First Contact

Chapter 975: The Shadows of Twilight

"Energy weapons are the most technologically advanced weapon type out there. Ballistic and kinetic weapons quickly hit energy potetional problems that can't be solved. The ballistic weapon is as obsolete as belief in a divine being." - Every advanced race

"IT'S MA DEUCE AND HER DAUGHTER THREE EIGHTEEN!" - Terrans

"OH, GODS WHO HAVE ABANDONED US SAVE US IN OUR HOUR OF NEED!" - same advanced races.

When high caliber ballistic rounds hit a target, the transfer of kinetic energy is enormous. From hydrostatic shock as the pressure of the round's passing blows out veins and arteries, to complete tissue liquification, a ballistic weapon leaves a complete mess behind. Even when it hits armor, it will stress the metal, divert power from battlescreen projectors, and, in general, mess up the target's day.

The M318A2E5 was considered obsolete in the Atrekna Conflict Zone.

Obsolete does not mean ineffective.

Turning his visor's opacity down to 0%, Bit.nek stepped forward, squeezing the firing lever. The M318A2E5 General Purpose Heavy Machinegun's 20mm barrel slamming back into the recoil compensator shocks as Bit.nek poured the hate out at 1,200 rounds a minute, far past the "maximum effective rate of fire" of 350 rounds a minute and way past the recommended maximum rate of fire of 100 rounds a minute.

The heavy rounds, three API then one tracer coated and tagged HEDP, roared out of the barrel.

The first 20 were standard ball rounds. Heavy load with a copper jacket and a pointed tip. They were gone in a single second as Bit.nek tracked his fire slowly from left to right, even as he walked forward and to the right. He panned the fire back as he kept moving.

The crowd of shamblers between him and the lone tank numbered in the hundreds, the thousands, when he raked them across a three second pan and another three seconds back.

It was only 120 rounds in six seconds.

Rounds that were moving at over seven thousand feet a second created a cavitation effect in the air, so that even if it didn't hit you, it hit you. The recoil on it was 1,400 pounds, easily absorbed by the smart gunnery frame, making it easy to keep the barrel straight and level.

One moment, there were thousands of deaders screaming.

Six seconds later the street was full of shredded hamburger, misted tissue, and sprayed blood.

The rounds that hit the tank's battlescreens made them flare, ripples appearing around where the rounds hit.

Six seconds, 120 rounds, ten HEDP impacts against the battlescreen.

The HEDP round: a high-explosive dual purpose round, grooved battlesteel jacket, tightly wound notched endosteel wire, impact fuzed, with a penetration jet of osmium.

The battlescreen visibly rippled as the ten rounds hit the tank's battlescreens. The ones that missed the tank ripped through two or three hundred bodies before it encountered something firm enough to crack off the fuze.

Usually a building.

The round blew a three foot wide, six inch deep, hole in the building facade, often blowing out whole fake marble panels and causing the ones and below to blow off as the underlying ferrocrete cracked.

In that red-eyed part of his brain, Bit.nek knew all of this, even though his conscious brain was barking orders to 299.

"Four peekaboo drones, templates in EPROM block nine. Diamond around me, no active sensors, passive only, including cameras. Slave them across my upper visor at 35% opacity," he snapped.

He walked another burst into the tank's battlescreen, watching the coloration and the ripples.

He could see that the battlescreen projector for the upper right quadrant was wavering by how the screen rippled.

He kept moving forward, still firing, the link spraying out beside him to chime and dance on the pavement.

Two tank rounds in the 255mm range whipped by, the shockwaves not even making his own battlescreen visible.

"40mm jammers. Prism, EM strobes and flares, thermal smoke, thermal masking smoke, IR flashers, HC white smoke," Bit.nek ordered. "Coat the street in front of the two tanks. Mix in some FASCAM-AR flipper mines."

--working working working oh god oh god oh god-- 299 sent back.

"Give us some tunes," Bit.nek said, stopping suddenly, planting his feet, and cranking up the gravity anchor.

His boots crushed the asphalt beneath his feet even as he pulled the M318 around and doublesqueezed the firing grip.

The barrel was flashing as the rings at the end of the barrel discharged the heat in pulses that went with each round. Visible light and thermal energy release. Steam was rising from the length of the barrel, and the rear of the weapon was smoking.

He knew it was just the storage film melting away.

Slush 11%. Heat 22.81%.

