Embers After Flames, Chapter 10.1

10.1

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It was just one ship, for the moment. It posed no threat to 621, and soon enough there was a Warship’s wreck decorating the surface of the Ice Field.

That, however, was just beginning.

Five years ago, the PCA had pulled out of Belius. In doing so, they had left the megacorporations to have free reign so long as they didn’t try to leave the continent.

Their intentions had been very obvious. The PCA wanted the Megacorps to deal with the RLF.

It wasn’t a bad plan by any means, really. The PCA had been operating under numerous restrictions ever since they arrived upon Rubicon. Sometimes, those restrictions were literal ones, built into the Enforcement System’s programming, such that it literally couldn’t disobey them. Sometimes, those restrictions were born of simple practicality.

The RLF had threaded those restrictions, survived, and thrived, in spite of the PCA’s best efforts to the contrary.

The Megacorporations did not have those restrictions, obviously. They were big enough that they answered basically only to themselves, and to the one thing that everybody ultimately answered to.

Force.

Unfortunately for the PCA, the Megacorps were here for Coral, not for conquering. The RLF was an obstacle only in that they wouldn’t tell them where the Coral was. Additionally, the forces available to the Megacorps on Rubicon were only a fraction of a fraction of their actual forces, and they couldn’t bring in more because the PCA was blocking the path.

Five years later, in the aftermath of the Megacorporations failing to deal with the RLF just like the PCA always had, a sudden Coral detonation derailed everybody’s plans, and the PCA was finally forced to start paying more than the most absolutely minimal attention it could to everything that wasn’t hunting down Raven with extreme prejudice.

The Megacorporations broke the PCA’s barrier, and left the continent of Belius, chasing down the Coral that was even now slowly flowing towards the Ice Field.

The PCA’s deception had failed. The actual location of the Coral megacolony had been revealed. Pressure on the RLF had ceased entirely, and the goal of Closure was now under direct threat... apparently because of Raven.

Again.

I could only imagine what the Enforcement System was feeling at the moment. Ever since the detonation, its core temperature had jumped another two degrees above the new baseline. AM’s Hate Speech somehow seemed appropriate, yet also not severe enough.

In any case, there was only a single response that the PCA would undertake to the threat of Closure breaking.

Immediate, enormous action.

The mobilization started immediately after the detonation had occurred, my numerous spying eyes fully capable of picking out the PCA’s preparations. By the time that 621 arrived on the Ice Field, they were getting into the full swing of things. I saw their fleets be readied in orbit. I watched them swarm at the bases. I watched autonomous machines crawl out of the foundries by the thousands, the asteroid in orbit being stripped away layer by layer as the PCA pulled from it everything they needed to feed the warmachine.

Their preparations were almost complete by the time that Balam and Arquebus had begun their surveys, but they chose to wait before acting, using the opportunity to gather as much information on the corporations as they could. When 621 hit the Arquebus survey camp, they finally acted.

The PCA descended upon Rubicon in force. Hundreds of Warships made their way to the Ice Field in order to deal with the corporations, attending full armies of PCA forces. From AH12Bs, to BALTEUS, to CATAPHRACTs, to Cavalry units, all of them were present, and there was a seemingly limitless horde of lesser autonomous machines to boot.

If the megacorporations had been in their well-fortified bases on Belius, this would have been something that they might have been able to fight back against directly. As it was?

No, not a chance.

The PCA swept over all of the survey bases that both megacorporations had set up, wiping them all out, and utterly stymying the efforts of the Megacorporations to gain access to the Coral. From there, they started sweeping the rest of the area, aiming to take out everything they could find. Independents were smashed, other outlying bases of the Megacorporations destroyed. In a day, any and all progress they’d made had been lost, and then the Megacorporations had additionally been forced to scatter from the Grids they’d made their second home in when the PCA came for them, too.

They went to ground real fucking quick in the aftermath of that.

Belius was not spared from attention, either. The rest of the PCA forces descended upon the continent. For them, it was the perfect excuse; with Closure threatened, anything and everything became permissible in the PCA’s eyes. Taking another swing at the thorns in their side with the horde that was now available to them was an obvious tactic.

One that we’d seen coming.

Not for no reason had the RLF fortified their everything on Belius. The preparations had been made, refined, and now executed. This was simply the trial by fire... And unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be here for much of it.

Flatwell had his plan on Belius to do. I had my own objectives to accomplish on the Northern Ice Field.

I had sent my Firekeepers across already. Most of my children would be staying with the RLF to assist in any way they could, but us? We were going to be busy.

There was one particular thing about this massive deployment that was good news.

They had deployed nearly everything. It was an absolute, full-scale mobilisation, which meant that everything that was out on the field currently was pretty much everything they had. Reserves? Not much. PCA SP would be most of it, but PCA SP had always been relatively small, and I had no doubt that they would also be deployed to hunt down the particularly problematic targets.

That gave us an opportunity in turn.

The Drones? The automated systems, the autonomous MTs? None of that mattered to the PCA, not really. The Warships, the Cavalry units, the manned machines?

The Enforcement System could not replace pilots as easily as it could replace anything else, and the vast, vast majority of their personnel were now being deployed to the field where they were vulnerable.

We needed as many of them dead as we could possibly kill. Any that still lived would remain a problem, even in the absence of the Enforcement System.

As such, that was a primary objective for us both.

Flatwell was going to handle the defence of Belius, and make sure that as few members of the PCA escaped from the battlefield as possible

I was going to handle the Ice Field, and make sure that the PCA and the Megacorps ground each other down as much as possible before we moved to the next stage of the plan.

