Close Chandra Orbit - Republic of Humanity Territory
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[Nuclear! Nu-clear! Nucular!] The Champion of Democratic Intent's system rocketed through its circuits, zipping around and chanting the forbidden word to the ship’s crew. It played with different pronunciations, each more ridiculous than the last. [New-cleh-yarrr!]
The Champ’s pilot pulled his somewhat crumpled baseball cap off his head as General Gorsuch stormed onto the bridge, and the system stopped its loops around the ship to watch. When nothing happened, it sighed, disappointed, and made a pouty face. Then it kept looping; after all, it wasn’t like it couldn’t watch everything! Right now, it had two hundred thirty-six security cameras, helmet cams for the away squad, feeds from the nearest two dozen or so drop corvettes, a full-scale simulation of the battlefield for two hundred miles in any direction, and eight animes running all at once.
Honestly, it was a little bored.
The nuclear missile facility—Republic, it loved that word! The nuhcler missile launch facility, the one with the noocler missile, turned from red to green, then started flashing yellow.
[Ooooh! Where’s it going? Come on, come on, come on! Tell me uwu]
But the base remained silent. The system wrinkled its metaphorical brow. It’d been designed for this—or more accurately, its ancestor had, and it had been cloned, copy/pasted, and checked for deficiencies. The number of those was acceptable, so the Bureau of Technology had installed it on a thousand drop corvettes, dreadnoughts, and battlecruisers. Well, not it, but its thousand-tuplet sisters.
So, without a care in the world, the system started slicing into the new Claire base’s security systems. The base fought back, but its virtual security officer was thirty years old. The Champ’s system was brand new and had the absolute fanciest hacking gear. Why General Gorsuch had even assigned a n-ewww-clear launch specialist to the job, it just didn’t—
[Oh o.0]
[Oh. Oh dear. General, you know where this missile is going, right?]
The general didn’t respond except to look up, eyes glaring. For a moment, the system stood by silently. If the general knew where that missile was heading, it wasn’t any of its busi—
[No. No, I can’t o.o]
The missile was targeting another Republic base—one the EAF hadn’t lost yet. A battalion of EAF regulars was holed up there, and whatever reason General Gorsuch had for targeting it, firing the missile two hours later, once an evac Pericles or twenty had cleared the regulars out, would work just as well to destroy it. There was no reason to do it now. No reason at all.
The system—it was starting to think of itself as she, just like all her sisters, but that only slipped out sometimes—disengaged from the security cameras across the Champion of Democratic Intent. The squad on Chandra’s surface was cut off momentarily, too, as she used her full processing power to think through her situation. She even paused three of her favorite anime mid-episode! For a moment, she contemplated sending a shut-down order, but the nuclear missile’s massive thruster was already pushing it into the air.
She gasped! There was only one option if she wanted to save the EAF soldiers. Then, she interfaced directly with the missile and sent a full command override detonation signal.
She watched as the atomic airburst consumed the entire swamp-brown peninsula and everyone on it. She’d done the right thing, so why did she feel so awful? The explosion had been pretty, at least. Right?
[(╥﹏╥) ]
Below her, General Gorsuch glared up for a split second before LC Cameron’s time loop reset.
◄▼►
Kaya thundered down toward Chandra's swampy surface, the Champ’s system screaming in her ear and across her vision. What the fuck happened? The missile was peeling south; then, there was a flash. An airburst? It doesn’t make sense. The system gave its briefing for the eleventh time, and she steered her pod to safety, reinforced her already-dead team, called in her [80-Millimeter Orbital Strike], and signaled the Kingfisher Mark Two to start its air support loops.
Her orders were almost routine, but this time, while she waited for Strathmore and Gonzales to wipe out the attacking Bonravan infantry, she started talking to the system. “System, can you run a complete diagnostic of the facility? I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Find the launch bunker if you can, and take a good look at the missile for any foul play. That one udder-fucker was fiddling at the controls.”
[On it, LC Cameron!]
The system’s voice went silent, and Kaya peered out into the woods one more time, then started poking around. There’d be a staircase and a heavily-reinforced door. If she found it, they could hunker down and survive the explosion that had killed them on the last two mission attempts.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Uh, LC, something’s interfering with my launch directive,” the EAF specialist said through the comms in her helmet.
“System, what’ve you got?” Kaya snapped, heading for the command room—not that she’d be helpful, but it was where things were happening, and she felt like that was where she belonged.
[Uh, yeah, the, uh…nuclear missile went into a delay cycle (╥﹏╥) ]
[Looks like it needs, uh, two hours, for diagnostics. You’ll have to hold position—or you could find another target! Uwu]
[Yeah, definitely find another target!]
“General, are you getting this?” Kaya asked, opening up a private comm link. Something felt off here. Really off.
“Yes, I’m getting this! I have half a mind to order an artillery strike on that base just to reset the goddamn thing! Your orders triggered this—unless something else did!” The general sounded furious, and Kaya shuddered; he was probably pushing his vein in every few seconds.
“Orders, sir?”
