War Core Wednesday, War Core 3, Chapter 7.

Chapter 7.

“What do you think the Ssath core is up to?” Captain Tran asked, voicing what they all were thinking.

“I’m not sure, I’d have thought the Ssath would be pushing for the central debris field a lot earlier since the Canadian core only has a small force covering it. This one is operating a lot different than the other core we fought,” Hugh replied.

It seemed that George was content to stay on the defensive, making no moves to even attempt to scout out the enemy positions. As it stood now, Hugh wondered if it would even be worth it to assault the central debris field. The force covering it was growing while the debris field was rapidly being stripped of resources. While whoever controlled the field would also get to salvage the wreckage of the mechs he destroyed to capture it, in Hugh’s experience, the resources gained from salvaging units destroyed during the fight was less than what you got from the stuff that the GCA scattered about the debris field before the start of the battle.

“I’m more worried that the Canadian guy isn’t even trying to get a peek at the Ssath forces,” Maddison said. From the simulations he had participated in with her, Maddison wasn’t a very patient person and would often take a large risk to keep things moving. He did have to admit she won more than she lost, so the overall aggressive plan had some merit. Hugh was more a middle-of-the-road guy, liking the flexibility to respond to how the battle developed rather than lock himself into a rigid plan and not deviate from it. The Canadian core had the opposite approach, he dug in and waited for the enemy to attack, no matter how long it took.

“Do you suppose the GCA will do something to intervene if the stalemate continues?” Admiral Nix asked.

“I’m not sure, but it’s a definite possibility, especially if this really is some form of entertainment for them,” Hugh replied.

Nothing much happened over the next several hours. Hugh was usually the one in the fight and never really noticed how much time passed during a campaign, being too focused on the task at hand to worry much about it. Now, it was a bit more excruciating to just wait and watch. The natural trickle of resources was all that was left to the Canadian core, and with it, he expanded the minefield in front of the main base. The construction drones hadn’t been idle either, using the time to further refine the trench line and clear any obstructions to their fields of fire. The defensive works were expanded, creating a second line of defense nearly at the top of the slope where the base sat.

Once the second line of defenses was complete. Nearly half of George’s construction drones poured out of the base and headed toward the eastern and western mountain passes at the edges of the battlefield. At first, Hugh thought he was going to build more defenses at those locations, but instead, the drones began to work on the defensive turrets that had been placed there. While there were a dozen of the turrets protecting the defensive lines in front of his base, George had built a half dozen at each of the mountain passes and a total of eight covering the central debris field.

The drones worked for some time, eventually dismounting the first turret at each location and hauling it back toward the command post. It took ten drones to move the heavily armored turret, and the small construction drones struggled at the pace of a slow walk. There was no response from the Ssath core, which surely had scouts watching over the human defenses. If Hugh was in charge of the Ssath forces, he would be tempted to strike at the human core while he was dismantling the fixed defenses. A huge attack could overwhelm the single squad of infantry defending the location and give the Ssath a chance to take out several of the construction drones as a bonus. When the first two turrets were on their way back, George sent out the rest of his drones to assist, risking them all, but doubling the number of turrets he could move at one time.

For over an hour, the drones struggled to dismount and relocate the defensive turrets. Once the first batch was delivered, some of the drones stayed behind to reinstall them in the second line of defenses that they had completed earlier. Once the last turret was relocated, the squads covering the mountain passes pulled out and made their way back to the command post where they filed into the newly created defenses. That must have been George’s plan, abandoning the field now that the resources there were exhausted and consolidating all his firepower in one place.

The Canadian core was lucky to have completed the task unmolested, but there was the risk of his force covering the central debris field being surrounded if the Ssath pushed troops through the passes. George must have thought the same thing as he ended up leaving a pair of construction drones behind at each location to give early warning of an attack. Once the mountain passes were completely evacuated, the process started on the central debris field. Having one location to work from would make relocating the turrets easier, allowing George to consolidate his forces even faster. Two squads were covering the central debris field, supported by a pair of machinegun teams and a pair of mortar teams.

After the first four turrets were moved, something began to change at the debris field. The cat-like mechs guarding it had been further upgraded and were now sporting heavy caliber rifles over each shoulder as well as several other attachments to their mechs, none of which Hugh could figure out the purpose of. Thick armor covered each mech, and Hugh thought he could detect the faint glimmer of a shield over them as well. With the last of the debris field gathered up, the cats’ numbers had increased to over eighty of the heavily modified mechs. Neither side could push through the center without having to take on the imposing defenders positioned there. The AI-controlled cat mechs began to roar and howl, the mechanical sound was eerie and unnatural.