"Private First Class Bit.nek, Second Platoon, Kilo Company, 992 Infantry. I have engaged the enemy," he stated again over the radio band. "Hey, music!"

--sorry sorry oh god oh god tanks tanks tanks--

The speakers howled for a moment, the distortion echoing off the sides of the buildings.

The tank's guns went on auto, Bit.nek's battlescreen flaring. He let off the firing grip, even as the tank's lasers snapped at his screens. The 40mm on his shoulder started firing, working its way through its ammo.

He saw it as the words came through the speaker with clarity.

" I'M PEELIN' OFF DOME WITH A BASEBALL BAT!"

"Classical? Really?" Bit.nek said as he tabbed up gum and kept running the gun's analytic software. The battlescreen wasn't even depleted, the magnetic and gravity forces acting as

There was a steady tone. The rate of fire began to bobble between 500 and 600 rounds a minute.

'44 MAGNUM CHOICE OF GAT!"

Bit.nek clamped back down on the lever as the tank started firing again.

Four windows popped up at the top of his visor, faint but readable.

The 318 roared, the gunnery frame handling the recoil, as Bit.nek fired back into the battlescreens of the lone tank shooting at him with its lasers.

"MERCURY TIP FILLIN UP MY CLIP!"

The rounds whipped through the battlescreen of the enemy tank as it flickered to allow the lasers through. They slammed into the base of the barrel, striking the mantlet. The API rounds cratered it, warping it, leaving behind burning spooky-particle white phosphorus.

The two HEDP rounds destroyed it. The following API slammed into the stabilizer beneath, the next HEDP blew through. The tank didn't have a turret, just a crab body with the main gun coming out where a crab's mouth would be. Bit.nek held the fire on the crater his rounds were making out of the mantlet.

"I CAN SHOOT HIM IN THE DOME OR I CAN GET HIM IN THE HIP!"

The top hatch blew off the tank, belching out fire and smoke.

"Give us some prism between us," Bit.nek snapped over the roar, letting off the grip and ramping the cyclic rate back up to 1,200.

The 40mm whined as it turned around quickly and chuffed out two rounds. They exploded in midair, white smoke with water droplets that had precisely manufactured micro-crystals suspended in them that refracted and deflected lasers.

He turned slowly, shuffling, his grav-anchor whining.

Five second burst across the street on his left.

Every shambler for nearly a block exploded into rags and pink mist. Fur, scales, spikes, plates, and other tissue splattered against the side of the buildings.

He could see the other two tanks in the drone feed even though using the Mark-One Eyeball the street was full of flashing strobes, burning light, and smoke.

His brainbox put where the tanks were with a wire grid, then a marker for where the barrel was pointing.

"PFC Bitnek, Kilo, Nine Nine Two, Tango One Down," he said over the radio. "Am still engaged."

--oh man oh man oh man-- 299 said.

Bit.nek could feel, through the text, that his battle buddy's near panic was subsiding and it had become more of a mantra than the gut wrenching fear of a first combat.

He pounded ten seconds of fire against the enemy tank on the right, the battlescreen flaring as over a hundred 20mm rounds slammed into it.

The shamblers in between exploded, barely affecting the round's velocity as it blew through almost fifty bodies to explode against the battlescreen. Shrapnel from the HEDP rounds ripped apart shamblers in a ten meter radius as the hypersonic pieces of battlesteel and endosteel liquefied what they hit.

"I DON'T BANG BUT I LIKE TO WOUND!"

Bit.nek started walking to the right, glancing up at the skyraker above him. He blinked twice at a good spot even as he walked his fire to the tank on the left, shredding the shamblers in front of the tanks and in between the tanks.

--shit shit shit shit--

"Armor defeating rockets, spooky FOOF core," Bit.nek said. "Ghost toasty round."

--ok ok ok ok we gonna die--

"MY ENEMY!"

He panned back, turning far enough to rake the other street.

The sprinting shamblers, running at him with arms outstreched, were less than twenty meters from him when he slow walked the M318 across the street and back again.

Eight seconds and nothing was left for five blocks but shredded meat.

"WHO'S MY ENEMY?"

A tank round hit his battlescreen, rocking him to the side.

His brainbox tossed it up.

255.5mm high explosive, rated low explosive by CONFED standards.

Bit.nek's lip curled in a sneer.

"I'M GLAD YOU ASKED!"

