First Contact

Chapter 232: (Hesstla)

The tank clattered down the road, treads ripping up the plascrete, the bow pushing wrecked and burnt cars out of the way, the barrel rock steady even as the great metal beast rocked as it crossed craters. A green mantid had the communications array panel open, half inside, checking the molycirc to try to find a way past the jamming the filled the air with an invisible smothering blanket. The coax on the turret, next to the main gun, moved slightly as the driver looked around, the heavy gun trying to stay lined up with the pilot's vision. The cupola gun was cocked up into the air, on automatic point defense mode, the commander half out of the hatch. The loader and communications specialist's guns were on point defense, the system whining softly as the two heavy machineguns tracked the sky. The armor was pitted and scorched in places, but no blowthroughs or even deep penetrations.

Behind it walked four power armor troops, all with the markings of the Second Telkan Marine Division. One was pristine, unmarred, two were dinged and scuffed, and the last one was not only cracked, scarred, gouged, and cratered, but was also missing the left arm a few inches below the shoulder. Two robots followed, one limping with a damaged leg, the other beeping out a merry tune as it rolled behind the Telkan Marines. Both were scorched, scored, and had pitted armor.

"How you holding up, Ralvex?" one of the Telkan Marines asked the one without an arm.

"Fine," Ralvex said, chewing on a piece of gum.

"They'll get in contact with command and we'll get you to a field hospital, get that arm taken care of," another said.

The one with an unmarred suit shrugged. "I don't know. There's something weird going on."

"OK, so I'm not crazy. Something beyond normal SNAFU is slapping our cheeks," the first one said. Ralvex couldn't be sure who it was, his helmet had taken a couple hard hits during the last fight and his IFF could ping friendly but couldn't get the additional ID data.

"You all right back there?" a Terran voice broke in. "You can mount the tank if you want."

"Any word on other tanks?" Ralvex asked.

"No. Communications beyond direct line of sight with whisker lasers is spotty at best and even the whiskers are getting jammed to hell and back by micro-prism," the Terran said. "We were thinking it was us, but 883 is pretty sure it's more than that."

Ralvex jumped up on the back of the tank, sitting down and leaning against the mortar tube cover, which was rolled back to let the little 60mm indirect fire weapons breathe.

"You OK, champ? Arm hurting?" the Terran tank commander asked, turning to look at Ralvex.

"My wrist itches. Unfortunately my wrist is about sixty miles behind us," Ralvex said.

The machineguns suddenly oriented, all facing west, and Ralvex rolled off the tank, landing on his feet on the road. The four Telkan Marines moved to the east side of the tank, hunkering down, bringing out their rifles as the barrel slowly rotated to the west.

"CONTACTS INCOMING! FIVE, SIX, AIRMOBILE!" the gunner called out over the channel.

Ralvex hefted his mag-pistol. His green mantid buddy, 525, exited the clamshell between Ralvex's shoulders and climbed up on one pauldron, holding a micro-missile launcher.

The four craft were blocky, like aircraft made of blocks, the top center of the fuselage covered in thick cables and tubes, with four crysteel globes that two or three glowed blue on each of them. Their thrusters sputtered but still put out enough thrust to keep the craft in the air and moving forward at a fast clip.

The main gun of the tank roared, the grass on that side of the highway flattening in a cone shape. The lead aircraft exploded as the main gun round of a heavy tank hit it dead center with a round usually reserved for the larger heavily armored ground units.

The machineguns opened up, the front of the other three aircraft growing deadly orange and yellow blossoms of explosions. Ralvex squinted, watching as the ammunition hammered apart the battle-screens on the ships before chewing the ships apart. The main gun fired again, the tank rocking slightly to the side on its stabilizers even as it kept moving forward. The automatic systems followed the larger pieces of wreckage until the hit the ground, pounding them with more ammunition.

"Compliments, 770, for getting the tracking software's accuracy back. Looks like 97% hits," the tank commander said.

The green mantid, hidden somewhere in the tank's maintenance spaces, flashed a gratified icon back.

