War Core 4, Chapter 30.

Chapter 30.

“Dude, check out how bad the pathing is on these guys,” one of the gamers said over the open command channel, highlighting the drones gathering salvage in the millipede hive.

“Cut the chatter, this is a command channel,” Nix growled at them.

“Who’s the angry guy?” Derek asked.

“The ‘angry guy’ is Admiral Nix, who’s not only in command of the naval forces, but is also the senior officer for this entire group. I’ll get you a separate channel for you guys, hang on a minute. If it’s something urgent comm me directly,” Hugh replied. There were going to be some challenges with the two groups, but already, Hugh could see an improvement.

Drones were working more efficiently and as the gamer had said, the default pathing for both combat units and construction drones was horrible. Maddison was estimating they could get anywhere from a 10% to 25% increase in gathering efficiency with the gamers on the job. Maddison remained on the command channel and took charge of the gamer group, assigning who she thought was the best fit for each location. They would also provide a bit of help in a fight, and while they couldn’t directly control a garrison unit, they could help prioritize targets. Normally, the AI just blasted away at the nearest threat, now, they would coordinate fire on key targets. Hugh left her to it; he had a battle to plan and a new command post upgrade to check out.

Command Post, tier 6.

Resources: 288.

Structures:

1. Barracks, tier 6 with armory upgrade.

2. Light mech factory, tier 6 with machine shop upgrade.

3. Main battle mech factory, tier 4 with forge upgrade. The cost to upgrade this structure to tier 5 is 900 resources.

4. Shipyard, tier 4 with drydock upgrade. The cost to upgrade this structure to tier 5 is 1000 resources.

5. Airfield, tier 4 with control tower upgrade. The cost to upgrade this structure to tier 5 is 900 resources.

There were upgrades to explore with the command post, barracks, and light mech factory, but Hugh decided to wait on them until the other structures were updated to the same tier. Another ten infantry and ten air mechs for the command post’s garrison were starting to be built, which was another benefit of gaining two tiers at once. The durability of his command post increased, and even the scales from the Kraken upgrade seemed to get a bit thicker.

Tier six assault infantry were a force to be reckoned with. The rifle mounted on one of the arms was replaced with a light machinegun, doubling their firepower. Only a pistol-caliber weapon graced the other arm, but it was additional firepower and Hugh wasn’t going to complain. The gamers were showing their worth, peeling off construction drones to upgrade the already built infantry mechs with the least amount of disruption to their other activities. For the scouts out in the other territories, they would have to remain in tier four mechs until they made it back to base.

His light mechs had upgraded and were now the M5 version of the Stuart. It retained the light, 37mm main gun, but now sported a total of three .30 caliber machineguns, making it excellent against infantry or other light mechs. Armor was increased by 15% and the powerplant changes to this model more than made up for the extra weight. Targeting and weapon traverse speed had also improved making the light mech a much more versatile unit. Hugh still wanted his main battle mechs, but the factory upgrade to tier six was too expensive and he’d rather at least have improved light mechs to use while he waited.

“What build order are you going for?” Maddison asked.

“I’m trying to keep things even as far as unit types, so the main battle mech factory to tier six, then the airfield, and lastly, the shipyard. Once that’s done, I’ll focus on upgrades then start banking resources to hit tier seven,” Hugh replied.

“That’s good, are you sure you want to max upgrades before jumping to a higher tier, the natural boost to a higher tier unit might overcome the benefits of the upgrade,” Maddison said.

“Maybe, but many of the upgrades improve as the mech gains a tier. We need our soldiers operating the best possible mech I can make for them,” Hugh said.

“Are the other cores doing the same thing?” Maddison asked.

“Hard to tell, the serpents that were next door were a higher tier, but their units lacked the punch that mine did. I assume that was due to a lack of upgrades. The Ssath was a few levels higher, but I think we’ve started to close the gap on them with the Emergency Recall,” Hugh said.

“That was good timing. Waiting might have meant one or more of our allies had declared as hostile, which would block their mechs from the recall ability,” Maddison said before abruptly cutting him off to get back to work, she was easily distracted like that, but was great at what she did. Wrangling gamers to get things organized was a task that Hugh was more than happy to delegate.

“Sir, we’ve got eyes on the D’kahn command post,” one of the scout teams reported. Hugh shifted his point of view over to the scout. The command post was a pretty generic GCA-generated one, while their only factory was a true monster, double the height of the command post. A single huge mech stood on watch, but there was a swarm of the smaller construction drones that served as both infantry and worker. Hugh couldn’t see anything resembling a trench line or bunkers for defense, but there were several turrets spread around the compound, the scout could spot at least a dozen from where he was positioned.

“Do you think they look a little light on the defenses?” Hugh asked the other commanders.

“I agree, the D’kahn don’t typically build many mechs, but at this stage in the battle, I would think they had more than just the one here and the one at the forward base,” Cartwright said.

“Are you thinking of making a play for their command post?” Zacharias asked.

“Yes, but not until the main battle mechs are brought up to tier six, as it stands, we need heavier guns to put a dent in that thing,” Hugh said.

“Hugh, you know that the liquid armor on those takes damage from every weapon we have. Get enough infantry plugging away at it and we’ll burn through all their armor reserves and leave it vulnerable,” Maddison said, joining them on the command channel. Practically everyone from their debrief meetings was here, all they were missing was Markum for an intel debrief.

