Bolo vs Titan
A shameless crossover between Keith Laumer's Bolo universe and the grim darkness of the far future.
We all knew the attack was coming soon. For three months, we had steadily been driven back by the Archenemy’s forces. Blackened, howling tanks raced towards our lines, spitting beams of coherent energy that slaughtered us by the dozens. The foot soldiers that followed raised a dust cloud hundreds of metres into the sky. The only thing that had held them back for this long were the war-engines of Legio Destructor. There had been twenty engines initially, though only seven are left now. One of them was almost directly behind our position, a Reaver named Equus Ferrum. Its huge guns cast a shadow that very nearly reached our trench, barrels gaping eagerly with the promise of their firepower. Looking at them, I dared feel a bit more optimistic. The Archenemy soldiers began to shriek their war cry, and broke into a run directly at our position. It was a wave of heretical filth, crackling with las and bolter fire as it crashed down on us. I brought my own lasrifle over the lip of the trench and started blasting away like everyone else. I scored fifteen kills, easily. The heretical bastards never even bothered to look for cover. “Stand firm, you maggots!” the commissar snarled behind me, flicking the safety off on his bolt pistol. The artillery began to open fire. Each blast was like a hammer directly to the eardrums, setting the ground shaking. The guns blasted huge chunks of flesh out of the approaching swarm, but the rest kept screaming and running. It was like they didn’t even understand what casualties are. But then something stepped out of the dust cloud they had raised. A titan. Like all the other Archenemy equipment, it was painted black. It looked disturbingly organic as well, with strange bony spikes jutting from its limbs and greyish fluids dribbling from its joints. The smell hit me like a sack of rotting fish, and I was nearly a mile away. Emperor knows what it would have been like up close. Equus Ferrus tracked its guns onto the enemy and started blazing away. Each shot reverberated through my chest, rattling me down to the bones. I smiled, embracing the feeling. The traitor titan staggered under its blow, and I saw its shielding give way in several sections. Despite the damage it had taken, it mostly seemed annoyed. The Titan raised one massive weapon arm, inscribed with eye-watering symbols and leveled it at Equus Ferrus. The sound it made was indescribable. I was lucky; I put my hands over my ears and managed to block some of it. Others weren’t so lucky. I saw several of my buddies’ heads explode from hearing it. I was screaming, probably. It was hard to tell. A lance of greenish energy crackled from the weapon’s tip and blew Equus Ferrus’s cockpit apart. The machine’s void shields crackled and collapsed. Equus Ferrus slowly sank to its knees, then collapsed completely. I knew what was coming next. “Take cover!” I yelled, and dived into the trench. It wouldn’t offer much cover, but when a Titan’s reactor is about to detonate, you take what you can get. There was a loud CRACK, and I squeezed my eyes shut, not really expecting the trench to protect me. After a moment, it dawned that I was still alive. I sat back up and looked around. The commissar’s body lay nearby, his head neatly clipped off by shrapnel. Pity I couldn’t see the hat anywhere. I looked around. Equus Ferrus was...gone. In its place, there was a tank of some sort. It looked like a Capitol Imperialis, but much longer and lower to the ground. It practically bristled with guns, the two largest of which were mounted in a pair of turrets, one on the front and one at the rear. The front turret was smoking slightly. I looked back toward the enemy lines. The ground troopers were milling about in confusion, suddenly deprived of their source for inspiration. The Chaos Titan was still standing, barely. A hole was punched straight through its chest, easily fifteen metres in diameter. The strange tank rolled forward, and I heard a snatch of ...music? As it approached, I could hear the sound more clearly. It reminded me of the sort of thing they played on the historical holovid channels, back in the early days of the Imperium. I looked towards the strange tank, which must have been the source of the music. Words in some dialect of Imperial Gothic were printed on its gunmetal hull. It read: “Bolo Mk XXIV, Unit 0076-NIK” beneath that, in larger letters, it simply said “Nika”. Its frontal turret thundered again, and the afterimage left a bright streak across my vision. The sound was similar to a Tau railgun, but much, much deeper. The Chaos Titan simply disintegrated under the second shot, chunks of metal scattering everywhere. The tank rumbled forwards, firing its smaller guns at the Archenemy’s vehicles. I saw Vanquishers and Rhinos erupt into pillars of flame, and when the tank deigned to fire at infantry, they disintegrated into a fine red mist.
It takes 0.00675 seconds to dispose of this latest swarm of infantry. These oddly warped creatures, despite their apparent relation to humanity, are clearly tools of the Enemy and must be stopped. Never before have I encountered such foul parodies of any form of life. My speakers continue to play ‘Mars, bringer of war’ by Gustav Holst to encourage the troops behind. Other Bolos have their own favorites, but my preference has always been the classics. These Enemy weapons of war are strange as well. What conceivable purpose does it serve to mount weapons of such heavy caliber atop a bipedal (and therefore already quite top-heavy) platform? The mechanisms necessary to brace it against its own recoil must be needlessly complex. Of course, I am unhindered by such an issue, and fire my infinite repeaters into the Enemy infantry as it attempts to attack me. All are destroyed by ion bolts before they even manage to open fire. I devote an additional 0.075 seconds to destroy one of the more conventional tanks of the Enemy host. I also devote a small percentage of my CPU to run a diagnostic on my navigation system, which still appears to be malfunctioning. However, my attention is diverted as several immense Enemy signatures appear on my sensors. I divert an additional 27.65% of power away from my weapons and shift it to my drive engines. Evasive maneuvers will be the key to this battle.
