I arrived at the Basic Military Course on a warm afternoon, trotting down the corridor from where the shuttle had landed and into the concourse. I had my plas sheet with my Military Service Number emblazoned on it and I kept checking it against the signs that were scattered around. When I found the number I entered the room.
With nearly a hundred other Lanaktallan I waited to be told what to do next. Eventually a Tri-Vee came on, a robot delivered papers, and we were welcomed to one of the major Unified Military Forces armored vehicle training planets.
We were the next class, ten thousand strong, joining ten million already in training.
Training that, at first, was merely how to walk in lines, in synchronization, and how to appear. Chin up, upper shoulders back, arms folded, lower spine straight. Then to fire a rifle, how to wear armor, how to address one another, how to fill out paperwork, how to use a communication's device, how to give proper obescience to our superiors.
In training I discovered that there were millions of my fellow trainees who had flunked out at various points, only instead of being sent home or to the mines they were just forced to start over again.
I also discovered that if you 'failed and recycled' all the costs were then waived.
Most of the hundred in my platoon 'failed' in the first few weeks in order to recycle and go through without accruing debt. As for myself, I had a waiver, so I just applied myself as I always had. Steadily working, being patiently, and not giving up.
Another discovery startled me. In the week after the final testing you could 'fail' for almost no reason, to be recycled. This was after class standing lists were put out, and awards gained during training were passed out.
I had achieved a certificate of Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence of Parade Marching, which several of my peers had been motivated to be awarded. Those that wanted it, that didn't get it, dropped back and recycled.
I cared not. I wasn't a marcher.
I was a tanker, and tankers don't walk.
I graduated 2,388th out of 12,455. One of the few who had a guaranteed job after Basic Military Training. Because I was higher than 2,500 in standing I was asked if I wished to select a new Military Employment Field.
No. I wanted to be a tanker.
I was promoted, when I was sent to MEF School, and arrived with rank and awards on my sash.
My class was a hundred thousand strong, including the Lanaktallan who had recycled during MEFS. I was spoken to by the trainers. I had scored both low and high enough that I could choose to receive neo-sapient crew-member training. I considered it, pondering over it at lunch. My fellow trainees warned against it, that it could effect my future promotions and standings.
I took the training. Three months of learning how to be a gunner in a tank outfitted to allow neo-sapients to contribute to the might of the Unified Council. I graduated first out of the nine Lanaktallan who had chosen the training. I was promoted again, and offered 'Tank Crewmember Multi-Role Training', which would cover everything from Tank Commander to Gunner to Driver.
If I did so, I would forever give up the opportunity to be an officer, as no officer would stoop so low as to drive or fire the main gun.
Still, I liked the idea, so I took the option.
I was offered "Multi-Armored Vehicle Proficency School', again, I could not be an officer.
I took the offer.
Over the next year I learned, not only to fire the gun, but every other position in the tank and each type of tank.
During training, my ability as a gunner was brought out. I was the Trainee Host Champ and set a record when I hit 874 targets out of 1,200, setting a new record by over twenty hits.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, a Terran tank crewman was somewhere learning to hit 800 out of 1,000, including while on the move. Terrans that my Star Nation had declared war upon with an unannounced attack upon non-belligerent worlds that were only peripherally aligned with the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems.
I was training to combat Corporate forces or break-away systems.
Terrans were training to kill anything that came into their gunsights.
I was in simulators.
They trained in real tanks.
I trained to fight on settled worlds, where I could leave the tank and breathe the air.
They trained as if the universe itself would kill them if they so much as peeked outside their tank.
When the news came that the Unified Council was at war with the Terran Confederacy I, like my fellow trainees, were confused at how the Terrans thought they could face the might of the Great Herd. Many of my fellow trainees were afraid the war would be over by the time out training was finished.
On the training world, things progressed as they had for millions of years. Something we had constantly drilled into us. Tank tactics had been finalized, streamlined, and made entirely efficient tens of millions ago. We were learning what the Great Herd had used to trample under all opposition.
