Vandread Fan Fiction ❯ Counterattack ❯ The Beleaguered Planet ( Chapter 8 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Standard disclaimers apply.
 
The soldier crunched gravel under his armored boot as he surveyed the scene before him. Rows upon rows of abandoned houses and buildings filled his eyes for what seemed like miles down the road . . . And not a single soul, none other than himself, his partner and the forty-two others who came with them.
“Porthos Alpha, this is A-2-4,” he whispered into the mic built into his helmet.
“Reading negative on life signs, there's no one out here, nothing but abandoned structures.”
“High altitude buoys are detecting several low intensity energy signatures, better keep scouting,” the expedition commander answered back.
“Roger that.”
With a look and a shrug at his partner, he continued deeper into the lifeless maze. As he progressed he began to feel it. Neither he nor his partner saw anything, but they felt it all the same, something was lurking. Lurking on the edges of their combined field of vision, moving from shadow to shadow. In unspoken agreement, both troopers cranked their suit sensors up to maximum. Everything . . . audio pickups, radar, IR, even thermometers. Something was stalking them. Both knew this with the certainty of prey animals being hunted.
As the feeling peaked the two were now back to back. Weapons held at the ready as they swept their surroundings with their sensors.
“There!!!”
It just sprang out of the ground, as if made of dust, or sand. As more appeared the two began firing. Sending streams of magnetically accelerated heavy density slugs at the creatures that seemed almost semi-corporeal.
“Mayday! Mayday! We're being surrounded! Requesting immediate evac.” As the soldier called out for help he and his partner started running back up the hill they had just come from, back to the rally point.
“Roger that A-2-4, keep transmitting. We're on our way. What kind of bogeys do you have, by the way?”
“These look like quadrupeds made of sand. Don't delay on our account. Heck! We'd appreciate if you could bring some heavy firepower.” The soldier panted as he ran. His assault rifle didn't really do much. He could use it to remove those things that had the bad sense to stand in his way. But only for a while. All it really did was slow the darned things down. They disintegrated when he shot them and he could run past them then, but then they would just reintegrate.
Finally they were there. With nowhere else to go they turned around and fired their weapons at the advancing creatures. It was futile, the sandcreatures were already past the buildings, bounding down the last few meters toward the two soldiers. One leapt, in a feral attack at one soldier, who had the sense to step out of the way. Turning, he spat out fire at the creature as it landed, turning it to dust. It re-formed, bounded off, and came around for another jump.
Things were bad. Now would be a good time for help to arrive. And it did, in the form of a deafening roar from a railgun. Both troopers fell to their knees as their helmet audio pickups, still at maximum sensitivity, registered the normally already very loud noise, before being brought down by the limited suit computer.
“Anybody asked for help?” The Bangata pilot asked as the railgun cradled in its arms like some sort of Bangata-sized machine gun continued spewing fire.
“You came right on time.” The troopers, now recovered, were adding their own little contribution, but it wasn't enough. None of the sandcreatures could come any closer without being pounded to dust by either railgun or assault rifle, but only for as long as either weapon had any ammo.
“If you have an idea for getting out of here, now would be a good time,” one of the soldiers remarked as he slapped a fresh magazine, his last.
“Oh yeah! Grab hold. We're punching out.”
As one, the troopers fired their suit mounted apogee motors and leapt onto the giant humanoids shoulders. Holding on for dear life, the two cried they were ready and the war machine leapt off on its own apogee motors.
“So,” one of the troopers finally managed to ask in between pants, “what took you so long? And why only you? Where are the others?”
“As far as I can tell, every one's in trouble. All the others are busy getting your other people out. Command's been going haywire just keeping things straight.”
 
