War Core Wednesday, War Core 4, Chapter 26.

Chapter 26.

Wave 5 of the automated attacks have begun, defend your cores.

“This is it, call out the attack when you see it,” Hugh ordered. He looked through the various feeds, trying to find out what form of attack was coming for them.

“I think I’ve got something over to the southwest, but I have no idea what that is,” Admiral Nix said. Hugh shifted his few and could see a large object high overhead that was on a straight course for his command post.

“Zacharias, it looks like we need the air force again,” Hugh said.

The air mechs began to gather over the command post, and, thankfully, the incoming attack was moving rather slowly at about the pace of a light mech instead of an aircraft zooming over the battlefield. With no direct threat to the forward bases from this attack, Hugh ordered their fighters to join the growing cap over the command post. So far, each base had a flight of five fighters protect it, and with the dozen pod-controlled and ten AI-controlled mechs already at the command post, he had a decent-sized force to counter the air threat.

“It's too high to engage with my guns when they pass over,” Nix said. It was true, Hugh’s air mechs really didn’t have a ceiling and could even fight in space, but the incoming attack was far above the range of anything his patrol boats had in the arsenal. They couldn’t even get a good look at the attacker until the air mechs engaged.

“Try to shadow it as it comes in. That thing will have to drop down if it wants to attack and it could come into gun range as it gets closer,” Hugh said. He was wrong, it kept the same altitude and course, eventually passing over Nix’s force of four patrol boats.

“Incoming!” Nix shouted to the commanders of the patrol boats. Hugh could see it now, something was dropping out of the bottom of the object. Was it doing an old-fashioned carpet bombing of his fleet?

“They’re slowing down, it’s a mech, not a bomb,” Nix called out as the objects drew near. To Hugh, they looked like giant locusts as the wings on the mech extended, slowing their descent. The attackers were larger than an infantry mech but not quite the size of a light mech. Hugh knew that another species used locust-like mechs, but those were used to jump short distances, and didn’t have wings as these did. No, these were likely just some amalgamation that the GCA had brewed up.

“Air cover coming in,” Zacharias said, ordering his pod-controlled force of fifteen air mechs into the fray. The locusts were dropping quickly, but they were still decelerating which would allow the air mechs to arrive before they got into gun range of the patrol boats. A quick count showed there were forty of the enemy mechs, and as they fell, they grouped up into batches of ten. Each batch of locust mechs, which Hugh had decided to call them, targeted a separate ship.

As the air mechs began to make their first pass through the falling enemy. More objects dropped from the mothership. Flames and a smoke trail showed that these weren’t more locusts, it was a barrage of missiles. A dozen of the missiles were fired, and then the mothership’s launchers quickly fired a second volley.

“They’re locked on, go evasive,” Zacharias ordered. The formation of air mechs scattered trying to shake the enemy missiles. A few of the air mechs ignored the threat and shot through the dropping locusts, guns blazing. Their fire shredded the locusts, who appeared to be lightly armored. Five dropped, burning into the sea around Nix’s patrol boats. The others unfurled their wings even wider, slowing their drop and causing them to glide smoothly toward their targets.

“It wiped them all out,” Tran said, as shocked as the rest of them when every single air mech was brought down by the missiles. Zacharias was offline for a moment until the next air mech could be built for him to control. Their last two attacks had been vulnerable to air mechs and when Hugh saw the mothership, he figured it might be more of the same. Instead, this threat looked like something that his ground forces were going to have to tackle.

Onboard the patrol boats, the twin .50 caliber mounts started to fire. The patrol boats had the 20mm cannon upgrade in the queue to be built, but its turn hadn’t come up yet. Nix might not need them as the patrol boats began to maneuver, refusing to make landing on them an easy task. Just like his soldiers operating the ground and air mechs, the sailors controlling the patrol boats were good. Their fire began to snuff out locusts quickly, thinning the swarm that approached.

The locusts responded with a beam weapon mounted in the mouth of their mechs. Water sizzled and flashed into steam and the beams tried to lock onto the agile patrol boats. Most were shot down before they could land, but a pair did manage to hit one of the boats, crushing the lightly armored deck as they hit. At point-blank range, the beams first blasted the two gun mounts before burning through the hull to sink the vessel.

Nix had the other patrol boats sweep the deck of the dying ship with machinegun fire, making sure the locusts went to the same watery grave as their victim. The mothership passed over the beach and more locusts started to drop. Defensive garrison air mechs charged toward the incoming attack but were shot down by missile fire before they could do anything. At least the missiles seemed to be anti-air only, not that they would need anything else based on the number of locusts pouring out of the enemy mothership.

The attackers continued to drop from the enemy ship as it passed over the command post. Only when it finally reached the edge of his northern fortifications did the flow cease. It was hard to get a count, but Hugh would put the number of attackers at five to seven hundred. They were going to land from the bunkers on the beach to the northern trench line. There was nothing they could do until the enemy got into range.

Thinking fast, Hugh ordered his construction drones to grab millipede eggs that he had been stockpiling for the air mechs to use. The drones were ordered to scatter them in the open area between the beach and the command post. It would be great to scatter them over the whole base, but the eggs were too dangerous to use near his troops. While the millipedes would be friendly, the explosion when they hatched could become a friendly fire incident. Out in the no man’s land between the bunkers and the base, he had open ground and plenty of enemies that would land there.

He estimated they would get maybe twenty of the eggs ready before the enemy landed. Hugh found that he could activate the eggs with a thought so he left the ones stockpiled in the command post area dormant. He also targeted the area with his missile battery, but it would only fire if the eggs were ineffective. The missile battery was a dumb fire weapon and couldn’t track the incoming locusts or it would have made a great way to thin their numbers. No, he’d have to wait until they landed before the battery could engage, and even then, he couldn’t target inside the command post area for fear of friendly fire.

