by Aer-ki Jyr
“Are they only on Eshwan?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll land my troops then go hunting for their fleet. Can you give me a planetary map with priorities highlighted. If they’re getting close to something they shouldn’t be we’ll hit them there, otherwise I’ll land in their backwater and start causing trouble.”
“I will provide a map, but our primary problem is with their walkers. They have several varieties of enormous size, greater even than those of the Nestafar, that our troops are having difficulty stopping. They’re quite frankly walking straight through our defense lines. They’re slow and heavily armored, almost to the point of immobility…but they have significant anti-air defenses.”
“Are your warships capable of atmospheric combat?”
The Protovic shook his head. “Capable yes, but not designed for it. I already tried that tactic, and nearly lost a corvette. They have grapple technology, anti-grav in nature, I believe, and will yank any large targets out of the sky. My ship hit ground before it was able to flee, but only after our Valeries took out several tethers, allowing it to escape. I’ve never seen anything like this weapon before.”
“We’ve heard rumors, and we’ve brought along some specialty equipment to deal with their walkers. We also have orbital bombardment capability if we can catch them in the open.”
“So I’ve heard. My own attempts to do so have failed, though we use guided missiles. You use unguided mass?”
“Well aimed mass, yes. And we’ve had a lot of practice with it.”
“What’s your accuracy range?”
“I can safely land a slug within a radius of 2 kilometers, and probably within 200 meters,” Kip said, using the trade language conversions.
“Which is only good if we can catch them out in the open, en mass,” the Protovic said with obvious disappointment. “You can’t pinpoint target troops within cities.”
“No. It’s designed for large, shielded targets mostly.”
“The Skarrons are using none. They’ve established no bases, and are continuously on the move.”
“Supply lines?”
“Convoys that follow the troops. We’ve tried to get at them, but they’re well-guarded. The Skarrons dropped an enormous amount of troops and supplies on planet. With what they’re also capturing from us, we don’t have much hope of waiting them out.”
“Have they been resupplied yet?”
“Twice. The second time only a single ship got through. That was four months ago.”
“What are their primary targets?”
“They appear to have none. They’re wiping our population out region by region. We’re evacuating what we can, but we estimate over 2 billion have already been killed.”
Kip closed his eyes and sighed. This was a full planetary assault, and he didn’t have nearly enough troops to fight it back on their own, so the best he could hope for was to do some damage, maybe take out some key Skarron units that would help the Protovic lines hold, or at least delay their collapse. In orbit was another story, and with the combined Star Force/Protovic fleet they had a good chance of keeping any additional Skarron reinforcements from landing…but there was no way of knowing how many more Skarron ships were enroute.
That meant this was going to get interesting, and he was going to have to play it by ear.
“Send me all the planetary data you think relevant. I’ll have troops on the ground within a few hours.”
“You have transport ships in addition to your warships?”
“We do.”
“You may leave them in our care, if you wish, while you pursue the enemy. My fleet has done little but sit in place since the first battle.”
“Thank you.”
“No, it is I who thank you. I’ve been having to watch as the planet under my care is slowly being conquered by the enemy. I don’t know if your troops will turn the tide, but at least now we have a bit of hope to work with.”
“Let’s get to work then…and you’re welcome.”
This is it, Rio thought as he boarded one of the Dragon-class dropships and squeezed into the passenger hold along with hundreds of other Metal Gear commandos, Knights, and Archons. He wore his full armor, appropriately colored camo green, as did the others. On his back he wore a rack, no pack, with a lachar sniper rifle, plasma rifle, and a pair of pistols, one plasma, one stinger. At the bottom of the rack was a small spare ammo compartment, but other than that he was left free to move without the weight of additional supplies.
Very few of them were seated, with most of the Clan troops standing to get as many inside as possible. More were back in the cargo section between the supplies. Should the dropship get hit by enemy fire they’d lose a lot of people when it went down…or at least if it went down and its inertial dampeners failed. If they held up there was a chance they’d survive impact…
No, he had to stop thinking like this. Star Force wouldn’t pack them in so tight knowing that they would be an easy target. The reverse, rather, and the tight fit meant they were confident they were going to get to ground. So until that happened he just needed to wait and watch.
The trip down to the planet was boring beyond words. He couldn’t feel the inertial swings of the dropship leaving the jumpship bay, nor could he watch it on vid screens, packed as they were, so he just stared at the back of the helmet in front of him and the pair of weapons bracketing it until he finally got the go order through his comm.
“We’re on the ground. Commence with deployment…and watch your step, it’s a mess out there.”
Adrenaline spiked through Rio’s body, but he held still, for there were too many people packed in around him for them all to leave at once. When the crowd thinned he followed the others out a side door and down an extendable staircase to the ground…that was strewn with debris.
Forcing himself not to stop and gawk, he continued down the line looking out over the devastation that had once been a Protovic city. Not a building remained standing, only pieces were visible, strewn here and there, as if a monster tornado had come through and ripped everything to shreds…along with delivering plasma burns.
