"OverDrive" - Chapter 5
"OverDrive"
(C) 2017 Sinclair Diavante
Chapter 5.
"I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion."
- Alexander the Great
Lieutenant Fax steadied the targeting beam of a tripod-mounted lancer-class CO2 pulse laser, tapping in a sequence that pulled the servos in a few incremental degrees to the left, while it tracked a six-limbed nightmare. The laser was an old, outdated weapon, brought up from basement storage, it took days just to get its power supply functional. It was a weapon which the enemy had surely decided by now was no longer in use, and in anyone else's paws it would be obvious why; right before the operator was torn into slender red and white splinters.
Gravwave could have sent the instructions straight from his headcomp, but while that transmission medium was difficult to eavesdrop on, it was still far too easy to interrupt. Large-matter explosions in the vicinity tended to null them out. The result: on the battlefield, almost all personal equipment operated via direct touch-buttons, as a rule. Larger systems requiring remote access had much more power available than a headcomp, and could use Photon/DZWW comms, aka photon over direct zero width wormhole. RF had been phased out centuries previously, no one would try to communicate on something so omnidirectional, noisy, and slow; the only thing worse would be smoke signals.
The targeted E'Throk crawler was five meters in length, if you didn't count its pair of wickedly sharp scythe-shaped pincers, those were half again as long. Its integrated disrupter array poked out of the head, setting it right at eye-level with a Kine soldier of average build, usually around 3 meters tall, though Fax himself was 2.8. The enemy loomed in the distance, appearing far too large on the battered, scratched targeting screen for his comfort. It was pressing through a small clearing, between surrounding trees, seeming confused and desperate to find an enemy to rip to shreds. Its actions suddenly changed, they became very smooth, as though it felt a surge of pleasure, and it lowered itself close to the ground. It had finally sensed the faint EM field which Fax's body naturally emitted, and it homed in on it, heading towards him. It was accelerating as fast as it could, stabbing its sharp legs deep into the terrain in order to increase traction, causing rocks and debris to spray out from behind. Its body was all black, yet the ebony surfaces glistened wet with a rainbow, like so much oil floating on water. Neither bullets nor lasers could easily penetrate that armor, the same shrugged off explosions and shrapnel, but even horribly wounded and disfigured, an E'Throk crawler was as deadly as anything could be. Luckily for Fax, this was just the one, and not the horde which often followed.
"Here you come... face me, that's right... a little closer."
He carefully watched the readouts on the ruggedized controller that had been set up in the dirt beside him, then flipped the cover off a green switch and stabbed the rocker underneath. A high pitched whine rose from the laser as it fired, while a surge of cool mist wafted out from below its emitter, as liquidfied CO2 phase-changed to provide cooling for the unit, in addition to a gaseous medium amplifying photons.
Nothing happened, the beam only defracted harmlessly off the creature's armor.
Fax quickly tapped in a new sequence, trying to stay calm, re-aiming; the servos gave forth their little chit-chit-chiiiit noise as they made adjustments while slewing. He clicked the fire button.
"Come on!" he urged the unit.
Another high pitched scream, its capacitors exhausted their stored energy with a dead short into the inductor coils. The weapon's resulting beam was invisible to the naked eye, far into the infrared spectrum, but it carried heat, and lots of it...
Oily smoke streamed out of a tiny spot the laser bored into, a gap between two reflective armor plates, and behind that was nothing of consequence, except for another plate of armor, which, when tilted as it moved... just so...
The beam scattered, until it retained integrity, it bounced over two more reflective surfaces, and promptly stabbed into the construct's main power supply, coring right through it.
Fax saw the bubble-shaped bend in the air right above it first, rapidly expanding, and he dropped his head firmly against the ground, keeping his ears folded flat, then added his paws tight on top of them.
The resulting shock wave tore apart nearby trees and foliage, finally blasting past his location, sounding like all the thunder in the world.
Silence, but for a few small bits and pieces still raining down from high above, landing in the trees and bouncing off branches; every animal around seemed to hold it's breath.
"What did you do!" shouted Brack, a young elite captain, with all black fur. He ran up to Fax, his battle armor clicking loudly until he dove onto him, growling deeply to roll hard on the ground with him several times, before finally coming to a stop, straddling him on top.
Fax remained on his back, only weakly struggling, far outmatched by the stronger, bigger canine.
While Brack shouted at him, his squad of a dozen soldiers approached much more calmly.
"Do you see this?" He yelled, grabbing Fax's sheath behind him, wiggling it back and forth until pink began to show. "This dog has balls! I want his puppies! Give me your puppies, now, you crafty bitch!"
