War Core Wednesday, War Core 3, Chapter 36.

Chapter 36.

“It’s a bloodbath,” Tran said as the waves of missiles hit. The two nearest stations poured out point defense fire, their tier six defenses included nearly a hundred of the weapons. Too many targets overloaded the point defense and missiles started to hit home, pummeling the stations. The rugged design of the defensive station could stand up to several hits, but with nearly a hundred missiles slamming home within seconds of each other, the nearest stations ceased to exist.

Conquest Point Totals.

Humanity: 0/131.

Ssath: 2/131.

The wave of missiles flew on, the final two stations were further from the Ssath fleet so it was another minute before they faced the same fate as the others. With the destruction of the last of the stations near the arrival point, the Ssath were in the lead four to zero. They may have defeated the first stations, but they were paying a price to do so. The missiles from the stations and the mines arrived, and while the Ssath point defense did a good job at keeping them from the heavy vessels, they reaped a harvest among the frigates and destroyers, obliterating over a hundred of the craft.

More devastating to the Ssath, were the losses to their fighters. Defensive missiles in their thousands swarmed among the craft, taking them down by the score. When the attack died down, over fifteen hundred Ssath starfighters had been eliminated. During this time, the last of the Ssath fleet arrived, and the fighters from the late-arriving ships helped to more than makeup for the losses. As the fleet altered course toward the line of stations waiting for them in the asteroid belt, Hugh was able to get a fairly accurate count.

Ssath order of battle.

Frigates: 2246.

Destroyers: 2388.

Cruisers: 995.

Battleships: 817.

Starfighters: 6622.

Opposing the Ssath fleet were ten defensive stations, and the fleet they had managed to amass. Even now, more ships were under construction, but it wasn’t clear if they would be completed by the time the Ssath arrived. About half of the minelayers that had been in service with the first stations had fled at the beginning of the battle. Hugh expected them to reinforce the asteroid belt, but instead, they were on a course directly toward Earth. If the enemy fleet was delayed with battling the other lines of defense, and they had a way to restock their mines, Earth might just get an extra layer of defense.

Human defensive station fleet, the asteroid belt.

System Defense Boats: 576

Frigates: 62.

Destroyers: 181.

Cruisers: 150.

Battlecruisers: 61.

Battleships: 22.

Light Carriers: 10.

Starfighters: 3500.

The human fleet was much smaller, but they were backed by ten of the tier six defensive stations. Not spread out like the other stations were, the asteroid field defenders had placed them into two clusters of five stations, greatly improving their point defense capabilities. Looking at the dockyards on each station, Hugh figured they might get a few system defense boats, a half dozen cruisers, and another pair of battleships built before the Ssath were in range.

At first, the Ssath turned and began to burn hard toward the next defensive line. Their speed proved to be fatal for many of the Ssath ships. The minefields had been extended to most of the likely avenues of approach, and without waiting for the fighters to do a thorough job of screening them, they were taking hit after hit from missiles and bomb-pumped lasers that the mines carried. It wasn’t safe for the fighters either, as a fair number of of the defensive missile mines were scattered with the others.

Ignoring the losses, the Ssath bulled their way through the remaining mines, pushing closer to get their sensors to lock onto the stations that were at the edge of the scanning range. The human stations could see and track the enemy fleet before they could get a lock, and all ten stations began to fire volleys of missiles. The ships in their fleet joined in, adding to the massive attack. Like with the other stations, they timed the missiles to arrive and attack together. Less than two minutes after the humans fired, the Ssath began their attack, and the Ssath swarm of missiles dwarfed the numbers the humans were launching.

“Sir, you need to get a look at this,” Captain Tran said, drawing Hugh’s attention away from the space battle and back to his defenses. A line of vehicles was emerging from one of the buildings just down the street from the command post. Hugh was a bit taken aback. The one thing he didn’t expect to see during an alien invasion on a conflict world was five police cars, but that’s exactly what was approaching. A comm link pinged with the chief of police, a man named Langerson.