The first thing I had to do was wait for Balam and Arquebus to get their shit together and make an alliance again. Scattered as they were, their communication networks were a little fucked up, so that took a few days before everything was finalized.

Once it was done, though, both Megacorps immediately went to hire 621. The Suppression Fleet was currently kicking the ass of Arquebus, and they would like to slow it down as much as possible, so they had 621 go attack the Jorgen Refueling Base, where the Energy Refinement Plant remained active and continuously producing fuel for the PCA’s use.

621 did not have problems on this mission. PCA SP showed up and died for their temerity, though.

While 621 and the Megacorporations were getting busy, I started deploying my Firekeeper squads at the same time. The PCA advantage in any area where 621 wasn’t present was overwhelming, and so I had them start chipping away at the problem wherever I could. Stray ships here, small scout armies there... It was a rapid flurry of deployments, each one carefully chosen in order to ensure we didn’t accidentally leave the Megacorps with a distinctive advantage...

Balam hired 621 next. They needed a diversion to distract the PCA for a bit, and they wanted 621 to go blow up a derelict Watchpoint sensor that the PCA had started preparing to rebuild.

That particular Watchpoint was Engebret Tunnel. The same place I found Ezra, nearly three decades ago now. I had fond memories of that place...

And I had also taken every drop of Coral in the area all those years ago, too. 621 went in, killed everything that could possibly stand in the path to the objective, destroyed the sensor, and then left without any problems. Which... meant that I had accidentally set up the circumstances for 621 to continue the no-hit no-damage run. I had taken the only poison swamp in Armored Core 6. Literally.

Funny how these things work out.

621’s little adventure worked perfectly fine for Balam, even without a vein of Coral going into a Surge. It allowed them to consolidate for a bit, bringing a few AC pilots together while the MT squads regrouped. That gave them a bit more of a chance than they might have otherwise had.

The next step was actually mine. I had a fairly good idea on what 621 was going to be sent to do next, after all, and for that particular mission, I had some objectives of my own to accomplish.

First, I had a squad of Firekeepers get ready for some decently heavy combat. I couldn’t imagine that, after all this time, their response was going to be particularly light. After that, I sent them on their way, having them infiltrate the location.

I found what I was looking for, and directed the Firekeepers to a place where they could stay quiet for a bit.

True to my expectations, 621’s next mission took them out into the Alean ocean, a fair distance away from the shore of the Ice Field. The survey drones that Arquebus had launched revealed an area of the map wherein they had completely failed to gather data, despite Arquebus later sending in multiple drones to the area.

No surprise. That particular area was home to the Xylem, and its defence system had been activated decades ago. It was surrounded in a perpetual fog created by the Xylem’s ECM Generators, which dramatically reduced both sensor effectivity, and visual range. The PCA noticed pretty quickly that somebody had gone to the place by the fact that the very same defence system started turning off, and had promptly dispatched some rather heavy hardware to go deal with the issue.

A Warship, three AH12Bs, five HCs, ten LCs, and a horde of smaller drones made up this force.

621 probably would have been fine alone, but, well... this was an opportunity.

I sent the command, giving permission to proceed.

The Firekeepers immediately powered up their ACs, their signatures going completely active. Both 621 and the PCA undoubtedly detected them, especially since they were quite close.

“Firekeepers?” Ayre asked, her attention caught as LOADER 4’s sensors lit up and the Coral Reponse pulsed loud and clear. “When did- Raven, these aren’t enemies. Those ACs are responding to the PCA.”

I sent a command through the Xylem’s systems, opening the ports and hatches for the areas that the Firekeepers had been stashed in.

Out they came, Boosters flaring red, weapons ready to go.

Alpha Melee took to the skies immediately, Back Boosters flaring to the maximum. Her target was the Warship, and her weapon of choice was the Chainsaw I’d developed.

Despite the name, it didn’t have too much in common with an actual chainsaw. I had it labelled in my armory as a Coral Oscillator variant, but the truth of the matter was that its method of operation had more in common with a Pulse generator than most of its kin. It used Coral, yes, but rather than simply producing a beam, it generated five bands of oscillating, alternating, spinning masses of Surging Coral. The bands were shaped like a stretched, rounded triangle, with the bottom, near to the actual weapon, being a mostly neat circle while the top had a very sudden and sharp turn. The outer and middle section rotated upwards, while the two bands between the middle and each outer band rotated downwards.

The effect of being hit by this was simple; not only would the Surging Coral excite matter to the point of transforming it into plasma, it would also generate shear and tension forces where the bands met, which did even more absolutely awful things to the integrity of whatever was caught there than the Surging Coral alone could achieve. The plasma would then be caught in the spinning flow of the Coral, further heated and excited as it followed, before being violently ejected at the narrower ‘tip’ of the bands.

What had prompted me to create this monstrosity?

I had been wondering what would be an efficient way of demolishing a Grid. This had been born when I realized that yeah, it could be miniaturized.

Alpha Melee slammed into the armoured hull of the Warship. The Chainsaw struck.

The armour sublimated, the Coral ripping it to its component atoms. Alpha Melee swept forwards, the Chainsaw still active. In its path, only destruction remained, biting deep to the body of the Warship, made all the worse by the fact that the plasma its own armour had turned into washing through it, shining bright enough to burn.

The Warship did not break in any conventional sense. It simply transformed from engineering into highly energetic physics.

The interior detonated, energy surging through both the Warship and everything in its surrounding. Lightning appeared to wreath Alpha Melee, flowing through the Primal Armour surrounding the AC.

The Chainsaw shut off.

The fight had begun most spectacularly.