The soldiers behind started laughing, a few slapping paws with each other, but Fax just took the compliment with silent embarrassment.
Brack leaned forward. "Marry me," he said with a huge grin, which amused Fax to no end, for Brack already had a mate, and two sons from her. He was far from being serious, yet Brack couldn't let Fax's sexuality intimidate him, so he regularly turned the tables and used it on him in reverse.
They all knew Fax wasn't straight, but while some might object, his performance was unquestionable, and everyone always liked someone who helped keep them alive during actual combat.
There hadn't been any serious risk with the crawler, not with those soldiers standing ready to intervene. Plus, it was crippled, its blaster array had been damaged far past any ability to regrow it. One of the latest and deadliest creations from the E'Throk, it had been captured during an armed conflict over on Seti II, just a couple of kdeg previous. That forest-covered planet was the nearest Alliance colony world to a natural central nexus wormhole, called Probos. It was as ancient as it was stable, the nexus linked to six possible outlets, depending on angle of entry, and they all spanned over a thousand light orbital units apart, making it well-worth fighting over. The planet itself was habitable, and only a few light degrees away; it was the perfect staging post for ships about to leave the system. At one point during its 1.21 OU trek around the system's sun, it actually came close enough to the nexus to fall right in, were it not thirty five degrees above the plane.
Fax certainly enjoyed his position in the military, he was never on the field, so the risks were minimal. He had unique opportunities to work with advanced classified technology, albeit usually that of the enemy, the collective output of the Separationist colony worlds: items captured, stolen, or shipped off-planet and into his eagerly waiting paws. All their dark, twisted creations that so perfectly represented the strange insect races whom designed them. Fax wasn't particularly speciesist, nor even xenophobic, really.
Coyote ran strong in his blood, making him an easy-going trickster with insatiable curiosity, he was a natural researcher. His thick coat couldn't decide weather it was supposed to be white or gray, so it just sort of changed all orbit. The only thing serious in Fax's galaxy was food.
When it came to food, keep your void-spawned paws off, but there was usually plenty of that to go around, so Fax didn't really see what the problem was, why be at war with anyone?
He wasn't a fresh recruit, though, he'd studied war just as much as every other enlisted. Politics, temporary alliances with their subsequent and inevitable betrayals, finite resources, and the power to dictate who enjoyed them.
Fax knew those were the topics which always brought about war, they were as old as time itself. The only difference today was the destruction that present technology offered, the sheer scale of it meant no one should be at war. An entire world could be left barren after just one battle, uninhabitable for a thousand kdegs, the final result of an 'if I can't have it, then neither can you' mentality. It was so puppyish, it made Fax just shake his head in frustration.
E'Throk stuff was often dark and evil, that was for certain. The worst of it wasn't even lethal, they had stuff that could take your body and turn you into a walking spy camera, or worse, control your mind, turn you into the enemy. The latter was scary just because of the process by which it occurred, it was neither fast nor pretty.
Fax had been working with insectoid technology for several years now, in the Kine strategic counter-tech intelligence unit, and in those few short years he'd learned more about the enemy than he had ever thought possible.
Brack let him up, turning to briefly show off his armor-covered muscular flanks before assuming his usual stiff-eared discipline. Fax tried not to stare, but his touch had felt sooo good, and things like that always brought forth many questionable feelings. Was Brack bi? Was it all just an act? It seemed like every excuse he ever had to do something sexual to Fax, always at his expense, he took it. When confronted, the captain just turned evasive and commanding, and there was no arguing with him. Fax pushed it out of his mind, it was his only defense.
"Corporal Cooks! Front and center..."
One of the nearby soldiers ran up to Brack, standing tall and at attention.
"Yes captain, sir!"
"Our objective is not to trash the local environment and ruin what nature has so kindly provided for us, do you understand what I'm saying, corporal?"
"Yes captain, sir!"
"Well then what are you going to do about it?"
"Corporal Cooks will take a detachment from the squad and go restore the terrain to the best of his abilities, sir!"
"Good, you do that. Carry on, soldier. Fax! The major wants to see you."
Some of the other remaining soldiers all chimed in with "OooOOOooo..." as they were walking away. Fax wondered if it was a commendation for successfully reverse engineering the crawler, finding its weakness.
"Dasid, stay behind and tear down that laser, give our hero some time to freshen up for the good major."
Or... maybe it was something else. He wondered what Brack knew that he didn't. He brushed most of the dirt from his fur and began the short trek back to the base, drunk on thoughts of what Brack's paw felt like on his sheath, along with what it would feel like to peel Brack's armor off so he could push it somewhere else.
