"Cease fire."

Despite the command there was still a few isolated gunshots as Marines pulled the trigger on an enemy that was alive or twitching too much. It quickly petered out and heavy silence descended on the battlefield, broken only by the crackling of flames and the groaning of stressed metal settling.

The entire area was coated with bio-slurry from Dwellerspawn that had been torn apart with focused fury, littered with scraps of larger Dwellerspawn and the mechanical remnants of Type-IV PAWM. The sun had set, but the stars and two moons were covered by thick clouds that radiation induced lightning snarled through.

"All officers, do headcount," Vuxten ordered, sagging slightly inside his armor. Twice the Dwellerspawn had rippled in reinforcements, leaving his troops facing a new wave of enemies before they could cool down and deslush.

He looked over at the sole human in the ranks.

SFC Casey.

The human's armor still had red and purple arcs of electricity crackling up and down the chassis, the fists were still wreathed with a flowing nimbus of red and purple swirling energy.

It gave the impression of slow heavy breathing, almost malevolent.

Vuxten had watched the Terran Descent Human fight, and had to admit he'd been impressed. Casey moved with precision and grace, never where the enemy directed their fire but always where his own fire or efforts would do the most good. Not only protecting himself and carrying out his offensive plans, but supporting the Telkan Marines he was fighting beside.

The reports started coming in. He had wounded, but not a single Killed in Action.

Yet.

Out of the First Telkan Marine Division there had been nearly 250 Wounded in Action. A full third of them had suffered limb amputations when Dwellerspawn had grabbed opposing limbs and applied pressure and force in the right angles and directions, overloading the armor's protective measures on the joints and ripping away the limb. The rest were concussions, broken ribs with a collapsed lung, and in two cases heat stroke when their internal heat rose too fast and too high.

250 out of 17,500.

While two thirds of the First Telkan Marines were support and logistics, everyone had been fighting for the last seventy-two hours. The Telkan Marines trained to sleep on the move, live off of nutripaste for days at a time, and above all, to stay in their armor for up to two weeks straight.

The Second Battle for Telkan had shown how necessary that could be.

Fast grav-lifters were pulling in, stopping and settling down.

Vuxten limped over to the nearest one, watching until all his troops had mounted the vehicles except for Casey.

Once everyone flashed loaded, he grabbed the bar and pulled himself up into the back of the loader.

--knee torqued-- 471 one said. --gonna need docs look at--

"Yeah. It's not getting better," Vuxten said. He sat down on the bench seat and sighed as it took all the weight. He knew, consciously and intellectually, that the suit carried its own weight as long as it had power, but after a six hour fight, his brain and body insisted it was carrying the weight.

"Lieutenant Vuxten, sir," one of NCO's said.

"Vuxten here, go ahead, Sergeant," Vuxten said. He thought about tabbing up a piece of stimgum and changed his mind.

"One of my men is getting a stray RF signal they forwarded to me. He has to stand there with one arm up in the air and the other held straight out. There's a civilian shelter cluster screaming for help. Apparently their local defense forces are Lanaktallan and have been fighting for nearly five days. They're almost all dead," the NCO said.

"How far away from you?" Vuxten asked.

"If we let the logistics vehicles keep up, nine hours," the NCO said. "I'm part of 4th Striker Brigade, I'm a communications specialist."

"If we don't slow down for the logistics? If we just send in the Marines?" Vuxten asked.

"Strikers of 4th Striker Brigade and their dismount troops can be there in forty-two minutes, their heat and slush should be nominal by the time they get there," the NCO said.

Vuxten sighed, tipping his head forward slightly so he could rub between his eyes with the piece of velcro stuck to the inside of this helmet. He consulted his map, looking at all the icons.

"Order 4th Strikers in. Tell them to pack the troops bay. Have 145th Engineers rendezvous at flank speed, the shelter will need reinforced. Tell 115 Infantry Battalion to mount the fast attack lifters and get in there," Vuxten ordered.

