War Core 2, Chapter 43.

Chapter 43.

The battle for the Krixnas capital city has begun.

The ominous message prompt let Hugh know that their time for preparation was over. Valery’s forces were in place, and he was ready to engage as soon as the Ssath were in range. Once the battle began, a steady stream of Krixnas transports began to leave the first ring, making their way slowly toward the portal and the new life that beckoned. The transports materialized from just inside of ring one, a location protected from direct Ssath attack. If the Ssath were somehow able to make it past Valery’s defense, the transports would be helpless.

“I’m sure you can all see that we’ve got company. I’ve pushed out my air mechs as far as we’re permitted to go, but I haven’t got a good look at the Ssath army just yet, they’re using some kind of interference screen to hide them from my sensors,” Tucker advised. Hugh interfaced with Tucker’s avatar, and just like Tucker had described, he could see movement in the distance, but when he tried to focus on anything, his vision just sort of slid off into the distance. It was tech they weren’t familiar with, and any surprise from the Ssath worried him.

“Well, I don’t think they can do too much with their blurry mechs this far out, I’m sure when they close in, our sensors will penetrate whatever that is. In the meantime, we can gauge their location by referencing the point where our vision starts to go haywire. I’ll target the artillery for that area and give them a nice surprise when they’re in range,” Valery advised. It was a smart idea, Hugh was worried the enemy would arrive untouched by their ranged firepower advantage, but the artillery was an indirect fire weapon system and didn’t require them to eyeball the Ssath directly.

The blurry smoke cloud drew closer, and from what Hugh could see, the Ssath were heading straight in, trying to overwhelm Valery in their initial attack rather than take the time to siege up and encircle the entire city. It made things easier for Hugh and Stephan as they maneuvered their supporting artillery to the best position they could, ready to fire when Valery gave the order.

“You’d think they would try to encircle us, or at least hit from a few different directions to divide our forces,” Hugh said.

“Maybe whatever they're using to screen their approach has a limited area of effect, or they’re worried about taking too much time, take a look at your interface, the countdown has started,” Stephan offered. Hugh pulled up his interface, new notifications populating as he read.

The first stage of the battle for the Krixnas capital has begun. A total of 30 minutes are required to evacuate the outer ring completely. If the assigned core can defend the current ring for the designated time, additional bonuses will be awarded to the remaining defenders and the Ssath will be forced to briefly halt their assault as the defender of that ring uses the portal to evacuate their troops. If a core does not evacuate before the reprieve is over, their forces will incur an additional 25% casualty rate for the campaign.

“We will hold, don’t you worry,” Valery assured them.

“I have a pair of volunteers that are going to try and close in to get a view of what’s coming,” Tucker said. A pair of Australian air mechs dove toward the blurry haze, their combat pod operators firing the mech’s guns the whole way. The bursts of machinegun fire penetrated the haze, it was just protection against sensors, not a shield of some sort, thankfully. As they dove closer, their mechs began to blur into the background as well. All connection to the mechs was severed, but they were still showing as functional in the order of battle. After a few seconds of tense waiting, one of the craft emerged from the haze, smoke trailing the mech where it had taken fire.

“We broke through the interference, but before I could get an exact count, we were met with a hail of fire. I think that whatever they're using to hide their presence works both ways and they couldn’t see us until we were right on top of them. All I can tell you is that there’s a whole lot of them, easily two or three times more than all our forces combined,” the combat pod operator advised.

“No matter, we’ll start to cut into their numbers shortly,” Valery said. The rocket artillery mechs hunched over as they prepared to fire their first volley’s. With a roar, rockets launched off the rails, one after the other. Ninety-six rockets arced out over the battlefield, their trajectory taking them right toward the blurred-out area protecting the Ssath advance. A few explosions were seen on the periphery, but most of the rockets landed inside the obscured zone, and hopefully, among the Ssath.

“How tightly packed are the Ssath in there?” Hugh asked the pilot.

“They’re pretty bunched up; I’d say that whatever is projecting that field has a limited coverage area and there were a lot of Ssath. I was checking on my flight recorder to show you, but whatever is doing that, also blanked out the recording when we passed through,” the pilot replied.

