"What do you mean they were stolen?" General Mentil slapped his hand flat on his desk, startling his aid. The General was well known for his calm demeanor, seeing him give into an outburst such as this was terrifying.
"They were stolen en route to our facility in the third arm." His aid pushed up her glasses, not that anyone needed them for poor vision these days. They were now used for interfacing with various devices for those without integrated implants.
"HOW?" General Mentil took a moment to regain his composure. After all, it wasn't good for a man of his station to be seen as emotional. Taking a final deep breath he repeated his question. "How?"
"We had utilized a group of smugglers to transport them outside the normal channels as a precaution. It appears someone managed to steal them while they were on a minor station of no real note." His aid adjusted her glasses reading more reports.
"Do we have any clue who is behind this? The Gix aren't involved, are they? The peace treaty hasn't even been signed for a year yet." General Mentil rubbed his face. The prolonged war with the Gix had just ended, the last thing they wanted was to roll right back into conflict with them. Not before they had time to finish their preparations at least.
"We aren't sure at this stage. It appears to be a third party. We identified them, sort of." His assistant was frowning as her eyes darted back and forth.
"What do you mean, sort of?" Now General Mentil cocked an eyebrow confused.
"We have identified the individual as a male named Deck. Born on Entra 3, a high gravity planet. At the age of fifteen, he was enlisted into the military as a Red Star. But we have no records of his time in the military. Not even a unit assignment. Even his discharge is little more than a single line. Everything in our records about him has been erased. Whoever did it, did a thorough job." General Mentil leaned back in his chair thinking. This was something strange, not just anyone could access military records. To delete it so completely. That lowered the suspects even more. Whoever this Deck was he had a major player backing them for sure.
"I'm assuming we lost track of them or you would have reports of pursuit?" General Mentil finally came out of his thoughts.
"Correct General." She nodded.
"Put out a bounty, make it a grade one. That should cover the more conventional methods of finding them. Also, search out labs and who might have the ability to make use of our prototype nanites. We need to get them back before they find a way to activate them. I'm not sure which would be worse. An entity getting them fully under control or losing control of them. The last thing we need now is the military to be associated with a rogue nanite swarm with self replicating properties." General Mentil shook his head, he had been against breaking regulations on nanite production. Maybe this will keep them from attempting another Sigma level AI project. As much as he was worried about the nanite project, the idea of creating a monster like that terrified him.
"Actually sir. According to the reports they were able to activate the nanites. In a surprisingly short amount of time." She turned to one of the walls in the office and started a replay of the recording they had received.
Mentil watched in a mix of horror and fascination as a swarm of nanites washed over a dingy looking frigate. In a terrifyingly short amount of time, it broke the frigate apart. Even more impressive he watched as the swarm proceeded to complete a small destroyer from little more than the frame to something close to complete.
"How long did they have the prototypes in their possession before this occurred? Two, maybe three weeks?" Mentil shook his head at the incompetence of the station's security not tracking down the thieves in that time frame. Still, whoever was behind this had some powerful tools at their disposal.
"We are not sure exactly how long. Between the time of the theft and this recording, it is estimated between twenty minutes and an hour." The aid seemed to be double checking reports on her glasses display before nodding.
"Impossible. There is no way they were able to network and gain that level of proficiency with those nanites. The data has to be wrong." He was watching a replay of the event. The security footage focused on the various ships, he could just make out movement at the base of the unfinished ship but nothing in detail. His attention turned back to the small destroyer.
"What type of ship is that? I don't recognize it." General Mentil thought it might be a clue as to who was behind this.
"Ship is an unregistered model. Initial findings point to human in design. Potentially an older military version. Its registration lacked any information on the ship itself." General listened while eyeing that ship. There was something slightly familiar about it. But he couldn't think of any ship in service that remotely came close. Perhaps an antique? Then why wouldn't there be records for it?
"We can't rely on bounty hunters for this. Deploy a Manhunter squad." Mentil watched again as the swarm of nanites rebuilt the ship paneling in short order.
"Shall I rescind the bounty as well?" Her eyes were already darting as she worked on completing his orders.
"No, I think we need to get a grasp on this right away." He was watching as the swarm destroyed the frigate in under a minute.
"Yes Sir."
**********
Deck gripped the handles in his tiny cylinder. Even with the inertia dampeners, it was rattling wildly. But then being blasted out of an electromagnetic railgun into the atmosphere for an orbital drop was rough. "Not a bad final mission eh Sarg?" Bolt's voice came over the comms.
"Yeah. Reports show the natives only have ballistic weapons. They hardly need us at all. Don't know why they need a doorman team. They could have just sent in the regulars." Jack chimed in.
"You know the uppers don't want to risk any casualties in their reports. Well, none they have to actually care about." Scrap gave a short laugh at his own bitter joke.
"Enough chatter. We impact in 3…2…1…" Even with the dampeners hitting the surface was a jarring impact. Around them, their individual drop pods blew open letting them get a look at the strange pink sky with their bright blue methane clouds.