“Chief?” Hugh asked as he connected the comm.

“Not really, normally a lieutenant, but the GCA chose me to act as chief for whatever this is,” Langerson replied, sounding a bit confused.

“How exactly did you get here?” Hugh asked.

“I’m not sure of that either, something happened over the city and I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was contacted by headquarters and told that I was chosen as the law enforcement liaison for the invasion. They gave me a crash course on operating this mech thing, and started linking me up with officers that volunteered to help. Apparently, you’re supposed to get some kind of system prompt to tell you why we’re here,” Langson said.

“Welcome aboard, I’m not sure what to do with you just yet, this is a war, not dealing with criminals. What can your mechs do? Wait, hold on, I think they’re sending me your information,” Hugh said.

A random upgrade has been purchased by the human leaders for your core. To assist in your defense, representatives of the local, armed legal enforcement organization for your area have been activated. A new structure, Police Headquarters had been added to your command post controls. Should the structure be destroyed, it cannot be rebuilt. An initial force of ten officers has been produced along with their transportation units. Additional units and upgrades will automatically produce as your command post increases its tier.

“Sir, we’re still getting the hang of these things, but it looks like we’ve got a sidearm, and the cruiser is armed as well,” Langerson said, ordering his officers to step from their cars.

The police vehicles were painted black and white, but weren’t normal cars, instead, they were lightly armored with the same stuff that protected his mechs. The wheels and tires were made from a solid material, preventing them from easily being damaged, and a small turret, mounting an oversized plasma shotgun swiveled atop the roof of the car, looking for targets. The police mechs were scaled-down versions of his infantry mechs, painted blue and featuring a bright badge on the mech’s chest. A bit wobbly on their feet, the police walked around their cars, their pod operators getting what practice they could.

“We’re glad to have you, but this is a war zone, and I don’t think what they’ve armed your mechs with will hold up to heavy weapons,” Hugh said, a bit confused over this addition to his force. He figured they were linked to whatever version of a combat pod the GCA had stuffed the officers in, and feared they would all just become casualties as soon as the first Ssath mechs arrived.

“Well, sir, this place looks a little different, but it’s still LA. There’s nobody better to guide your troops around the city than the police that patrol it,” Langerson answered.

“Good call, we can use their help, Hugh,” Captain Tran offered.

“Roger that, okay, Langerson, work with Captain Tran to organize your force. Have them help our troops identify the best places to set up defensive points around the city as well as help them get acclimated. We can also use some help finding out where any salvage opportunities might be. Have your men look for damaged mechs or anything that can be carted back to the command post for reprocessing. Once the Ssath arrive, pull back to your headquarters and defend there,” Hugh ordered.

The police might not be of much use, but Hugh couldn’t pass up a few extra mechs in the coming fight. Their headquarters looked sturdy as well, a small fortress to help defend the city hall command post. Even with limited weapons, the LAPD mechs were firing plasma rounds, which did some damage to anything they hit. Hugh was sure that if the fight pushed all the way to the command post, he would throw everything at the Ssath to stop it, even lightly armed police.

Hugh explained that they needed to defend the ten victory points around the city. One of the officers offered to help map out some patrol routes that would be efficient and help to keep any Ssath infiltrators from leaking through during the battle. They still didn’t know exactly where the Ssath would land, given the number of possible locations still hadn’t shrunk at all. The fleet needed to do some more damage before he would start to see any results. He was about to hit tier two as well, which meant that there was no time to observe the fight going on in space.

With all ten victory points now active, the bonus for capturing them had sped up the command post upgrade progress. Once he hit tier two, the city hall began to change, the structure increasing in density and adding a few armored plates over the outside. A quick check of his resources showed that Hugh was sitting at just over five hundred. His drones had finished carrying in the salvage that he had found earlier, and the police assigned to the patrol routes had uncovered two more.

