred but 3rd Armor and 1st Recon Divisions had lost only a handful of tanks that were now replaced with the crews having been replaced or 'reskinned' and now checking out their new tanks.

Vuxten was following his datalink, which was connected to his cyber-eye, weaving between the working crews and tanks. His fur looking like it was crisped from being scorched, the scar down the side of his head and on both sides of his ear was bright angry red, and he was moving with slow deliberate movements that became habitual for power armor pilots.

Tankers waved at him, or called out to him in greeting. Vuxten knew it was because they could see his name and rank above his head due to the datalink and retinal link so it didn't freak him out as bad as it would have as little as a year and half ago.

It just felt so strange. A year and a half ago he was a simple janitor cleaning out the cells and interrogation rooms as well as buffing the halls at the Corporate Security Headquarters building while his wife had been a cleaning maid for several high ranking Lanaktallan.

Now he was a Second Lieutenant serving with the First Telkan Infantry Division (New Blood) of the Telkan Marine Corps, part of the Terran Confederate Armed Services. He was in command of thirty of his fellow Telkans and several Terran humans.

Which is why Vuxten was now heading through the motor pool bay of 3rd Armor Division (Old Metal) looking for the commanding officer.

The CO of 3AD was one General Trucker, who Vuxten had first heard was a legend and then saw the Terran in action and learned that his reputation was well earned. While the Terran male was more cybernetic implant than flesh, his men respected his abilities and counted on him when the chips were down.

Vuxten admired the Terran greatly.

Toward the back one of the heavy main battle tanks was surrounded by a work frame, the heavy slabs of armor being pulled off of the port side and the rear deck. Vuxten had learned enough to know they were pulling one of the reactors from the massive armored war machine. The barrel of the main gun had been removed and a new one was being attached.

Trucker was standing in front of the tank, watching the mechanics going over the Cry Little Sister. Vuxten knew it wasn't because he didn't trust the mechanics but because he needed to watch the mechanics as they repaired and worked upon a machine that his life and the life of others depended upon.

Vuxten had learned that himself when he had asked the psych-tech why he felt obsessed with watching the mechanics work on his own power armor, usually standing there with his green mantis engineer 471 keep watch.

His armor was finished being worked on and was now in 'The Morgue' which Vuxten had learned was the morbid nickname of the racks where power armor was stored.

Vuxten moved up next to the Terran male. Vuxten had learned that Trucker was considered large even for a Terran male, the human massing four times what Vuxten did even though Vuxten was considered large for a Telkan after over a year in power armor.

"Hey, kid," Trucker said, lifting a bottle and spitting into it. Vuxten had learned that Trucker kept shredded tabac between his lower lip and his lower mandible gum, the shredded leaf producing nicotine laden juice that Trucker kept spitting into a bottle.

"General Trucker, sir," Vuxten said. He would have saluted but Vuxten had learned that Third Armor Division (Old Metal) considered the motor pool a non-saluting area.

"Heard you were looking for me, kid," Trucker said. He was standing with his feet spread out shoulder width apart, his hands behind his back at his belt line, rocking back and forth on his heels.

"Yes, sir," Vuxten said. "I had some questions."

"Fire for effect then, kid," Trucker said.

The mechanics yelled at each other as they worked with old fashioned prybars to break the acid weld on one of the armor plates on the side of the tank.

Vuxten waited for a moment then blurted it out. "Those guys that landed, what's wrong with them?"

Trucker gave a low chuckle then spit in the bottle again. "That's a long story, kid, and it ain't a pretty one. You sure you want to hear it, a lot of species get distressed when they hear it."

Vuxten thought for a moment. "Just over a year ago I was a custodial menial. I was fighting for my life against the Precursors while my wife, broodcarriers, and podlings were evacuated to a Terran medical frigate. The Precursors, they landed on my home city, where I was born and lived my entire life."

Vuxten went silent for a moment as several techs took a sledgehammer to the seam of two armor plates to try to break the weld. When they were done he went back to talking.

