Earthcrusher Ultrawalker

## Tactical information

* **Doom and Despair**: The Earthcrusher is large enough to simply stomp on and crush the Audiopod and other superheavy units, and can be crushed itself by nothing less than a true epic unit, and with that overwhelming bulk it brings a devastating arsenal including space-warp cannons, a femtite hive, arrestor beams, blackstar projectors as well as the ability for up to twelve units (or less depending on the size of said units) to fire from within while augmented by the bunker components in its titanic fame. And can rapidly close the distance by warping spacetime to instantly "teleport" a short distance. The power strain, however, temporarily shuts it down.

* **The sound of your extinction**: Swarms of femtites heal and repair all friendly units near an Earthcrusher, allowing them to be the anchor and lynchpin for entire advances, and they are able to generate major atmospheric air and electric disturbances in order to both further damage nearby enemies as well as intercept incoming projectiles before they can even begin to test its incredible armour and multi-layered regenerating shielding.

* **Wait your turn**: These six legged titanic walkers of course are neither cheap nor quick to produce, and getting the most out of them by loading them with troops or vehicles only adds to that. Additionally, while hardly defenseless against aircraft and dangerous for infantry to even be near; something so big is a prime, even ideal target for even the least accurate artillery.

* **Your time has come**: The most elite Ultrawalkers can distort spacetime around themselves, passively accelerating allies and decelerating all enemies in their presence to further their importance as lynchpins of the assault while of course; making them faster themselves.

## Unit History

**Observational Fleet Aggressive Monitoring Department Orders for Amarani "Yuglakarka"**

**Mission Type: Eradication**

**Objective: Destroy Network facility in outskirts of Hamilton, Canada to seal security breach following Variable Test 891 of Earth Experimental Project "ARTAINAR"**

**Complicating Factor: Allied Peacekeeper base preparing for intervention into United States nearby, military presence is strong.**

**Oddity: Network and Allies are hostile to each other, military presence in Canada is unusual, especially with this proximity**

**Theorem: Network Cell is using Allied presence as a shield against our forces or those of other supranormal aggressors (RE: "Protectorate", "Legion", "Hegemony", etc)**

**Resolution: Induce communications failure, deploy extreme force, leave no survivors**

**Suitable Disinformation: Quebecois Separatist movement and Indigenous Rights Movements, clean battlefield following operation, deploy reformatted abductees of suitable ethnicity (Quebecois, Cree), provide captured Chinese weapons and fabricated evidence of Chinese plot, distribute additional weapons and falsified orders to violent groups to further plausibility**

**Likely Secondary effects: Intra-ethnic violence against Cree and Quebecois people, increase pressure on Allied governments to direct war effort towards Atomic China**

**Likelihood of Negative Impact on Operations: Negligible. Exception; Potential complaints from Syndicate co-conspirators and Unionist contacts. This will be handled by your superiors through additional funding and allowance of crackdown on secessionist movements in Canada.**

**Additional: Ultrawalker deployment authorised.**

**Open data-packets for full briefing and context. This unit shall reiterate that your superiors have made it unconditional that there are to be no witnesses.**

### Battle of Blake Holsey

"Frederick, I told you a million times to stop fucking around with the radar until the techies get here." There was a hint of irritation to the Captain's voice as he looked at the shirtless Javelin trooper slamming his fist at the side of the panel, the persistent snow of interference preventing anything from appearing.

"Captain, this shit is brand new, fresh out of the MCV. It shouldn't be giving us static like this already." He said, the pale-skinned burly man towering over the young Swedish Captain who chewed his lips and had a close look at the console before shrugging.

"Look, Sargeant Fred, it's not something either of us can do anything about. Get your head back in the game, we're due for a chronosphere insertion into Cali in an hour anyway. And I hope this time you remember to use the proper rounds on buildings instead of wasting HEAT missiles on bunkers like an asshole." The Captain said, his pale blonde hair's bangs needing to be brushed away from his ocean coloured eyes while he adjusted his cap and folded his peacekeeper armour clad arms.

"Honestly, Fred may have a point, Ike, I haven't been able to get a word out of Falcon Squadron since these atmospheric anomalies cropped up." Comm Officer Marinette tapped back into her uplink to the Commander's Electronic-Video network, the French woman making a face as she was met with a howl of static feedback while the Chronosphere nearby started to hum into readiness.

"Look I'm sure the Brigadier has it all figured out or else we'd have gotten a stand down order." Captain Ike replied, tapping his foot in nervousness all the same...why hadn't the Brigadier said anything yet?

