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Far Too Close
Far Too Close -Part 1-

Far Too Close -Part 1-

Kaviel woke, his alertness returning to normal and his vision swimming back into focus.  He twitched his antennae and waved them through the air a bit, he detected nothing unusual.  He was alone in his room, the drab grayish green walls seeming to press close in his imagination.

Arching his armoured back in a stretch, he raised the forward two meters of his long body off the padded sleeping couch he had been lying atop.  He flexed his arms and legs as the cool blood in his veins started to warm slightly.  As a Vinarfel, he wasn't exactly warm blooded, but neither was he truly cold blooded.  His blood tended to fluctuate based on the surrounding temperature but never fully adjusted to match it, usually staying a few degrees higher or lower than the ambient temperature around him.

He gave a small hissing sigh as the air passed from his multitude of simple lungs and out of his mouth.  He moved his lower body off the sleeping couch and onto the floor with a thump, his many sharp pointed legs lifting his bulk from the floor.  He had often heard himself compared to some creature that Humans called a centipede, albeit a six meter long version of the critter with arms and no venomous pinchers.

His blue compound eyes took in the entirety of his small room at a glance.  As an officer he had his own room instead of a bunk in the barracks with the others.  He twitched his antennae in elation at the thought of the privilege.  He hadn't always been an officer, it had taken years of career work in the Union military.  He could barely remember what it had been like as a raw recruit to the Union armed forces, back when he had been but a bare larvae, barely hardened and at full size.

He walked across the small room, his many legs making a skittering, clicking sound on the hard floor of the living space.  He reached out with his second pair of arms to pick up his uniform while simultaneously grabbing a small container of instant caffeine mix and making a small heated cup of water.  He had ten arms and he made full use of them as he finished up his morning routine.

Tilting his head back he chugged the hot caffeine slurry in a single long gulp, he didn't need to pause for breath as his lungs were situated further down his length.  He breathed through a simple set of spiracle lung structures arrayed down his sides, directly under his heavy back armour plates and above his legs.

He slipped into the uniform vest that denoted his rank and assignment, the glitter of the golden embroidery denoting his rank as 2N-06, a Staff Sergeant in the SCU armed forces.  Checking his appearance was suitable in the mirror in the corner of the room using his wide peripheral vision, his antennae rose in satisfaction and he made his way out of his room into the corridor beyond.

The ceiling was close enough for the light fixtures to brush the tops of his antennae even though he had folded down his back.  He followed his normal routine, first leaving the living structure he was assigned to in the officers district.  While not exactly a high ranking official, he had enough authority to command his own vehicle and a small group of escorts or infantry.

He made his way to the nearest officer's mess in a hurry.  He wasn't late by any means, but there was no sense in losing additional time dawdling either.  Reaching the large structure alone, he entered into it and was immediately hit with a wall of noise as the dozens of overlapping conversations assailed the tympanal openings under his eyes.  Taking in the vast majority of the room at a glance, he started off towards the food area.  Several of the others in the room cast sidelong glances his way as he passed, most filled with bored scrutiny but a few looking more hostile in intent.

He could understand the hostility even if he didn't agree with it.  While the Vinarfel Homeworld of Vreefall had declared openly in support of the Union, a great many of the outer Vinarfelien colonies had declared for the secessionists.  He himself was entirely on the side of the Union, let those Hegemony bastards burn for all he cared.  But this did not cure the slight air of mistrust some others felt for his people.  It was unfair in his opinion, just as many if not more Human colonies had declared for the HIS as well, but the poster race of the Union could do no wrong as far as the public was concerned.

Oh yeah, Humanity had been the first to reach out to the stars and they had shared the technology graciously with all they found, but that didn't mean the squishy meat sacks were perfect.  He hissed low in annoyance as he reached the breakfast line and grabbed a tray.

As a pseudo-cold blooded organism, Kaviel didn't need to eat more than a single hearty meal per day, and he personally liked it to be breakfast.  What with its abundance of greasy sausages, sweet honey hams and savory gravy it was a delicious way to start a day.  In the past he had tried some of the more carb heavy foods that Humans seemed to like but they had disagreed with his digestive system and so he mostly stuck to proteins now.

Kaviel piled his tray high with sausage patties, slices of steaming ham, crispy bacon strips and then coated it all in a liberal helping of chunky white sausage gravy.  His mouthplates twitched in anticipation as the smell of the food reached the sensitive receptors covering his antennae.

