by C H Gideon
A hushed silence fell upon the room, just as Jenkins had expected it would. He let that silence hang for a long while as his people came to terms with the magnitude of the situation.
“How’s Fleet holding up at the gate, sir?” Xi asked, but the truth was Jenkins didn’t know.
“I left on a slow-rider three days after the initial attack,” Sergeant Major Trapper interjected grimly. “The yachties were holding their own last I checked but couldn’t spare a carrier to come here and properly reinforce y'all.”
“So the sergeant major,” Jenkins put in dryly, “thought that if we couldn’t get reinforced with a ten-pack of Marines, like originally planned, the next best thing would be for him to grace us with his ugly mug while delivering the good news.”
Nervous laughter filled the cabin as Trapper drawled, “You Armor kids are almost as cocky as Marines. And you smell worse.”
Even Jenkins chuckled as the mood lightened. “Chief, break it down for us.” He gestured for Styles to take his place at the head of the table.
The de facto intelligence officer nodded and stood, gesturing to the looping video feed of the rock-biters being temporarily KO’d. “You’re probably thinking we’ll just keep using this trick,” Styles said, raising his voice to be heard over the short-lived laughter which soon died down, “in which case, no problem. The rock-biters get close enough, we put them to sleep and mop up. The problem is it took me twelve hours to modify these receivers—” He held up a fragment of the rock-biter cybernetic implants. “—in such a way that they’re no longer vulnerable. If I could do it, knowing next to nothing about this tech, the enemy will be able to make better modifications faster.”
The mood sobered. And even Trapper seemed displeased by the latest news. A dark cloud had descended on those who heard Styles’ assessment.
“That’s the bad news, but we’ve got two pieces of good news to go along with it,” Styles continued confidently. “The first is that I knew exactly what I did in order to disrupt them, which means I have a head-start in figuring out a way to block it. But it’s already been two days, so it’s possible that the rock-biters who retreated have already made the necessary modifications. If I had to bet, I’d say they haven’t worked it out—yet—but it’s just a matter of time.”
“That’s the good news?” Captain Murdoch blurted, speaking for the first time since the meeting had begun.
“It is,” Styles said without missing a beat, “but it’s not all the good news. The rest is that, working with Lieutenant Xi—” He gestured to Elvira’s Jock. “—I’ve devised a way to take functional control of every rock-biter on Durgan’s Folly.”
Hoots and cheers erupted throughout the command center, but Jenkins knew that the next bit of Styles’ presentation was likely to dampen the suddenly hopeful atmosphere. The intel dweeb’s penchant for taking the battalion’s leadership on an emotional roller coaster ride chapped Jenkins’ ass.
“The catch—” Styles raised his voice, barely able to make himself heard as he repeated at the top of his lungs. “The catch—” He held up his hands, quieting the crowd enough to be heard over the din. “—is that we have to find an Arh’Kel nest and position Roy no further than fifty meters from five hundred individual rock-biters to make it work.”
Predictably, the positive energy was sucked from the room.
“Their troop density is rarely that high, even in a full charge,” Trapper mused.
“What about using the Vultures?” Ford ventured hopefully.
Styles shook his head. “We’ve run the simulations tens of thousands of times. The drones don’t have the transceiver wattage, and even if we ginned them up to spec, there’s no realistic way they’d get close enough to do the job before they got shot down.”
Jenkins stood beside Styles and made brief eye contact with each of his Jocks. “Roy’s the only mech in the battalion with thick enough armor to pull it off. Even Elvira and Flaming Rose are too vulnerable to wade into a mass like that, but we’ll need all three of those mechs to breach the junction if we’re going to make this work.”
“You’re not taking the whole battalion, sir?” asked Falwell, Preacher’s Jock.
“No, we’re not,” Jenkins confirmed. “We’ll have a lower seismic footprint if we take as few units as possible, but we’ll need your MRMs to help crack this junction open.”
“We’ve got six hot missiles ready to launch on your order and two more that could be loaded onto Vultures to be dumb-fired point-blank,” Falwell said confidently.
“Good,” Jenkins said approvingly, glad to hear that Preacher’s crew had managed to partially salvage two of their last eight MRMs—mid-range missiles. Every last round would be important where they were going.
