Naero's War: The Citation Series 2: The High Crusade (17 page)

This was why the invaders had to die, as quickly and as soon as such could be achieved. Nothing would be able to return to any sense of normalcy until that reality was made true.

There could be no Ejjai. The entire race had to be eradicated as if it had never existed.

The shock and disgust at just watching that one meatblock sizzle and burn brought it all home to them. Why they were fighting, and what it was they were fighting for.

The end of shit like this.

What they were fighting against.

Shetanna snarled and lifted one hand, reducing the vile cube to ash with Cosmic fire.

Yet the stench of it was still in the air like a cloud, like the stink of death and misery of all the hundreds of invaded worlds. And that putrid cloud clung to them and stained them all.

On Pixie-6, it took the Marines eight long days of nonstop fighting to completely exterminate and slaughter the massive hordes of the Ejjai that were hurled against them.

Shettana personally selected eight invader generals and admirals who had been captured, gagged them, and bound them in chains and shackles. Once General Walker approved her request, these enemy officers were sent on a small ship to the next world Bravo was heading for.

They carried a message to all of the invaders. To let them know what had happened in the black on Pixie-6.

To let the enemy know what to expect, very shortly.

Bravo Command, Shetanna, and the Alliance were coming for them, head on and ready to take them down.

And there was no power in the universe that could prevent that, or save the invader’s worthless existence, from the wrath and the sure vengeance of the Spacer Marines.

13

The Gort-6 system had a population of barely fifteen million. But it was a botworld, where all sorts of bots were developed and tried out before being shipped out for sale to various markets.

Unfortunately, that also included drone attack/defense systems and other warbots.

Even though the invaders attacked Gort-6 with only four fleets, they had been onworld for almost two months–during which time they had killed off more than a third of the local, mostly Naivatch, population, hunted the others wherever they hid, and also seized control of most of the 2.3 billion bots on the planet.

Only twenty percent of those bots were originally built for war, but the others could also be programmed to fight and kill, or at the very least get in the way as they attempted to cause harm. The sheer number of them made for a bizarre and extremely dangerous and unpredictable situation.

The Ejjai invader could sit back and laugh, waiting behind a sea of bots shielding them, and snipe at the Marines at will. While the Marines were forced to fight and slog their way through billions of pissed-off bots, reprogrammed to combat anything living that came near that wasn’t Ejjai.

If the Marines couldn’t get at the invaders, they couldn’t take them out. What was worse, the enemy made certain that all of the bots they unleashed on the planet were randomly AI-adapted to various kill and attack modes.

The bots all operated independently. Therefore, there was no off switch, abort, or kill switch on the bot hordes. No central command or any way to shut the bots down in large numbers. Unlike in countless stupid vids, all fail-safes and safety protocols were off. There was no convenient self-destruct or deactivation code for the robot armies.

Available EMP attacks would take out the military equipment of the defenders as well as the bots. The Alliance was stuck. These bots would continue to attack and try to kill the defenders, even after all of the invaders were destroyed.

Granted, only the actual military drones and warbots constituted a real tactical threat. At first the Marines and the Navy focused on dealing with them as priority targets. But it quickly became apparent that the vast numbers of the other normal bots were a huge obstacle as well.

Shetanna and her strike teams from 36 focused on locating batches of the actual invaders directing and controlling the bot hordes. They either took out the invaders, or painted them on the main combat grid for other primary forces to take down.

At first the Marines found it rather comical to enter a gigacity area and have service bots, waiter and waitress bots, cookbots, janitorial and sanitation bots, and store clerkbots come at them with low level firearms or even knives and clubs.

The Alliance sent in clouds of fixers to deactivate or dismantle the bots into inert components and scrap.

In one illicit area, hundreds of sexbots flooded out of buildings to charge the defender lines with automatic weapons and grenades. They had to be dealt with swiftly and cut down.

Then there were suicide bots that simply tried to get close enough to the defenders and detonate the explosives rigged up inside of them.

After the first casualties, all of the jokes and the laughter ceased, as soon as the Marines and the civies suffered wounded and KIAs.

