War Core Wednesday! War Core 3, Chapter 33.

Chapter 33.

While the command team planned for the space assault, Hugh tried to touch base with some of the other cores. It turned out that comms were limited for the cores stationed in the conflict world. Once the Ssath arrived, he, and the other cores, could monitor the fight through a general interface that let them view the overall progress of the battle, but they would be unable to communicate with anyone else.

If and when the Ssath entered orbit over the conflict world, he would get regular updates from his command team, but Hugh figured he’d be too busy to chat by that time, but it would be good to know how the war was progressing, and what the score was. They didn’t know what his resource flow would be, or how long it would take his core to improve its tier. In addition to deciding where to defend, Hugh had to balance spending his resources to not only build units but also to upgrade them. Without knowing what the Ssath were bringing to the party, it would be hard to decide on whether quantity or quality would be the best approach.

To add to Hugh’s frustration, he didn’t know where the ten victory points were that he had to defend. Would the GCA choose important and famous structures, random locations, or some other method of choosing? It made planning even more difficult, and Hugh felt like he was wasting the time he had before the battle started. Nix and Maddison pulled most of the team to help them work on the space assault side of things. Maddison had some pretty radical ideas and was getting pushback from high command, but Nix was fighting for her.

The military officers chosen to participate in the defense wanted to create a balanced fleet, creating a mix of ships that would work together. Their tier improvements would be gated by time, just like Hugh’s command post upgrades, so they were also trying to decide whether more numbers or greater upgrades were the way to go. They knew the Ssath were coming with tier seven ships, but they didn’t know if the Ssath were bringing upgraded vessels or bog-standard units.

The battle for control of the human homeworld has begun. Ssath forces will arrive in 23:59:52.

Hugh’s link to the fleet discussion was cut, which was fine, he needed to focus on his plans for the invasion. A small bit of new information populated as the battle officially began.

Possible Ssath invasion points for your city will now be revealed on your interface. This information will update as casualties are inflicted on the enemy fleet. The greater the damage your fleet inflicts on the Ssath, the more limited the enemy's options for invasion will become. Once the extent of the Ssath fleet is known, estimates on the number of cores and the forces at their disposal may become available. This information will become more accurate the closer the Ssath are to the planet itself. The size of the ground invasion force is based on the number and type of ships remaining in the Ssath fleet.

A filter could now be activated by Hugh, revealing all possible points of attack for his city. The map was covered in red circles, the entire city and everywhere around it could be a possible invasion point. For now, this information was useless and the potential invasion numbers were just showing as pending. He would have to wait for the Ssath to arrive and the fleet battle to progress before the ground invasion predictions would be of any use.

With comms locked, and limited information for Hugh to work with, he reviewed the advantages he would have in the coming fight. The drop beacon of the Vanquished would be great, as always, and even though they were few in number and locked at tier five, the automated turrets he had purchased on Harmony Station could make a difference if they were well placed to support his units. He would also save a few resources with his tier one infantry, the new automatic upgrade system for that tier would give him every upgrade and only take a bit of time for them to activate.

A component of one upgrade that Hugh had purchased a while back might finally come into play as well. The Reprocessing Efficiency perk was supposed to automatically gather up any fallen mechs and break them down for additional resources. Normally, the thirty-minute timer before a mech was teleported made it almost useless, but this battle could be a long grind, and Hugh felt it could give him a slight edge.

His single-use Automated Factory was also a powerful asset. Once Hugh knew where his victory points were located and had a better idea of where the Ssath invasion points were, he could use it to reinforce any out-of-the-way locations. Sure, the mechs produced would be AI-controlled, but every weapon on the battlefield was important. Hugh was less sure about the infantry mech avatar. It might allow him to become a force of destruction, or it could result in him being taken out of the fight at the worst possible time. It turned out when he dug further into the information on the item, that if he was destroyed, he would be inactive for five minutes before being transferred back to his command post. A lot of horrible things could happen on the battlefield in five minutes, so he would reserve the mech for emergencies only.

Having done just about everything he could think of with the information he had, Hugh turned his attention to the progress that their space forces were making. It took a few minutes for him to locate all twenty-four of the stations that were preparing Earth’s defenses. A highlighted area showed where the Ssath invasion would start, it was a huge possible area, but at least they knew where to look when the invasion fleet arrived.

Normally, the Ssath could comfortably avoid most of the defenses they were building, moving in a wide arc to avoid the stations and attack Earth directly before they took many losses. Sure, the fleets the stations produced would keep up and attack, but the stations and their direct defenses could be avoided. Hugh had seen the Ssath invasion of the Krixnas homeworld and knew the stations could have impressive firepower as well as swarms of attack craft to dish out respectable damage.

Unfortunately for the Ssath, they had to take out those stations in a reasonable timeframe or risk giving the conquest points they represented to Earth in the final score tally. They could opt to push directly to the planet and rack up easy wins there given they could attack without losses to their ground forces. That might secure victory without needing the twenty-four conquest points that the stations represented. The downside to that approach was the fact that those stations would keep on producing units, and eventually, the human fleet would overwhelm the Ssath orbiting the conflict world if the stations were ignored.

