Chapter 021: Battle

The Genetic Wars were a series of military campaigns waged during the later part of the Golden Era of Mankind, today mostly overshadowed by the horrors of the War of Purity. During the Genetic Wars, forces of the Solar Commonwealth and soon-to-be Transhuman Alliance came under sudden assault of the so-called genetic warlords.

The source of the Genetic Wars was the Battle of Serenity-VIII, during which some Gene Artificers were misplaced. They resurfaced eighteen years later when the Genetic Wars started. In the meantime, their new owners used them to create several genetic templates that wouldn’t receive the approval of the Solar Commonwealth's Commission of Genetic Ethics.

The resulting supersoldiers (either cloned or grown naturally) were then used by their creators to wage war against the Solar Commonwealth. In the era before the War of Purity and the creation of the first Enhanced, their genetic improvements offered an overwhelming advantage over the regular soldiers of the Commonwealth. As a result, the Solarian forces suffered several humiliating defeats. This, in turn, led to many pirates and political radicals joining the warlords.

Despite early successes, the majority of the genetic warlords were swiftly defeated. However, some of them (like the sadistic psychopath Reaver, the idealist extremist Purifier and the Secessionist Alliance) managed to plague the Commonwealth for many, many years.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 1, Page 124

***

EGS Hastati, Cargo Deck

15:00 30.06.2610 STT

Cadet Christopher Hall

The attack was overwhelmingly strong, yet straightforward. There was no subtlety in the marines’ assault. Then again, did squashing cockroaches require subtlety? All you need is overwhelming strength. And the marines had it.

The first heralds of the assault were grenades. Flash grenades detonated as the first ones, though with the scout bots warning the defenders of the attack they blinded almost no one. Smoke grenades detonated shortly after, enclosing the entrance with a nanomachine infused smoke, impenetrable to both naked eyes and most sensors available to the defenders. The mines placed near the entrance didn’t detonate, remotely disabled by the marines’ hackers or by the nanomachines of the smoke cloud.

A heavy machine gun opened fire, raining death upon the entrance. With the smoke coverage, it was a suppressive fire at best. The sound of bullets hitting plastic walls was quickly joined with an almost continuous sound akin to an electrical discharge.

Two towering marines in powered armors emerged from the smoke. Their armor’s outer layer was shaped to resemble Roman legionary armor. Each of them carried a shield - a small metallic buckler surrounded by a wall of translucent hexagons. When the machine gun operator turned his attention to them, the sound of discharges ascended into a deafening cacophony as the shields began devouring the bullets even faster.

Christopher didn’t hear the orders, but he heard the result. The anti-tank gun fired, the round hitting the shield of one marine. The resulting burst of light and horrible noise felt almost like a flash grenade. The shield broke, the marine collapsing on his knees. Bullets rattled on his armor, the several layers of ceramic repelling them with nothing but a minor inconvenience to the soldier underneath.

The soldier kneeling behind the gun was about to fire it once more, hopefully killing the downed shieldbearer. Seconds before that, a missile emerged from the smoke with a loud whizz. It flew right to its target, obliterating their only anti-armor weapon in a giant fireball.

As if it was a signal, the downed shieldbearer stood up, pulling a machine gun from his back. The other one pressed forward, closing the distance between him and the nearest cover. The machine gunner directed its attention at the heavy machine gun emplacement, tearing it to pieces in a few seconds of sustained fire.

The reason for the shieldbearer’s charge became evident once the distance closed between him and the nearest line of the covers. There were marines behind him, wearing full combat suits decorated in a way similar to their heavy troopers. The rain of bullets suppressed the defenders while they crossed the distance. The two nearest soldiers of the Echo were riddled in holes in seconds when they tried to move back. The third one got grabbed and pulled to the other side of the cover. Once his killer raised from behind the cover, an unexpected bullet landed right in the middle of his facemask.

One kill for the Recovery Team 8, at least judging from the victorious howl of Rukh. We lost four soldiers, and if I see things correctly, the enemy might have numerical superiority. Also, that hit was a goddamn fluke, regardless of what Rukh might say.

Christopher didn’t want to kill people. He was, deep inside, a pacifist. A product of more peaceful times. But right now people around him were dropping dead like crazy. And he was confident that the Hastati marines weren’t concerned with taking prisoners. Thus, for the first time in his life, he pointed his gun towards another living being. Taking full advantage of the fact that his side of the cover was covered with electronic displays connected with minuscule cameras on the other side of the artificial wall.