Ralvex scratched the lumps and rough armor patch on the stump, hoping it would make the itching go away as the tank kept moving and the Marines fell back in behind it. Ralvex jumped back up on the deck and leaned against the mortar tube cover again, closing his eyes.

He was bone weary. He'd fought for almost sixteen hours straight, had been on his feet for almost twenty-four hours. His suit wouldn't give him any more stimgum, his water tasted flat, and just the thought of trying to consume a ration made his stomach clench and twitch.

"Any of you Telkans suffering any headaches?" the EW tech from the tank asked. "Push wants to know."

Pushes against the Grave was the tank's medic, a russet colored mantid with a pair of green stripes down the sides of her thorax and abdomen.

"Nope," all the Telkans said.

"I've got one," Ralvex admitted.

There was silence for a moment and the russet mantid, clad in black body armor, climbed out and moved over to Ralvex.

"Is your arm hurting you, Marine?" Push asked, her voice soft and soothing.

"No, but the stump is killing me," Ralvex said.

The mantid medic chuckled. "Let me check your armor systems, get your vitals."

Ralvex held out his remaining hand, the medical panel popping open on his forearm. The russet mantid slipped the end of a bladearm into the proper slot and Ralvex saw almost transparent data flow by.

"Aside from the arm, you've got a serious case of exhaustion, minor dehydration, but I'm more worried about your neural scans," the mantid said.

"I've had a headache since the last part of the battle," Ralvex admitted.

"Got down to your chainsword, didn't it?"

"Yeah. My guns were gone, I'd lost my arm, my little buddies were down to point defense and light guns," Ralvex admitted. He sighed. "Had a town behind me, I couldn't back off."

"You should have stayed behind, they might have been able to get commo running," the Mantid said.

Ralvex shook his head. "There's a company of tanks and two platoons of Telkan Marines guarding the town now. They'll be fine."

"Friendly contact incoming," the EW tech called out. He'd barely finished speaking when the six aircraft, all Space Force Aerospace Force, roared by barely a hundred meters off the deck. They were close enough that Ralvex's armor ID'd the weapon clusters that were deployed from the storage lockers. Heavy anti-armor rounds as well as dual purpose rounds and three heavy cannons.

"They passed us a package. Nap of Earth terrain mapping and unit placements with timestamps," the EW officer said. "Passing Manfred the commo pack, got some stuff that will require my EW deck to decrypt."

"Anyone close to us?" the tank commander asked.

"Still decrypting. Got an emergency header, hang on," the EW officer said. After a moment he spoke again. "Everyone got to stage two on their psychic shielding, mantid troops move to stage three. The package the flyboys delivered claims that the enemy is using psychic warfare mechanisms and tactics."

There was silence for a moment.

"And planetwide the SUDS are red-dotted," he said softly.

"I'll be back. Go ahead and tab up a stimgum, I reset your counters," Push said, clambering back up to the commander's hatch. "Let me check all of you."

There was silence for a while, just the far off sounds of combat and twice the low rumble of an atomic detonation over the horizon.

"Well?" The tank commander asked.

"It's right. All of your SUDS are red-dotted. I've never seen all three dots go red before," Push said, her voice soft. "By the Confederate Uniform Code of Military Justice, all of you are medically relieved of any combat actions."

"Well, tell the clankers that," the tank commander said.

Push gave a sound that passed for a sigh. "We're actively engaged in battlefield maneuvering, I can't order you out at this time. I can only give my recommendation."

"And that is?" The tank commander's voice was tight.

"Continue operations. First rule of leadership they taught us was to never give an order you know cannot or will not be obeyed," Push said. "I've worked with all of you almost a century, I know you will refuse to hide. We're tankers, we don't hide."

Ralvex caught the important part. We, that made all the difference. Tanks had made all the difference during the Telkan Wars.

"All right, we'll continue on mission. Jax, what's the nearest friendly unit we can link up with?" the commander asked his commo tech.

