Chapter Forty - Linebreaker Zone Coverage |
Chapter Forty - Linebreaker Zone Coverage
"It's always funny when an asshole leader's asshole symbol of power messes up."
--Attributed to Samurai Emoji Motive, before his execution of Warlord Thomas, 2045
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"Ma'am?" I was asked over the comms. It was the sergeant again. His Rattlesnake was at the very back of our formation, gun turned all the way around so that its second gun, the one on the same turret as their main gun, could fire.
What was that called, a co-axial or something?
"Uh, yeah, what's up?" I asked.
"We have a lot of xeno running up behind us."
I glanced up and then switched my vision through a few of the cameras around the MEOW. Once I was looking through one of the cameras on one of the gimbal-mounted guns, I shifted it to scan left and right, and yeah, that was a lot of aliens.
We couldn't exactly stop and abandon the tanks.
I mean... we could, but it wasn't worth it. Those things were pretty expensive, and I didn't want to have to explain shit to Tinwhistle later. She'd probably be annoyed at the one lost ATV already. Besides, they could come in handy later.
"I see them," I said. "Let them get closer, then hose them down. We'll keep moving. How is everyone on ammo?"
I had the great advantage that I was in an air-conditioned, comfy cab while the rest of the group was... very much not. It kind of placed the responsibility of looking after everyone on my shoulders, but that was hardly something I was unused to.
I got some replies back from the entire strike group and nodded along. Mostly, we were alright. Not fine, though. The Wolverines didn't carry a ton of ammo with them, and neither did the troop transports. The two big Rattlesnakes were fine, and the Pikes had hardly shot anything yet.
The incoming swarm was being peppered by shots already, and every couple of seconds a Model Three would flop over and die. They were being followed by bigger Models, but those were on the slower side, so I decided not to worry.
We were being harassed by a few fliers, but the Model Ones slamming into the side of our tanks were doing sweet fuck-all. They were a moderate threat for the ATVs, but only if they were lucky, and so far they hadn't been.
We drove around a corner, and I was seriously contemplating using the MEOW's mouth to grab onto one of the Pikes and drag it along because it was slow to turn.
A beep sounded out, and I glanced up. Something had targeted a larger Antithesis, and I didn't want to be caught off-guard.
My main fear was a Model Elevel. The much bigger brother of the Model One. Those assholes were large enough to fling motorcycles around. They could probably grab onto one of our ATVs and fly off with it, at least a little ways, and they were large enough that they could be hard to take down.
Instead, I found myself squinting at something large that was approaching quickly. No, not one large thing, three of them.
"What the fuck is that?" I asked.
"Model Sixteen, ma'am, variant type, b," someone over the comms said, but I was too busy staring at the incoming problems to really register it.
The Model Sixteens or whatever had a passing similarity to a Model Six. That was to say, they had a flat, angular face, with tiny recessed eyes and a jaw like an expert mogger.
The Sixteens were huge. The size of a bus, at least, though they didn't move slowly. They had twelve legs, each one like an elephant's, ending in a large pad. Clinging to them like barnacles was a host of smaller Models. Some Threes on their backs, but lots of Model Tens as well, and a few things that looked like very large shrubs that I suspected were Model Nines.
I checked on our position with a glance at an overhead map. We were some ways from the wall, moving at an angle towards the river. With the bends we'd need to take, we were going to have those fat fucks run into us long before we were at either the river or the wall.
"Keep moving ahead," I ordered. "Provide covering fire, but focus on the smaller ones. I'll catch up in a minute."
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The mines I'd been leaving in our wake were going off with some regularity, but more often than not they were being set off by Antithesis rushing towards the wall.
We were kind of getting sandwiched. There was the group chasing after us, which now had some big guys in it, and the constant stream of smaller Antithesis, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, rushing towards the wall in the distance. With our horizontal movement across the battlefield, we were running into both.
Instead of stopping, I gallopped the MEOW faster. If I was going to fight, I wanted to pick the battleground for it, and there was a small, flat lot out ahead. It looked like there had been a building here some time ago, because a large, square-edged hole was sitting nearby, half-filled with stagnant water. The flat space was a parking lot of some sort. There were a few old-school light poles still left, set at even intervals, and while the asphalt was cracked all over and spilling out grass, it had still kept the ground more or less even.
After turning around, I squared up the MEOW and brought the main gun around. The strike group rumbled by, kicking up dust in its wake. They were still firing, though sporadically, at random aliens that got too close.
I aimed past all of that, into the distance, until my crosshair was lined up with the face of the middle-most Model Sixteen.
The trigger clicked. The cannon roared.
The shell struck the Model Sixteen right between its many eyes and detonated.
I grinned, then felt my grin freezing in place as the alien continued to charge through the cloud of fire and smoke left behind by my HE shell. "What the fuck?" I asked.
The Model Sixteen's face and most of its head was nothing more than giblets and shredded meat, but it had one eye remaining on its split skull, and after spinning around wildly, it locked ahead and the monster kept coming, only slowed down enough to fall behind the others.
You'll find that the Model Sixteen B is a rather tough opponent. They are often used as 'linebreakers' by the Antithesis, especially in cases where they are fighting foes that use smaller, weaker defenses and mobile formations.
"Yeah, well fuck that," I said before I aimed again and fired. This time the 155mm shell rammed into the monster's neck and exploded a solid half-metre inside of its torso. That was only maybe a quarter of the way through, but it caused the alien to fold in on itself and crash onto the ground with a thump.
It kicked up dirt as it slid, and the aliens riding on it were thrown right off, as though it were an open-topped bus that had just flipped over.
I shifted my aim onto the second and opened up, but I was a little too fast about it, and the shell went off on its flank. Two legs took off and cartwheeled away, but that was two of twelve, and the damned thing kept coming.
So I opened up with everything I had, laying into the alien with the two 75mm cannons built into the front of the mech's chassis. That did it. They didn't have the same punch as the bigger gun, but they could fire two rounds a second each, and cumulative damage counted for a lot.
Then the third alien was too damned close, and I had to jump aside, juking away from its clumsy charge.
The alien didn't hurt me. The smaller aliens jumping off of it and leaping onto my mech... annoyed me a lot.
"Dammit!" I cursed as I shook the MEOW like a wet dog, dislodging a few of the bigger Model Threes. My thagomizer-equipped tail snapped around and crushed one to my side, and on the backswing another's head went flying off.
The smaller Model Tens, however, were harder to dislodge.
Fortunately, they were not much more dangerous than a hyped up monkey, even if a few of them had picked up rocks to bang against my side.
I focused instead on the big guy and the Model Nines that had started to jump onto me.
The big dude was a threat out of sheer mass. If he buried the MEOW, I might be stuck. Being stuck would suck.
The Model Nines were a threat because they could morph and change shape, something they were already doing in order to grab onto me.
"Myalis, I need something that'll make a fuckload of fire, and I need it dropped at my feet!"
Taking a page from your friend?
"If it works for Gom, it might work for me!"
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