More waves of modified fixers were brought down from the Navy and sacrificed in order to take out hundreds of thousands of bot bombers, some of which had gravitics and could fly. The silent ones were the most deadly.

Leave it to Om to finally come up with a viable solution. Due to flaws in the invader programming, the bots did not attack Ejjai…or other bots. Therefore, a specially modified fixer went with each Marine and projected a masking, camouflage signal that made the Marines appear to be either Ejjai or other bots.

Such protection improved the situation dramatically.

The invader countered by remotely detonating suicide bots and many explosive charges set all over the city.

In the end, the sheer number of bots continued to be a hindrance and complicated the combat situation.

Yet they were a definite distraction, an obstacle. The battle for Gort-6 could not be won until the enemy invaders were hunted down and killed.

Naero and the hunter-killer teams proceeded to do just that, and kept it up as the actual number of invaders onworld deteriorated.

They managed to break into one of the bot construction factories where the female Ejjai shocktroops and their smaller, male tech counterparts were scurrying around, reprogramming and planting explosives inside a few thousand more suicide bots.

Grenades, explosive needles, demolition charges, and rockets brought the entire operation crashing down on the enemy’s heads. The resulting multiple explosions sealed the deal.

Reports from long-range recon scouts stated that a large group of invaders was passing through some service and sewage tunnels, trying to reach a hidden pocket of enemy ships. The Ejjai were preparing to flee.

The Navy already positioned itself up in the black to intercept and take out any of the cowards who attempted to get away.

Meanwhile, Shetanna went down to drive a good portion of the slashers into a waiting deathtrap that 36 had prepared for them.

A small, cloaked squad maintained several unit shield barriers in front of either her or a projected holo of Shetanna.

All Naero had to do was appear menacing and advance on the foe. The slashers were already terrified out of their minds wherever the Dark Angel of Death appeared. They shot and fought with each other in their panic to escape from Shetanna’s wrath.

All the Marines needed to do was keep their trap set, and just wait for the terrified Ejjai to more or less leap right into it.

Gort-6 was fully pacified, one day later.

Mission accomplished, the Marines loaded back up into their dropships and returned to their fleet carriers and other transports to depart that system for their next objective.

Then Naero received an alert from Om.

N, several strange disturbances in the fixer clouds. None of these scans or readings make any sense.

What do we have, Om? Some other kind of enemy stealth or phaze attack?

Not sure yet. Trying to track and filter multiple pings.

Naero closed her eyes and teknomanced with Om, adding her abilities and senses with his, reaching out through the various fixer nebulae in all of their configurations.

Om, let’s try a vesper flea attack, and then an infestation strategy.

Got it. Tag, envelope, and then reveal.

Okay. We’ve got something forming. Looks like…hundreds of small ships. Haisha! What configuration are these? No jump drives. They’re not starships.

Unknown design and origin. But they must be enemy craft.

What are they doing? Where are they heading? Is there some kind of pattern? Spy craft? Are they scanning our fleets? Maybe they’re sabotage vessels?

They’re rather large for that, but they could be remote drones of some kind. Why not just send in cloaked missiles or bombships? No atomics on board, other than cloaked power cores. Silent alerts going to Fleet Command and Intel.

Naero’s heart froze the instant she perceived what they were.

They’re phazed boarding craft, Om. Like nothing we’ve ever seen before. And the enemy’s swarming on General Walker’s Flagship,
The Iwo Jima.

They’re attempting to kill Walker and take out our command and control.

And right before the crucial Spacer Grand Conclave was set to begin. Was that just a coincidence as well?

“Major Luna,” Naero cut in over the links. “Priority One Negative Alert Red, I say again, Alert Red. Company 36 MCL Maeris reporting. Hundreds of inbound, phazed enemy boarding craft are slipping in and coating
The Iwo Jima
. They will most likely attack any second. I know that you and first and second platoons are already on board. Secure General Walker and all command officers. Prepare to repel boarders. Make ready for heavy assaults by phazed enemy troop waves. Institute Intel Vesper protocols.”

Intense enemy jamming disrupted all coms suddenly, as even the fleet ships were cut off from each other. As a further distraction, a dozen new enemy strike fleets and fighter waves jumped in to keep the Navy busy.

