First Contact

Chapter 181: (The War)

The day was stormy. The thick gray clouds low in the sky, seemingly close enough to reach up and touch. Lightning flickered in the clouds, dancing across the sky, splitting and forking, rejoining and flowing. The rain was heavy feeling, almost thick, and felt slightly sticky. The air was damp but clean feeling to the male and female creatures standing out on the tarmac.

Tanks were lined up, large armored vehicles ranging from 150 tons to 250 tons. Their hoverfans, six in all, were capable of moving the tanks at speeds up to 250 miles an hour. Barrels for main guns capable of putting out kilotons of explosive weight in firepower a second. Air defense pods, point defense guns, anti-personnel strips, incoming firepower interception systems, coaxial weaponry, mortars, even vertical launch systems. The massive fusion engines made the vehicles tremble even when the steam turbines and electro-magnetic engines were shut down. The radar, LIDAR, and other systems were capable of tracking pollen floating through the air as well as accurately targeting enemy vehicles up to the curvature of the planet the were on.

Thick warsteel laminate armor over a diamond doped ceramic core, thick anti-spalling liner to protect the crewspace. The crewspace was protected from electromagnetics, radiation, bioweapons, nanite weaponry, chemical weaponry, and was capable of running off of a closed system atmosphere weeks at a time while still enabling the crew to use all of their weapon systems efficiently. The seats were comfortable despite being little more than metal framework covered with unintelligent memory foam. Even with the commander or driver's hatch open the sterilization field kept the crew compartment from being contaminated by a compromised atmosphere. Waste reclamation and reprocessing systems meant that a crew could survive for years on little more than their own waste.

It was a triumph of engineering, innovativeness, and ingenuity.

It also had a life expectancy on the battlefield of 16.88 seconds.

But that was not why new tanks were being driven, one by one, to replace the tanks already on the tarmac. Not why the crews left battered, scuffed, and scratched tanks to climb up onto new ones.

Their old ones were obsolete.

The design was also nearly 15 years old.

By Unified Military Council standards, the tanks weren't even old enough to warrant a storage or maintenance inspection.

By the Terran Confederacy's standards, they were all obsolete.

Sitting on a particularly battered tank a furry being sat chewing on an empty ration tube. He sighed, staring at another tank being driven off the field, replaced by one that looked identical to the casual observer but to Ekret's trained eye was fundamentally different.

Adapted and refit specifically for my men by the Terrans from basic light scout tank designs, run off the creation engines of the CNSV Pontiac, these tanks have seen us through a year and a half of intense fighting. It seems almost ungrateful to shuffle them off to a scrap yard now, Ekret thought to himself.

The new tanks had been in design production and testing for a year and even now the Terran military only considered them test-bed weapons. Instead of the normal two green mantid engineers each tank was issued four, the standard for the main battle tanks.

They don't even have a name yet, Ekret thought to himself. Just a number and some letters.

"Sir, your tank is ready," one of the Terran techs called out audibly and over Ekret's datalink.

"I know, I know, I'll get down," Ekret said. He slid down the side, landing in his comfortable boots. He watched as the Terran lifted his lower arms at the elbows, making two fists like he was holding onto something. Ekret could see the faint glimmer of a hologram and knew that the Terran was enabling outside driver controls.

The vehicle's turbines roared as the vehicle trembled and lifted up, slowly rotating and following the technician out.

The new tank moved into place.

According to the Terrans it was a heavy scout tank, multi-role mission configurable design.

Ekret shook his head. It was as large as a Unified Military Council heavy tank and considerably heavier armed.

His datalink clicked and an icon flashed at the corner of his vision.

GEN TRUCKER - 3AD(OM)

"Ekret here," he said.

"You see this untested junk Confed's trying to pawn off on us, Ekret?" the big burly Terran's voice was rough and harsh sounding, just like always.

"Looks weird," Ekret admitted. "Don't know why, these new tanks just look weird to me."

"Like they weren't finished but some prancing social media expert came along and slapped lipstick on a pig?" Trucker asked.

At least Ekret's implant threw up the image of pig, a pig with lipstick on it, explanation of the pig's role in human society, and what the saying meant.

"Yeah," Ekret said.

"I'd rather have Cry Little Sister back," Trucker grumped.

"Yeah," Ekret said. "How's your crew?"

There was silence for a moment. "Still shaking down. I'm thinking about just grabbing greenhorns, everyone's got their own habits and it keeps interfering with mine," Trucker finally answered.

"Your old crew?" Ekret knew it was a tender subject.

Another long silent moment. "Rotated back to Confederate Space. To be honest, I should have already broken apart my crew and replaced them, we'd been working nearly fifty years together, about ten years longer than the recommended crew cohesion regulations," Trucker said. He sighed. "It's to keep us from becoming too co-dependent or whatever it is dreamed up by the shrinks who've never been anywhere near a tank or a battlefield."