“Commander…” Captain Murdoch leaned forward skeptically. “The chief says we need to draw five hundred Arh’Kel infantry within fifty meters of Roy. Even with the latest—” His lips twisted distastefully. “—modifications to our heavies, how the hell can we hope to pull that off? It only takes six rock-biters with cutting torches to cut a light mech down in ten seconds. I know Roy’s a beast, and that both Elvira and Flaming Rose are tough nuts to crack, but we’re looking at…what, a minute of survival time at most?”
Xi smirked. “And that’s only if we sneak in before they turn a dozen railguns on us.” It was clear she wanted to say more, but after making brief eye contact with Jenkins, she opted to stow it for the time being.
“The latest mods will buy us at least a minute at knife-range,” Jenkins assured his jittery company captain. “But let me be clear: we’re going to have to go there cycling our anti-personnel guns so fast their barrels melt. It’s the only way we can ensure enough of them flood the cavern.”
“All right…” Murdoch sent a resentful look Xi’s way. “So, we go in guns blazing. I still don’t see what’s so important that we can’t just hole up here and wait for Fleet to arrive.”
“We’re bingo ordnance, Captain,” Xi snapped. “If the rock-biters figure out how to block Styles’ disruption method, you can bet your ass they’ll storm this rock in force—and when they do, I might not have enough ammo to cover your back. Again.”
“Lieutenant Xi—” Murdoch rounded angrily on the young woman.
“That’s enough!” Jenkins barked. He sent each of his ill-behaved officers looks of dire warning before unimaginatively saying, “Save it for the rock-biters. We roll in twenty minutes. I want Preacher’s two dumb-fires loaded onto Vultures and airborne in one hour. We’re going to hit them hard, fast, and right where they live. This is no joke, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, setting his jaw grimly, “there are probably enough Arh’Kel on this rock to wipe out every human in the Terran Republic if those fireships break through our Fleet’s blockade. I’m not going to sugarcoat it: this is a high-risk, high-reward operation. If we succeed, we neutralize an existential threat to the colonial way of life. And if we fail, we’re looking at New Australia all over again—only this time on every colony in the Terran Republic.”
Judging by the expressions around the table, his invocation of New Australia had done the trick of refocusing the group. New Australia was the worst slaughter in the history of the Arh’Kel Wars and had become a universal rallying cry for Republic soldiers. Ten million humans, most of them civilians, had been wiped out by Arh’Kel shock troops before Fleet could scrub New Australia—officially recognized as Terra Australiana—clean of the rock-biter plague.
“Any questions?” he asked, receiving nothing but shaking heads in reply. “Good. Dismissed.”
Xi was just about to board Elvira and prep her for departure when she heard a now-familiar voice call from her back. “Lieutenant, a moment?”
She turned to see Sergeant Major Trapper striding toward her. “Yes, Sergeant Major?”
He grinned in reply, but behind his thick, handlebar mustache, the expression looked more like a bemused smirk. “I was hoping you’d agree to an unusual request,” he explained with a mischievou
s twinkle in his eye.
She couldn’t help but snicker. “If this is going where I think it’s going…”
“Depends on where you think it’s going,” he chuckled before gesturing to the top of Elvira’s hull. “Between those dual fifteens is a pretty good spot for a nest, and you’ll need all the close-in fire support you can carry down that hole.”
She turned and looked up, studying the space between Elvira’s dual fifteen-kilo cannons, and nodded. “It looks like you could squeeze a couple Pounders up there with machine guns.”
“I was thinking RPGs and hand grenades, mostly. I’ve got a couple boys lined up for the job if you don’t mind,” Trapper explained, though that mischievous grin never left his lips.
“I’m not going to lie,” she said seriously. “I’d appreciate the extra close-in firepower, but it’s a suicide mission even inside a heavily-armored mech. Riding on top of one?” She shook her head adamantly. “I couldn’t ask anyone to do that.”
“Good thing you’re not askin’ for it, then,” Trapper drawled. “Wouldn’t want to mix signals, would we?”
