Alpha 9:
"Prey Zero-One in hot." The radio blared over the roar of gunfire and the sharp whizzing of crystalline munitions fired across the battlefield. Lieutenant David thought he heard the words "danger close" follow the declaration, but the screaming of rockets overhead as they streaked through the sky drowned out the broadcast.
If not for the built-in hearing protection in his helmet, he was sure that a good chunk of his hearing would have suddenly disappeared.
Judging by their size and speed, they were probably Archer missiles. David hoped they were directed at airborne or even orbital targets, because he did not want to be anywhere near the impact zone of whatever had been chosen to receive 70+ anti-starship-grade weapons to the face. That salvo alone was damn near three entire pods of the large missiles.
Now, what about that danger close strike?
BRRRRRRRT*
The tree line close by, which had once towered with pristine redwood trees, was shredded into splinters as the friendly CAS aircraft on station performed a strafing run. They hadn't been joking at it being dangerously close, as David felt the vibration from the impact of the gatling munitions in his teeth. It was a small price to pay for an effective strike, as he could hear what sounded like shattering glass and saw the amount of those incoming needle-like flechette peter out.
David smiled as he looked up and saw the aircraft above streak away. The A-1 Osprey was a new addition to the arsenal. She was strapped to the brim with ordnance and carried with her the 70MM rotary cannon that was usually reserved for some models of Pelicans. It was a heavy load, but one that was well managed by the twin fusion engines that were standard across most UNSC craft.
That gun was still ridiculous, though. A 70MM rotary? Those shells were almost as big as the main cannon of the older Scorpions from what he heard.
Reaching over and grabbing the backup radio from the body of a dead sergeant beside him, as the one that was built into his helmet had been damaged by a crystal round that had thankfully only skimmed his head without exploding, he double-checked the channel he was on before keying the mic, "Alpha lead this is Alpha 9. That strafing run had a good effect on the enemy position. Do you want my company to stay in our position or move up?"
There was a long moment of silence and radio static before Alpha Lead, or Captain Craigers, as he knew him, finally responded.
"With the number of casualties we're reading from your company's bio signals, absolutely not. Hold your position and man those dugouts. A recon drone saw a large force of fiends heading your way. Luckily, I just got word from Overlord that you already have heavy support en route." The radio crackled as the Alpha lead gave him his company's orders.
"Heavy support? More Osprey's, or did they finally decide to bust out the Grizzly's?" David asked.
Preferably, he'd take both if even more fiends were about to flood the area.
An amused snort came over the radio in response, "Better."
The whine of engines slowing down reached David's ears as he looked behind the dugout he was currently in. Three Pelicans had touched down about a hundred feet away, and their doors cracked open to their troop bay as they did so. Seeing what was in them drew a sigh of relief out of David.
Spoiler: Semi-Powered Mljnoir Prototype Armor
Spartans. 60 of them, to be precise.
Okay, yeah, he'd give this one to the captain. This was definitely better.
He barely had time to appreciate the sight, though, for as soon as the doors were fully open, the Spartans moved with blinding speed. Even in only semi-powered armor, a far cry from the full-powered assault armor they would have been wearing had they been back in UNSC space with proper supply lines; the super soldiers were blurs as they closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye. By the time his shell-shocked and fatigued reaction time registered their speed and moved his gaze back to the front line, the Spartans were already assaulting the shattered wood line.
All he could hear was the heavy crack of gunfire and the screeches of the fiends as they moved deeper and deeper into the woods.
Keying the radio, he expressed his appreciation: "That's some heavy support, alright. Pass my thanks to Overlord."
A chuckle came out the other side, "Will do Alpha 9."
Atreus:
Slamming Draupnir into the ground below, I watched in no small amount of satisfaction as dozens of copies of said spear detonated at once. The battlefield before me was enveloped in explosions, and I was on the move before the dust could even settle.
With a shoulder check, I caved in the chest of a particularly large fiend that had survived the bombardment. It flew back, and Draupnir was thrown off to my right, catching another fiend dead between it's forehead. Not wasting a moment, another Draupnir was summoned to my hand as I pushed forward.
I became a whirlwind of gold and red as the spear and its crimson sash found target after target.
The body of an average Primarch was an amazing achievement of warp craft and bioengineering. Even in the body of one early on in its adolescence, it still put me above most beings outside of the warp. In the last three months alone, I'd gone from about 5'2 to a hair below 5'7, and the growth of speed and strength that came with it was astonishing.
Of course, until I met my brothers, there was no way I'd know if that was normal or if because other factors were also at play for me. This body was affected by body tune-up and athletic talent, along with two templates primarily focused on physical combat. For all I knew, I was ahead of the curve or just straight up above the other Primarchs physically.
