Date point: 16y11m1d AV
Starship Silent But Deadly, Planet Mordor, Hunter Space
Sergeant Ian Wilde
The thing that Wilde never got his head around was the idea that a spaceship could be as quiet as a breeze. Deadly could fly supersonic, and that obviously wasn’t quiet, but at low speeds she could be pretty much entirely silent. And of course, her cloak made her entirely transparent across the visual spectrum, with not even the faintest blurring or distortion around the edges to give her away.
The intersection of these two capabilities meant Tooko could drop them right next to the target facility, pulling a lazy aerobatic slow roll between two fat cooling towers before alighting as softly as a falling leaf, as close as he could possibly get while still having some concealment to hide the three humans and four Ten’gewek who promptly disembarked. The only noise Deadly made as it took off again was the faint sound of her ramp closing. It was… eerie.
The Hunter wormhole-blocker was a staggeringly ugly bit of architecture. The actual field emitters at the epicenter thrust up from the ground on the most bare-bones of functional scaffolding, and drew power from a trio of what they guessed were nuclear power plants, equidistant around it and sealed away inside blank concrete tombs that the acid rain had stained yellow. Electrified razor fences sealed the gaps between the buildings.
All told, it was almost like the Hunters had deliberately set out to build the most egregious eyesore in the universe. It certainly didn’t impress Ferd, who made a quiet sort of disgusted noise in his throat. Granted he was also wrapped up in a sealed, full-bodied set of nuclear-biological-chemical warfare overgarments, but the sentiment wasn’t wrong.
They darted forward by the numbers, wasting no time. Tumik, Genn, and Nomuk had the dump webs, all six of the ones the ship had in cargo. Although they only planned to use three, they were only going to have one shot at this, and had to prepare for the possibility of redundant shielding. Best to not half-arse it.
This wasn’t a facility run by the natives. This one was all Hunters, and it showed in the architecture, the signage, the weird dimensions. A species with six legs designed their stairs a little differently, building them deeper and less steep. The doors were tall and square, all the equipment mounted on it at at head-height, for a human.
The hump up to the facility wasn’t so bad. They had to play it carefully of course, sticking to the twisty bits of terrain and the occasional half-dead clump of foliage to conceal their approach. That part was the bit that had worried Wilde the most. Ten’Gewek in general were…well, they were naturally better athletes than anyone at basically everything, but that weirdly worked against them, because they didn’t really need to work at anything to be good at it. That meant that, beyond trained skills, their real practical weakness was their conditioning. Or, lack thereof.
For ambush hunting? That was just fine. A long walk carrying something well within their strength to carry? Not so bad. But soldiering, though? That involved a lot of force-march and weird movement across long stretches of awful land. Exactly how much that sort of thing sucked was a rude awakening for his cavemonkey friends, who didn’t much like the idea of their “weak” little humans so easily upstaging them over distance.
So, they’d trained, and trained hard, and done so because Ferd refused to let Wilde beat him at anything. The result was…well, they still didn’t quite have a forty-mile ruck in them, but if any group of cavemonkeys ever would, it would be Wilde’s crew. Oki hadn’t proven up to the task and had to part ways with the team, but the remaining four proved they could hack it. Not bad at all. The approach was therefore…almost entirely free of drama. It was certainly no fun in NBC gear but, well, it could always be worse.
They pulled up into cover right next to the facility with everyone ready to breach. And if Wilde and his men seemed to have executed the approach a bit better, he didn’t gloat about it. Practice would no doubt eventually make perfect.
Besides, the Ten’Gewek got their moment to shine, because as it turned out, hulked-out talking apes could do things with the architecture that humans couldn’t. They could climb like Peter Parker himself and jump like a goddamned salmon. Perfect for overcoming fences. Nomuk ignored one electrified razor-wire fence by the simple expedient of charging at the wall beside it, scrambling up it, grabbing the top and swinging one-handed around the corner, then dropping back down again.
From there, cutting the power was easy for him, and a mere wire fence was no obstacle at all after that.