He fired without having to stick his head outside. The marine he tried to shoot dived behind the shield-bearer.

So much about my debut as a soldier.

One marine flung a grenade from behind the cover. Christopher looked in that direction and acted quickly. His telekinesis grabbed the grenade midair and held it there until the detonation. It was enough to startle the nearest marines, giving the defenders a precious few seconds.

At least that was what Christopher had hoped would happen. Instead, the marines reacted almost instantly. A grenade launcher launched a grenade much faster than he could react to, exploding mid-air a few meters away from him, right next to the Corporal, Tendrik, and Nekia. The Corporal took the brunt of the damage, dying instantly. Nekia seemed to have gone through the detonation unscathed, even if stunned, but Tendrik was much too close. He collapsed to the ground behind the cover, blood dripping from several holes in the suit.

“Tendrik!” Tiriel, the closest their team had to a paramedic, was about to leap from her cover towards Tendrik when Christopher interrupted her.

“Wait!” Christopher shouted through the microphone. Tiriel froze.

The battle still raged in the backdrop. Since the marines noticed the enemy had a sorcerer amidst them and weren’t sure if they got him with the grenade launcher, they played it safe. The smoke near the entrance was slowly dissipating, but with the number of marines around, they didn’t need it anymore.

They were entering the hangar in groups of three, one carrying a transparent and glasslike shield and the others using that cover to rain fire on the fortifications. The marines probably had several crawler-like vehicles with spare ammunition following them, so that wasn’t an issue. They were slowly advancing, with the remaining Echo soldiers and crew members suppressed. Soon they would get close enough to pick them off one by one.

“He will bleed out!” Tiriel urged him. Tendrik added some mumbled groans. “Stop moving, Tin Can!”

“Wait!” With the cloud dispersed, Christopher could see a soldier armed with a long tube which he had just finished reloading. He was surrounded by two marines with shields and pistols.

They want a sorcerer? They will get one.

Christopher focused every single ounce of psychic strength, concentration, and sorcerer training he had on his telekinesis. It would be his magnum opus. The greatest achievement of his supernatural powers. A proof that even a weak sorcerer talent could be of immense use on the battlefield when used with creativity.

The soldier with the grenade launcher finished reloading and pulled the trigger. The projectile left the tube… but one meter later it arrived at an invisible wall. The unexpected detonation enveloped the soldier with the launcher and his two protectors in a giant fireball and rained shrapnels on nearby marines. The shockwave pushed aside those close to the detonation and startled those who were farther away. The remaining Echo soldiers used that occasion to raise from their covers and rain bullets on the surprised marines.

“NOW!” Tiriel leaped from behind her cover, closing distance to Tendrik quickly. As she started administering first aid, Christopher had a chance to review the overall situation on the battlefield.

They had eight soldiers left out of thirteen. Nekia was curled behind her cover, her light machine gun broken by enemy fire - ordering her to shoot enemies with the pistol was probably a recipe for death. Tendrik was out, and Tiriel was too busy keeping him alive to fire at attackers. This left the Recovery Team 8 with Christopher, Rukh, Ryan, and Kivanna.

The last one hadn’t even fired thus far and seemed to be gripped with a panic attack. Ryan was a terrible marksman. Christopher was ok with the rifle, but he was as far from being a soldier as possible and besides his telekinesis, he was of little use.

The enemy still had two heavy troopers which they could do little against, and an increasing number of marines that at this point surpassed two squads in number. At least five of them had died, some were wounded. The brief respite caused by the grenade launcher’s self-detonation was coming to an end, as the marines reorganized themselves.

As two more Texian soldiers fell, forcing the rest of their side to hide once again, Christopher had come to a decision.

“Cat Two, can he move?” The cacophony of suppression fire grew louder. If both sides weren’t using special bullets, ricochets would have already murdered everyone in the hangar.

“Yes, but not for long.” Tiriel replied. This was the last straw for Christopher.

“Everyone, smoke grenades on our position, NOW!” Even soldiers listened to him. When the smoke began enveloping their side of the hangar, their suits adapted to the circumstances. Most of the smoke-filled vision began being replaced with the computer rendering of the area, with approximate positions of people and the terrain. Based on sounds and, in case of people on their side, the electronic signals of their suits. There was even a minimap in the corner of his view.