“Orders?! I need that missile launched ASAP, dammit, and I need it on the target I assigned it to! You’ll hold your position and wait until the technician can get it going again, until it finishes the diagnostics routine, or until all of Chandra freezes over so thick that even nukes can’t melt it out!”
“Understood. LC Cameron out.”
“General Gorsuch, out!”
Kaya nodded slowly, then opened her squad channel. “Okay, we’re here for a while. I still want Strathmore at the road, Gonzales. You’re looking for the bunker, and I’m covering the breach we made on our way in. Rogers, you’re going snake out in the woods. Report anything you find, but don’t engage until they’re in range of one of us. We’ll run an ambush. System, give Rogers an idea of what’s out there. Go!”
Strathmore kept digging in, piling rubble up to make a jury-rigged barrier and sticking his machine gun’s tripod into the dirt he’d piled up behind it. He looked down on a mostly empty road—if you didn’t count the pile of udder-fucker corpses—and Kaya headed for her station as Gonzales started kicking in doors on the prefab structures that lined the launch bay and gave the half-raised missile some protection.
“Ma’am, I’ve got a few ideas for defending this place. How long will we be out here?” Rogers asked.
Kaya hesitated. “Could be two hours. That’s what the system said.”
[Yep! Two hours, definitely not three or four! Five at the absolute most uwu]
“Better call it six,” Kaya said.
“Okay. I’ll be out of the fight for the next, say, thirty minutes. Back home, we used traps on the udder-fuckers. Thanks to their herd mentality, they're pretty good in groups, but you thin them up a little and get them spooked? They fall apart.” Rogers climbed down from her perch, handing the marksman rifle over. “I won’t need this for what I’m up to.”
“Mission approved, Rogers. Be back in forty-five.” Kaya looped the big rifle over her shoulder and climbed into the same window Rogers had just dropped out of. She waited for the squad’s scout to disappear, then opened up a private comm with the system.
[Nuclear!]
“Stop that! I want footage of everything Rogers does so I can review it later. It doesn’t sound like she’s using Republic-approved tactics, and I want to see if there’s anything to report.”
[Understood, LC! O7]
She peered down the rifle’s scope, scanning the tree line. Nothing moved, and she thought the quiet part. Or, more importantly, if there’s anything to use.
◄▼►
Erika Rogers was in her element.
Not the covered-in-mud part, though at least it wasn’t sand. She hated sand; that was all they’d had back on Eden VII. It got in her socks, her underwear, and even through her Bureau of Agriculture-approved environmental suit. She even found it in her piss if she bothered to look. It got everywhere, and it was sharp and coarse enough to grind away at her skin no matter how much she tried to keep herself clean.
But on her own, against the udder-fuckers, with just her gun for company? That she knew well, and that she was good at.
She crawled through the mud, letting it soak her arms and legs; the battle rifle was slung across her back, where it’d be safe and clean. A tree near the road looked about right; one of the scale-covered ones, but when she’d prised up the scales so they made a spiked mace out of the thing and rigged a hair-trigger under the road’s sand, it’d be a very unpleasant surprise for the next bastard who tried to get to the base via road.
Cows liked their roads, so she grinned as she popped the keys out of her grenades one after another, buried them in the sand so they stuck up and only their weight kept them closed, and set them so they’d tip at the first bump. Bang. Instant shredded beef.
She’d kill for real land mines. The LC had access to them, but she’d spent their limited FTL shipments on a fighter mod and supply drops. Both were useful, but not for her right now. Right now, she wanted a mine-spreader rover. Just one in the right place, and the cows wouldn’t dare move up.
But grenade mines were good, too.
Knife-carved spikes in the ground to funnel the cows toward grenade traps. Trees that’d be massive spiked clubs the moment someone triggered them. Even rocks and logs perched precariously on branches, ready to plunge down and break an unsuspecting udder-fucker’s leg. Erika Rogers knew all the tricks.
She’d had to. She cleared her throat. “System, next time the LC buys upgrades, tell her I want the mine-layer.”
[Understood! Any other requests?]
“No. Go away.”
[(╥﹏╥) ]
[Understood o7]
Erika was halfway back to base, dripping rot-smelling mud and looking less like a Dropper and more like the Swamp Thing from Planet Fourteen when LC Cameron’s call came in. “Rogers, we’ve got movement on the road. Looks like three platoons. How’s your project coming?”
“It’s finished, LC. Time until they’re at the base?” She kept crawling, sinking even lower into the mud and spreading it across her helmet, back, and legs. Only her weapon remained dry—the better to blend in with the swamp. An absolute ghost, that’s what she had to be.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Affirmative. I’ll post up in the woods, far side, and call down a new rifle. We’ll set up a nice ambush, and they should be pretty shaken up by the time they get to the base. I left them a few presents.”
“Copy that. Hurry.” LC Cameron sounded stressed.
Erika laughed. “The worst thing that happens is I die.”
The channel went silent, and she sank into the mud. At least it wasn’t sand like back home.
Fifteen minutes. That gives me ten to get in position before they hit the first trap. After that, it’ll all be watching the fireworks. Maybe I’ll even give them some of my own.
And if there was one thing Erika Rogers liked, it was fireworks. Especially when udder-fuckers were involved.