Ant Tensei Redux Prologue Terra Arc in segmented format for easier reading and viewer enjoyability.

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Terra Arc, Part 5 - The Final Battle

As my fire team began to make it down, I knew full well we had to move quickly. The alien’s lasers could still very well target us. No sooner had just a mere fifteen of the fifty men on board my ship made it down had the ship erupted into flames, laser bolts in the dozens wrecked havoc upon the ship as it veered off, the screams of burning souls silenced as a crash sounded out behind a laser cannon mound.

There was no time to wait for other ships to land, I went on the move. The mission for these first hell droppers would be to eliminate as many laser turrets as possible. If they were able, disabling two or three of the main laser cannons would provide a great boon, but the numerous laser turrets were priority.

Thanks to the sacrifice of one of our best pilots we had managed to discover how to disable the turrets. He had crash landed purposefully onto the surface of the ship after a wing had been shot off and using a pack of explosives he had stolen, discovered a weak point on the laser turrets. Unfortunately, his discovery led to him being targeted by the other dozen turrets surrounding his position, leading to his death.

Since there were thousands of those things, and adding to the fact that almost all of our explosives were lost since we had yet to clear out from our ship, I decided to embark on a different mission.

I decided that the sixteen of us would go inside, to be the first ones to scout out the interior and search for weaknesses.

As for our entry point, we just had to jump down one of the dozens of damaged points or holes that our main offensive had left for us thus far. While we couldn’t deal major damage easily, we could certainly punch a hole or two with enough firepower pointed at one place.

I wanted to know just what we were facing. We knew the lasers, the terror gas bombs, and their massive ships. We also knew that they were fully capable of wiping out an entire continent in just under two days, slaughtering several hundred million people.

No, since we weren’t equipped to disable the lasers, we’d just have to settle for information gathering.

About twenty meters from where our ship had gone down, there was a five meter caused by one what seemed to be an experimental artillery ship, armed with a railgun cannon. It was still experimental and had already long since been shot down, but not before doing more damage than twenty ships armed with missiles could do in a single run. The damage went in several dozen meters, a surprising level of damage from just two shots.

Several minutes after entry….

guh….

…

…

…

…

It’s… gone…

I can’t think of anything after that… …

…

…

…

What… was it…

There was an incident that had occurred later on that had caused me to lose a small portion of my memory as well as apparent other things… That incident… I still don’t remember what caused the damage… but that wasn’t from this infiltration…

Ah… that’s right, I had researched after regaining my mental structure and capability to think. I needed to catch up to speed, so I listened in to several audio logs that I had left as well as the reports.

It’s still not the same as being able to remember it directly though… hah… now where did I leave off…

Entering the structure… ah… For roughly ten minutes, there was no contact of any sort, nor resistance. Then, coms went wild as half of my squad had apparently dropped. Reports from the remaining members began shouting about giant humanoids that towered nearly two and a half meters in height with various other features.

The squad then began a full retreat to the top of the ship with my orders. Though, it would appear that during the exodus, the remainder of the squad dropped off and I was left alone to fight through dozens of the alien soldiers before returning to the surface. Perhaps, it was a trap to lure me far enough in to eliminate me.

Regardless, after that, coms from all over began to ring out as the alien forces began to surge out from the underbelly of the ship through every hole we had opened. The clash between our two forces continued on for quite some time. Thousands of our men perished in a devastating melee against the far stronger alien brutes.

If you really consider it, we were up against beasts that towered above our heads, that were stronger than us physically, and were armed with far superior weaponry. If it ever came to a melee, it would often take between three to eight soldiers just to pin and defeat just one of those things, the vitality difference was obvious.

But, this is where my plan began to come in strong. While we were losing ships, we could replace them as time went on by calling in military transports that hadn’t been summoned until now. As for soldiers, there were over a million of them on standby on the land alone, if needed, over a hundred million soldiers could be called in during the period of a single day.

