StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Nine Circles of Hell.

The war started with a boom. The first one Terra ton Crust Buster warhead ripped apart the ground above the city’s top level, then the second punched through the gaping hole in the armour to detonate at the top of the city’s first level.

Those unfortunate enough to be on that level died more or less instantly: one hundred million civilians, five hundred thousand local militia and two million battle forms were all snuffed out in that single instant of awful heat and pressure.

They were only the most immediate of the casualties of course. Next, those near the access points that connected the city’s levels died as the blast reached them: about eight thousand. Finally, as the blast wave wrecked the city’s structure, falling debris, collapsing buildings and the secondary explosions of city’s utilities killed around half million throughout the city.

The AI in her armour fed a fairly accurate summation of this through the brain of Sarah Red 4381, even as a large mass of rubble from the layer above slammed into her and buried her (fortunately suited) body under several hundred tons of rock, metal and plastic.

She awoke (as her internal clock told her) a mere five and a half minutes later and took stock of her situation. She wasn’t going anywhere fast that was for sure. Her suit was well and truly pinned; she would have to blow her way out using explosives.

Fortunately, her communications were working... she could at least watch the battle unfold. Might as well start digging. She opened her comm feeds, and told her suit to extend a digging charge into the rubble in front of her.

The city had been laid out in ten levels underground. This unusual arrangement had been set up to take full advantage of geography, in this case, a vast network of alien ruins, which provided the place’s initial structure. The underground building was hailed by the first colonisation company as a way of increasing usable surface land, providing easy access to minerals, and as a great defence against a possible hostile universe.

That just went to prove how much you could trust corporate advertising.

Mikal Frost cringed slightly as another after shock ran through the city’s already warped structure. Ever sensor in the transit system had been fried by the blast and EMP but they knew the enemy was coming. If they weren’t, there would have been another nine Crust Busters.

The power grid had failed, leaving the dull red of emergency lamps as the only illumination. Mikal’s helmet optics automatically enhanced the light allowing him to see. He was sweating inside his armour, and the grip of his gun felt slick, even though he knew it couldn’t be.
Suddenly he felt a calm coolness spread through his body. Most of the gut wrenching fear he had been experiencing vanished as the combat drugs flowed through him.

“Now remember, short bursts, stick to a target till it falls over then move on to the next one and shoot the big ones first.” The feminine voice of the battle form in charge of the squad sounded icily calm as she gave this final set of instructions.

The first enemy trooper dropped from the surface transit shaft. It was not a big one. All of about four foot tall with six legs and packing a gun that looked several times too big for it. A stream of rounds from the battle form officer cut it down before it could even recover its balance.


Apparently the enemy had dropped the poor little thing, whatever it was, in to test the waters. The next things that dropped into the ruined transit station were a dozen sensor Confusion and ECM grenades which reduced Mikal’s sensors to a fog of static even as a dozen enemies dropped from the up shaft, already firing.

Mikal had taken up position behind a set of singularly ugly public art works, now the abstract began to lose definition under the storm of enemy fire. There was the whine of an electro magnetic weapon and a grenade exploded among the squad of aliens at the bottom of the shaft. Blue gore and body parts sprayed across the concrete and the metal tracks. Aliens who had got far enough from their entry point to survive the blast returned fire. Mikal saw a man near him get hit, the energy penetrated his chest armour and flash boiled his body causing his helmet and gloves to blow off him in a spray of red steam. Mikal tried not to vomit as he poured fire into the general area of the aliens.

A stream of missiles shot from the shaft entrance to explode across the militia positions. Three of them concentrated on the battle form. The anti missile system on her armour blew one apart but the other two scored almost direct hits. The anti matter warheads vaporised the armoured body and a sent a wave of plasma searing across nearby buildings and militia. Even as the light of the explosion threw the scene into sharp relief, a much larger alien shape dropped into the station. It was six limbed like the smaller aliens, but bigger than a gorilla and wearing a suit of full body armour. Two massive multi barrelled guns mounted on its shoulders began to spit a fusillade of energy bolts as it charged form the exposed transit shaft into the nearest cover. Another large alien dropped after it, this one holding a large projectile weapon of some kind.

“FALL BACK!” someone shouted over the communication channel. A series of optical markings showing a rally point appeared on his HUD and he began to retreat. The heavy weapons team near the door provided covering fire for the humans as they ran and stumbled back out from the station. As Mikal passed, the heavy weapons team was blotted out by another smart missile, the shock wave lifted him from his feet and threw him into the street. He hit the ground and rolled forward. His ears rang, pain and heat lanced through his back... He saw a wall coming up way to fast and then the world went black.

Sarah Red was nearly at the surface of the debris pile burying her. From the communications she was receiving things weren’t going well. Enemy forces had entered every level of the city and were pushing inward through some what disorganised resistance. Fortunately, they’d stalled on this level due to the presence of Terran Union armour. But it was only a matter of time before the enemy’s own tanks got down this far...

The shape charge she’d just placed blew extending her tunnel another few meters fortunately breaking through to the surface. Sarah pulled her heavy weapons suit through the hole. She stood upright and looked around. Suddenly there were three more explosions and three more battle forms pulled themselves from the rubble.

Sarah checked their suit indicators on her HUD. All basically functional. This was the good thing about heavy suits - internal weapons.

“All right, rally point is 1 klick to our south. Let’s move.”

First, fuck you and your naming skills, too.

