by Aer-ki Jyr
“Get one of the laser relays over here, quick.”
The green armored soldier nodded and took off running, not wasting the two seconds to form a verbal reply. Paul turned back to the lower building and zoomed in again, then raised an arm up and waved back at the signal. It flashed twice more then cut out, recognizing the receipt of the contact wave.
Raines came back over with two other Canderians carrying a crate which they set down next to Paul and began to unpack. Clan Saber had sent over four of the units, along with the message that the other Clans were doing the same in an attempt to get around the jamming signals, but this was the first one he or any of his men had been able to spot.
The unit came out in three pieces. The bottom one was a wide tripod with vibration buffers at four points. The second, middle section was the laser transmitter, and the third was the targeting sphere that inflated from a small tube out to three quarters of a meter in diameter. Once they had the unit assembled and inflated Paul used a built in scope to target the first laser transmitter. The unit had four so that it could form a nexus within a grid system, but for the moment he only needed to align one of them with the other building.
It took him well over a minute to find the position in the small scope, given the distances involved. Once he found the building top it didn’t take long, but the width of the viewing aperture was narrower than his helmet scope and it was easy to get the zoom lost in the various buildings when he couldn’t pull back as far. The unit was designed to work over insane distances, and one item on their to-do list was to test a link between Corneria and Dxun once they got a drift protocol established…otherwise even if they did manage to locate the other unit the spin of the planet and the orbital velocity of the moon would misalign it immediately.
Use on the same planet required firm, locked positions, hence the need for vibration buffers in the tripod. A mech walking past could easily misalign the laser over a distance of a kilometer, let alone 10k or 100k. Atmospheric conditions came into play, but if used in space or on an airless moon the range was almost unlimited.
Paul finally got the laser trained on the opposite target sphere and locked the transmitter in place, then stood up and looked at the display panel, seeing that there was already an incoming signal. He flipped on the audio and immediately heard a voice.
“…you receiving?”
“Copy,” Paul answered. “You got me?”
“Copy,” the voice answered. “This is Archon Miranda-943 of Clan Samus.”
“Paul-024. What’s your status?”
“We’re part of a hunting team sent out to track down rogue lizard units and simultaneously set up a comm grid. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’ve got teams sneaking around everywhere, half of which we don’t have a clue what they’re up to.”
“We’ve been beating back a major assault force with Canderous and have retaken the command building. They had a jammer installed but we took it out, then the big one went up and we’ve been forced to use couriers and the building’s intercom hard lines.”
“Too bad somebody didn’t think to include running those between buildings,” Miranda commented dryly.
“Hightower set up the larger buildings as self-sufficient units,” Paul guessed, knowing how the Duke worked. “That probably meant he put down an edict stating no interconnecting lines. The comm systems I’ve come across in the building have multiple redundancies, just no hard lines. It’s a design oversight I’ll chew him out for later, but the up side is there’s no main power core for the lizards to knock out and we’ve got most of the building’s functions online, including the rooftop landing pads which are just outside the range of the lizards’ anti-air ground batteries, so we’ve been able to bring in supplies and troops via the Canderian assault shuttles.”
“Yeah, we’ve noticed a few coming and going. I’m surprised the cruisers haven’t taken them out.”
“I’ve been watching them and they only seem to be concerned with the larger transports, plus it’d be hard for them to hit the shuttles without flying into range of the turrets. How far have you set up your grid?”
“We had a link all the way back to what’s left of the airfield and Rafa but we lost one of the intermediaries, so we’ve got 4 buildings linked up now, counting yours.”
“How many men have you got?”
“14, all Archons.”
“How are you set with supplies?”
“Running low and our armor is chewed up.”
“You can resupply here, and we’ve got spare parts.”
“Ambrosia?”
“Plenty to go around.”
“We’ll definitely be heading your way, but there are plenty of lizards between here and there to get around.”
“I’ve been keeping an eye from up top here, but I can’t see much other than the one street. How thick are they in your area?”
“They’re up to something and have large, mobile units moving about to discourage attention. At least three armed transports, but they’re never together. We can building hop, but they’re starting to plant booby traps so we’re having to take it slow.”
“What kind?”
“Proximity mines…shrapnel and plasma. Unless we step on one they’re not so bad, but some of us are starting to look like porcupines.”
Paul frowned. “Where exactly are you coming across them?”
“Multiple buildings, both at the entrances and further in.”
“Which buildings…be specific.”
“We’ve been bouncing around so much I don’t remember them all, but one was residential and two were industrial.”
“What did you find inside?”
“Not much, but we didn’t stick around too long. Killed a few lizard teams but didn’t find anything else of interest.”
“I’m guessing the building with the downed transmitter has more than a few lizards in it. They were redecorating the command building with the intent to stick around for a few decades. I’m guessing they’re setting up similar sites around the city. You probably stumbled across a few…except we didn’t come across any booby traps here.”
