Tusk frowned as she watched the last of the simulations run through, showing the defense clouds in K'eth orbit rupturing enough to let the strike force in shuttles pass through and land on the surface.
"Earth Mother bless me." She looked over at an expectant Tate and a smiling Grint. "We're not talking about this again, are we?"
"This newest plan has merit, Admiral," Voguun noted from where he stood just off Tusk's shoulder, the n'vorn officer intently examining the simulation's final result. "The hive hierarchy is strong in the k'ethik species. We eliminate the elders and their entire command structure should collapse!"
"Our thoughts exactly, ma'am," Tate added with a quick look at the thoughtful n'vorn. "Using a combination of Hammer's Shrike-based disruptors and Legion's iso-magnetic pulse generators in sync with the Swords, we could easily cut our way to orbit with minimal casualties."
Tusk jerked a nod of understanding even as she readied herself to respond.
"It's not the getting there that I'm worried about, General," she said, folding her arms beneath her breasts. "It's the 'how are you going to find the elders' on what would presumably be a very well defended surface following the Velkin's abortive attack several years ago, that concerns me." Tusk turned to point at the various secondary displays that bracketed the main display, each currently occupied with sensory data about a dozen different star systems currently at risk from a k'ethik cloud assault.
"Besides, we still don't know exactly where K'eth is," she pointed out. "We barely know where the next attack is going to take place! Even with Juniper's algorithm."
"Legion is working on that, ma'am," Tate noted. "He's downloaded thousands of memory cores from the attack on Lansik, along with the cores our teslas have been examining. He feels a data scrub and a thorough cross-reference will yield K'eth's location."
Before Tusk could react to that, a notification alert chirped on the Tactical workstation.
"Admiral, we have cloud movement on target delta," the Tactical officer announced, looking back and up at the command dais to deliver their report.
Nodding, Tusk turned away from Tate and Grint to lean over the railing.
"Time to intercept?" she asked.
"Delta will be fully involved in less than five minutes at the current rate of advance," was Tactical's grim reply.
"Nav, make us a hole. Comms, prep the fleet for a transition and immediate combat." The veteran naval officer was then looking back at Tate.
"Prep your troops for a ground defense, General," she tightly directed. "I'm tabling this discussion until we can get this next round of targets safe from k'ethik incursion."
"Understood, Admiral," Tate said. He then looked over at a thoughtful Grint.
"Let's get our people ready!"
As it turned out, Tactical was conservative on their estimate. Even as the fleet exited from the wormhole out of Collectorspace, the main viewers were quickly filled with the vision of no less than five larval clouds wrapping around the blue-green planet in front of them.
"We're reading massive dump outs, Admiral," Science reported tersely. "They are putting a large amount of larva directly onto the surface."
"Strange," Voguun noted as his fingers danced across a data tablet to bring up numbers on the planet itself. "The planet is only tech level four, with minimal ability to travel up their own gravity well. Why would the k'ethik devote so many resources to land when they can consume the planet at will with little to no resistance from the inhabitants?"
Then all eyes were drawn to the screen as what looked like a storm abruptly appeared in the upper atmosphere. A storm that rapidly grew in volume and reach as it started sending vicious slashes of plasma ripping up into the cloud with a decent amount of affect.
"I think that's your answer, commander," Tusk replied. "Tech level four but able to control their own weather." She turned to look down onto the command bridge. "Science?"
"Confirmed, Admiral," the Science officer quickly replied. "The local species have built what appears to be massive tesla coils across every landmass. These not only provide an ambient energy field that allows efficient transmission of energy to any and all locations, but also appears to be part of a network that gives the locals the ability to modify their weather at will."
There was a pause as the Science team quickly worked over their interfaces for a moment. Then the Science officer was looking back at the command dais.
"They've ionized the upper atmosphere, ma'am, in such a way, it's shattering the network bonds within the clouds and breaking down their assault fronts. They are, for the moment, holding the clouds at bay."
"Huh," Tusk said with a frown. "Would you imagine that!" Then, a bit louder: "Science, give me everything you can scan from that coil network. If it's that effective at level four, then a level nine like us should be able to make it even more so!"
She then reached out to touch a comms station built into the railing.
"General Tate, we're dropping your vanguard in five mikes. The clouds have been blunted by some sort of ionizing field the locals are creating. But that's also dumping large numbers of larva directly onto the surface where they may be re-establishing their networks and building assault forms. Prepare to face significant k'ethik ground forces when you arrive."
Tate nodded before replying through his suit's comms.
"Understood, Admiral. We're boarding the dropships now. We'll be ready for drop in two mikes." He then looked over at Grint, who was just sealing his own armored suit.
"Significant ground forces," he said, the sound of his voice bringing the avatar's head back up to look over at him. "More bugs like Lansik?"
Grint frowned before his visor swung down and locked, stowing his assault rifle as it did.
