Kick the Sphere 22 (Patreon)

A/N: been some time since we came here, eh? Welcome back to the Battletech Celestial Forge.

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 22

-VB-

Last Time…

After the attempted invasion by ComStar and ROM, Alan kicked the advancement and industrialization of his people into high gear.

And launched an invasion of his own aimed not at ROM and Comstar … but the Capellan Confederation? Oh, and his Lantean replicators gained sentience outside of their programming and named themselves after Greek gods.

-VB-

Kar98k, or now known as Catherine to her general and her comrades, watched the planet in front of her.

With her were three warships, each loaded to the brim with replicators.

She knew her purpose for this “raid” and would see her general’s will done.

To that end, she decided to use one of the three strategies thought of by the general himself.

The first thing that had to go?

[Target: spaceport.]

Her warship, a white, sleek, and long drone carrier, turned one of its main batteries. According to the manual, this cannon battery was classified as a High Velocity 500mm Artillery, best used with APCR projectiles for maximum effectiveness against hard spaceborne targets and ground targets during orbital strikes.

Catherine had done a double take upon learning about that but after taking a quick crash course on orbit-to-surface and spaceship combat physics, she understood why solid projectiles were better for this.

[Targeting solution… locked.]

[Firing.]

She watched her shots silently pierce through the void before turning bright red briefly as they entered the atmosphere and then a small bleep of motion as they struck the target.

And she kept firing.

Predictably, the enemy’s air-space fighters finally reached them. Their standard fighter frame was a familiar sight for Catherine’s eyes, but they offered no relief, only irritation. Through connectors directly connecting her to the ship, she mentally commanded her ship’s point defense to autofire, and her vision lit up with bursts of light as a dozen point-defense turrets lit up the void with three hundred shots per second firepower.

The dozen ASF squadrons quickly entered evasive maneuvers as all three of her ships attacked them from over a thousand kilometers away with bullets traveling that distance in under five seconds. Each of her turret’s trajectory prediction computers coldly calculated for her PD guns, and they aimed ahead. Despite this, most of the bullets still missed.

She didn’t remain idle, just watching the ASF squadrons attempt to close the distance. She sent out her own drone fighters, all of them replicators, but also began to shoot down orbital drop units. The former wheezed out of each of her carriers while the latter were shot directly at the planet.

Each orbital drop unit was a mass of replicators. They didn’t need to be “intact” when they landed.

-VB-

“We can’t get close!”

They had lost nearly a tenth of their ASF without even being able to fire back at the mysterious invaders with carrier warships.

Their point defense was ridiculous, and if that wasn’t all, then it was their counterattack with fighters too small to be able to house a person.

General James Morbarreon didn’t know what that must feel like, being hounded while getting shot at in space. It was a uniquely ASF experience that he, an army general, had not the chance to experience.

But it was also what was happening to their first line of defense.

That line of defense, however, had been completely powerless to stop the orbital strikes those warships had done upon his world. Thank God that this wasn’t a nuclear strike, but nearly all of the dropships and landing fields of the spaceport as well as the spaceport itself was in ruins. It would take months to fix the damages and years to replace all of the dropships that had been sitting in the spaceport.

The old general picked up the radio. “Men, Betelgeuse is the heart of Capellan Confederation’s antispinward defense. If the factories of this world falls to these raiders, then the Free Worlds League will conquer us! Even if you must sell your lives to make it true, you must shoot them down! Sell your lives dearly for the Confederation!”

He hated what he said but what else could he do?

wwwwwWWWWWWHHHHEEEE!

“General, duck!” one of his aides shouted before tackling him to the floor.

Something landed outside so very close to where his headquarters was and sent shockwaves that made the concrete walls crack. Dust fell down in heaps from above, and he held his arms over his head.

… The bunker was intact, for now.

He got back up and helped the aide as well, and looked back at the staticking screen. One of the officers were scrolling through the cameras available to them across the city, and quickly found what had struck them.

On the surface near the spaceport and right above where their bunker was, the raiders had launched another orbital strike. But this one was different. It was larger and had a core of … What were those things? They flaked off like chips.

And then James froze as he watched on the grainy white and black camera footage as the core of the orbital strike projectile began to move. There was a shudder as the entire structure - had to be at least ten meters in high and a third as wide - rippled and then … legs. He watched as a spider-like thing crawled out of the cylindrical tube. He didn’t hear anything from the audio-less camera, but watched as it skittered out briefly.

And then a swarm of those creatures broke away from the projectile.

No, the projectile had been those creatures, and thy had struck all across the city.

He slammed down on the comms and searched for the right channel to speak to all of his forces. He found it.

“Enemy forces have landed on Betelgeuse! I repeat, enemies have landed! They are not human! I repeat, your enemies are not human! Defend the planet”