No, Hugh figured the Ssath would attack the space stations first, sweeping them away and removing the threat before starting the planetary invasion.  Every minute that the space battle took was another minute Hugh and the other cores would use to build up and improve defenses. As far as Hugh knew, other than a small number of troops skirmishing during the Mexican American War in the 1840s, Los Angeles had never seen a real battle. It was going to be hard to ignore the fact that each round fired and each of the structures destroyed could result in a real human being considered a casualty and eliminated by the GCA.

Earth’s first line of defense would rest with fourteen stations positioned in a small asteroid field at the edge of the solar system. They weren’t too far off from where the Ssath fleet was slated to arrive, and while Hugh watched, he could see the locations of the stations move around, the GCA allowing the human teams to fine-tune their position before locking them into place. The teams clustered two groups of five stations together, allowing them to integrate their fire when the Ssath fleet drew close. Four stations spread themselves across the area just outside the arrival point of the Ssath. To Hugh, it seemed suicidal, but there must have been a plan behind it, one that would reveal itself as the stations got to work and produced their units.

The next line of defense would be near Jupiter where six stations were placed, including the one Admiral Nix and Maddison were operating. After dealing with the Jupiter defenses, the Ssath would pass by a neutral Mars, which was greyed out in Hugh’s interface, and proceed directly toward Earth. The final layer of defenses consisted of a single station orbiting the moon, a station orbiting Earth, and a pair of ground-based stations on the surface of the planet. Thankfully, the two cores that were on the conflict planet selected areas that were nowhere near any populated zones for their bases, one at each pole. Near misses and debris shouldn’t result in casualties among the civilians unless the GCA was feeling particularly bloodthirsty.

As the stations and bases were locked into place, they began to come alive with lights and motion. His interface was able to focus on each station individually and see their stats, which would help him keep track of how they were progressing. The Ssath would come into the system with tier seven ships and mechs, it appeared Earth’s defenders were starting out at tier zero, but with over twenty-three hours to improve, they could hopefully start closing the gap. Focusing on one of the stations in the asteroid belt, Hugh was given a basic rundown of their capabilities.

Defense Station, Tier 0.

Upgrade to the next tier: 0/100%.

Armaments:

Light point defense laser: 2. These weapons fire a continuous beam at incoming small craft and missiles. While capable of targeting larger ships, their damage output is minimal, and it would take a considerable time for the weapon to penetrate anything other than the lightest of armors.

Defenses:

Armor: n/a.

Construction Facilities.

Boatyard: 1. Capable of producing a variety of system defense craft, the boatyard is the most basic of shipbuilding options. While the class of vessels it produces has a maximum tier of 4, the shipyard will continue to improve its construction speed and reduce the resources needed for production all the way to the maximum station tier of 10.

Not very impressive, with each station possessing only one shipyard capable of producing small vessels, they weren’t going to get much done. Some of the information wasn’t revealed, like the resource inflow or unit costs. Hugh would have to wait for the stations to get to a higher tier before he saw any capital ship construction going on.

The station itself looked skeletal, A collection of support beams and machinery that was open to space. It resembled an upsized version of what humanity could produce now, similar to the international space station. There weren’t solar panels, the station had some other form of power generation, but other than that, it was a bunch of tubes sticking out of a larger center tube. At the ends of the central tube were the small turrets housing the point defense beams. Hugh didn’t have any scale to base them on, but he expected they were like a heavy machinegun or light cannon from one of his mechs.

Motion at the longest tube sticking out of the station was seen, and drones swarmed about the area as they began construction of the first vessel at the boatyard. A quick check of all the stations showed they were in the same configuration as the one he was looking at now. The ground-based stations on the conflict planet were underground bunkers with various targeting systems scanning the skies. They too had only a pair of point defense beam weapons but lacked any kind of production facilities. Under their defenses tab, they were listed as having minimal armor protection, which was more than the unarmored space stations possessed.

It took about fifteen minutes to produce the first vessel. Given the production rate for this smallest of defenders, Hugh was starting to get a bit worried about their chances. He had seen the Krixnas homeworld get invaded and the fleet there had included massive battleships and other supporting vessels. A single battleship could handle a hundred of the small boats that the human stations had just spit out. Hugh zoomed in on the craft, looking at what was going to help defend him.

System Defense Boat, tier 0.

Maximum tier, 4.

Armaments:

Light pulse laser: 1. A light weapon that can be used in a ship-to-ship or point defense capacity. The weakest of all shipboard weapons, it’s better used to target missiles, starfighters, or other small craft.

Defenses: n/a.

Three more of the system defense boats were produced and then the station shut down the boatyard. Hugh was a bit concerned, thinking they had already run dry on resources, but instead, drones swarmed over the structure, adding to it and improving the station to level one. The station was still limited to only a single boatyard, but it looked more substantial, and Hugh could see the beginnings of other structures that would undoubtedly be better shipyards and improved defenses as the station’s tier improved.

The system defense boats improved as well, but they were required to return to the station to complete their upgrades. It turned out that one of the new structures being built was a dock to the station that was there for the boats to receive their upgrades, freeing up the boatyard for additional construction. At just over an hour for them to reach the first upgrade tier. Hugh had some hope for the stations growing enough to put up a fight, but if the system functioned like most of the GCA systems, each successive tier was going to take longer and longer to reach.