"I'm only a Sergeant, sir," the NCO protested.

Vuxten sighed. "All right. I'll handle it. Thanks for passing the message, Sergeant."

"My pleasure, sir," the NCO said and winked out.

Vuxten sighed, tabbed up the various officers in charge of those units, and gave out orders. He finished up by telling 112 Field Artillery to get a close by unit to get a drone up and see if they could provide artillery support for the Lanaktallan troops.

Finally it was done and Vuxten looked around.

Everyone in the grav-flitter was asleep. A quick check showed most of HHC Brigade was asleep, except for the flitter drivers and the troops manning the ring mounted light machineguns.

And Casey, of course, who was 'jogging' along next to the flitter as if it was only idling along not moving at close to a hundred and ten kph. Every impact of his armored feet against the ground showered out purple and red sparks and the lightning snarled around his lower legs.

Vuxten found himself mesmerized by the visuals in the dark.

Foot go up. Lightning stretching between the ground and the bottom of the foot. Lightning around the lower leg thickening. Foot slam down, sparks shower out from under the sole, lightning snarls down the legs. Repeat.

Like a metronome.

Vuxten's brain shifted into neutral as he watched the big Terran run, his subconscious processing the last three, almost four days of combat, as his conscious brain went numb watching the Terran run. Part of him was aware of the flashes of the combat, particularly bad or stressful parts of the entire drop, but he just kept watching Casey run.

Thud thud thud thud thud thud

He blinked, slow, still watching the human's feet. There was a slight twinge of pain as his armor injected nanites into his leg. He could feel them moving down his leg to his knee, and his imagination filled in the idea of thousands of tiny ants moving down there to start rebuilding the damaged cartilage.

thud thud thud thud thud

471 kept an eye on Vuxten's biometrics, watching his breathing and heartbeat, watching his brain waves. Vuxten wasn't exactly awake, but wasn't exactly asleep, more in fugue state. 471 triggered the clamshell and climbed out, moving to the rocket launcher. Two of the gears weren't meshing properly and diagnostics kept reporting everything all right. He undid the gasket seal and flashed his headlamp inside.

One look told 471 that the seal had failed. There was Dwellerspawn acid damage to the gears. Sighing, he began working, listening to old classical music, the Triumph of Steel, as he worked.

The flitters kept moving through the darkness, dawn almost five hours away, heading toward the next emergency, toward the next Dwellerspawn and Atrekna landing zone.

Part of Vuxten kept track of the radio chatter. It was mid-band VHF commo, run point to point, usually by vehicles, but it pulled the entire division into one radio net and allowed it to work as a coherent whole.

His men were engaged with the enemy in twelve different locations, but no panic, no worry. Just the job of killing the Dwellerspawn and backtracking to the spawning point. Most of First Telkan consisted of veterans of the Second Battle for Telkan, all of them experienced against Dwellerspawn.

471 replaced the gears and the gasket, then ran the rocket launcher's aiming system through a function check, recalibrated it, and tagged it as field repaired.

for the want of a gasket a gear was lost, he thought to himself as he moved to the grenade launcher.

Since the correction of the grenade propellant the launcher was much more reliable, but 471 still didn't trust it. It had a smug feeling to him, like it was projecting innocence with a piece of stolen beef jerky hidden behind its back.

He ran the cleaning routines and double-checked. It was in good condition, but he still didn't trust it.

One of the seals had a microleak that had tiny flecks of whitish opaque gelled hydraulic fluid around it, he pulled the entire seal, fixed the leak in the conduit, put a new seal in place.

Vuxten had slipped into dreaming, his eyes still open. His biological one heavy and almost closed, the cybernetic one wide open and watching Casey run.

thump thump thump thump

He was playing with podlings in the park, stormclouds on the horizon, but nothing to worry about. Synthal'la and Ilmata'at were cuddled up next to him, his wife in his arms even as he played with the podlings, actions that only worked in a dream.

thump thump thump thump

471 climbed into the armored clamshell and closed it, the holodisplays coming to life. He checked the entire system, triggering a report from the medical nanites. He wasn't a medical mantid, no russet streaks or spots on his green carapace, but he knew engineering and a knee was all engineering.