I loved the tanks. Unstoppable engines of destruction, armed with plasma weapons to bring forth the fury of a star upon the foes of the Unified Council. Battlesteel armor capable of resisting any weapon brought to bear. Thick battlescreens that would prevent all but the heaviest weapons from reaching the heavily armored hull. Powerful hoverfans allowing the tanks to cross any terrain, even water.
Applying myself to training as I had everything else, with patience, attention to detail, and a hard work ethic, I was a first time complete on my travel through the training cycle.
The only first time through graduate in the entire Host. No other trainee had graduated after a single cycle of training in nearly three hundred thousand years.
Many of my peers mocked me. Told me that I was foolish not to remain in the cycles of training, to pass up chances for promotion based on how long I was in the Unified Military Forces, pass up the chance at awards, and the chance of making contacts with those higher ranking than me.
They didn't understand my desire to go somewhere and help defend the Great Herd.
Unlike my peers, when graduation came, and I was 525th out of 9,037, I accepted graduation instead of requesting that I be recycled.
And was assigned to Great Grand Most High A'armo'o's forces.
Little did I know that the simple random choice of units had slated me to become more than I had ever thought.
I was 25 years old when I landed, that sunny day, and pranced about excitedly at the thought of being assigned to my very own tank.
--Excerpt From: We Were the Lanaktallan of the Atomic Hooves, a Memoir.
A'armo'o spit his cud over the side of the tank, raking the advancing robots with his quad-barrel. He pulled it back and up when it started beeping, slapping the lever to eject nitrogen coolant across the barrels.
The Telkan undid the latches and opened the cover for the ammunition hopper. It grabbed the empty can of ammo and threw it off the side of the tank, an act that would have drawn punishment and a fine a mere two weeks prior. The Telkan slapped the full ammo can in, pulled out a length of the belt, and mag-attached the links together. They closed the cover, redid the two latches, and lightly slapped A'armo'o on the back of his helmet.
"CLEAR!" the Telkan yelled, then jumped off, landing smoothly and running back to where the Terran self-propelled munitions nanoforge was operating, its battlescreens thick and heavy.
A'armo'o didn't bother saying anything, just lowered the quad-barrel and started firing again.
Private Second Class Tumkurt had an icon flashing already on his HUD. Lanaktallan main battle tank, two exterior guns out of ammo, medical issue. Before he could accept the mission someone else grabbed it and a request for more external weapon ammo popped up.
Tumkurt had to admit it was more than slightly disconcerting that he was being relegated to ferrying armor for the tanks, but he wasn't infantry. He was part of Ordnance for First Telkan Marine Division, which meant light power armor and ferrying ammo to whoever needed it.
Although loading ammunition in the middle of a firefight was an entirely new thing.
--left left left-- 527 flashed on the inside of his visor.
Tumkurt looked to the left, seeing a dozen flexible metal tentacles erupting out of a hole in the ground. Before the mechanical enemy could fully pull itself out Tumkurt had grabbed his mag-ac rifle from his back and started shooting, marking the robot for everyone else.
Tentacles popped loose or shattered as the main body of the robot, the size of a good sized cargo lifter, pulled its way from the ground. His shots just bounced off the thick armor and Tumkurt wished his armor had a grenade or missile launcher.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
One of the assault infantry guys landed next to Tumkurt, the rocket pack on his right shoulder shifting slightly as the micromotors ensured the rocket pack was aiming at the right spot. The rocket pack fired once, the missile hitting the robot's chassis and blowing it into scrap.
Tumkurt hustled back toward the nanoforge as the assault infantry guy tossed a fusion grenade into the hole and jumped again to land on the back of tank, making the ass end wobble.
Sto'odfa'azt felt the tank wobble as it smashed aside a ferrocrete wall that the battlescreen has passed over, the heavy prow shattering the poured ferrocrete slabs. He had his face pressed against his sight, both to push his helmet against his head to keep pressure on the cut across his head, just in front of his side-eyes, and to try to see better.
