(Art source unknown)
Index: Chapter 1 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Chapter 2
Frontline hoppers
The eight-wheeler grumbled over the stone road, its megasteel wheels crushing odd debris and pebbles without effort. This part of the front was the colony’s farm belt and local villagers traditionally handcrafted cobbled roads. In summer, entire villages gathered to either extend one or repair another stretch of road. Farmers seeded the drainage with large Martian carp fish in the autumn, to keep bugs under control. Said drainage was connected with the irrigation canals of various water-loving crops.
Molnia Prime was well known across the Terran Minarchy for exporting first-class rice of the Earth’s Eastern European giant species. However, following the recent invasion, the colonists were unable to trade with their neighbors, nor travel anywhere since there was a Taz’aran blockade around their planet. That this force was such and commanded by the administrator, a border Count, there was no doubt. As soon as they approached orbital space, the troops announced the complete annexation of Molnia Prime into the Taz’aran Imperium. A space force of three strike corvettes, one heavy monitor, and two scout carriers, followed by a large convoy of troop transports and supply ships, meant the obnoxious imperials planned to stay.
Though, to swiftly conquer the smallish planet, these troopers could not. Defenses constantly improved upon, soldiers of the Terran Minarchy’s colonial militia and navy made the tazzies pay dearly for every light second of space taken and kilometer of ground conquered. Though the small naval contingent retreated, it was not defeated and raided Taz’aran forces, striking out from the shadows of deep space. Constant, sudden attacks were to eventually grind down even a sizable enemy force such as this, yet that would occur months down the line.
For now, the entrenched Terran militia needed every edge, including hired adventurers and special operators, so they would survive and hold.
In the driver’s seat and quite comfortable, sitting beside a case full of hand grenades was one of the bunny commandos. White-furred, red-eyed Potatski was the bulkiest and tallest of the three. He operated the large military truck with a huge grin on his scarred snout. His Human Patrons designed their efficient, rugged machinery with simple controls, so even their smaller Clients could drive or pilot them with ease. The driving wheel’s inner circle popped up towards him so his shorter arms could turn it, and the same was true for the Danube’s pedals and the gear stick.
Only idiot species would invest in complicated solutions, needlessly over-engineering their craft.
“Potatski, could you not drift every soddin’ turn? I’d like to recalibrate the truck’s sensors... before we reach the front.” – asked him Mice, the team’s scout, from the second seat.
Perhaps the deftest of them, Mice’s paws danced across the Danube’s computer console with such speed, that untrained sentients would not be able to even understand exactly what the gray-furred bunny did. Squinted behind his goggles, a pair of chocolate-brown eyes screened lines of data, picking up errors in the reprogramming and correcting these on the fly. Had he not done this, the Taz’arans in orbit might have either beamed them out of existence or they’d be bombed into slag by GAV craft.
“Sure thing bruh,” – grumbled back Potatski, as he vigorously rotated the turning wheel with one paw, shifting gears with his other – “only if ye want to reach the front on the morrow.”
The scout added a new box of code and grinned back at Potatski – “Better reach the pew-pew line later, but with our whiskers intact.”
The Danube thundered over a small bridge, some of its wheels leaving the pavement for a second or two. True, the vehicle was heavily laden with railguns and ammo, but Potatski drove so well that they barely felt anything. Like Mice complained earlier, it was only when Potatski drifted around the turns they experienced some discomfort. However, the burly bunny was not a lover of slowing the heck down since from his personal experience, it was then when the enemy blasted you to smithereens.
Sacky’s golden-furred head popped from the truck’s open machine gun turret and hushed them – “Can it, ‘tis prayer time.”
“Dude,” – Potatski asked their sniper – “do you think my driving is bad too?”
Head canted to the left, right ear flopping, Sacky’s crystal gray eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to aim at someone far, far away. His paw touched the forehead and rested on his heart for a second before the marksman replied:
“I pray before and after each crash.”
“That bad, huh?” – grumbled the driver as he navigated a sharp turn with such speed, most would assume the long truck was sure to tumble into the riverbed below.
“What do you pray before and after, eh Sacky?” – Mice asked after one short, satisfying purr since he was finally able to correct for all lines of unresponsive code.
The sniper’s floppy ear straightened a bit, his stoic snout livening with Sacky’s version of a half-smile – “Before I pray that I can do the same... after the crash.”
Potatski gripped the steering wheel and his mug twisted in a huge smile, when someone from orbit fired an inaccurate beam, frying a huge rock two hundred feet away from their madly speeding truck. He laughed, taking another turn with even greater speed, two of the Danube’s eight wheels dangling precariously over the road’s edge. Another beam smashed a pile of rocks, this time just a bit closer to their vehicle, and Mice snickered:
“I am giving me left ear to get up there and personally disembowel that Taz’aran shitblood.”