"Hope so," the dorvaldi avatar replied. "I'm not in the mood for some ridiculous mod those jobby tuggers have dreamed up to frell with my day." He took a step to the nearest monitor and called up a view of the planet they were rapidly approaching. "Any reason we can't just hit the cloud with Hammer's Shrikes now? Before they put more larva on the ground?"
Tate frowned himself. It was an excellent question, actually. The disruptor Shrikes have proven themselves already in battle. Why weren't they deploying them now to take the clouds completely out of the picture before the situation on the ground got any worse?
Tusk grimaced as she looked at the readout built into her command chair.
"Engineering! What's the status now on those damn disruptor Shrikes?? We've got k'ethik to kill!"
"Sorry, Admiral," her chief engineer replied over the comms. "We're assembling them as fast as possible with the teslas we have on hand. We should have a full salvo ready in five minutes."
Tusk's expression tightened. Five minutes? That'll be two minutes after landing ground forces! She glanced at the chrono on her readout. Then she was tapping her comms.
"General. Buckle in."
"Copy that, Admiral. We are good to go," Tate quickly replied.
Nodding in satisfaction, Tusk turned to her Tactical officer.
"Drop 'em!"
"Aye, sir. Dropping in three, two, one ... Dropships away!"
Tate grunted as the bottom of his stomach abruptly was in his throat. A heartbeat later the dropship was getting tossed in every direction as it penetrated the ionized layer the locals had created for their defense.
"Sweet fuckin' hell!" Hammer said from somewhere near the dropship's entry ramp. "Is it always this bad??"
"Hammer!" Tate barked through grit teeth. "What the actual fuck are you doing on this dropship? Shouldn't you be building us some goa-damned disruptor Shrikes??"
"Letting the union bitches build them," the eccentric tesla quickly fired back. "They don't need me now that they have the plans. 'Sides, I'm gonna get me some k'ethik shells to hang on my mantle, Sith style!"
Instead of responding to that, Tate fell silent. Not because he didn't understand a good number of Hammer's references, even though he didn't. Unions were something long dead in his time, Human society fairly egalitarian in the years before the Velkin attack. And he wasn't sure 'Sith' was even a word.
No, it had more to do with the fact the tesla seemed to come up with last minute solutions that ended up being game changers. Like his adaptation of Thek's disruptor idea that allowed them to tear apart entire k'ethik larval clouds with modified Shrike missiles.
That kind of innovation on the fly could prove invaluable on the ground if they ran into anything new. In retrospect, Hammer would've given them the edge with his out-of-the-box thinking on Lansik, if he had been part of the team at the time. As it was, it was a pair of neo-shells and their omni-fields that got them out of there without it being a total loss.
Speaking of:
"Legion, which dropship did you and Armada take?" he asked over comms.
"Delta Sierra twenty two," came the quick response.
Before Tate could respond to that, a tight voice came over the ship's intercom.
"Ground fall in thirty seconds. Firing retros to compensate for higher than anticipated gravity fields."
Tate felt his teeth clench in reaction. Then the dropship was jerking hard as its retros fired to slow its gravity-assisted descent through the atmosphere.
Resetting himself after the retros finished reducing them below terminal speed, Tate pulled up his HUD to make sure his suit systems, and those in the ship were still fully operational. Then:
"Computer, count us down. PODs, stand by to extend stasis fields."
"Yes, General," the tight voice replied. "Brace for impact," the voice then tautly directed before: "Five, four, three, two, one ..."
"PODs, extend your stasis fields now!"
Wham! The dropship came to an abrupt halt as it slammed into the ground, throwing its passengers hard into their flight harnesses. At least it would have, if the psyrens accompanying the ground forces didn't use their telekinesis to cushion them all. Without it, they would've been crushed by the sudden change in direction, velocity, and gravity, even as Risen and tharkura.
Instead:
"Pop the doors!" Tate barked as forty tightly packed Risen soldiers began throwing off their harnesses and readying their weapons. "Weapons to ready! Point team, I want a perimeter one hundred meters out. Go! The rest of you, follow me!!" Then he was charging down the center of the troop area and down the ramp.
As expected, the dropship was sitting in the middle of a significant amount of devastation, most of it due to its own heavy landing. Spotting a way through the rubble, Tate charged through, keeping his weapon up and ready to fire on anything that didn't look completely organic.
- POD, any idea of what the locals look like? - he tersely asked over broadband.
- Still looking for them, sir, - the POD assigned to his handful of dropships, replied. - We're sensing what appears to be blast bunkers deep under the city. They could be some sort of shelters. They are heavily shielded against EM fields so we're having difficulty penetrating them to scan the interiors. -
Tate grimaced without slowing down. First an ion shield and now EM-buffered blast shelters? Were they actually sure this species was only level four on the technology scale?