With each wave of reinforcements, the number of soldiers fighting on the top of the ship swelled. Each time, the survivors would teach the incoming troops how to handle themselves in the new combat experience, slowly increasing the effectiveness of the remaining forces. Not to mention each of the reinforcement groups would grow in numbers with each wave. The longer we fought on, the more turrets we were able to destroy, preventing more and more transports from being destroyed. With only a rough thirty percent, my wave had brought in just under eight thousand. By the time we had secured the surface again and began to bring the fighting inside, there were already nearly eighteen thousand on the surface, with each wave now averaging fifteen thousand men being dropped off per wave.

That was when the logs stated a change in the alien’s strict flight formation was observed. This was just when reports came in that a team had encountered a power-like facility within the ship and were preparing to destroy it. The moment that report came in, the very same ship we were on began to charge forward at extreme speeds, nearly breaking fifty miles an hour.

Hundreds, if not thousands of ships, surprised at the massive hulk moving at them perished by colliding into the ship.

At that time, I had apparently sent out a message stating that the ship was going critical. My team was located at the very center of the ship at the time. My final words were to use any means necessary to destroy the enemy fleet, no matter the cost, no matter the weapon before the coms went static from interference.

Three minutes after my message, signs of hundreds of soldiers jumping off the top of the ship for the water were reported. Rescue operations were launched.

Eight minutes after last contact, the small ship had reached the center of our naval fleet and came under extreme fire from all sides and fronts as the fleet frantically attempted to stop its advance.

Nine minutes after last contact, a single alien craft, small in size, launched from the alien cruiser. A signal went out that was quickly identified as me. Just after, a message went out to clear all personnel away from the area around the cruiser.

Ten minutes after last contact, the small alien craft that was believed to have me on board came under a harreld of enemy fire. Reports claim that the ship avoided enemy fire for almost five minutes as it made its way towards the main enemy hulk-like cruiser at the center before taking a hit and crashing into the main ship.

Fifteen minutes after second contact, I was presumed killed in action, much to the grief of the entire military forces. Clamor for revenge was commonplace as the remaining military chiefs of staff began to clear the necessary procedures to utilize nuclear weaponry. After my last demand to use all means necessary, it was assumed I had discovered something extremely important, why else would I have charged alone at the main ship without first returning to explain the situation.

Sixteen minutes after second contact, the small alien cruiser explodes, destroying at least ten thousand launched fighter-class ships and almost a third of our battleships. Many of the lost battleships had actually fallen victim to the large surge of water caused from the large hulk crashing beneath the waves. Using targeted missile fire, the damage was limited to only a third, if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of several captains, the losses might have been well over half of the entire fleet. Just after the ship crashed beneath the waves, the remaining enemy cruisers begin to engage our forces.

Twenty five minutes after last contact, the majority of our air forces had retreated and a rear guard of battleships had been volunteered into service. The remainder of my military command under the pretense of following my last order began a full nuclear strike upon the remaining enemy cruisers.

Records account to twenty six nuclear warheads being launched at the same time, more than twice the number of warheads launched for military purposes in the entire history of mankind. Two of the alien cruisers were confirmed destroyed while another three appeared to be disabled and slowly fell to the water. Thus marking the defeat of roughly half of the enemy’s fleet, the total war potential that was destroyed was uncertain. The remaining ships all showed signs of serious damage, but appeared to not be in danger of falling.

Fifty minutes after second contact, reports from scout ships specifically used to ensure the safety of the pilots came in stating that explosions were occasionally coming from the main enemy capital ship/ hulk-cruiser. There were few who made wild mention that I had perhaps remained alive, but it was marked as mere speculation and highly unlikely. Plans were underway to resume air warfare against the enemy fleet before they recovered from the damage. Personnel on land had already been organized to pull back several dozen miles away until the extent of the fallout could be determined. Without doubt, the incident would cause a future environmental catastrophe, but the destruction of half the alien fleet was deemed worth the sacrifice.