The majority of the tables in the room were low and had bench or stool seating attached to them, but a few of the tables near the far corner of the room were taller and had no seats.  It was to one of these that he carried his food, careful so as to not spill any of the tasty gravy.  It wouldn't injure him, his exoskeletal armour thick enough to prevent such burns, but it would still hurt.  His exoskeleton on his hands especially was much more sensitive to pressure and heat than the thick plates covering his long back.

He settled the tray down on the table and grabbed an eating utensil.  While he could eat with his hands,  he was wearing a uniform and didn't want to get it messy.  He had appearances to keep after all.

Spearing a juicy sausage from the miasma of his breakfast platter, he raised it to his face.  Unlike the Skorp, he had no mandibles, in fact he had no jaws of any kind.  Instead as his face plates moved to the sides to reveal the pinkish flesh around his mouth, he shoveled the small sausage in whole before swallowing it a moment later.

Smaller bites he could eat all at once but for bigger pieces he would have to cut them up or alternatively he could use his radula to eat them piece by piece, the toothed organ similar to a tongue except for the fact it was coated in sharp tooth like projections and generally used to strip matter from the surface of his food.  He liked to think of it as pre chewing the food before he got it into his mouth.  The very thought of putting food into his mouth and then crushing it repeatedly with flat pieces of one’s own skull was a bizarre thought.

Indeed he had tried this chewing inside his mouth a few times when nobody was near him, trying to break the food down with his radula inside his mouth instead of outside it.  His results so far had been, well, disappointing.  But he would keep it up until he succeeded, why?  ‘Because he would be damned if he was beaten by those scrawny little blood sacs at anything that's why!’  he thought stoically.

His meal was finished without incident, today of all days being an important one for him.  Today was an active deployment day, he would be taking a more direct role in the progression of the war.  These rebels would be smashed eventually and things could go back to the way they had been before.  Did the Union have issues?  Sure, most governments did.  But the Union was at least trying to maintain the peace, unlike those motherless cowards that were running the Hegemony.  They started this whole war in a desperate bid to swipe power, clear and simple.  He had seen the news broadcasts and the coverage from across the front.  Wherever the Hegemony forces fought, they left behind the smoldering remains of civilian life.  Their hatred indiscriminate against both the Union and her people.

Kaviel could not stand idly by while his own neighbors might be dying, or losing everything else.  No.  He had made the choice to fight the enemies of law and order many years past.  The fact that the enemy was changed made no difference to him, they were an affront to everything he believed in.  And so the verdict was simple, destruction.

He skittered past the other officers in the mess without a glance at them, well not directly at least.  His compound eyes gave him almost two hundred and seventy degrees of vision without moving his head.  His pseudo pupils were off putting to those that were unfamiliar with his people as they made it appear as though he was always looking directly at said observers.  He wasn't, not really.

He left the building and stepped out onto the paved walkway that sat near the edge of one of the main routes through the camp.  The roads were made of quickbond asphalt and fast setting duracrete for the most part, they served to make it so that the many vehicles that constantly traversed the camp could move without issue.  While they were not in one of Dreyvan II’s wet zones, the constant heavy traffic would still degrade dirt or gravel roadways to uselessness in weeks if not days.  So, the pavement.

These thoughts passed through his mind as he made his way along the paved blacktop towards the third armoured motor pool, the artillery park as it was called among the ranks.  He checked his surroundings before he crossed and stopped as he saw the huge armoured bulk of an M8A2E1 Quinten main battle tank rolling his way.  The eighty one ton behemoth was more than two and a half meters in height and its one hundred and forty millimeter main gun was raised tall and proud in combat ready position.

He felt the rumble of its tracks through the pavement below him as it ground its way past.  His antennae perked up a bit and he waved to the commander who was positioned out on one of the heavy tank’s many machine guns.  The Human nodded and raised a hand in greeting before they were carried away by the mammoth vehicle.  A slight feeling of awe passed through him as it always did when confronted with the superheavy armoured main battle line of the Union.  The thick armoured plates of the departing tank seemed to give it an air of extreme power that almost made him wish he was assigned to one of the metal beasts.  Almost, but not quite.

Kaviel crossed the road quickly as it was clear and walked to the guard post that allowed access to the artillery park.  The Nerivith guard inside seemed a bit bored but took his ID and checked it against the computer before handing it back.