Flicking my weapon upward, Draupnir batted away a crystal that had been streaking through the air with the intent to pierce an open spot in my armor. Tracking where the projectile had come from, I reared back the spear and was ready to launch the divine weapon at the fiend who had tried to get the drop on me. Only for a rocket to slam into the fucker and scorch the entire area before I follow through.
Looking back, 100 figures in proto-typed semi-powered Mjolnir armor made their way across the battlefield towards me. One of them, I saw, was still holding a smoking UNSC rocket launcher on his shoulder as he did. After we were done here, I'd have to get that Spartan a beer. I hadn't precisely needed the help, but fire support in the form of large explosions was always helpful.
"Sir, please stop charging head first into enemy lines." A Spartan whose armor was a little more customized and battle-scared than the other pleaded as they approached, "Not only does it make it hard to back you up, but you're getting in the way of our heavier weapons."
"Sorry about that, Jackson." I chuckled, "But like I've told you before, I tend to get lost in the heat of battle. I forget you guys are with me sometimes."
Unfortunately for the commander of my Spartans, this wasn't the first, nor would it soon be the last time that happened. A little negative about being a Primarch with two angry boy templates was that sometimes, the haze of anger and battle craze clouded my mind a little too much. It was a problem that, in hindsight, I should have seen coming.
Because the templates of Kratos and the Slayer were tampered down below what their actual tiers were supposed to be, I had the lesser versions of their abilities. Such as when I occasionally tapped into a very weak Spartan's rage. That being said, a weak spartan rage was still a spartan rage, and I had the power without any of the mental discipline or experience needed to control it. My Primarch biology and enhanced cognitive abilities that came with it were probably the only thing that was stopping me from entirely flying off the handle every time I tapped into it.
It's not a great habit to have when your primary forces wielded range weapons and were substantially slower than you. Even if they were enhanced Spartan I's, I sometimes tended to get in their way. In that aspect, it was a shame I didn't have Astarte's. Those crazy fuckers would have charged in right beside me with melee weapons at first sight of their Primarch charging into the fray.
Shaking his head at my half-apology, Jackson motioned a couple of Spartans forward as the others set up a loose defensive line. One by one, they disengaged a cylinder-like object from the back magnetic holders on their armor and sat it on the ground. One by one, each Spartan punched in a series of codes and timers, ensuring each of the devices would begin ticking down from 15 minutes once they were fully armed.
"You think these will be enough to deal with that big old bastard?" Jackson pointed to the giant crystal wall stretching for miles in each direction ahead of us.
The lore about the fiends hadn't precisely been exaggerating when it said they lived in giant cities with walls and buildings made of crystal.
"It better be." I snorted, "Besides the fact that I would hate for the ongoing push down south to amount to nothing more than a failed distraction at the cost of my marine lives, those are HAVOKs. Each of those things could shatter a capital ship from the inside, much less 5 of them stacked outside some crystal walls in atmosphere."
If I hadn't thought that the fiends might have some sort of anti-ship weaponry stationed here, as they are most defiantly exotic forms of anti-air and point defense, I'd have ordered the Spirit to lift off and put a couple of MAC rounds right through the place. Unfortunately, I couldn't risk losing the ship's manufacturing capabilities because of how new and fragile the small city and industry surrounding the mountain the Spirit rested below was.
So instead, while the majority of my forces baited the fiends into committing to a significant pitched battle down south. Some of my Spartans and I had snuck up on the bastards to deliver a multi-megaton surprise.
30 megatons each, to be precise. 20 megatons below what the Tsar Bomba had been rated for, and when all put together, they'd explode with the force of 150 megatons. I don't care what crystalline magic bullshit these guys had; catching the equivalent of three Tsar Bombas to the face had to hurt.
Honestly, it's still funny how absurd UNSC tech can sometimes be. Nuclear devices the size of an overinflated football that could glass a significant city in a single hit? No problem and easy as pie to make. FTL that breached through a higher dimension? Discovered it centuries ago. The ability to massively terraform? Did it to hundreds of worlds. AI so advanced that it could learn and adapt to the technology used by an old hyper-advanced race? You bet your sweet Bibby.
All of which was mirrored by stunning stagnation.
Absolute garbage tanks that have been the same design for about 300 years, literally no energy defense weaponry despite its existence in the 21st century, and their primary rifle still uses 7.62.
I'd give them a pass for the fact that prior to the Insurrection and Covenant wars, they hadn't had a conflict in nearly 300 years. But still. That tank was an embarrassment. If not for my industry's focus on other sectors outside of MBT's, I'd have scrapped them all. I mean, really, could you imagine if it wasn't Big E who ended up making first contact with me, but instead Perturabo or Dorn, if the timeline is that far already?
Those two pricks would never let me live down using something like the Scorpion if their personalities were anything like how they were usually presented.
Jackson nodded, "I'm sure they'll love the show once it ignites. Southern forces must be having quite the time if we're this close and only a token force was here to stop us."
