Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 20:20:34 GMT
Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your bodies down…
--Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Find The Cost of Freedom”
--oOo--
Following the supernaturally augmented invasion of key systems in the Tenebraen Empire, the war—the Quiet War according to the Flux Ascendancy, the Ancerious War according to the Eastern power bloc, and simply another war to the Immortal Empire—began to show its increasing scope in greater abundance. With the mobilization of forces by the SSC and the Union, peace quickly receded into obscurity. Before, it had merely dallied on the horizon. Operation Blackball’s scorched worlds policy certainly indicated that the Centum were well committed to seeing the undoing of the Immortal Empire and their shadowy benefactors, and their shadowy benefactors carefully prepared accordingly.
There were minor defenses already in place of course, though minor here is really a subjective term. To the Flux Ascendancy, they were minor; they had still throughout the last two years of conflict only managed to engage the Temporians once, as both sides appeared skittish of out and out unbarred conflict. General Pallam, a veteran of the Nakai wars, held defenses against the Union of Worlds, ever prepared for what he considered was likely an inevitable assault. In his own mind his was an unenviable position, though not for the straightforward pragmatic reasons that guide the minds of most master strategists. While he only had 400 ships or so at his disposal, this should by his estimate be more than enough to hold off an assault force. After all, Pallam would later recount, four ships had almost single handedly annihilated a fleet of 800 Capitol warships, and while he certainly estimated the Union’s technical prowess as well above what Capitol was capable of fielding, both Capitol and the Union of Worlds—and, privately he might have acknowledged, so it was too with the lower castes of the Ascendancy—were ultimately human, and as with most things if it bled, it could be killed. After having fought tooth and nail to rid this galaxy of the Nakai once before, Pallam privately believed that mere mortals would be a refreshing change of pace, though he again did not at all envy his duty. Pallam’s unseen line of defense stretched like a tripwire, and his orders stood. If the Union of Worlds deployed forces beyond that line, FSEMCEs would quickly hit them well before they could reach any systems of value; he would not however engage in offensive operations against them.
The reasoning for this was simple, and it was why General Pallam did not envy his command. While Dorin had, while she was still alive anyway, held the Union as a wary matter in that they knew of the Ascendancy and remained independent of its pervasive tendrils yet equally did not seek to annihilate them, Pallam found almost a sense of favour for them in his own eyes. After all, the Nakai were revolting against them, and he felt a natural empathy for any force which found itself hated by the Nakai. Having been there himself, he felt no desire to weaken them further; they would need all the strength they could muster to maintain solidarity in the face of such brutal opponents. Were it not for the fact that the Emperor of their faction, a man called Myric, would have likely been repelled by any offers of assistance from cosmic puppeteers like the Ascendancy, Pallam would have found it quite feasible to offer assistance to his cause. It is strange how wars can separate like minded men from each other, as it did here; so Pallam’s line stood silently awaiting judgement day. His ships were carefully tucked away in nebulas and asteroid thickets, well obscured from sensors that even then would have been likely unable to perceive them. Around the Bolt, trade continued relatively unhampered, and the traders traded unaware of the powers that lurked among them.
Then it came to pass that on the morning that the Centum began advancing into Immortal Empire space with a formidable fleet that Our Superiors, the successor to Prime Admiral Dorin’s leadership following her assassination by Chaw’Haust, contacted General Pallam.
--oOo--
But of a less stealthy matter was the business of stars. In particular, we here are addressing the matter of stars well far away from the combat zone, on the backside as it were of the Immortal Empire and her Cerebian colonies. To the naked eye, these stars or the changes occurring to them would not be perceived by the naked eye for several thousand years by the allies; of course, FTL sensor systems such as R.U.S.E were aware of these changes within a substantially shorter length of time than that.
