Battle for the Confederacy Pt.III
The Asmodeus shook violently from the latest blast to pierce through their shields, and Modius felt his heart drop when the hull-breach alarm went off.
“Damage report!” he growled as another blast shook the ship.
“Hull breach on sub-deck 4, the entire compartment depressurized. Pressure doors dropped just in time to prevent any further loss. We’re receiving reports of five to six confirmed casualties, with three more unconfirmed. The belt feed system for the number 8 and 9 rail gun mounts were destroyed, once those guns expend their magazine their done.” His bridge talker, Aibus, reported.
Mobius took in the deep breath and slowly let it out, 5-9 dead sailors and the loss of two guns were certainly bad, but not as bad as it could have been. If that blast had hit closer to the bow then they could have their entire port side missile loaders, or if it had hit closer astern then they might start venting coolant. It was bad, but not the worst possible outcome.
Modius gritted his teeth as he swayed to the left as the fleet made another hard port maneuver, the poor inertial dampeners already overtaxed from all the high-g maneuvers they had to perform to escape the tides of enemy ships. Without those ingenious inertial dampeners he and his crew might have passed out after their first hard turn. But now they were failing to absorb all the kinetic energy from each turn, and if they continued to tax them this hard then they would soon start to feel the dangerous effects of high-g maneuvers. And unlike the other three archdevil ships Modius had to take into account that Torweni and Terrans had different tolerances despite the strikingly similar physiology.
He felt incredibly frustrated with the whole battle around him, here he was piloting one of the fastest, strongest, and deadliest ships on the battlefield, and they were being pushed to their limits by the sheer number of enemy combatants. Numbers will always make up for incompetence and inferior ships. In a straight up fight with a ship of comparable tonnage Asmodeus would win every time, in a fleet-on-fleet engagement of equal numbers the Hellworlders would almost certainly always win. Hell, even facing an opponent who outnumbered five times over they could still win. But right now the second fleet was facing an opponent nearly 15 times larger than them, and that’s not including the swarms of gunboats that kept arriving through the narrow corridor of unimpeded space Kazlum had opened up for the Kruhur.
At first they were able to easily target the larger enemy ships and throw their ranks into disorder, but now wedged in between two separate Kruhur/Aunviry fleets they were having a tough time striking any blows that could disorientate the enemy and relieve some of the pressure on the fleet. And as the battle drew on the Kruhur began to develop new tactics for dealing with the heavy blows Astaroth and Asmodeus were dealing. They would position several smaller destroyer class ships in front of their heavy hitters until they were ready to fire, then the destroyers would open up and allow the Kruhur cruisers to fire directly at the archdevil cruisers. If it had only been the one fleet employing this tacit then they could potentially time their own shots for whenever the enemy destroyers opened up, but they also had to contend with another fleet on their other flank doing the same thing. Worse yet was that whenever they did get a clear shot the enemy would just order a gunboat to fly in and intercept any missiles sent their way with their own bodies.
Modius was stunned at first when he saw the suicidal tactic work, who would willing give up their own lives to take on a missile? Were the Kruhur that loyal to their commanders? Every report he had read on Kruhur psychology insisted that these were inherently selfish and cruel creatures, and even if they were fanatically loyal to their commanders there should at least be one or two who hesitated enough for one of their missiles to get through.
An idea struck him “Aibus, send a message to Beelzebub. I suspect that the gunboats are being guided by a central navigation computer on one or more of the cruisers, rather than independent pilots.” He said calmly and clearly.
Aibus nodded and confirmed he heard everything correctly, punched his message into the computer, scrambled the message, and transmitted it to the CIC on the Beelzebub. Hopefully Bell could do something with this knowledge.
The destroyers within K-B opened a clear path all the way to the Asmodeus, Modius stared dismayingly at the five blocky cruisers who had lined all their pulse cannons on his ship. The shields hadn’t recovered from the last hit, and this could likely hit something vital this time. Modius gritted his teeth and ordered two Stabby class drones to move onto his starboard flank to intercept the enemy fire. He hated himself for borrowing the dirty tactics of the enemy, but at least Stabby class drones were unmanned.
~~~*~~~
Bell received the message from Modius and wondered if the Kruhur were actually dumb enough to command their legions of gunboats from one central location. Could they really neutralize a huge swath of the enemy fleet by destroying one fleet?
