Right Where I Am

Lt. Jay Fidale had decided that Taren V was the most blighted planet in the entire blighted district. He was part of an insertion team, which meant that they were put in a situation with very little backup and uneven odds. After landing behind enemy lines they had battled for almost a week (with no outside help) before reconnecting with League forces.

Now his weary team had been recruited to take the nearest beachhead, which didn't even have the sense, like most beaches, to be pretty or flat and in fact was a mountainous mess. He popped his head above his self-dug trench and let off another round of fire at the now retreating Anty troops. Over one eye his HUD flashed a yellow circle right in the middle of the beach they had been approaching for the better part of the day. Well, apparently the time had come for an advance. Fidale pulled himself over the top of the trench, his fellow infantry men moving as one. To one side, Major Kentar let loose with a battle yell and fired towards the enemy, unleashing a steady stream of depleted uranium shells from the hip. Fidale used his hand-held PlasPistale to fire off a few highly volatile plasma packets at the troops. Within a few minutes, his armored boot hit sand and he was on the beach, approaching the yellow dot on his HUD. He laid down a systematic field of fire driving the already running Anty troops even farther back. A few meters in front of him an Anty was hit directly in the chest by a plasma packet and flew backword, the sand spraying up in golden waves around him.

Fidale walked carefully forward, letting out short, controlled, bursts from his pistol to cover his advance. After stepping over the bodies of various sizzled Antys, he reached the top of the dune and found himself looking at the shore. For a second he thought that the damn planet had discovered a further way to piss him off by sending a convienient storm to create large waves that pounded the shore in rythem with his blasted headache. It was even worse, to his alarm the thing causing the waves was a hovercraft, disgorging Anty troops. Then Fidale heard a low pitched hum. The back of one of the hovercraft fell open and a skimmer, forward cannon blazing, flew out. It was soon followed by a seemingly endless supply of fellows. As Fidale turned to run he realized that he wanted to be anywhere but right where he was.

Skimmer-man Charely Proslin tightened his hands around the control bars of the Antarean Skimmer Bike. The brown and green combat paint job made it look fast and the low comforting hum of its hover-drive reassured its driver that it was fast. He quickly strafed the field of suddenly retreating League troops cutting down a line of retreating infantry. Whizzing forward Proslin kept one hand on the control bar, sending out a barrage of energy lances to stab into the scattering blue and white armored backs. With a whirr he swiveled around and rejoined the rest of the skimmers, pushing forward together in a delta formation that flew across the now secured beach, insuring a safe, if not clear, path for the medium and light infantry. The formation moved like a scourge through the no-man's land driving away the enemy with powerful and quick bursts of fire. Just over the wind Proslin heard the yell of his squad leader through the ear-comm unit.

"Advance forward, drive these rats from their tunnels. Take the battle back to their inner lines."

Leaning into the turn, Proslin swung towards the concentration of ULP troops when a powerful wall of air slowed his vehicle. From somewhere above him he heard the sound of latches unlocking. He looked up to see the dim outline of a dropship. Then, directly in his path, so close he had to activate reverse thrusters to stop in time, a set of three battlesuits landed in front of him, trailing the whips of clouds from above. With a series of load clicks and whirs the battlesuits stomped forward, placing their legs in a sumo wrestler-like position and uncoiling gatling guns from their shoulders, locking them into position. Before Proslin could draw another breath the two skimmers to either side were blown to pieces in a hail of bullets. One of the battlesuits repositioned its gun, pointing the huge muzzle directly at Proslin's face. He heard the feeder warming back up to unleash a hail of bullets directly at him and realized that he wanted to be anywhere but right where he was.

Sergeant JD Asure laughed with glee as he blew another Anty skimmer to bits. What had once been an organized formation pointed directly at the heart of ULP forces was now chaos and Sergeant Asure, more then any other Exo-Commander in his platoon, thrived in chaos. Nothing gave him more pleasure then watching the expositions of skimmers with punctured fuel tanks and seeing enemy infantry blown yards back by the force of his personal arsenal. He walked slowly through the field of battle, the suit swiveling on it's waist in imitation of his own movements as he strafed the sides of the battlefield, driving the Antys farther and farther back.