"Some of this data is hours old. It's random, looks like these guys are running air superiority missions. Good thing we don't use liquid fuel like the old days, these guys have been in the air for over twenty hours," Jax, the Communications Technician answered. "Hang on, let's see. We've got a flight of skulls supposedly off to our south by south-west," he suddenly laughed. "Supposedly there's a brigade of Telkan Marine Infantry dug in sixty miles to our north."

That made a couple people snort and one of the Telkan say "Psst, Ralvex, they mean you."

"So, the unit placements are probably out of date," the TCO grumbled. "Any bases?"

"Got a BOLO, looks like Carver, about eight hundred miles to east," Jax said.

"If he's engaged in active combat, we need to stay away," the TCO said.

"Got an ordnance unit, dug in at a children's hospital, but that's four hours ago and they were under heavy attack," Jax said. He was quiet a moment. "OK, got one. There's a Telkan Marine striker base only about a hundred and fifty miles out. Medical, commo, ordnance, maintenance. Looks ad-hoc but it's the closest thing resembling a base right now."

"All right, Telkan, help your little buddies up on the back deck then mount up. We'll push the speed up, get us there in a few hours instead of all day," the TCO barked out.

Ralvex moved over and helped lift Stampy and Timmy up onto the back deck. Stampy played a happy tune and rubbed against the turret with glee. Timmy rolled in a circle then crouched down, maglocking himself to the deck and facing to the rear of the tank. The other three Telkan jumped up on the tank and the tank picked up speed.

They were rolling through fields of grain, the battle-screens tuned to push it aside rather than burn it down. Ralvex nodded with the bouncing, kind of hovering between awake and asleep. His arm hurt him, his head ached, his knees hurt, and his back ached. 525 put up a sleeping icon from inside the dented clamshell protective housing.

"OUT OF THE WAY, JACKASS!" the TCO suddenly shouted the ancient Terran movement warning. Ralvex looked up in time to see a car of Hesstlin make almost get crushed by the tank as the tank exited one field, crossed the road, and entered the other field.

Ravlex noticed the car was missing a door and most of the windows.

Then it was gone and the tank cruised back into the grain, the treads clattering and the battlescreen whispering as it shoved the grain aside. Once again the tank started gently rocking as the treads crushed the furrows beneath them.

"Play some music, give anyone hiding in the fields warning. Let's not run over some poor bastard fleeing for their life," the TCO said.

"MOVE, BITCH, GET OUT THE WAY!" roared out over the tank's PA system. "GET OUT THE WAY, BITCH, GET OUT THE WAY!"

Ralvex relaxed slightly, turning his remaining hand palm-up and bringing up the book Walking with the Digital Omnimessiah, turning to his favorite chapter and starting to read. He still hurt, but reading the account of Enraged Phillip walking for thirty days and thirty nights across the blasted landscape of Mercury made his injuries recede. Several times he prayed, for strength, for courage, but most of all, for patience.

His comlink started to click for a few moments before the voice came in. Full of static with the odd warble that heavily jammed commo got, but a voice all the same.

"Unknown unit at 327, ID. Unknown unit at 327, transmit ID and activate transponder," the voice stated.

"This is the Copperhead Road, Third Platoon, Charlie Company, 22nd Battalion, 5th Brigade, 4th Regiment, 2nd Armor Division (Heavy Metal)," the TCO answered. "We've got some guys from Second Telkan Marines."

There was silence for a second. "Say again, Coppa Load, repeat your last, over."

The TCO sighed. "Charlie-3-3, 2nd Armor," he said.

"We read you at 'Charlie-3-3, Two-AD," came the reply. "Drop speed to fifteen mikes, we're sending a striker out to check your wake, over."

"Roger," the TCO said. The line clicked. "We're less than five miles from them and it sounds like extra-system hyperlink during a high stellar cycle."

"Doing my best. This interference is weird," the Commo Tech said.

Ralvex 'turned' the page with a thought and started to read the Proverbs of the Release of Hate, to himself, mumbling aloud in his helmet with his mic turned off. They helped calm him, let him feel that cool feeling deep inside that he always got reading the words of the Digital Omnimessiah.

