Chapter Thirty-Seven - Bringing the Heat |
Chapter Thirty-Seven - Bringing the Heat
"Ont Bring le Heat!"
Motto of the 12e Régiment blindé du Canada, 2036
***
I set the MEOW to a low trot, then sped up. It wasn't long before I had to slow down again. The Wolverine ATVs were pretty speedy, and the troop transports could keep up without any trouble, but the Rattlesnakes and Pikes were both on the slower side. They were otherwise underpowered, or just heavy as shit, so they couldn't accelerate as quickly as my mech could, which was... fair, actually.
I refocused on the scene ahead.
The moment we were out from under the shadow of the wall, I had a wide-range view of the battlefield, and it wasn't pretty.
Our artillery was dropping a constant stream of shells deep into the Antithesis lines, scattering dirt and sending up thick plumes of smoke in the distance. Machine gun fire painted the air above with thousands of quickly-fading tracer lines, and then there was the contributions from the nearest samurai.
Gomorrah was definitely responsible for a good quarter of the battlefield being covered in knee-high flames. It was so much fire that the air was nothing but a hazy mirage. The stuff she'd sprayed around was likely some sort of gel. It was sticking to the aliens running through it, lighting them on fire and slowly burning them out.
Hedgehog was helping too. There were entire fields covered in long, narrow quills. There were missiles detonating high overhead, and then ten seconds of so later, areas the size of a basketball court would be covered in a volley of spikes, skewering any aliens that happened to be here, and creating a jungle of needles for any following them.
It wasn't stopping the aliens.
There were hundreds of Model Tens that made it to the wall every minute. Model Threes were being killed by the dozens every second, but there were thousands of them. Some of them were making it to the wall, regardless.
There didn't seem to be anything built into the wall designed to allow the people in it to shoot straight down. I think that was a problem solved in like, the 1400s, but at some point modern walls forgot to have overhangs and shit like that.
Instead, I noticed a number of soldiers opening some of the slit windows and just... dropping a frag out of them. That actually did a decent number on the aliens by the base of the wall. They just had to have enough grenades to last the day.
"Attention ahead, right side, incoming," came over the radio. It was sent by the lead C3 Rattlesnake. Its main turret turned even as the almost-a-tank moved and then it opened fire with its 50Cal, spraying into a small horde of Model Threes escorting some bigger models.
I locked onto the same group and opened up with my gimbal-mounted guns. Behind me, the... wait, what should I call us? We weren't a convoy. A strike group? That made sense. The strike group started to shoot into the gaggle of aliens, and there was enough overlapping fire that each alien was gifted a few new holes each.
"Watch your ammo," I said.
I wasn't sure if it was standard, but there was an app of sorts for the group. It had a readout of each vehicle on it, highlighted in green to show that everyone was still fine. They also had a small indicator for ammo stores, split by gun type. Some of them could fire for a damned long time, but those little ATVs didn't have infinite ammo to fling around.
In theory, with me here collecting kills, they did. But in practice, getting the ammo into place would require some maneuvering and I wasn't ready to stop so soon just to reload.
Our destination was maybe a kilometre and a half from the wall. We didn't make a straight line for it, even if that might have been faster.
Stolen novel; please report.
The issue was that the straight line was drawn right through a minefield and an area that was currently on fire. I was pretty sure I could walk through that with no issues, but the rest of the strike force? The tankettes would be fine, maybe, but half our vehicles had wheels, and I was pretty sure rubber was flammable. Plus, it'd get warm.
So, we were cutting around in a wide arc, then tightening the end around with a sharp turn. Someone in the army was painting the Model Fifteens that were our primary target.
"Myalis, can you help me for a moment?"
Perhaps. What do you need assistance with?
"Kinda splitting my attention three ways here," I said. I was piloting the mech, picking out targets, looking over the local map, and listening in on the strike force all at the same time.
I could definitely turn on one or two automated systems, and I had. The MEOW wasn't being auto-piloted, but there was a system that could be turned on to reduce the amount of attention I had to pay to moving it. Basically auto-pilot light. There was something similar on for the targeting and such as well.
"Can you handle the big gun's targetting?" I asked with a gesture above to the 155mm cannon sitting atop the MEOW.
I suppose I can deign to help a little.
"Thanks," I replied a little dry. I would have been more sarcastic, but I had shit to take care of. Myalis did turn the gun, aiming it far higher than I expected, then she fired repeatedly, timing it so that it was between steps. "What are you even aiming at?" I asked.
The enemy.
Right, okay. "We can switch to something with more punch. Looks like we're about to hit the main line of the enemy, and I want to flatten them first."
Noted. More AFAP Everglows? Even if Libre suggested otherwise.
"Yup!" I said.
There was a ker-chunk as a new shell was loaded in.
I switched the radio on. "Alright, strike force, slow down for a moment before that next hill about... thirty meters ahead. I'm going to shoot something to clear the way. It might get a little warm."
Myalis fired the Everglow just as we made it to a section of old, potholed road next to a small hill. There were a few buildings here, a set of garages and sheds next to an open lot. They'd been struck by at least one shell already, and every window was shattered. Aliens were zipping by between the cover.
Then the bomb went off, and the hill provided us with a nice bit of cover from the sunlight-strong ball of superheated fuck-off just a few hundred metres away.
I winced a little as I heard a lot of the strike force gasp and then bitch over the comms. Yeah, I had a nice, climate-controlled cockpit to sit my luxurious ass in. Half the strike force were sitting on ATVs, and the rest didn't have the same level of protection.
I checked on thermals. It went from a nice twenty-ish degrees out to the lower forties in a few seconds, then stayed there.
"Focus up," I said.
I'd owe this bunch a drink once this was done, especially since they locked in and opened up on the Antithesis scurrying away from the edges of the Everglow's area of effect.
We waited for the bomb's main core to burst, then I had the MEOW run up ahead of the rest. "Alright, follow me!" I said.
I felt like some sort of action-movie hero. Then I saw what waited for us. The Everblow had cleared some of the smokescreen. The Antithesis had given up on that tactic for the moment, maybe? In any case, from the top of that small hill, I could see the thousands of aliens up ahead of us, many of them sitting just beyond artillery range.
Our main targets were lit up in green, far closer than the big incoming wave.
"We're going to have to be real fast about this, or we're going to get swamped," I said. "Let's move!"
With a roar, the ATVs and tanks pushed up and over the hill, then we were racing across still-steaming dirt towards the enemy.
***