“Go give em hell for me will ya?”  The guard said as he took the proffered ID chip back.  He looked at her, her indigo eyes and raven hair mixing with the deep rose of her skin to give her an intriguing appearance.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

His antennae rose in a friendly manner as he replied “Of coursse.  They won't even ssee it coming, sswift retribution will be dealt upon them.”  She nodded, a bit less put upon looking as if his comment had given her the will to keep up her boring post.

The interesting encounter wasn't all that unfamiliar to him, the Nerivith being a very actionable people after all.  They hated sitting still and maintaining positions.  They loved to attack, the offensive.  The rush of wind as one charged a fortified position with nothing but courage and a rifle.  It's what they had been bred for after all.  Their culture and thousands of years of history almost entirely composed of brutal planetary wars on a scale that would make even a Human green with horror.  The effects of stress and trauma were almost entirely absent from them and they would follow orders to the letter if directed by an officer of higher rank.  Though, that didn't always mean they had to like it.  They could break, but it took a hell of a lot of firepower to get them to run.

Kaviel put thoughts of the grim succubine aliens aside as he focused once more on the task ahead.  He was wending his way in between the various hulks of artillery vehicles.  Here the wide bulk of a M699 SPG blocked his path.  The long barrel of the Human designed artillery piece reaching towards the sky.  There next to it the much squatter form of a Nerivith designed Bombard Class gun carrier sat, the idle vehicle armed with a truly menacing wide barreled ordinance launcher.  He made his way around the lightly armoured mobile gun battery and perked up instantly as he saw his pride and joy.

Sitting ahead of him, the hull heavy with armour and the main gun looking like the cavernous maw of some ravenous beast, sat his charge, a Thunderscream Assault Gun or TAG as some called it more simply.  Emblazoned across the side facing him in stylized lettering were the words ‘Oledsi qas Vaspnik’ meaning ‘Old man Death’ in old Vinarfelien, an apt name for such a powerful instrument of the Union’s wrath.  As he approached he heard the sound of clanking metal and a hissing curse.  A head poked out from the rear external engine compartment hatch and turned his way.

The slightly grime streaked Vinarfel called out to him.  “Hello Sargeant!  I got here a bit early to make sure he was running in tip top shape.  Good thing I did too as he was a bit rattly, a loose bolt on the manifold.  Nothing threatening but I had to go over them all to make sure it was an isolated case.”  They said, their antennae tightly tucked across their back to avoid getting greasy too.

Kaviel gave the man a nod, a Human gesture that was no less effective among his own people.  “Good work Haggy.  I figured as much which is why I got out here early to keep you from taking the entire engine apart.  I know you were thinking about it, ah!  Don't try to deny it.”  He added quickly as Haggy’s faceplates moved slightly to reply.

Haggy just closed their mouth and went back to working on the engine out of sight.  The low muttering curses telling Kaviel that they were making progress on their tasks.  Haggy was his driver, the young man having only been in active service for a few years but already a talented driver and maintenance worker.  He was never one to trust his vehicle to the hands of others and liked to preform most maintenance on the Old man himself.  Kaviel saw no problems with this as the young man was an excellent mechanic and had never failed to keep the assault gun in tip top condition.

Taking a deep breath through the spiracle lungs that dotted his sides, he moved up to the vehicle and climbed up its side.  The textured Anti Thermal and Magnetic Armour Coating provided ample hand and footholds to allow him access to the roof.  The ATMAC coating was designed to prevent or at least mitigate the chances of magnetic mines being attached to the hull of his vehicle.  So far he hadn't had to test the idea and that was just fine with him.

He opened the top hatch and climbed inside, his long body taking a few seconds to fully enter the interior of the vehicle.  He moved into the partially covered control couch that sat near the main gun.  As both the Commander and gunner of the vehicle, it was his duty to convey tactical data and choose targets for the main gun of the TAG.  And what a main gun the Old man had.

The TAG was armed with a two hundred and eighty millimeter superheavy rocket assisted mortar launcher.  The Stormhammer cannon was able to fire a variety of rounds, from regular high explosives and anti fortification bunker busters to incendiary and it even carried two 280F-8 fusion rounds.  The devastating seven kiloton tactical nuclear devices capable of destroying virtually everything in a one hundred meter radius and causing heavy damage up to a kilometer from the detonation site.  The power to possess such potent weapons was only given to the most trusted and dedicated TAG commanders.  He knew the destruction that such devices caused, had seen the devastation and fallout they left in their wake.  To fire one was to become death incarnate.  The slaughterer of more than just the enemies caught in the weapons blast, but of every living thing that existed down to the very microbes.