Bell’s E-war techs began to furiously type away at their stations as they narrowed down all the signals the Hellworlder fleet was intercepting and began to unscramble the Kruhur communications. They segregated damage reports, confirmed hits and kills, and other general chatter until they narrowed down their search onto one set of commands being constantly transmitted by Kruhur ships. Bell stared intensely at the screen before her as Beelzebub’s enormous quantum computing core analyzed the data, she felt her heart sink into her stomach as she realized that of course her enemy hadn’t been dumb enough to coordinate all of their movements through one central location.
Instead they had rather brilliantly created a vast integrated network of ships communicating navigation data to each other to coordinate their movements in a way that wouldn’t result any friendly collisions. It was very similar to how the Hellworlder ships all had sensors to collect data that was sent to her ship and then transmitted back out to the rest of the fleet after it had been thoroughly analyzed. The Kruhur however relied on several hundred smaller computers to crunch the data rather than one central one like the Hellworlders. Of course if the Beelzebub was eliminated or her computing core was taken offline then the Hellworlders would switch to a similar system. All Hellworlder ships had to be capable of independent action as well as coordinated fleet actions.
“Jenkins, could it be possible to spoof a similar signal to confuse the enemy?” she asked to her head E-war tech.
“Potentially, they might figure it out after a while though.”
Bell tapped her fingers against the tabletop in a staccato pattern as a plan slowly formed in her head. “Good, what I’m planning will only work once anyway.”
~~~*~~~
Alice had gotten tired of waiting for her position to be overrun, the enemy had taken position on either side of her and where harrying them with fire from both sides. At this rate they would be slowly picked off by constant fire from both sides until the enemy grew a pair and charged them. So instead Alice decided to charge them first, the best defense was good offense after all.
Sussuro and Sombra, along with three others followed Alice while she faked a staggered retreat away from the enemy. Once they were out of sight Alice and her small platoon disabled their mag-boots and pushed themselves off the edge of the docking pylon to the under side of the Igrathoth. Up and down were relative terms in space, and most ships were built with one side arbitrarily designated as up by an exposed bridge or some antenna, not the Igrathoth though, this ship was perfectly symmetrical all the way around. It was actually a pretty smart design that would have allowed it a full 360° by 360° of firing angles without needing to use massive amounts of energy to spin itself around to get the enemy within sight of its primaries. That did mean however that it had to have double the gun mounts to maintain effective firing angles, with half the guns becoming useless depending on which side the enemy chose to engage with. Which is why ships like this were generally in the center of formations to make the best use of all their weapons.
But even if up and down were relative concepts in space, within the ship was a whole different story. Grav-plating only simulated the force of gravity and pulled things directly downwards evenly across a flat surface. How it did that Alice didn’t care, all she needed to know was that the Egh’ahds only posted a guard on the ‘top’ side of a ship. And likely didn’t bother to post guards on the ‘bottom’ because that’s not where the mooring clamps were.
As she and her platoon activated the EM thrusters on their backs Alice was relieved to see that the underside was completely unguarded as she and her platoon began to secretly maneuver behind the enemy’s left flank. They were careful to only use their EM thrusters for small bursts so as not to drain the suits internal battery that they needed for their mag-boots. They angled their feet downward as their mag-boots clamped onto the side of the Igrathoth just behind a group of unsuspecting Egh’ahds. Normally a metal on metal collision would have given away their position, but since there is no air in space, and consequently no sound either, they remained totally undetected.
She gave her men a count of three with her fingers as they burst over the edge guns blazing into the Egh’ahds undefended backs, careful not to overstep and launch themselves off the ship’s exterior hull. Sussuro broke off from the main group and ran to the hatch were another group of Egh’ahds were emerging. One tried to instinctually bite at Sussuro’s leg, forgetting just for a second that it was wearing a space suit and couldn’t bite anyone, a second that cost it its life as Sussuro kicked it back into the other Egh’ahds and tossed a frag grenade in after it.
