I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work

I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.

Chapter 6 Hailstorm

Day 8 High orbit

High over the planet, at the point in space that the Colonials use to jump into faster than light travel, there was a brief flash of energy. This was not an announced or scheduled flight, and this was noticed by key people on the planet below. The odd shaped craft, which at one time had been part of the Colonial Movers shipping company had arrived. It would stay in orbit and would only have minimal communication with the blue planet below.

After the small cargo ship's jump engines had been recharged, something separated from its hull on jets of white gas clouds. The smaller ship moved away from the larger ship that it had hitchhiked to this system on. As soon as it was about a hundred and sixty kilometers above the cloud tops of the blue planet, its mother ship winked out of the system in a brief flash of energy. Not once did it contact any of the large governments on the surface. And yes, that included the space commands in the US, Russia, EU and anyone else that likes to keep an eye on that part of space.

The small ship moved in all three dimensions at once as it lined up for its planned endpoint. Now the smaller craft made contact with Space Command deep under a mountain in Colorado. Even then it was only a short message to tell them where on the planet's surface it was going. As with each Colonial ship that had come before it, this one also had a lot of images taken of it and in every wavelength that the locals had equipment to do the imaging with. It would not ever be called a pretty craft, or even a sleek craft, and many of the ground base personnel would even have called it the ugliest Colonial ship they had ever seen. In fact, this was the first time that this craft had been seen in this star system. Once this was confirmed by certain intelligence teams on the ground, then a lot of additional assets were turned to look at the smallish craft as it got lower in the planet's atmosphere. Everyone wanted to find out as much as they could about the Colonial space craft while it was within their systems' effective range.

The descending Colonial craft was even considered ugly by her flight crew. She was a ship that had been built out of a compromise and being pretty was quite low on the list of design traits needed for it to do the jobs the Colonials needed it to do. She also was a Colonial Fleet ship that had never been flown or had seen the systems that had at one time held the Twelve Colonies of Man. She had only seen Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri, and now the Sol systems.

The Colonial fleet base was slowly growing at a steady rate. Now that most of the extra civilian ships were hidden away for emergencies, the effort needed to maintain and repair them could be used in other parts of the space fleet. The Admiral had been pushing for a capability to build new warships after the escorts had finished construction. Adama and his staff had come up with a list of ship types they envisioned as being worth the effort for when the Cylons came sniffing around, while also able to fill their small population's other needs.

The one ship class that was in short supply was the short ranged heavy cargo shuttle that was not jump capable. Only two working models of these craft had made it out with the Rag Tag Fleet, and they had been used and abused for years. In fact, the only reason that there were two of these craft in the Rag Tag fleet was that they had been on supply runs to larger passenger liners when the Cylons attacked. They had been carried in the small hangars of those two passenger ships for some time. Admiral Adama had not found out about them until the fleet had been on the run for a few months. He would write later in his journals that if he had known about those two ships, he might have been able to pull off more supplies from Ragnar station when they left Colonial space. They were even larger than what had been used to help lift the Rifter ships off of New Caprica. They just had a lot shorter legs.

This type of craft would be a good starting point for the slowly rebuilding refugees. They still did not have a full-scale military shipyard, or even what could be called a small yard back in Colonial space. They also did not have any shipbuilding engineers or ship designers among their population. It would be a steep learning curve, even with the skills they had picked up and practiced in repairing and rebuilding the different ships of the fleet. In short, the ship was designed by committee because they had no other way to get the job done without using supplied plans. It was a great way to learn lessons for any future operations. It was learning to use a hammer, sore thumbs, bloody nails and all.

The first item to be thrown out of the design was the idea for any jump engines. They were still practically handbuilding the small jump engines for the Raptors and any spare parts that the rest of the ships needed. Without the ability or knowhow to make the right sized jump engine for a craft never seen by the Colonial shipbuilding committee, it was decided that the ship would just be carried by larger interstellar ships when it was needed outside of New Kobol. For now, that would not be that big of an issue. When enough had been built to put in the two different star systems, they might have to come up with something different.

The command center and nose of the new craft were to be modified from the standard used in the last generation of Raptor. It now held two pilots sitting side by side, but the old Colonial Raptor berthing was still recognizable when the nose was seen from the outside. The back part of the new craft also looked to be from a Raptor or based off of one, but the control surfaces were twice as large. And instead of the two high mounted engines, there were four engines and they were larger. Two of the large beasts it had for engines were above the tailfins and two were below the tail.

The center of the craft was a metal box that was about as ugly as it could be. On the outside of the metal box were six twin laser cannon turrets, two of the twin updated 30mm KEW turrets, and three other bays that could hold medium and short ranged missiles. Under the craft were the hardpoints to carry ten long ranged anti-ship missiles. This craft was not carrying anything on those heavy weapons points for this mission. They would not have reacted well to the high-speed entry into the planet's atmosphere that was planned to be used today.

Added to the mix of ideas for the class of ship was the missions it was supposed to be able to do at any one time. The Colonial civilians needed and wanted a heavy lift shuttle. The Colonial military wanted a marine orbital assault craft. Even Captain Kelly had been able to add some input into the design of this craft. Instead of just Colonial Marines in heavy and thick body armor running out large landing doors mounted on the sides, they had to be able to deploy something a lot bigger and heavier thanks to his people.