The changes, put simply, were these; a pair of dead, lifeless, empty strips were opened up in the fabric of space. Each empty waste lay hundreds of light years across, and in these strips of no man’s land the stars were going out. They went out in a number of ways, as if the executor of the deeds held in their hearts a certain sense of whimsy. Some stars were rapidly aged out. Others were primed and erupted in violent supernovas. Others simply were carried away; entire stars drifted to one side or another of these vast strips of void, carried at superluminal speeds my means those who may have viewed them distantly could not at all imagine. This was the first time the Ascendancy had moved stars in several millennia, for the process was inherently much more visible than they preferred. To an astute and suspiciously omniscient viewer, the fact that such moves were taking place gave something critical away about the nature of the new minds leading the Ascendancy. Dorin’s day had indeed past, though beyond the highest echelons of the Heraldic society few fully appreciated the ramifications of this changing of the guard. Our Superiors had come to the conclusion that it was simply not feasible at this time to contain the spread of their name. Like their predecessor, Our Superiors also believed that they did not at this time possess the means to initiate a full galactic sterilization. Whether or not they believed the Ascendancy would ever again possess that strength is open to speculation; very much can be speculated about Our Superiors, and even to the Flux it was largely a pleasant mystery.
One noteworthy change of policy here though merits mentioning. While Our Superiors had concluded that the Flux would gradually continue to become known, they also knew that they could decide just what would be known about them. So they began with throwing stars around the night sky.
It is worth noting that as far as anyone could tell, this region of space had always been remarkably barren of life; unlike the Golden Expanse, however, these were not dead and lifeless worlds. Indeed, the strip between these two insulating voids was remarkable rich and fragrant in energies and resources; it was a veritable garden of Eden. The Ascendancy had seen to this too, of course. There had been no massacres, no unwritings of races here; they’d merely picked up planets where sentient races would eventually evolve and carefully tucked them away, securing them from the coming maelstrom.
--oOo—
(to be conveyed via Emissary Dalyth to the Immortal Empire for ultimate consumption by Alice Maydic, director of supernatural research programs for the Overlord. The emissary may redact and correct information for sensitivity’s sake as she sees fit. This message is facilitated by order of Our Superiors.)
Greetings,
Having long admired, consulted, and envied your work, I feel it a distinct privilege to be able to write to you now and to write knowing that I am speaking to a mind so gifted as your own. I am not yet at liberty I fear to give too much specifics as pertains to who I am, where I come from, where I am…I fear I must be a bit of a mystery to you, and for how long that is to be I cannot say either. What I can say I that we as shadows reflect each other; I mirror your work, and you mirror mine, and as we both are committed to securing victory for the Overlord it is only fitting that we at least consult upon each other and so improve our own efficiency.
Enclosed with this letter is a digital summary of my research into counter-supernatural techniques as well as supernatural mediums as a whole; I do not believe I have been quite as successful as you have been when it comes to indigenous replication, but I have made unique progress in a few avenues you have as yet not begun to inquire into. I likewise imagine you may have complimentary research to offer for my own benefit; I do not feel it is too far of a leap of faith to say that any documents you offer to the Emerald Guards with intent for my consumption will ultimately reach me in time. To collaborate even remotely will surely increase the benefits of our harvest.
Having been as pleasantly rewarded as I was surely by the Immortal Empire’s occupation of the Tenebraen territories, I can only imagine you have been contemplating how to apply further such elements into your own work; I can hazard the guess quite safely that in particular, you’re looking into the possibility of protecting AC-W Type II vessels with Pheonix Sigils so as to make them impervious to containment techniques. Do not be alarmed by my insight here; I have not been spying upon you I promise. I merely track your logic quite closely, and in fairness my thoughts came to that point quite quickly as well.
I must speak strongly against such notions however; while we…and here I say we fully expecting to be censored…have over millions of years mastered how to harness the Aberration to the extent that they were used so successfully against the Nakai that no records on their part exist of its deployment, a regenerating strain would be utterly uncontrollable. At best, it is a doomsday weapon of last resort. I do not in the least advocate for testing of such a strain, as I doubt even with the symbiotic entities we mount it into the strain would behave itself well…
--oOo—
“His timeline reasserts itself here,” the figure said, pointing to a point in space and time incomprehensible to conventional minds.
“He did self terminate, did he not?”
“He did so here.”