"I am able to listen to what is wrong with them," Vuxten said.

Trucker nodded, spitting again. "You've heard the Mantid glassed Terra, destroyed all our colonies in the Sol System, killed billions of us in a carefully coordinated attack."

"Eight thousand years ago, right?" Vuxten asked.

Trucker nodded. "Mm-hmm."

"But those people out there, what does it have to do with them?" Vuxten asked.

"Most of them were there. They were Terran Combine soldiers or civilians who survived it and then entered the Combine military. Those guys out there are living legends, kid," Trucker said. He paused, then spit again. "Some aren't. Nobody's sure how many. They used matter transmission to teleport from a dropship to a planet's surface and it scorched their brains. Those are the Idiots, most of them remember the Glassing even though they weren't there."

Vuxten frowned. "But that's eight thousand years ago."

Trucker nodded. "Mm-hmm. Those guys out there, they're legends. You have to understand, Vux, we were pushed against the wall," he looked down at Vuxten, his expression serious. "How far would you have gone to protect your world? How far will you go?"

"Whatever it takes," Vuxten said without even thinking.

"What if I told you that all you had to do is give up everything. Hear, in your head, every waking and sleeping moment, the screams of your people who died, live their final seconds, that they will always be with you, but in return, you'll be clinically immortal. Disease, any injury that doesn't instantly kill you, age, none of it will ever touch you," Trucker said. "You will live for nothing but battle. Only in battle will you have some semblance of sanity and the screams of your murdered people will drive you into war after war until you know nothing else."

Trucker spit and looked back down at Vuxten.

"Would you do it, kid?" he asked. "Relive the death of every male, every female, every broodcarrier, every podling, until something, somewhere, manages to kill you. Would you do it?"

Vuxten thought about it, staring at the mechanics working on the tank. Watching the massive laminated armor pulled off of the hexagonal compression layer, watching as the reactor was pulled from the back deck.

He thought about what he had seen during the Precursor War, how he was grateful every second for the massive underground shelters his people were hiding inside so that there wasn't another desperate defense of a refugee point where even though he gave it his all nearly eight percent of the refugees died. Thought about how, for the year after the Precursor War, every time he'd seen his broodcarriers sleeping he had been gripped by fits on panic that they had been killed, crushed, trying to protect the podlings.

"Yes," he said after a long moment. "To protect my people? Yes."

Trucker nodded slowly. "I believe you, kid."

"So they relive it all?" Vuxten asked.

Trucker nodded again. "Oh, it's more than that. See, kid, those are the last of the Terran psychics. So they reach out to one another, cause a resonance, making it more intense, share each other's pain and agony and memories. Hell, it's more than that, kid. The Combine, it did things to them. Things that were considered terrible and monstrous even for that time."

Trucker pointed at where the mechanics were working. "Warsteel is damn near indestructible, at least, we thought so till we started fighting Slobbery Mo and his little friends. It can survive being in the outer plasma seas of a star. Acid didn't effect it, till whatever those vegitales bastards started spitting. It cools rapidly, once set it is almost impossible to work unless you know exactly what you're doing."

"Umm, okay," Vuxten said, wondering where the big human was going.

"Have you see that burning metal on those guy's armor? Do you know what makes it burn like that?" Trucker asked. He flinched slightly as the mechanics finally managed to break the weld on the two heavy plates and one fell to the ground as the mechanics yelled at each other to get clear.

"No," Vuxten said honestly. "I know that my armor is warsteel and the only reason I'm alive is how tough it is."

Trucker nodded. "It requires hate, requires wrath. Burning hot wrathful hate. That's why we call it the Hate Anvils of Mars and the Wrath Forges of Mercury."

That made Vuxten frown until he realized something. He looked at Trucker, looked at the Terrans working on the tank, and remembered the first day he'd seen one.

The Lanaktallan Overseers hadn't been wearing psychic shielding and one aggressive surge from the Terran soldier had caused the Overseers to collapse.