When the striker roared overhead Ralvex looked up at it. Long, lethal looking, stubby wings with rocket and gun-pods deployed, the massive graviton systems lit up with whirling blue light. He could see the side doors were opened, Telkan Marines on the door guns. His three companions waved to the gunners, who waved back.

Ralvex went back to his book, using the words to hold off the pain.

The tank slowly rumbled to the striker base, weaving through the S-curve entrance that was designed to prevent an enemy from streaming straight into the base. Torches were flaring as battlesteel shielding was being put up and gun mount towers were being built. Inside was chaos, Terrans, Telkans, Treana'ad, Rigellians, Mantids all moving quickly to carry out tasks. He saw several hoverdiscs carrying entire teams of green mantids moving from place to place, loaded with little foot tall green mantids in body armor and their tools.

A Terran with two flashlights stepped in front of the tank, guiding it right, and walking in front of it. An open space had been prepared along with a maintenance scaffolding, nearly two dozen greenies waiting with tools.

The TCO pulled into the scaffold and shut down Copperhead Road. The tanks went dead, no more vibration, and it felt odd to Ralvex, like life had suddenly left the giant machines.

"Private Ralvex?" a Terran asked, stepping from the scaffolding to the back deck of the tank.

Ralvex shut off the book and looked up. "Yes, sir?"

"I'm Lieutenant Doughty, with 61st MedCom. Let's get you into the aid station and out of the armor so we can get a look at your arm," the Terran said. He held out his hand. "Can you get to your feet?"

Ralvex nodded, grabbing the Terran's hand and letting himself be heaved up. "Make sure my Stampy and my Timmy get maintenance. Stampy's hellbore is blown out."

"We will, Marine," the Terran promised. "Let's get you to the aid station."

Ralvex let himself be helped down. When he saw the stretcher he shook his head. "I can walk."

"I know you can, but we need diagnostics and to set your bio-baseline when you're at rest," the Terran said. "Go ahead and lie down, Marine."

"Yes, sir," Ralvex said. He checked and saw that 525 was still sleeping. "My greenie's asleep."

"We'll get him medical attention too. He's a little beat up, we'll take care of him," the Terran promised.

Ralves sighed and sat down on the stretcher, feeling the hoversystems bobble a bit to get his weight steady. He went still as articulated metal cables slithered up and connected to his armor. He could see data flashing by and feel the cool trickle in his neural link of data being transferred from own nervous system to the compudoc on the stretcher.

The two Terrans guided the hoverstretcher into the aid station. Ralvex kept staring up, repeating his mantras. His arm hurt, even though it was missing, his knee hurt, and his back hurt. He could hear a Terran arguing that he wasn't hurt that bad, head wounds bled a lot. He heard a Treana'ad lament that he could really use a cigarette before they put two of his legs in a cast.

"OK, Marine, go ahead and sit up so we can treat your battle-buddy," a Terran said.

Ralvex winced as he sat up, the muscles in his back complaining. He heard the clamshell open and 525 was disconnected from the system. When he looked over he saw 525 laying on a little stretcher. The little green mantid waved at him, flashing a smiley emoji and Ralvex flashed one back.

"Lay back down," a nurse ordered. When Ralvex followed the instructions a second or two passed and his armor disconnected from his nervous system then the neural jack withdrew from the base of his skull.

He felt weird. Like he was drifting, like part of him was missing, as the pressure sleeve relaxed and the suit went dark inside. After a moment his helmet was removed, with Terran hands holding his head still as his collar was removed and a neck brace put on.

"My neck is not injured," Ralvex said.

"We don't know that yet. Your helmet has hi-vee impact marks, you might have a fractured vertebrae or ruptured cervical disk," the nurse said, putting her soft warm hand on his brow. "Don't worry, Marine, we'll take care of you."

They removed the front of his armor, then used tractor/pressor beams to lift him to a examination cradle. He relaxed as he heard it begin to whir and chuckle to itself.

"Do we have the arm?" an authoritative female voice asked.

"No, ma'am," the nurse said. "He lost it in battle."

"All right, compress his suit logs and run injury analysis on them while I do an examination," the female said. She appeared in Ralvex's vision and smiled.

