"In the Great Herd you are taught that there is nothing out there that can defeat you, the representative of the Great Herd. That behind you, beside you, is the uncountable weight of the Great Herd, with the neo-sapients marching lockstep with us to bring the galactic arm under our hand.

"The only training, the only experience the Great Herd had undergone, was that of victory, so they trained for nothing else.

"The Mad Lemurs of Terra taught their troops that even the weakest enemy can defeat those who are lazy, sloppy, inattentive. They trained to win. Even if they were defeated they believed that they could still not lose. That the enemy craves victory and will do whatever they can to attain it, that there will always be someone stronger, hungrier, or just plain meaner. They planned and trained for victory, a stalement, and even defeat.

"They were never beaten.

"The Great Herd was.

"Make your own conclusions." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

--------

Rounds whipped by, some shrieking, some whistling, some just with a whip-crack of supersonic ballistics. Plasma rounds howled, lasers cracked, masers thrummed, and explosions detonated on thick Confed armor or hit the ground to send up a shower of mud and debris.

SP4 Melinvae was tucked in tight behind Staff Sergeant R'Nert, the First Section Sergeant of Third Platoon, Alpha Company. She was scanning the battlefield, her helmet channels open. She made sure to keep the big Treana'ad between her and the enemy fire, letting his battlescreens and armor soak up the enemy fire.

"MEDIC!" rang over her headset. Her HUD pointed to where the eVI in the wounded troop's gear was pinging his IFF. She turned her head, tensing and slapping the Treana'ad's armored abdomen with one hand.

A Telkan infantryman was staggering, going down on his knees.

Melinvae saw her chance, rammed her psychic shielding and her port side battlescreen to the max as she lunged out from behind the Treana'ad Section Sergeant. The loading frame she was wearing hissed and thumped as she sprinted across the hundred yards.

Twice her battlescreen took a hit, once it almost knocked her down, the heavy round exploding, the battlescreen projector on her left shoulder howling. Training and experience helped her keep her feet even though she staggered.

She made it to the Telkan, who had picked up a severed arm and was looking at it with his helmet cocked. His armor had transmitted what was wrong and she had already gone through the treatment options as she ran.

Running the treatment checklist helped her ignore the screaming of the rounds whipping by her as she sprinted across a battlefield.

"Up, get up!" Melinvae yelled, grabbing the Telkan. Her loading frame whined as she pulled the 2.2 tons of armored Telkan infantryman to his feet, slapping one palm on his back and activating the pseudo-electromagnetic system to lock her open hand to his back plating.

"I found my arm," The Telkan mumbled absently.

"Hold onto it," Melinvae said, knowing she was shouting. She turned and started pulling the Telkan.

"Wait, my weapon," the Telkan said.

"Come back for it when you're arm's reattached," Melinvae said, dragging him along.

"Oh," the Telkan was definitely dazed, going into shock.

Her backpack eVI was talking to the Telkan's eVI, calming it down, ordering it to inject sedatives, blood coagulants into the Telkan.

"Boss," Canton, the eVI riding in Melinvae's ruck said.

"Go," Melinvae panted.

"Tore his arm clean off at the shoulder. Armor tourniquet is holding. He's got major blood loss, is edging around going into shock, but you're going to have to work on him," Canton said.

"Spore," Melinvae guessed, pulling the Telkan toward where her HUD told her the medical station was at.

"Spore," the eVI said. "Lodged in his shoulder socket."

"Dammit," Melinvae swore.

A 200mm round whipped by, the shockwave of its passage almost knocking her down and causing her starboard shield to flare. It hit a vehicle and exploded, a gout of fire reaching for the sky. The armored personnel carrier ignored the hit and kept rolling forward, the heavy warsteel plate sporting a crater with an osmium film inside from where the EFP had been wasted.

She was sixty meters from the aid station when her comlink buzzed and dreaded words floated up on her retinal link.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

She looked around quickly and spotted a crater in the ground. It wasn't much, but it was only two steps away. There was water in the bottom, an inch or so, but that couldn't be helped.

Melinvae swerved, heading for the crater.

"His blood pressure's spiking, the spore is releasing toxic enzymes," her eVI warned.

"Sixty seconds," Melinvae panted, dragging the Telkan over the lip of the crater. She threw him down and threw herself on top of him.

She knew it was coming, but the patient didn't have long.

Melinvae put her hand on the side of the patient's helmet, hitting the medical override, leaving his armor limp in a semi-powered lockout of any orders from the patient. She pulled her medikit around, pulling out a field expedient semi-sterile bubble bandage. She slapped it over the rough black patch where the armor's self-sealing systems had plated thick rubbery polymers over the wound.