Heavy scar tissue on one of the tendons and where it merged with the hock muscle. Vuxten's muscles were typical of every mammal race but Terrans, where the muscle could flex in more than one direction. Terrans were uni-flex, which meant they had more muscles than other mammals in the galaxy, but were horrifically strong, but that also meant the bone structure had to be stronger. Vuxten's knee was mostly cartilage and fluid bladders, and it had been damaged before 471 had ever met him.

He could see the structural issue and twiddled with the idea of having the medical nanites fix it, then discarded the idea of doing it in the field and simply appended his recommendations to the field medical file for the next time Vuxten saw a russet mantid.

Vuxten could feel his knee was warm and tingly, a faint far away pins and needles prickling somewhere underneath, but it just translated to a podling gnawing on his pants with big wide eyes as it chewed its gums and hugged his leg.

His cyber-eye burned a cold green as it watched Casey.

thump thump thump thump

Casey suddenly moved, pivoting in place, the heavy cannon over his right shoulder shifting aiming point, the thick stubber in his hand raising, even as the missile launcher covers deployed.

Vuxten snapped awake, tightening his grip on his SMG as he sent the command for the stubber to go from safe to semi through his smartlink.

Before anyone else could react the big gun over Casey's shoulder went off.

The entire night lit up. The shockwave was visible, a cone of rippled air with a core of fire, and the vehicles near him rocked on their grav-lifters from the sheer strength of the sonic boom. The Terran was on the move, turning and jumping over a lifter, clearing it by at least ten meters, landing and running not jogging away from the grav-flitters.

"CONTACT! ENEMY CONTACT UP HIGH, TWO-O-CLOCK!" Casey roared out.

Vuxten felt that weird rippling pressure, like he was wrapped in tentacles that squeezed and loosened from the top of his head to his feet in one weird fluttering pattern.

"INCOMING PHASE SHIFT!" Vuxten called out, chinning up a piece of stimgum even as he looked up.

Casey fired again, the air displacement rocking the vehicles near him.

Vuxten saw a globe of purple energy appear in the sky, blocking out the stars, as a burning white line connected the globe to where the end of Casey's gun had been.

Everything around shimmered like heat distortion had suddenly blossomed.

The grav-lifters slammed onto the ground even as the green mantid techs maxed out the temporal stabilizers.

The world was suddenly filled with monsters. Most of them were shaking, flinging parasites and smaller creatures off of them, webbing and lumpy extruded chitin off of them, thick gel-like liquid and clotted grease off their shells and hides. They all began to roar, pawing at the air with tentacles, antenna, massive clawed hands, rearing up.

Vuxten fired a burst of heavy shells, blowing open the side of a massive caterpillar that was larger than the heavy flitters. Divots blew out of the thick rubbery hide as Vuxten ran the burst down the side. The caterpillar gave a bellowing cry as Vuxten's antimatter rounds exploded and drove spikes of radiation and kinetic shockwaves into the already dying flesh.

The gunners of the ring mounts were engaging the creatures around them, the heavy 12.7mm guns hammering at the appearing Dwellerspawn. Sometimes the Dwellerspawn appeared as the gunners were shooting at one further away, meaning the bullets exploded inside the massive creature.

GRAV GRAV GRAV appeared on Vuxten's visor. He glanced up and saw that the purple globe was still in the air.

PHASIC PHASIC PHASIC streamed up right afterwards.

Vuxten saw eight missiles streak up toward the globe, even as Casey fired twice in rapid succession, still on the move.

The purple lightning bolt was wider than a tank as it lashed down at Casey, who was over two hundred meters from the nearest grav-flitter and still on the move. It him square and part of Vuxten expected to see the human vanish as the ground exploded into the air in a torus around Casey.