“Creepy mech roars weren’t what I was expecting,” Maddison said.

“Agreed, what do you think they’re up to?” Nix asked.

“I have no idea, but George isn’t taking any chances,” Hugh said, watching the scene unfold. As soon as the roars started, George’s infantry began to pull back, the drones abandoning the last four turrets that were waiting to be removed. That proved to be a good call as the hatch covering the resource drop-off point opened and more of the cat mechs emerged.

“I can’t get a good count, they’re moving around too fast,” Tran said. It was true, the flow of new units didn’t last long, but Hugh had no idea how many of them were now out there as the entire mob swarmed this way and that, much like a panicked school of fish.

“I’m pretty sure they’re working themselves up for an attack,” Hugh said.

“Bingo, look at them go,” Maddison said as the group of cat mechs split their numbers and charged away from the debris field. The four remaining turrets opened up, heavy rounds hammering into the swarm heading toward George’s base. Just as Hugh suspected, the first rounds hit a shield, deflecting harmlessly away. Not all that powerful, the shields only stopped the first burst, allowing the next ones to slam home into their targets.

Before the turrets could take down their first targets, the AI-controlled cat mechs began to fire the twin rifles mounted to their shoulders. Armored and dug in, the turrets made for a difficult target, but with the number of rounds being fired, the damage mounted quickly. One then another of the turrets went silent, and as each one fell, more guns were targeted on the survivors.

A few of the cat mechs showed damage, but all were still functional, and the entire mob continued to hack and blast at the destroyed turrets, almost as if they didn’t believe they were really out of commission. They dug around a bit more in the trenches and after not finding any new targets, the group finally began to head on a direct path toward George’s base. In the distance, more rifle fire was heard, as well as the clash of metal on metal, proof the Ssath were getting equal treatment by the GCA-created cat mechs.

“Guess old George was too boring for the GCA,” Maddison quipped.

“I doubt things are going to be boring for long, and with his focus on fixed defenses, I think the cats should do more damage to the Ssath than to us,” Hugh offered. He could be entirely wrong, the Ssath commander for this battle had been much more timid than Hugh would have expected from the species. It stood to reason that different Ssath cores would have different fighting styles, but he hadn’t expected one to turtle up. Maybe something else was going on? Whatever it was, the Ssath surely had a plan, and so far, George’s defensive strategy had done little to unveil it.

The cat mechs were fast, but George’s infantry had a good head start on them. Despite the head start, the group would have been overtaken if George hadn’t sacrificed a dozen of his construction drones to slow them down. To help them out, the pair of artillery mechs that George had created began to fire, hurling shells across the battlefield toward the approaching cats. The cats ignored the shells, instead, they went bonkers at the sight of the construction drones. The drones led them away from the command post and the retreating infantry. They were run down quickly by the fleet-footed mechs, the cats seemed to enjoy playing with their prey, going for melee kills instead of ranged damage on their nearly helpless foe.

“I wonder if George could have kited the robo-cats to the Ssath base?” Maddison asked.

“Kites? What are you talking about?” Nix asked, the admiral once again annoyed by Maddison’s use of gamer slang.

“Okay, kiting is an MMORPG term where you lead a powerful AI-controlled unit, like a world boss or something, toward an enemy. Normally the creature you’re kiting would just lose interest after you ran for a bit, requiring the person kiting it to do some occasional damage to keep it interested. There was this one time when my guild…” Maddison’s gamer speech was interrupted by most of the officers telling her to keep the chatter down so they could focus on the battle in front of them.

The whole time the cat mechs were chasing down the drones, the artillery continued to pepper the area around them with fire. The guns George used looked similar to the ones Hugh had used in some of his battles. As a tier five weapon, they were around 105mm and packed a decent punch along with a modest rate of fire. A direct hit turned a cat mech into a burnt hole in the ground with bits of metal sprinkled about. Getting a direct hit was rare, but the artillery shells threw out a good-sized plasma blast, hurling glowing shrapnel and burned into the enemy, dropping shields and damaging armor.

With the last of the drones out of action, the cats continued on their course toward George’s command post. The retreating infantry made it to the defenses just before the cats arrived. Once there, they filled into the second line of defense, adding their numbers to the infantry mechs that had pulled back from the mountain passes. The mortar teams were now joining the party, throwing their smaller shells at the charging foe.