“Good, my Katyusha rockets will thin their numbers. Once they’ve passed through the area where our volley’s landed, you can look in their wake for any destroyed mechs,” Valery offered. It was a good idea, and they should be able to track the destroyed units left behind when the attackers moved past, giving them an idea of the number of kills they were inflicting. Given the size of the Ssath army, it could take a while for them to march far enough past the impact point to get a kill count.

Watching the rocket launchers, Hugh confirmed that they had a long reload time. Small boxes at the end of each rocket tube were vibrating as whatever tech the GCA stuffed inside there worked to build and load a new rocket. The warheads on the weapons were pretty powerful, and they packed a bigger punch than a similarly sized artillery shell. Hugh wasn’t convinced rockets were the way to go, he was much more confident in a steady barrage of steel and plasma.

Almost as if conjured by his thoughts, his pair of artillery mechs went into action, firing the first rounds downrange. Hugh couldn’t make out any explosions, which meant the first shots had been on target. Three volley’s later, Stephan’s guns got into the action, adding their fire to the mix. After their fifth volley, the hazy blob of Ssath was closing in, and Valery’s rockets finally got off a second volley. This time, the range had closed, and all the rockets landed inside the haze.

The blurry field flickered, then collapsed completely as the rockets destroyed whatever it was that had created it. There, marching toward them, was a huge force of Ssath infantry and light mechs. The complete absence of any heavier units told Hugh this wasn’t the entire army, just a quick attack force that the Ssath commander, Hssim, was attempting to push through. At a closer look, there were a few larger mechs in the swarm, these being the medium sauropod-based ones. Instead of any weapons, these mechs instead held large glowing antenna arrays on their back. One of the sauropod mechs had been smashed by a rocket, the single loss must have been enough to drop the screen they had been hiding in.

“There they are men, show them your Russian steel!” Valery called out. The conscripts opened fire, their rifles cracking out a shot every few seconds. With a large boom, the main guns on the supporting medium mechs got into the action, secondary machineguns tearing into the massed infantry while each blast of the main gun reaped a reward of smashed enemy mechs. The tightly packed formation was opening up, the Ssath pod operators desperate to not present such a juicy target, but this kind of thing took time, and for every second it took, Valery was going to cash in.

His heavy mechs had a line of sight over the low buildings in front of them, their heavy main guns and a wall of secondary machinegun fire all opened up at the same time. The front ranks of the Ssath melted away, a hundred mechs cut down in those first few seconds. Like a man that had taken an unexpected punch to the face, the Ssath attackers paused, more of their numbers bleeding away before someone, either the war core or one of the commanders took charge.

Ssath after Ssath fell, but their numbers could absorb such losses, for a time. Return fire was building and once they had broken themselves down into smaller and less vulnerable groups, the Ssath began to push the attack. Valery was beginning to take casualties of his own, the conscripts being picked apart as they banged out slow and steady rounds into the enemy. The buildings they were in gave little protection, even when combined with the thin armor of the conscript mech. Every hit on a conscript was a kill, while the Russian mech’s rifle fire often took several rounds to drop the enemy infantry.

While the infantry was starting to struggle, the medium and heavy mechs of Valery’s force were having a field day. They focused on the enemy light mechs, taking down the biggest enemy threats, and suffering little to no damage in return. The small caliber auto-cannons on the Ssath light mechs were having little effect on the shields of the heavy mechs, and it took multiple hits on the medium T34’s to break down the shield, and even more to start to melt through the impressive armor.

The Ssath plan must have been to walk right on top of the first ranks of defenders before they were seen, the lucky rocket hit had blown that plan away, but the Ssath weren’t giving up. Step by step they pushed toward the first row of structures, the defending conscripts were being cut down quickly as the range closed and the partially hidden defenders were more easily seen and targeted.

At the outer edge of their advance, a small group of Ssath infantry broke into the first row of structures, the deadly infantry ripping through the conscripts like their armor was made of paper. The loss ratio tuned against Valery as more and more Ssath made their way into the city, hunting down the remaining pockets of defenders. With two platoons staying behind to delay the enemy, Valery’s medium mechs stomped their way to the third row of structures, taking up prepared positions to support the cream of the Russian army.

Targeting became harder for the larger Russian mechs, the house-sized structures giving the Ssath some concealment from their sensors. As every soldier knows, concealment is not cover, and if a structure was suspected of hiding a Ssath, it was leveled by powerful 120mm main gun blasts. Machineguns picked off any Ssath that made themselves visible, but the Ssath were also level ten, and that gave them the agility to slink along behind the structures, more and more slipping their way into the second row of buildings, where they traded fire with the regular Russian infantry and guards engineers.

