The Tau Ceti Agenda: Chapter Eleven

October 31, 2388 A.D.
Sol System
Oort Cloud
Saturday, 6:15 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

    Separatist drop tanks poured in seemingly with infinite supply from the north and both sides. Warboys pressed the Warlords forward, deeper and deeper into the line. The red dots in the colonel’s DTM were thick in front of him, but not insurmountably thick. The Demon Dawgs had softened the line all the way north to the first tower of the teleporter complex. Mason was certain that his tankheads could create a corridor in the enemy position and push the AEMs behind the front to wreak havoc as only the AEMs could do.

    Brenda, plot the best vector for the Robots in the DTM, he asked his AIC Major Brenda Bravo One One One Mike Hotel Two.

    Yes, sir. I’m on it. The AIC began running wargaming scenarios and simulations at blinding computer speeds. A few seconds later, she had several solutions and chose one. The vectors highlighted in green across Warboys’s virtual battlescape.

    Thanks. I’ll pass that along. Maybe they can use it. Warlord One dropped to a knee and took up a firing position with his DEG. Enemy tanks were everywhere, giving him plenty to shoot at.

    "Two, watch your right flank!" Warboys warned his second, Major Glenda "Warlord Two" Freeman. An Orcus drop tank pounced from above and to the right as a squad of bot-mode enemy tanks ran down the side of a crater rim, backing him up with their cannons blazing into the point tanks. "Shit, guns guns guns!"

    "I’ve got him, Two!" First Lieutenant Sam "Warlord Five" Cortez responded from tank-mode, blasting one of the enemy drop tanks with his DEG. The directed energy beam tore through the enemy mecha at the knee, spinning it off balance and flailing backwards in an uncontrolled spin in the low gravity. In response, Warlord Two leaped over Five into a swan dive and tackled the mecha beside it, punching a mechanized fist through the cockpit and tearing out the pilot, tossing him aside like a dead rag doll and making him fall limp in the low gravity and against the icy planetoid forty meters away.

    Colonel Warboys serpentined through the terrain with his cannon firing auto, his AIC controlling it and using it to spread out the advancing line, forcing them to either duck-and-cover or to turn-and-run. This gave Mason time to target individual enemy tanks with his DEG. He picked them off like an experienced sniper. The blue-green DEG blasts punched across the desolate Oort Cloud planetoid, punctuating the dust clouds and debris scattering from the battle.

    "Move, Warlords! Keep pushing through this line!" They would get the Robots through the line. But Warboys knew that once they did, the Warlords would be on the wrong side of the enemy, with very little support, if any.

 

---

 

    "Move Robots! We have to stay with the Warlords," Major Roberts dove for cover behind what appeared to be the edge of an impact crater that had probably been formed during the joining of the four little planetoids with the Seppy hauler. The crater was fairly new and didn’t look anything like an astronomical phenomenon. The marine major spent little time contemplating the issue.

    "Major," McCandless slid belly-first up beside Roberts. "This is a hell of a storm, sir." Tanks were going at each other on the ground and taking the occasional shot at mecha in space, and vice versa. The AEMs had yet to see any Seppy ground troops and were glad of it. "QMs got no sign of foot traffic."

    "I noticed that, gunny. Bother you at all?"

    "For the moment, no, sir. You think that means that they didn’t detect us in the tubes with tanks?"

    "I was thinking the same thing." Roberts checked his team vitals and placement in the DTM. All ten of his forward unit was accounted for and in good shape. And as far as he could tell, the Seppies had no idea they were there. Major Roberts liked that element of stealth. After all, they were a forward recon unit, and they didn’t need to get in the mix just yet if they could avoid it.

    Carol, have you found any other points of entry yet?

    Still looking, major, his AIC, Carol Eight Eight Mike One One Hotel Lima replied. Colonel Warboys has sent us some possibilities.

    Keep at it and keep me posted.

    Yes sir.

    "Sir," Lieutenant Johnny Noonez buzzed in.

    "Go, Johnny."

    "The line seems to split around this crater and then over that mooring point at the crater’s two o’clock position on the other side of it. The crater is about six hundred meters across, and the southern tower is on the mooring point between the six o’clock and nine o’clock planetoids." Noonez paused for a breath.

    "Yeah, so?"

    "Well, sir, if we split off from the Warlords at the crater’s nine o’clock and then take to the inside rim of the crater, we might be able to slip into or onto the moorings. If we can slip around this crater to that mooring point, we might be able to get into this thing and make our way to the south tower."

    "A lot of ifs, Lieutenant, sir," McCandless said.

    "Yes it is, Gunny."

    "What the fuck, we got no better plans, sir," Gunny replied, shrugging her oversized, armored shoulders.

    "I like it," Roberts nodded.

    Carol, this sort of matches what Warboys sent. Connect with him and tell him to support us to the nine o’clock on this crater rim.

    Yes, sir.

    And tell him thanks.

    I will, Sir.

 

---

 

    "Suez, you’re up!" Tamara ordered the rookie Lance Corporal over the net.

    "Oorah, gunny!" Suez bounced over the side of the crater rim, covering a good seventy meters in the low gravity of the planetoid facility. The AEM landed in a belly slide across the surface to absorb his bounce and to take cover. A rooster tail of dust flew behind him, making a slow, falling arc to the ground.

 

---

 

    "Bates! Go!" Gunny’s voice continued.

    Tommy crawled up behind an outcropping of concrete, steel, and other rubble surrounding a giant guy cable. The cable was a stranded material that looked like a cross between steel and some composite and was more than seventy centimeters in diameter and several kilometers long, stretching from one planetoid to the other. There were other smaller cables running from the ground up to the wall of the octagon.