He sighed at the thought.  He had never fired one of the fusion rounds in combat, and only once live on a test range.  He said a small prayer to the Mother that he would never have to use such a terrible weapon.  The death they caused was almost beyond mortal comprehension.

The beginning of the rebellion had seen the traitorous secessionists drop nuclear weapons on the defenseless inhabitants of Sector Eta.  Entire cities of hundreds of thousands evaporated in an instant by the unprecedented first strike.  Weapons of such terrible potency that they had been said to crack the very crust of the planet.  He wasn't sure about that one, but what he had seen was the footage of the blasts caught from the point of view of some of the smaller towns on the planet.  The sight of the darkened horizon being turned into a hateful sunrise had stuck in his mind, knowing that the ominous orange glow marked the deaths of countless innocents.  Their blasted atoms cast into space by the force of the blasts.

He found he was shuddering in anger, his lower hands creaking as he squeezed the piloting levers in his rage.  He took a few more shuddering breaths, he needed to remain calm.  Calm enough to punish those traitors for their crimes against the galaxy.

He paused his checks as he heard the hatch above him open, he saw a dark silhouette against the blue sky above.  The shadow climbed into the vehicle, their long armoured body similar to his but slimmer, less heavily armoured with thick chitinous plates.

They looked at him, grey compound eyes seeming to look straight back at him even though he knew they were likely paying most attention to their assigned area.

Kaviel spoke up in greeting “Good morning Private, I appreciate you getting here a bit early.”

The woman twitched her antennae in a casual way that told him she was only partially paying attention to him.  Her name was Joana and she was the youngest member of his crew, a skilled loader, she was also adept at maintenance.  She often could often be found spending time maintaining the vehicle with Haggy, the two seemingly made to get along well.  He suspected that their relationship might run a bit deeper than that but did not dwell on it.  If they wanted to get to know each other he had no right to get involved, as long as they maintained an air of professionalism while on duty of course.

His preliminary checks completed, Kaviel climbed from his crash couch to the rear area of the TAG.  He wanted to make sure they had a full ammo stowage, it would be important that they had the proper loadout.

He checked the partially armoured wet racks, the ammo being surrounded by expanding oxygen inhibitors and ignition suppressants.  That way if the vehicle was to be penetrated by enemy fire, the ammo would likely fail to detonate in its racks.  This was not a perfect method of course and so it was still recommended to evacuate the vehicle in the case of ammunition destruction.  Just in case.

Looking at the racks he nodded to himself, they had a full load of ammo, twenty four rounds of varying types in three rows of eight and one in the ready rack.  The preloaded round looked to be a high explosive variant, likely fine as he didnt see an issue with it.  If they needed to fire a different type of shell first then that could be annoying, but the chances were low of that being the case.

The ammunition looking correct, Kaviel then moved back to the main crew compartment and then out the top hatch.  As he poked his head through the hole he noticed another figure scuttling closer.  It was Freddy, his secondary loader and radio operator.  In most armoured vehicles the commander would be the radio operator as well, but due to the conditions inside the TAG, it was advantageous for the commander and radio operator to be on opposite sides of the vehicle.  Hence the strange allotment of tasks.

Freddy neared and gave him a two armed wave as he saw Kaviel in the open hatch.

“Good morning Commander.  I trusst we are on ssschedule to depart?  I tried to get here earlier but wass held up in the command ssector with new ordersss for you.”  the man said as he reached the vehicle.  He clambered up the side of the vehicle effortlessly and handed Kaviel a manilla envelope, the old style paper documents a common sight to him due to the TAG’s allotment of nuclear arsenal.

Due to the prevalence of cyber attacks and spying, it was common procedure to give instructions to such powerful armaments in a form that could not be overheard or stolen.  Thus the paper documents.  The only way to see his orders were to be the ones physically holding them, and they were also easily destroyed in case of capture.  It was seen as a useful, if a bit archaic, method of keeping secrets.