One hour after second contact, the main cruiser is reported to have opened fire upon two of the remaining cruisers as well as suddenly charging forward, crashing into another of the remaining cruisers. One of the two cruisers under fire explodes, taking out the other ship that had been under fire. Both had already appeared to be in critical condition as fires and various energy fluctuations could be detected. The rammed ship appeared to have lost flight stability as it began to roll mid air and crash violently beneath the waves, causing a tsunami-like wave that would lead to over thirty thousand civilian casualties within the course of the next few hours. Surprise at this sudden development shot through the entire military, as well as the world who were standing by and watching the conflict from afar. At this time, outcries came from various sources to proclaim my survival and continued resistance on board the capital ship. Reports state that a mid-class officer of the air force had overridden military command and moved to set off with the remaining sixty thousand airships and fighters on a rescue mission. The transports were loaded with volunteer soldiers as they knew they would likely suffer from various forms of radiation poisoning after participating in a battle on the capital ship without protection. Without the support of the lower troops, the upper echelons yielded and gave validity to this operation. It would set off between ten and thirty minutes later. With hierarchical support, the troops prepared for the operation.

Seventy-five minutes after second contact, operation ‘Savior of Mankind’ is announced to the world and launched. The purpose was to infiltrate the alien capital ship for the sole purpose of pulling me out from enemy territory. Alive and well of course. The operation saw the entire air and naval force launch with a blitz-style reckless offensive with all transports launching at once. The plan was to bypass the remaining cruisers that had taken up a defensive formation around the capital ship and land troops to recover me. They had recklessly taken advantage of the sudden surge of warfervor to get the troops to zealously agree to a basic, and reckless attack.

Eighty minutes after second contact, all hostile fire coming from the capital ship shuts down. The remaining three alien cruisers stop moving and take up a defensive formation to protect the capital ship.

Eighty-seven minutes after second contact, several major explosions occur from deep within the alien’s capital ship, causing very noticeable damage. The three ships now turn in full retreat.

Ninety minutes after second contact, the two escorting ships release a roughly estimated ten-thousand fighters. The human forces that had set out after the capital ship then engaged. The battle continued for only twenty minutes before the alien’s side had been depleted due to a combined air and naval offensive. On the human’s side, however, the casualties numbered nearly forty-thousand in total, nearly a full two thirds of our entire air potential. This was due to various reasons such as running out of fuel to crashing into alien ships in the chaotic engagement. The battle scaled from just above the water’s surface to nearly two miles into the sky. Skirmishes to mass engagements were scattered across nearly twenty miles. Regardless of orders, the surviving military forces break through the enemy formation to land onto the alien capital ship.

One hundred and twenty minutes after second contact, the first landing teams arrive on the capital ship under moderate fire from the remaining two cruisers. Heavy damage had already disabled a significant number of their weapon capacity. The capital ship’s weapons remained inactive. A squad of one thousand, two hundred and seven men and women organized and entered into the capital ship’s interior. Reports came in constantly about the infiltration team finding scenes of what appeared to be battles scattered throughout the interior of the ship. The massive hallways were lined with hundreds, to thousands of mutilated corpses of various disfigurement. From stab wounds, bite wounds, puncture wounds, missing limbs, caved-in skulls, opened stomachs, laser burns, and just about every other form of damage could be reported from the slain alien footsoldiers. A debate had begun over the possibility of a civil war breaking out within the alien ship, though this idea was mostly ignored due to the blind warfervor that had overtaken the minds of the soldiers. After crushing a majority of the alien fleet in less than three hours, the confidence of the military officers and soldiers alike had long since reached new levels of dangerous zealotry. No living encounters were reported by this time, only further increasing numbers of dead.

One hundred and fifty minutes after second contact, infiltration teams report the sounds of an active battle and receive full permission to investigate the situation.