The first Hunter—a Builder—blundered into them within a hundred yards of the shield boundary. Wilde’s team saw it coming a mile off and went to ground, laid a trap that it promptly stumbled into.
Ferd landed on it from above like an angry boulder with hands. Killing a Hunter had to be done before they had a chance to signal alarm, and having a Ten’Gewek’s explosive quickness along with four literally rock-crushing hands turned out to be a big advantage in that regard.
In one perfect moment of impact, Ferd simultaneously crushed and snapped off its head, used his fookin’ ridiculous weight to pulp its torso and his feet to crack its spine apart like a glowstick, just in case it had any neuroelectronics that might’ve given them away; they’d all enjoyed that bit in training. The builder died instantly.
Decon was going to be an absolute bitch tonight, but…
Worth it.
They moved on without any celebration. For the Ten’Gewek, this was like the most serious of tribal raids, the kind where they would descend like reavers and none would be left alive. It was very rare they went that far—war for them was usually a sort of extreme contact sport more than anything else, and almost always ended in a playful orgy rather than pillage—but when a tribe had so transgressed that they needed to die, Ten’Gewek were a species made to be vicious.
For best results, they were going to attach the dump webs in three spots, just in case the shields were segmented. That way, they could give Tooko a clean shot from pretty much any southern approach. By pure dumb luck—or pure dumb architecture—the Hunters apparently didn’t appreciate windows in their buildings, so every facet of the complex was nothing but towering grey concrete things that made a Soviet Khrushchyovka look decorative.
Wilde and his men rapidly secured the perimeter and got some practice in with their knives. Two blades in exactly the right places could do much the same as Ferd’s insane strength, if not as easily or immediately. They took the opportunity for some sensor emplacement too, because while they were dealing with patrols before the locals noticed…
The Ten’Gewek were climbing those flat, featureless walls after having easily leapt clear over the tall underhangs along the bottom of the wall. They climbed by simply gripping the concrete so hard, their fingers crushed handholds in as they swarmed effortlessly up the corners faster then Wilde could jog across the ground. They’d climbed a very tall building in full gear and with more equipment on their backs than Wilde could even budge, and done so as easily as he would by just standing up.
That feat of monkey-muscle all by itself made the mission possible. Just getting up to the wall would have been a major challenge without them; the start of its flat surface had to be about two storeys or more off the ground. And after that, Wilde and his men would have needed to carefully scale a flat concrete slab of a wall, break out ropes and pitons and hoist the dump webs up one by one…all of that would have taken far too much time. Ten’Gewek didn’t need pitons. Or rope. Hell, Ferd didn’t even bother climbing at the corners. He ran straight up the wall using just the fierce grip in his feet, keeping his arms free to wield his rifle in defense of his men, who were stuck on the semi-exposed corners using all four hands. The big bastard had by far the heaviest load too, and didn’t bother with any prep. He just jumped up like a flea and rammed his toe-fingers straight through the concrete almost like it was cork. Jesus.
The first dump was emplaced without issue. They looked and worked rather like an oversized claymore mine, complete with “this face toward target” printed clearly on one side. When triggered, they would explode an electrostatically sticky mess of superconductive fibers all over the shield in front of them, grounding and short-pathing the shield while simultaneously dumping an enormous stored electrical charge into it.
There was absolutely nothing more effective in the whole galaxy at completely and instantly overwhelming a forcefield and leaving its emitters as a half-molten smoking mess.
The second, too, was in place before the Hunters noticed anything was amiss.
When the Hunters finally responded there was nothing like a commotion, a klaxon, flashing lights or anything of the kind. The only thing that gave them away was when, as one, every Hunter in line of sight immediately stopped whatever they were doing and made a beeline for the concrete building.
Time to start shooting. Ice-calm, with perfectly steady hands, Wilde spoke the first words he’d uttered since leaving the ship.
“Send it.”
They sent it. Hunters died.