Asure turned to one side where the enemy seemed to be the weakest. Leading his fellows he saw the dim outline of a Antarean APC picking up the retreating troops. Relishing the chance to take down a vehicle, Asure went to switch to missiles only to discover that his suit no longer had an arm. He'd been concentrating so hard on the APC and hadn't noticed the Antarean Spider-Tank that skittered out of the mist to his right. He cried out as the tank's powerful ion-pulse disintegrated his suit's leg out from beneath it. As his suit fell backwards into the dirt he realized that he wanted to be anywhere but right where he was.

Group-Ascend Case Crawly grimly disintegrated another damn League battlesuit. He never was the type to take joy in harm, but he knew there was a necessity. One made even more important by the reality of the injured being loaded into the APC behind him. Crawly sat square in the middle of the turret mounted atop the four legs that propelled the spider tank. ULP troops popped out from the dirt and fired at him, their shells bouncing harmlessly off his armor. His slow firing speed wouldn't be enough to take out the little infantry men. With a deep breath Crawly relaxed his mind and let his thoughts flow into the Neural Jack behind him. With a thought, a dozen small spiders, each looking like miniature versions of his own tank, unlatched themselves from his vehicle's underside and legs, dropping to the ground and uncurling small legs and plasma guns. They scattered out before his tank like a blanket each firing far faster then his powerful ion-pulse cannon ever could, forcing any Leaguer that didn't want their head blown off to stay down. In other key points in the battlefield he saw his brother tanks doing the same, covering the now retreating APCs. The last few battlesuits were backing away in a slow clumsy manner quite unlike the fluid movement of his own tank.

Sharp pointed legs, painted blood-red, stabbed into cracked ground, taking back the land the Empire had lost to the League's battlesuits. Ground dominance was what the Spider-Tanks and their spider drones were build for, and dominate they did. Few ground troops could stand up to a Fist of Spiders with their drones deployed. The inside of his cockpit suddenly blinked red and a low pitched alarm klaxon went off. Crawley's sensors had detected incoming aerial fighters. The spider drones turned their little guns upward, acting as a point defense system for his tank. Their guns swiveled to take out incoming missiles but they couldn't protect themselves from the spattering of fire that was a Banshee aerial fighter picking them off. As the drones disappeared one by one in puffs of fire and smoke more Banshees began to target him with missiles. His computer confirmed the fifth lock when the last of his drones disappeared. When the computer proclaimed that it had detected missile fire Crawley realized that he wanted to be anywhere but right where he was.

Nothing like the smell of burning Antys in the morning, thought Lead Pilot Charley Westell, or at least there would be nothing like it if the smell were to actually filter through his Banshee Aero-Fighter's anti-septic cockpit. He came arround with his group to strafe the Anty Crab-Tanks a second time and was immensely satisfied too see another large bloom of flames sprout into the air. He felt the slightest, smallest, bit of sympathy for his poor targets, how could they possibly contend with the power and united might of his Banshee wing. Sending a signal through his comm., Westell told his wing mates to reform around him. The Antys were reforming, tanks re-positioning to get a bead on his flyers and infantry men assembling and equipping anti-air weaponry. His squadron of twelve fighters, now in a diamond formation, pulled up into the air, rapidly gaining altitude. With a half- twist that made the sun gleam off their silver wingtips, the Banshees turned over, one by one, to get the ground back into sight. Then, gunning their thrusters, they swooped down, low to the ground, unleashing one missile after another onto the Antareans below, the entire field lighting up with the explosions.

Then, suddenly, the wingman to Westell's south east turned into a fireball. Afraid that the Antys had actually organized enough to mount a real counter-attack he immediately pulled up and, hopefully, out of range. His instincts could not have steered him more wrong. All above him were dozens and dozens of small, quick, drones. Each one a black sphere of death with red-lit weaponry pointing out of various ends. Turning with his wingmen, he engaged the drones and with finely tuned bursts of gunfire began to pick them out of the sky. Beside him another Banshee exploded as a half-dozen drones concentrated their fire on its cockpit. He fired missiles, which crisscrossed in front of him, tracking two large clusters of drones. Each missile hit its target with an boom that took down or damaged other nearby drones. For a second Westell thought he might be turning the tide against the drones. Then red light flashed in front of his face and his right wing was cleanly cut off. As his Banshee fell he saw the wing above him, it's silver tip varnished with soot, and then the severed wing was overshadowed by the bulk of an Antarean drone controller. As the ground rushed up to meet him, Westell realized that he wanted to be anywhere but right where he was.