The tank he was in had rotated to the outside, giving the heavy Terran tank a chance to move inside the formation. The Terran tank had taken a heavy hit to its starboard armor and had smoke pouring out of it, the outside track blown free.
But Sto'odfa'azt wasn't thinking about the lemur tank. He was aiming at the massive Precursor vehicle that had damaged it.
"Fire already," the Tank Most High shouted. His gunner had loaded a tank round and had it pressurizing, the tank's firing chamber already nearing dangerous pressure levels.
"Not yet," Sto'odfa'azt said quietly, knowing his helmet mic would pick it up. Sto'odfa'azt shifted the angle of the cupola slightly, the armor whirring slightly. He fluttered the magnetic rails, clearing any strange charges.
"SHOOT IT!" the driver yelled.
"Not yet," Sto'odfa'azt said. The machine's screens were as thick as a Terran tank's, flickering as they bounced Terran warshot or slowed it enough for the armor to deflect or withstand.
But he'd seen it. He knew he had.
"FIRE RIGHT NOW!" the Tank Most High ordered.
"Not yet," Sto'odfa'azt reached out with his lower right hand and slapped a button to cut everyone else out of the firing loop as the gunsight slid over the battlescreen. The firing bar was already deployed down by his front hooves and he lifted on hoof.
The Tank Most High opened his mouth to order the tank computer to override Sto'odfa'azt's controls when the Lanaktallan suddenly stomped the firing bar rather than use the more traditional firing stud.
"SHOT OUT!"
With a roar the tank's main gun fired an overpressured plasma round, the flare and backwash erasing shadows as it went white and blue rather than the standard orange and green.
Sto'odfa'azt saw the loading icon lash and stomped the bar again.
"SHOT OUT!"
The tank slid slightly, the driver struggling to compensate as the autoloader whirred.
"SHOT OUT!"
The first round cross the two kilometer space, hitting not the battlescreen, but the wreckage of a transit bus it was passed over and shredding. The wreckage exploded, the battlescreen flickering as the projectors tried to adjust.
The second round hit the debris and turned it into half-matter half-energy ravening up the side of the battlescreen in a plume of hellfire.
The third shot screamed through the middle of the plasma blast, the outer layer of ions stripped away by its passage through the center of a star.
The massive machine had opened a thermal venting port, no bigger than two meters.
Sto'odfa'azt's third shot hit it square, blowing apart the thermal venting system, boiling away the liquids the heatsinks depended on, and shattering the ceramics of the systems. Wiring caught fire, electrical impulses raced through the system.
The thermal coolant tank ruptured, converted to steam in an enclosed area, and refused to be denied.
The side of the vehicle exploded outward.
Two Terran tanks put their heavy kinetic rounds into the suddenly vulnerable side and the vehicle exploded.
Colonel Dremsal saw the Great Herd tank cripple the Precursor combat vehicle and his two men kill it out of the corner of his eye, his brain noticing it all even if just registered that the vehicle that had tried to flank the serrated wedge formation had been killed.
The weight of metal he was smashing into was increasing. More and more tanks were getting damaged, but Dremsal only had a few choices, none of them good.
The biggest and most obvious one was the massive mining robot behind him. True, it wasn't moving very fast, barely 22 km/hr, but the damn thing was so big and tough that it was little more than a mobile wall pushing him straight into the enemy.
The river was on one side, and while he could order the tanks to button up and hit the river, just emerging on the other side, he had a bad feeling about that river that he had learned to pay attention back when he was a lowly Captain.
Then two Precursor space vessels, a Djinn and a Jotun, both pumping out combatants. The Jotun was pushing combat robots hard and fast, the Djinn was fielding mining robots.
Which were actually doing better than the combat vehicles.
Dremsal glanced at what one of his recon drones had shown.
Both Precursor machines had cleared avenues between each other as well as behind them. The Djinn was shipping resources to the Jotun, and the Jotun and the Djinn were both shipping resources to something else.