“Yet he is…here.”
“And in pain. I do not imagine our enemies are inclined to risk not knowing versus sleeping well at night.”
“The Tenebraens have mastered the art of preserving life post death. The potential of it being a security liability is quite evident I fear.”
“Never mind the pain.”
“The pain?”
“They’re attempting to extract information from him. He is only privy to plans pertaining to Exceion, thankfully.”
Silence for a moment. They are all thinking together.
“Even then, he cannot reveal too much. There is an hour gap between his self termination and forced resurrection. The lack of oxygen to the brain leaves him with limited capacity for expression beyond final thoughts.”
“The contents of the briefcase however are valuable. If not secured promptly, timelines show the contents being used rather distastefully by the cultists.”
--oOo—
Field Governor Augustus Kohl watched with serious intent the regular updates of the mass landings on New Callisto. They’d organized quite quickly…
“Triangulations of reentry trails confirm seismic readings of terrestrial impact at these points predominantly. Additionally they confirm yesterday’s preliminary landings. Via infantry deployed surface to low orbit satellite systems we’ve tracked thermal and psychic signatures matching the infantry and vehicles deployed by the bogie.” The aide reported succinctly, gesturing to a region at a distance from the significant landing zones.
“As long as we’re occupying the urban centers,” Kohl mused guardedly, “their orbital superiority will be pointless. Soft jamming systems make accurate telemetry for orbital bombardment impossible; they’d slaughter civilian populations even with low yield kinetic weapons simply by merit of inaccuracy. More importantly, they know this. Has Central Command responded to my request for evacuation transports for civilian populations?”
“It’s not feasible at this point Field Governor.” The aide replied, “Particularly with the situation on the space front.”
Kohl didn’t answer immediately. He instead leaned down towards the display table in contemplation. The response to their expedition had been well anticipated, hoped for even, but it was remarkably timely. Marvelously swift. He looked up after a short silence and nodded.
“Tell the boys in counter-intelligence to shut down the broadcasts and power up the higher jamming functions. They can’t abort landings at this point; they’ve already committed too many men.” He disliked that phrase, and his mouth contorted slightly in disgust at it. Too many men. Too many men. He didn’t have a soldier’s heart, but he had a soldier’s mind. And really, being a heartless soldier has its merits.
“…and notify the woodsmen to trigger delta options on the landing zones. Let’s not let them get their balance.”
With that, Field Governor Augustus Kohl gestured over to another aide, who provided him with a bio reader tablet. He pressed the palm of his hand to it with a firm sense of purpose: preventing the end.
--oOo—
The woodsmen all had nice names, and nice suits. Oak. Birch. Alder. Decidedly not woodsy looking folks, and not the sort to be seen in flannels with an axe by their side. They wore tightly cropped hair cuts, immaculately tailored yet refined suits, and a quiet sort of ominous energy that they wrapped their souls in like it was a shall. Of course, by now the suits were gone; they were embedded quite innocuously among populations both civilian and military, and they vanished utterly like chameleons.
For the sake of a straight forward explanation, what Field Governor Augustus Kohl knew as the delta options were known to the Flux Ascendancy as the Great Weapons. They had not typically been fielded since the Nakai Wars on account of their dramatic nature, but with the new mandate of Our Superiors to demonstrate more efficiently the varieties of force at their disposal, special dispensations had been made for the sake of prolonging the occupation of Tenebraen worlds. After all, a point had to be made to the Centum much in the way that a dog required training to sit and stay: by means of a sharp rap on the nose. If Our Superiors had known of Lilith Sloane’s impending defection, what they would have invoked on this day would have been gravely more severe.
In particular, the delta option the woodsmen found palatable here today was known in laymen’s terms as terrestrial density modification. The Flux of course had a more elegant name for the process, as they delighted in a macabre sense of refinement when it came to making a point: they called it Divine Burial.
--oOo—
The Divine Burial of the First Colonial Army commenced with silence. Not a silence that could be heard, obviously; true silence as the Flux would define it is imperceptible. So here what I mean to say is that those about to die were caught utterly unaware.
