Space Crusaders

Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Operation Trojan Tank

"Ok, guys and gals, listen up!" Sarge began to explain in the calm tone the woman used when she wanted to silence all doubts.

"The name Trojan Tank comes from an old legend from the Machine Wars period."

"So did the Machine Wars really happen?" one of the battle brothers interjected

"Don't interrupt the sergeant." Stan cut him off.

The short period of 'interregnum' during which Stan Levinsky 1070, due to his seniority in service, acted as commander, fortunately ended with the arrival of Warprincess Atava.

'The First' as her crusaders called her, was more than a leader; she was their family. The biggest of sisters.

The ship on which they docked was Warmistress's Battlebarge 'Righteous Fury', the largest ship that the inhabitants of Earth (undoubtedly with the help of some borrowings from Feymen technology) managed to build in known times. Of course, there were legends that battles were fought in distant space centuries ago, but no one today has any idea when or how.

Tens of thousands of people actually served, worked, and lived on board the ‘Righteous Fury’, and in the near future, it was to be hundreds of thousands. This also meant that there probably wouldn't be enough people (or, as they were now called, Warmen) left in the solar system to ever build another such ship.

Stan was only glad that his role was to be a space crusader and not someone responsible for some kind of repopulation, because his contacts with representatives of the opposite s*x still left much to be desired - to put it mildly.

Therefore, Stan was one of the group of battle brothers and sisters who accepted with some relief the Warprincess's decree that crusaders should maintain full combat readiness at all times and, unless absolutely necessary, should not even take off their power armor after receiving it.

It was much easier to collaborate, exercise, or even talk to your battle sisters if her appearance didn't constantly remind your brain that she was a girl!

Thanks to numerous implants, Mark I Crusader Armor was like a second skin for them; it was a shell in which a battle brother or sister could live.

Stan even preferred not to take off his helmet, but of course, most of the girls liked to show off their beautiful faces.

Well, even Stan had to admit that no matter how badass their helmets looked, the girls' faces were hotter.

"Ehh..."

However, before the battle brothers and sisters could move into their power armors, they still had to undergo training.

Although the ‘Righteous Fury’ was bustling with life and personnel, the deck where the recruits had docked was completely empty.

"This is the crusaders' deck. Here, you will learn everything about your equipment and yourself. When you finally leave this level of the ship and meet the other crew members, they will see in you not some overgrown teenagers but the knights of the crusade! Make no mistake, a lot was sacrificed to make you, to create us. Make it count!" Warprincess explained.

Any prior training that had taken place on the lunar base quickly became laughable in comparison.

The intensity of Atava's regime undermined everything that was physically possible.

Weights were counted in hundreds of pounds, and there were no dumbbells or plates lighter than one hundred pounds.

And when someone thought something was impossible to lift or do, Atava herself came and showed that this person was wrong.

Of course, most battle brothers and sisters appreciated sparring the most.

Maybe not so much with Atava, because even when they attacked Warprincess with an entire squad of ten, 'The First' swept the floor with them every time.

Stan was pleased with the fact that he was ranking quite high in melee overall.

"Level 998 Berzerker in the tank spec with the best current gear available on the server is not for nothing!" Levinsky proudly recalled in his mind, referring to his favorite MMO

After fighting a lot over several weeks with all of his battle brothers and sisters, Stan won more often than he lost, and even when he lost, it was after a long and even fight. There was only one person in their entire group (no one counted the Warprincess, who was in a completely different league) who never lost.

Battle sister Gina Jinx 1080, or as she was now called 'Wicked Gina', 'Gina the Wicked' or simply 'the Wicked'

Gina, of course, deliberately taking advantage of the sparring sessions, beat the crap out of all the people who had previously taken part in overpowering her.

Well, Stan didn't have much of a choice but to take it like a man.

Outside of the fight, Gina was completely nonchalant about the topic, so Stan figured she probably didn't have anything specifically against him. Gina simply liked to cause others pain, and being ever in ods with her had its consequences.

Despite his exceptional melee prowess, Stan was excluded from any leadership position when the Warprincess divided their entire group into squads of approximately ten people. The squad that Stan now belonged to was commanded by the battle sister, whom Levinski barely defeated in one of the duels. However, Stan didn't feel even a little bit wrong because of this; on the contrary, he was proud that he was part of her squad.

Stan understood perfectly well that it takes more than chainsword skills to be a good leader, and his sarge had just that.

And although the battle sister obviously had her own name and number, for Stan and all members of their squad, Squad Red, she was simply Sarge.

Sarge sighed.

"Well, I guess the Machine Wars must have happened or we wouldn't have the Trojan Tank story, right?" Sarge suggested wisely, to which the entire squad nodded.

"Okay, so listen: After one of the won battles, the victors were looking for equipment that they could use themselves, and almost immediately they noticed an advanced tank, a type they had not seen before."

"A new type of tank for the opposing army?" asked one of the battle brothers, interested in the story. Sarge nodded patiently.