Without anything other than a rifle caliber weapon, the cat mechs had to weather increasing amounts of fire as the machinegun teams opened up, then the turrets, and finally the infantry. When the infantry started to fire, the cat mechs were in range with their own weapons. As impressive as their agility was, the cat mechs were still AI-controlled units, which meant their long-range accuracy was abysmal. Still, if you fired enough rounds some were bound to hit. The number of attackers dropped quickly as they approached the first line of defenses. Blasts from the thinly spread minefield took out more of the cats, leaving only thirteen cat mech survivors to jump in amongst the first row of trenches.

The human infantry mechs didn’t do so well at close range, but they now outnumbered their opponents. Many of the soldier-controlled infantry mechs didn’t even try to match the enemy in melee, opting instead to activate a grenade when the cat got close to them, taking out both mechs. Half the infantry from the second line moved up to assist, taking out the last of the cat mechs and replacing the losses the first line of defense had suffered.

“I hope he sends some scouts out now, it’d be good to see how much damage the attack did to the Ssath,” Hugh said.

“Agreed, and it looks like he’s taking your advice,” Admiral Nix said. Three pairs of infantry from the second line of defense climbed out of the trenches and headed toward the Ssath side of the battlefield, one pair for each mountain pass and one for the center. George was also moving some of his construction drones up to begin harvesting what they could from the battlefield debris, hopefully, there was enough there to replace his losses.

“What’s that, look, there, in the second line of defense!” Maddison shouted, drawing all their attention to the earth erupting in several spots along the second line of defense. At first, Hugh thought the enemy might have some kind of long-range artillery mech they were unleashing, but this was different, it wasn’t the blast of shell striking, it was something digging up from below. The glint of metal flashed off a huge reptilian head that emerged, the long body of the mech tunneled its way out of the earth before attacking the stunned human mechs.

Six of the beasts emerged, and while they didn’t have any ranged weapons Hugh could see, their oversized claws looked like they would tear apart a mech just as easily as they could tunnel through the ground. Fire was already lashing out at the monsters, their armored bodies shrugging off the first rounds, but Hugh knew that with the GCA-created weapons, it was only a matter of time before even the smallest of calibers could cut through the thickest of armor.

“So that’s what the Ssath was doing all this time, making some kind of tunneling mech, and they didn’t come alone,” Admiral Nix said as more Ssath emerged from the tunnels. These weren’t more of the tunneling behemoths, these were the raptor-like Ssath infantry mechs that had followed their larger kin. While the tunneling mechs engaged the secondary line of defense, the Ssath infantry charged directly toward George’s command post.

AI-controlled defensive garrison mechs moved to the low wall surrounding the base, firing on the rapidly approaching enemy infantry. George’s base had a sizeable garrison force, but the mechs defending his command post had a slower rate of fire than a normal infantry mech and didn’t have a soldier in a combat pod controlling them. The Ssath infantry was much more accurate with their fire, landing a strong percentage of hits even though the garrison had a low wall to shelter behind.

George’s forces in the first line of defense poured from the trenches to try and stop the attackers, but the tunneling mechs were trying to delay them. Moving into direct fire mode, the artillery mechs blasted several Ssath infantry apart, but before they could get a second round in, the Ssath were in and among the defensive garrison troops, tearing through them. They didn’t stop to engage the defenders, instead, they inflicted as much damage as they could while focusing on the command post.

Each Ssath infantry had a single rifle mounted over one shoulder, and all of them were now banging away at the command post. Hugh had some hope that the robust structure would hold out until the friendly units arrived, but once they got into melee range, the Ssath claws and teeth tore away at the command post like a demolition team. From his quick guestimate, the Ssath only had a score of infantry attacking the command post, but they had cut the defensive garrison force down to a handful, the survivors trying to land hits on the fast-moving foe.

Soldiers pushed their mechs to the limits as they tried to stop the Ssath, but their efforts were hampered by the durable tunneling mechs that blocked their advance. It didn’t look like the huge mechs were all that dangerous, slow and without a ranged weapon, they were sitting ducks, but their armored bodies soaked up the incoming fire. The tunnel mechs weren’t alone, a squad of Ssath infantry had remained behind to help gum up the human mechs racing to defend their command post.

More of the attackers were picked off by the humans’ accurate long-range fire, but the outer wall of the command post was now breached, allowing the surviving Ssath to pour inside and begin to destroy the heart of the structure. Hugh winced at the pain he knew his fellow core was feeling. The command post building was like an extension of a core’s body and every hit, every blast could be felt.

The human war core known as George Lucin has been defeated, the Ssath may now continue their advance further into human space.

With a jolt, they were all disconnected from the feed. George had put up a good fight, and Hugh could only hope and pray that his comrade would make it out alive. There wouldn’t be much time before the Ssath continued their advance, and the next system in line was one of Hugh’s.