He used ideas he had copied from the New German Republic made XM180 Dragonfly that he had worked with many years before. He knew that the craft could carry heavy combat robots over the battlefield. They were exposed to the elements during transport, and he thought that part was dumb, then dropped them off of what basically were large clamps. That deployment idea would not work coming down from orbit at very high speed from a few thousand clicks up. That was why they needed the thick metal box to protect them.

Inside the metal box was space enough to carry twenty-four large battle bots. They were deployed and unloaded from what were at their core just old style bomb bay doors. There was a set of loading doors per combat powered armor so that the cargo master could control the sequence of deployment of combat power or weapons.

Plans were in the works that maybe this area would be turned into a real bomb bay on the military versions of the production ship. The plan was to build a dozen of these craft, all focused on the military need. The Colonial navy would pay to get the bugs fixed before production would start on the civilian use only ships. This was the baptism of fire for what was considered the fourth prototype of this ship's class. As it was, almost twelve percent of the mass of this craft was set aside for just testing and recording equipment to help find all of the issues a brand new ship design must have.

The large assault ship dropped out of the cloud covered sky like a rod of the gods, and when it was around 3,000 meters above the waves, it was joined by a matched pair each of fully armed Vipers and Raptors. In the thicker atmosphere of Earth, the larger ship had to reduce speed to only Mach 2.5 or the crew was going to have issues with fine control of the craft. The approach was noticed by every patrolling aircraft and ship within a hundred kilometers. It was also picked up by other systems that were farther away from this local area.

A lot of money and time had been put by the major powers on the planet into upgrading their equipment. The assault ship had a lot more surface area but she was still hard to detect on these new radar systems. It was not as hard to detect as a Viper or Raptor could be, but it was not that much easier either. It was still better stealth than the latest modifications to the generation 5++ fighters in testing but only by about ten or fifteen percent. In other words, there was not a military on the planet that would not have sold its soul to have three of four of these ugly craft within their arsenals.

Landing Craft Utility or LCU Misoa split from the other escorting Colonial craft without a word being picked up on any radio in the hemisphere. The escort craft went over the mountains, while the larger craft went north. It rounded the northern tip of the island and overflew the American fleet, still moving at twice the speed of sound. All the while the four escorting Colonial craft punched a hole in the attacking Chinese aircraft over the 180 kilometer wide strait.

By this time, word had made it out of the command centers to the warship crews and people that the Colonials were coming. Even some of the news crews were told about the large strange looking Colonial craft heading to the war zone at an undisclosed speed. The only ones who did not know in time to react effectively were the Warlord and his subcommanders.

The two pilots of the new Colonial craft were now only flying at about 300 hundred kmh and below three hundred meters above the ground as they closed in on the north coast of the island. They overflew the city of Taipei and then headed south of the capital city. They were drawing some fire, but the laser turrets and side mounted KEW's were swatting the rising missiles out of the sky with the ease of a few dozen generations advantage in counter missile tech. Any bullets or cannon shells that flew into its path were just run over by the armored nose and body of the craft.

The craft made its way to the forward line of enemy troops without speeding up, slowing down, or making any major course changes of any kind. It was as if it was daring anyone to shoot at it. With its Raptor based scouting sub systems, it pulled in every bit of information it could during the whole flight. The LCU now made a course change and it flew down the length of the defensive line from the mountains going all the way to the sea. With the updated information the craft had collected, the crew and passengers had to modify their combat plans.

Captain Stanley Fedewa was out of his multi-ton Northern Gun made Samson class suit and looking at the data as it came into the LCU cockpit. This was his command, and after reviewing the updated information with his own systems input, he gave an evil smile to the command crew of the Misoa. After a few quick orders, he left the cockpit of the LCU and climbed back into his powered armored in the main cargo bay.

The Colonial craft turned back towards the beach and dropped to around a hundred and fifty meters above the waves. The air speed dropped to about 100 kmh after clearing the beach at the edge of the sand and the black topped access road. By now, most of the mass of the landing craft was being supported by the craft's AG plates. When the crew passed over a marked point on their HUD, the pilot pushed a button on the main console of the craft.

"Bombs away!" She said with a straight face that lasted all of .03 seconds.

Below the craft a pair of doors opened, and a suit of Rifter tech combat armor dropped out. The suit was pulled down by gravity, and as soon as the head had cleared the craft's underside, a single use rocket mounted on its back fired and kept firing until the its feet touched the ground. As the LCU flew down its designated course, every five hundred meters or so another Rifts Earth made machine was touching the ground. When the cargo bay was empty, a line twelve km long was now under the control of the giant war machines built on a different Earth.

The whole Colonial landing operation was caught by a dozen different news crews. In a few hours, those videos would be shown worldwide. The huge technology gap between the Colonials and the people of this Earth was now going to be public knowledge. As weapons geeks replayed, slowed down, and replayed the new images again and again, every bit of information was gleaned out of them. Soon there would be a major public push by the major powers to have their own walking combat tanks.