The fast recon drone had spotted what it was, nearly fifteen miles away, well enough to get a silhouette of it, see the fires on the hull, see the smoke pouring off of it.
A Juggernaut. The size of a metropolis, lightly armed compared to a Devestator or Dreadnought, it had obviously taken a pounding coming in.
Dremsal checked his datalink. The Juggernaut was listed as destroyed in action, sat-recon showed fires burning on the hull and massive cracks and craters. It was bent in the middle, a huge fissure nearly a half mile wide across the middle.
The fast recon drone had shown that nearly a dozen of the Precursor machines were feeding it resources, combat robots, ore haulers, and other gear.
Trying to bring your big brother back to life, huh? Dremsal thought.
He checked his route.
12th Regiment was fighting hard to get at the Jotun. The Telkan Marines had wanted to go scout it, but Dremsal had cancelled the scouting mission that Trucker had ordered and told them to stay tight to the tanks. He had two thirds of the Great Herd harrying the flanks and rear of Gobbler, the rest mixed in with his tanks.
Sixteenth Infantry Brigade (warborg) was closing in on the Jotun fast, but it was throwing out a wall of mechs to stop them, had actually bogged them down to the point that the warborgs had called in their big brothers, the warmechs, who would take nearly an hour to reach the warborgs. The warborgs were moving, but slowly, the Jotun not doing anything fancy, just using mass drivers to fling debris at the warborgs, but forcing them to slow down.
Dremsal nodded to himself as he caught a flier with his quad-barrel.
He knew what to do.
"Are we going inside?" Plunex asked.
Addox shook his head. "No, last thing we want is to be inside and some C-DAT manages to get a golden BB on this thing."
"Then why?" Plunex asked, watching Casey finish the cut and start a new one.
"I wanna looksee," Casey said. He pointed to the side. "Under those armor bubbles right there are battlescreen projectors, nearly a dozen in that cluster," he continued, still paying attention to the work he was doing. "I wanna see if I'm right and there's a power cluster here."
Vuxten nodded as 471 tossed up a potential schematic. A main power lead that branched off to the different battlescreen protectors.
"Blasted integrity screens," Casey mutterd when sparks shot out from where the fusion torch was ripping into the armor. "Oughta be a law."
Vuxten's armor tossed up a meme of the giant Precursor vehicle being handed a ticket by a massive warmech. "Precursor Mining Vehicle, you are fined two days pay for using integrity screens while we try to kill you."
Vuxten groaned. That bad of a meme showed he was on local network only.
"How bad's the jamming?" he asked.
--bad bad-- 471 answered. --putting out enough EM to fry yummy yummy turkey--
Plunex turned and looked at the platoon, which was starting to gather up. "Spread out. Look for hatches, gaps in the plates, exposed wiring, exposed battlescreen projectors. Stop bunching up."
The Telkan Marines started moving around.
"How the hell do you kill something this damn big with the weapons we've got?" someone asked, omitting their broadcast ID.
"How thick is the armor?" Vuxten asked, looking at the cut.
"Right here? Only a meter," Casey said. "At least, the outer layer. It's not layered armor, just solid battlesteel since this isn't a combat vehicle. Armor's hot right here too, meaning there's something underneath it generating a lot of heat."
"I don't see any thermal sinks or thermal systems," Addox said.
"This thing is a deep level mining rig, not really built for surface thermal exchange since half the heat generated would be external. Not too deep, not using that weird stuff," Casey said. His face was shielded by an opaque faceplate that Vuxten wasn't sure where the Terran had gotten it from.
There was silence for a couple of minutes as Casey kept working.
"Kinda boring up here," Addox said, looking around. "The battlescreens are thick enough not even sound is really getting through, just this thing's noise."
"Boring is good," Casey said, starting the last cut.
"Got a hatch right here," PFC Melkrit called out.
"Got a buckled armor plate here," PV2 Sagroot said.
Vuxten jogged over to the buckled plate, looking at it. Some time in the past the excavator had hit something too tough for the battlesteel to ignore and the plate had bent. There was a patch over it, a light brown rather than the rust color of old battlesteel.