The patient shuddered in the armor and she glanced in the upper left of his vision. He was unconscious, but his mouth was slightly open, he was panting, and his ears were rigid.

Her hand went unconsciously to her bag, pulling out a counter-injector. She pulled it out, pushed the needle through the inflated bubble, and stabbed it deep into the polymer until she felt the fibrous feel of tissue. She gave him a shot, tossed the needle aside, and dug out her scalpel.

The shot would give her extra time, force the spore to counter the enzymes in the shot that were designed to dissolve the spore lodged in the Telkan's flesh.

She pushed the scalpel and her hand through the bubble, feeling it sterilize her hand and the blade. A touch of the scalpel sliced open the gummy patch and she leaned over him.

The world went white but she ignored it, concentrating on her job.

The fist that slammed into her made her battlescreen projectors handling her rear shielding howl. Her gravity spike sparked and whined but held, keeping her pinned on top of the Telkan and the Telkan pinned to the ground.

Her radiation monitor screeched at her but she blocked it out as she steadied her hand and sliced into the wound beneath the polymer patch. The flesh was blackened, diseased looking, and parted in front of her blade like rotted lace.

The spore was the size of a marble, pale pink, veined, throbbing in malevolent purpose.

The backblast of the atomic airburst buffeted at her but she ignored it, forcing herself to concentrate on her patient, the scalpel, and the spore.

The 'dome' of interlocked hexagons that made up her battlescreen field shot sparks and arcs of electricity at it took the 20 psi overpressure hammer. It pressed down, the projectors mounted on her frame screaming.

Power drain warnings popped up in her HUD, but Melinvae didn't care.

She had a patient to focus on.

She pulled out a clamp and reached in, grabbing the spore. It was spiked, but the spikes were soft and thin. For a second there was resistance, the spore swelled, and she eased off her grip pressure on the spore even as she pulled it backwards.

The spikes released from the flesh and she had it. She pulled it outside the steri-bubble and crushed it with the clamp. Noxious purple goop sprayed out, sizzling on the sterifields, and she tapped the clamp twice on the black warsteel plate on her left forearm. The clamp heated up as it was sterilized, and she tucked it back into her medikit even as she sliced away the diseased looking flesh.

Cut until you see the clean red blood, she thought, trying to keep her center.

Medic pips were pinging up all over the battlefield. People caught out of position, those who had debris hit them, those who had been thrown by the blast.

She ignored them, slicing away the last of the diseased flesh. She pulled back the scalpel and, using the point on the opposite end of the handle, 'popped' the steri-bubble bandage. It adhered to the wound, pressure hard against the wound.

The patient gave a gasp, a combination of pain and relief.

She put her scalpel back, fingers moving automatically as she looked up at the aid station. It was still intact, still pulsing a medical beacon.

She got to one knee, grabbed the patient, slung him over one shoulder, her frame whining, and struggled to her feet. She lurched and staggered forward, one foot after another.

Three times she felt heavy impacts against her battlescreen, sending her stumbling forward, but she managed to get around the large boulder.

There was a half dozen russet mantids, a gold mantid, and nearly a dozen medics, all working on patients. She put the patient down on the stretcher as two others ran up.

"Ballistic trauma severed left arm, spore poisoning," Melinvae said, even though her eVI transmitted it to the two litter bearers who ran up. "I got the spore out."

The two litter bearers nodded, lifting up the stretcher.

An urgent icon pinged to life on her HUD and she heard the audible warning.

"MEDIC!" sounded out in her ear.

She turned, looking at the battlefield. Her brain automatically ran through her route even as she threw herself forward, the frame hissing and whining, her feet thudding into the dirt and mud.

--------

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC popped up in Undrat's vision.

538 cranked up the gravity spike even as Lamark locked down the EM systems.

Undrat kept up the firepower at the Dwellerspawn heavy assault biological unit. Madame Three-Eighteen was singing loud, the engravings burning a bright yellow, a gold color, as Undrat directed fire across the upper row of eyes of the massive pillbug-esque creature. The eyes exploded as bright whitish blue actinic flashes marked the antimatter mass-reactive cores going off.

The massive creature screamed as Undrat pulled his fire down and raked the second set of eyes.

A meme popped up. A three panel vertical meme. The top panel read "Congratulations on your new child, Animeland" with the banner of the Hamburger Kingdom painted on a little white ball. The middle panel was a ball with the banner of Animeland on it saying "What new child?" The last was an atomic explosion with the Hamburger Kingdom colors painted ball saying "The Little Boy."

