Chapter 393 - Far Future Ch. 103 – And it Ended up This Way... (1/2)
Multiple cerevores tried to infiltrate the civilians they rescued, but couldn't escape the notice of Lepido, whose hisses of distaste were basically a death sentence, or the spirits of the Ghost Knights and their hungry mind blades.
One unlucky Null had a cerevore invade his mouth, and was struck from six different angles by mindblades, guided by his own plunging in. His jaw was torn right off when the cerevore expanded to full size in death... but he didn't die, as a healer leapt on him, a blood-bonded Healer crystal tied to Serene, the head Rantha of the blok, in his hand; started the empathic healing transfer and mended the injuries to his spine, brain, face, skull, jaw, and neck as everyone waited.
The Ranthas had their backs. Within a minute, the mutilated fighter was back on his feet, looking grimmer than ever, and a wild look of renewed confidence back in his eyes.
-Ammunition Check,- Egil /said unflappably, and the shooters checked their reserves. They'd been scavenging any dropped magazines as they went, with their own expended ones either going into pockets for recharge if they could, or stacked up neatly off to the side so someone coming after them wouldn't mistake them for fresh ones, to be swept up by the teams coming in behind them for recharging.
-NUKE INCOMING PROXIMATE CASPERBLOK.- Serena /Declared, and everyone looked up and cursed at the same time.
-Support beams,- Egil /directed them calmly, taking a few steps to stand next to a corner, and the team promptly scattered to do the same. Those who couldn't get an optimal position did the best they could, while a few just sighed, stood where they were, and faced what was coming on their feet.
The light passed over the Plunge, which flared behind them with actinic radiance. The vibration came through the ground first, a shockwave that made the ground heave as it sought an outlet, and around them, floors cracked... some, which had been assaulted by extremely corrosive acid, more than others.
Egil looked up at the ceiling shattering above him, sighed in resignation, and then the whole blok lurched as the primary shockwave smashed into it, and there was a roar of falling plascrete masonry.
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Egil didn't know where he was, but he now knew how he got there.
The edge of something sharp had drilled into his eyes, and both his real and fake eyes were ruined, the bones of his face sheared an inch deep. He had a bar of durasteel in his shoulder, the tip of it fractured like crystal... only a few thousand years old, and couldn't stand a couple shockwaves like that, probably some contractor cheating on the alloy specs. His leg was crushed and caught under a slab of some kind, while he had somehow fallen into a cavity that had preserved his life.
-And you didn't believe in Soak at one time,- a quiet, calm /voice intruded into his self-assessment.
-There is no instruction like practical experience,- he /agreed, using the paralysis of sleep to continue not moving and so reduce the pain. -How long.-
-A half hour or so. We got a psion to dimdoor us into Casperblok, and have been working our way up.- He had seen Ranthas at work, so he could picture the kind of havoc the sword-wielding nymphals and hammer-wielding Ancients were wreaking on the xenos. – Your team left a guard with Lepido there, and have begun securing the floor, while making sure the xenos don't spread up as we pressure them.-
-How bad was the nuke.- he /asked, morbidly interested.
-It was aimed at Aloft Spire. The Mentats deflected it away and down. Krommelblok caught the edge of the primary blast, and is basically gone.- Images flickered, and he got a rough eyeful of the blast area, a crater at least a mile across, surrounded by ruins, but overlaid by enough debris and dust smoke that he couldn't see much more than too much radiation boiling at the center of it. Durasteel was no joke, and nuclear weapons were generally designed to generate intense focused heat, rather than dispersed blasts. So, the crater would be reaching down into Underspire, but the fallout damage would not be as horrible as it could be.
Still, all the lesser habs and workplaces in the area were basically rubble, and anyone unshielded within ten miles was going to be a blast shadow or ashes.
The secondary shields of the Spire had weathered the blast. If the xenos wanted to take it, they'd have to do so on foot now.
-The other atomics converged on a section of the Shield Wall, and breached the hard wall in the direction of the Spikeplains. Cavalry and armor up to bio-mech grade came up out of the killwaters there and over the breach. They did a harmonic field extension to keep out any bad air, and the xenos aren't trying to fight it, but there's also interested creatures from outside wandering in when they see the xenos bio-armor crawling through the gap.-
-Sounds exciting.- he /deadpanned.
-Very. The Kasas are already deploying with great anticipation of multiple explosions and great property damage. Boys and their toys and all.-
He thought about the Rantha tank and mecha drivers, and said nothing. The war machines of the Empire were certainly capable of explosions and property damage.
He also thought about where the enemy was coming from. -They have an underwater base of operations.-
-Yes, they are coming from under the Sunken Seas. We have no idea how many bases of operation, or how long they have been there. By numbers and penetration, we assume their primary bases are on the other side of the continent. Their attacks here seem more aimed at damaging crucial infrastructure and keeping us occupied then any serious attempt to seize assets or biomass.-