Something fiery illuminated the left side of Ike's face, prompting him to look to the side and narrow his youthful eyes to try and get a bead on what it could have been. A meteor? No, can't be, the Satellite network would have picked it up. And it was changing course, levelling out its path of flight and then splitting off some...things that slowed before they hit the ground, with waving tendrils and mechanical legs that were curled towards their ovoid frames.

"What kinda chuckwagon..." The nearby Guardian Tank commander, a dyed in the wool American hardass by the name of Jake managed before the air began to split apart with flashing lights and blinding colours and deafening noises like a jet engine whining to life. An American Navy SEAL operative chewing gum near the base's secondary conyard that had survived a dozen strikes on the Continentals, the entirety of world war two, and the jungles of vietnam disappeared; his body flensed into sparking fragments after a call of pained surprise, a Javelin squad getting enough time to fire off a missile before their bodies were torn apart, red mist blackening into ash before Ike's very eyes.

Vehicle Armouries and Barracks started coming apart like toys, power plants burned to the ground, tanks caught in the bizarre storms generated by the figures peeled apart and sanded into little more than dust, Longbows and Cryocopters on patrol twisted apart and sent tumbling out of the sky as the Construction yard disintegrated.

Before Ike could process what had happened, the missing planes of Falcon squadron returned; in pieces. One by one the wreckages of the ace Apollo squadron and even the Achilles super-fighter that had been accompanying them ploughed into the ground nose first, strange shapes dancing through the storm clouds above as what he recognised as armoured vehicles, some hovering, some walking, approached at high speed towards the troops stationed at the North in the sight of the Grand Collider Cannon and smaller defences meant to guard the Chronosphere.

"We're under attack! Everyone get moving! Battle positions now now now!" Ike shouted, trying to be heard over the din of battle as the faster hovertanks and scuttling walkers pushed through the initial Multigunner turret fire and happily took what the Guardian Tanks of the Brigade's American tank company had to offer. The heavier, turreted ones and the tripods; what he figured for tanks, returned fire, focusing on the Grand Collider Cannon to reduce the artillery piece to so much slag while the ground rumbled beneath the tread of something much heavier.

Ike's M60 chattered to life, useless for killing a tank, but if he could keep the crew buttoned up, under attack...no, his bullets struck some flashing light that seemed to harden at impact and the vehicles hardly cared as they turned their attentions to the other static artillery turrets.

"Can anyone hear us?! We have unknown contacts bearing down on us at twelve o' clock, heavy armoured formations with unknown markings!" Ike shouted, only getting more static until he had to throw out his com-bead to prevent himself from going deaf, the screams of dying soldiers in what was left of the secondary base as the things dropped earlier had their fun replacing one unpleasantness with another.

"I got this, hold tight." Frederick said, eagerly loading in a missile and letting fly as soon as he got a lock on something big stepping through the curling storm clouds that seemed to follow the unknown army's movements. Lightning arced between clouds and struck the missile from the sky, a faint spray sparking against the hard-light barrier of something that looked like a bent pillar, taller than a tank with clawed projections.

The surviving tanks fired wildly into it, rainbow Spectrum beams spearing from Mirage Tanks hidden as trees and joined with the yellow solar light of an Ares; an Assault Striker rumbling into position and letting its multigunner batteries fly with missiles at the pillar.

A second pillar emerged, undaunted by the fire thrown its way, shifting clouds of tyrian specks glowing with an unnatural heat dancing around it while bolts of electricity and howling winds flickered and sang. The first pillar moved again, and he saw what looked like fog-lights glaring with an evil green light from the clouds.

"...Might need more missiles." Frederick said, trying to keep it cool while Marinette tried again and again to raise someone, anyone, but one look at her face was enough to tell Ike that she was having no better luck than him.

"Forget it Marinette, get a gun." He ordered as Jake buttoned up, shouting something he'd never repeat in front of anyone with skin darker in ochre before Ike's eyes widened, grabbing Frederick and pulling him out of the way of a thrown tank that slammed into the ground with enough force to make a crater, broken and mangled crewmembers flopping out of the smashed open hatches in a heap disfigured enough to make Frederick puke.

"That company's supposed to be three clicks out!" Marinette stammered.

"Guess they had a quick return to base." Ike tried to joke before a low warble mixed with high clicking rattled his teeth.

The first pillar moved, and then he realised they were legs for a mecha and Ike could feel his balls try to retreat into his intestinal tract.