Undrat didn't understand it, but it still got a chuckle. A very sensible chuckle for a very sensible meme.

There was a white flash from the sky and Undrat's armor automatically let him know that it was an airburst at 1500 meters above the valley in the 450 kiloton range.

He automatically lifted off the trigger.

The overpressure wave hit like a hammer. 20 psi of overpressure, enough to destroy reinforced ferrocrete buildings, slammed into his shields. His grav-spike roared like a beast in pain, he could see his zero-point reactors go to peak load, but he paid it no mind.

He was Tukna'rn.

He was a Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems Armed Services Heavy Weapons Operator.

He was First Cavalry Division.

538 and Lamark furiously worked, keeping the systems running. Lamark felt the impact, not as an overpressure, but as a fist of EMP slamming into him, only shunted away by the new systems. Radiation alarms screamed, but even the direct exposure didn't penetrate the radiation shielding.

The fireball expanded for just a smidge over three seconds, reaching out nearly four hundred meters from the explosion point. The superheated air drove a wall of compressed atmosphere in front of it, the thermal pulse outracing the shockwave.

In the four seconds it took for the blast wave to collapse back in on itself as the superheated air cooled and contracted, Undrat saw his heat and slush drop. The slush was faster, until the 'wind' changed direction. Despite the fact the air was hot, the fins were even hotter and the air being pulled over them helped with the heat dissapation.

538 reset the sensors and Undrat saw his vision clear.

The battlescreen was down. There were huge crystalline pillars atop the fortress fractured and splintered, throwing huge arcs of lightning into the top of the fortress, into the granite surrounding them. Any dirt or flora that had been on top of the fortress was gone, the blast scouring the earth down to the bedrock and flinging it out as well as pulling it up into the air.

"ALL UNITS! ADVANCE!" Undrat heard the order.

Undrat nodded. The back of the enemies defenses was broken.

It was time to crush the skull.

All according to doctrine.

Undrat's armor hummed as he slowly, purposefully began striding forward, out of the crater his grav-anchor had forged into the ground. His massive boots crunched against the shattered bedrock, his guns already searching for any surviving enemy.

Medic requests were popping up, but Undrat knew those were the job of the medics.

He was to ensure the enemy had better things to do than concentrate on the medics.

A giant centipede was shrieking, rearing up from where half its body had been crushed, lashing at itself and the creatures around it.

Undrat raked it with Madame Three-Eighteen as he stomped foward toward the enemy base.

Behind him the rest of Third Platoon stood up from where they were kneeling and began moving forward.

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

Nuk was inside the little shelter when the blast went off. The water felt like it clanged to Nuk's senses as the thermal pulse hit the water, raising its temperature, then the shockwave hit it like a hammer.

The shelter groaned. One of the struts snapped and a small split appeared but one of the Leebaw commandos slapped a patch on it before it could do much more than spray everyone. The nanoforges all snarled and sparked.

Nuk could feel it was more in anger than the radiation really effecting them.

The viewscreen went green as they reset and degaussed. When the reset the showed the valley was completely swept clean. The external point defense emplacements had broken away, crashed to the ground and shattered. The spawning field was empty.

Nuk's Alpha Team Leader looked at the screens and clicked happily. He held up the clacker, a simple little box with a lever on the side, and clicked it three times. The amber light flashed three times, and three pulses of electricity, generated by the lever action, raced down the wire.

At the bottom of the river, where Team Two of the Alpha Team had set it up, the Temporal Stabilization Unit got the signal. The little spark closed the circuit, the zero point reactors fired up, the computer systems went live, and activated the primary temporal core.

It roared to life, the cold water keeping the heat down as it revved up to max power.

The entire valley seemed to thrum, to become more real than real, as the temporal instabilities created by the Atrekna were wiped away and the timelines slammed together, collapsing, crushing Atrekna working on making the timeline where they emerged victorious and spreading them out as ultra-minute sub-particles spreading through the dimensional foam.

Nuk's Team Leader gave a grin and clicked with satisfaction.

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

"Do we need to get into the basement?" Elu asked.

Dambree held her arm straight out, her thumb extended up, and put it between her eye and the burning red mushroom cloud rising up in the mountains off in the distance.

Her thumb completely covered it.

"No, we should be good," Dambree said. "Let's go inside."

"I hate black rain," Elu grumped, reaching out and taking his sister's large hand.

"I know," Dambree said.

Together they walked back to the cabin.