Casey came out the other side at a run, the lightning thick on his armor, dust and debris streaming off of him like water as he fired his stubber point blank into a large caterpillar and plunged into the steaming wound, coming out the other side less than a second later, the chainsword held in one fist spewing ocher ichor from its teeth.

The missiles flew up, missing the globe by twenty meters on each side, and Vuxten realized that they were perfectly aligned at the four major and secondary compass points. Two way off to the side heeled over and kicked in sprint drives, shooting one underneath one over the bubble, right as the others reached midpoint of the bubble.

GRAV GRAV GRAV

PHASIC PHASIC PHASIC

Both streamed up.

Vuxten smashed a flatworm between the rough unfinished eyes as it reared up to lunge into the grav-flitter, sending it spasming away as its rudimentary brain was crushed.

The missiles went off.

The sky screamed as the clouds sucked down into the globe.

Vuxten had seen a thing called a tornado on another world, and the way the clouds sucked into the globe reminded him of how the clouds had begun to churn and twist into a funnel.

Dirt and debris did the same from the ground, both funnels connecting on the globe.

The bright purplish white-flash of a phasic munition flashed across the sky, the blast turned into a ten meter thick halo that flashed out for nearly two miles before fading.

A swarm of beetles tried to climb into the flitter but the Marine on Vuxten's right washed his flamecaster over them, making them pop as their internals superheated despite their armor holding for a second.

Vuxten saw what looked like a cluster of figures in the sky. He went to zoom in, to get a better look.

Casey's heavy gun fired three times in rapid succession. All three explosions merging into one long one, the shockwave visible to the naked air in the air.

Vuxten got a view, a dozen purplish beings in iridescent robes, each standing on wavering disc of purple, tentacles covering the lower third of their heads. Long arms and long fingers. A high conical head, two white eyes.

They suddenly shredded. Like a snowman hit by hot water from a showerhead. They just tattered and came apart.

The next wave was partially through, almost brought forward from millions of years ago.

They suddenly exploded as the way through collapsed on them, squeezing them between the temporal tides millions of years apart.

Vuxten couldn't pay attention. A massive insect creature reared up, grabbed the edge of the grav-flitter, and flipped it over. Most of the Telkan Marines went flying, but Vuxten's knee buckled and he didn't manage to leap free, the fast grav-flitter slamming down on him, pinning him to the ground.

The insect reared back, the ends of its whip-like arms glowing purple as it prepared to strike with all six. It lashed out, one ripping away his antenna, two cracking on his chest, one slapping his faceplate, the other two hitting his shoulders. None of them penetrated, but the slap to the faceplate disoriented him a minute as the faceplate hit him in the face.

Before it could move and cutting bar erupted from the middle of the bottom of its thorax, spewing ichor and chunks of chitin and internal structures. The cutting bar ripped out the side and the creature collapsed.

PFC Durtelt grabbed the flitter with one hand and flipped it off Vuxten.

"I got you, sir," the PFC said, leaning down and heaving Vuxten to his feet.

Vuxten went back to back with the other Marine, seeing that the rest of his men were doing the same. Together they fought to keep their arc clear, keep the Dwellerspawn back. They connected with another pair, shifting so they had a man facing each of four directions, and kept shuffle-stepping through the gore and corpses, linking up with more and more.

After what seemed forever, but Vuxten's chronometer insisted was only a few minutes, the firing petered out again.

"Cease fire," Vuxten ordered.

Again, a few Marines pulled the trigger on still living or overly twitching Dwellerspawn.

Casey's heavy gun went off once, then silence descended.

"Remount the vehicles," Vuxten ordered. He moved over to the one he had been riding in. It was on the side, the ringmount gun missing. He checked and saw the Private that had been running the gun had it in his hands.

His back hurt as he climbed in and sat down on the bench seat, sighing as he took his weight off his knee. He could feel blood running down his neck and knew the scar around his ear had opened up again.

He checked the commo. It had been a massive respawn, but for the most part it was almost handled. He could see 4th Infantry Regiment was having a slight problem, but 1-2 Striker Battalion was coming in hot to provide close air support.