High above them on the gleaming star ship, others monitored their progress. Crewers worked feverishly processing as much of the data as they could. Over them a pair of eyes watched calmly.
“How is the survey team?”
“As far as we can tell, they all made it out. Minor structural damage to one of the Bangatas, but nothing serious.”
“We got lucky. Have Dread Squadron 1 launch and take up watch positions, then have them send two of theirs to meet up with the survey team as soon as they clear the upper atmosphere. I'll be in the flag deck.”
With that, BC turned and went up the stairs into the area known as the flag deck. It was situated just aft and above the command deck and used to be Magno's ready room. After the renovations, when it was deemed no longer necessary for Magno to stay on top of the day-to-day activities of the Nirvana, she had nonetheless kept it for her use, as she couldn't just stay away. It allowed her to watch without interfering.
“Still no luck?” The old woman was smiling as usual.
“Nothing. The first one we encountered a while back wasn't even interested in helping out. Just as disturbed as that silly Anpatos a few years back. And this one, too late for us to do anything. It was practically the same thing that nearly got Meia and the others way back then, too. With a little refinement. . . these are actually taking semi-solid shapes. Gave our troopers quite a scare.”
“That's something.” The old woman smiled. “The Harvest has always been keen to take all the lessons they've learned seriously. So, what next?”
BC turned to look at the timer visible from her station. “I've already taken the liberty of sending a long-range recon probe ahead. We should be hearing from it in a few minutes.”
Finally it flashed, and Misty's console lit up in a flurry of readings. “Captain!” She called out as she began sorting through the data being received. “I'm reading a massive energy source on the planet and multiple smaller ones in orbit around the planet!” She punched up some displays, “It looks like a battle! Ack!” She quickly removed her headset and began punching up displays all over her station. Then she shook her head. “We've lost contact with the probe!”
Magno and BC looked at each other. Then both nodded. “Get everybody aboard! Bart! Prepare to get the Nirvana underway! Misty will supply the coordinates! All hands! Alert level 2!” She cried out orders one after the other as she began climbing down to the command deck. Looks like they were about to get busy.
 
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The Nirvana stopped just short of entering the inner star system where the inhabited planet was. Preferring instead to hide in the shadow of the closest gas giant while Vandread Jura and a Bangata squad scouted ahead. The senior officers sat around the flag deck's small briefing table as a streaming feed from Jura's forward viewport filled most of a briefing screen on one side of the room. Jura, Hibiki and Jarell's faces along with a small tactical schematic of the surrounding space filled the rest of the screen.
“So, what do we know?” Magno asked first.
“The planet seems to be encased in a planet-wide energy shield,” Jarell's voice observed. “Must be the large energy source the probe picked up first. Most of the Harvest fleet seems to have taken up stations, more or less evenly spaced all around the planet.”
“The cubes are just staying there? Not doing anything? But why? Why hang around? From what we know of the Harvest they don't hang around impregnable targets. They just leave them for the meantime and get back to them later with overwhelming firepower. What's so special about this particular one that they're waiting it out? Do they expect it to fall within the near future?” BC was all questions. Something was not quite right.
“We're just about as curious as you are. Don't you worry. We'll hang around some more and check it out.” The tactical schematic showed Able Squad splitting up into groups of threes and taking up positions all over the planet's surrounding space.
As the Bangatas took positions there was a discreet beep from the bridge. “Yes?” BC stabbed at the intercom. “Captain our sensors show that the planetary shield's energy supply just fluctuated.” It was Belvedere.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes ma'am.” At this BC reopened the link to the recon unit. “Able Squad, come in. Did you just see what we saw over here?”
“Yeah we did, the energy levels for the shield just went off of sync for a few seconds,” Jarell acknowledged. “Do you have any idea why?” BC wanted to know. “Hold on . . . Yup, Able Four just reported a small hole opening in his quadrant but only for a few seconds. What? No! Can't be! Not that!”
“What is it Able Leader? What do you see?” BC asked, not noticing that below them, on the command deck the bridge technicians along with Bart had suddenly gone still.
“Able Nine, Ten and Eleven just reached their preassigned post. You'd better take a look at their streaming feed.” BC stabbed at the console. And gaped. As did everyone. There was a Harvest mothership in orbit around the planet. From what they'd studied of its capabilities, it seemed to be in the cooldown phase of a very recent main cannon firing. As recent as say around… a minute or so ago.
“Oh boy,” Hibiki was the first to recover. “We're in for it now.”
 