Tertiary Node H2506, also known as Mavis Tayler, followed her orders - terminate League air fighters - with extreme prejudice. She smiled fiercely as her drone-grouping, six medium sized aerial drones, swarmed a Banshee fighter and cut it into pieces with their precise and powerful focused plasma arrays. Yellow beams bunched into the grey silver planes vaporizing whole strips of metal and turning the graceful curved lines of the Banshees into a collection of jagged edges and sparking circuits. The drones swiveled in midair to keep a target lock on the Banshees as the enemy made a flyby. Tayler shifted slightly in the interface chair as a spark flew from the interface into her second spine. Her mind carefully manipulated the drones via neural impulses, each move she made was interpolated by the ship's AI and relayed through hyperspace at five times the speed of light. Her view of the battle field, piped directly through her brainstem and into her visual cortex. It was called a Total Sensory Interface (TSI) and was a mesh of visual data from the drone controller and sensory data from the drones, with an enormously speedy computer filling in the blanks. A tactical display hovered just above the battlefield and the status of her drones floated in the upper right corner of her vision. Her tactics training came back to her in a flash and her drones clustered around a Banshee, hitting it with laser and plasma fire from all directions and Tayler could hardly see the explosion under the cover of her drones.

Then a spark of bio-neural feedback arced from her interface to her second spine. One of the drones was damaged somehow and it's failed circuits were sending digital mishmash up her interface line, which turned into painful electric feedback. Squirming, she focused in on the center of the TSI where a drone was now falling to the ground in a shower of sparks. It hit the ground with a painful shock that distributed itself around her nervous system. Tayler shifted her point of view to see her attacker and saw the vast outline of a USN battleship, descending from space to just inside the atmosphere, where it's massive weapons array was wrecking havoc with Antarean forces. The descending ship was haloed by flame as it came closer and closer to the battle field. It's heavy gatling guns turned to her drones and began to swiss-cheese them one by one. The electric bio-feedback hit her spine with increasing frequency and power as her drones fell. She tried to disconnect, but it was too late, she recognized the situation all too well, soon the feedback would overload her second spine and unless she got immediate attention after that she'd likely end up brain-dead. She saw the guns on the USN ship begin to swivel towards her controller ship and then she blacked out. The last thing through her head before she lost consciousness was the realization that she wanted to be anywhere but right where she was.

Senator-General Jack Manchester was quite pleased. Of course if you listened to his detractors, Manchester, elected to a political position because of his military prowess and appointed to a military position because of his political prowess, spent quite too much time being pleased with himself. Especially considering how few of his recent military engagements had a "pleasing" outcome for the ULP. However this time he actually had reason to be happy, he was wining. There had been a short moment of worry when the Antareans had launched a number of drone controller ships that had been hiding underwater to cover their infantry’s retreat. They had begun to demolish his air support and he had to bring his ship out of orbit and into the atmosphere to save his squadrons, he had done so most effectively. The unfortunate side of that was, while they were technically able to enter atmospheres, USN space-based Battleships didn't really do so with any sort of skill. They flew into a planets atmosphere with the same way they did anything else, brute force. They shoved air out of their way in large waves and hit the atmosphere like a flaming belly diver. Unfortunately this meant that changes in the movement of the ship were coming so fast the inertial dampeners could barely compensate and Manchester was being rattled with such force (as was the rest of the crew) that he felt as if his teeth were going to fall out. He waved a hand elegantly, something difficult to do while the ship felt as if it was falling apart around you, and ordered them to keep the ship steady. As the atmosphere thickened around them and the ships speed decreased the ship's shaking slowly stopped. Soon the battleship was casting its enormous shadow over the battlefield, League soldiers, rallied by the sight, yelled battle-cries. The Antareans looked up with fear in their eyes instead and started running towards shelter and heavy armor.