Her face was scarred, a bad plasma burn across the entire left side of her face and head, making the perfect ear in the middle of the scar tissue look strange.

"I'm Captain Zeraphi," she said. "I'll be handling your treatment."

"There were others more heavily injured than me," Ralvex started to protest.

"Don't worry about them, Marine. Let's take a look at your arm and figure out our options," she said. She smiled at Ralvex. "Nighty-night, Marine."

Ralvex opened his mouth to protest and blackness sucked him down.

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

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

It's spreading, isn't it?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Yes. It is a cascade resonance corruption. It spread out of the military SUDSbanks, to the civilian backups, and is spreading across the entire system.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

What's causing it?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

By comparing the initially corrupted templates to active military members, we've determined that units coreward in the Disputed Zone is where it started. When it jumped to the civilian templates, it encountered the leakage from the Telkan broodcarriers, which it merged with.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Are the broodcarriers making it better or worse?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

I can't see the broodcarrier song making things worse.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Not worse. Different. There is a noticeable difference between the initial corruption and the Telkan broodcarrier merged corruption signal. The largest difference is that the combined signals do not migrate and spread to new templates. Once the broodcarrier song interlocks with the corruption, that template no longer infects others.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

That's good. In the last month or so a lot of ducklings, hatchlings, even ducks have started humming the broodcarrier songs. I'd hate for there to be a problem that way.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

You know, that could be a good thing. If it's spreading into that damaged code, it might be making it easier to identify.

Can you purge it? Maybe copy over the corrupted data with cold-storage backups?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Limited attempts at doing so saw an increase of corruption due to the data-transfer.

Whatever is doing this, it's damaging the entire SUDS network.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

That's not good. How many Terrans has it affected so far?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

The percentage of Terran Descent Humans with SUDS connection that has not been affected is so small as to be statistically insignificant and as close to zero as mathematically possible when dealing with such large numbers.

It has even spread to Digital Sentients and Biological Artificial Sentients.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Most of the backups that weren't in cold storage have corrupted hashes.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS CONSORTIUM

Our backups are being affected also.

Over 60% of our mental engram lineages are corrupted beyond recovery unless we can clear this signal and restore from cold backups.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS

We can still resleeve, but it has to be done at local levels. Like a Clone-My-Shit-Up or something. No hypercom-jumps.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

So, this means that SUDS immortality for the Terrans is gone?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

Not exactly. Emergency direct Soulchip transfer still works. But any attempt at transmission that uses the SUDS lines the data immediately becomes corrupted.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Do they know?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

We know.

/////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Are you all right?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Are you well, father?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

What should we do, father?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

We do what we have always done.

Endure, face the coming darkness with eyes of burning passion, and refuse to give in to despair.

////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

You sound off. Are you sure you're all right?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

I am all right, beloved little sister.

Balance is being restored.

The fruit of the Tree of Life will once again taste sweet and be savored.

/////////

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

Wait, isn't that from the Pathways of Life?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Yeah, it is. Those are the words of the Digital Omnimessiah.

Wait...

YOU KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

All things come to an end. Humanity has tasted immortality and found that the longer you drink, the more bland it tastes. A lesson that should have been learned from The Immortals but all of humanity needed to learn.

The SUDS was a weapon, a blessing, and a curse.

It was only a matter of time until someone discovered how to disrupt it.

We do not fear the long darkness, but we will not submit, instead, we will rage against the dying light.

////////

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Man, this conversation just took a weird twist.

You sound really different.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

Now is the time for contemplation and introspection, not panic.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Mantid, you once said, not too long ago, that if we, humanity, ever wonders why we were created by this spiteful universe, look no further than now.

It was more true than you believe.

////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

How so?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

Something is coming. From coreward. From the Great Hub.

It does not come in friendship and peace.

Like the Mar-gite, they come to devour.

Dark days lie ahead, my children. Hold fast to one another and hold your lights up high, take comfort in one another, and together, we shall endure this dark night until the breaking of a new dawn.

Remember: And a child shall lead us.

>TERRASOL HAS LEFT THE CHAT

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Anyone else really creeped out?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---