On the roof of the command post, his 20mm gun began to fire as the locusts entered extreme range. His main battle mechs and light mechs joined the party with their main guns. On top of the center bunker, the anti-armor rocket also fired, easily homing in on the slowly maneuvering locusts dropping toward them.

The enemy maintained a tight formation which allowed the anti-armor rocket to blast one locust and shower its neighbors with shrapnel. Destroyed mechs started to drop as Hugh’s forces tore into the swarm. They became a hazard to his construction drones and exposed infantry, but it was better than letting them land unopposed.

More weapons joined the fight as the locusts continue their descent. Fifty caliber machineguns on the main battle mechs engaged, and then the thirties on the light mechs and the quartet of defensive turrets around his base and the two mounted on bunkers fired. When the infantry joined the battle, the locusts finally responded with their mouth beams.  Both forces took losses, but Hugh thought his troops were getting the upper hand. The mouth beams were powerful, but inaccurate when fired from the dropping mechs. Hugh’s troops, on the other hand, were deadly accurate with all their weapons.

The defensive garrison units were a different story, but Hugh was still glad to have them banging away at the enemy. A squad of the garrison troops was inside each of the three bunkers by the beach and the rest were either in the trench line or scattered around the base. With the combined firepower of every weapon on his base, over half of the enemy were destroyed before they could land, leaving Hugh several hundred that he needed to deal with.

Locusts landed first on the beach, and the garrison troops did a fine job of holding their own. Mouth beams tore at the fortification, but the troops were safely inside and picking off the enemy as fast as they could pull the trigger. Just past the beach, the wave of landings continued. Here the ones closest to the bunkers charged to join the attack on them, but most headed toward their ultimate goal, Hugh and his command post.

A series of explosions rippled across the ground as locusts dropped among the millipede eggs. Hugh lost four of his construction drones in the blasts where they were they were trying to place the last of the eggs. It was worth losing a few drones when he saw the results. Eggs blasted apart and before the locusts in the area could recover, millipedes were swarming to attack. The enemy had the numbers to overwhelm the millipedes, but they would buy him time to deal with the mechs dropping into the command post before the one's outside could reinforce.

A mass of locusts dropped onto the roof of the command post. His 20mm gun started blasting them apart, but it was quickly put out of action by the beam weapons of the enemy. After disposing of the cannon, the locusts started to fire on the roof, causing pain to flare in Hugh’s mind as the command post was damaged.

“They’re on my roof, get them off me!” Hugh shouted to his commanders. The troops on the ground were fully engaged, but Tran did send several squads of infantry to the rescue. Garrison troops also responded, all those still functional inside the command post area charged to defend their core. Construction drones went to work, trying to repair the command post even as it was being torn apart. Their efforts and the Kraken upgrade kept Hugh from losing himself to the pain.

Hugh activated a single missile launch, calling it down on top of the millipedes where they were battling the locusts. Only a few hundred yards away, the launch and impact were almost instantaneous. When the plasma cleared, most of the attackers between the beach and the command post were down. Now they only had to deal with the ones already inside.

The pain felt when the locusts broke through the roof reminded Hugh of the time he had broken his arm as a kid. Jumping down to the command post floor, the locusts started to blast apart the machinery inside and tore into the construction drones that were working on repairs. It also allowed Hugh’s defenders a chance to get at them, and soon, a gunfight inside the command post was well underway.

Trained soldiers operating combat pods outclassed the AI-controlled locusts and before a minute had passed, the last of the attackers that had breached the roof was down. The pain began to slowly subside as the surviving construction drones got to work on repairs. The enemy inside the base was also being dealt with, but not without casualties.

It was a brutal fight, but Hugh’s forces had cover and lifetimes of military training to see them through. Locusts were dropped right and left and once their numbers dwindled, the kill ratio swung even further in Hugh’s favor. The main battle mechs were a wrecking crew. With armor that could stand up to the beams for some time, their machineguns never stopped firing and each burst cut down a foe. By keeping moving, the beams never focused on one part of the armor for long and the legs of the mechs proved more than adequate for squishing the lightly armored locusts.

Normally, melee combat wasn’t their forte, but in this brawl, Hugh’s troops used everything they had. Within only a few minutes the last enemy fell inside the base. Out on the beach, the locusts had burned their way into two of the bunkers, melting the defenders inside. They were stopped by Nix’s surviving patrol boats, which walked right up onto the beach to hose the enemy down with twin--mounted .50 caliber gunfire.

“Is that it, or do you think that mothership will turn around to become a boss mech we need to deal with?” Cartwright asked.

“Given the numbers that attacked us, I’d say that was it. Look, it also dropped locusts on the forward base,” Hugh said. Given warning and having time to watch at least some of the fight at the command post, the forward base defenders were prepared when the mothership flew over them. Both his forward base and the one they had taken from the serpent core were attacked at the same time, telling Hugh that the motherships attacking each zone were in sync with each other.

Like the launcher on the bunker, the missile battery at the center of the forward base got into action early, and with three reloads in the magazine, it took down a good number of locusts before they even got close. It turned out the enemy would only drop when over directly controlled territory, and with the footprint of the forward base being much smaller when compared to the command post, the number of attackers was manageable. His forces there still took over 50% casualties but the structures and defenses weren’t damaged much in the fighting.

“I think we’ve made it, but keep a lookout just in case. For now, we continue with the plan, rebuilding anything that was damaged and replacing our losses,” Hugh said. He had lost a good number of his drones as they tried to continue repairs even while being attacked by the locusts, so they were first in the queue to get rebuilt. Resource gathering had taken a hit as most of the drones were working on rebuilding but having multiple critical areas giving him a flow of resources, it wasn’t long before they were operating at peak efficiency again.