“Bruh,” – Potatski’s laughter became even rowdier – “your left ear is cybertech.”
Mice moved a couple of decoy algos on his console, initiating another wave of sensor ghosts and patted his beautiful ear – “Exactly!”
The two did indeed can it since Sacky slammed his paw a couple of times over the roof. In the next star-minute they listened to their sniper, a zealous Universalist, pray.
“Oh Universe, guide my paws, steel my will, and prepare my soul for life-saving battle. Deliver those enemies of ours to their self-inflicted doom. Allow us, if this is thy will, to save our Terran kin, for their intent is of peace. Give us strength, oh Universe, to protect the little ones from molestation and slavery, so they would grow free. Teach us how to slay the Narco, eviscerate the Slaver, and eradicate the Invader. It is with thy alimental blessings, oh Universe, that we volunteer to die for others.”
Sacky had embraced his sniper rifle; eyes and ears alert, his head on a swivel. The fact that he prayed meant not that he’d be tardy in his holy soldierly duty. The marksman took a long breath before he ended his prayer:
“For Life Eternal.”
For a short while they remained silent, while the truck’s megasteel tires screeched over the cobbled road, Potatski maintaining the same top speed, turns or no turns. Though many a Terran Client was fierily religious, among their team only Sacky fell into this category.
Mice was known to say a prayer or two, ask the ascended ancestors of his Human creators if his kin earned their spiritual aid. Oft, he attributed their luck as team to one or another of the ancients who were with them in spirit.
Potatski on the other hand, he was a firm believer in the power of inspirational music.
A hardcore life metal snout since his kiddo days, the beefcake soldier oftentimes went into battle listening to one or another brutally wholesome album.
“Mice, open the CD reader. We need killing tunes.” – said Potatski with a grin, and produced a smallish dark-blue crystal disk from one of his armored suit’s pockets.
“I can see the battle with my holo-optics.” – Sacky informed them, even though Mice had just swiped their latest scan-data over to the Danube’s main screen.
“They were about to push in this sector and this is why their commander ordered our support detachment destroyed.” – explained Mice gesturing at the holo-map, and loaded Potatski’s crystal disc into the truck’s reader.
“Simple and efficient.” – Sacky whispered in their comms, manning the K3 Browning heavy rail machine gun, flipping its safety off – “They must be led by somebody competent.”
“Yeah. Somebody who hopes that by breaching the lines here, they will be able to put our troops in a cauldron.” – Potatski said driving just as fast as before, and used his snout to operate the crystal disk’s holo controls.
“Target: cloaked air, two-and-a-half kilometers.” – Voice void of emotion reported Mice and swiped the scan-data file up to Sacky’s turret screen.
Potatski selected on of the fifteen songs just as Sacky fired a long bout of 15mm railgun pellets at a low-flying Taz’aran dropship, forcing it to land prematurely. The machine gun’s impressive roar coincided with the vocalist shouting:
“Metaaaaal!”
Six dropships, modified for heavy ground support operations, swooped in from the upper atmo where they’d lurked, far away from the Danube’s otherwise impressive sensor capacity. They unleashed a torrent of missile and beamfire, blasting at Mice’s clever sensor ghosts and, eventually, the truck itself. Somewhere behind the Taz’aran troops, their plasma-rail cannons opened fire, intent on saturating the Militia’s defensive perimeter. However, Terran arty countered swiftly, silenced their guns with accurate counter-battery fire.
Meanwhile, Potatski navigated the Danube across a ravaged paddy field, its lovingly terraformed, rich soil turned into glass by detonating Taz’aran plasma shells. The megasteel tires sent mangled shards of glass flying everywhere as they propelled the machine forth. The K3 churned out a relentless stream of railgun pellets and soon, another dropship slammed flaming at the ground.
“Target: force recon grav-bike, fifty-four meters to the south east.” – Mice kept reporting target after target as soon as his scanner picked their cloaked signatures, and immediately displayed them onto their truck’s holo-screen.
“Metal doooom we rain down their sorry heaaaads...” – sang-along Potatski with his beautiful baritone, the Danube’s frontal armor smacking a light Taz’aran reconnaissance grav-bike, and driving over it with impunity.
He drew his pistol and opened the armored window, frying the two Taz’aran scouts alive with blue laser beams as he fired on the move and with his left paw. Walter in his lap, Potatski measured the distance between their truck and another target vehicle, this time a scout grav-car.
“I’ll turn, you Wire them our bestest of greetings.” – he bellowed at Mice, who left the sensor station and ran inside the Danube’s cargo compartment.
