by M. D. Cooper
On the holotank, Leslie watched the Roaches close in around Hammerfall. Their smallest grouping was to the north, where there were only a few outbuildings stretched along the fence line. Beyond lay the landing strips and landing cradles.
Commensurately, the majority of the enemy was grouped at three points along the southern side of the base, where the majority of the structures lay. They closed to within five hundred meters, and then stopped at the edge of the warehouses.
From there on out, nothing lay between the Roaches and the base but tall, waving grass and a narrow road that ran to the gate.
Leslie overlaid an optical view of the terrain on her vision, selecting Sergeant Aaron’s helmet cams for her vantage. He’d proven his valor when Rika took down the Politica, and she had no doubt he’d do so again.
Gazing out over the half-kilometer of space between the forces and seeing well over a hundred Roach tags hovering in and around the distant buildings, she worried that bravery may not be enough to take down so many enemies.
Stop that thinking, Leslie. No one has ever seen a massed mech formation like this before. It’s going to be amazing.
The world seemed to pause for a moment, and everything grew still. It was as though Iapetus knew that hell was about to descend, and was bracing for impact.
Four electron beams lanced out from the enemy positions and struck the plascrete barrier on the left side of the gate, then another four struck the barrier on the other side.
Aaron and the four mechs of fireteam one-one returned fire erratically, shooting at targets of opportunity before falling back behind a secondary barrier, this one thicker with a lead core, plus a grav-shield.
Twenty Roaches rushed forward into the grassy plain, holding CFT shields and using the covering fire from their compatriots to enable their advance. Another group repeated the maneuver, then another.
A minute later, there were one hundred enemies leapfrogging one another across the field.
Leslie looked at the eastern and northern gates. The Roaches were using the same tactic there, as well. They hadn’t advanced on the bunkers at the corners, but they would soon, once they determined the response the mechs would bring to bear.
Only, it wouldn’t be mechs that they met.
Leslie activated their first line of defense, and aracnidrones—twenty on each side of Fort Hammerfall—dug themselves out of the ground behind the advancing Roaches and opened fire.
At the south side of the base, six enemies went down in the initial volley. The roaches still in position at the edge of the plain tried to take shots at the aracnidrones, but most of the bots were between them and their teammates, making clean shots impossible.
The drones, however, had no compunctions about unleashing suicidal fury on the Roaches, taking out another dozen in the next ten seconds, firing missiles, chainguns, and tearing limbs off with wild abandon.
Several of the enemy’s CFT shields fell to the ground, and others turned to face the aracnidrones as the advancing Roaches suddenly found themselves surrounded.
At the southern gate, Aaron and his fireteam took the opportunity to lay down heaver fire on the enemy, slinging depleted uranium slugs and rail-accelerated pellets.
In a minute, fifty of the Roaches had fallen. Similar scenarios were playing out at the other gates, and Leslie wondered if the enemy commander would call a retreat. Losing over ten-percent of your force in the first few minutes was not a good sign.
Despite the tactic’s success, casualties were not one-sided. Several mechs had taken damage as well, but unlike purely organic humans—even ones in powered armor—the mechs could take a lot of punishment before going down. They felt no pain when losing a limb, nor did they fear that level of damage, and it gave them a distinct advantage when under heavy fire.
Just when Leslie thought the enemy would in fact fall back, they rose up and rushed Fort Hammerfall from three sides.
“Shit!” Leslie whispered glancing at David, who was standing silently on the far side of the holotank.
“This is good,” he said, nodding slowly. “We need them to overextend. We have to give Dala time to do her part.”
Leslie nodded in return. “It’s just nuts for the enemy commander to commit his full force like this.”
“Yes.” David was drumming his fingers on the edge of the holotank. “If our forces were what they appear to be, then a combined assault with his troops would be enough to overwhelm us.”
“He’s a fool to think this is all we have,” Leslie replied. “Same thing as nuts, in this case.”
On the holotank, six blue markers lifted out of a warehouse, three kilometers southeast of the base, splitting off into pairs, each headed for the gates that were under attack.
As Leslie watched the SkyScreams streak toward the onrushing enemy, Lieutenant Travis pinged her over the command net.
And our reserves’ reserves, Leslie thought.
The feed from Aaron’s helmet picked up an earsplitting scream, and two airborne shapes flashed over the enemy formation, each firing all four electron beams, raking them across the ground, slicing through the second wave of attackers followed by the Roaches out on the field—who were still under attack from the aracnidrones.
David chuckled, a grim look in his eyes. “That’s a lot of dead Cocks.”
Leslie groaned. “Not you too. The after-action reports alone are going to make me cringe for days.”
Even with Rika’s SkyScreams raking the enemy lines, the Roaches still continued their advance. Pockets of enemies set up gun emplacements protected by shields and began to spray anti-air fire at the SkyScreams, pushing them back.