There never was a Radio Free New Callisto. To imagine that the Immortal Empire or the Flux Ascendancy would have tolerated dissenting broadcasts without raising a finger to interfere with them was certainly a strange assumption. In fairness, those who the occupiers were attempting to be tricked were merely rebel elements; by masquerading as one of their own fold, Radio Free New Callisto and the counter-intelligence officers who operated it had gained key insight into the nature of the resistance. Pertinent parties would in time be arrested, but as it stands the boys in counter-intelligence had already well infiltrated the newborn resistance movement right from its conception. So it was a pleasant surprise that, as an additional level of icing to their cake, Radio Free New Callisto had inadvertently mislead the impending invasion force of the facts regarding just what was occuring on the surface.
Thus, almost at the strike of midnight on the first day of the invasion, communications were severed. It appeared to be an unusually dramatic thunder storm, though in this day and age a thunder storm of such a caliber being capable of interfering with surface to orbit communications was exceedingly unusual. Hyper-ionized particles flooded the atmosphere with seeming spontaneity in defiance of common ideas of atmospheric behavior. While there was no cold front colliding with a warm front here, thunder boomed through the night sky as clouds obscured the heavens, and a light hail began to pelt the helmets of the invader’s invaders.
In their defense, most if not all of the First Colonial Army had ever personally experienced the phenomena known as earthquake weather.
From a purely physical perspective, earthquakes and quicksand share a surprising amount of common ground. Of course, in both cases ground is rendered unusable; a fact soon to be demonstrated with particular force to the First Colonial Army. In the most specific terms, what is being discussed here is the concept of soil liquification. Through the influence of the Ascendancy’s Divine Burial and under a stormy starless sky, the most unnaturally natural tragedy in the history of modern military campaigning unfolded.
It began with the heavy machinery. The battle tanks sank first, their treads churning up a liquid sea of viscous soil as the woodsmen invoked the quantum harmonics of the universe to execute their bidding. Hail poured down, and the tanks sank into quagmire; and under a constant barrage of thunder cracks the soil flowed past the tank’s turrets as they dove or were dragged—it was difficult to ascertain quite what was occurring given the lighting and the weather—into the heart of the earth. And the armoured cars and the APCs followed the spearhead of the taskforce into the ground, a heavy metal vanguard charging strait to the gates of hell.
Trees toppled; their roots no longer able to support their stature on account of the fluid nature of the ground. The only survivors were those who managed to find solid rock to stand on, and it was far and few and unforgivingly scarce in these parts. Hover vehicles scarcely fared better as they kicked up a spray of soil which no longer gave the resistance required to levitate their hulking armoured chassis. They sank more slowly, admittedly, and their crews had some greater success at escaping a dark entombment within plated sepulchures under feet of slowly reconstituting soil.
Then the men began to drown as mother earth embraced her children. Far lighter than the vehicles that guarded them and carried them, they lived well past the departure of their iron chariots and mechanical assets. Mother began by swallowing their legs, and her children screamed.
Even before the sun rose, select airstrikes pounded remaining thermal signatures in the affected regions. Dazed and confused by the night, the twilight of the dawn brought little comfort to the ragtag survivors of the ordeal. By morning, well over 300 square miles of land had been subjected to the Divine Burial. Outside of urban areas, the civilian population was remarkably unscathed; those in homes with concrete foundations suffered property damage extensively, but were well able to escape the unholy carnage of the previous night. The dissipation of the storm above revealed to the invasion force the unprecedented consumption of the near entirety of the expedition force within twenty four hours of groundfall. While more waves certainly could be deployed, the uncertain nature of what precisely had befallen the First Colonial Army’s initial expedition would leave deadly questions echoing in the mind of the next wave.
Minor aftershocks continued as the sun rose over the sunken hulks; not having been an earthquake in the conventional sense, these aftershocks did not amount to more than a low rumble that dwindled into nonexistence by the end of the day. In the landing zones the scavengers would arrive in time, but would find little above a depth of ten feet. They would typically instead prefer to head for greener pastures.