Eventually, enough Ssath would make it to the second row of buildings and then have the mass to push through for a final strike. The only thing holding back the flow of enemy mechs was the constant sniping by the Russian heavy and medium units. In dribs and drabs, the Ssath numbers mounted, the fire from the second row of buildings lashing into the final row of reinforced Russian defenses. To make matters worse, the Ssath were using their superior numbers to start to turn the flank, small groups darting across the road to get into the third-row buildings the Russians didn’t have the numbers to properly defend.

This was going to be a challenge for all the cores, defending a line that was far too long to defend with the numbers at their disposal. Valery had been given an almost ideal setup for this attack with the enemy all being bunched up together. Despite the advantage that this gave him, even his expanded forces were being outflanked by the Ssath. His only consolation was that the Ssath had left behind piles of destroyed mechs. Valery had made them pay a heavy price, but it looked like he would eventually be surrounded and overwhelmed. The clock was down to fifteen minutes, a long way to go, perhaps too long for Valery to hold out.

“Do not worry, my fellow cores, we prepared for exactly this situation. As you can see, I added elite engineers to my infantry numbers and they’re about to show you why,” Valery said, giving orders to the commander of his infantry an officer named Grishin. The ground shook as massive explosions ripped through the second row of structures. Every third build along that section exploded and then erupted in a gout of plasma fire, incinerating the entire structure and any Ssath unlucky enough to be inside.

Ready for the trap to be sprung, Valery’s other units immediately opened up on the buildings that hadn’t been targeted for destruction. The Ssath were confused, some thought the answer was to attack, while others waited in the cover of the possibly rigged buildings. With a sizeable portion of their force destroyed in the blasts, and many of the remainder staying put, the attacking Ssath found themselves outnumbered and vastly outgunned by the dug-in and prepared Russian forces.

Natural aggression kicked in, and more and more Ssath emerged from their cover to support the attack. Their momentum was gone, however, and though they still slightly outnumbered the Russians, Valery’s forces were doing a good job at holding them at bay. A loud screeching siren sounded over the battlefield as Stephan’s dive bombers joined the fray. Some of the Ssath halted their attack, firing up at the attacking air mechs. Bombs crashed into the assaulting Ssath, followed up by strafing runs. Attacking in pairs, Tucker had his air mechs strafe the road separating the second and third rows of structures.

Without any enemy air force in sight, the human mechs were able to keep up non-stop attacks from the air, the heavy machineguns chewing through rows of ever more desperate Ssath. Either the enemy war core or the commander in charge of this ill-fated attack finally had enough, and the Ssath began to withdraw pulling back to the first row of structures before fleeing away from the city. Hugh felt relief as the enemy attack broke, he had been on the verge of calling up the Drop Beacon of the Vanquished, which was a risk since he wasn’t sure he could use that ability outside his assigned area. Odds were good that if followed along with the same rules as the air mechs, given that he could target it anywhere on the battlefield without the GCA calling him out of bounds and inflicting a 25% casualty penalty.

“Keep on them Tucker, we’ll have to fight the ones that escape again, and I’d rather we kill them while they're easy to kill,” Valery called out. Tucker didn’t need any encouragement, his combined force of air mechs were harrying the enemy retreat, bringing down many of those trying to flee to safety.

Air mechs kept up their attack all the way to the outer boundary that the GCA had established for them. Valery’s army didn’t come out unscathed, he had lost all his conscripts, half his other infantry, and a good portion of his medium mechs. The heavy mechs hadn’t taken any losses, which wasn’t surprising given the type of fight they had been in. If the Ssath had been able to close into melee range, the heavies would have had a much more difficult time. More Ssath forces were gathering in the distance, this time, there was no attempt at subterfuge, only a mass of enemy mechs marching at a brisk pace toward the city. As the timer counted down to zero, the humans and their Krixnas allies claimed the first victory in this fight. They had a long way to go, but a lot of civilians had been saved by Valery’s efforts.

Krixnas Capital City Evacuation Progress:

Portal Functionality: 100%.

Ring 1: 100%.

Ring 2: 0%.

Ring 3: 0%.

Ring 4: 0%.

Ring 5: 0%.

Ring 6: 0%