One hundred and sixty-five minutes after second contact, scouts come across a scene of battle between the alien soldiers and a ‘Beast’ of some form. The beast was reported to be fighting alone against the several hundred alien soldiers surrounding it from all angles. The beast was reported to be humanoid in nature, though was determined to not be human due to the missing portions of the skull, missing arm, and various other injuries while still inflicting dozens of casualties upon the alien brutes. These were the same ones that required between three and eight soldiers to just barely take down one, and they were being taken down in droves from a single individual, thus why the scouts called it a beast. Steam was constantly seeping out from it’s body as blood gushed from it’s dozens of wounds. It fought tooth and nail as if every portion of its body had a mind of its own. As it bit down on one alien, it used the protruding bones on its arm to kill another while kicking two more in the head with a swiveling kick, causing blood to gush from both as they fell to the floor. Such was the scene of the beast fighting the alien soldiers, a near one sided slaughter against beasts that had proven to be so difficult to fight against. The speed the beast moved was reported to be at least three times faster than a human as its limbs moved almost too fast for them to perceive whenever it attacked. After a short deliberation between the officers on the scene, they decided to reinforce the beast in battle against the aliens.

Of course, that beast was me.

After a quick surprise assault from the infiltration team, the alien soldiers were routed. After securing the surrounding area, a single soldier was volunteered to investigate the beast from close up as the beast had since then stopped moving completely. The steam surging from its body still continuing as the significant amount of blood flowing out continued, the muscles moving slightly as if slowly attempting to stop the bleeding. The soldier then went on to report that he ID the beast’s face as my own, mistaking my current state as a coma due to the injuries I had sustained.

In reality, I had entered a shallow consciousness that I consider to be a recovery mode of sorts. I can’t say for sure if that was the case, but given the amount of steam they said was coming out of my body, that was probably the case. When I was in the water with my various injuries from taking a ship’s explosion head on, I had used that very same recovery mode to repair my body to the extent I could move again. The version I was probably using in the alien ship was probably far less effective though as the amount of heat generated from the process is almost to the extent that my body would be damaged seriously as cells would die from the heat. Various toxins would also grow to dangerous levels as both aerobic and anaerobic processes would operate at levels tens to almost a hundred times faster than the average human body. As my body is far different in comparison to the average human, my body was tempered to handle this burden to a certain extent, though as I am a hodgepodge of science experiments from birth on, it isn’t as if every part of my body functions properly. I have assumed though that over time, my body was increasing the efficiency and evolving to properly function. The normal human body does this as well over a long period of time as well as over the generations, though i’m sure the extent of my own is far faster.

Basically, the energy is used to facilitate an extreme burst of cellular replication, reproduction, and recovery. Special organs release large quantities of nutrients from two other organs that highly condense fats and other nutrients. Similar to kidneys, they filter the my entire blood system, working in symbiosis with other organs to balance my blood system. My blood is not normal blood cells, but rather a hemoglobin protein mass that, if receiving a chemical signal from the kidney-like organs that signal that blood levels are too low, will begin to take in amino acids and replicate several dozens of times per second as they break up into several dozen branches and rebuild themselves. Similar to how a worm can regrow itself if it is split in half I suppose. I would have to be losing several liters of blood per second to risk running low on blood. The amount of calories within my body are undeterminable, though I do not excrete waste, and many of the chemical processes within my body were never determined. The matter of how much water was or is within my system, or even where it was stored was never really determined. I had greatly limited the number of experiments performed on my body for various reasons.

Though, the main source of my recovery falls to the responsibility of several organs that researchers called stem membranes. These organs basically release thousands of stem cells into my bloodstream, allowing them to reach any and all damaged sites to aid in recovery. Even though bone doesn’t help with my bones as they are not the same as normal bones, if they come into range of bone damage, they can repair the special tissue that forms up the outer layer of the bone. When the outer layer is damaged, the tissue detects the damage to itself and takes in nutrients and stem cells to repair itself. As it repairs, a byproduct of the process is that the dead or older cells from this membrane form into my new bone. Scientists were unable to determine what the process behind this is because as they took samples, the samples would dissolve the moment they attempted to remove some. The process of bone repair is thus one of the most rapid within my body, the time it takes various, but even if a limb were to be lost, the first thing to regrow would be the bone, as tested by removing my hand in one of the early experiments after a test with a finger led to it growing back. The membrane would hold joints and loose bones in place until the tissue recovered and grew back over them, at which point the muscle tissue would push the membranes out of the way and took control of the joints.