Explosions and fires suddenly rocked
The Iwo Jima
, taking out her power core, propulsion, and jump drives. She floated helpless in the big black.

All while hundreds of assault craft appeared along the flagship’s length, injecting their lethal cargo of attackers and assassins at the same time.

Their officer’s were already fighting and in harm’s way with the first two platoons of 36. Naero called up First Sergeant Samuel Gordon and Gunnery Sergeant Peyton Valmont. Then they woke up Second Leftenant Holly Mitsubishi and she joined their link instantly, checking the sitrep.

“Top, Gunny, Holly–you’re scanning the sitch. I have our dropship en route to dock and board the Flagship
The Iwo Jima
in seconds, near the bridge and command quarterdecks. Platoons three, four, and five are geared up and ready to fight, on my orders. More help is right behind us, seconds away.”

“Good work, N,” Gordon said, “by their own initial reports, the flagship is engulfed in heavy fighting on almost every level. They need us in there fast.”

Naero nodded. “Copy that, Top. I’ll take 3
rd
Platoon, you take 4
th
in, and Gunny, you take 5
th
. I want our most experienced people at the head of this. Holly, I know you’re normally a combat field officer, but we desperately you to stay behind and run–”

“Already on it, N. I’m up and hot on the combat grid. 36 won’t go in blind. Linking with stealth fixers on scene. Coordinate your three assault entry points on these three key locations and fight your way to the officer’s quarters, the bridge, and General Walker’s state room and command quarters. Lock and load Marines. Green to hit the mix in thirty-seconds. Mark.”

Naero, there’s something odd being reported about some of the enemy Ejjai boarding troops. Many of them are larger, and more powerful than any other Ejjai troops we have met before.

More Ejjai mutants, Om? Naero switched into full-on Shetanna mode, racing to join 3
rd
Platoon at the insertion tubes.

It appears so. Early stealth fixer genetic scans show them to be some kind of Ejjai sterodans, hyped up on strength and speed mods.

Great, Om. We’ve fought sterodans before. Let’s kill these jacked up slashers all the same. They bleed. They die.

At the last instant, Shetanna split up their available meks evenly throughout all three platoons. Their extra might would help counter the new Ejjai freaks.

They went in blasting and fighting on gravwings in zero-G.

3
rd
Platoon entered near the officer and command staff quarter decks. On board Marines already had their hands full attempting to repel hundreds of invading troops.

One of the Ejjai sterodan mutants, a misshapen beast over two meters tall grabbed her and attempt to smash her against the hull of the battleship.

Shetanna stunned the creature with a mind blast and drove it back. She severed one huge, hulking arm with her right katana and then opened her third eye.

Three scarlet Chaos beams drilled out of her eyes and bored out the mutant horror’s face and skull, leaving only a glowing shell of sizzling meat and bone.

She cut off the left arm and finally broke free of the huge corpse.

If there were many more of these creatures on board, they were going to cause a lot of havoc. She saw at least four more from where she floated.

These mutants could take an immense amount of damage before they went down. And they were stronger than even the meks.

The Marines swarmed on them, cutting them to pieces with autoguns, miniguns, and multiple explosives.

They were still heavily engaged when platoons four and five reported that they were meeting heavy resistance trying to reach their objectives and were falling back with other Marine units to regroup.

More enemies seemed to pour in from the boarding craft outside.

Yet more Marine units arrived each second, swarming on the flagship inside and out. The battleship rocked, twisted, and shook, shuddering with the effects of heavy fighting all throughout its length.

Shetanna needed to break the stalemate here fast so that they could move on.

She pierced one of the freaks with Chaos spikes and detonated them, blasting it to pieces, and even sending Marines in shielded combat armor flying. But they’d survive being kicked around.

Another with several ravening mutant heads was ripping through a Marine’s combat armor, trying to devour her. The gungirl did her best to hold it off. She stabbed at the monster’s horrid faces with an energy blade and unloaded her pulse carbine into its torso.

The abomination ignored blaster fire being pumped into its massive body, and continued to lash out, knocking other Marines away while it still tried to gnaw on the one.