I kept my head down as the tank rumbled over our trench, still blazing away. The enemy seemed to be retreating for now, and the primer had very specific instructions for what we had to do. “Charge!” I yelled at the various surviving Guardsmen. I climbed onto the lip of the trench, and was grateful to see that others were following. We raced- well, stumbled, really, it had been a brutal day of fighting- across the barren landscape, firing our lasguns into the backs of the fleeing heretics. All their insane courage seemed to have deserted them, but I could at least respect that they hadn’t dropped their weapons like a bunch of pansies. The huge tank led the charge. I wasn’t sure who was driving it, but he was one crazy bastard. The vehicle was zig-zagging across the entire line, mowing down heretics with its lighter guns like a drilling head on a coal face. Still, the driver was acting awful skittish. For all the crazy maneuvers he was pulling, my tactical know-how (gleamed mostly from listening to drunk officers at the bar) told me he ought to be driving straight through, breaking the army’s body into smaller, digestible pieces for grunts like us to take out. With no warning whatsoever, the tank stopped. The music it had been playing cut out, and a lady’s voice came on to the speakers. “Concordiat troops, fall back.” it called. “Incoming enemy armor.” She sounded quite calm about it, and I was about to ask what the hell a ‘concordiat’ was when a second Archenemy Titan hove out of the dust clouds. There was only one good reaction. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit” I muttered, heading back towards the relative safety of our trench. Now I was actually running, probably for the first time in a week. Knowing that thirty-five meters and two and a half thousand tons of pure pain are walking towards you is a good way to get the adrenaline pumping. I had gone about twenty meters when things got worse. The ‘retreating’ heretics, who’d so bravely not thrown away their weapons, had now split into two forces, and were coming around on either side to flank us. I was completely cut off. Their weapons started firing, blowing dozens of my fellow Guardsmen apart in moments. I saw only one way out, and it was slim as all hell. I sprinted straight towards the weird tank and prayed to the Emperor that the lady inside was feeling charitable. Somehow, I managed to make it through the hail of las and bolter fire and to the tank’s bulk. Up close, it was just as much a mystery. It looked almost...xenos in origin. There were no crenellations or skulls anywhere on its armor, which seemed like a shame. What kind of proper tank would go around without at least a single aquila somewhere on it? Still, the woman inside spoke Gothic, and so it must be the will of the Emperor, although only He knew, apparently. I climbed onto the hull with some difficulty (the skulls and crenellations always made good handholds) and managed to find a hatch. I raised a fist to knock, but it slid open before I could touch it. Well, how friendly, I thought and climbed inside.
Only one of the soldiers has survived the Enemy’s trap. He climbs aboard and is attempting to come inside. I open the hatch and allow him to enter. I devote 0.0027 seconds to consider the situation before I can come to a conclusion. I am currently out of contact with my superiors in the concordiat, which by default leaves this soldier as my Commander until communications can be established. I frown at his nonstandard uniform and equipment, but it seems that this entire situation is nonstandard. I can only hope he knows what he’s doing.
“Welcome, Commander.” the woman’s voice came from a vox-grille mounted on the wall. “Please go down the passage and sit in the chair at the end.” Judging by the sound of bullets ringing on the hull outside, whoever this was had just saved my life, so I obeyed. The chair proved to be a huge recliner-looking thing, surrounded on all sides by pict-screens. I’d never seen ones so clear and colorful before, but the general shape was the same, excepting the missing skulls once again. The hull rocked gently as the tank passed over the terrain, and the soundproofing had canceled out most of the noise of battle coming from outside. Except for the images on the pict-screens, I could almost have imagined I wasn’t in battle anymore. I took the seat. “Would you mind telling me who you are, ma’am?” I asked. It always pays to be polite when someone saves your life. “I am the Mark twenty-four Bolo, seventy-sixth of the Line, serial code En Eye Kay.” She replied. “I am awaiting your orders, Commander.” I opened my mouth to protest, but a sudden explosion of dirt and fire on one of the pict-screens caught my attention as the entire tank rocked. “We are running out of time, Commander.” The lady sounded only marginally more urgent than before. I decided to leave the formalities for later. “Right,” I said. “Bring us about and head for the group of heretics coming in on the left flank.” “As you command.” she replied. I felt myself being pressed into the comfortable seat as the tank turned and accelerated beneath me. “Warning: Ammunition will be depleted before all enemies are destroyed. Probability: ninety-nine point seven percent.” “Don’t bother with shooting, then.” I answered. “Just run ‘em down.” I couldn’t hear it inside the heavy armor of the tank, but I could imagine its engines roaring as it simply ran down the heretics like a press over grapes. The Archenemy Titan was tracking us with its guns, and it now loosed a bolt of green, sick-looking light. The tank shuddered, and I heard her say: “Portside wheels sixteen through twenty-four have been destroyed. Track seven has been destroyed. Continued operability of this vehicle: ninety-four percent.” “Hit ‘em back!” I ordered, gripping the arms of the chair tightly. There was a buzzing noise, and a red light appeared on one screen. “Authorization required for use of the Hellrail.” I had no idea what a hellrail was, but the name alone convinced me. “Go right ahead.” A moment later, there was a flash of light, although the pict-screens dimmed to shield me from the glare. Afterwards, the Titan was simply gone. A furrow twenty feet wide had been plowed straight through the ground, with some small bits of metal littering it here and there. The Heretics had broken completely this time. I saw them throwing down their weapons like the little fucking cowards they were. “Yesss!” I hissed, pounding the armrest. Today had been a good day by any standards. “Spacetime rift detected. Recalibrating navigation system. Error. Error.” “Oh shi-” There was a flash, and the scene of the battlefield vanished. The next thing I knew, I had been dragged along with the mysterious tank to another place entirely.
-probably not to be continued, but who fucking knows