War Core 3, Chapter 43.

Chapter 43.

“Fall back to the command post and defend from there,” Captain Cartwright ordered over comms.

“Move!” Cartwright shouted, the urgency in his voice getting through to Private Yan and spurring him into action as he tried to both operate his mech and come to grips with the pummeling that had just wiped out most of his force.

Taking stock of his mech’s condition, Yan could see it wasn’t too bad. The incoming bombardment had vaporized the other three main battle mechs of his platoon, but he had been far enough away that the heat from the beam had dropped his shield and done little more than scorch part of his armor. The M26 he operated was a beast, but it definitely wasn’t able to stand up to the guns of a starship from orbit. A few infantry mechs were moving in the rubble of the buildings, but where the light mechs and other main battle mechs had been positioned, there was nothing but melted slag.

“Moving back to the command post, I’ve got a few infantry with me,” Yan reported. Only three infantry from his unit had survived the attack, and they positioned themselves on Yan’s flanks, covering him from the ruins of the nearby buildings as they pulled back. The point defense beam on his mech automatically activated, seeking out the incoming drop pods. It was fine for hitting a missile or even damaging an air mech, but it had no hope of burning through the thick armor of a drop pod. If the entire force had been alive and firing, they might have made a difference, but as it stood, the weapon only served to give away his position, so Yan overrode its firing parameters, silencing the weapon.

The command post was to the southwest of his current position at the intersection of W Temple Street and Figueroa, and it wouldn’t him too long to get there. Dirt erupted and the ground shook as a drop pod slammed into the street about five hundred yards ahead of them. The pod was huge, about the size of a small house, and its impact leveled the buildings around it. Yan swung his main gun around, chambering a round as the doors to the drop pod blasted out and Ssath infantry started to emerge.

A string of small explosions blanketed the Ssath as the infantry supporting Yan launched their grenades into the tightly packed enemy forces. He could feel the main gun of his mech fire, like the thump of deep bass inside your chest from an oversized speaker. That was the strange part of piloting a mech vs. operating a tank, Yan felt everything firsthand. It wasn’t like a vibration through the hull of a tank, this was part of his body performing an action.

The 90mm main gun round hammered into the drop pod, the explosion vaporizing part of the pod along with the last Ssath trying to leave it. His mech had a hull-mounted, 30-caliber machinegun that was already pouring fire into the individual Ssath seeking cover, while the heavier .50-caliber machinegun mounted on the cupola picked apart the enemy infantry clustered behind the remains of a low wall that offered scant protection from the rounds that the .50-caliber thumped out.

Not ones to cower before a threat, the Ssath hesitated only a moment before charging at Yan’s mech. He kicked the mech into reverse, walking backward slowly while keeping up his fire. A second blast of the main gun scattered more Ssath, but they were like hounds on the hunt, unwilling to be deterred by losses among their fellows. The supporting trio of infantry opened up with the assault rifles mounted to each arm, mag dumping into the Ssath, who returned fire with the small caliber weapons mounted on their shoulders.

Once close enough, the Ssath leaped onto the human infantry mechs, tearing them apart with their superior melee abilities. Not ones to go down easy, the humans piloting the infantry mechs had each saved a grenade inside their launchers for just this situation. Overriding the safety controls, the infantry activated their grenades, the blasts taking the attackers down with them. Yan was alone, and the Ssath were closing in. The shield on his mech finally recharged, snapping a dome of protection over the M26 before the Ssath arrived.

Another blast of the main gun fried four of the approaching Ssath, and the machineguns hammered back more of the foe, but they were still gaining on him. Almost forgetting he had it, Yan reactivated the point defense laser, setting it to engage ground targets as the first pair of enemy infantry leaped onto his mech. The shield flashed with a faint glimmer and the Ssath skid off, their enhanced claws and teeth generating sparks as they tried to penetrate the shield.

Yan felt a crunch as one of his mech’s legs landed on a fallen Ssath, crushing the enemy as he continued to try and put distance between himself and the enemy. A third Ssath landed on his mech and the shield, not having time to fully recharge yet, collapsed. The Ssath began to chew and claw through his armor, and though Yan’s main battle mech was tough, it couldn’t stand up to this type of punishment forever. More Ssath infantry made it through the wall of fire Yan was putting up and began to claw and bite away the armor on the legs of his M26.