A waypoint beacon pulsed on his battlemap, with Rio following it after he got down the stairs and off the dropship. He and several other commandos milled about in a spot between dozens of dropships that set down in a giant double line, staggered to find available landing spots. Out of them, Rio watched mechs walk forward and trek off into the city remains, pushing out to establish a perimeter while more dropships continued to come down.
Soon cargo haulers, compact little vehicles with powerful anti-grav engines and grapples, began unloading giant metallic cubes and setting them into clearings that bulldozers began to expand upon. Rio knew those were the building blocks for a prefab firebase, and watched as the first of them was activated.
It broke down into pieces, like a giant transformer, and flattened out into a floor and wall segment many times wider than the cube had originally been, forming an L-shaped piece that another cube was sat down next to. It was briefly attached at the floor, then it too transformed and added to the wall, making another 50 meters or so of the barrier and a large section of floor that was extra thick, for it contained support equipment.
One by one more cubes were added, both to the sides and the floor, extending it inward while creating various buildings, some of which required a second cube to be set on top by the cargo haulers. Bit by bit an impromptu base was established, with Rio and his fellow commando group waiting for orders until the last cube transformed and locked into place, then they got a waypoint at one of the four gates, indicating that they needed to move.
Rio followed in a two man wide line as they jogged up to the entrance, getting there just in time to see the doors grind open and the bubble shield activate over top. It dropped to the ground before them, then the portion over the doors disappeared, allowing them access. They ran inside to another waypoint, whereupon they received their orders…this time through a text message tha
t appeared on the HUD of Rio’s helmet.
He split off from the others, moving to a position on the wall that had a lookout post with an enclosed canopy. His orders said to take that position and stand guard, watching the surrounding area…which had an awful lot of cover for bad guys to hide in, not to mention any underground structures.
Rio walked inside, with the wall doubling as a narrow walkway that shielded him from view from the waist down, and took a seat on a stool-like bench and started to visually scan the area behind a second shield that doubled as a window. He experimentally put his hand through, feeling the shield crackle around his armored glove. It was a combination energy/physical shield, with the physical aspect set to only repel fast moving objects.
The bubble shield that lay some 30 meters further out was the hard variety, and no weaponsfire from Rio was going to get through it. That said, the generator wasn’t overly strong, so the bubble would go down after a decent amount of pounding, after which it’d be up to him and the other defenders to hold off the enemy from the supplies that the base was being loaded up with…not to mention the restrooms, shower facilities, bunks, and cafeterias that were inside, none of which you wanted to be without for long in the field.
Combat teams would be cycling back here from missions, meaning this was a proximal firebase. If/when the battle lines were moved forward it could be broken back down into cubes and repositioned, making Rio wonder just how close they were to the fighting. There were no enemy fighters visible, but maybe that had to do with the squadrons of skeets protecting the dropships as they continued to come down in an unending stream of reinforcements.
Rio pulled off his sniper rifle and poked it through his lookout post’s shield, with the protective energy reforming around the barrel. He used the zoom and his vantage point up high to scan the area in the direction he saw some of the mechs moving. A lot of the view was broken building, but several long gaps gave him miles worth of view, and in one of those breaks he saw additional mechs engaged with some type of enemy.
Rio blinked, realizing that they must have been set down in another group, and his was here merely as supply support. That was fine by him, he was happy to help in any way, but he wondered where exactly the enemy was and why he couldn’t see any fighters in the sky.
Then his scope caught a bit of motion in closer, and he adjusted the zoom back to the ruins around the base where he caught the motion again, seeing a waving hand in the building debris more than half a mile away. He sighted in on it, seeing a Human-like figure, but one with fluorescent skin that shown a dull green/purple.
Feathering the barrel every so carefully he zoomed in again and got a decent look at the person’s face, seeing what looked like burn marks on the left half, but he confirmed that it had a head, two arms, and a torso that appeared to fit inside the pictures he’d seen of Protovic armor.
“Nemmal, comm on,” he said, using the voice commands so he could keep both hands on the rifle and keep his eye on the individual, who was continuing to wave furiously. Once the comm activated he used eye line commands and blinks to highlight a direct frequency to the commando tagged as the base commander.
“I have contact with what I think is a Protovic native. He’s wearing no armor and waving at us from the rubble.”
“Where?”
In response, Rio synced his rifle’s scope to his HUD and laid down a waypoint on the battlemap.
10
The Protovic survivor and four others found nearby were brought into the Star Force base and quickly interrogated. Fortunately some of the commandos could speak the trade language, for Rio knew only 50 or so words, which he didn’t deem sufficient to make first contact with an alien. He stayed at his post, but kept glancing back inside at the Protovic, for they were the first non-Humans he had ever seen.
