by David Nash
We are going to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and close combat. 2 minutes after this meeting breaks up we are going to be wheels up and headed toward this damn Kernel complex.
The plan is we are all going to un-ass the ground and ride our hover shields into battle. Once again, I remind you it is heavily defended and the Centaurus lost most of their troops in its reconnaissance.
We are going with a two prong attack. 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions are going to smash in from the air, first and second are coming with me right through the front door. We have to destroy this thing and see if we can get Comms back with the fleet. If we can’t cut through this jamming we aren’t going back home.
Any questions?”
I look around and make eye contact with my commanding officers; I see no hesitation in their faces.
“Good,” I say “Sergeant Major Provo?”
“Yes General?”
“Do you have that playlist?”
“I do sir?”
Does it have Flight of the Valkyries on it?”
“Yes Sir, just as you asked.”
“We’ll come in low, with the sun to our backs; as soon as we take off we’ll put on the music… My legionaries love it! Sergeant Major, you crank that shit out of every damn speaker on every last suit. They know we are here, let’s let them know what they won….”
“Yes sir, someday this wars gonna end.” answers the Sergeant Major.
“You play that damn music and I will forgive you for taking my line. Let’s get it done men. Dismissed” I walked away and let my commanders spread the word.
Two minutes later, Captain Cook, the Commander of Dozer Brigade waved to me and signaled all was ready.
I raised my right arm over my head waved it in a circular helicopter motion and yelled to my Sergeant Major as I yelled “Hit it Provo!”
The musical notes of Wagner started quietly as all the surviving members of some 1700 members of my Dozers took to the air. It did not stop the Human wave attack as my infantry square rose as one, but synchronized high speed close air support provided by the Centaurs gave us the seconds needed for us to get altitude and airspeed.
When we were just out of visual range of the complex, Areion signaled and my group landed and began running toward the compound. The air support would arrive a few seconds before us, and while we expected high casualties, the plan was to allow us the chance to assault the ship itself.
I had read the after action report from Project Blue Harvest’s battle, so I was familiar with the New Kernel weapon, but to see hundreds of dog sized robots firing weapons en-mass at my troops is something a report just doesn’t prepare you for.
The Centaurus soldiers used their rockets and heavy cannons to blast us a path through the middle the robots, but even missing multiple legs, the spiders kept attacking. We had to fire extreme close proximity shots at the robots as we ran past, otherwise they would reach out and entangle a soldier.
We learned our lesson concerning the ridden; only 100 Germs were in a brigade, and most of them communicated with their partner using the suit Comms or a handheld communications device. Only the oldest of us, the OL’s, if we used the term the newer recruits called the first groups of Legionnaires were implanted. We only had about 30 in the 6 Battalions present. I am the only implanted human on the breach team.
Our flying soldiers dominate the sky, their fearless attack draws fire, but they are dying in droves. “Get to the ship!” I yell. The first teams to hit the ship immediately apply their breaching paste and prepare to burn us some open doors.
“Prepare to Breech?” Yells the first breacher as he shields his face and holds the detonator. The tension in the already volatile situation escalates a notch.
“Breech, Breech, Breech!” Yells the Lieutenant in charge of the breeching team
The dual stage thermite and explosive mix does its job and several large doorways are formed in the former solid hull.
“Frag out!” Yells a team sergeant as he fires a torpedo into the door we will be entering, along the front, other NCOs follow suit.
The exploding plasma torpedoes are deafening. We are used to the techniques, but we normally practice in space, where the vacuum precludes the sound from traveling.
As soon as the light from the blast fades, our teams rush into the ship. We immediately take fire as the robotic spiders are not as sensitive to our oversized flash bangs as humans would be.
We have no choice but to drive on and get out of the fatal funnel formed by our entry into our unplanned entry points.
We had cut several entry points into the ship, as 500 warriors take up a lot of space, however, clearing a structure as large as a space ship takes manpower. We cleared rooms of anything we saw a threat and did not worry about damage. If it moved like a kernel, talked like a kernel, or just beeped wrong we destroyed it. As we moved deeper into the ship we left teams to man checkpoints so that nothing could sneak in behind us.
The Breeching team did double duty as combat engineers, and as a former engineer Sergeant, they stayed with me. Some of that was nostalgia, but a large part was that I wanted firm control of the two SADMs we brought end to positively end and hive minds. The SADMs are Special Atomic Demolition Munitions; each one is about one foot in diameter and 18 inches long. They are larger than the historic SADM’s used in the Cold War, and have a little more than double the power. The man portable tactical nuclear weapons have a 2 kiloton maximum TNT equivalent. That may seem small as the primitive bomb “Little Boy” dropped on Hiroshima in World War II had a 15 Kiloton blast, but it was 10 feet long and weighed nearly 5 tons. Our special deliveries only weighed 50 pounds.
Our plan was not to get right up to a Hive Mind, I learned my lesson with Marvin’s death, but rather to get close and drop one and let it do the work of bucking off the Kernel from the Barkun backs.
“Where the hell are all these spiders coming from?” I hear a young Corporal yell.