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your bodies down…
--Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Find The Cost of Freedom”
--oOo--
Following the supernaturally augmented invasion of key systems in the Tenebraen Empire, the war—the Quiet War according to the Flux Ascendancy, the Ancerious War according to the Eastern power bloc, and simply another war to the Immortal Empire—began to show its increasing scope in greater abundance. With the mobilization of forces by the SSC and the Union, peace quickly receded into obscurity. Before, it had merely dallied on the horizon. Operation Blackball’s scorched worlds policy certainly indicated that the Centum were well committed to seeing the undoing of the Immortal Empire and their shadowy benefactors, and their shadowy benefactors carefully prepared accordingly.
There were minor defenses already in place of course, though minor here is really a subjective term. To the Flux Ascendancy, they were minor; they had still throughout the last two years of conflict only managed to engage the Temporians once, as both sides appeared skittish of out and out unbarred conflict. General Pallam, a veteran of the Nakai wars, held defenses against the Union of Worlds, ever prepared for what he considered was likely an inevitable assault. In his own mind his was an unenviable position, though not for the straightforward pragmatic reasons that guide the minds of most master strategists. While he only had 400 ships or so at his disposal, this should by his estimate be more than enough to hold off an assault force. After all, Pallam would later recount, four ships had almost single handedly annihilated a fleet of 800 Capitol warships, and while he certainly estimated the Union’s technical prowess as well above what Capitol was capable of fielding, both Capitol and the Union of Worlds—and, privately he might have acknowledged, so it was too with the lower castes of the Ascendancy—were ultimately human, and as with most things if it bled, it could be killed. After having fought tooth and nail to rid this galaxy of the Nakai once before, Pallam privately believed that mere mortals would be a refreshing change of pace, though he again did not at all envy his duty. Pallam’s unseen line of defense stretched like a tripwire, and his orders stood. If the Union of Worlds deployed forces beyond that line, FSEMCEs would quickly hit them well before they could reach any systems of value; he would not however engage in offensive operations against them.
The reasoning for this was simple, and it was why General Pallam did not envy his command. While Dorin had, while she was still alive anyway, held the Union as a wary matter in that they knew of the Ascendancy and remained independent of its pervasive tendrils yet equally did not seek to annihilate them, Pallam found almost a sense of favour for them in his own eyes. After all, the Nakai were revolting against them, and he felt a natural empathy for any force which found itself hated by the Nakai. Having been there himself, he felt no desire to weaken them further; they would need all the strength they could muster to maintain solidarity in the face of such brutal opponents. Were it not for the fact that the Emperor of their faction, a man called Myric, would have likely been repelled by any offers of assistance from cosmic puppeteers like the Ascendancy, Pallam would have found it quite feasible to offer assistance to his cause. It is strange how wars can separate like minded men from each other, as it did here; so Pallam’s line stood silently awaiting judgement day. His ships were carefully tucked away in nebulas and asteroid thickets, well obscured from sensors that even then would have been likely unable to perceive them. Around the Bolt, trade continued relatively unhampered, and the traders traded unaware of the powers that lurked among them.
Then it came to pass that on the morning that the Centum began advancing into Immortal Empire space with a formidable fleet that Our Superiors, the successor to Prime Admiral Dorin’s leadership following her assassination by Chaw’Haust, contacted General Pallam.
--oOo--
But of a less stealthy matter was the business of stars. In particular, we here are addressing the matter of stars well far away from the combat zone, on the backside as it were of the Immortal Empire and her Cerebian colonies. To the naked eye, these stars or the changes occurring to them would not be perceived by the naked eye for several thousand years by the allies; of course, FTL sensor systems such as R.U.S.E were aware of these changes within a substantially shorter length of time than that.