Second, very nice, espeaciallty in the action department. I also congradulate you in your ability to convey quite a bit with as little detail as possible.

Third, get back to Culture/Lensman you bastard.

Well, there's no reason that the two have to be mutally exculsive, and I most certainly will keep doing Lensman/culture

yes a very good story
but the epic tale of the death
of the culture must first
be finished

XANATOS

Looks good, please continue

Looks very, very promising. I've rarely seen a story which started so dramatically.

[Shameless Plug] BTW, Singular Quartet - a few days I revised The Wormhole War - mostly by changing the dialogue according to your suggestions. I advise you to check it out when you have time. [/Shameless Plug]

Seras had been born some twelve Chuckug years ago, about ten earth years, A translation from the meaning packed laungage of the Chuckug, her name meant roughly: Deceptive Killer Unit of Both God Slaves and Athiests of the Human Form Number 2143342343431.

Seras’ form had been designed as a weapon. Her form, that of a human female about mid way through her second decade. This form had been created for two purposes.

First to put humans at their ease during interactions, be they interrogation, infiltration or diplomacy. Secondly, to produce a hesitation in human combat troops. Of course, a battle form would be immune to such psychological tricks, but the remaining ten percent of human ground forces would generally experience some degree of psychological difficulty when they faced such units.

Seras and her squad were currently waiting their turn to enter one of the near vertical entry tube ways at the edge of the city, (the station building that had once housed passengers and rolling stock on their way down had of course been flattened by the first crust buster), but the shaft remained. Her squad was due to go into level 2 where the remaining militia were concentrated.

The armour unit in front of them dropped into the tunnel. Seras’ implants told her to step into the shaft, and she did.


The battle for level seven, from the perspective of Sarah Red, started with six small fast moving toaster like objects emerging from the transit shaft. Each tinny box had a small chin turret and an array of sensors. Assault probes.

Sarah picked out the nearest as her squad’s target, fire plan schematics scrolled across her vision in an expanding wave front of colour as her inbuilt computers and armour projected the probes likely course.

The squad fired in unison: fire from their many weapons placed to cover as many of the likely flight paths as possible. The probe Sarah Red was targetting began a series of frantic evasions, but it was not quite quick enough, a plasma round detonated near it, scorching off most of its sensors and sending it spinning to one side in an easily predictable manor, more rounds hit it, the last punching through its force shield and blowing it apart.

Sarah would have liked to have turned her attention to the other probes, but a volley of smart missiles shot from the tube, so she was forced to turn her squad’s fire on those. The entire force covering the access way was firing. The air in front of Sarah was a mass of ionization trails and the flaring white globes of explosions as the T.U. forces tried frantically to intercept the waves of missiles swarming out at them.

A tank near by got hit, the anti matter explosion causing its shields and superconductive hull to glow across its entire surface at it attempted to dissipate the heat before the internal tempreture bled through causing the tank’s ammo to cook off, sending bits of the vehicle flying in all directions. A jagged piece of armour, glowing red, took the head off a battle form near by sending blood spraying in all directions, including over Sarah. She ignored the liquid running off her armour and kept firing.

The wave of missiles finally ceased as someone in the rear of the position killed the last of the probes, Sarah checked her ammo levels, still 75% full, pretty good so far.

Six more probes shot from the opening and the gutted acess station once again echoed with the sound of heavy weapons.

Mikal came awake to a horrible pain in his back, which quickly fell away as his armour pumped him full of pain killer.

He opened his eyes... his helmet optics must have been damaged for the scene before him was only dimly lit. The entry station had obviously fallen, staggered groups of alien troops and armour were pouring from the darkness of the transit shaft.

The alien forces were in no way homogeneous. There were humaniods, six legged creatures like those he had recently fought, boneless looking multi tentacled invertebrates, and a dozen more shapes.

Fortunately, none of them seemed to have seen him.

Unfortunately, one of them seemed to be coming over to him. She was armoured, and wore a helmet with a clear face place... she looked like a girl of about 15. Mikal had heard of creatures like this - psychological tricks thought up by the enemy to sow horror and confusion.

He tensed to run or fight or scream or do something, but couldn’t seem to make his limbs move, she stepped up beside him and looked down. Then said something, and pointed her gun at him. He lay still. Looked like his war was over before it had even begun...


The first bomb detonated 80 meters from the Were Wolf main battle tank’s forward quarter. The battle form which ran the tank felt the vehicle shudder as the shockwave passed over it.

Missed you fuckers thought the tank. This line was of course a cliche. But the tank didn’t really care. Someone had said practically everything. It received orders from the command tank to speed up and begin evasions, it acknowledged, doubled its speed and began to zig zag.

More bombs burst around it as it topped a small hill. The enemy space fleet owned orbit, and was using this to good advantage. Ahead of it, the tank could detect a group of enemy machines, probably a mix of AFVs and IFVs moving out of the woods. Stablising its main gun, it fired of a three round burst at the lead vehicle. It was quite statisfied to see it explode setting nearby trees on fire, and knocking down the small thermal shadows of alien infantry.

The rest of its squadron was also firing, and more alien vehicles were brewing up. They were taking withering fire as well of course... the tank next to it blew apart as a beam of energy touched off its ammunitions. A smart missile hit another sending molten shards of armour spraying into the night

The command tank told them to pull back. They’d blunted this alien push, time to pull back before they got swamped.

The tank screeched into reverse, pumping off another burst of defiance to the enemy then running back over the hill.