“Sergeant Major…” She did her best to screw her face up into a look of disapproval. “Are you offering fire support or hitting on me?”
“I’ll let you be the judge of that,” he chuckled. “But if you want me and my boys up there, we need to get set up on the double.” He gestured to a small team of Pounders assembled nearby.
She was more than a little intimidated by the battle ahead of her, and she knew that every bit of support would help her focus on the task at hand. “I’d appreciate that, Sergeant Major,” she said with genuine feeling.
“Please,” he said, gesturing for his people to begin working on the makeshift nest atop her mech, “call me Tim. The only people who refer to me by my rank are my men and my father.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “That last bit sounds like a story worth hearing.”
“Might just share it with you after we get back, Elvira,” he said, tipping his helmet before joining his people atop her mech.
He was a dozen paces away before she realized he had called her ‘Elvira.’
16
Carbon vs. Silica
Fifty-two kilometers from HQ, the trio of mechs had drawn within spitting distance of their target. Roy, Elvira, and Flaming Rose looked like props straight out of a post-apocalyptic blockbuster, with jagged spikes and other, more sinister-looking equipment having been hastily welded, bolted, and even cemented onto their hulls in preparation for the attack.
Jenkins activated the P2P comm-link, routed through their lone remaining Owl drone. Maintaining radio silence had been critical to this point, but now it was time to do their thing. “All right, people, this is it,” he declared as Roy drove toward the hidden subterranean nexus beneath the glassy surface. “Preacher, make a hole.”
Thanks to Elvira and her Owl, they knew where it was without having to see it.
“Copy that, Commander. Six Defiance birds inbound: ETA twenty-one seconds,” Falwell replied promptly. “Good hunting, Roy.”
Jenkins grinned as a particular phrase leaped to the front of his mind. “To paraphrase our very own Elvira,” he intoned as the impact clock wound down toward zero, “it’s time to send these assholes back to the Stone Age.”
Six Defiance-class MRMs slammed into the ground before the mech trio, sending a geyser of rubble hundreds of meters into the air. Head-sized rocks clanked against Roy’s armor as the formation, led by Elvira and Flaming Rose, bore down on the impact site.
When the dust cleared, it was obvious the hole was too small.
“Vultures inbound,” Styles reported as the two airborne drones’ icons sped across the tactical plotter. “Time to engagement: eight seconds.”
The mechs slowed to half-speed as Jenkins ordered, “Chaps, hit that hole with everything we’ve got.”
At less than six hundred meters, Roy’s fifteens would be hard to put on the target, but Chaps proved his mettle as he managed to send a pair of HE shells within a dozen meters of the bulls-eye. Rockets tore loose of Roy’s launch tubes, slamming into the ground mere seconds before Styles declared, “Dumb-fires away!”
Another geyser of rubble erupted upward from the impact site as two more Defiance-class MRMs struck the ground.
Elvira and Flaming Rose added their weight of fire to the effort, and this time when the dust settled, there was a hole large enough to fit a single mech through at a time.
It was far from ideal, but it was what they had to work with.
“Elvira, you’re up,” Jenkins commanded. “Give ‘em hell.”
“Roger,” Xi replied eagerly. The makeshift nest atop Elvira’s armored carapace sprang into action as six Pounders, led by Tim Trapper, laid RPGs over their hastily-assembled nest.
The Scorpion-class mech surged into the hole just as a pair of railgun bolts burst out, and Jenkins knew then that what he’d said in the pre-mission brief had been true.
This was for all the marbles.
Elvira II breached the hole, revealing an underground chamber remarkably similar to the one Xi and Podsy had fallen into in the original Elvira.
And this one was crawling with rock-biters.
Xi’s flank-mounted machine guns sprayed hundreds of rounds per second into the cavern, laying waste to rock-biters even as a pair of railgun strikes narrowly missed her hull.
“You want the new mods online?” Podsy asked, ever the calm voice in the midst of chaos.
“Not yet.” She winced as a third railgun struck her head-on, causing her to nearly lose the mech’s footing on the scrabble. She recovered and sprayed depleted uranium rounds into the cavern as fast as her machine guns could cycle, while Podsy sent a fifteen-kilo slug into an enemy HWP on the far side of the cavern.