In the end, my vitality is quite substantial, though the amount of energy required is probably just as significant. The more voracious my healing process becomes, the more heat is generated. Based on rough estimates, the researchers determined that the amount of calories being used for the process could vary from tens to hundreds of thousands of calories per second. Needless to say, but my body is substantially heavy… Very… very heavy… Though since normal scales weren’t able to determine my weight, I never felt like actually finding out, not something one would really care about that much.

After an incident where a researcher attempted to remove one of my organs for her own personal gain, I stopped the experiments altogether, too risky if people started looking at my body as a tool for scientific research after all.

Shame though, now that it has become like this, I find myself growing more curious as to how my body works and who I am. There’s some philosophic joke in there somewhere I’m sure… Bah, there’s only so many regrets you can allow yourself in life. Not learning how every one of my cells work shall not be one of them.

Well, when the infiltration squad got in close to examine their so called ‘Beast’ i’m certain their faces warped with surprise… actually… I can almost… imagine it.. no, perhaps I do to a certain extent… mmmm… surprise… joy… sorrow… anger… retreat… must retreat… emergency… interference… beyond… damage… stop it… all will be lost… almost too late… must prevent… must go back… stop them… stop them… almost too late… must move… hurry… … … … … …

It’s gone again…

Whatever I had learned is probably lost to me forever, or for however long I have left. If there was more time, perhaps I could have recovered those memories.

Well… I suppose… maybe after this, my questions will unravel themselves… who can truly know what that next step entails besides those who have walked upon it and moved on from here… so many have already gone before me… perhaps it’s time… … No… not yet… I owe them that much… to at least remember the rest of our last story…

…

Going on the reports, the team had initially thought that I was dead. This was mostly due to half of my neck being gone, a half missing arm, and the main reason being that roughly 40% of my head missing from various injuries. This was ignoring the fact that blood was constantly pouring out of my body from every wound. They did their best to stop the bleeding at least until they got me back to land.

I always wondered, after the fact, just what the hell went on after I got onto that small ship, hell, I want to know just about everything that happened. The reports are just not enough depth to make up for one’s memories. It feels off to read about what happened to you in vague terms when you lose your memory.

Bah, why do I keep coming back to this, enough of this already, I don’t have time for it anymore.

Hmm…. reports…

…

When one of the soldiers touched my head, the reports state that my eyes opened, showing consciousness. After that, I ordered the soldiers to retreat. Because I had just suddenly started talking after they had been working on stopping my bleeding without me saying a word, most of the soldiers were frozen in place. Of course, reports state that after cracking one of the soldiers on the side of the head and shouting the order again, they got their rears in gear. After two minutes, a retreat order surged through the remaining forces on board.

The delay turned to be costly as just two minutes after the retreat call sounded, the turrets within the cruiser and outside all went online, or perhaps they had only just come back online, who knows. Regardless, the unaware soldiers were dropped in droves as laser fire wreaked havoc on soldiers lacking any form of cover. Since they had plenty of experience with the laser weapons, there were still plenty that were able to react after the initial casualties and push on to retreat. By the time I had personally gotten out with the remaining forces, only two hundred and eleven soldiers got out. Given that they all had to clear their way through dozens to nearly a hundred passages and lift wells filled with continuous laser fire after being caught off guard, the number was actually extremely good.

Retreating from the ship, I was taken to a special medical facility specifically intended for me that was located roughly sixty miles away from the combat site. There, a special tank had been prepared in case I had received critical wounds and needed to return to battle quickly. This tank was called a Stem Tank, basically filled with a stem cell gel-like substance. Basically it was a tank with tens or hundreds of millions of stem cells, if not billions. The whole idea was rather simplistic in nature, and in terms of a normal person using it, their recovery would probably not be helped at all, or rather, it might seriously cause them harm if a person was just thrown into it.

