War Core, Chapter 21.

I needed to take a break from Derelict 3, so I thought you might like another War Core Chapter. I want to keep up with the story and plan to do at least one chapter on War Core each week, in addition to whichever main book I'm focused on.

Chapter 21

The main guns on the T-7’s boomed as they began to engage the ships approaching the northern beach, somehow, those vessels had pulled ahead of the southern forces. In response to the heavy rounds being thrown at them, twin beams from a weapons mount in the bow of the ship reached out toward the shore. Rocky soil sizzled where the beams hit, the attackers swiveling them back and forth as they sought to lock onto his forces. Hugh watched as one of the beams landed on a T-7, the armor began to bubble and melt, but Cartwright, or whoever controlled that particular mech, quickly sidestepped, breaking the lock.

With their twin bows grinding their way onto the beach, the Madrix ships made it to shore. Hugh waited for the sides to pop off and troops to emerge, but instead, panels opened along the lower hull. Long limbs extended and the ship rocked as the legs tried to pull the heavy vessel out of the water. The four legs didn’t seem up to the task and four more sets of panels opened. A total of eight legs seemed to do the trick and the ships were now able to move on land. The craft began to slowly stomp their way onto the beach as the T-7’s landed round after round into them.

The Madrix craft were more heavily armored than the Krixnas landing craft, but the fifty caliber weapons on his light mechs were beginning to burn through. When the landing craft made it halfway up the beach, the secondary weapons on the T-7’s as well as the thirty-caliber machinegun positions added their fire to the mix. In response, the bow mounted weapons on both craft zeroed in on the stationary machinegun team, burning through the sandbag reinforced position it occupied. The beams struck the lightly armored infantry operating the weapon, destroying them nearly instantly and slagging the machinegun.

His T-7’s proved a harder target for the ship’s weapons to lock onto, the soldiers crewing the light mechs moved them in a random pattern as they kept up their steady fire. The weapon on one of the ships went silent as incoming fire caved in a section of armor and began to tear apart the insides of the ship. With a hiss, the legs dropped the ship onto the beach as an armored hatch at the rear dropped to disgorge the infantry the ship carried.

Madrix infantry were strange, and unlike either his forces or the Krixnas. A stout armored torso was mounted on four legs and atop the torso were two large round globes, resembling heads. The strange infantry mech moved slower than his own troops and the overall design had about twice the mass of his infantry, but were still decidedly smaller than the T-7’s. A total of four of the Madrix infantry emerged from the rear of the landing craft, forming up in pairs before continuing their assault on Hugh’s command post.

His T-7’s shifted fire to a second landing craft, wanting to prevent the attackers from breaching his lines and dropping off the infantry directly inside his base. These Madrix were tough, and Hugh was beginning to worry his troops wouldn’t be up to the task of defeating them. So far, his only opponent had been the Krixnas, who while powerful, had several flaws in their fighting style that gave Hugh an good chance at beating them. With the Madrix, Hugh was matched in range and accuracy while the attacking units were much more durable than his own.

The northern and southern forces had each managed to take down one of the landing craft, both fronts losing their machinegun teams and several infantry mechs from the fire of the powerful shipboard weapons. His infantry were now in range and threw their fire into the mix, targeting their Madrix counterparts. The stout Madrix infantry shrugged off the first hits, returning fire in an unusual, yet shockingly effective, manner. Twin globes that served as the heads of the attackers proved to also be their weapons. A beam shot forth from each head, striking with impressive accuracy. Hugh’s infantry went down one after another as the Madrix picked them off, his return fire only now starting to penetrate the armor and do some real damage to their foes.

With only one air mech remaining to try and stop the airborne attackers, Hugh knew he needed more protection near the command post. Since there was no threat to the east and west, Hugh ordered the forces there to come and mount a defense of the command post itself. He had only five infantry in each of those locations, but he also had two machinegun teams to help repel the airborne invasion.

Overhead, the attacking aircraft began to cross over the base, panels opening underneath them to allow the infantry inside to jump out. The aircraft only carried a pair of Madrix infantry each. Unlike normal human paratroopers, the infantry each stood on a small platform that mounted four small thrusters. It appeared the attackers had some control over the direction of their descent, all ten of the Madrix drop troops guided themselves toward Hugh’s command post.

One of the attackers lost control as fire began to hit it. Hugh looked up to see Tremaine and his Buffalo fighter fly past, his gun already seeking out more targets. The machinegun teams also surprised him, the crews were extending the legs on the tripod mount, allowing the guns to be aimed upward in an air defense role. They, and the accompanying infantry pelted the drop troops. Their drop platforms were armored to some extent and the Madrix aboard them were already returning fire with beams fired from their head, burning through Hugh’s infantry.

Hugh was tempted to call back some of the infantry defending against the seaborne assault, but it looked like they were having their own problems dealing with the deadly Madrix units. Of his four light mechs, only one battered T-7 was still in the fight, slugging it out with the final ship walking in toward the north. In the south, one of the ships was forcing its way past the infantry in the second line, who were trading grenades with the Madrix infantry who used their own version of the plasma weapons. Hugh’s forces were bleeding out, but the Madrix losses were also mounting, it would be a race to see if he could stop them before they reached the command post.

Captain Tremaine shot down another Madrix drop trooper just before they landed, the pilot turning his attention to the walking ships, already lining up his first strafing run the pair to the south. Between Tremaine’s attacks and the fire from the infantry on the ground, only four Madrix landed safely. They didn’t hesitate, using their beam weapons to fry the crews of both machinegun teams almost immediately. A handful of infantry stood in their way, and given the power of the Madrix weapons, it wouldn’t take them long to burn down the command post.

