Book 3: Chapter 94: Orbital Assault

Book 3: Chapter 94: Orbital Assault

USD: 4 Days after the Arrival to MIL-1A

Location: Nu Crateris, Dedia IV, The Great NestFollow current novels on novelb((in).(com)

Heeler was sore, despite his nanites repairing his body rapidly. The Queen had ridden him roughly. Yet, that did not displease him. Although he was unsure how she would make use of his genetic material, he was sure that she would surprise him with her future creations of star children.

Heeler made his way into the new habitation zone for the human colony. The design was his own, a no-nonsense series of straight lines with service areas centrally located for easy access. They had created different zones for habitation, commerce, product delivery, education, bureaucracy, and the military.

The military level was segregated, and he had secured it with safeguards, but he had plans for enlisting the aid of what humans he could once they had acclimated to their new home. The soft sk The humans were very useful for some tasks, and he was sure he would need at least a few to help command future battalions of star children once he worked out an interface to allow them to do so.

Likewise, he had no desire to stop at one battlecruiser, and a fleet would need captains at the very least. A fully automated fleet of warships was unrealistic unless he wished to reduce his computronics production to create many subcores, and that would weaken his ongoing efforts to build up enough nanite control to fortify the planet properly.

Vast caverns deep in the earth were being hewn for the rare resources needed to produce them en masse. For now, it was enough, but the resources around the strange moon of Hades were a clarion call for his spaceward efforts.

He kept the star children away from the human section for safety reasons. Heeler was unsure if the humans would attack out of fear, but he suspected the civilians would have poor reactions to the sight of them, even if he made sure that any present were conditioned to consider humans as part of the nest.

His suspicions were confirmed when he heard many of the small humans emit shrieks at the sight of him emerging from a secret entry point. Those shrieks attracted the attention of some larger ones who drew weapons and opened fire on him.

The projectile rounds were of too low caliber to damage his nanite hardened carapace, so he ignored the humans attempt at dominance despite its breaking of law by attacking another member of the colony.

Heeler made for the government building at the center of the corridor. The mayhem and disarray of the humans he saw displeased him greatly, and he was reminded of his earlier promise to avoid them personally, which he had forgotten. He had only been prompted to enter their new nest because of a desire to confirm their progress on settling in, but already he was deeply regretting it.

Heeler clittered down the corridor to the secure elevator to leave the human section. His conversation with the Governor-turned-Mayor Tyler had been useful for clearing up several misconceptions about the humans food supply. Despite H32s projections that the humans would object to an efficient food source, Heeler had hoped that they would adapt.

The way the Mayor became ill upon learning about the method of food production and what went in it, he became ill. Heeler carefully informed him he would devote some resources to allow the humans to produce their own food supply once some industrialization drones became available.

His machine mind clicked with satisfaction at him, and Heeler clittered faster in annoyance. As he began the climb back up to the main nest, a transmission arrived from beyond orbit.

A frantic video of Daniel Ashburn broadcasting a distress signal appeared on Heelers video feed. Triangulation of the location put him much closer than Heeler had, though the Hades station could have made it toward Dedia. It was only hours from reaching orbit, but the reason for distress became apparent as sensors detected both the proto-station and a Corpo cruiser light off their Linear drives.

Heeler immediately spun up the fast response shuttle on the surface. H32 re-arranged work priorities across the planet. He sent a brief mind caress to Szizsielia, informing her of his departure.

Sending a brief message to maintain a fastest course approach toward the planet, Heeler examined the rest of the information available. Ashburns station was barely functioning after so long running silent and on skeleton supplies. Some refugees had already perished from nutritional deficiency.

A small subset of drones was dispatched in order to prepare medical and nutritional support at the space elevator.

And boarding pods.

Thousands of Rexxor waited in the ships belly, while the triangular bow had been encased in heavy plates of armor, entire sections that had been previously dedicated to berthing and other human things replaced with chunks of heavy metal alloys and ceramics.

The drive had been completely rebuilt, with an eye for speed, allowing the ship to not only effortlessly leave the planets surface, but to accelerate faster than even the nimble Shrike II had been able to.

It wasnt quite as agile, the ship could only burn that quickly in a straight line, but it was purpose-built to run down fleeing smaller ships.

And it worked beautifully, as the Heavens Fire ran down the Corpo cruiser. The chase only took an hour before the Cruiser came into weapons range, and an anemic weapon duel ignited the space between the two ships.

Lasers gouged into the battlecruisers prow, but ECLWS launchers flung chaff cannisters into the space between the two ships, degrading their performance. The ship either did not have any or did not wish to risk a missile launch, and the stern chase through the chaff continued until the ships entered railgun range.

The first shot nailed the Heavens Fire on the bow, digging deep into inert internals. The damage ultimately did not affect the larger ship meaningfully.

The reply was a thunderous launch of a thousand boarding rockets. Heavens Fire hurled munitions out of magnetic launchers before the small projectiles gyrod toward and ignited their drives, flinging themselves toward the Corpo cruiser in a spiraling cloud.

The chaff canisters degraded the PDC-L effectiveness, and a desperate PDC-K fire did its best to swat down as many of the projectiles as possible, but hundreds of the short-range missiles impacted the cruisers hull.

The young nestlings inside had been chosen for their durability rather than intelligence. Shrieking Rexxor emerged from the pods, launching themselves throughout the ship in a frenzied bloodlust encouraged by the loss of the thought minds of their kin in the assault.

Heeler would have preferred to have boarded with them, to taste the fear and weakness of the dying prey himself, but such a thing was much too risky for that kind of luxury. Maybe someday in the future when he was more expendable, with many replacements, he could enjoy the taste of the charge as he had once done with Mother against the enemy fleet.

Heeler watched through the eyes of the armor, and weaponry mounted to his brothers, storming the hostile ship. Although his thought organ was smaller than a Queens, he could still help guide their progress along with assistance from the telemetry the weaponry transmitted.

Two smarter than regular nestlings had special devices that detached from their weapon packs and sought connections to the ships network. Segregation of the ships networks and systems prevented outright control of the ship, but Heeler was able to quickly disable the ships weapon systems.

Partly because the nestlings tore apart the operators working them, and partly because of the connection to the weapon network by the hacking devices.

The crew of the ship did their best, passing out weapons and attempting to repel the boarders, but the outcome was never in question as the nestlings breached compartment after compartment with their steel shredding claws and teeth.

Automated turrets and defenders fell nearly two dozen of his brothers, but the ship quickly became a tomb of Corpo marines and sailors.

The heavily armored bridge fell last, and then the ship had fallen. The carnage had flowed throughout the ship so quickly that the Captain had not realized he should have scuttled the ship, and Heeler growled in satisfaction as he realized the prize was theirs.

Now he needed to devise a method of towing the cruiser back to the planet.