Yet they no longer considered themselves psychic.

Vuxten had witnessed those heavily armored humans roar in rage and creatures from the Jungle collapse.

Yet they didn't consider themselves psychic.

"Sir?" Vuxten asked after a long moment.

"Yeah, kid?" Trucker said, spitting into his bottle.

"Will that happen to me?" Vuxten asked.

Trucker shrugged. "No other species has shown it. Well, none that we have encountered that survived the meeting. I doubt it will happen to you."

Vuxten just nodded, watching the mechanics work. "Did it ever happen to you? That kind of rage?"

Trucker was silent for a long time. "Once. Back when I was about as green than you, Vux. My first detached company command, back before I got Cry Little Sister," the big Terran spit in the bottle then looked down at Vuxten. "We don't know each other well enough for me to talk about it though."

Vuxten just nodded.

"Glad you fought for your world, kid. They'll be dropping the Elven Courts tonight and the Elves soon afterwards. The High Queen is going to be on this world, right here," Trucker said. "They'll fix your world up. Make it safe for podlings to toddle around and broodcarriers to curl up on rocks in the sun."

"My wife tried to explain it to me. They're some kind of biological construct?" Vuxten said.

"Mm-hmm," Trucker just stared at the tank. "I don't know how it works. Just know there's nothing they can't fix. They fixed Terra."

One of the senior non-commissioned officers of the Division came up to ask Trucker a few questions and Vuxten moved off to the side until the SNCO walked away.

"Can I ask one more question?" Vuxten said, moving next to Trucker again.

"Shoot, kid," Trucker said, his cyberoptics constricting slightly as he focused on what one of the mechanics was doing at the base of the barrel where the shroud was removed.

"Is it normal to feel a little uncomfortable when I see memes of myself being passed around? I'm not the only Telkan out there," Vuxten said.

Trucker pulled his attention away from his tank, looking back down at Vuxten. He nodded slowly. "I get it, yeah. My men do the same to me. They do memes of me being all seeing, all knowing, and yelling at them or trying to find my car keys and stuff like that. It's embarassing, but as long as they're good ones, you know you're doing something right. It's when they take a darker turn you have to worry."

"Oh," Vuxten said.

"You about ready to get to the real question yet, Vux?" Trucker asked, spitting in the bottle.

Vuxten nodded. "Are you married, sir?"

Trucker shook his head. "Nope. I'm a tanker."

"I don't understand."

Trucker sighed, spit, and looked back down at Vuxten. "It's a tanker thing. Women get jealous of your tank, of your crew."

"Oh," Vuxten said. "My wife worries about me."

"And she always will," Trucker said. "Shit, that's going to be a problem."

"What?" Vuxten asked.

"That."

Up on the tank one of the green mantids climbed out of the commander's hatch, shaking a fist and flashing angry emojis at the mechanics working on the gears and pistons at the base of the cannon barrel.

"What happened?" Vuxten asked.

"They shorted out the autoloader lift for the gun. It can't bring the ammo up out of the magazine until it gets fixed. Those shells weigh almost four hundred pounds and we do not want to be hand-loading in the heat of battle," Trucker said, shaking his head. "That sucks royally. The whole loader wiring harness is going to have to be pulled and replaced and poor 854 is going to have to check the power leads and computer lines from the ammunition creation engine. He's going to be at it for hours."

One of the mechanics yelled something back and the little green one flashed some rude emojis and jumped back into the tank.

"How did you know?" Vuxten asked.

Trucker shrugged. "I dunno. I just knew. Been able to since I was a butterbar like you," he looked back down at Vuxten. "If you're going to ask me how to keep your wife from worrying, I'll tell you what I tell my boys: She's always going to worry about you. It's her job. There will be times where you won't take care of yourself too good and she'll have to. She worries because she loves you, and there's nothing more pure than that."

"Oh," Vuxten said. He'd hoped the big human would have had better advice.