On top of all that, the cost of producing and preserving such a large quantity of stem cells would be ridiculous in normal instances. The only reason there are so many is due to my stem membranes being siphoned to build a reserve for it. The only reason that such a crude method was used is due to my body’s adaptations, or perhaps mutations, to use stem cells allowed it to control the functions and usage of stem cells. Instead of relying solely on the membrane production of stem cells, the cells could pass through my skin as well as enter my wounds for rapid utilization. If my normal recovery were to be marked at a 100% recovery rate, the rate inside the tank would be between 250 and 375 percent.

It was after about two hours that my current consciousness recovered. Even though there were still several injuries that had yet to fully recover, my head had fully regenerated. My hand wasn’t fully functional yet either, but it was good enough. Though, from what I gathered from those that were there, there was something different. Or, rather, they felt as if something was missing, but it was impossible for them to finger what it was. Since there was nothing they could come up with, I moved on.

From there, I discovered that the alien’s capital ship had fallen back to the continent and had crash landed.

The cruisers that had crashed into the water had been heavily assaulted and overrun. When they had fallen into the water, it would seem their power sources or whatever powered their laser weaponry was lost, thus they were almost defenseless. If you count a two and a half foot tall brute with a laser rifle and great strength defenseless of course.

After overrunning their positions, we had managed to recover some of their technology and it was already under serious study.

After returning to a command center, I gave the order to invade the continent. Without giving our invaders time to make a single move, I wanted to wipe them out. If reinforcements were called, we were a year, perhaps two years away from offering another serious resistance.

It had to be now. Destroy the main ship before it’s too late. That was the one feeling that surged through my entire being. At the time, I thought of only alien reinforcements, but now, now I know why…

With a majority of the air force destroyed, the sole method of we could truly rely on for large scale invasions would be a naval invasion, with helicopter infusions. While most of our airship-type transports were lost, with this invasion, we could now utilize helicopters. If we used them previously, they were far too slow to use in our formation, and would be sitting targets for the laser weaponry.

The remaining air force still had its uses, but since we were not in a land invasion as well as their depleted number, they would only be able to move roughly eleven thousand men in total. While there were still plenty of fighters, there were less than a thousand undamaged transports that we could actively call on currently.

Instead, they would be mostly turned over to support purposes.

We still had two cruisers to destroy, then, then we would finally come to face our final target.

Thirty two hours after the first shots rang out, our forces had made land fall upon the barren wastelands that used to be a thriving continent of humankind.

Modern naval technology had allowed us to clear the distance of a hundred miles relatively quickly.

The sum of the liberation invasion forces numbered just 85,000 in total, but reinforcements would be coming in the tens of thousands every hour or so.

The fighting was fierce, but after several hours of constant fighting, hiding from terror gas bombs, and the sort, we finally shot down the remaining two cruisers, and routed their ground forces.

It was then that we had finally surrounded the entire wrecked hulk of a capital ship.

With almost two hundred thousand soldiers at my back, the world itself went silent, not a breath, not a whisper.

With a single roar, the call rang out, and the final assault had begun, humanity would be victorious this day. Of this, I was certain… I… was so certain…

The alien fighting capacity was a shadow of its former self. At best there were perhaps twenty or thirty thousand of them left, taking up what little fortifications they could or hiding within the wreck of the capital ship. That day, they would be granted their final stand.

I left no room for error, I wanted to wipe them out, to leave no trace. Hundreds of teams scoured the continent to clear out any remnants. Tanks and air support were heavily established within the area around the capital ship, artillery was on stand by and suitable numbers of reinforcements were called for to ensure success…

I will never forgive myself for this blunder. I knew in my heart that time was in direly short supply, yet, I took my time in being thorough… took my time in my approach… I waited for more troops… I waited for support… I waited… and by the time I gave that order to attack… It was far… far too late…

In the midst of the fight, I encountered what seemed to be the enemy’s leader, a three meter monster with three sets of arms that each carried a laser blade. In just five minutes, he had already fallen beneath my heel.

In my confidence, I had exclaimed to the beast, taking up one of his blades to point at his neck, that they had lost.

But, in his eyes, he had a humored expression. It was in that moment, our minds had synced, and I heard just four words…

“You’re already too late.”

[Part 5: The Final Battle - END]