The tightness in Trucker's voice told Ekret that the big human was under heavy stress. He'd forgotten how carefully balanced humans were to keep all that rage and hatred from exploding out of them.

"The Imperium Combine guys are fighting on Frestilek-III," Trucker changed the subject. "It got tight right before they got there but you saw how they make their arrival."

"I hope those guys are going to be all right," Ekret said, shaking his head.

"They're cooking a Queen up for them," Trucker said. "Grapevine says it'll be a full court press like on Telkan. They're a little worse off than Telkan was."

"This was pretty bad," Ekret said. "Those little guys turned the tide. I still don't get why we couldn't just hammer through the mountain with hellbores."

"Dunno. Probably because it would have crackedt he continent, hell, damn near did crack the continent anyway," Trucker said. "You heard about that volcano?"

Ekret nodded even though he knew Trucker couldn't see him. "Seen it's off limits to everyone. They adjusted the sats to they don't pass over it."

"Heard it has something to do with the Slobbery Mo buried in the mountain that the Telkan kid and his team managed to snuff," Trucker said. "My money's on some kind of freaky big bug bio and genome databank."

"My money's on they got part of it alive and they're interrogating it," Ekret said. "You ask any of your men what they think?"

Trucker snorted. "Never ask Terran tankers something like that."

"Why not?" Ekret asked.

Trucker laughed and tossed up a post from the inter-Division social media platform. Ekret looked at it and busted up laughing.

WHAT'S HIDDEN IN THE MOUNTAIN?

A Big Bag of Dicks

My Discharge Papers

Trucker's Real Body

Proof Cyber-Hortler Did Nothing Wrong

All the Ice Cream You Can Eat

An Even Bigger Bag of Dicks

My Last Three Paychecks

A Dependapotumus Who Doesn't Spend All Your Money or Fuck Jody During Deployment

Dicks! Dicks Until the End of Time!

Ekret laughed when he saw that apparently, according to Third Armor Division's internal social media the whole reason MilInt was hiding what was in the mountain is that it contained "Dicks Until the End of Time" with "Proof Cyber-Hortler Did Nothing Wrong" a close second. The first serious one, "Captured Goo Creature", ranked 138th, right behind "Goo Creature Dicks" and right above "Your Mom."

Ekret frowned and ran a search of Cyber-Hortler.

And was immediately sorry. Some of the memes and image macros were so old they were done in flat colors in crude 2D art styles and apparently were Pre-Glassing.

Ekret didn't get what was funny about a genocidal maniac and just chalked it up to another strange personality quirk of Terrans. They seemed to make jokes of even the worst things, many of the jokes deliberately aimed at offending each other.

"Question?" Ekret asked.

"Go ahead," Trucker answered.

"Why all the dicks?" Ekret asked.

"Because they're funny," Trucker answered, his icon in Ekret's upper left view shrugging.

"But why?" Ekret asked. "Nobody else seems to think male genitalia is that humorous."

"They just are. I don't know. They always have been. There's old ruins from the Bronze Age that have dicks drawn on them," Trucker suddenly laughed. "After the Anteries War the Second Republic's leader, who had been defeated, used his custom built private latrine then came back to the table demanding to know who had gone inside and drawn a dick on the wall."

"Who did it?" Ekret asked, fascinated despite himself.

"His assistant," Trucker laughed. "Because dicks are funny."

"I will never understand you humans," Ekret said, shaking his head. He could see one of his men approaching. "My Sergeant Major is heading my way. Poker tonight?"

"Yeah. Smokey 'No will probably try to fob that marked deck on us again," Trucker laughed. "See you tonight, Ekret."

The datalink clinked as the Sergeant Major came up. The other being was limping on his cybernetic leg, the prosthetic whining as he walked. Ekret had suggested several times to the other being that he go see the Terran cybertechs or at least a medic, but so far the crusty old being had refused.

"Suh," the Sergeant Major said, straightening up and saluting. His cybernetic leg hissed like an angry snake.

"Sergeant Major," Ekret said, nodding. The older being dropped his salute.

"The Ordnance Corps boys are on their way over," the Sergeant Major said in his odd accent. He pointed at the far end of the tarmac parking lot. Ekret looked over and saw a couple dozen Terrans in Adaptive Camouflage walking down the line. The one in front was pointing at the various models of tanks and shouting.

"Thank you, Sergeant Major," Ekret said, walking down the line toward the humans.

"Suh," the Sergeant Major head, turning and heading toward his own tanks.

"...each tanks munitions and ordnance template profiles. I know they're fresh off the manufacturing lines, but let's not have a repeat of the Nacemeten-Six Incident. I want the templates for each vehicle's ammo compared to what we have. Look for rotation band density differentiation, stand off distance mis-matches, and incompatible fusing," the leader, a big human with one eye covered by a cloth patch was calling out, pointing at tanks. "That coaxial looks different than the other ones, armorer, check it out."