“Potter, tap those guns,” Leslie ordered.
Guided mortar fire burst from three of the nearby hangars, arcing high in the air and jinking side to side before falling on the AA emplacements.
The Roaches’ guns took out most of the incoming mortar fire. Leslie had anticipated that and didn’t even need to give Potter the word; the AI launched a salvo of groundhuggers, missiles that flew a mere dozen centimeters above the terrain, masked by the tall grass.
While the Roaches were firing into the sky, the groundhuggers struck, blowing away four of the AA guns and flinging enemies in all directions.
“Nice shooting, Potter,” Leslie said grimly as the enemy continued to advance, now within only a hundred meters of the southern fence.
* * * * *
Rika watched four of the six AA emplacements at the southern gate explode, and twisted in the air, diving toward the fifth, as it remained focused on incoming mortar fire.
She kicked a round out of her railgun and cried out in triumph as it struck true, taking out the gun.
The Cocks below turned their weapons on her, and Rika fired her engines at max burn, boosting back into the sky, jinking left and right to avoid incoming fire.
While the Cocks were aiming at her, Karen swooped in from the south and fired a pair of missiles into clusters of the enemy, flinging armored bodies across the battlefield.
Rika smiled with satisfaction, but then saw a group of Cocks rush out of one of the buildings to the south of the battlefield, and fire shoulder-mounted missiles at Karen.
Rika dove toward the missiles, firing her chaingun at them and taking out two before she had to pull up to avoid enemy weapons fire.
One of the missiles switched targets and locked onto her. Rika swore, twisted in the air, and released c
haff before banking hard to port, bringing her chaingun to bear on the missile. The weapon flung hot carbon shards at the missile, ripping it to shreds.
With that threat neutralized, Rika turned her attention to the Cocks who had shoulder-fired the missiles at the SkyScreams. She directed all four of her electron beams at them, and the enemy fell under her withering beam fire. There was no time to revel in the small victory, as a red light flashed on her HUD.
Karen had been hit.
Rika twisted in the air and boosted toward her teammate. The sergeant’s SkyScream had been hit in the port engine, and was wobbling, barely maintaining altitude.
Rika launched two missiles at the enemies below, clearing a path for Karen to set down. The sergeant’s SkyScream came in low and fast, digging a long furrow into the grass within Hammerfall’s fence line.
Her breath catching in her throat, Rika boosted higher, seeking a better vantage and the relative safety of altitude. Relief flooded her upon seeing Karen slide out of the pilot’s pocket on her SkyScream far below, the craft’s armatures setting her back into her legs.
Good, she’s still in the fight.
She banked left and saw Aaron’s fireteam falling back to their third barrier, the first two nothing more than smoking ruins. They were nearly flanked; another minute, and they’d be surrounded.
Three days ago, when First Platoon had made their mock-combat drop to Fort Hammerfall, a flotilla of cargo ships had dropped from the Golden Lark. Those ships had carried supplies and equipment, but they’d also contained the mechs of Lieutenant Travis’s Second Platoon.
The crates containing the reinforcements had been transferred to the hangars, where the mechs had begun to dig.
The Cocks continued to advance on Aaron’s team at the south gate, no doubt certain in their victory over the five beleaguered Marauders. Then the ground exploded in two places a scant, dozen meters from the flanking Cocks.
On the eastern side, a massive figure lumbered out of the ground—a K1R-M that everyone in the company simply called ‘Bitty’.
Bitty carried two large caliber chainguns loaded with HE rounds, and they were already spinning when the six tons of mech hit the ground.
The front ranks of the enemy were torn to shreds before the rest of Second Platoon’s squad four even finished breaking through the surface of the field.
There were twelve of them, only three kilometers out and coming from the east. Rika targeted four with her electron beams, taking out two on her first salvo.
Kelly’s voice came into Rika’s mind, and a rail shot, followed by four electron beams, lanced out, destroying another three missiles.
Five seconds later, they were in range of the base’s three AA turrets, and the guns rose from the ground, firing on and destroying another four of the air-breathers, leaving only three.
The guns pivoted to track the missiles, when a trio of rockets streaked out from the enemy lines, hitting one of Fort Hammerfall’s AA guns. A fireball rose up from the weapon’s wreckage, even as a quartet of electron beams lanced into the second AA gun, tearing it to ribbons.
Hammerfall’s third AA gun took out one more of the missiles, but the final two were closing fast. Rika steadied her trajectory, trying to get a lock on the incoming weapons while still jinking herself to avoid groundfire.
The missiles were within seconds of striking the mechs at the southern gate, when Bitty casually raised both arms and fired both chainguns into the air, creating two cones of destruction that the missiles had to pass through to reach their targets.
Which they did not.