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Generations of operations planners going back to the distant past when traveling among the stars was a distant dream have always sworn by one simple rule of thumb. The probability of success was inversely proportional to the number of unknown variables. In simple parlance, KISS, or Keep It Simple, Stupid. Thus, Operation Alpha Strike was simplicity in itself.
Vandread Jura and most of Able Squad were withdrawn to a region of space as close to the Harvest Mothership as possible without entering its sensor range. There they were to await the arrival of the Nirvana which would have to take a longer route around. Once the rendezvous was completed, the Operation would begin and they would simply send everything they had with the express purpose of punching through to the Mothership and knocking it out. An Alpha Strike, short and simple.
All those were done without a hitch. The only thing left was to fight the battle itself. As Zero Hour arrived everyone was more than ready and squadrons began starting off on their preassigned attack vectors, like different roads all leading to the Mothership. If only plans could survive first contact with the enemy.
It wasn't long before the battle turned into a brawl, and squadrons began to concentrate on causing as much damage to surrounding cubes as possible. Never mind if the attack lanes were by now all but abandoned.
Able Squad was one such. At the rate it was going it was going to come up against the planetary shield itself and there were still a lot of cubes between them and their objective. Frustrating. What's more, reinforcements were starting to trickle in for the Harvest. Space around Able Squad was beginning to get crowded. But there was nothing to worry about. The highly capable professionals simply took it in stride and redoubled their efforts at destroying targets at least as fast as the speed with which they trickled in. Somebody else would have to get to the Mothership, they were busy keeping reinforcements from reinforcing it.
Able Leader was no exception. Maintaining formation was by now almost impossible. In groups of twos and threes the squadron was holding on, and for that he was proud. But he had problems of his own. Three Vandread copies had accosted him some minutes ago, one each of the Jura, Meia and Dita types, and they were keeping him busy. That they didn't overpower him right away was probably downright luck, but they would soon wear him down. He'd already taken some hits, most of it in shielded areas like his forearm and shoulder, and he'd given back in return. Scoring solid hits of his own. But this melee was far from over.
Not far from him Meia and Hibiki had just combined their ships. They were now proceeding to make short work of even the fastest of the highspeed types the Harvest could throw at them. At the speed with which they worked nothing could touch them. Yet.
On the Nirvana, BC was getting desperate. The target had already taken some minor hits but it would take much more to knock it out, and no one had yet been able to make some sort of followthrough. And their window was shrinking. Pretty soon it would be able to fire again, opening up a small hole in some random part of the planetary shield.
And then, time was up. The Harvest Mothership started pouring energy onto one part of the planetary shield. It was damaged, but obviously not enough. Meia and Hibiki had been about to make a run on it, but they were too late. They stared at the target as it opened fire and looked at the shield as it began to flicker. A sure sign that it was absorbing massive amounts of energy, more than it was designed to. Any second now a hole in some other part of the shield would open and harvest cubes would pour through to assault the planet's inhabitants directly. They were too dumbfounded by their own failure to even notice the flash of red light. Until it was too late, that is.
Jarell's pulsed anti-proton rifle had just gone dry. In frustration he threw it at a clone, one of Jura's, blasting it with his built in beam machine gun. He got lucky and hit a capacitor, causing it to detonate close enough to the clone to cause some real damage. Glaive already in hand, he charged in to finish it off, stabbing right through the center of it. As microexplosions flared within it, he felt rather than saw the other clone, Dita's, make its move. Gritting his teeth with the G-forces, he wheeled around to hide behind the clone he had just impaled. The high-energy beams packed a real punch, and threw the clone, along with him, back. Straight into the planetary shield.
 
It had come from one of the Harvest units coming from some other area to assist the beleaguered Mothership. It was by no means a stranger to the Nirvana crew. They had encountered one like it before and it had one notable trick up its sleeve. It was able to fire directed Paeksis Pragma beams, beams with polarities radically different from those used on Vandreads and the Nirvana. The effect was usually to disrupt the flow of energies throughout a Paeksis powered ship. On Vandreads, that usually meant a breakup into component ships. What's more, because of the extraordinary link between man and machine afforded by the Paeksis, the pilots also felt the disruption as pain.
Both Meia and Hibiki cried out as they felt the disruption. Felt the Vandread being torn apart as if it was they themselves being torn apart. The two were ripped apart and hurled in opposite directions. Hibiki was lucky. Able squad was nearby, and it was a small matter for them to catch him and right him. Meia however, still dazed, went straight in the direction of the planet, to be swallowed up by a hole that suddenly opened in her path. Jarell, pushed back by the Vandread clone's powerful energy beams, fell in right behind her. Before anyone could react, the planetary shield recovered and closed behind them.
“Leader!”
“Commander!”
Pilots called out for their respective superiors as they realized what they saw. Before confusion could set in any further, BC gave the recall order. Not everyone was happy.
“How the hell could you even consider leaving her there!?” Barnette was furious. “She was your friend! She was fair to everyone! She needs our help!” BC simply looked calmly at her and spoke. “I know how you feel, but we simply couldn't stay there and go on fighting. Both the Dreads and the Bangatas have lost their overall commanders. With such a disruption in the chain of command I had no choice but to recall everyone and regroup. I know you don't want to abandon her, and I have no intention to. We will return for them soon enough, but for now we must rest and regain our composure.”
Barnette simply turned around. She could understand why. She'd in fact known right away that they would have to retreat. That didn't make it any easier to accept it. I only hope she'll be fine. Hang tight Meia, we're coming for you.