"Then let's not keep them waiting." I agreed and turned to the Spartans who were finishing up the bomb setup, "Spartans, light those things up, and let's bug out."
Not a moment later, I heard the musical clicks of the weapons being armed and the beeping countdown of the timer.
"Alright, everyone. Back to the Pelicans, double time." I ordered.
My Spartans and I moved as we retreated to our landing zone. For a standard company of soldiers, the 15-minute timer would have been way too short between arming the bombs and the distance we needed to cross to make it back to the LZ. But for a bunch of augmented superhumans who weren't under fire or being harassed by the enemy, it was barely a short jaunt.
I hadn't even realized I tempted the universe until the hairs on my neck stood up. I was mid-stride next to Jackson when I felt the ground buckle and what sounded like several thousand tons of glass and crystal being ground up in a crusher. Looking over my shoulder, my stomach dropped as I stopped mid-stride along with the rest of Omega Company.
A fiend that was dozens of feet tall and covered with growths of pink and purple crystal that jutted out of its skin. Its eyes glowed with malevolence as they locked onto mine, and it opened a razor-filled maw that looked like it could scrap a truck in a single bite. I couldn't even comprehend how something that big could have snuck up on us. Did it jump down from that damn wall, or did they have some kind of teleporting tech?
The crystals on its body started glowing in an even greater radiance, and I felt the air around us suddenly suffused with energy—like how the area around you suddenly became tense when a lightning strike was inbound.
Fuck all of that shit.
"Spartans, smoke that thing," I ordered.
I might have had two very angry bois inside me, but even I wasn't stupid enough to go 1v1 that thing without actual full power armor while a nuke was counting down. Not when I was with troops who were packing heavy-range weapons.
The beast let out another ear-piercing shriek as it began to thunder forward, and arcs of pink electrics began to spark off the jagged crystals that jutted from its body. However, it was interrupted by the 50 or so Spartans out of the 100 in my company who were packing railguns and rockets as secondaries.
Spoiler: UNSC Rocket Launcher
Spoiler: UNSC Rail Gun
There were quite a few beings, such as higher-level Daemons, Tyranids, and maybe even some Orks, who would have taken such a salvo to the face and been none the worse for wear. Fortunately, the fiends didn't have quite the warp bullshitery or bio-adaption to pull off such a feat. The rail gun shots slammed into it first, nearly halting its momentum and shattering its crystal hide. The rockets that followed might have been overkill, but I couldn't deny the sweet satisfaction of watching the hulking fucker be vaporized.
Ranged combat for the win.
"Well, that was mildly terrifying." I heard Jackson mutter from beside me.
"Agreed. Now let's get out of here before any more of its friends show up."
"You are an absolute bloody menace. You know that Atreus?" Serina greeted my freshly de-armored form as I entered the Spirit's observation deck.
We no longer used the command deck when we needed to plan or talk in private, as there was an actual crew there now who were working a variety of jobs around the place. From monitoring communications and keeping an eye on the sky above with the ship's sensors to some of my newly established officer core using the holo tables to coordinate troop movement and defensive lines, it was quite a busy place these days.
Luckily, Spirit's former doctor and researcher had set up her lab here. This gave Serina and me some privacy while still allowing us to use our holo table, work benches, and terminals.
"For the record, you signed off on this little operation with me," I pointed out as I sat at the table where Serina's holographic form was currently projected.
"After I talked you down from using 300 to 500 megatons worth of munitions," Serina said blandly, "You're also lucky fusion weapons have ingredients with smaller half-lives than fission. That area will probably be habitable in a couple of years—maybe sooner if we spare rescores to clean it up."
I suppose I was lucky in that regard. While nukes generally had radiation that quickly disappeared after they were set off, that was usually when they were detonated as an air-burst strike. It spread the radioactive material over a distance and let it dissipate pretty fast. What I did with setting them off as a ground burst usually led to the radioactive material condensing into a smaller area as it was jettisoned into the atmosphere above via the mushroom cloud. It then would rain back down in higher quantities over a tighter zone.
Yet, it wasn't too concerning in the long run. The radiation from a ground burst wouldn't last as long as, say, the Fallout games would have you believe, nor as long as what reactors would cause when they went critical.
"Leave it for now. Our population isn't big enough to need to expand anywhere near that area anyway." I said, "We just crossed the 100K mark after all. Instead, we should go forward with the Armstrong program now that we not only control the skies over this section of the planet with the destruction of that fiend stronghold, but also have an excess of people to begin funneling into engineering and support roles."
Our investment into building more artificial wombs had paid off nicely. With Serina's knowledge of the entire UNSC database, the science behind the pods wasn't too hard for her to reverse engineer, and several thousand have been produced to speed our population growth. It wasn't all positive, as it had drained resources away from other projects we had going on. Ultimately, though, the bump in manpower was worth it, even if it was ultimately a blip on the population map for humanity as a whole.