“Shit Corporal does it fucking matter. Concentrate on where we are sending them” replies his grizzled gunnery sergeant.
“Oorah Gunny!” I reply as I aim my forearm cannon at a spider attempting to leap toward us from a nearby bulkhead. My directed energy blast took the spider in its torso. It knocked him back as two more legionaries hit it where it fell turning it into a smoking hulk.
We battle what seems to be thousands of these little spider robots, they are everywhere. However, I begin to get reports of larger spider bodies in the background. They seem to be one for every 30 smaller hunks. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, they seem to hang in the background and lurk around corners so we never seem to get a good sighting or shot at one.
“Marvin! Shit, I’m sorry Alan, have you seen these larger robots? What do you think?”
“General,” he said, not missing a beat at my misnaming him “the actions suggest that those larger machines carry Kernels, and they are controlling the smaller robots much as they would the ridden.”
“Are you sure?” I ask
“No General, but the Kernel’s past history and the behavior of the attacking robots suggest it; I assign it a 73% probability.”
“Lieutenant Commander Kauffman” I yell, giving him a come here motion as the Engineer detachment commander turned toward me.
“Sir?”
“Have you heard about those large Spiders? Alan here has a theory I want to test? Do any of your sappers have any gadgets for hitting an enemy hiding around a corner?”
“Yes Sir, and I think I have an idea one young Lance Corporals came up with, I have to warn you boss, this kid is known for his Good initiative, bad judgement ideas.”
“Well, call him over here; I want to hear his idea.”
Within seconds, a slightly out of breath, and very uncomfortable looking junior enlisted Legionnaire was standing in front of me. He had a good front, as he looked back and forth between his Platoon Leader and me. He tried to look cocky and even in-charge, but as a former member of the La
nce Corporal underground I knew he was scared shitless.
“So, son, I hear you might have an idea that we could use to take out enemies hidden in locations we can’t get to? Is this correct? Before you answer, know two things. First, don’t be bullshitting, you have a solution or you don’t. Second, if it works you have blanket immunity from whatever you did to make it work. Got it?
“Yes sir” He said with a distinct and obvious hesitation, and then with just the tiniest pause he restated “I mean, Yes Sir, ABSOLUTELY SIR!”
I smile a little, and put my hand on his shoulder, “Alright then tell me what you got.”
“The guys were a little board, so I found out a way to hack the hover shields. We used them to, well sir, we were racing them.” My young Lance Coolie looked down a little and became quiet.”
“Son, I said you had immunity, I was a Lance Corporal living in the Barracks once myself, I don’t care if you gambled a on the outcome, but we are in the middle of a battle here, so I need you to hurry the explanation along.”
“Well we went from racing to using it to prank people. I added a camera linked to my helmet and a way to drop payloads. We dumped some garbage on some things….” With that Lance Corporal Donatelly became silent.
LTCMR Kauffman, however, looked like he was going to explode. ‘Things like Lieutenant’s Stern’s personal car? Those things?”
“Yes sir.”
Before my officer beat the ingenuity out of my young troublemaker I stepped in.
“No time for that, how long will it take to hack a shield and give it an explosive payload son?”
“No time at all sir, every non-rate in the company has a modified shield, after the ‘incident’ everyone wanted the capability. I could rig a remote charge right to the shield in say, 2 minutes.”
My hand was still on Donatelly’s shoulder, I pulled him close, placing my arm around him and speaking directly into his ear. “Son, you still have your immunity, but when this battle is over, you and I are going to have a talk about modifying Legionnaire gear without permission. Now, for your sake, you had best rig some damn fine explosives. Beat feet!” With that the young man ran over to his team-mates and began assembling several large packets of explosives.
While he was doing his best to impress, I had the word spread to the front line that shortly a hover shield would fly over their heads, and that their mission was to ensure it did not get shot down.
44
Inside Kernel Ship Surface of Laphanes
The modified shield flew right over the heads of our front line, built to hold a soldier in full combat gear; it could hold a lot of explosives. Of course the spiders started shooting at it, but with only 20 pounds of explosive to lift, the device had enough power to run a small amount of shielding.
Lance Corporal Donatelly drove the shield with skill, taking it around the corner and chasing after the larger ‘control’ spider. It attempted to run away, but my little barracks shit-bird chased it down and rand the shield right up under its torso before detonating the shield.
KA-Boom! Went the remotely piloted explosive device, 20 pounds of C-4 does not seem like a lot, but it really is, especially in a confined area. The blast was tremendous, and rolled most of the spiders across the floor. I only authorized that amount because I was worried about shielding, and the supposed Kernel was around a corner and my med where buttoned up in suits. The blast wave ran down the hall, but did not completely make the turn toward my men. However, even with a moderated shock wave, it still peppered us with debris.
We were okay, but the larger robot must have been a Kernel as Alan surmised, as the spiders immediately facing us did not attempt to get up. They were, for all intents, dead.
“Alright Men, let’s take the initiative, get down the hall!” Captain Cook yelled!
The Legionnaires scrambled to fill the gap left by the deactivated spiders.