    If the phrase "big fucking cable" is in a dictionary somewhere, I’ll bet there is a picture of that goddamned thing right beside it, Suez thought.

    Agreed, his AIC replied. If it’s not there, somebody should add it. I’ll take a picture and add a wiki.

    Good idea.

    One of the smaller cables led up into the sky above him and fixed to the southern-most side of the outer octagon of the teleporter that spanned the space between the six o’clock and the nine o’clock planetoids. Tommy increased the magnification of his sensors on the cable and followed it up to where it met the construct. There were no entrances on that side that he could see.

    His QMs pinged around him and generated a three-dimensional map in his head of the environment, showing no red groundpounders. For the time being, they were alone and in the clear, more than a kilometer from the center of the fighting. None of the unit had fired a shot yet, and Tommy wasn’t sure if he was glad of that or not.

    "Got anything, Suez?" Private First Class Danny Bates took a knee beside him. His armored knee crunched and shattered a rock beneath him as he dropped. The dull gray camou of his e-suit blended into the background so well that Tommy had to enhance his vision with the QMs and IRs just to see him.

    "We’re clean, as best I can tell. Don’t see a way in yet, though." Suez turned his armored head towards the private and smiled. "We might just have to blast our way in, Private."

    "Would you look at that," PFC Bates whistled. "What the hell kind of cable is that? Look how long that sucker is. It goes damned near out of sight."

    "Yeah, it’s a BFC," Tommy replied nonchalantly.

    "A BFC?"

    "Big Fucking Cable. There’s a wiki on it. Look it up, private." Tommy could see the expression on Bates’s face. The PFC was obviously having his AIC check it out.

    "No shit," Bates mumbled and laughed.

    "Pagoolas, take your team!" Gunny’s voice buzzed the net again.

    Tommy looked back over his shoulder to see Corporal Pagoolas and Private First Class Felicity Kent belly slide about a hundred meters to their east and slightly up the ridge of the crater, closer to the ten-story-high wall of the octagon. A glint in the sky caught his eye. A small craft crested over another crater rim to the east of them by four or five kilometers and dropped out of sight. Then another one ripped across the deck right after it, firing DEG blasts. The blue-green blast from the pursuing mecha was followed by orange cannon tracers from another plane that must have been the second one’s wingman. Tommy zoomed in on the fight and watched as a small detachment of marine FM-12s zigged and zagged over the top of the meteor crater and the facility wall, chasing enemy Stingers. The fighters stormed over the crest of the ridge out of sight, and there was a fireball eruption that followed.

    Hmmm, any idea what that was? he thought to his AIC.

    I’d say the Saviors have finally joined us.

    Then, several low-flying glints caught his eye a little farther south. They were too big and slow for mecha. Tommy watched a little closer and then got a good sensor zoom on one of them. It was the Seppy version of the Starhawk – the Lorda Troop Lifter. The lifters dropped quickly over the nearest edge of the crater and then vanished out of sight, undetected by any other mecha.

    "Gunny, we’re clean over here, and there’s no way into this thing that I can find," Suez explained. "There is some some enemy air traffic farther to the east."

    "Roger that, Suez. You and Bates start making your way along the wall of that thing towards Pagoolas."

    "Affirmative." Tommy rose, pulling his HVAR to his right shoulder, and he grinned at Bates who was still staring at the BFC. "You heard the lady, Danny. Let’s get moving."

 

---

 

    "Major, the teams are all leapfrogging along the wall, moving eastward," Gunnery Seargent Tamara McCandless informed her boss. Tamara stood back against the facility wall, looking south at the battle that was raging a kilometer or so away on the other side of the impact crater. The line had pretty much stopped any movement forwards or backwards and was reaching a point of stalemate.

    "Good thing we got through when we did, hey Gunny?" Major Roberts replied with a glance southward himself.

    "Yes sir. I guess so," she said. "Sergeant Nicks is eastern most, sir. She is probably a good three kilometers ahead of us by now, and we still have no good idea of how to get in this thing. Lance Corporal Suez reported that there is air traffic farther up , and Sergeant Nicks has verified that. Maybe there is something on up worth blowing up."

    "Keep moving us east, Gunny. Send the next team twice the distance this time."

    "Yes, major. Suez, you’re up again! Double the gap."

 

---

 

    "Let’s go, Danny," Lance Corporal Suez slapped the PFC on the shoulder. Tommy stood and bounced his jumpboots against the ground, which was mostly metal and concrete now. The bounce tossed him a good fifty meters. At the apex of his bounce, he could see over the ridgeline of the nearest crater and noticed several other vehicles flying in and out. His trajectory dropped, and he bounced again. After a few minutes of bouncing, he and PFC Bates had leapfrogged Sergeant Nicks’s team by more than two kilometers and were quickly approaching the rim of the crater.

    "Suez, look!" PFC Bates pointed an armored finger at the edge of the crater where it met up against the ten-story wall of the teleport facility. Below the ridgeline were several hangar doors and Seppy fighters, and support equipment flew in and out.

    "Like following honey bees to a hive," Suez smiled. "Gunny, we’ve got an entry portal up here. Looks like hangars."

    "Roger that, Suez. Sit tight, we’re on our way."

    "Okay Robots, converge on these coordinates," Major Roberts passed along Suez’s position DTM to the unit.

    "Well, Danny, looks like we have a couple minutes to kill. Might as well see what we can see, huh?" Suez put his visor on full zoom and started scanning the hangar opening for a good, covert entry point.