The shell tore the railgun mount apart, causing its wreckage to explode in a fireball that took out a dozen nearby rock-biters.
Elvira’s machine guns ripped into the horde, but the carnage did nothing to dissuade the Arh’Kel as they hurled themselves at the death-dealing engine of war. Never before had Xi felt so in control of her mech, not even when the neural link had worked in the old Elvira. Seconds ticked by as she let herself ride the wave of inputs, reacting on hard-trained reflex rather than overthinking things.
A pair of rock-biters leaped down from a nearby ledge, and she pivoted Elvira to sweep through them. They were torn apart mid-air, with roughly equal halves of their six-limbed bodies falling lifelessly to the cavern floor.
One Arh’Kel managed to get beneath her carapace, and without planning it, Xi splayed her mech’s legs just enough that she actually heard the eminently satisfying crunch as her eighty-ton mech crushed the rock-biter. Oyster vs. sledgehammer. She smirked.
Just as she recovered the mech’s footing, a wave of rock-biters surged up the scrabble, clearly intent on slowing her progress so the railguns could get another volley off.
A half-dozen explosions erupted from the rock-biter line as a swarm of RPGs tore the Arh’Kel troops limb from limb. She silently thanked Sergeant Major Trapper and his people as she continued crawling down the loose rubble toward the cavern floor.
They were halfway down the two-hundred-meter-long slope before it became clear that the rock-biters were closing in faster than she and the Pounders could clear them. Arh’Kel slammed into her hull and snuck inside her machine gun arcs before she could cut them down. She knew it as only a matter of time before they started doing serious damage to her systems.
“All right, Podsy,” she decided, “activate the mods.”
“Mods online,” he acknowledged, and Elvira’s cabin was filled with a terrifying sound as a hundred motors whirred to life outside.
A mixture of circular saws, wire saws, and honest-to-God chainsaws—some of which were five meters long—sprang to life on Elvira’s hull. A dozen Arh’Kel were cut down by the mostly-diamond-tipped cutting devices in the opening seconds, their vital fluids decorating Elvira’s armored carapace
in a macabre mix of purples and blues.
Looking and sounding like something that would have given Salvador Dali lifelong nightmares, Elvira waded into the Arh’Kel with her new anti-personnel mods picking off the few Arh’Kel her machine guns missed. For good measure, Podsy sniped another railgun mount before it could fire.
As the saws did their gruesome work, Xi heard Podsy cackle maniacally at her back.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded, her focus temporarily broken by his mirthful outburst.
“Diamond-tipped saws,” he declared gleefully before cackling even harder than before. “Carbon vs. silica…get it? It’s this whole war boiled down to right here, right now. And guess who wins?!”
Xi couldn’t help but giggle uncontrollably as she swept her machine guns through a particularly thick cluster of Arh’Kel soldiers. “You’re a sicko, Podsy. But you’re my kinda sicko.”
After that, even with Flaming Rose finally adding its guns to the mix while making its way down the scrabble, the Arh’Kel were holding their own and gaining. It would become a race against time. Would the mechs run out of ammo before the enemy ran out of infantry?
A pair of previously unseen railguns spat fire, with one taking Elvira in the left flank and the other striking Flaming Rose on its heavily-armored prow. One of Elvira’s two left-flank machine guns was scrubbed by the hit, and with single-minded purpose, the Arh’Kel began to flow toward that gap in her defenses.
For a moment, Xi was concerned that the Pounders riding on Elvira’s back had been killed by the superheated tungsten, but when a fresh barrage or RPGs ripped into the approaching Arh’Kel, she knew they were still with her.
For now.
She noticed that Flaming Rose’s anti-boarding saws were already whirring, filling her with disgust at Captain Murdoch’s perpetual skittishness. Had he waited until he was in the thick of the enemy before activating the saws, they could have done more damage. As it was, the Arh’Kel near his mech quickly targeted Murdoch’s saws with small arms fire. With the same methodical precision they had displayed in every other engagement on Durgan’s Folly, the rock-biters focused their fire on a few small areas. Slowly but surely, they opened gaps in Flaming Rose’s last line of defense.