“We’re being overrun at the command post, everyone fall back and defend,” Hugh ordered, re-tasking all his surviving forces to help. Another infantry unit walked from the barracks and joined the fight, followed closely by a freshly made T-7, its heavy gun picking off one of the drop troopers. Another fell under the surviving infantry’s rifle fire, while the last pair ignored the defenders and focused their beams on Hugh’s command post. A burning pain lanced into Hugh as the beams began to dig deep into the structure, vaporizing construction drones that were working frantically to try and patch the damage.

Without any opposing fire, the T-7 and the new infantry unit took down the drop troopers before they could finish Hugh off. The pain was nearly overwhelmed him, and Hugh couldn’t concentrate very well. Just when the drones repairing the command post began to bring him some relief, more beams from the walking ships blazed in. The final damaged ship pushed forward, its powerful beams tearing through the command post as every surviving weapon tried to put them down.

Hugh lost his vision at that point, teetering on the bring of failure. He didn’t know how long had passed, only that the pain wasn’t getting any worse and that meant that, somehow, his forces had won the fight. The agony was receding much slower than it had previously, but his vision finally returned. Looking out from his command post, Hugh spotted a lone, damaged drone slowly working on repairs. That was the problem, he had queued up his combat forces to keep building no matter what, but had neglected to do something similar with his construction drones. He ordered replacements for his lost workers, giving them the highest priority. It seemed like ages before the first new drone was complete. It joined its damaged comrade and repairs began to move more quickly.

“Hugh, are you back with us?” Captain Tran asked, concern in his voice.

“Yeah, I’m back now, the pain was too much,” Hugh replied.

“Good, I know it hurts, the same thing happens when the mech’s we’re operating take damage. You need to shake it off soldier and get back into the fight, time is ticking by,” Tran said. A third drone started work and Hugh began to feel more like himself.

“So, what happened with the Madrix?” Hugh asked, looking at the destroyed mechs strewn about his island.

“When they got close, they went bonkers and tried to steamroll your command post. It almost worked too, but your recall order brought all of us back to defend. Without taking return fire, we were finally able to knock them out pretty quickly. Captain Tremaine saved the day by crashing his fighter into one of the walking ships, taking it out of the fight,” Tran replied.

“Well done, everyone, let’s get our forces sorted out and prepare for the next wave,” Hugh said, looking up the most recent system notice.

The Krixnas War Core has defeated the fifth assault wave, 6 minutes remaining until the next wave. This is the final wave; you will now face a continuous stream of attackers.

The notice was given just two minutes ago, he only had four minutes remaining before the final wave started, at least his factories hadn’t stopped while he was writhing in pain, they followed their commands to replace his losses. A quick check of his forces showed what he had to work with.

Construction Drones: 4.

Infantry: 29.

Machinegun teams: 3.

Light Mechs: 2.

Air Mechs: 1.

“We’re almost out of time, lets get what we have into our final line of defense and hunker down for the attacks,” Hugh said.

“Roger that, sir, but I have a feeling that we’re in a better position than our opponent,” Captain Cartwright told him. It struck Hugh just then that the Krixnas victory prompt was the most recent one, which meant he had cleared the wave first. There it was in the logs; he had cleared it first and ten-minute timer had begun to tick down. The Krixnas had less time to prepare and given the challenge that the last wave was, he was willing to bet they were in worse shape than he was.

Resources were at 134, the number dropping rapidly as new units were built. He had lost almost all of his construction workers, and the ones being built now were all focused on repairing the damage to his command post. There was lots of salvage out there, with all the Madrix ships just waiting to be gathered, but his workers all seemed to go into emergency repair mode when the command post was attacked, and this time, all but one were destroyed while he was out. He would need to always prioritize workers so if something happened like this again, he wouldn’t be left with zero resources and zero construction drones.

“Do you want us to spread the troops evenly around the perimeter?” Tran asked.

“Yes, at least until we see where the new waves will focus. From the prompt it looks like they’re pulling out all the stops and I would expect them to come at us from everywhere at once,” Hugh replied.

“True, and this time, perhaps we keep a small force back at the command post to defend you. With none of free AI defense forces being produced, you need to have something to take their place,” Tran advised.

“I get that now, and something tells me you guys were trying to tell me that all along and the information was blocked. Okay, give me a squad of ten infantry, a machine gun team, and a light mech, everything else that gets built goes into the final defensive line. Tremaine, do the best you can with our air cover, I know having a maximum of two aircraft to work with isn’t ideal, but you’ve done great with it so far,” Hugh ordered.

He had pulled a good chunk of their available force to defend the command post, the soldiers assigned to that duty took position behind the short wall that surrounded the building. The light mech would patrol inside the walls, and the machinegun team would shift to wherever the greatest threat was.

The final wave has begun, prepare for battle.

Another five infantry and a light mech were completed when the announcement was made. Hugh was up to twelve construction drones, two of which were still working on repairing the damage to the command post while the others gathered up salvage, trying to first clear away anything that was blocking his troops’ fields of fire. Even with his forces only occupying the final line of defense, his numbers looked thin. Hugh was almost ready to pare down the force defending the command post and add them to the defense line when contact was made.

“I’ve got incoming at all points, looks like a wave of Krixnas landing ships,” Tran said. Hugh looked out, and just as he had suspected, landing craft approached from every direction. He counted fifty-two of the vessels, which meant over four hundred Krixnas attackers would land at nearly the same time. As they closed in on the beach, Hugh could see they weren’t alone, only slightly behind the Krixnas, another wave of Madrix was heading in, this time, the force consisted of twenty transport planes and an equal number of the crazy walking ships they used, far more than his forces could withstand.

“Don’t freak out, Hugh, remember your opponent is likely in worse shape than we are,” Cartwright said.

“No problem, we’ve got this,” Hugh said with a confidence he didn’t quite feel.