The changes, put simply, were these; a pair of dead, lifeless, empty strips were opened up in the fabric of space. Each empty waste lay hundreds of light years across, and in these strips of no man’s land the stars were going out. They went out in a number of ways, as if the executor of the deeds held in their hearts a certain sense of whimsy. Some stars were rapidly aged out. Others were primed and erupted in violent supernovas. Others simply were carried away; entire stars drifted to one side or another of these vast strips of void, carried at superluminal speeds my means those who may have viewed them distantly could not at all imagine. This was the first time the Ascendancy had moved stars in several millennia, for the process was inherently much more visible than they preferred. To an astute and suspiciously omniscient viewer, the fact that such moves were taking place gave something critical away about the nature of the new minds leading the Ascendancy. Dorin’s day had indeed past, though beyond the highest echelons of the Heraldic society few fully appreciated the ramifications of this changing of the guard. Our Superiors had come to the conclusion that it was simply not feasible at this time to contain the spread of their name. Like their predecessor, Our Superiors also believed that they did not at this time possess the means to initiate a full galactic sterilization. Whether or not they believed the Ascendancy would ever again possess that strength is open to speculation; very much can be speculated about Our Superiors, and even to the Flux it was largely a pleasant mystery.
One noteworthy change of policy here though merits mentioning. While Our Superiors had concluded that the Flux would gradually continue to become known, they also knew that they could decide just what would be known about them. So they began with throwing stars around the night sky.
It is worth noting that as far as anyone could tell, this region of space had always been remarkably barren of life; unlike the Golden Expanse, however, these were not dead and lifeless worlds. Indeed, the strip between these two insulating voids was remarkable rich and fragrant in energies and resources; it was a veritable garden of Eden. The Ascendancy had seen to this too, of course. There had been no massacres, no unwritings of races here; they’d merely picked up planets where sentient races would eventually evolve and carefully tucked them away, securing them from the coming maelstrom.
--oOo—
(to be conveyed via Emissary Dalyth to the Immortal Empire for ultimate consumption by Alice Maydic, director of supernatural research programs for the Overlord. The emissary may redact and correct information for sensitivity’s sake as she sees fit. This message is facilitated by order of Our Superiors.)
Greetings,
Having long admired, consulted, and envied your work, I feel it a distinct privilege to be able to write to you now and to write knowing that I am speaking to a mind so gifted as your own. I am not yet at liberty I fear to give too much specifics as pertains to who I am, where I come from, where I am…I fear I must be a bit of a mystery to you, and for how long that is to be I cannot say either. What I can say I that we as shadows reflect each other; I mirror your work, and you mirror mine, and as we both are committed to securing victory for the Overlord it is only fitting that we at least consult upon each other and so improve our own efficiency.
Enclosed with this letter is a digital summary of my research into counter-supernatural techniques as well as supernatural mediums as a whole; I do not believe I have been quite as successful as you have been when it comes to indigenous replication, but I have made unique progress in a few avenues you have as yet not begun to inquire into. I likewise imagine you may have complimentary research to offer for my own benefit; I do not feel it is too far of a leap of faith to say that any documents you offer to the Emerald Guards with intent for my consumption will ultimately reach me in time. To collaborate even remotely will surely increase the benefits of our harvest.
Having been as pleasantly rewarded as I was surely by the Immortal Empire’s occupation of the Tenebraen territories, I can only imagine you have been contemplating how to apply further such elements into your own work; I can hazard the guess quite safely that in particular, you’re looking into the possibility of protecting AC-W Type II vessels with Pheonix Sigils so as to make them impervious to containment techniques. Do not be alarmed by my insight here; I have not been spying upon you I promise. I merely track your logic quite closely, and in fairness my thoughts came to that point quite quickly as well.
I must speak strongly against such notions however; while we…and here I say we fully expecting to be censored…have over millions of years mastered how to harness the Aberration to the extent that they were used so successfully against the Nakai that no records on their part exist of its deployment, a regenerating strain would be utterly uncontrollable. At best, it is a doomsday weapon of last resort. I do not in the least advocate for testing of such a strain, as I doubt even with the symbiotic entities we mount it into the strain would behave itself well…
--oOo—
“His timeline reasserts itself here,” the figure said, pointing to a point in space and time incomprehensible to conventional minds.
“He did self terminate, did he not?”
“He did so here.”
