Kick the Sphere 34 (Patreon)

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 34

-VB-

It was a tidal wave of flesh and teeth.

“I’m overheating!” 

“Fuck! Fall back! All units fall back!”

“We can’t! They’re behind us!”

It didn’t matter how good the soldiers were. 

“Captain, I’m out of autocannon ammunition!”

“GAH! My mech’s shut down!”

“No no no no no -!” 

It didn’t matter if the Great Houses scorched their own worlds.

“There are millions down there!” 

“Fire all nukes.”

“You’re own family is down there!” 

Nothing mattered. 

When the Swarm came in their giant organic ships and that monstrous void dragon, it signaled the death of the world.

They stripped worlds in their path of all things living. They devoured everything until resistance itself was eaten up. Only when the populace froze in horror and ran away in fear of their lives were they “left alone.” Then they spread throughout the world, setting up their living structures like ants and bees. Finally, they tainted those worlds with their hives and spawned more of themselves to invade more worlds. 

It was wholly different from the machines that stripped Betelgeuse of all metal.

The first wave struck like a lightning deep into the Sian Commonality. 

Shiba. Buenos Aires. Kurvasa. Bellatrix. 

And then from there, they invaded all systems closest to those worlds in a second wave mere three weeks after the first. 

Dicon, Prix, Decatur, Columbine, Vard, Egress, Borden, Drozan, Turin, Barras, Principia, Nilomede. 

The third wave struck past the commonality’s core and sought to tear the peripheral worlds away from the Capellan Confederation. 

Menke, Victoria, Mitchel, Jacson.

The Capellan Confederation didn’t have the numbers to stop it. They didn’t have the loyalty to stop it. 

And they certainly didn’t have the will to stop it after the first wave. 

Dropping nukes did nothing. Those bastards just dug in, literally, and came out once the debris, blast, and annoying humans disappeared.

A nuke would pause the Swarm for a few days, and if they suffered any casualties, then by that time next week, they would be double their original size. 

Nothing stopped them.

So …

So the Capellan Confederation gave up. They just pulled any useful assets and people out of the rimward Sian Commonality and brought them towards the coreward part. 

In the coming months, the people left behind by the confederation would come under the “rule” of the Swarm.

The rimward Sian Commonality was lost. 

That was just Swarm Space now.

-VB-

It was not any better in the League space. 

Unlike the Zerg Swarm that pierced, multiplied, and spread out until they were touching the Federated Suns just one system over, the Red Fleet attacked the Free Worlds League with inhuman precision. 

After taking over Ryerson, they struck at the nearest industrial worlds: Lopez, Shiro, Andurien, and Mosiro.

Of all of the worlds that suffered, Andurien was a reflection of what happened to Betelgeuse. 

The machines rained down like orbital bombardment and then struck at the defenders. 

Andurien was the seat of the Duchy of Andurien. With a population nearing 5 billion, the Duchess of Andurien, Madame Humphreys, put a lot of effort into making sure that it was properly defended. With three fully operational and veteran combined arms regiments of the Defenders of Andurien stationed here, it would take at least a division and a half for any attackers to stand a chance of winning against the defenders.

But was there ever a chance that they could have defended from … this? 

Colonel Adam Humphreys - a cousin of the current duchess - stared at the map of the solar system. The few professional astronomers Andurien employed meticulously tracked the trio of warships heading towards the planet. 

It was … utterly alien.

And perhaps, if he and the other worlds of the Free Worlds League had received warnings, then they might have evacuated important factories. Or something. Anything. But they didn’t get any warning. 

There was no thrust. No flare. Nothing that would indicate that it ran on conventional technology. Bad news, those warships weren’t stopping and headed right for the capital city on Andurien. Worse news, the astronomers had a good estimation of three warship’s combined weight and combined with their heading, lack of deceleration, and speed, they also had a rough estimate of the damages they would be on the receiving end. 

Evacuation orders had already gone out, but he wasn’t sure if it mattered. 

Because when three one-million-ton spear-shaped projectiles tore through space at nearly one percent the speed of light, it wasn’t a question of whether the city would stand but if the continent would be habitable afterwards. 

“Are all of the birds in the air?” he asked. 

“Yes, sir,” his adjutant replied from behind him.

“Good. You all know the plan. Whether those things are warships or not, the plan is stupid simple: we hit it hard the moment it gets into orbit with everything we have. The duchess granted us the leeway to use nuclear bombs if it comes down to it, and I intend to shatter those spears with them.”

---

Adam watched the screen as the aerospace fighters came with striking distance of the quiet warships…

“Brave Squad leader here. Those are not warships.”

“Tell me what you see, Brave Squad,” Adam immediately ordered. 

“It almost looks an opaque crystalline stalagmite. Wai-?”

And then it cut off. 

“Brave Squad?”

“This is Brave Squad’s second! Leader’s dead! Atom Squad is all gone! Those things are warships! We’re getting bombarded-!”

“Fire all nukes! Fire them now!” Adam ordered frantically. 

“Shit, that thing is breaking-!”

“What the fuck is that?!”

“I’ve got four on my tail! Anyone help-?!”

“The warship’s covered in drones! They’re all drones!” 

Adam stood there in the command center bunker underneath Jojoken as he listened to over forty aerospace fighter pilots screaming as they died in droves. 

“Sir, the warships are breaking apart!” someone shouted from the back.

“Any sign of nuclear detonation?”

“Negative! I repeat, negative, sir! Sir, the -. Each warship is breaking up into a dozen pieces. All same size…” the sergeant continued to talk, listening to the astronomers talking to him. “They’re descending!” 

No more than five minutes later, the bunker shook.

Then this time, it was the ground forces screaming into the radio.

“Spiders! There’s machine spiders everywhere!” 

“These fuckers are eating through my mech!”

“Where’s a fucking flamer when you need one?!”

“They went after my servos! I can’t move!”

Everyone in the command center listened to the dead and dying for hours on end as he and other officers tried everything they knew about warfare to turn the situation around.

It was in vain.

And finally, someone found a video feed from the surface.

Adam warily put it up on the screen, and it showed the city from the outside. He watched as the city’s skyline seemed to melt in real time. 

Everything melted away.

And from all of it, a tidal wave of silver and blue metallic spiders poured out.

KIIING KIIING

His eyes snapped towards the bunker doors. 

He and everyone inside heard … scraping.

Chewing.

Clawing.

And the sound of metal tearing away. 

“Arm yourselves,” Adam ordered his men and women. “Do not fire all together. I want all of you to alternate fire and give your comrades time to reload.” Not that there was a lot of bullets down here. The sounds grew louder. 

He pulled out his service pistol.

And took aim as the bunker door buckled. 

Clang.

Everyone’s eyes snapped to the side. 

And Adam’s eyes widened when he saw a mechanical drone of some kind crawling out of the narrow vent. 

Right then, the bunker’s vault door crashed open and a literal wave of those same machines crawled towards them.

“OPEN FIRE!” 

---

Colonel Adam Humphreys was killed in action along with his entire command. He left behind a wife and three children.

First, Second, and Sixth Defenders of Andurien, Andurien militia, Andurien Ducal Guards, and Andurien-based mercenaries are all assumed KIA. Assets unrecoverable. 

Assume Andurien and all of its people lost.