“We are retreating.” Christopher shouted over the radio. “Start throwing your grenades towards the enemy, then hurry to the exit. Keep your goddamn heads down! Tiriel take Tendrik. Ryan, make sure Kivanna is with us. Rukh… eh, do whatever you want.” Christopher said, resolving that of all the people on their side, Rukh was the only one who had a clue how combat worked. And despite acting like a berserker, he was sane enough to retreat in time.

He noticed he broke the protocol only after he finished speaking. It wasn’t the time to bother about that.

Their team marine trainee responded with a loud and triumphant howl, leaving Christopher to wonder if he got another kill.

As the grenades began exploding, and the suppressing fire temporarily died down, all defenders who could still move started running away. Christopher was among them… when he noticed one small green point on his minimap staying behind. Nekia.

“Cat Four?” He received no answer. A second later the dot disappeared.

No. No. No wa… wait a second. I can still see the Corporal’s dot, though it’s grey now. Nobody’s signal just disappeared.

He stopped his escape and turned back. Her last known position wasn’t far. It took him two or three seconds to pass the few meters distance… after which he almost tripped over her body, lying on the ground right next to her cover.

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Dead? No time to check.

He grabbed her, the servomotors in his exoskeleton protesting against the additional strain. Then the alarm rang and Christopher found himself staring at a marine who emerged from the smoke right on the other side of the cover.

Before the marine changed Christopher into swiss cheese, he was pushed back into the smoke by the impacts of several bullets. Rukh roared triumphantly from the background once again.

Christopher took the occasion to run towards the exit with Nekia in his arms, ignoring the bullets whizzing above his head. And somehow he survived the run. He passed Rukh, who was standing near the door and firing at the smoke cloud.

Behind the door was a corridor where the three crawlers stood. They had no time to evacuate them and the equipment still stored aboard them. Christopher ran beside them, almost getting to the end before he heard Rukh’s voice.

“Hall!” Christopher turned back, to see Rukh jumping off the first of the crawlers and then sprinting towards him. “Throw something above that crawler!”

Without thinking about it, he did as ordered. He pulled Nekia’s pistol and then threw it with his telekinesis. He had no idea what Rukh was plotting… but he found it out almost instantly, as the crawler exploded.

The blast was powerful enough to throw Rukh at Christopher. In fact, because of occurring in a corridor, it had enough power to throw them all away from it. They landed in the middle of the corridor after flying through both the crawler corridor and the intersection.

Christopher was still slightly stunned when the rest of the group got to them.

“Holy shit, what did you do?!” He heard Ryan’s voice while trying to raise from the ground.

“I set some leftover mines in the crawler for movement detonation triggers. Then Hall threw something right above them, caving in the corridor.” Rukh replied.

I swear I will kick his ass for calling me by my surname.

Finally, the ringing died out and Christopher stood up. His entire body was in pain, despite the bits of armor that he wore. He started with a question.

“How much time do we have?” That was the most urgent thing to find out.

“Five to ten minutes.” Ryan responded. “They have to blow their way through one of the cave-ins.”

That should be adequate. But we have to hurry. A quick check of ourselves, then we go.

Eight surviving soldiers and the Recovery Team Eight were crowded into the corridor. They were mostly out of ammo and at least some of them looked like they were going through a serious case of shock. Not surprising - the marines had swept the floor with them in an orgy of destruction and murder, and they barely escaped with their lives intact.

“Cat Five, and… you.” Christopher pointed to one of the soldiers who looked like they still had some fight left in them. “Guard the intersection behind us.” He repositioned himself together with Rukh. If Christopher remembered the blueprints together, the corridor intersecting with the one they were in went right beside some of the passages that Ryan and Nekia blocked, the most likely assault route.

“Cat Two, what about him?” Tiriel was kneeling beside the cyborg. Tendrik was resting with his back on the floor. Some parts of his armor were removed to expose wounds, now draped with a translucent futuristic equivalent of a bandage.

“Lost a lot of blood, but he is stable. Getting him to a hospital would be a splendid idea, though. Some shrapnels are lodged in his right arm too deep for me to remove them here. If we lose too much time…”

“Then… I might have a… pretext for a… cybernetic arm.” Tendrik said, his left hand making a thumbs-up gesture. His voice was faint.

