War Core Wednesday. War Core 4, Chapter 29.

Chapter 29.

Incoming artillery started to land on the hive, and Vilkrex’s defenders responded in an unusual way. Hugh’s troops would have hunkered down inside the trenches and bunkers, waiting for the enemy to attack and returning fire with their long-range weapons. Vilkrex’s troops reacted like they were angry bees and the Ssath had just poked their hive with a stick. They poured out and charged toward the Ssath, blind in their fury at being attacked.

“Hugh, I didn’t know they could fly, did the one you were fighting with do the same?” Cartwright asked as all Vilkrex’s forces took wing and flew toward the Ssath.

“No idea, she never flew when we were allies and given that we were on a ship and then a space station, the opportunity never really presented itself,” Hugh replied. He might not have known about the whole flying deal, but he Ssath did and they were obviously ready for it.

A wall of fire met the leaping attackers, with the Ssath heavy weapons concentrating on the larger mechs and the infantry picking off their counterparts. Beams from the base turrets joined the fight, and their range was much longer than Hugh would have thought. The deadly energy probed into the jungle, burning through the vegetation and into the horde of Ssath attackers. Both sides were taking casualties, but Vilkrex was definitely getting the worst in the exchange.

“Hopefully they kill each other off,” Tran said.

“I agree, but we still can’t be sure who the good guy is in this brawl,” Hugh said.

“My money’s on both being the bad guy, but if I had to choose, I’d say our foe is the Ssath,” Cartwright said.

“Either way, I don’t think we should commit any of our troops to that little fracas,” Zacharias added. It was good to see him getting more involved with the chatter. Having been a replacement for their previous Air Force Liaison, Zacharias had to join a command team that were already comfortable with each other, which is never an easy thing to do in a time of war.

“Don’t worry, we’re staying put for now. Did we get a look at either the forward base or their version of the millipede nest?” Hugh asked.

“Scouts say the forward base is gone, that last attack must have wiped out the defenders and they hadn’t sent anyone there to rebuild. That team is looking for their millipede nest now,” Tran said.

“Did our recon team step foot on the forward base? Can we take it before the fight ends?” Hugh asked.

“Taking it over is a no-go. The team did inspect the base directly, but since we’re allies it’s considered friendly territory. I take it the GCA didn’t send you some notice to go to war against Vilkrex,” Tran said.

“No, the whole ally thing must block it until we make a deliberate attack. Just keep an eye on it for now,” Hugh ordered.

That was a disappointment, taking the forward base out from under the serpents was paying off, and if he could take this one, it would only bolster their income. Back in the battle, the Ssath were overpowering Vilkrex’s forces. Things were in melee now, and the Ssath were deadly at close range. At least the base turrets were charging a heavy toll on the Ssath. They seemed to team up on the larger mechs when they walked into view and would pick off infantry if there weren’t any juicier targets to hit.

“Look at that, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Tran asked, highlighting a particular mech in the fight. It was one of the strangely colored infantry mechs, and it had slammed something on the back of a Ssath mech’s head. The Ssath began to go berserk tearing into his allies who were stunned at the sudden betrayal.

“Vilkrex did something like that when she was in her real body. She apparently used her young to take over another being. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, they young would feed on its victim while piloting the body around. This must be the mech version of that ability, but only those oddly colored infantry can do it.

Several mechs had been hijacked that way, including one of the medium mechs. It was causing chaos in the Ssath ranks as nearly a half dozen mechs had been taken over so far. Hssim reacted quickly and soon, fire was focused on any of the oddly colored infantry that they found. That little stunt added to the butcher’s bill, but the Ssath were still going to win this.

The Ssath soon wiped out the last of Vilkrex’s counterattack and pushed on the hive itself. Damaged mounted on the hive, but Vilkrex wasn’t out of tricks just yet. Activity was seen at the previously silent bunker and swarms of the little mech versions of Vilkrex’s children flew toward the Ssath force. The Ssath shifted their fire, burning down the small mechs as they closed in.

A few of Vilkrex’s children made it to the Ssath lines and another dozen mechs turned against their own. A second firefight eliminated the last of the traitor mechs, and the surviving Ssath charged forward, to tear the hive apart with their claws. The structure was a combined command post and factory buildings, making it extremely durable. Just like anything, it would fall if enough firepower was directed against it.

Vilkrex now tried her final option, becoming an avatar to engage in the fight directly. From the hive stepped Vilkrex, wearing the guise of a medium mech. Beam weapons on her carapace tore into the Ssath lines as more of her children flew from where they had clung to her body. Heavy shields flared on Vilkrex’s body, but even the powerful shields of an avatar couldn’t stand up to dozens of Ssath blasting, clawing, and biting at her.

Her claws lashed out, tearing through a Ssath light mech’s armor like tissue paper. Two more Ssath infantry fell to her assault before the avatar was torn apart by a team of medium mechs. Hugh thought it was like watching a kaiju movie, a giant mantis mech fighting a team of metal T-rexes. A familiar prompt appeared as Vilkrex fell and her hive collapsed into rubble.

A core has been defeated; 4 cores remain in the fight.

Vilkrex, for good or bad, was out of the fight, but it must have been a pyrrhic victory for Hssim. Three quarters of the Ssath attack force was down and with the command post hive destroyed, there was no way to take over the forward base or the other critical location in the zone. Hssim might get some kind of bonus for defeating the core, but this zone was now a graveyard.