“If you were dealing with a lot of troops maybe they thought they didn’t need them. The most we’ve come across at any one moment was about 30, so maybe they’re fortifying their holdings with the devices in lieu of the troops they don’t have.”
“Why can’t the damn things just stay still,” Paul commented, realizing just how serious their enemy was about moving in for keeps. Smart actually, because even if Star Force evacuated and Paul bombarded the city from orbit the lizards would have succeeded in getting him to destroy one of their own cities.
“I’m assuming command of your team, Miranda. Get over here as soon as you can. We’re making building by building sweeps, and it looks like that’s the only way we’re going to make any progress against the strays.”
“Agreed. How close are your lines?”
“One block radius.”
“Do you have control of the streets?”
“For the moment. There’s been some attempts to retake the building from the south, but we’ve got enough rocket launchers in play to make them think twice about bringing in vehicles.”
“Want a couple of mechs?”
“Please.”
“We’ll have to backtrack a bit, but we came across a pair hiding out in a courtyard parking lot. They’re non-Archon mechwarriors, survivors of the mainline unit that the cruisers tore up that first day. They said they’ve been corned by ground troops no matter which way they go so they decided to hold ground and let them come to them. They didn’t so they’ve just been waiting until Morgan could get to them with a ground offensive, hoping to hit the lizards from the front and use the mechs to flank them from behind, but since the comm whiteout they haven’t known what to do.”
“They’ve been in their mechs the whole time?”
“No, they’ve been rotating out and living in a nearby building, but their nerves are fraye
d and their mechs look just as bad, but most of the weaponry is still intact. Not sure how much heavy fire they’ll stand up to, but as far as infantry support goes I’d rather have them at my back than not.”
“You have their position marked?”
“Yes.”
“Once you get back here I’ll send out a retrieval team and we’ll bring them in.”
“With your permission I’ll head back and stay with them until it arrives, my team can bring the coordinates to you.”
“Permission granted and good idea. Keep their heads level and their mechs intact. We’re going to need them both.”
8
March 27, 2266
Epsilon Eridani System
Corneria
“Where we at?” Paul asked.
“Teams just finished sweeping these two buildings,” Raines said, comparing notes with the Archon on a holographic map inside one of the parked assault shuttles on the command building’s roof. “Forward elements are engaging here and here,” he said, pointing at two streets that spread out like a ‘V’ from the edge of their current safe zone.
Paul nodded, shifting the weight of the extra pack he wore slung over his right shoulder. “Anti-air?”
“Everything we could find has been neutralized within the predetermined radius. You should be clear to go.”
“Alright. Mind the store while I’m gone.”
“Store?” Raines asked.
“Figure of speech. Keep clearing buildings and pushing our lines to the south. Leave the other vectors to the Archon teams and focus on taking pressure off that tower. If we lose that we’re hurting.”
“We’ll get there,” Raines said, stepping back outside the shuttle and clapping his fist against his chest in a quick salute as the boarding ramp rose up and closed Paul inside the hold by himself. He grabbed a ceiling handhold, choosing to remain standing as he stared at the wall.
“Pilot, let’s go,” he half yelled up into the cockpit. A few seconds later the shuttle lifted off the pad, but Paul couldn’t feel the acceleration due to the internal dampeners. Less than a minute later the pilot remote triggered the boarding ramp to lower, depositing Paul on the rooftop of another lower building…as far out as they could dare fly without running into enemy anti-air ground units.
Paul jogged off and the shuttle quickly departed. After a glance around the immediate area to make sure it was clear he turned around and watched the Canderian craft fly back across the safe zone and up to the top of the command building, which now rose up behind him like a giant mountain…a mountain that Star Force now controlled and was reconquering their city out from.
The building Paul was standing on now was not in the safe zone. It was two blocks outside it, but the surrounding streets had just been cleared of anti-air troops and the roof of this and the surrounding buildings hadn’t shown any signs of the lizards, making for an adequate drop point into enemy territory. How much of the building and the surrounding area the lizards controlled they didn’t know, but it didn’t appear to be a dense occupation area.
Wasting no time Paul ran across the sparse rooftop to a stairwell entrance, spying the larger building off to his right. That was his target, but he was going to have to get there on foot and hopefully avoid attention while doing so. Hefting around a large gear satchel wasn’t exactly the way he wanted to go into combat, so stealth was his greatest asset at the moment.
Paul took the stairs straight down to the ground floor, not encountering any resistance in what appeared to be a completely deserted building, though in truth he’d only seen a tiny piece of it. Still, there were no guards or defensive barricades set up on the southern set of doors which Paul cautiously peeked out of.
