Nova Wars

They come to kill the Rooster, but he ain't gonna die. - Steel Bound Alice, Terra-Sol, Age of Paranoia

The enemy consisted of tanks, the big hogs, as well as smaller armored vehicles. Mixed in were Treana'ad, Mantid, Terran, Kobold, and Rigellian power armors. All of them were moving forward jerkily, panning their weapons back and forth in jerky movements. Battlescreens were so thick they glimmered and sparkled, easily visible even at range. Missiles and rockets fired at the enemy were being picked off over a kilometer from the ranks of the enemy, exploding futilely as the enemy's point defense knocked them out of the air.

There was two kilometers between Kilo Company, Second Platoon, and the first ranks of the enemy when Vak-tel went over the collapsed wall he had been laying down behind.

--running am6 rounds should be effective against them does affect warsteel mk viii-- 621 told him.

"Let's hope so," Vak-tel said.

"Keep your distances. Short, controlled bursts. Targets in your thirty-degree forward zone. Concentrate on front ranks, let the missiles and rockets handle the armor. Keep advance to double time march," Captain Kemtrelap said.

Vak-tel nodded inside his armor. The BATTACNET icon was still flashing red with a lightning bolts through it. His armor felt slow and sluggish. His rocket pack was under the control of someone else and kept firing, the heat and slush of the reloading nanoforge rising quickly. His grenade launcher was putting out drones and chaff.

Some of the forward battlescreens of the rapidly approaching enemy went out in a fountain of multi-colored sparks.

He dropped the aiming pip down on an unshielded Terran suit of armor and triggered a burst from his rifle.

There were bluish-white flashes as the antimatter version six cooked off when the hit split the non-reactive shell along the fault and slammed the antimatter against the armor.

Vak-tel expected to see the armor gutted.

Instead it kept moving forward, not even marred.

"What?" Vak-tel said, triggering another burst. "That should have gutted even Vodamn Armor with Neolinnium plating."

It didn't even slow the armor down.

"621, what's going on?" he asked.

--not sure should work-- 621 said. --oh no--

A little window opened up and Vak-tel realized he was watching through the opticals of a missile that was streaking across the battlefield toward one of the big tanks. The missile managed to slam home, hitting the heavy armor of the 1,200 ton tank. 621 rewound the feed until there was a clear frame of the tank once the previous missiles had hit and detonated.

The armor on the tank wasn't even marred.

Vak-tel opened a channel. "Sir, sir, our weapons are completely ineffective," he said.

The accuracy of the enemy fire was starting to pick up. His battlescreen was registering hits from medium wattage plasma and laser weapons.

As he watched, one of the Treana'ad armors leveled a rotary plasma autocannon and triggered a burst, hosing LT Gretilk until his battlescreen went out in a spray of sparks. The cannon cut out leaving LT Gretilk stumbling, his chest smouldering and crisscrossed with shallow scars that glowed red in the depths.

"Since when does a Treana'ad use plasma?" Vak-tel grumbled.

Ten more paces. Ten paces where weapons did exactly jack and shit against the enemy and the enemy's weapons scratched and pockmarked the Telkan Marine's armor.

Captain Kemtrelap's voice came over the magic band.

"Fall back to the berm! By the numbers!" the CO ordered.

Vak-tel cursed and stopped. He was in the front rank, which meant he was supposed to move back to the rear. He turned and jogged quickly.

The enemy's accuracy was still bad, but it was getting better, but he still didn't take a hit.

The enemy's advance had slowed to a crawl. Even the tanks, moving in jerks and fits and starts, had slowed down.

A booming voice came across the magic band, overriding LT Gretilk's voice ordered the second rank to fall back even as Vak-tel turned back to face the enemy and took a knee, firing his rifle.

"Why are boots pulling back? What wrong, boots?" the voice was growling, full of crackling rage.

Yuri the Chernobog.

"We're retreating. Our weapons don't work against them," Captain Kemtrelap said.

"Stupid boots. Ask for Chernobog!" the voice said.

There was a thudding noise and the ground shook slightly.

Artillery shells started raining down. The first few seconds the enemy's point defense sheered them out of the sky.

But then they started getting through, slamming into the ranks of the enemy as the last rank ran by Vak-tel and one slapped him on the shoulder. The shells that missed plunged into the torn up ground and detonated, throwing dirt up in a fountain that had a bluish-white base.

The ones that hit slammed armored figures to the ground. Limbs flew out from the explosions.

Several tanks exploded when they took multiple hits on the decks.

That reduced the point defense.

More hammered down.

Vak-tel jumped over the berm, then turned and laid down.

The shaking was getting closer.

--look-- 621 said.

A window opened up, slowing in slow motion as a Treana'ad warrior took one of the artillery shells to the lower abdomen. The parts scattered and the image followed the thorax as it flipped forward and landed facing back the way the enemy had advanced from.

No body. No ichor. Just electronics and mechanicals.

--robots-- 621 said.

Vak-tel opened the channel even as the rumbling was getting heavy enough that he could feel it through his armor's anti-shock systems.

"What?" LT Gretilk's voice was annoyed.

"They're robots. The enemy, they're robots," Vak-tel said. "My greenie triple-checked."

"Shit. Keep low. What is that rumbling?" he asked.

Vak-tel's external mics suddenly cut off as the world filled with a roaring noise.

Chernobog stepped over the prone Telkan, firing a multitude of weapons. The weapons sheered through battlescreen and armor, sending the pieces of the robots or vehicles skyrocketing into the air.