“Sure, we can strip its armor away, but it’s not going to stand still and let us do it, those things pack some serious firepower,” Hugh said.

“We’ll keep an eye on it, but for now, we’ll concentrate on getting stronger,” Hugh said.

Hugh felt good about their overall position, he was still waiting for recon to reach the far border of the D’kahn so he could contact Dalven. The dual-purpose drones that the D’kahn used had caught his first infiltration team, and he lost both mechs in return for taking down a half dozen of the enemy drones. Another team was trying to slip through, and now knew to time their crossing with the predictable patrol routes the enemy drones were taking.

The Ssath had stayed in their territory and hadn’t pushed on to contact Hugh, making him think the alliance was probably off at this point. All three cores could easily handle the D’kahn and then move on to finish this, but Hssim was holding his cards close to his chest. While they hadn’t seen any Ssath mechs in their zone, Hugh wasn’t naive enough to believe that Hssim hadn’t infiltrated somewhere into his territory. For now, he'd keep sending out scouts and working to upgrade while they prepared for the next wave.

Income had seen a nice bump from the gamers’ work. Hugh now had enough to upgrade the main battle mech factory to tier five and it would be completed just before the next wave hit. Construction drones got to work on the factory, and it was soon completed in record time. His tier five mechs were still the M4 Sherman’s but they were a much-improved version.

The Sherman’s 75mm main gun now had a stabilizer, improving accuracy when on the move, and the number of machineguns blossomed to three, including a .50 caliber on the top cupola, a .30 caliber coaxial weapon, and a hull-mounted .30 caliber. Armor increased along with the power to compensate for the extra weight. More upgrades were unlocked, but Hugh would wait until he hit tier six with this and the other factories before he dug into them.

It was nice to not have to juggle construction drones, and the gamers allocated the correct number of drones to get Hugh’s existing forces upgraded while new units were still being built. His forces had expanded, and he now had a full company of 250 infantry mechs holding the command post along with ten light mechs and twenty main battle mechs. Zacharias had twenty air mechs at the command post and Nix’s fleet had been expanded to six patrol boats.

Each of the forward bases and his millipede hive had the numbers he wanted to defend them, so Hugh cut off unit production to focus on upgrading his remaining factories. The flow of resources seemed like a flood now that he wasn’t building units but tier six for the main battle mech factory wouldn’t happen before the next wave.

Wave 6 of the automated attacks have begun, defend your cores.

“Any bets on what we fight this time?” Maddison asked.

“No idea, but it usually doesn’t take long for us to spot something,” Tran advised. Minutes passed until one of the fighter patrols to the north called in a sighting.

“We’ve got mechs moving in from the north and heading toward the forward base. They’re too deep in the jungle for me to get an exact count, but I can see that it’s a sizeable force with some of the mechs being at least medium mech sized,” the pilot reported. They didn’t have a scout over the northern part of the former serpent territory, and Hugh was curious if the zones that no longer contained a core would face an attack wave.

“Incoming!” One of the soldiers at the forward base called out. Hugh could hear it now, the unmistakable sound of incoming artillery. Explosions blossomed outside the wire of the forward base. The defenders hunkered down inside the trench line. At this tier, the drones had dugout fighting positions for the light and main battle mechs, allowing them to crouch and have some cover. Another volley landed behind the command post a few seconds later.

“They’ve got us bracketed. There has to be a spotter out there, weapons free on the jungle. Pick a spot that doesn’t look right to you and light it up,” Cartwright ordered. Gunfire of all calibers lashed the edge of the jungle. It was likely too late to throw off the artillery, they were already on target, but the fire did motivate the incoming mechs to start their attack early.

A rocket from the launcher at the center of the forward base fired, then exploded somewhere out of sight in the jungle. One of the gamers tried to apologize for not catching it and wasting a missile, but he had things locked down now. Those rockets were one of their heavy hitters, and Hugh didn’t want them wasted on a random infantry mech leading the attack.

“Here they come, hey, those are our mechs,” Maddison said as the first enemy infantry mechs marched out of the jungle and into a hell storm of defensive fire. It was an exact match of Hugh’s infantry, down the national markings on the shoulder of the mech.

“Sir, we’ve got an assault underway at the D’kahn forward base,” a soldier reported. Hugh shifted his point of view to the scout’s mech. Massive plasma cannons on the arms of the D’kahn mech guarding the command post fired. Return fire was almost instantaneous, and four similar blasts slammed into the nearest defensive turrets. Automatic cannons and light beam weapons activated on the D’kahn mech as a trio of similar figures marched from the jungle.

“They’re hitting each core with their own troops. This should get interesting,” Hugh said. The forward base in the serpent territory wasn’t attacked, so at least he wasn’t at risk of losing that location. His other forward base was in trouble; the incoming fire was intense, and despite it coming from AI-controlled mechs, it was scoring some hits.

“We’ll do fine on this one. If there’s one thing humans are good at, it is fighting among ourselves,” Tran offered. He was right, every soldier under his command had trained to fight other humans so sloppily controlled AI versions of themselves weren’t going to pose the same threat as they might for the other cores.