"Keep firing! Keep firing!" He shouted, a Guardian Tank exploding as the second Assault Striker arrived; Century Bombers loaded with paratroopers releasing their payload to join the fray even as a trio of Artemis Bombers slammed into the ground with sundered wings. Some of the smaller machines had fallen, but others were disgorging...soldiers? Too big to be soldiers like he knew, walking too weirdly...but they walked like infantry, even as they shot some sort of purple light into his lads that not only erupted in an explosion but seemed to punch them, organs spilling out from blunt impact and bodies flying.

The giant was not alone, there were others like it. He wasn't sure how big, until the closest assault striker that had rolled over and crushed one of the tripod walkers that had sought to close with it and stab it with its glowing mantis claws to stop it from finishing off oe of the hover tanks found itself beneath that leg and another. A machine meant to go toe to toe with an apocalypse tank or survive naval artillery or direct bomb hits crumpled like foil as the enormous object pushed its legs downwards and turned a huge head like some kind of hybrid of an insect and a demon towards the Particle Expellers firing into it.

Sight distorted, direction inverted and stretched, the world spun and twisted and broke and all that was left of the experimental vehicles was scattered wreckage that looked like it had been pulled like taffy as the rest of the giant thing moved into vision, bunkers lighting up with weapons like the soldiers firing around it but magnified, stabbing, tearing at anything in their way.

SAS troopers trained by Tanya Adams rushed ahead, explosives in hand before Ike could grab them and stop them. "Stop!" He managed.

"No can do mate, only one thing for big bloody mecha like that!" One of them said as they tried to approach, missile after missile brought down by the electrical arcs that stabbed between clouds or blown away by the curling storm system around it. They seemed to read the lightning, to try and dance away from cloudlets building a charge, but they didn't reckon with the tyrian dust that started to cling to their armour and uniforms.

Marinette, perhaps wiser than her two male companions, looked away as they started to shout, then scream, then burn. The dust was eating them, metabolising them, they steamed, they ignited, they de and recomposed as the clouds swirled around and around, racing to injured or damaged units of these...these inhuman things and sealing what injuries had been made.

Ike's gun clicked, he looked desperately for another belt, Marinette squeezing off bursts with her MX-15 at the infantry, aiming for the smaller ones, but the giant was close. Had to be over seventy meters tall, the thing could have trampled a King Oni to death, and its six legs bore a great body with that heavy head on top, every step making the ground rumble and riot.

Surviving Vindicators tried to rush it, but they were swatted down by its storm, its hungry clouds, and the smaller weapons upon it, their bombs exploding uselessly against the shields while the spectrum towers were silenced one after the other, a Javelin Company trying to overload its anti-missile defences with sheer volume briefly getting the thing's notice for long enough for an odd dark sphere to be spat from horn-like cannons. A sphere that erupted into a yawning abyss that yanked man and machine within, squeezing, crushing, irradiating with some twisted force that left only Tyrian coloured unrecognisable wreckage and gore in its wake.

Mesofortresses that broke through the storm tried to just dumbfire their missiles, and for a moment Ike dared hope. What tank couldn't the Mesofortress lay waste to?

He had seen them turn whole Continental armoured battalions to dust, sink Corsair ships like toy boats, smash holes wide open in the Iron Bear, break the NVA over their knees and bring swarms of GLA Scorpions and Marauders to a grinding halt.

Evidently these machines were on that list as the shielding of the pack of these things absorbed the vehicle decaying warheads without issue; cold, bitterly cold beams erupting in response and sheathing the mesofortresses in prisons of lithium that burned with a dreadful brilliance when they crashed and shattered like brittle sculptures, others torn into by the smaller escorts beams, missiles, and sparking bolts or by the predatory forms of their own aircraft.

"I'm dry!" Fred shouted, fumbling around for another missile only to find nothing.

Still no luck on Ike's end for more bullets.

"Last clip!" Marinette shouted, stabbing beams of that hard-light punching into Jake's tank from a bunker on the lead colossus and leaving little more than steaming wreckage, Marinette swearing in response as she flicked to full auto and just let rip into one of the big, reptilian things holding a Peacekeeper by the neck into the air for the benefit of one of those squid things from earlier, in its many tentacled suit.

The big reptile ignored the shots while the squid wrapped tendrils around Corporal Jade's head and forced her to look upon it.

Her resistance stopped, and when she was dropped she offered nothing more than a glazed over salute before pointing to where rifleman was hiding. "A pleasure to serve the Ecumene my superiors." She said with a hollow voice.

"No...mind control...no!" Ike shouted, still having nightmares about Tokyo as he pulled his pistol and shot at the Squid, ignoring the goliath as it stomped on the primary construction yard's walls, trying to push them down while firing upon it.

The bullets got the Squid's attentions as the trio emptied pistol clips into it, but it may as well have been pissing into the wind.