"CHERNOBOG!" the massive cyborg roared out, strafing the entire front of the enemy's ranks. The big cannon was still in stowage mode on Chernobog's back, the barrel pointing upwards. The huge cyborg began moving forward, stomping on enemy armored infantry, blowing up vehicles, and shooting everything in sight.

"No touch Yuri's boots," came over the radio as the massive cyborg ripped through the enemy's troops. One tank got near and Yuri sent it sailing with one swing of a graviton-energy wreathed foot.

Someone snickered as Yuri picked up one of the light armored vehicles and swooped it over the battlefield making "vroom... screeee... vrooom" noises before throwing it off into the distance.

The whole time the cyborgs guns shredded the rest of the enemy.

At one point he picked up a Terran suit of armor by its head and started pulling it apart and looking at it, shaking the legs at one point, before squishing the head with his thumb and finger and tossing it off to the side.

--chernobog greenies say warsteel mark one and robot parts-- 621 said.

"The rounds we were using can crack warsteel mark VIII, so why wasn't it working?" Vak-tel asked.

--mark-viii is tinfoil laminate mark-i is hate anvils of mars and wrath forges of mercury-- 621 explained. --old stuff but still mark i--

A beeping interrupted what Vak-tel was going to ask.

"Fleet's landing dropships. All of 7th Division is being recalled," Captain Kemtrelap's voice was thick with disbelief. "They're moving First MEF to take our place."

The Captain cut off the exclaimations of disbelief.

Vek-tel looked over the berm.

Yuri was done with the enemy forces and stood in the middle of the wreckage, slowly looking around. His big gun was slowly lowering into position and he could see the massive nanoforge on the base of the gun starting to steam as it produced ammunition.

Vak-tel looked at the wreckage.

We can't hurt them, went through his mind.

It was a bitter pill.

0-0-0-0-0

Chief Warrant Officer Grade Five McShootermac's body was safely ensconced in her crash couch. The entire ship's atmosphere was pumped out and the interior spaces were all in vacuum, thus the reason she was in an armored vac-suit, even though her crash couch was armored and the interior spaces full of breathable kinetic gel.

Her mind was walking around a room, staring at holographic windows around her.

Here an infantry company was using hunter-killer tactics on the enemy armored unit they lured into an urban hellscape. She closed the window, they had it under control and no new data was being presented that needed her attention.

There a medical company was signaling for patient overflow as civilians streamed in. McShootermac pinged MEDCOM and the MPs both to get a handle on the situation before it boiled over.

That one had strikers doing white knuckle close air support. She closed it, she didn't have time for frame by frame analysis on nearly fifty strikers moving at Mach-3.

This one had the 7th Telkan Marine Division's feed.

Their weapons were entirely ineffective. She went over it. They were using standard New Confed equipment, using AM6 rounds. She ran energy-v-armor analysis and determined that the weapons stood no chance of even denting the armor. She looked over their relative strength parameters vs estimations of enemy physical strength as estimated by movement and realized that the enemy would tear them to pieces.

She signaled for 7th TMD to retreat.

She then pinged Combat Logistics & Supply as well as Games & Theory to find out what was wrong.

She looked over the footage, taking into account the enemy's weapon strength. Medium wattage lasers, medium temp plasma.

She frowned. The weapon the Treana'ad looking robots were fielding looked like a Ma-Deuce, but fired lasers.

She knew from experience that you'd have to pry the Ma-Deuce out of the Treana'ad's cold dead hands before they'd accept an energy weapon in the low jigawatt range.

"Enemy is copying weapon styles without understanding underlying concepts" she annotated. She looked over the plasma and laser weapons. "Enemy is not using nanoforges and has reverted to using energy weapons rather than nanoforge supplied kinetics."

She looked at the armor. There was no adjustments, no field modifications that one normally saw for certain vehicles and equipment.

"Enemy is using unmodified military gear from 2PW, early Atrekna arrival"

The massive Chernobog was waving a light armored vehicle around while the greenies scanned it.

The engine scans that the Chernobog had taken were interesting.

The fusion powered steam system that most modern vehicles used was missing, instead using the steam to power generators that then powered electric motors.

The greenies had highlighted sections and McShootmac looked it over.

Atmosphere equations and gas mixtures. Electromagnet field distances. Average water vapor of atmosphere.

She got it.

"Enemy vehicles have too large of a gap between electromagnetic systems, requiring a charge build up to occur before system actuation. Enemy is unprepared for current atmosphere."

She slowly moved around (less than 1.5 seconds outside of eVR time) the windows, looking at them.

"Enemy's technological base and warfighting technology and abilities are inferior to fielded equipment" she jotted down.

She moved over to another window. "Enemy is cargo-culting equipment. Vehicles power plants, sensors, and computer systems have been replaced. Warsteel superstructure elements have been repurposed, drastically reducing enemy effectiveness."

She stared at one window.

"Enemy has not committed actual personnel to ground-side attack. It is currently automated systems."

She looked at another window.

"BATTACNET disruption is possibly due to former systems attempting to link up with current BATTACNET" she put in another window with a wave of her hand.

She frowned as more data came in.

Serial numbers, VIN numbers, and more were pouring in from units.

She opened windows and began running searches in TERSOLMILINT records.

It took her only a few moments to find it.

Fifty-third Expedition Force, lost with all hands.

She pinged the Admiral.

She had the force levels, ship types, and the rest of the data now.

McShootermac waved her hand and banished the current data, moving to the next task.

In her crash couch her toe twitched.

0-0-0-0-0

"Enemy vessels are within firing range, Admiral," the tactical control officer's voice was calm and level.

Admiral Rippentear smiled.

"You may fire when ready."