Trucker suddenly turned around, putting his hand to his datalink. "Hey! Watch zero point core seven on Big Iron, it's got a base crack!"

One of the mechanics on one of the heavy tanks waved.

"Yeah, it took a hit from one of the big crawlers. I'll bet it's cracked between the two power studs," Trucker said.

"I've gotta go, sir," Vuxten said. Trucker waved at him and Vuxten hustled out of the tank motorpool, waving to the tankers and mechanics that called out to him.

Walking back Vuxten got curious and checked the image bank, running a keyword search for Trucker. Hundreds of them popped up. A lot of them didn't make sense to him, but some did. The ones showing Trucker half hidden by the shadows staring with bright red cyber-eyes at privates or junior NCO's doing something wrong made him snort. Another common one was for a tanker to be saying something stupid in a close up then it pulled back to Trucker standing behind the tanker, almost completely transparent, with the tanker saying "He's right behind me, isn't he?"

Vuxten got a couple of chuckles out of some he really didn't understand. "Tri/quadbarrel go brrr" he didn't get. He didn't get "Which would win: 750 tons of rolling death or one orphan pointy-boy?" with a picture of a main battle tank on one side and a screw laying on the ground on the other. The whole old man sitting in what looked like a very low tech tank saying: "Aw, you've been in the field for two weeks? I've been in the same tank since Trucker still had all his parts." one he understood.

When he got to the morgue he walked down the line, watching what everyone was doing. A few of his men were half in their suits being synched up to them, one was arguing with a mechanic about the reloader on his missile launcher with his green mantid flashing icons of frustration.

That one Vuxten went over to check out since it reminded him of something he'd noticed the last couple of weeks.

"I'm telling you, there's nothing wrong with your missile launcher's feed," the mechanic was saying.

"And I'm telling you the links keep binding up in combat," the Telkan told the human, not backing down. The Mantid flashed frustrated icons.

"Look, I've been a power armor tech since before we even found your world," the human started to say.

"So you've been a mechanic since before this armor was designed, on the fly, during the Precursor War, by some engineers aboard one of the major fabrication ships, with exactly me for them to base the armor off of?" Vuxten said mildly.

The mechanic turned around, opened his mouth, then his implant pinged him with who Vuxten was.

"Every little brother here," Vuxten pointed at the little green Mantid on the top of the other Telkan's head. "will tell you that the grenade launcher feed mechanism is badly designed. That the inertial dampener punches you in the stomach if you jog left off of your right foot above a fifteen mile an hour job, that the graviton booster in the left boot has to be miscalibrated by two one hundredths of a G because it's not right."

Vuxten waved at all the armors in the morgue. "These were made as fast as possible for us. They left the ship in orbit to make parts for us just in case."

"What do you want me to do about it, sir?" The mechanic asked, trying to keep the anger from his voice.

Vuxten sighed. "What I would like we can't take the time to do," he said.

The human frowned: "What?"

"The armor's still in prototype phase," Vuxten said. "I'd like it if your men could take a look at the armor from the ground up. Check the wear on them, see if there's any mistakes, go over the problems with our little brothers, check the pilot logs for complaints."

Vuxten waved his hand toward his own armor which still had the red circular splotch with the rings and the X inside it. "Just do your best, that's all we ask, Senior Tech."

The human looked mollified. "Nobody said they were prototype suits," he mused. "I'll check with your Division command to see when you have to go out next. It'll take you off the line for a couple of days."

Vuxten sighed. "My men need rest anyway."

"We'll avoid any major changes so you don't have to completely retrain," the Tech said.

"Just see if you can fix the shoulder launchers," Vuxten said, nodding. "Those are the big ones. My little green brother has to kick on mine if I've been running it hard in combat to get it to close and he says it's a design flaw."

The Tech kept from sighing. He could blow off the Telkan's complaints if he really tried, but trying to claim that experienced mantid engineers didn't know what they were talking about would raise some eyebrows.