Wilde’s men were fantastic shots, and their targets were serviced with maximum economy. The cavemonkeys were pretty good too, especially considering they had leapt down from the top of the building, which was high enough up that they had time to pull their rifles and send pinpoint-accurate fire downrange for a shocking count of seconds, before their ground-shaking impacts shattered the concrete under their feet.
Monkeycommandos were the best thing ever.
Still a bit raw on tactics, though. They didn’t start moving until Rees’ own motion jogged their memories. Not a good mistake to make, but if they lived through this they’d probably not make it again.
That next bit might be tricky. Firstly, Wilde and crew needed to bug out without getting perforated or otherwise dead. Secondly, they needed to do that before the Hunters noticed the special packages they’d left behind, one of which still needed to be placed.
And they needed to get clear so Tooko could send the real fun.
Wilde led the push up. The first actual Hunter—the white ones with the teeth and claws, rather than the nerds—put in an appearance as he did so, barging out of a large steel door thirty feet in front of him, premature and too eager. He dropped it with a neat triple-tap then put a grenade through that door in case it had friends.
The slaughterhouse aftermath said it had.
Behind him, Genn set up the third and final dump web and sang out his success. Time to go, before this turned into a real cake-and-arse party. They dropped smoke grenades, and pulled back under its concealment.
Another awesome fact about monkeycommandos: while they didn’t necessarily have a human’s all-day endurance, they could move like the wind when they needed to, and do so across three dimensions like gravity wasn’t even a thing. This they used to great effect when they made for cover. Ferd snapped up Wilde like a rugby ball and flung them both behind cover, up over around down and sideways across all obstacles, sprinted across the open terrain jinking all the way, then finally slammed them both ignominiously into a fetid ditch, well behind cover.
Thank Christ for their overclothing. It was hot, annoying and itchy, but at least it kept them fully sealed against whatever slimy diseased radioactive horrors they were wallowing in now.
Back around the target, the dump webs went off. Strobing, white-blue light like a fuckup at a power substation made the Ten’Gewek wince even through their ballistic eyepro, and Wilde plainly saw a writhing ribbon of plasma climb into the air.
He keyed his mic. “Pippin… ACTION!!”
That was Tooko’s cue, and their diminutive Gaoian pilot delivered. Barely two seconds after the word left Wilde’s mouth, there was a rip-tearing noise and the Angel of Death himself smashed by overhead.
Wilde had always appreciated air support. Hell, he’d even had occasion to thank the Yanks and their wonderful aircraft in distant sandy wars. He’d never quite appreciated the artistry of it all… but Tooko was clearly a Jedi fucking master at his craft. No wonder the Great Father had personally picked him for this mission.
He wasn’t quite sure what that said about the rest of them.
The whole complex went up, beginning with the all-important Farthrow apparatus in the middle. Those concrete monstrosities around the edges folded and tipped inwards as whatever invisible destructive force Tooko had at his clawtips gouged their supporting walls out. It was the fastest, most crushingly effective demolition job Wilde had ever seen, and it happened in a very literal flash.
Where the greatest obstacle to the invasion had been, a pillar of pulverized concrete dust unfurled lazily into the air.
Now, they were in a race against a second clock. When one Hunter knew a thing, every Hunter knew. The entire planet knew what was going on the instant the fight got started, and that meant they had to get things taken care of right fucking now.
This was Ferd’s biggest job. He had by far the heaviest pack on him, a compact device that, when deployed, would fire megalight drones into the air, snap a jump portal into being, and bring forth the hammer of Daar’s Grand Army. He wedged the package firmly down in a patch of damp, soft earth, heaved the cover off, pushed the very appropriate Big Red Button, and stood back.
He sprang back a little further when the ground-to-orbit mortars fired with their characteristic gut-kicking WHAM!! and streaks of superluminal blue light flashed into the sky. That done, the package violently ejected the mortar tubes and unfolded like clever LEGO origami. In a handful of complicated, clicky seconds it had unfolded into a twenty foot cube.
There was the edge-of-hearing whine of capacitors, and….
Thump.
The liberation of Mordor began.