“Yet he is…here.”
“And in pain. I do not imagine our enemies are inclined to risk not knowing versus sleeping well at night.”
“The Tenebraens have mastered the art of preserving life post death. The potential of it being a security liability is quite evident I fear.”
“Never mind the pain.”
“The pain?”
“They’re attempting to extract information from him. He is only privy to plans pertaining to Exceion, thankfully.”
Silence for a moment. They are all thinking together.
“Even then, he cannot reveal too much. There is an hour gap between his self termination and forced resurrection. The lack of oxygen to the brain leaves him with limited capacity for expression beyond final thoughts.”
“The contents of the briefcase however are valuable. If not secured promptly, timelines show the contents being used rather distastefully by the cultists.”
--oOo—
Field Governor Augustus Kohl watched with serious intent the regular updates of the mass landings on New Callisto. They’d organized quite quickly…
“Triangulations of reentry trails confirm seismic readings of terrestrial impact at these points predominantly. Additionally they confirm yesterday’s preliminary landings. Via infantry deployed surface to low orbit satellite systems we’ve tracked thermal and psychic signatures matching the infantry and vehicles deployed by the bogie.” The aide reported succinctly, gesturing to a region at a distance from the significant landing zones.
“As long as we’re occupying the urban centers,” Kohl mused guardedly, “their orbital superiority will be pointless. Soft jamming systems make accurate telemetry for orbital bombardment impossible; they’d slaughter civilian populations even with low yield kinetic weapons simply by merit of inaccuracy. More importantly, they know this. Has Central Command responded to my request for evacuation transports for civilian populations?”
“It’s not feasible at this point Field Governor.” The aide replied, “Particularly with the situation on the space front.”
Kohl didn’t answer immediately. He instead leaned down towards the display table in contemplation. The response to their expedition had been well anticipated, hoped for even, but it was remarkably timely. Marvelously swift. He looked up after a short silence and nodded.
“Tell the boys in counter-intelligence to shut down the broadcasts and power up the higher jamming functions. They can’t abort landings at this point; they’ve already committed too many men.” He disliked that phrase, and his mouth contorted slightly in disgust at it. Too many men. Too many men. He didn’t have a soldier’s heart, but he had a soldier’s mind. And really, being a heartless soldier has its merits.
“…and notify the woodsmen to trigger delta options on the landing zones. Let’s not let them get their balance.”
With that, Field Governor Augustus Kohl gestured over to another aide, who provided him with a bio reader tablet. He pressed the palm of his hand to it with a firm sense of purpose: preventing the end.
--oOo—
The woodsmen all had nice names, and nice suits. Oak. Birch. Alder. Decidedly not woodsy looking folks, and not the sort to be seen in flannels with an axe by their side. They wore tightly cropped hair cuts, immaculately tailored yet refined suits, and a quiet sort of ominous energy that they wrapped their souls in like it was a shall. Of course, by now the suits were gone; they were embedded quite innocuously among populations both civilian and military, and they vanished utterly like chameleons.
For the sake of a straight forward explanation, what Field Governor Augustus Kohl knew as the delta options were known to the Flux Ascendancy as the Great Weapons. They had not typically been fielded since the Nakai Wars on account of their dramatic nature, but with the new mandate of Our Superiors to demonstrate more efficiently the varieties of force at their disposal, special dispensations had been made for the sake of prolonging the occupation of Tenebraen worlds. After all, a point had to be made to the Centum much in the way that a dog required training to sit and stay: by means of a sharp rap on the nose. If Our Superiors had known of Lilith Sloane’s impending defection, what they would have invoked on this day would have been gravely more severe.
In particular, the delta option the woodsmen found palatable here today was known in laymen’s terms as terrestrial density modification. The Flux of course had a more elegant name for the process, as they delighted in a macabre sense of refinement when it came to making a point: they called it Divine Burial.
--oOo—
The Divine Burial of the First Colonial Army commenced with silence. Not a silence that could be heard, obviously; true silence as the Flux would define it is imperceptible. So here what I mean to say is that those about to die were caught utterly unaware.