It wouldn't penetrate his armor if he was running without his shower curtain.

"UP HIGH!" Bit.nek called out, switching his grav-anchor's position, cutting the grav stabilizing to his boots, and letting off the grip. The asphalt crunched under his feet as he flexed his knees and hocks.

--SHIT--

Bit.nek hurtled through the air as he leaped through the air. He rolled in mid-air, letting his brainbox get a good panoramic view. His left foot hit first, then his right, then his left hand. He held the M318 by one hand, letting the smart-harness hold the gun in position as he racked the rate of fire down to 120 rounds a minute.

"ANY MOTHERFUCKER STANDIN IN MY PATH!"

"Watch and learn, buddy," Bit.nek said. He ramped up the rate of fire to three hundred a minute.

Hanging from the wide strip of ferrocrete on the side the building he aimed the M318.

"Track."

At the inside of the track. Where it met the street, the inside was visible as the top where the roadwheels and sprockets.

The topside battlescreen snarled and held.

For one point two seconds.

Three rounds.

The HEDP went off and sparks shot up from the emitters.

Bit.nek raked the top of the tread.

It snapped as the API blew through it and the HEDP's penetrator jet shot clear through the endosteel track and exploded in the tarmac when jet's heat transfer caused the ferrocrete asphalt to superheat.

"Engine intake," he said.

He could see the air being sucked into the tank, on the side of the crab-body. He knew there was another one on the other side, hidden by the curve of the crab-body.

The API punched through, the HEDP made the vent cover blow off. The next four rounds turned the mechanisms inside into shrapnel and scrap metal.

He fired a rocket into it and jumped, turning a lazy somersault in mid-air, popping three masking grenades from the 40mm onto the top of the remaining battlescreen. The back deck of the crab body blew off in a shower of armor shrapnel and there was the eyewatering flash of a fusion reactor exposed to air for a second before the mag-fields collapsed and the reactor stopped fusing hydrogen.

The tank's battlescreens went dead and it ground to a halt, the external weapons falling silent.

The left hand tank's gun roared and ferrocrete exploded from where Bit.nek had been less than two seconds before. The 255.5mm HE round blew out ferrocrete and macroplas for five meters to either side.

The skyraker gave a huge groaning shudder and macroplas fell from around the crater, falling to the street to bounce then shatter into chunks.

Bit.nek landed perfectly, left foot high, left hand planted, right foot low, right hand controlling the gun, grav anchor into the wall at his hip for four points of contact with the wall.

"I'M BACK I'M BACK AND I GOT A BIGGER GAT!"

Bit.nek fired the M318 into the battlescreen of the remaining tank. It flickered and snarled.

"AND I'M POSITIVELY HITTIN' THAT DOME!"

The battlescreen failed and Bit.nek raked a burst across the top of the tank.

"Tanks without infantry are sitting ducks," he told 299.

--how how how--

"I know what I'm doing, just like you, buddy," Bit.nek said.

" YOU MIGHT WANT MINE BUT YOU CAN'T GET MINE!"

Shamblers were running onto the street, flooding in from sidestreets.

The macroplas window next to him shattered and a half-dozen runners flew out.

"Up up up," Bit.nek said, squatting then launching himself up ten meters before reestablishing the four points of contact.

Without a battlescreen the runners fell a hundred feet and slammed onto the tank's turret. The tank started moving forward, the crab legs scrambling even as the tracks clattered.

"Track," Bit.nek said.

This time one of the roadwheels and the idler gear blew off.

"Intakes," he aimed at the back of the side of the crab body.

The crab was trying to turn, but without the track it took longer.

Bit.nek raked the vent as the crab suddenly stood up higher on the legs and began turning.

"Well, new trick," he said.

--oh no--

"WORD TO THE COPS, I CAN'T BE STOPPED!"

Bit.nek just grinned, adjusting his fire to rake the top of the tank crab body. He fired two rockets, both of them slamming into the top. Neither completely penetrated, but his brain box ran the analysis of the hits and determined that if they didn't have an anti-spalling liner their day had just gotten worse.

He kicked off again, jumping to the opposite side even as the main gun fire, missing where he had been and shattering a macroplas window. The round disappeared into the building, went up through two floors at an angle before a pillar gave it enough mass for the round to go off.

"WORD TO MY ENEMIES, I DON'T DROP PROPS!"