“Invaidah’, you should’da stayed back hooome, cos’ now yer never gonna leaveeee...” – Potatski sang, while his paws vigorously swiveled the steering wheel, the truck evaded one haphazardly aimed particle-beam.
To shoot more the armored scout car had no time since Mice launched a cable-guided Wire missile from the Danube’s half opened cargo ramp as soon as Potatski made another insane drifting turn. The scout aptly planted this anti-materiel munition straight into the enemy turret ring, the resulting explosion cutting the light vehicle almost in two.
“Mice, there be sneaky wozzies laying in that ditch over there.” – warned the driver, as soon as he picked up movement with his faceplate’s integrated goggles.
Potatski kept singing and, window still open, he made another wide turn as his free paw chucked one grenade after another at otherwise well-hidden scout troopers – “Callin’ fer yer mammah as ye hold yer bleedin’ guts, Invaidah’, ‘twas not what ye dreamed fooor...”
As soon as the truck drove past the screaming and madly shooting their particle-beam snub guns at them Taz’aran scouts, Mice sprayed them with automatic fire. He’d unboxed and loaded a Colt light machine gun when Potatski warned him, and ripped the surviving tazzies to shreds firing from the hip. Point-blank range was not a good place to be when a trained, experienced commando shot at you and with a powerful rail machine gun to boot.
Mice closed the top half of the cargo ramp, reloaded the light machine gun and shouldered two Wire launchers, on the way back to the cabin. The scout first locked the machine gun’s stabilizing legs onto the lowered window and chucked the Wires to Sacky, who’d just reported the Taz’arans had deployed one of their grav-tanks via a suborbital drop pod.
“Either they are in love with this position in particular or...” – Sacky began to elaborate yet stopped to aim and fire one Wire missile, hitting precisely the tank’s main particle-beam cannon.
“They are on a tight time table?” – Mice completed Sacky’s sentence while the sniper proceeded to drop the smoking missile tube, reach for the second Wire, and hit the smoldering tank straight where he’d already damaged it.
The enemy crew had already attempted to leave their vehicle, while it experienced another unwanted external and internal redecoration. Two survivors jumped and crawled out, their armored uniforms burning and smoldering. Mice made sure to machine-gun them. Vehicle crews were valuable since they could not be trained in a jiff and the more of them your enemy lost, the better.
Moderately armored, this Taz’aran machine was designed for fast raids and to support light, mobile scout troops. This meant that all of the forces they’d so far taken out, they were part of an overall plan to overwhelm this position and do it quickly. Stealthy troopers deployed in the rear, supported by cloaked reconnaissance armored vehicles and even a tank via drop pod deployment.
The rearguard supply base taken out earlier by elite Taz’aran stormtrooper unit with PA mech support, betrayed someone’s higher than average command and organizational ability. Hit in the back by concealed troops and from the front by a Taz’aran line infantry unit, the colonial militia mechanized company could’ve very well been overwhelmed and destroyed.
“Bruh, watch for floaters.” – Potatski swiped a couple of holo-slides he’d just made with his goggles to Sacky, who picked the two cloaked Taz’aran snipers with short bursts from the now cooled K3 machine gun.
“Target:” – chimed in Mice, his paws operating the machine gun, mowing down the two Taz’aran crew of another cloaked grav-bike – “decloaking AFV, eight-hundred meters to the north.”
Sacky proceeded to unleash the full power of the K3 once more, 15mm railgun pellets ripping Taz’aran troopers to pieces inside their armored fighting vehicle catching them wiht their rear hatch open, mere seconds before they could deploy. Their AFV was badly hit and something inside of it detonated, flying half-cloaked, burning debris in all directions.
Someone in a Taz’aran command center somewhere sounded the retreat. The massive frontal assault canceled, the commandos witnessed enemy troops in the distance pull back into their artillery shelters. Scanners could not pick every single soldier or piece of equipment, but from what they could see, the enemy force consisted of six infantry companies or a full battalion in Taz’aran army standards.
Parking the Danube close to the entrenchments, the three commandos proceeded to grab a couple of Wire missiles each and a box of grenades. The rest they’d leave for the troops fighting here and since their mission was not to hold specific positions, they prepared to dismount. Armored suits were closed shut and their cloaks made the three invisible for the naked eye.
Potatski’s crystal disk sang the last cords of his favorite song before he recovered it. The treasured item vanished into thin air and then the truck doors opened by themselves. Nothing closed them shut and while troopers of the Terran Militia approached the truck, checking it for traps just to be on the safe side, the air sang with a whisper:
“Invaidah’, soon ye be finding out...”
I love the image of these Badass Bunnies drifting around the battlefield in their armoured vehicle. They're 'The Fast and the Furriest'! Haha... 🐰😎🐰
Tiny paws of fucking doom. Hell Ya, Bruh.