We only got about 30 yards deeper into the ship when Alan warned me over the Comms; His warning was too late to notify me, because as his link went active my brain was hit with the familiar voices.
“Stupid man! You’re stupid, you can’t win, it is pointless to resist!” A thousand disjointed voices some muted and unable to be distinguished separately, others spouting garbled nonsense, and a few angry voices spewing hateful and vile statements against humanity and myself in particular.” We found the Hive-mind and I wasn’t taking any chances.
I immediately stopped and yelled “This is it, set the SADM right here!” As I backpedaled until the voices subsided.
LTCMDR Kauffman set the charge personally, adjusting the timer to give us time to retreat out of the lethal zone and setting it to immediately detonate at the first sign of tampering. The Munition was specifically built as a dumb device; the triggering sequence was analog in order to prevent the Kernel from being able to disarm the device. Actually, once activated it would take two special keys to disarm the device, the EOD commander had one and I carried the other.
We made it to the exit points without interference, two battalions of combat troops clearing an area will tend to ensure you don’t have anyone to sneak up on you. However, it was when we got to our egress points that we hit a snag. Hundreds of spiders were fighting to keep us inside the ship.
We only had a few moments before a tactical nuke detonated at our rear so we really did not have any time to waste.
“Men, we got two choices, are we gonna get glowing or are we gonna get going!” I scream out through my suit speakers
Knowing the stakes the legionnaires of the Dozer Brigade live up to their names, the steam out of the holes we burnt to get into the ship. The men went to the right and the left as they streamed through the improvised doorways, each man taking fire, but spreading the incoming fire in a wider front so it was not so deadly on the hatchways itself.
Once they had a large enough base of fire, the Dozer’s began to push back against the spiders clearing a hole and creating a wide swath of blasted metal carcasses. The three airborne battalions aided our departure by providing fire from above. The Centaurs were long out of rockets, but their large caliber automatic cannons were put to good use. They made one good strafing run and then high-tailed it away from the coming nuclear holocaust. They landed behind the same cover we came out of at the start of the attack and began firing at the unprotected rear of the enemy.
We had just made it out of the ship and were nearly to cover when LTCDR Kauffman saw it was 10 seconds to detonation and yelled “Time! On your faces!” We all dropped to react to the nuclear detonation; we landed to place our head toward the blast, darkened our visors, killed our audio and covered our heads with our hands. Our suits would do most of the protection, but we were too close for comfort.
The nuke detonated.
A massive chuck of the ship was vaporized, along with the hill it was buried into. The shockwave came at the dozers full force. Without any barriers, we got the wave full force. It rolled over us, and rolled any troops not perfectly perpendicular to the blast wave. The shock wave was so powerful it created a vacuum and once it had dissipated, a second wave of destruction came from behind as the vacuum sucked all the debris back toward the origin of the explosion.
Bits of spiders mixed with dirt, ship, and Lord knows what else. Luckily, our shields were all attached to our backs and we were in combat suits. The majority of us survived without serious injury, future cancers and ringing ears notwithstanding.
As soon as I could hear again my radio came alive. Dozer Team this is RPS Washington, come in Dozer Team 3.” This was repeated several times until I finally realized someone was talking to me. We had Comms with our fleet again.
“Go ahead RPS Washington, this is Dozer 3 Actual. Good to Hear you, give me a strep, over.”
“We were ambushed, they had 50 punishers cloaked against our tech. Once you landed they sprung the trap. We have no way of knowing if we got them all, but all 50 that shot at us are space debris.” The voice on the radio continued.
&n
bsp; “We have not had any contact with Fleet Expeditionary Force 1 or 2, but we do see ground combat near their drop ships and toward what appears to be large buried ships of unknown origin. We saw the ship near you explode. Once it was destroyed, interference reduced enough for the fleet to get a boosted signal through to you.”
“Those ships are the location of the hive minds” I said over the communications system. I want you to drop a couple orbital kinetics center mass. Take care to avoid friendlies, but you must take out those Kernel Ships, once that is done, send the assault ships down to pick us up. Dozer 3 Actual Out”
The other two battles were over the horizon or otherwise we could have seen the kinetics streaking down to take out the nests of our enemy.
Not having the luxury to think about other battles, the men of the Brigade went straight to work. Intel teams started to try to find any salvageable tech in order to begin to learn to counteract the Kernel’s new ability to cloak and jam our radios. The rest began to gather our dead and pile the Kernel scrap for recycling.
The senior enlisted began the process of identifying our casualties and ensuring we were prepared for a counter attack. Officers looked after their troops. It was the same actions of any army going back to the dawn of time. The soldiers did their jobs, some willingly, some walking zombies. Exhaustion was clouding every mind. Most of them were thankful to be alive, yet that joy was tempered with guilt and shame that they survived when their brothers in arms did not. It was the same for me, as their General, I will see the fallen in every quiet moment of my life and wonder what actions I could have done to have prevented their deaths.
Once the fleet had a target, the orbital strikes came quickly. The precision kinetics destroyed the Kernel Hive ships and we regained control of the planet. At least, we think we did.