The turrets on the underside and wingtips of Manchester's ship swiveled to track the fleeing Antareans. The crew cheered as one Antarean vehicle after another went up in flames. Command had wanted him to split his troops, to send almost half his contingent to the Fenril system, they had a contingent there that was worried about possible Antarean attack. Manchester was sure that he was truly needed here, and it was looking as if he was right. The planet would soon be theirs. Though he had come from a long line of gentlemen officers, Manchester’s emotional state was approaching something akin to glee as he watched his mighty vessel’s guns cut down Antarean resistance, of all shapes and sizes, like so much wheat. His comm. Officer, a pretty young thing that he had handpicked, turned towards him, catching his eye. Glancing down at his arm display he saw that he was being hailed by the Fleet Admiral in charge of this and the surrounding sectors. Manchester realized that the Admiral must had heard of how well the fight was going on this planet and was calling to congratulate him, he activated the comm., bringing the scowling face of the Admiral on the holo-screen. Mancherster began to say how well everything was going when the Admiral interrupted him.

“Manchester!” he yelled, “What in the name of all that is holy is your ship doing in the Taren system?!” Manchester was about to explain but the Admiral curtly interrupted him again. “Do you realize that the Fenril system is about to be overrun?” He snidely looked down from the screen at Manchester. “Do you know why? I’ll tell you why! Because the contingent of troops that you were supposed to send there never went, that’s why!” The Admiral paused to let it sink in. “I’ll have your stars for this,” he yelled at Manchester, the spittle doting the image. Then he cut the communication off.

Senator-General Jack Manchester, soon to be Senator Jack Manchester, and doubtless soon after that simply Jack Manchester, slid down into his chair. Now oblivious of the explosions and victory outside he realized that he wanted to be anywhere but right where he was.

The most minimal possible force was attacking the Fenril system, a key system in the sector. In a move of what must have been desperation the ULP leaders had ordered protecting fleets from other systems to send the bulk of their forces to engage the Fenril attack force. The attack on Fenril would fail, 87.6329% of the attack force would be destroyed. All was going as planed. If Fay, as in FAI, as in Fleet Artificial Intelligence, had hands, it would have rubbed them together. However, FAI did not have hands, nor any limbs at all, in the conventional sense. If you asked the Antarean techs who were responsible for the security and upkeep of FAI, which you weren’t allowed to do, they would have claimed that it had limbs in a far more… metaphorical sense. Specifically, tendrils, huge long electronic tendrils that stretched wherever any Antarean vehicle larger then a fighter could be found. FAI itself would have had a simpler response (though you would not be allowed to ask it either): I fight, therefore I am.

FAI had been keeping a very close eye (more like a large bank of sensors, really) on Sector U0547, which contained Fenril, Taren, and a number of other systems. FAI had been fed the dossiers of all the commanders the ULP had sent there and FAI had manipulated the events, and the commanders, exactly to its liking. If FAI had emotions, it would be taking joy in that work at this very moment. Fenril was indeed a key system, but FAI looked at that key in a far different way then the human commanders of the ULP did. If FAI had been human it would have been called a ‘special kind of insight,’ since it was not, it was simply called ‘good programming.’ Fenril was key in that it had a great deal of resources and ship-creation facilities, it was also key in that it was in the center. The ULP Admiral in charge of the sector played a great deal of chess, the center was valuable to him, to him it was most valuable. FAI, in its early years, had played a great deal of chess and a great deal of Go, among other things. FAI realized something that the ULP Admiral was soon to learn. The sides and corners can be just as important, if not more, then the center. If FAI had been built to empathize it might have felt bad that the Admiral was going to learn his lessen in such a harsh manner… then again, it might not have. FAI sent orders out to the 10th and 18th Fists to begin their attack on the now easy targets on the rim of the sector. There was a 98.9996% probability that Antarean forces would take the entire rim of the sector, a 94.8749% probability that enough Antarean vessels would remain to take the set of systems farther in and close a tight circle around the (now) ULP controlled core of the sector. There was a 99.9999% chance that after that, the Antareans would have the entire sector within two weeks. FAI calculated that after the battle for the sector was over there was a 11.1547% chance that there would be enough scrap metal left from the ULP fleet to create even a single battleship. If FAI had a face it would have smiled. In a week the United League of Planets would be collectively wishing they were anywhere but right where they were.

Aram Zucker-Scharff - Fiction and Description. Category:Universe Category:Fiction