He could feel pain mount as the damage began to pile up. A Ssath chewed through the barrel of the .30 caliber coaxial machinegun, silencing the weapon, and another pair of the enemy were working on doing the same thing to his main gun. Firing the main gun shook off the pair, but they leaped back on, continuing the assault. The point defense laser burned through another Ssath, but its activation drew the attention of the enemy, one of which bit down on the short barrel of the weapon. Yan ignored the heat warnings and activated the laser before it had finished its recharge cycle. A fresh wave of burning pain shot through him as the weapon overloaded and burst with a pulse of plasma fire, consuming the Ssath that had been biting on it but also burning away the weapon and a good chunk of the armor in that area, leaving him defenseless against the other enemy mechs swarming over his hull.

A familiar, yet out-of-place sound grew in volume before cutting off. It wasn’t until small caliber rounds started to ping off his armor, and the Ssath attached to it that Yan’s pain-filled mind recalled what that sound was, it was a police siren. One, then another of the Ssath mechs fell as one of the strange police car mechs stopped about a hundred yards away, the rifle mounted on a makeshift turret in the roof of the car never ceasing its barrage. Some of the rounds hit Yan’s mech, but the damage they did was fine with him as long as they were able to pick off the Ssath.

Yan’s mech collapsed, one leg finally being chewed through and giving way. As he fell, the Ssath changed their focus, leaping off his badly damaged mech and charging the police cruiser. Mobility was limited, and the only operation weapon that Yan had was his .50 caliber machinegun, which the Ssath hadn’t got to yet. With one leg out of action and the other three damaged, he was still able to drag his mech along the street, moving clear of the rubble to give his machinegun a clear field of fire.

With over a dozen Ssath mechs remaining, the police cruiser was about to be overrun. It wasn’t a true combat mech and lacked the armor and firepower that Yan had once possessed. The front doors on the cruiser opened and a pair of police officer mechs emerged. Each took cover behind the door and leveled their shotguns as the charging Ssath. Blasts of plasma pellets from the futuristic shotguns knocked back the lead Ssath, but there were too many to stop and after only a couple of shots, the enemy was tearing into the lightly armored officer mechs.

They had bought Yan the time he needed, and he wasn’t going to put their sacrifice to waste. Checking one last time to make sure his final surviving weapon was functional; Yah began to fire. The rounds shattered the armor of the Ssath infantry, who were even now finishing off the police cruiser. Four of the enemy went down before they shifted their attention back to Yan. The eight surviving Ssath started to charge back to their first victim, Yan’s fire slapping them down as they closed in. Only one Ssath made it through the fire to latch its teeth onto the barrel of the .50 cal, tearing it apart even as several of its teeth melted from the now, white-hot barrel of the weapon.

Knowing its enemy now had nothing left to fight with, the Ssath grabbed on and began to chew through the thinner armor at the top of Yan’s mech, near where the now-destroyed machinegun had been mounted. The pain began to mount again, threatening to swamp Yan’s ability to concentrate, his mech wobbling as it tried to stand once more. That was it, he didn’t need to stand, he needed his mech to fall. Lurching to the side with the collapsed leg, Yan allowed his mech to roll over on its turret, the Ssath attached to it didn’t notice until it was too late, taking too long to dislodge the claws burrowed into Yan’s armor. With a satisfying crunch, the massive main battle mech rolled over onto the Ssath, crushing the infantry mech beneath its bulk. Yan lay there, unable to right himself with the damage he had received.

“This is Private Yan from group three. My mech is damaged and immobile. I’m the last survivor of the group, and we’ve taken out a drop pod full of Ssath at the intersection of West Temple and Figueroa. An LAPD cruiser mech and two officers rendered assistance to our survivors, but they were destroyed in the fighting,” Yan reported. His comms were badly damaged from the fight, and he could only send audio. Normally he could check in on the battle, watching it from the sensors of the other human mechs, but now, he was forced to just sit and wait until either help arrived, or another Ssath strolled by and had him for lunch.

“Hang tight, Private, we’re a little busy, but I’ll have a construction drone sent over to fix you up when one’s available,” Captain Cartwright replied. With nothing else to do, he watched the limited self-repair functions of his main battle mech work. They wouldn’t get him upright and back in the fight, but they could do some basic repairs and make things easier for when the construction drone finally got there. He tried to make sense of the battle from just the audio reports, but things were chaotic, and he couldn’t get an accurate picture of what was happening. The only thing he could figure out was that things weren’t going well at the command post, and if that fell, there wasn’t much hope for the rest of them.