They wore clothing that appeared metallic, but by the way it moved he figured it was just shiny cloth. It had holes in it, on each of the five they had brought in through the gate, two of which were still outdoors within the courtyard created by the four base walls, while the other three had been taken inside one of the buildings which Rio knew to be a medical station. The two outside were Human height, but aside from their glowing flesh their eyes stood out, even at a distance. They literally burned neon purple, making their allies look altogether freaky.
He didn’t let his attention linger on them for long, for he had a perimeter to watch. There were other commandos on the wall at various points, some behind heavy weapons batteries, and all were entrusted to safeguard this tiny bit of Star Force territory on the planet. Already one mechwarrior had returned…missing her mech. She’d returned on foot and taken shelter inside, looking overly haggard. Rio didn’t have a line of sight on where the fighting was taking place at present, but every now and then he’d see a bit of it as weaponsfire passed through the gaps in the rubble.
After a couple of hours another commando came up and relieved him, with Rio leaving his sniper rifle in the lookout post for the other to use, seeing that he carried none. With his other weapons locked onto his back rack he sat down on the inner ledge of the wall and pivoted his butt around, dropping off until he caught his hands and hung on the inside for a moment to kill his momentum, then he let go and dropped several meters to the ground.
His feet hit and he absorbed the impact as he’d done in training hundreds, if not thousands of times before. Normally he would have had to roll out of it to bleed the last bit of compression off, but the gravity here was a bit below normal, allowing him to stick the landing and walk it off into the building cluster, with the ‘ground’ he was striding across being a synthetic compound designed to give slightly, but able to support a mech’s weight without cracking.
There was a wide open area next to the wall, well wide enough for a mech to walk through, then there were the buildings mounted on top of the ‘ground’ that held numerous support lines…power, sewage, water, comm…not to mention the plasma that fed the corner turrets, which was produced in a generator in the interior, allowing the turrets to pivot about more freely without all that mass weighing them down.
When Rio crossed into the pedestrian walkways in between the single and two story buildings he caught a glimpse of the Protovic pair as they entered a doorway ahead of him. His eyes weren’t failing him before…their skin was actually glowing, visible even in the daylight.
He walked by the building they’d entered, throwing a glance inside as he passed, then he headed for the barracks, only to get stopped on the way there by another camo green armored soldier.
“Rio, you up for some action?” Dravic asked.
“Always,” he answered the level 23 commando.
“We’ve spotted some skirmishers in the rubble. I’m making a running patrol through some of the areas the spotters can’t see. Mission is to kill and/or flush them out, as well as recon the area to see how many are out there. Our Protovic friends seem to think they were sent to hunt them down, not us.”
“We going underground?”
Dravic shook his head. “Not worth the effort. If they’re down there, and come up, then they’re our problem.”
“What about the shield?”
“It’ll be raised enough to give the wall guards firing lines.”
“How many of us?”
“Just you and me…if you can keep up?”
Rio pulled his plasma rifle off his back. “Lead on.”
Dravic didn’t waste any more time talking and took off at a jog through the buildings, then accelerated up into a decent run when they hit the exposed ring just inside the wall. Rio stayed with him easy enough, knowing the tricky part was going to be navigating the debris…but if he was only following it shouldn’t be a problem, even in armor, because there weren’t going to be any long clearings to get up to top speed in.
The double doors in the south wall ground open partway, just enough for the pair to slip out, then they closed again as the commandos ran single file out and over the mound of dirt/debris th
at the dozers had pushed out to clear the base plain. Once over that Rio followed the more experienced commando out and down behind a section of round building that had once been a tower, crossing under the top half that was laying across their path, leaving a small triangular opening for them to pass through.
Almost immediately after crossing under, Rio saw Dravic fire off a quick shot, downing a target that the pair then ran after. They hesitated only slightly as they passed it, confirming that the small alien was dead, with a plasma burn on its rounded chest. It had a flat head that made it look like it was wearing a decorative halo, with four eyes spread across it on the front half, giving it considerable lateral vision.
Two arms and two legs made it a biped, but more than that Rio didn’t have time to learn. The pair moved on for another five seconds before two more of them came into view, then bolted…with the second one firing a tiny spec of white plasma back at Dravic that was absorbed by his armor’s shields.
The little things moved fast, and Dravic picked up his pace into full pursuit mode, with Rio struggling just to keep up. He had the advantage of only having to match the other’s steps rather than choose them, so he managed to stay within two meters of his partner as they chased the pair of aliens further south before they suddenly turned to the east.
Dravic winged one, with it limping behind enough that he was able to finish it with another pair of shots on the run. Rio jumped over its corpse as they kept after the other, then a few steps later Dravic was covered in little white flashes as the two of them ran into an ambush. On reflex both commandos went evasive, with them parting ways. Rio went right and Dravic went left, with both of them staying on the run and flanking around the dozen or so aliens trying to line up a decent shot that didn’t involve taking a lot of hits to their shields…which weren’t all that strong to begin with.