He dropped 40mm maskers behind him as he rolled, the grenades slapping against the top of the crab body and erupting into prism mist, thermal masking smoke, and IR strobes. He landed close to two hundred feet up, the crab facing the wrong way, hitting his four points of contact and leveling the M318.

"WORD TO THE OVERSEER, I DON'T PICK CROPS!"

He could see the air intake and exhaust at the back.

He raked the back end with the 20mm rounds, the battlescreen that had almost spun up during his jump collapsing in a shower of sparks on the second round. The 20mm rounds kept hammering the reinforced grate, sparks and shrapnel shooting from the metal.

"YOU CAN RUN UP WITH YOUR PROD!"

He raked the top, just for fun.

"YOU'LL JUST RUN UP AND GET POPPED!"

His rocket launcher gave the double-chirp of being reloaded as he raked another burst across the top of the crab, then began slamming shots against the armored knee of the forward crab leg.

"WORD TO THE 'TREKNA, YOU ABOUT TO FALL!"

Bit.nek shifted fire when three seconds didn't do anything but ding and dent the battlesteel armor shroud around the knee, raking it across the crab-claw in the front that was busy trying to push away the shamblers that were rushing toward the tank.

"YOU CAN KILL A COUPLE TELKAN!"

The tank managed to crab-walk around, trying to bring the gun to bear, but just brought the undamaged intakes into Bit.nek's fire.

He raked the intake grate and it exploded outward in a little over a second.

"BUT YOU'LL NEVER GET US ALL!"

Bit.nek fired a rocket, it streaked down, whipped into the twisted wreckage of the intake, and exploded.

The hatch blew off, vomiting up fire and smoke. Bit.nek relaxed his grasp on the firing grip and rocked side to side, waving the heated barrel around to help cool it.

The screens went dead and the shamblers swarmed it.

Bit.nek hung on the side of the building.

"PFC Bit.nek, Kilo Nine Nine Two, enemy tank tango down. Continuing mission," he said into the dead air.

He scrambled up the building, then jumped across the street toward the next waypoint.

Six jumps and he'd be back.

-----

The short range radio went live as he moved from the one-fifty-third floor to the next.

"...just jumped off the back with the 20mm autocannon," PFC Julneerta was saying.

"And you let him?" 2LT Ilvarwazz was asking.

"How was I supposed to stop him?" the PFC asked.

Bit.nek paused, looking up.

The stars were hidden by the clouds, and there was still streaks coming down from the sky, blowing holes in the clouds that were quickly refilled. None of the streaks were touching ground.

Debris from destroyed ships burning up on reentry.

"Well, great. He's dead," SSG J'Wremt grumbled. "Now what do we do?"

Bit.nek started climbing again, listening to them complain. Twice the barrel of the Madame Three-Eighteen clonked against the back of his helmet.

--how we live-- 299 asked.

"Tanks unsupported by infantry. Better weaponry," Bit.nek said as he crossed the 200th story. "Lots of experience fighting armored vehicles."

--not now capabilities-- 299 said.

"A tank is a tank. It has to breathe, you can blow out the wheels or tracks, and the mantlet is a weak point in every tank," he said.

--was scared-- 299 said. --i'm sorry was scared--

"It's OK," Bit.nek reassured the little green battle buddy. "It's OK to be scared in combat. You didn't know the tank's capabilities, you didn't know my capabilities. It's one thing to read about Madame Three-Eighteen, to fire it at the range and in simulation, it's another to see someone who knows how to use it in action."

--try not to be scared next time-- 299 promised.

"It's OK if you are. Just stick with me, kid, and we'll get through this," Bit.nek said.

He flexed his knees and hocks, letting both arms extend out, his hands against the building.

He jumped up over the edge and landed smoothly on the roof.

There were nearly a hundred troops on the roof. Most of them sitting around. Some had their helmets open. Some were sleeping.

The lifter with the drop pod was by the south side, resting on the roof.

"Miss me?" Bit.nek asked, heading toward the drop pod.

Everyone just stared at him.

He slapped his hand on the side of the pod and activated his induction link.

ACCESS DENIED flashed.

"299, crack this baby open," Bit.nek said. He turned and looked off into the distance.

--not gonna get in trouble-- 299 asked.

"No. And we need to hurry," Bit.nek said.

--why why why-- 299 asked.

The sat-com uplink field had pinpoint flickering in it.

"We've gotta put a stop to Fionna."