"Exactly, something that the winners wanted to see as soon as possible, but this equipment was so advanced that the local technicians didn't even know how to handle it so as not to accidentally damage it, so the decision was made to take it to their own laboratory where they worked on secret weapons."

"The whole tank?"

"Well, yes"

"Okay, so what's so special?"

"When the tank got to their most secret base, where they had their own most important experiments, they started to dismantle it with the intention of reverse engineering it. But then it turned out that every electronic component of the enemy gear was infected with Trojans!"

"And they didn't expect it?" One of the battle brothers asked in disbelief. Sarge shrugged.

"I guess the point of this story is that these were the first Trojans in history, so no one expected it," his commander explained.

Many battle brothers reacted to this revelation with understanding nods.

"It must have been brutal the first time," the first battle brother stated his opinion.

"Yeah," his battle sister answered.

"Now I understand why the story is called The Trojan Tank," said the man.

"What else did you think it could be? A tank crew?" asked the woman.

"Heh, that would be stupid." He agreed.

"Yeah," another battle brother nodded.

Sarge scratched her head and said,

“About that…”

***

Mokarah drank greedily from the cup Vasileiah held to her mouth.

When women finally stopped crying and feeling sorry for their fate, they started to talk, slowly getting to know each other. Apart from a break for sleep, they basically never stopped talking, so Mokarah, unused to such long conversations, quickly began to suffer from a dry throat.

In such situations, her new friend was tenderly giving Mokarah water from a glass. The Voidling could hold objects in her snake hands and never felt particularly disabled, but someone like Vasileiah, who had 'normal' limbs, found it simply easier to move around the room after all, designed for someone with less demanding anatomy. So in practice, before Mokarah could take something herself, Vasileiah was already giving it to her.

Mokarah did not complain about this. Not at all.

Vasileiah was thirty-five years old, so she was quite a bit older than Mokarah, who had turned eighteen the day the women met. That was a few weeks ago.

Mokarah has spent her entire life in her sanctuary and has never experienced violence directly, but her new friend unfortunately has. Vasileiah was a valuable, sensitive person, exactly what Mokarah expected from the Feymen race. Vasileiah, as far as she knew, had lost her entire family. Mokarah cried for a long time when the Feymen female told her her story. The Voidling cried so hard, not because of the words she heard but because of the emotions that poured out from her suffering friend, which, for Curse Gifted Mokarah, were like a real torrent of mental pain.

The Voidling tried to take Vasileiah's mind away from unpleasant memories, telling her about all the things she knew thanks to the use of her abilities.

Vasileiah also had her own slightly unconscious way of dealing with her own pain in the form of quickly beginning to care for Mokarah like the younger sister she once had. She made sure she ate regularly, drank a lot, and so on. The Feymen woman also spent long hours combing the Voidling's long red hair. Mokarah loved it.

"Okay, Mokarah again, only this time slowly," Vasileiah ordered

"Right, so the Lizardmen are planning an invasion."

"Invasion? I thought pirates only hunted lone, poorly armed voidcrafts. Or spaceships that had some kind of breakdown," Vasileiah noted.

"Exactly, yes, but this is a unique situation, and it's a bit sad," Mokarah admitted, grimacing involuntarily.

"Oh, what happened? Are these scaled vultures wanting to invade a system that was just decimated? By… the Polupus? or something else, and now these scum are about to capture the survivors?" Vasileiah asked, concerned, and Mokarah shook her head.

"No, it's not that, although... in some way it sounds just as bad," Voidling admitted.

"Explain," her friend insisted

"This is a signal from some minor race, unknown so far; it seems that they have just mastered the technology of FTL communication and are sending a familiarization signal in all directions..." Mokarah explained.

"Oh no..." Vasileiah groaned as she realized the implications.

"Yeah... a young, naive race is looking for friends in the big universe. They're giving out the exact location of this so-called Sol System of theirs. It's damn far away, and if it weren't for the precise coordinates that those 'Earthlings'' gave so trustingly and carelessly, I would have a problem steering the ship there. This is really sad Vasileiah, they talk with such pride and enthusiasm about huge fertile fields, granaries full of food, mines full of deposits, and so on. All they managed to achieve. It is some incredibly peace-loving race. And as if the pirate scum didn't have enough reason to invade them now, these 'Earthlings' also announced in all directions, as far as their transmitter allowed, that they are mostly females who would like to find a partner somewhere among the stars because their small race has very few males. The Lizardmen are already rubbing not only their hands," Mokarah said with disgust.

"Wait? You said Sol System?" Vasileiah asked suddenly.

"Yes, why?"

"Fey Republic found some kindred manlike race some time ago, probably around this place, but it didn't sound like anything you describe, just some techno-barbarian tribes scattered on the postnuclear tombworld."

"Yeah, that's definitely not it."

"Yes, you're right; it must be some other race." Vasileiah admitted, then added, "I feel sorry for them; they expect to find friends, but all they find are a bunch of slavers and invaders.”

"If it weren't for the fact that I'm living on this spaceship myself, I'd really like those f*****g Lizardmen scum to get some nasty surprise," Mokarah admitted.