"We'll check those first. Hopefully it's an easy fix that we can just engine up the parts," the Tech said.

"Thank you," Vuxten said, turning away. He saw the tech out of the corner of his eye put his fingers on his implant and subvocallize. Almost as one the techs immediately started checking out the shoulder launchers of the armors they were working on.

Within ten steps everything suddenly changed.

The mantids as one hid behind the armor cradles, flashing signs of awe and fear. The human techs suddenly stood up and looked around. Shadows seemed to grow and twist and Vuxten saw several shadows, shaped like twisted and contorted humans, slide across the floor with a faint scream that he could barely hear. The lights flickered, several showering sparks as they blew out.

The far door opened and a robed figure entered. It was a slender figure that moved forward slowly. The mantids all shivered, more than a few bending forward to put their bladearms against the floor and flash runes and emojis that Vuxten didn't understand.

She left footprints of blood behind her. Her hands seemed to drip blood onto the floor.

The Telkan pressed against the wall, joining the human techs.

Vuxten stood in the middle of the room, watching her approach. When she was a third of the way to him it felt like someone had hit him with a firm pillow in the face but he just snarled, lifting his upper lip from his teeth, refusing to move.

The figure stopped in front of him and he looked up. Her eyes were burning purple fire, her skin was gray, she had flames scarred into her face that were filled with flowing ebbing and surging purple energy, and her throat was sliced open revealing her windpipe, blood leaking from it down her neck to disappear into the robe. She had strange markings on her cheek that Vuxten had been told were her rank and her system identification number.

"Brother Vuxten," the woman gurgled. A shadow slid from under her robe, twisting and reaching out to one of the techs, who drew back, flinching, as it screamed and then tattered apart.

"Sister," Vuxten said, nodding his head.

"My Lord requests your presence. Garb yourself in holy warsteel and bring your faithful one, brother," the woman gurgled. A light blew out by the door in a shower of purplish sparks and a thin electronic scream.

"I will be there, sister," Vuxten nodded again. The woman touched his forehead and his datalink pinged that the file was loaded. It had weight to it, almost made his knees buckle, but instead he straightened his back and snarled.

The female human nodded, turned, and slowly left, leaving behind bloody footprints. The door shut and the lights went back to the normal, the shadows slid back into the correct shapes, and the pressure seemed to lift. The human techs all gave sighs of relief and the mantids got up, scurrying into groups of three or four to touch antenna.

Everyone was staring at him as he walked to his cradle. 471 already had the armor open and live. Vuxten stripped off his suit and climbed in, wincing slightly as the jack slammed home into the cybernetic linkage at the base of his skull. The armor whined slightly as it closed and Vuxten waited until the function check and then 471's checks were finished.

Everyone stared and he could hear them whispering as he left the motorpool. He followed the directions on his cybereye, leading him up to the wall.

He was there less than a second when the heavily armored dropship dropped down in front of him, its retro rockets firing hard. The big hatch on the side opened up and Vuxten saw a dozen of those massive humans in the heavy armor with the thick plates standing inside. The one in the middle was massive, big even for these humans.

"Come, brother," one of them said, moving aside slightly.

Vuxten jumped across the gap, twisting and somersaulting so he landed facing outward. The dropship kept the sides open as it roared upward.

He didn't ask questions as the logistics base dwindled then vanished as the dropship banked and accelerated with the scream of mistuned drives. 471 was quiet on the linkage, only flashing a rune that didn't translate on the upper right corner of his vision.

"Brother Vuxten," the biggest one suddenly said as the craft shuddered through the sky.

"Yes, brother?" Vuxten answered.

"I am served by oracles and seers," the figure stated. "They have foreseen that shelter 371A4 will malfunction and surface early. They have seen you at my side. Only you of all the Telkan people."

Vuxten felt his blood run cold.

That was the shelter his family was in. His broodcarriers and podlings.

"Fear not, brother, for we shall be with them," the massive figure stated.