The Ssath could send drones to salvage the abundant wreckage strewn about, but it was likely a very long haul and might not be worth it to pull that many drones off of other tasks. Hugh could do the same thing, but sending his drones form the serpent forward base was foolish. It would take them a long time to make a round trip and only receive a few points of salvage each time. Maybe when their other sources ran dry it might be worth the risk, but with the salvage fields outside all his bases still holding a sizeable quantity, he wouldn’t take up long distance salvage operations just yet.

Now that Hugh thought about it, gathering up all those battlefield wrecks was something he might be able to do. Hugh had the Emergency Recall ability from his reprocessing skill. It would gather all fallen allied mechs on the battlefield and give him 10% of the salvage value instantly. Hugh worried that he might be screwing Dalven out of some resources but walking away from this much salvage on the battlefield or leaving it for Hssim to gather up seemed to outweigh Dalven maybe salvaging a few of his fallen mechs.

“Heads up everyone, I’m going to try my Emergency Recall ability. It should gather up all those fallen mechs and give us 10% of the salvage value.

Emergency Recall has been activated. Salvage calculations are commencing.

As they watched, the wrecks on the battlefield started to dissolve away as the GCA worked their magic. Just as he had hoped, both Hssim and Vilkrex had been considered allies and both their fallen mechs were eligible for the process. Hugh could feel it, sensing where other fallen mechs were being gathered. This was the largest concentration, but there were others out there, lost in jungle skirmishes early in the campaign and never recovered. He did sense some where he figured Dalven was located, on the other side of the D’kahn, and it was a sizeable number.

From what Hugh could tell, no announcement had been made, so his allies wouldn’t know what Hugh had just done unless he told them. None of his units were gathered up, his automatically were reprocessed after ten minutes and for the full value. That one trait he had selected was really paying off. Hugh took a look at his status to see how much of a windfall he had gathered.

Command Post, tier 4.

Resources: 4785.

Perfect, he could bump the command post all the way to tier six and have enough left over to raise the light mech factory to the same level. The barracks were free thanks to his perk at the beginning of the battle, but the main battle mech factory, air mech factory, and sea mech factory would take some time given their costs to upgrade. He ordered the upgrade to the command post and his drones got to work. While he waited for the upgrades to complete, Hugh received notice that the intel and admin office addon to his command post had as comple.

“Hey Hugh, can you hear me?” Maddison said over the command channel.

“Maddison, how did you get here?” Hugh asked.

“You built the perfect upgrade for me, that’s how. The GCA gave us a heads up that you might have access to some kind of intel addon and that operators skilled in administration and efficiency would be needed. There are twenty of us in pods ready to help,” Maddison said.

“You don’t need to risk yourself, let the military handle this,” Hugh said, afraid for his friend. She wasn’t a soldier, and her greatest strengths were her gaming abilities outside of real combat.

“We can’t exactly do that, as you already know. Once in the pod, you’re in for the duration. Since we’re here, are you ready to put us to work?” Maddison asked.

“Who’s this ‘we’ and what kind of work are you talking about? You’re good in the simulation, but you don’t’ have the combat experience to pilot a mech suit,” Hugh said.

“The we I mention is a collection of the top gamers in our country. As for the work, you need to concentrate on the war, we’ll concentrate on making sure the resource gathering and garrison stuff is optimized,” Maddison said.

“Can you do that? That’s all AI-controlled. What about these other gamers? Do they know what they signed up for?” Hugh asked, worried that the team of gamers were going to freak out like the core prior to Hugh had done.

“Mr. Hugh, can I answer this?” One of the gamers called out.

“Go ahead, and it’s just Hugh,”

“Hi, I’m Derek, and yes, we all know the risk of getting into one of the pods. I’m not a soldier, and probably wasted way too much time on gaming than real life, but I want to help. You and the soldiers are putting everything on the line for us and from what the GCA told us, this battle is a big deal. My brother is in the National Guard with you when you defended Los Angeles against the invasion,” Derek went silent, and Hugh could hear the pain in his voice when he mentioned his brother.

“I lost him in that fight, and I wish I could have done something to help. I’ve never been in great shape, don’t like sports, and knew that the military wasn’t for me, but that doesn’t mean I’m a coward. There is one thing I’m good at, what I and the others consider ourselves the best at, and that’s gaming. You need our help and we’re willing to risk it all if it has a chance to save our world,” Derek finished.

The young man was right. If he wanted to share the burden and knew the risks, Hugh wasn’t going to stop him. It was too late anyway; they were here which meant they were logged into a pod somewhere and those wouldn’t open until the battle was over. Maddison must have had her key players ready to go for a while now, just hoping she would get another chance to jump into the real action.

“We’re glad to have you and the others, Derek. You may not think you’re cut out to be soldier, but today you showed the courage of one by offering to fight alongside us. Now, what can you all do to help us?” Hugh asked.

“Oh, this is where it gets cool. The GCA is allowing us to help manage any AI-controlled units, both your construction drones and the garrison stuff,” Maddison said.

“But I thought direct control of the garrison units was blocked by the GCA?” Hugh asked.

“It still is, and we can’t control them directly, more like you can do in a RTS game. We can set pathing for both combat units and drones, prioritize targets, repairs, and even general placement. Give us a few minutes and we’ll have your automated stuff, well, automated, but better,” Maddison said.

That was good news, and gamers would be perfect for this kind of thing. Hugh could issue some general orders, like prioritizing which resource field to harvest, and what building to construct, and do things like assign garrison to the bunkers, but it took time. In the middle of a fight, he was forced to rely on the default programming. Now, he wouldn’t have to worry about that, if these guys were as good as they claimed they were. Gamers were a bit like soldiers in one aspect, they all thought they were the best. Now was the time for them to prove it.