The street to his left was clear as far as he could see, but to his right there was an anti-personnel vehicle creeping along several blocks down headed the opposite direction. With it were ranks of ground troops, apparently on patrol for there were too few to be an assault force. They also had their tails towards his position, so he ducked across the street and up to the doors on the building on the far side, but when he tried to open them he found that they were locked.
He was so surprised he almost laughed. Every building he’d come across in the city had their exterior doors unlocked, as was standard protocol. A lot of them didn’t even have locks built into them and this one in particular, given that it was comprised entirely of glass, looked almost pathetic being locked. He wondered if the building manager had done so as a last thought during the evacuation.
Paul brought his boot up and kicked the door near the handle, but the glass held firm. He kicked a second time, harder, and was rewarded with a small crack. Glancing around to make sure he was still in the clear he set down his gear satchel and took a step back, setting himself before he launched forward into a side kick that punched straight through the safety glass, pinning his foot in place.
He wiggled it free of the hole and reached inside to open the door from the push handle on the opposite side with a muted click, then he ducked into the building reshouldering his gear satchel and ran across the ground floor to the exit on the far side where he street jumped again, this time coming up to an open door and signs of looting.
Knowing that meant the lizards had been through the area at some point he walked slowly through the hallways, listening ahead and trying to stay out of sight. He didn’t know if they were still in the building or not but there was no visible security so he took a straight line path across the building and arrived at the other side just in time to see another patrol pass by, this one with several lizards driving small hover carts with anti-air batteries on the back.
Paul could have jumped them easily enough but that wasn’t his mission, so he let them pass and waited for another 20 minutes for an opportunity to building jump again. This time he did meet up with a rogue lizard inside and dispatched it with a quick jab of his stun sword before it could get to its weapon. He didn’t kill it, but rather let it lay unconscious on the floor as he moved on, not wanting the sound of plasma fire to give away his location.
Paul passed through another three buildings with minimal resistance until he finally got to his target…which of course had to be one with a lizard guard at the door. He could see at least half a dozen inside behind a pair of brand new barricades. They wouldn’t be hard to take if he left his satchel behind, but drawing attention to himself was going to make more trouble than he wanted so he chose to move across to an adjacent building, then one up further so he could come around and observe another entrance into his target.
It too was guarded, but the third side he later checked wasn’t and he managed to slip across and into the building unnoticed. He took to the stairs and quietly began to ascend the medium-height building up to the roof, having to pause and wait out several close encounters with lizards milling about erecting gear that indicated to Paul that they were setting up shop in the building for more onsite industrial use. Fortunately he wouldn’t be sticking around for long.
When he finally made it to the roof he encountered two lizards putting together an anti-air turret and took them down with four well placed shots before taking cover and waiting, wondering if there were any more on the roof along with them. After a few minutes of silence he did a slow perimeter sweep and eventually came up with nothing. His insertion had been a success.
As he made his way back to where he’d dropped his satchel he saw an Eagle-class dropship scoot across the forest edge and dip down into the grassy clearing ringing the city. Paul did a double take, wondering if he was seeing things until another followed it up from a different approach angle before dropping out of sight. He was still well within the center of the city and the perimeter was a ways off in the distance but there was no way his eyes were misjudging the sight of the dropships on approach.
By the time he got his helmet scope engaged a Falcon-class dropship joined them and he was able to confirm that they were landing in the clearing, but the perimeter buildings were blockin
g his line of sight so he couldn’t see what they were offloading but he knew it had to be mechs. Up until now their guardian cruiser had been intercepting and driving off all attempts to reinforce the city via dropship, which made him wonder where exactly it was now.
Scanning the horizon with his scope he did a full half turn before the command building blocked his view, then he skipped over it and got another partial turn in before he spotted it even further away than it normally was, and on the opposite side of the city from where the dropships were coming in. A flash of blue impacted on its shields and Paul followed the plasma streak back to a grey rectangular cube…no, three cubes, all cutter-class by the looks of them, that were engaging the cruiser at close range.
At the same time he noticed a scattering of dots crossing his vision, which he soon realized were more dropships heading in from that direction, under the cover of the three naval ships that had dropped down into atmosphere to take on the wounded cruiser, who’d lost most of its offensive plasma cannons over the previous days. Paul didn’t know which side would win out in that fight, but get enough mechs on the ground and it wouldn’t matter…which is exactly what this Clan had planned, though he couldn’t tell from this range who the dropships belonged to.
Even if they were flying over the city he wouldn’t have been able to spot the small icons on the hull, but he knew that the remote pilots flying those warships had to be transmitting from one of the Clan colonies on a beam signal, otherwise the jamming coming from the city would have overwhelmed their control receivers. It was possible that they’d sent the ships in on autopilot with the cruiser pre-tagged as their target, but Paul found that unlikely as he watched the distant battle unfold based on the way the ships moved about to gain maximum advantage.