Alice and the rest of her team made short work of the surprised Egh’ahds and wasted no time in getting into a position where they outflanked the other group of Egh’ahds. Their initial barrage got maybe ten or fifteen Egh’ahds within only a few seconds, but they quickly reacted to the sudden change in the battlefield and rearranged themselves to handle the armored Terrans on their flank. At the exact moment they took pressure off the team defending the boarding clamps they switched from defense to offense. They ate up the distance between them and the enemy and took up an aggressive position against the Egh’ahds.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Now with two of the three exterior hatches disabled the remaining troops aboard the Igrathoth began to stream out of the final remaining hatch, right into the kill box Alice and her marines had created. Severed limbs and sickly green Egh’ahd blood filled the space around them and began to affect her aim as it blocked her sights, but Alice didn’t care. There were so many ugly Egh’ahds in the kill zone that she only had to fire in their general direction to hit something.
“This is for Wraith” she roared as she unloaded clip after clip of ceramic bullets the mutilated any flesh they hit after piercing the relatively thinly armored space suits.
~~~*~~~
Aster roared as she charged the monster before her, the moment she began to charge Greed, and Wrath began to pepper the other two Aunviry with amor piercing bullets. She wished she could have brought RPG’s or antitank rifles with her to the trial, but while pirates were incredibly liberal about the kinds of weapons you could bring into a courtroom they drew the line at anything above anti-personnel weapons. Anything that could possibly take down an armored vehicle was out right banned since they could also be used to assassinate councilors or the king by overpowering the invisible kinetic shielding they used to defend themselves. Which was a shame because what they needed right now was anti-vehicle weaponry because these monsters were built like tanks.
Kazlum launched forward far faster than something his size should be capable of, and brought down his elephant like foot down on her. She ducked low and rolled just under his heel, popped up onto her feet and slashed at the tendon on the back of his leg. But unlike the other Aunviry Kazlum quickly shifted his leg just out of reach while a mass of those creepy extending tentacles swung down toward her. They were attempting to wrap around her from all sides, but there was a brief point when they were all together, which gave her a chance to bring up Tenken and slash through all of them. Red gore covered her as she chopped through the vine like appendages and nearly blinded her, she had turned her head to the side just in time to avoid hitting the splatter face first and charged forward towards Kazlum’s center.
They had known they would be facing the giant Aunviry for months now, and they had prepared accordingly. Small EM thrusters built into her boots, matched with her own enhanced muscles gave her just enough power to leap up to Kazlum’s shoulder. She perched herself on the precarious foothold of moistened skin and sliced down at his neck where a jugular or major vein might be found. She had sung down with all her force, but her blade still got stuck within his neck as if she had tried to chop an oak tree. Disappointed she wasn’t able to cut any further Aster gritted her teeth as she withdrew her blade and jumped off Kazlum’s shoulder just as a three clawed hand smacked the very spot where she had been standing.
Kazlum turned to try and swat at her falling form, but had to abandon the attempt to shield his head from the hail of gun fire that Freya’s team laid down to support Aster. She felt to the ground in a roll and sprung up to dart halfway across the room. She turned on her heels and once more faced Kazlum, and watched with vicious delight as the would she had just inflicted bled like a burst pipe. Only to feel a deep dread as the stream of bright red blood quickly clotted and the skin slowly swelled up like a bee sting to close the wound.
Obviously people had either forgotten to mention, or were simply ignorant to the rapid clotting and sealing of Aunviry cut wounds. She stared incredulously as a white substance seeped out of the wound and sealed his wounds like surgical glue, and was even more depressed as the tentacles she had severed grew blastema’ and slowly regenerated.
She took in several huffs of air “have you ever considered donating your corpse to science, that crazy regeneration of yours could be the secret to eternal life.” She asked petulantly as she vented her rage at his regenerative abilities.
“I never planned on dying, and eternal life would be wasted on inferior creatures like you” Kazlum growled as he charged at her once more.
~~~*~~~
The good news was that there was plenty of wreckage around the grand marble room for Alwen and Wrath’s team to hide behind. From shredded and crushed metal barricades, to broken marble pillars that were wider than most cars. The bad news was that no matter what they did nothing seemed to effect the Aunviry before them. Their strategy was to fire armor piercing rounds and hopefully hit something vital.