There never was a Radio Free New Callisto. To imagine that the Immortal Empire or the Flux Ascendancy would have tolerated dissenting broadcasts without raising a finger to interfere with them was certainly a strange assumption. In fairness, those who the occupiers were attempting to be tricked were merely rebel elements; by masquerading as one of their own fold, Radio Free New Callisto and the counter-intelligence officers who operated it had gained key insight into the nature of the resistance. Pertinent parties would in time be arrested, but as it stands the boys in counter-intelligence had already well infiltrated the newborn resistance movement right from its conception. So it was a pleasant surprise that, as an additional level of icing to their cake, Radio Free New Callisto had inadvertently mislead the impending invasion force of the facts regarding just what was occuring on the surface.
Thus, almost at the strike of midnight on the first day of the invasion, communications were severed. It appeared to be an unusually dramatic thunder storm, though in this day and age a thunder storm of such a caliber being capable of interfering with surface to orbit communications was exceedingly unusual. Hyper-ionized particles flooded the atmosphere with seeming spontaneity in defiance of common ideas of atmospheric behavior. While there was no cold front colliding with a warm front here, thunder boomed through the night sky as clouds obscured the heavens, and a light hail began to pelt the helmets of the invader’s invaders.
In their defense, most if not all of the First Colonial Army had ever personally experienced the phenomena known as earthquake weather.
From a purely physical perspective, earthquakes and quicksand share a surprising amount of common ground. Of course, in both cases ground is rendered unusable; a fact soon to be demonstrated with particular force to the First Colonial Army. In the most specific terms, what is being discussed here is the concept of soil liquification. Through the influence of the Ascendancy’s Divine Burial and under a stormy starless sky, the most unnaturally natural tragedy in the history of modern military campaigning unfolded.
It began with the heavy machinery. The battle tanks sank first, their treads churning up a liquid sea of viscous soil as the woodsmen invoked the quantum harmonics of the universe to execute their bidding. Hail poured down, and the tanks sank into quagmire; and under a constant barrage of thunder cracks the soil flowed past the tank’s turrets as they dove or were dragged—it was difficult to ascertain quite what was occurring given the lighting and the weather—into the heart of the earth. And the armoured cars and the APCs followed the spearhead of the taskforce into the ground, a heavy metal vanguard charging strait to the gates of hell.
Trees toppled; their roots no longer able to support their stature on account of the fluid nature of the ground. The only survivors were those who managed to find solid rock to stand on, and it was far and few and unforgivingly scarce in these parts. Hover vehicles scarcely fared better as they kicked up a spray of soil which no longer gave the resistance required to levitate their hulking armoured chassis. They sank more slowly, admittedly, and their crews had some greater success at escaping a dark entombment within plated sepulchures under feet of slowly reconstituting soil.
Then the men began to drown as mother earth embraced her children. Far lighter than the vehicles that guarded them and carried them, they lived well past the departure of their iron chariots and mechanical assets. Mother began by swallowing their legs, and her children screamed.
Even before the sun rose, select airstrikes pounded remaining thermal signatures in the affected regions. Dazed and confused by the night, the twilight of the dawn brought little comfort to the ragtag survivors of the ordeal. By morning, well over 300 square miles of land had been subjected to the Divine Burial. Outside of urban areas, the civilian population was remarkably unscathed; those in homes with concrete foundations suffered property damage extensively, but were well able to escape the unholy carnage of the previous night. The dissipation of the storm above revealed to the invasion force the unprecedented consumption of the near entirety of the expedition force within twenty four hours of groundfall. While more waves certainly could be deployed, the uncertain nature of what precisely had befallen the First Colonial Army’s initial expedition would leave deadly questions echoing in the mind of the next wave.
Minor aftershocks continued as the sun rose over the sunken hulks; not having been an earthquake in the conventional sense, these aftershocks did not amount to more than a low rumble that dwindled into nonexistence by the end of the day. In the landing zones the scavengers would arrive in time, but would find little above a depth of ten feet. They would typically instead prefer to head for greener pastures.