Chapter 44
They’re Coming
After Hugh explained why they couldn’t drop him off to be with his ‘family’ he had sent Chu Shen to a room and then a.s.signed a guard to him.
The guard was kind though Chu Shen didn’t like the looks of pity that he gave him every now and then. The guard had pointed out a couple weird things that were in the cabin. There was something called a hologram, a food synthesizer, and there was a desk and chair that he had called the computer interface.
After pointing out everything the guard told Chu Shen, “Just ask the computer any questions and it will answer you.”
Chu Shen looked at the guard. “Who is the computer and how do I ask it to do anything?”
The guard stared at Chu Shen trying to determine if he was serious. He was. ‘Country hick huh. I didn’t think the colony was that bad but maybe the parents were anti-tech.’
“Well the computer is not a person but an object, an artificial intelligence programmed to watch over the crew. If you want to ask any questions just say it out loud.” After that the guard left to stand outside the room.
Chu Shen didn’t get what he meant but if the computer could talk to Chu Shen and it was an object, then it must be similar to a treasure spirit. They were rare but occasionally they did appear in high-level treasures.
Chu Shen sat down to cultivate but when he did he frowned. He could sense energy was barely present inside the room. There was a vast flood of it a little bit away but for some reason it was being blocked. He couldn’t cultivate like this, otherwise even with his cultivation technique it would take over a couple months to breakthrough, such was the small amount of energy available in the room.
Chu Shen tried talking to Master Ti Wu but for some reason he couldn’t contact him. (Inside the Voids Hand Ti Wu decided to take a break. He really didn’t want to try and answer his disciples constant questions so he blocked himself off.) Since he couldn’t contact him he decided to ask the computer some questions.
“Computer, where am I, what city am I in?” Chu Shen felt a little bit silly talking to air like this but what happened next truly surprised him.
A voice that for some reason had a bland voice with a metallic undertone answered his question. “You are aboard the UBF s.p.a.ceship Casanova. We are in hypers.p.a.ce currently en-route to the colony Getrin. We shall arrive there in three hours, exactly fifteen minutes before the bugs land on the surface. “
Chu Shen looked around in surprise before becoming excited. He’d never thought he’d meet a treasure spirit or artificial intelligence as the soldier had put it. He looked like a kid in a candy store.
“What’s a s.p.a.ceship and what’s hypers.p.a.ce.” He asked the computer for clarification on some points.
“A s.p.a.ceship is a mechanical vehicle using a variety of methods to cross s.p.a.ce to reach other destinations such as moons, worlds, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. Hypers.p.a.ce is described as a subs.p.a.ce that FTL or faster-than-light travel is possible through using a special energy called Tachyons.”
Chu Shen had an expression of deep shock. Travel to other worlds was basically a pipe dream until they reached a level of a Cosmo’s Immortal. These people on the other hand barely cultivated. There was only the smallest of Qi inside their bodies yet through mechanical means they were able to travel to other worlds by themselves? This was absolutely amazing!
Chu Shen started quizzing the computer on both history and also asked for descriptions of these s.p.a.ceships and it provided blueprints for him. Of course he didn’t understand everything so he had the computer help him. Since he was a cultivator he had a photographic memory. He gained a lot of knowledge and before he knew it, three hours were up.
Captain Jimmy Hentle looked at the readout of bug types. He frowned. This was extremely bad. They had only transports which was good but there was over 300 of them. Previously his ship’s division of 500 Scouts, 2000 Heavy Infantry, 200 Mechanized, and 100 Floater troops had destroyed the single transport at Chu Shen’s colony with about 128 deaths and 301 injuries. Luckily only about 40 of them weren’t able to be patched up before the fight.
A vast majorities of the deaths and injuries had been in Scouts and Heavy Infantry with only about 50 spread out between the other divisions. That particular transport had no flying or anti-air bugs on it so there was no deaths in the Floater division.
They had about 70 ship divisions available along with a carrier and 30 fighters. They could destroy some of the craft on the way down but certainly not all of them. Once the bugs landed they would almost certainly have some anti-s.p.a.ce elements and anti-air elements mixed in with their numbers.
The civilians were all evacuated into the shelters inside of two cities but the UBF couldn’t protect them for long. At most they could defend for two days. The good thing though was that there was another 120 ship divisions along with 10 frigates and 2 small destroyers and carriers inbound.
If they could hold off the bugs for 1 day they could save the entire population. Otherwise they were doomed. There was a General on one of the ships and he was organizing everyone.
The captain landed the ship in his designated spot. Checking out the tactical map he saw he was towards the frontlines. He started trying to get in contact with the general. He had to know there was a civilian on his ship. If he was at the frontlines, then there would definitely be a media catastrophe, blaming the UBG for purposefully endangering civilians. Unfortunately, with there being only another three minutes until the bugs landed, how could the general have time for him?
The soldiers got off the ship. There was scouts dressed in armor like Delgado had, then there was much larger suits with full body armor. Lines of energy ran throughout the armor unlike the completely black scout armor.
Then there was a variety of vehicles such as the large gravity tanks, the small one man mortar scooters, the medium size hovercraft with different weapons systems like lasers, plasma guns, machine guns, missiles, and grenade launchers.
The ship itself began burrowing itself into the ground. The soldiers started setting up fortifications along with portable machine and energy guns on and around the ship. The ship was obviously going to be used as a temporary base when the bugs attacks. Various guns popped out of hatches on the ship. Far off there was other ships, barely visible with the naked eye.
The soldiers had completely prepared for the invasion. The bugs had landed over twenty minutes ago. The fighters had been able to pick off about 13 transports but the fighters were forced to back off after the anti aircraft bugs were set up. These bugs launched b.a.l.l.s of plasma at the fighters. Over a third of the fighters was forced back.
A couple of soldiers was talking on the fort.
“Hey, do you think we’ll make it?”
“Of course not. We’re one of the first ones to confront the bugs.”
“Yeah, but now we don’t have to worry about being eaten or processed.”
“Why not?”
“Well if you’re suit opens up the radiation will fry your brains out.”
“Oh yeah. Makes you wonder why they even set up a colony out here anyways.”
“Greed. There’s lots of minerals out here. Makes it a pain for the colonists but the radiation force fields protect them fairly well.”
“Sigh, it’s always because of credits isn’t it?”
“Yep. Ironic that I signed up to the military for the credits and here I am about to die protecting someone else’s credits.”
“Shhh. You hear that?” The three Heavy Infantry men stopped talking. As they listened carefully there was a dull rumbling sound coming from in front of them. There was a large dust storm gathering in front of them. The ground started shaking.
“What is it?” One of them asked, fear obvious in his voice. The one next to him shook his head. He’d fought for ten years against the bugs. He was no stranger to what this was.
“That son is a bug stampede. EVERYONE GET READY. THEY’RE COMING”