But as Alwen watched the fight between Kazlum and Astarte from the corner of her eyes she was to? suspect that wouldn’t work. Astarte had obviously hit whatever passed for an artery in Aunviry biology, and it had just clotted within seconds. She heard what Astarte had said and she felt the researcher within her nod with approval, just a small sample of Aunviry tissue could launch several new branches in regenerative medicine. It might even be capable of leading them to an answer for regrowing something as complicated as brains, spinal cords, and even eyes.
Great for future generations of doctors and researchers, but bad for them right now, because that meant that the original plan of hitting something vital was not an option. Or was it?
They had already killed two of these things, or rather Gato and Astarte had killed two of them. A single stab into their brain had killed them instantaneously, and Kazlum had ignored all previous gun fire from Freya squad until they started aiming for the head. Only then did Kazlum raise his trunk like arms to defend his eyes.
Gears turned in Alwens head as she darted from behind the broken pillar she had been using for cover. She quickly found Gato who was hacking away at several tentacles coming his way and rushed over to him. Gato noticed Alwen coming his way and signaled for Kavic and Limey to take his place as he ducked for cover.
She hopped over the fragmented pillar and pressed her back against it to hide from the giant, there were several severed tentacles near her that reeked of something that smelled vaguely familiar. “We need a new a plan!” she shouted over the chaos.
“What do you mean?” he shouted back, irked that she had pulled him out of the fight for this.
Alwen pointed at the severed tentacles which were forming their own blastema and oozing that white natural sealing agent even though they were separated from the main body. “Their healing abilities are to good, we need to narrow down our attacks to its brain and eyes!”
Gato watched as the tentacle tried to regenerate and nodded his “Roger.” He lifted his hand to his wrist and sent out a channel wide communication “Focus all attacks on their heads” he ordered before he jumped out from behind their cover.
Alwen stayed behind for a few seconds longer to catch her breath, the acrid smell of the tentacles filled her lungs, and she suddenly recognized the smell, kerosene. Or something like it at least.
She reached out a hand and scooped a fingers full of the white sealing agent, some came off the closed wound and stuck to her fingers like thick paint. She took an investigative sniff and got a nose full of the acrid tang of kerosene and paint thinner. Aunviry were supposedly resistant to plasma fire, it took a direct and continuous stream of focus fire to overwhelm the strange mucus that coated their skin to melt their skin. But that was just direct heat, had anyone ever tried to use napalm?
Alwen had an idea and jumped over the broken pillar and ran over to Limey who was taking cover behind a fallen segment of fractured marble while he reloaded.
“Limey, I need Molotov.” She said using the strange Terran word for incendiary grenades.
“At a time like this!” he spluttered.
“Just do it!” she growled, and he obeyed.
She took the Molotov and moved closer to the raging Aunviry, who was now covering its face as marines focused their fire on it head, blindly stomping about trying to crush the pests around it. She got up close, pulled the pin, counted to four since she was really close, and tossed it directly at the patch of its beard-like mass of tentacles that Gato had chopped threw earlier. The tentacles were already half regrown and covered in the same white kerosene smelling substance. She tossed it under handedly so that it would come up from under where its arm was guarding its face, the incendiary smacked into the center mass of healing tentacles and burst on impact.
The monster stumbled back from the surprising burst of fire in front of its face, and Alwen watched in awe as the mass of healing tentacles caught fire. The heat and flame rapidly ate away at the remaining length of tentacle, dropping burnt and withered tentacle remains as the flames crawled dangerously close to its bulbous head. The Monster screeched in fear as it tried to beat away at the flames lapping at its face, its movements rapidly became frenzied and panicked as the smell of burnt rotten flesh filled the room. It fumbled around wildly until it backed over a sideways pillar and fell onto its back.
Gato who was near where it fell wasted no time in drawing out his sword and swinging down into its skull which was now at his height. He drew his blade out and brought back upwards for a textbook slash, then another, and another, he cut until the creature stopped thrashing. Evidently the two previous improvised lobotomies had been lucky strikes as it seemed Gato had to try several swings before the beast died.
Alwen watched the blood covered and giddy warrior roar in satisfaction, and broke her gaze to send out a channel wide communication of her own. “The white healing fluid is suspectable to fire, chop at the tentacles and use a Molotov on the healing area” she said to all the marines in the throne room who were currently struggling with their own monsters.