I'm sure even the smaller colony worlds had more births in a day than we did with growing people in a week.
That being said, every person we produced as an adult had a 16-year head start in population productivity over the average colony world, as they could be put to work almost immediately. To say nothing of all the worlds that had regressed to medieval, primal, or barely space-capable levels of technology. They would need to dedicate most of their populations to jobs we could automate away with 26th-century dumb AI and machines. Farming and assembly line factories, for example.
In those terms, our population of around 100,000 was probably more productive and efficient than some worlds with tens of millions of people. Most of whom would be stuck slaving away in the fields or low-skill factory jobs.
"You want to start building a navy this early?" Serina asked with a raised holographic eyebrow.
"We're on the clock to impress my patron in case you haven't forgotten Serina." I reminded them as I brought up a file on the holo table with ship designs, logistical needs, and the dockyards that would be needed. It'll be a significant drain on resources, but with it, we could majorly divert the numbers of marines and Spartans that need to be produced currently and achieve our objectives far faster."
Serina shifted her head from side to side as she crunched the digital numbers through her processors, "190 crew per frigate would be far cheaper manpower-wise than the several thousand it took to mount that assault on the crystal city. It would be faster, too. Especially considering we can then strike from orbit with impunity. However, that's only if they don't have some anti-ship weapon that can fire into orbit like we feared they might since, according to your memory, they are a multi-planet species."
"The only way to know for sure is to get ships in orbit." I countered, "And I'd much rather find out by losing a frigate than the Spirit. Besides, if I'm not misremembering, they must have some sort of space transport because they are indeed a multi-planetary species. If they have their own navy, I'd rather us have some form of our own instead of being caught with our pants completely down."
Luckily, it didn't seem like Reach was the home world of these things.
"Fine, fine." Serina accepted, "However, I hope you know we still don't have the capability to manufacture slip space drives and install them, correct?"
I nodded, "I'm aware. Baby steps, though. Once we secure Reach and its lunar orbit, we'll scale back massively on any naval construction and defense production. We'll focus purely on expansion and research to get to a point where we can field FTL on ships that won't instantly die."
As much as the paranoid part of me wanted to go balls to the wall and start building a massive navy, it would be pointless as of right now. The early UNSC ships were too obsolete to handle anything more than an engagement with a smaller star nation. Of which, there could be an uncountable amount depending on whether the crusade had started or not. To say nothing of what the hell was lurking in the Ghoul Stars.
Because of that, whatever was built now would just have to be retrofitted later if it was even feasible to do so. Sometimes, building a massive thing like a naval vessel from scratch was cheaper than trying to fit new designs onto an old superstructure. To say nothing once I got my hands on some of the absolute nutty shit the Imperium had to offer.
I'd probably have to dedicate an entire department to integrating that tech with mine unless I wanted to dump UNSC tech entirely. Maybe I could ask Guilliman for pointers if he's found before me? He would have had to have done something similar with his own empire once they integrated into the Imperium.
"So you still want to go ahead and create your little smart AI-led DARPA/Skunkworks research hub? If you think the Imperium would have a fit over me, having AI actively lead and pushing the realms of science might throw them into a hissy." Serina warned.
I almost questioned why she had used DARPA or Skunkworks specifically, but I assumed she had adjusted her examples and knowledge base to 21st-century references once she found out that's where I was from.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." I said, "Besides if a bunch of 20th-century engineers could push science as far as they had during my time with nothing more than a large coke habit and blank cheques. Imagine what a bunch of coked-out super AI can do."
Besides, this little lab of mine would be buried so far underneath the earth of a mountain that someone would have to have an Abaddon-level smash a Blackstone Fortress into Cadia kind of crash out to get to it.
And if Big E still found out about it, I'd shut it down. Right now, my main purpose was to survive these stars until I could get to the Imperium.
Serina hit me with a flat stare, "AI can't do coke, Atreus."
I grinned, "Not yet, they can't."
No full Mljnoir for our Spartan 1.5's yet. The full power armored version even without energy shields is stupidly costly. Admirals and captains where straight up having aneurisms at the price. 1 suit cost as much as destroyer. The maintenance and upgrades for all 35 Spartan II's armor was even nuttier:
"Captain Rich's brows shot up. "I've never seen these figures before MJOLNIR suit construction, maintenance staff, and recent upgrades to their microfusion plants. Christ! You could build a new battle group for what Halsey is spending.""
- Chapter 2 of Ghosts of Onyx
Best they're getting right now is SPI with heavier plating than normal SPI.
Also if you all have fem primarch/40k art, drop them in the thread. Might make an index page for them since they're a bit of a pain in the ass to find.
Spoiler: Meme
Side note: What would the equivalent of coke be for AI? Like Quote