“Now I’m even more motivated to save it.” Tiriel shook her head. “And I told you, do not move and do not try to speak. You don’t feel the pain because of painkillers, but it’s still the… wait, what happened to Cat Four?”

“I suspect a suit malfunction.” Christopher resolved to never tell anyone that he forgot about her after Rukh blew up the corridor. Being half-conscious wouldn’t save him from Tiaa. “Cat Seven, check it out.” After maybe half a minute he got an answer.

“I think a shrapnel hit her at such an improbable angle that it somehow lodged in a bundle of cables right next to the suit’s main battery, without damaging it or anything else.” Ryan announced. “But when she tried to run away, the movement pushed the shrapnel deeper and sliced off part of the cables. Without energy, the suit went offline. Come help me, we need to free her from it.”

Both of them kneeled beside Nekia. Ryan did most of the job. Christopher helped when Ryan told him to. The process was a bit more lengthy than they hoped for. It took them two minutes to free the upper half of Nekia. After which said half immediately raised and grabbed Christopher in a rather trembling hug.

Christopher stared at Ryan for a second. The engineer grasped the meaning of it and nodded, returning to the process of freeing Nekia from the broken armor.

“Nekia, it’s all right. We’re safe.” He wasn’t sure if she could hear him. He could understand that.

They fought a battle - which was scary enough for yesterday’s civilians. They were almost wiped out with utmost ease by an enemy they hadn’t expected to be there - at this point, even their soldiers had enough. Not enough experience, not enough bloodthirsty warmongering. Only Rukh seemed to feel great.

And then, when she was about to run to safety, her suit malfunctioned. Leaving her motionless and in darkness. With an enemy nearby, who probably could kill her or worse.

Kill… I killed people, didn’t I? Sure, they might have been corrupted, and they would kill us. But I killed them. Blew them into pieces with that grenade. Not even three months here and I have already become a killer.

It will take me a while to get used to that fact.

Finally, he decided that he wasn’t interested in his public image and he hugged Nekia back. He couldn’t feel a lot of it because of wearing a full suit, but it was the intent that counted.

So many emotions swirling inside me. A battlefield is a horrible place for an epiphany, but… it will not be the last time. Especially if the Captain keeps pursuing that whatevercult. Even today, we could have died. I didn’t sign up for this! I signed up for scavenging work! I signed up to follow in my mother’s footsteps, and…

The first counter moved up, the signal waking him up.

Those weren’t my thoughts! What just happen…

“They are here!” Rukh’s warning came a second before he opened fire down the corridor. And two seconds before a grenade flew past him, bouncing off the wall and landing a meter away from Christopher.

He had around two seconds to say goodbye to his life when the flash grenade exploded with both a blinding light and deafening noise. Christopher’s suit, despite the short distance and surprise, partly compensated for both. He was still temporarily blinded.

The gunfire got closer. He expected to be abruptly torn into pieces by bullets, but everything went quiet right after a powerful DUUM.

“Keep your heads down.” He recognized the voice. Colonel Nowak.

His eyesight started coming back. Everything was still foggy and his eyes hurt, but he could see a towering figure passing by him. The details of the figure’s armor were blurred, but unlike theirs, it was a closed suit.

Something blurred jumped away from the corridor earlier guarded by Rukh. A large rifle in the figure’s hands emitted the same DUUM sound that Christopher had heard earlier, and the blurry something collapsed on the floor.

Christopher blinked a few times, and his view got clearer. Clear enough to recognize the person who passed by him as Colonel Nowak. Mostly because she wasn’t wearing a helmet - or, to be exact, she made it translucent. For what reason, Christopher had no time to think about.

The sci-fi roman legionaries refused to give up, despite two of their soldiers lying on the floor. The third one, this time with a shield, tried to push through the corridor with two soldiers behind him. The result was the shortest and most one-sided fight Christopher had ever seen.

Colonel Nowak timed her attack perfectly. Her left arm grabbed the left side of the shield the second the shieldbearer came from behind the corner. She pulled him towards her, the shield cracking under her grip. Then she headbutted him with enough power for his helmet’s faceplate to shatter into several pieces.

That’s when his two companions jumped from behind the corner, their attempt to save their shieldbearer backfiring. She fired her gun again, the abdomen of the first marine changing into a bloody mess when the round pierced the armor and detonated. The second one had enough time to notice the looming giant right in front of him and point his gun towards her. She used the stunned’ shieldbearer’s body as a shield and then threw it at the last remaining soldier. When the two of them collided and fell to the floor, she finished them with two loud DUUMs to their heads.