The HE rounds tore through the air-breathers, and the missiles exploded a hundred meters above the ground, raining shrapnel down on the enemy.
Rika watched the K1R-M from above, grateful for his quick thinking.
The enemy had singled out Bitty as priority number one, directing more fire on him, tearing away his ablative armor bit by bit. Rika was raking more beamfire through the lines when she spotted the Cocks bringing a four-meter-long, crew-served railgun to bear on Bitty.
It fired once, catching the K1R in the shoulder. Carbon plating and steel exploded from the impact, and Bitty staggered back. He swung his left chaingun around to fire at the enemy, but nothing happened.
Rika wasn’t sure if it was out of ammo or jammed, but before Bitty could bring his other weapon to bear, another shot from the railgun hit, this one tearing his left arm off entirely.
Bitty froze, and Rika feared that something in his control systems had broken.
The K1R jerked side to side, and the enemy aimed the railgun at the mech’s head.
Time slowed as Rika dove toward the enemy’s weapon emplacement, firing wildly. Try as she might, her angle was no good; one of her shots was blocked by a CFT shield, and another by an enemy soldier.
She estimated that the rail would fire again in one second, maybe two. Bitty seemed stunned, or had suffered a failure, and was unable to move.
Then Rika saw a blurred shape leap out of the mech ranks, arch through the air, and land atop the crew-served railgun, firing wildly at the surrounding enemy.
Rika’s HUD tagged the figure as Staff Sergeant Divinar—an AM-3 they had rescued from the Politica.
The Staff Sergeant killed two of the Cocks, but then took a shot in the shoulder that blew his right arm off. He switched to his shoulder cannons, and took out another Cock before the gunner pivoted the railgun and fired at Divinar.
Rika watched, cold determination flooding her veins, as the rail-fired shot tore Divinar in half, flinging his body in two directions, spraying blood and steel across the surrounding enemies.
A second later, Rika had a clean shot—but she didn’t take it.
Instead, she swooped down into the enemy lines, grabbed the gunner and his rail in the SkyScream’s talons, and lifted them into the air.
She bent the gun and flung it back down at the enemy before tearing the gunner to pieces, throwing his remains onto the Cocks below.
* * * * *
“Southern advance is halted,” Leslie muttered as she watched the massed mechs from Second Platoon overwhelm the front lines of the enemy, driving them back across the fence line.
A few turned and ran from the mechs’ advance. Once the Roaches saw their comrades fall back, more and more of them turned and ran for the relative safety of the warehouses and commercial buildings half a kilometer distant.
Leslie turned her attention to the eastern gate, where Staff Sergeant Chris had slowed the Roaches’ advance, and was now bolstered by Second Platoon’s squad three.
Thirty seconds after the enemy at the southern gate began to flee, the Roaches at the eastern gate began to fall back—albeit in a more orderly fashion.
Leslie couldn’t help but smile as Kelly streaked overhead and fired her last two missiles at the retreating enemies, sending half of them into a full run.
Well, about as orderly as they can, with two SkyScreams harrying them.
The defense of the northern gate had not fared as well.
There had not been enough time to dig tunnels to the northern fence, though two fireteams from Second Platoon had hidden in the outbuildings near the fence line.
The defenders at the gate had been overrun and fell back to those buildi
ngs where the fighting was fierce as mechs fought the enemies in powered armor in close quarters—sometimes hand-to-hand.
Leslie watched the two dots north of the base close on the former airport at top speed. At first, she thought the mechs were still in their vehicles, but when she got a visual, she realized that the foremost signal was The Van, out ahead of the rest of his team. The AMs and FRs were trailing behind in a second group.
The Roaches had maintained a reserve as they advanced into the northern end of the base, and The Van tore into them, killing with both his weapons and his swinging arms. The rest of the Marauders accompanying him spread out around The Van and swept toward the base, driving the enemy into the other mechs within.
“Damn, that northern bunch may be forced to surrender,” David said in awe. “This is unheard of. I’ve never seen such a small force take out so many so fast—not when the enemy was armored almost as heavily.”
Leslie couldn’t stop the grin that was spreading across her face. “Just think of what would have happened to the Nietzscheans if the GAF had let us fight like this.”
David met her smile with one of his own. “Believe me, I am thinking of it. When we get the second wave of mechs from the Politica, we’re going to have the beginnings of an army like no one has ever seen. Then we’ll get to see how the Nietzscheans deal with it, outside of our imaginations.”
Leslie watched the other elements of First Platoon’s second and fourth squads sweep in toward the enemy. The only place the Roaches had available for retreat was east, toward the city of Hittis.
ATTACK ON ATLANTIS
STELLAR DATE: 04.26.8949 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Fort Hammerfall
REGION: Iapetus, Hercules System, Septhian Alliance