Deck started his short climb out of the still smoldering crater. He cleared the edge and stood up surrounded by flames. His combat suit easily diffused the heat. It also absorbed a spray of physical projectiles. He glanced down to see what looked like razor sharp metal fragments bounding off him as the natives started firing. "Scrap suppressive fire. Bolt area denial. Jack you and me are on point. Let's open the door so the main troops can come on down."
Scrap topped his own crater with a heavy machine gun in hand. Bolts of dense plasma started spraying with terrifying speed creating an almost wall of death as it sprayed towards the natives.
Bolt knelt down and leaned forward his back mounted heavy armaments opening up as dozens of micro rockets launched into the air before turning in the direction of the enemy. Explosions bloomed as huge balls of plasma formed with each impact rising up to the size of a small house far in the rear of the defenses. There would be no retreat or further reinforcements.
Deck took off rushing towards the enemies, his heavy combat rifle firing off dense metal slugs accelerated through a gravity well with enough force each shot left scar torn into the ground in the wake of each bullet. Jack followed behind with a similar weapon aiming for heavily armored targets. A huge crablike vehicle walking on a dozen legs was hammered by their rounds. Large holes were torn through its armor with even bigger exit wounds raining molten slag on the troops behind.
Those troops were hulking creatures. Almost humanoid from the waist up they had six arms and were covered in shaggy white fur. Their mouths were round and filled with teeth like a lamprey while they had a dozen black glossy eyes like a spider. Many of them had different monocles over various eyes. Reports suggested they provided vision in different spectrums. Their waist rose out of the center of a round oval shaped body, with a dozen legs ending in spikes below. The legs grew out of the oval making it look like the six armed torsos were growing out of a crab or spider body. Only the lower body was covered in the same shaggy fur and despite their multi jointed legs scuttling insect-like across the field, they possessed an endoskeleton. Reports said they were to be classified as mammalian even if they did lay eggs.
Two of the spindly legged tanks were taken down by the time Jack and Deck made it to engage the enemy. Another salvo of rockets kept them from retreating while Scrap's suppressive fire kept them from advancing. Deck ignored the shrapnel shots hammering into him, his suits shielding easily able to deal with such a primitive attack as long as he didn't stand still long enough for them to focus fire. Ahead of him one of the natives held their shard guns in four of their six limbs firing away. He leveled his heavy rifle and fired. His round hit it in the gut, ripping the torso free of its lower body. Without slowing, he jumped up to land on the collapsing lower body and made it over just as the torso came down with a wet thud. Despite the trauma, the creature still wasn't dead and continued to fire from its prone position, though it had lost one of its guns.
Deck slid under the body of another. They were huge compared to the human, the lower part of their crablike body was held up over ten feet above the ground. The torso alone was taller than he was. As he skidded under it started to drop down intent on crushing him. Instead, he fired his rifle upwards blowing a massive hole through it and turning the torso above into gore.
Already he was back on his feet snapping upwards in an almost impossible fashion. Now he was in the thick of it, the natives were no longer firing their shard guns. They couldn't without risking hitting friendlies. Instead, they attempted to impale him with their large legs, grab him with hulking almost gorilla arms, or crush him with their wide bodies. He had no such concern and continued to fire away, blowing apart those he couldn't simply rush past. His team's goal wasn't to kill the enemies. There would be plenty of others to do that. They had to bring down the generator for the planetary shield.
He was almost to the hatch that would let them down below. He fired into another enemy, this one wearing some sort of heavy ablative armor over its furred body. It did little to stop the mass accelerated round. It ripped through it, armor and all. Then he saw it. The entrance they were heading for. It was large enough for the natives and closed. Opening it would be a bitch. Deck didn't care, if his face hadn't already been stretched to the limits with his grin he would have smiled. A flick of his thumb and his rifle went from single to full auto. Unlike plasma weapons, he had to carry the heavy rounds for his rifle. It limited the amount of ammunition he could bring. So such rapid fire was normally reserved for special occasions. Like ripping apart the door into a bunker.
He fired away as he charged, some of the natives even threw their own bodies in the path of his fire. It did little to save the door. One mag empty he slid another in with practiced ease. By the time he made it to the door, there was a hole large enough to admit him. The edges of the metal glowing hot. "Alright Jack let's go." He glanced back and frowned. Jack wasn't behind him. Further back he could see a massive pile of the natives. Plasma blasts rained down on them shredding natives whose bodies fell down to shield others. Several heavy blasts from a familiar rifle tore through the pile but more were rapidly replacing it. The sound of constant firing from the native weapons drowned out everything else. "Sarg! SARG! I'm pinned down. My suit's shielding isn't able to keep up. They… they… help me." Deck hesitated. Going back might be a problem. They didn't have the munitions to mount a sustained engagement. The plan had them breaching rapidly and bringing down the planet's shielding. After that, the rest of the troops could come down.
"Sarg! Sarg! My shields are down. My shields are down. SARG!"