Then he was clear of the rubble and standing on the edge of a relatively broad boulevard leading into the heart of what appeared to be a city of some sort. A glance upward showed an angry sky filled with seething clouds and multiple lightning forks, the air rumbling with their almost constant discharge. Or was it the coils that he was hearing discharging?
He quickly knelt to provide as little a profile for the enemy to shoot at as possible. Then a hand onto his utility belt and he was tossing a recon drone into the air with instructions to map their immediate location. As it hummed almost silently out of sight, he was joined by Grint and a number of armored Risen.
"At least it hasn't been flattened yet like Lansik," the grim dorvaldi avatar noted as he crouched beside the kneeling Tate.
"Not yet," the juggernaut replied, dividing his time between studying their surroundings and looking at the angry sky above them. "But so far they seem to be using mostly passive defenses. There's nary a weapons emplacement or bloody missile battery in sight." He looked over at Grint. "If that ion shield falls, they have nothing to stop the swarm clouds from consuming their world like they did Lansik. Then these people will die, no matter how insulated their blast shelters are!"
That tightened Grint's expression, visible only by a creasing around his eyes, which were peering out his visor.
"Why the frell would they even have blast bunkers?" the dorvaldi avatar wanted to know. "It's not like they're warlike. I'm not seeing surface installations, fortifications, or anything that indicates they're in enough of a warring state with each other to warrant the kinda defenses we're seeing. And that ion shield ..."
Grint's voice faded as something obviously occurred to him.
"Well?" Tate looked over at him. "You're on to something, mate. Don't keep it to yourself."
The big avatar slowly looked back over at the frowning juggernaut.
"I remember, just after joining the Dorvald military, of coming across an inhabited planet at the edge of Dorvaldi space on a training mission. It had an atmospheric shield like this place, and deep shelters."
Grint paused to look up at the sky.
"It was because their sun was unstable, blasting the planet on a regular basis with extinction level solar storms every few thousand years, and far less deadly but still powerful ones every two or three lunar cycles. The local sapients had nearly been wiped out at least two or three dozen times by the time we stumbled across them. But the storms also provided the pressure to quickly develop protective technology, something they did in their last technological advancement surge, stabilizing their environment to where they were beginning to seriously flourish."
The dorvaldi let his eyes drop to the ground, his visible expression oddly pensive.
"Our superiors were impressed with how quickly this species advanced. In a move that troubled many on the ground, they decided to absorb the species to take advantage of their rapid technological development cycle. In a series of evacuations, they relocated the entire species to a more favorable world with a stable environment. And, within the space of a decade, they retrogressed to the point of barely being capable of supporting themselves."
Tate frowned as he looked over at Grint. He knew from his admittedly infrequent contacts with the Dorvaldi, now fully restored on a planet that closely resembled their home world, that the species was uncommonly aggressive and self-serving. Them absorbing another species to take advantage of their rapid advancement didn't come as a surprise.
What was surprising was the Master Walker's emotional turbulence as he remembered the event so early in his military career. To attain the rank of 'Master Walker' required no little courage, resolve, skill, and ruthlessness, all traits admired by the Dorvaldi. Yet here Grint was showing what appeared to be actual remorse as he recalled his people's shameful act in subsuming another species for their own gain.
So profound was his observation, he almost didn't want to break the quiet moment of self-reflection. Still, they had a job to do and very little time to do it.
"So you're suggesting we won't find any defenses here," he began, turning to look at the relatively plain buildings that stood on either side of the broad avenue. "Because the ion shield and the blast shelters were built to protect the people from an unstable local star?"
With an almost physical effort, Grint schooled his features back to blank.
"Yup," was his terse answer.
"Bloody brilliant," Tate responded with a wry twist of his mouth.
No defenses meant no protection for the locals if the ion shield failed. Which meant another wild attempt at evacuating the locals before the clouds could consume the planet.
"Fleet Actual, this is ExLan Alpha, do you read?"
"This is Fleet Actual, ExLan Alpha," Tusk's voice said over his comms through a storm of static. "We're having trouble reading you due to swarm cloud interference. What is your sitrep?"
"We are on the ground and have established a perimeter around the LZ," Tate quickly reported, knowing he wouldn't have much time before the clouds cut them off completely. "The locals have retreated to blast shelters of some kind and we've seen no other defenses beyond the ion shield. Can you scan the system's star and determine its stability? The Master Walker suspects the shield is in place to protect the inhabitants from dangerous stellar flares."
"Scanning now, ExLan Alpha," Tusk replied. "And confirmed. The local star is dangerously unstable. In fact, we're reading a massive flare event currently in progress! Harden your shielding. It will impact in less than five minutes."
"Bloody hell," Tate growled, unconsciously hunkering down even lower as he hazarded a look up at the sky. - All PODs, advise your units that we have an incoming radiation storm caused by a massive stellar flare. Take your suit shields to maximum and find hard shelter if available. I repeat, advise all units of an incoming radiation storm. Harden shields and find shelter! Storm impact in four minutes and counting. -