She paused her advance for a second and threw something behind the corner. As a distant sound of an explosion echoed through the corridor, she released the rifle from her grip. It didn’t fall to the ground - only now Christopher noticed that the rifle was attached to the back of her armor with a very thin rope. She rolled up the cable, the rifle positioning itself on her back.

She grabbed two items attached to the outer side of her legs, right beneath the hips. The small buckler in her left hand exchanged its thickness for size, becoming a shield as large as those used by the Hastati marines. The long stick in her right hand extended a rounded blade, becoming an axe.

And then she remembered that she was a soldier of the 27th Century rather than a warrior of the 7th Century. Two light machine guns rose above her head, each held by a mechanical arm, with two ammunition belts descending into her backpack.

She glanced behind her and nodded to someone. Then she covered herself with the shield and charged around the corner, her two machine guns raining fire on the remaining Hastati marines. Soon afterward Christopher discovered whom she nodded to, as a few of the Echo marines ran beside him and followed her beyond the corner.

Well, that settles it. We’re really low on the scale of combat effectiveness. Those three marines would be enough to finish us all and she just bulldozed through them within five seconds!

“Hall.” Rukh’s voice brought Christopher back to reality. “We received an order to finish fixing ourselves up and retreat to the landing zone.”

Time to leave the rest for the professionals.

***

EGS Hercules, Command Deck

15:25 30.06.2610 STT

Rear Admiral Hao Yunqi

Rear Admiral Hao Yunqi felt like he was starring in a horror movie. His last plan of turning the situation - destroying the Echo, even at the cost of his own life - was negated in a single second, when the viruses deployed from the Agreement shut down every single weapon throughout his task force.

The most optimistic estimation of time needed to have them online again was counted in hours. The Agreement was lost, the Hastati citadel was breached, and the forces storming the Hercules were closing in on him. Only the Nietzsche wasn’t attacked directly, as its earlier reports on boarding were found false.

And that’s when the Echo hailed the Hercules out.

“Yunqi, my dear boy.” Keller laughed. “You got twenty years older in the past, like, one and a half hours.” The Rear Admiral decided to not give the man satisfaction of replying to that. “I assume you already met the second member of my little menagerie of horrors. Innocent. The man. The myth. The legend. The most successful and dangerous operative of the Society for the Eradication of False Beliefs. The group that in the ideal world would be a bunch of religious terrorists. But in our world, it saves an uncountable number of lives from people like you.”

Hao Yunqi left answering the question of how the hell Keller had access to half the scary space myths within the Galaxy for later.

“By the way, I assume you are planning to escape to the Nietzsche.” Keller continued. “You know, I needed the Hercules for data and supplies, and both the Agreement and the Hastati to save every single slave I could. But the Nietzsche? Expendable, like the Progress was.” He laughed. The Rear Admiral could feel a cold sweat breaking on his back. Judging from Captain Faust’s face, he wasn’t the only person who felt that way.

The very same second people visible on the Nietzsche’s bridge began slumping onto the floor. Some were vomiting blood, most of them were coughing or were holding themselves by their stomachs, obviously in pain. Faust, visibly unaffected, pulled the gun out.

“What sort of tricks are you…” He started saying, but he wasn’t allowed to finish.

“Lieutenant Vincent Focquet.” Keller informed. “Aka ‘Boogeyman’. The genius in the field of nanoplague development, and an international terrorist. I saved him from getting executed for causing deadly epidemics for fun. He is totally insane, and he is going to spend the rest of his life working off his debt to society aboard the Echo. By creating nanoplagues, but this time with access to some exotech materials. That impact that you took for boarding earlier? He just deployed his newest strain of nanoplague. It multiplied for the past one and a half hours while avoiding the attention of your immune systems and without causing any symptoms. The nanites just started releasing toxins, all according to schedule.” He smiled at the camera. “I told him to set the nanomachines to activate slightly later if they detect your DNA, Captain Faust.”

A few seconds after the realization dawned on Faust’s face, he slumped to the ground, vomiting blood.

“There goes your escape route, Rear Admiral Yunqi.” Keller waved to the camera. “The real question is: if I send such people after your underlings, then whom did I send after you?” Then he terminated the connection.