Construction drones were produced as the command post went through its changes. The count stopped at twenty-five, not a huge number given how large of an area they were required to work in. At least the victory points had their own force drones to perform upgrades, lightening the load on the others. Some of his drones would also have to make the rounds and perform upgrades in the field for the existing units. Hugh assigned ten drones to salvage gathering, and ten more to perform upgrades. The final five were working on the command post, upgrading the portion of the structure that produced his infantry.

Production of units continued despite the upgrade process, and once the upgrades were completed, Hugh finally had access to his light mechs. Additional upgrades were unlocked, but before digging into the options, he ordered production of the light mechs to begin. They would take longer to build than infantry, and those seemed to be taking quite a bit longer than they normally did already. As the first light mech, a T-7, walked off the assembly line, Captain Cartwright connected to the command channel.

“Major Logan, the armor has arrived,” Cartwright said.

“Glad to have you with us. Take a look at the battlefield, I’d like your thoughts on how to deploy our heavier mechs,” Hugh said, giving the armor commander time to look things over.

“Fighting in a city is not something we normally like to do, but these mechs do it a whole lot better than my old tanks did. The maneuverability with the legs helps, and it appears we’ll have plenty of infantry support. Why don’t we gather the heavier mechs into kill teams that we can send out to any of these victory points that are under attack? Pack the infantry in at the victory points and any defensive positions in the city that we set up, but leave a few to travel with us,” Cartwright offered.

“I was thinking of positioning some of the heavier mechs at each victory point to give us more firepower, but I can see how having them as a mobile reserve would be better. If production picks up, maybe we can do both,” Hugh replied.

“Captain Cartwright was it? My officers would be glad to include you on our patrols so you can get a feel for the terrain. I’m expecting that you’ll want to use the wider streets and freeways to move those things, especially if you got bigger ones on the way,” Captain Langerson said.

“Thank you, I didn’t realize we had police support,” Cartwright said, sounding about as confused as Hugh was over the newest addition to the team. With a plan in place and production of units continuing. Hugh looked at all the upgrades that he had unlocked with this tier.

Command Post.

1. Basic fortifications have been unlocked. Your infantry can now construct basic fortifications that consist of simple trenches in open areas and creating firing loopholes inside buildings. Fortifications do not require resources as the mech will use the available terrain for what they need.

Infantry Mechs:

1. Machinegun teams are now unlocked. The machinegun team consists of two infantry mechs and a single .30 caliber machinegun. Machinegun teams require 20 resources to produce.

2. Heavy barrel addon. This upgrade requires 75 resources to unlock and will improve the range of your infantry mech’s rifles by 15%.

3. Plasma grenades. This upgrade is already unlocked by the Assault Infantry specialization that your core has chosen. Each infantry mech will have a grenade container installed that will automatically produce three of these devices. Once expended, new grenades will slowly replenish over time.

Light mechs:

Light mechs can be produced for 25 resources. Your current light mech is the T-7 mech. This mech has a single, fifty-caliber main gun and minimal armor.

1. Secondary armament upgrade. This upgrade requires 50 resources to unlock and will allow a .30 caliber secondary weapon to be mounted on the main turret.

It wasn’t much, yet, but Hugh wanted every upgrade he could get, spending the resources to unlock the heavy barrel for his infantry and the secondary armament for his light mechs. The number of units under his command was limited, and he would need to plan carefully to have the right number of construction drones assigned to upgrade units in the field. For now, he would assign a single drone tasked with unit upgrades to each of the ten victory points.

With two new salvage fields to help out, and the faster resource inflow from having reached tier two, Hugh started upgrading the victory points with Internal Fortifications. The victory point upgrades were expensive and he had to purchase the upgrade for each of the ten locations, but once done, the command post would upgrade as well. Also, he needed to complete existing upgrades before seeing what else the new tier might have unlocked. The construction drones at each victory point were already working on the Clear Fields of Fire upgrade, and while it was a free upgrade, it did take time.

How much time Hugh would have depended on how the fleet was doing. Checking back in on the space battle, things didn’t look good for the humans.