The 'thud thud thud' alerted him that Casey had rejoined the convoy. While he was handing out orders, he looked over Casey's armor.

Vuxten couldn't see a single scratch, not even the paint was marred, the armor gleaming as he ran. The lightning was as thick as ever and Vuxten could vaguely remember seeing that the Terran's cutting bar had been entirely wreathed in that rippling and snarling phasic lightning.

Vuxten sighed and blinked heavily. His joints all ached, his muscles hurt, and he knew he was reaching the end of his stamina.

"All units, all units," Vuxten said, tabbing up the Commander's Channel. "All CO's, find a spot to dig in like we're Army. Set guard shifts, do field maintenance and medical checks, make sure everyone gets at least ten hours of sleep, run guard shifts and quick response force."

He waited for each unit to check in. Some were slower than others, other icons blinked on almost as if the officer in charge was startled that it was up to them.

Vuxten checked the map of the whole super-continent. It largely looked as if the battle had turned against the Atrekna.

He checked his orders again. It was just a fragment from Fleet, but it had repeated multiple times.

"...LINK WITH THIRD ARMOR AND/OR EIGHTH INFANTRY..."

They only had three hundred miles to go, but his men were exhausted, the slush was thick and the heat was high.

Vuxten was confident that Trucker could handle the enemy long enough for First Telkan to regroup.

---------------

Trucker snarled, slamming his armored glove against the side of his quad-barrel, the jammed shell casing popping out and flying into the dusty darkness.

His men were starting to drop in place. Tanks, knocked out and recrewed by the dead, were slowly clattering to a stop and going still.

He was ninety-three hours into the fight and his men had reached the limit of even necromancy enhanced endurance.

He blinked several times, wiping his face with one tattered and torn sleeve, and looked at the night.

He only needed one more hour. Maybe less.

He could feel the vile intellect in front of him. It tasted almost like what had been under the mountain, tasted almost like the death scream that had washed over the whole planet when the volcano had erupted.

But the Dwellerspawn and PAWM were putting up a fight, and less and less of his men were able to get back up, able to keep fighting.

He saw Panama Pam go dark and slowly coast to a stop, black smoke oozing from the back deck and out the hole in the side. Pretty Paulie gave a cough of thick black smoke and clattered to a stop, two of its tracks missing. The TC was slumped over his gun.

A half dozen of the infantry on the back of Punch Out slumped down, two of them falling from the tank.

The Black Cauldron was reaching its limit.

There. They're there. Kill them and you can rest, he sent across the datalink.

Cry Little Sister was vibrating, grinding, beneath him.

She threw a track, but his driver kept it steady.

"Stay on target, Red Five, stay on target," he whispered to himself.

The sole living member of V Corps urged the rest of the Corps toward the goal.

Gimme just one more hour, men. Just one more, he silently urged.

--------------

The Atrekna were trapped. Most of them had been wiped out. The battle in the stellar system had been a disaster. They were down to less than a Conclave, almost down to a Quorum.

And a huge mass of infantry and tanks were moving toward them.

They would not admit to one another, maybe not even admit to themselves, but what was coming had reached deep inside of them and triggered something primal.

Fear.

Those gnashing jaws, those powerful jaws, constantly open and closing on empty air, black blood running over the teeth and lower lip to ooze down the chin. The way some would pause for a moment to shove gobbets of slavespawn into those endlessly chewing maws.

The enemy was starting to fall down, whatever strange power animating them leaving the bodies suddenly. The tanks, which seemed to be able to be killed over and over again, finally grinding to a halt.

But that was cold comfort.

All of them could feel it. Cold hands pressing against their psychic shielding. Cold flesh pressed against the shielding as they pressed their faces against the phasic protections and gnawed at them with blackened teeth.

And the whispers.

The Atrekna were the masters of whispers. Had been for untold hundreds of millions, billions of years.

But these were different.

i can taste nipplegloss and blood