Without the laser to carry, he made his way to centops in just six degrees.*
Captain Carvos, Kine Planetary Services Officer, PSO, sat waiting at his desk. He came from wolf stock, all brown with wizened gray behind his nose. Fax entered and stood at attention, tail straight down, legs apart, just so, paws behind his back.
Attached to the wall behind the major, and completely filling it in fact, were holoprints of various soldiers under his command. All were taken by themselves while they were enjoying off-duty time with friends and family, his one rule being that one must be taken and sent to him for posting. His policy was to leave those colorful, pleasant visages as sharp reminders, the reason for why they were fighting, exactly what they were fighting for.
The captain looked up from some paperwork on his desk and nodded.
"At ease, Lieutenant. I just received word of your success on the E'Throk crawler, great work, there. You may have saved countless lives finding that weakness, making you an excellent investment to Kine war efforts."
"Thank you, sir." Fax's tail twitched, he wanted to wag it fiercely but such was generally frowned upon in the presence of top brass.
"You know you can't... rise above the rank of Lieutenant without seeing actual combat, Fax."
"Yes, sir, I understand that. But I also understand that my skill set is best used behind the scenes, working to understand the enemy better, sir."
"True. But not anymore. I'm putting you in the field, you can't hide behind your sensors and tools forever, it feeds a weakness that I know is not present in you, yet."
Fax swallowed hard. Field work? Maybe... as a scout, perhaps. Void! Things were just starting to get good. He felt disappointed, he should have known better, being so over-familiiar with Brack, that's what this was. Someone had a score to settle, a weak Kine, playing behind his back. Fax tried his hardest not to scowl, but he knew Carvos could smell every bit of his emotions, and he stared as if he read Fax like a book, smelling of amusement, even. Somehow that made it even worse.
"That said, you are hereby granted a high security rating, effective for twenty kdegs, at which point you will have to put in for a renewal yourself." He paused, closely watching Fax's reaction, sniffing the air.
HSC? Wait, this wasn't a vendetta. Why would anyone need that in combat? Fax's ears went sideways as he drew a blank.
"These are your transfer orders, you've just been reassigned to the Gamma quadrant, Outpost 4-D."
"Sir, that's... a Teecat world, everything in Gamma is theirs."
"Teecat Assault Corps, yes. Lieutenant Colonel Thrix is a very old friend of mine, he'll be your commanding officer, you're taking orders from him here forward.
"Fax's ears took all the effort he could possibly come up with to keep them forward, and not flat, this was... a punishment?
"Prep for stasis, you're catching a ride on the outbound transport leaving at oh-six-shade tomorrow, and it will stop to drop you off three kdegs later. There, you can further your career by exclusively supporting... the firstlink of a genuine... ASU." The major put hard emphasis on those three lone letters, pausing to let it sink in.
What? An ASU. Fax could only blink. Not a punishment... his eyes went wide, and he swallowed. ASU's were one of the galaxy's most expensive, elite fighting forces ever made. This was... WAY above Fax's pay grade! No single Kine could possibly be responsible for such an event, and besides... he knew almost nothing about how they worked. Was this a mistake? Did Carvos not realize he knew nothing about ASU's? He didn't understand, maybe something was wrong with his hearing, that shock wave must have jostled his brain. His ears were twitching, but he tried hard to keep them pointing forward.
"Surprised?"
"No, I mean, yes, sir. It's just that... I'm not trained in ASU hardware." The major nodded.
"Nor would you be without that clearance, and you can't get it if you don't need it. Training will be uploaded via hypnofeed during stasis. I fully expect you to learn everything that you need to know, because after firstlink, you and the ASU will be deployed together. Your role will be maintenance and repairs, with a promotion to Captain pending review from Thrix, dependent upon your success on bringing the ASU to battle worthiness standards." The major smiled, all white teeth. "Any questions?"
Fax had... about a hundred.
"No, sir."
"Excellent! Dismissed." Fax turned to leave, feeling baffled and dazed, yet his heart was racing with excitement.
"Oh, and Fax?" He paused, turning to stare. "It has been a true pleasure working with you. Show those Teecat's up, make me proud."
Fax nodded. "I'll do that, sir."
*Although (DEMO VERSION!)the 'hour' time unit measurement varies from species to species, world to world, since Teecat's were one of the first in the alliance to obtain FTL capability, their specific unit of measurement had been agreed upon and adopted across the entire Alliance.