~~~*~~~
Aster heard both Gato’s and Alwen’s channel wide communication and mentally decided to change her plan of attack once more. When she had seen that Kazlum was regenerating after each of her cuts she had decided that the mass of the regrown limb had to come from somewhere.
Back in New Mombasa she had known a man whose grandparents had severely altered their DNA with salamander and gecko DNA under the commands of the mad cult they had joined. He had the body of a human, but his skin was more like a geckos, and he had horizontal red stripes across his body. And most amazingly he could regrow entire limbs so long as his brain and spinal cord weren’t severely damaged. He had worked as hired muscle for her adoptive mom and had once shared with her that the regeneration time was effected by how much extra tissue and lipids his body could utilize to regrow the limb. So her plan was to keep chopping until Kazlum ran out of cells to cannibalize.
He was already looking a bit thinner than when she had started, but not by much. And after dodging and weaving around the impossibly fast titan she was beginning to slow down as her strength flagged. Humans had remarkable reserves of energy and endurance they could draw from, but that was only if they set a steady pace. Going full force like she was significantly drained her, and soon she would be to slow to evade his bone shattering attacks.
But if the winning strategy was to apply fire to the places where she had previously cut, then she wasn’t too proud to admit her plan was kind of dumb and shift gears.
“Did you hear what Bones said Trigger!” she said in English to the leader of Freya’s squad.
Trigger, whose real name she had never really heard, shouted “yeah, we’re gonna need to draw in close though!”
“Leave it to me!” Aster said as she readied herself for on last strike.
Her eye raked over Kazlum’s slightly haggard form, looking for wherever most of the surgical glue-like stuff was amassed. The spot where she had previously chopped down on his neck was still the place where the most of the stuff had gathered, she gave a hand sign behind her back to indicate that she was going to go for the neck and rushed forward one last time. She saw out the corner of her eye as Greed squad brought down the final remaining son of Kazlum in a bright flash of fire.
She darted below a sweeping arc of Kazlum’s tentacles and leapt right onto his shoulder once more. She quickly found her footing and made a shallow slash just above where she had cut before to add more fuel to the future fire, and leapt back off Kazlum’s shoulder. As soon as she leapt though Aster realized something was very wrong. Kazlum hadn’t tried to swat at her like he had done before, she felt time slow down to a crawl as she turned her head back to see Kazlum’s fist bat away the Molotov that had been thrown at his neck. A snatch of movement caught her eye and she turned back to see that Kazlum’s other arm swinging towards her from the blind spot on her left side.
She tried to contort her body and place Tenken in between her and the oncoming fist, but she wasn’t fast enough, she wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to guard herself from the wrecking ball of force that batted into her. Time slowed down even further as she was flung across the throne room, she saw Gato running her way, shouting something she couldn’t hear, but it looked like her name. Alwen was right next to him, visibly growing paler and paler, until her skin almost with as white as paper. There were little tears in her eyes as she screamed.
Aster watch as all the other marines turned with glacial speed as she flew across the room. She didn’t have the time, or the energy left to try to tuck into a ball to take and divert the kinetic energy that would shatter many if not all the bones in her body as she fell. But she could just barely orient herself in a way that would protect her head from cracking against the hard stone. She saw a shadow pass over her as she passed under the alcove ledge the was supported by all the pillars in the room, and just seconds before she collided with the wall she felt something soft.
A tapestry, maybe that would cushion her fall just enough so that she didn’t - no, no it didn’t cushion her fall enough she thought as she heard the heart sickening crunch of her right arm breaking in several pieces. The rest of her body smacked against the wall, and she felt several ribs break within her chest. Her limp and useless body tumbled a little as she fell to the floor and landed on her leg in a bad way and her ankle went in a direction she wasn’t entirely sure it could go. Now resting against the wall in a very uncomfortable position Astarte’s vision blackened around the edges as she fell to her left side.
She vision was completely black before her head hit the ground.
“Funny, I thought breaking most of the bones in my body would hurt more. Maybe that smack broke my spine as well, cutting off all the pain below my neck” she thought as her consciousness faded away.
“Never mind, I guess my neck wasn’t broken after all. At least it will all be over soon.” She thought as mind shattering pain to match her shattered body filled her brain.
“I hope… I hope Karega, Bell, Mom, and Modius can finish the war without me.” Were the last thoughts she had before the blackness turned white, and she felt no more pain.