He took the envelope with a nod and opened it as Freddy crawled into the TAG through the secondary command hatch.  Leaning an arm against the vehicle's pintle mounted ten millimeter repeating railgun, he read his new orders.  He had originally been tasked with following a patrol to the contested front where they would be called to an active fire support role.  It looked as if that position had already been filled however.  Instead, his new orders were to take a light escort to the secondary contested zone to the east and bolster the morning's counterpush.  They had been heavily shelled the night before and were expecting the rebels to make a concerted push sometime in the next few days.  It would be his job to soften the enemy up a bit before a preemptive strike.

This suited him just fine, all it meant was that they would get into the thick of it a bit sooner.  They would likely start shelling before lunch.  He wondered to himself if they would receive a resupply so as to keep fighting all day, or if they would be returning to camp when they had expended their main ammo reserves.

The question was important, but not one he could expect to answer sitting around in the artillery park, they would need to get out on deployment to figure this mystery out most likely.  He folded the envelope and tucked it into the inner pocket of his military uniform.  Not that he didn't trust the other’s with the document, but his orders were to keep such information close to his chest after all.

He gazed over the rear of the vehicle and saw Haggy tinkering with the exhaust manifold of the main engine.  “Haggy, finissh it up, we are leaving in the next twenty two minutess.”  he ordered.

Haggy seemed to talk to himself quietly, the faint hiss of expelled air the only discernible sound from the man as he worked.  After a moment of this he turned and looked up at Kaviel.  “Oh.  Yess, I will be done in only another minute or two.  We should be good as it iss posssilble to be.  The Old man iss running well like normal.”

Kaviel was happy to hear that, it meant one less thing to worry about during deployment.  They had never had a catastrophic breakdown on deployment yet, but it was always a minor possibility, one he had no wish to encounter.  And so he let Haggy and Joana tinker with the TAG as long as they always put it back together again when they were done.  As a result of this, his Thunderscream was likely the most smoothly running heavy assault gun in the whole planetary battlezone.  He felt a bit of pride at that.  It was only right after all, the Union fielded hundreds of similar vehicles across the massive warfront, but in all of them only a few were armed with tactical nuclear weapons.  He and his crew were one of the only ones allotted the ability to carry tactical nuclear weaponry in their camp.

He started from his thoughts as the heavy clunk of an armoured panel closing behind him made him turn.  Haggy seemed to be done on the engines, his body streaked with grime and his uniform slightly less than pristine.  But Kaviel wasn't about to reprimand the young man on his appearance, he was a remarkable driver after all.

“Haggy, are you done with your maintenance?”  he asked the younger man.

Haggy’s antennae perked up immediately as he noticed Kaviel.  “Yess sssir!  We are in perfect running order, I bet I even managed to raisse the efficiency of the engine sslightly asss it sseemed to be cleaner than the lasst time I opened it up.  Thiss will in turn give me more power to work with while maneuvering…”  he started to say but Kaviel cut him off before he could really get going.

“Yess yesss.  That’ss great to hear Haggy.  Pleasse take your place insside as we are about to roll out.”  Haggy seemed a bit let down by his reluctance to hear the vaunted attributes of the newly refurbished engine, but did as ordered.

Kaviel checked his assistant, the small wrist device able to provide a variety of functions.  It was almost deployment time, Oh-nine-hundred local time.  He clambered back into the TAG and settled into his command position, the optics arrayed before him as both electronic screens and old fashioned periscopes in case of electrical failure.  Checking his screens he saw that they were clear at the rear to depart the park.  He looked at his assistant again, three minutes till, what the dark.  Might as well get going a little early he figured.  He picked up the specially designed headset and placed it over his head.  The speakers were positioned over the tympanal organs just under his eyes on the front of his head, an arrangement different from many other races that had their hearing organs on the sides of their heads.

“Ok Haggy.  Sstart it up, take usss out sslowly.  We aren't in any hurry.”  he said confidently over the internal comms.

Haggy made an affirmative noise and turned the vehicles main powerplant on, the huge biodiesel engine roaring to life.  Such was its power that the entire sixty eight tons of the TAG shivered slightly.  Haggy began to move them, the huge vehicle juddering slightly as it began to move slowly on its wide tracks.  Kaviel kept an eye on his screens, he trusted Haggy implicitly but it never hurt to keep an extra set of compound eyes on the situation.

He watched as they crept out into the yard's main lane and then started towards the gates.  The Nerivith guard he had spoken to earlier received a notice of scheduled departure and opened the gates for them with a wave.  Haggy gave her a small blare of the horn in response.

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