Vuxten put his hand on it and felt an oscillating vibration from the other side.
"Might have found something good," Vuxten told the Private. "Good catch."
Sagroot flushed inside his armor and nodded.
Vuxten hopped back to where Casey was pulling up the thick slab of armor.
"Yup, cable junction," the Terran said.
--lean forward want look-- 471 said.
"My greenie wants a better look," Vuxten said, moving up. The cables were thick and heavy, flexible black armor wrapped around the cables that were as thick as Vuxten's legs. There were six cables coming in from the edge, two running parallel to the edge, and a heavy braided cable running toward the center of the vehicle.
--battlescreen cabling-- 471 said. --backup systems not there must be deeper in or different spot--
"471 says that the backups aren't there, either down deeper or in a different location," Vuxten said.
"So no use in blowing this junction," Addox said, shaking his head. "Dammit."
--no maintenance crawly crawly space-- 471 said. --there right there datalink cables and a datalink junction--
The part was highlighted in Vuxten's vision.
"471 says that's a datalink junction," Vuxten said, pointing it out, marking it so the others could see it plainly.
--power flow analysis and datalink intercept might get system algorithm-- 471 said.
"471 says he might be able to get the battlescreen frequency shift algorithm," Vuxten said.
--close enough-- 471 said, tabbing in two laughing mantid emojis. He cracked the case and climbed out, slapping his rifle on his abdomen and checking his toolkit.
The bigger beings watched as 471 moved up and attached detectors to the cables.
--superconductor cable not superluminal optics cable-- 471 tsked.
"What about encryption?" Plunex asked.
"Who's it going to encrypt it from, itself?" Addox asked. "This is a mining rig, it's not supposed to be anywhere near the enemy. Add in that unless you're using electron wiring or self-healing molycircs, encrypting signals inside your own system introduces heavy lag."
"Oh," Plunex asked.
"But it's not beyond the realm of possibility," Casey mused. "Felgreth ships had internal encryption, even signal encryption within their own equipment."
"Aren't those the guys who fielded magnesium/titanium armor?" Addox asked, chuckling.
"What's so funny?" Plunex asked when Casey nodded, giving a quiet laugh.
"Magnesium is flammable, titanium bursts into flame at about the temp magnesium burns at. The alloy litterally burst into flame when hit with a laser pointer," Addox chuckled. "They fielded a massive military force. Attacked some of the rimward colonies about six hundred years ago."
"Which promptly burst into flame the minute the paint was scratched," Casey said. "Standard operation was a burst from a mag-ac then use your laser designator. A tank would just burst into flame. Funnier than Hell."
"Never did find out where those guys came from," Addox said.
Casey shrugged. "They're probably designing a thermite/petroleum based armor."
471 climbed back up Vuxten, moving around to sit back in the clamshell. He closed it and plugged in.
--got it-- 471 said. --short formula algorithm repeating--
"He says he has the algorithm," Vuxten said.
"Well, now what, sir?" Addox asked, looking around.
Vuxten noticed Plunex was looking at him too and resisted a sigh.
471 flashed an amused icon.
stall, Vuxten, stall
"Well, after careful consideration, I'm beginning to lean toward the idea of performing," Vuxten started, thinking rapidly.
"Hey, I got a big skull over here. Looks like its jammed in the forward grinders!" Corporal Lantix called out.
Vuxten breathed out a sigh of relief as 471 popped an icon of an umpire yelling "SAFE!"
"Skull?" Addox said. "Think Glory survived?"
"Link me your feed," Vuxten ordered.
His visor showed what the other Telkan Marine was seeing.
There were massive grinders halfway down, the buckets for the port side wheel would dump their load into that set of grinders, but they were jammed up. A massive black skull, part of an arm, and a hand were visible in the grinders, which kept bucking, reversing and engaging.
The hand waved as Vuxten looked through his troop's cameras.
"Help a girl out?" Glory asked, staring up at the tiny specks with the header of Telkan Marines.