"~A very curious display of bravado. All a wasted effort.~" The thing "said" in a shrill voice transcoded by its suit, a harsh, angry monotone like something out of Doctor Who.

"~Our Earthcrushers have already broken you. Your resistance is as futile as it is stupid.~" The Alien said again as it approached, unworried, unafraid.

"What or who are you!" Ike shouted.

"~We are the Enlightened Ecumene of Civilisation and owners of your world, Isaac Svensson of Sweden. Your technological uniqueness will serve a new master and we will salvage from the filth of your race the one in a million parts that are worthy of civilisation.~" It replied, waving a tendril at the Hexapod that had broken open a hole in the construction yard for odd, grey skinned aliens like in the comics to slip in while another of the machines stood near the chronosphere, surrounded by what he now understood to be extraterrestrials.

"Like hell you will!" Frederick managed as he tossed a grenade at the Squid thing, only for an arc of atmospheric lightning to dance up from the ground and fry the explosive, a hovering tendrilled drone like an ammonite relaxing its tendrils when the threat passed.

"~Look at our Ultrawalkers and tell me that we have not won. Your only hope for survival is in surrender. Now **kneel.**~" The alien said with a voice that deepened with the last words as Ike fell to his knee, the last dregs of peacekeeper resistance crushed when the third of the Ultrawalkers swept through it with those black star and space distort weapons their anguished screams only eclipsed by the sizzling and burning created by their tyrian dust.

"~I am Arkzarzakal and from this moment you are my slaves, for it is as slaves that you may learn to be higher than your weakness that has allowed you to be defeated. But worry not, the pain to come for you is but strength entering your body.~" The Alien said bluntly as a saucer arrived overhead and released a strange light that pulled all three of them off the ground, sucking them towards a rapidly opening compartment as the Ultrawalkers formed a triangular formation to watch over the treasure of the Allied base be carted away into waiting spacecraft before he blacked out.

When he came to, he awoke staring into a harsh light, a dome like cell housing him and many others, all naked as he was, all stripped of markings of nation or humanity, from the languages and voices he heard it seemed they didn't really care to group people together by nationality, nor age, nor gender. All thrown in here with nothing but skin and hair and staring cameras and drones like animals in the slaughterhouse. Behind him though was a display screen...one that, part of him knew was showing him what he would have seen if this were the sort of craft to have windows and he were anywhere near where one would be.

Jupiter, King of Planets, with that angry red spot staring him dead on.

### Description

Tier 4 ultraheavy units are something not every army has, but those that do have them put genuine monsters in them. The last step before the Tier 5 epic units which are nearly always impossible to provide more than one of to most commanders in the MCV battlefield, such instruments of war are testament to the fact that if you give military engineers an inch they will take a mile. With armour materials that become stronger the larger the contiguous volume they have, portable factories and deployable refineries to make simple the once difficult task of logistics and even provide reinforcements on the field while also making static fortifications far more practical than before, and the automation of so much heavy industry allowing for so many to be freed for military service, designs that would have been considered absurd fantasy in the first world war are now posterboys for armies that decided the Mammoth Tank just wasn't big enough.

On Earth Soviets arguably started the trend with their computer-controlled Super Tank prototypes, behemoths with armour proofed against V-2 impacts, rapid reloading 600mm twin cannons, four 30mm rotary cannons to shred infantry, and a brace of S-100 long range Anti-Air missiles and shorter ranged multi-purpose "gadfly" missiles that dwarfed the Mammoth Tank. Though the Allies managed to hack their control systems and sabotage the plat that was preparing to refine their designs for war factory production before they could have started rolling out en masse to annihilate the Allied armies, the idea still left an impression that would give birth to the Vladimir Lenin series of tanks such as the "Red October" and the Karl Marx series of Ultraheavy Walkers like the "Rokossovsky" War Crawler.

For an intergalactic warmachine like the Ecumene however, such machines are such an ancient part of their military history that their presence is one of those "just-sos" of how warfare works. Once one overcomes the technological limitations that disfavour very large units, it is only natural to build bigger to take advantage of economies of scale and concentrate more force in a single package to provide enough density of power to overwhelm defences or blunt offensives. It's just how things are done, and anyone who was surprised by the fact that an interstellar armada would bother with the facilities to bring these tens of thousands of tonnes heavy land battleships across the void must clearly be addled in the brain to be shocked by such a simple thing. Why *wouldn't* you do it if you could is the more important question to them. Especially as these machines sow two things very important for an empire that needs a constant diet of conquests and grim subjugations to outrace its own entropy; terror and dread.