Ekret poured the saliva in the ration tube out on the rain covered tarmac as he approached the human, who was pointing out that the medium scout tank on his left had "weird looking" VSL hatches.

"General," the Terran said.

"Sergeant," Ekret said, surprised that the Terran was barely a Senior NCO.

"Sorry to disturb you and your men, but we want to make sure our creation engines don't throw mismatched ammo for your tanks," the Terran said.

"Nacemeten-Six," Ekret guessed.

The Terran nodded. "I figured you'd appreciate it if half your tanks didn't blow up when you fired your main gun."

"That would be less than optimal," Ekret said solemnly.

"New tanks for new beings," he looked over the rows of tanks. "How are your people finding them?"

Ekret couldn't resist indulging in something he found was acceptable in the Terran military that would have resulted in immediate punishment in the Unified Military Forces.

"By looking where their datalink informs them the tanks are," Ekret said seriously.

The Terran did a double-take then laughed when Ekret twitched an ear with amusement.

"They paid attention to the crew compartment. All the tanks in the world don't do no good iff'n you don't have people in the cabs," the Ordnance sergeant said. "Let your Third Shop guy know if there's any problems."

Ekret nodded.

"Shit, sorry, sir. I'm treating you like a greenie," he sighed. "They rotated out about half my unit's experienced lower enlisted. I've got a bunch of new blood privates and I'm been having to tell them every little thing."

"Reorganization and reinforcement," Ekret said, nodding slowly.

"Yeah. You get any new people?" the Terran asked.

Ekret nodded. "Some Terrans. Smokey 'No is swapping a brigade of 3AD to me and me to them."

The Terran nodded. "Give you guys some in house heavyweights, give Trucker some scouts. Divisional reorganization."

"Are you worried?" Ekret asked.

The Terran nodded. "The bioweapons are all over the place. That acid, it eats warsteel, or at least softens it up. We haven't encountered that before and maintenance is trying to figure out some kind of counter method. Warsteel's been a standard for like eight thousand years and it's making the armor manufacturers practically stroke that they're going to have to come up with something better."

Ekret shrugged. "It's the nature of weapons to overcome armor and the nature of armor to overcome weapons."

The Terran laughed. "Ain't that the truth. Finding out about that acid was bound to happen sooner or later and the armor designers have been sitting on that particular laurel for a long time."

One of the Ordnance techs jogged up. Another thing that Ekret had noticed. It seemed like Terrans jogged or ran everywhere.

"Sergeant," the tech said.

"Sup?" the Ordnance guy said.

"We've found four coaxials put in the wrong place. Driver's coax where the TC's should be and vice versa," the tech answered.

"You tell Maintenance?" he asked.

"Not yet," the tech admitted.

"Get to it instead of yakking at me," the Sergeant said. He looked at Ekret. "Better get back to work."

Ekret nodded then watched the two Terran's jog away, shaking his head. He looked over and saw Cheapshot and two green mantids waving at him from his own tank. He moved over and climbed up it.

"Any problems?" he asked.

"Fan three refused to turn on, turned out that someone forgot to put the wiring harness together. They were nice enough to leave a note reminding someone to hook it together," Cheapshot said.

One of the new mantids 936, flashed a few icons.

"And someone drew a human dick on the side of the gunner's sight," Cheapshot translated.

Ekret sighed. "Of course they did."

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

V CORPS MEMO

Rearming and reorganization in progress. Telkan-1 has been approved as new Corps Area of Operations. Local planetary government has agreed to determine locations of training and military bases.

First Telkan Marine Division will be undergoing vehicle training now that vehicles have arrived.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

You're SURE about this data?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

I think I know warsteel when I see it.

////////

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

How is this even possible?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

When a mommy warsteel molecule meets a daddy warsteel molecule and they love each other very very much...

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Hardy har har.

Seriously? Warsteel?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Yup. Pure warsteel. Stays liquid for quite a while.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

We suspect it might have to do with that Daxin guy and his troops.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

No. It would have cooled already after they left.

It's the kid's people.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Yeah, I don't exactly see how.

The song isn't exactly "I'm gonna git you suckah" you know what I mean?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

Naw, it's the kid's people.

Trust me on this.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

All right. We believe you.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITIAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

The Cowtaurs find out about it, they're going to do everything they can to take it away.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Which is why we're formally requesting V CORPS (Old Metal) and VII Corps (Old Metal) and 5th Marine Expeditionary Force (Old Blood) to be stationed in system and reinforced.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Hey, you want the 9th and 51st Warrior Harvests? We like deserts.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

SKY NEBULA ALIGNMENT

Yeah, no shit. You only fought with TerraSol over the mistaken belief they wanted shitty desert planets in red giant systems.

Nobody but YOU wants those.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

GAH! Holy crap! How long have you been there?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

SKY NEBULA ALIGNMENT