All of those games where people had made fun of the idea of walking tanks were now flying off the display shelves again. Video games were pulled out of digital storage and updated for release to a galvanized public hot for anything like combat robots. All efforts would be focused on the idea of the Rifter power armor that had just been showed to the whole world. This outer design style was copied by ninety percent of the defense contractors around the world that followed suit. Bank loads of money were poured into projects that all focused around manned and man shaped combat power armor, but that was after the battle was won on this small part of the blue world.

Each of the giant war machines dropped their spent jump/rocket packs as soon as they had burnt out. Then they went to work on the People's Liberation Army forces nearest to them. Normally you would think that something like a Samson class suit would be overkill for the units fielded by the Chinese Warlord that they were pitted against. And you would have been right, except for a few changes that the armored suits had undergone in this universe.

While they had been on the run from the Cylons after leaving the hidden system, the Colonial military had time to think about what they now had access to. They had only a few very heavy combat robots and they were overkill to be used on small groups of Centurions and human form Cylons. As well they had very hard limits on the engagement times they could afford against a mass of small enemies due to ammunition. To solve these two issues, it was decided that one of the heavy weapon systems on the combat robots would be replaced with three smaller ones. One of these smaller systems was mounted on each of the legs, at about two meters off the ground. The hardest part of this redesign was integrating the added weapons into the cockpit targeting and fire control systems.

These were meant to take on human wave attacks, or what was called the Centurion swarm by the Colonials. The other smaller class of weapon was more powerful than the leg weapons, and it was carried in one hand of the human like combat machines. It was an ion based system in contrast to the laser technology based weapons refit onto the legs and hips. This multi-barrel system was for taking out heavy or harder to kill combat systems like tanks, raiders, or any other flying targets within effective range. All three of these new weapons were fed by power lines running through the armor to the nuclear power plant carried by the massive machines.

The additional weapons also were covered by new armored sheets. Were they armored to the same level of protection normal for these types of Rifts Earth systems? No, but they could stand up to even Cylon 30mm KEW strikes and conventional warhead missiles for a few sets of hits and still keep on firing. And all of these new weapons were being made on or over New Kobol. The heavy weapons that were removed went to one of two places. They either went back into storage for a future need or a few of them went into a new complex where like systems were being worked on and studied.

Those now modified combat robots still had a heavy load of the more powerful Rifts tech weapons. Today however, these three add on weapon systems were going to make or break the battle for the whole island. As each of the dropped twenty-four combat machines hit the ground, they started sweeping the local area of threats like they were harvesting blood-soaked wheat. Some on the ground and in later reviews of the combat footage would notice some odd things. One was that no three machines were of the same design. They just were what had been carried to that cold wet planet all those years ago. Another one was that as soon as the machines touched down, and before the auto-eject system kicked away the now hot and spent JATO rockets, the new arrivals were already taking fire from the nearest Chinese defensive points or armored vehicles.

Captain Fedewa was the fourth of the twenty-four machines to be ejected from the low flying craft. He flexed his warmachine's knees in anticipation of the imminent contact with the ground. As his Northern Gun built machine touched down in a grey, red, and orange cloud, it kept moving downwards even after the bolt on rocket had stopped firing. Any movement in a multi ton machine still holds a lot of momentum, and its great knees and hips flexed and groaned under the stress of landing even from such a short fall.

Stanley had done about fifty of these landings in training, so he was not worried that he was going to lose control of his machine now. As he brought his Samson out of its kneeling position, and up to its full height, he looked around his area. He checked the data feeds coming in from the rest of his little unit and also took notice of all of the incoming fire. He did not even flitch when his system told him that he had just been hit by a something called an RPG-32.

After checking on his nearest people, Stanley started tracking the incoming fire. As he used his hip mounted lasers for the first time, he activated this company wide frequency. After so many years training in these suits, multitasking was second nature to them. He could talk, aim, maneuver, and adjust his attacks all at the same time.

"Okay people, clear out your designated areas of all threats. If they start running and have no weapons, you can let them go. Team leaders report in when you all are ready to move to the next location."

The first enemy rounds to impact the Colonial military machines were from light handheld QBZ-95 battle rifles. This was quickly joined by Type 81 light machineguns and Type 67 general purpose machine guns. These little weapons were soon joined by HJ-12's and the more powerful 120mm PF-98's. Hitting the nonmoving target was only a matter of getting over the shock of seeing the strange metal beast land. This late in the battle for this island, the frontline Chinese units were made up of veterans with very quick reflexes. This was the tactic that had worked for them so far. There was just one problem, these attackers were not from the ROC military. They were a totally different breed of fighters and their equipment was just as different. All firing at them did was reveal the location of the shooters to the two-legged machines.

The outside of Stanley's Samson was flashing silver and copper blinking lights like flash bulbs at the Eifel Tower. These were caused by the impacts of the steel cored rounds and burned-out tracers. After another quick look around, the hip mounted lasers shifted a little and soon the low powered - well, low powered for a Rifts Earth weapon at least - weapon started to rapid fire pulses of laser energy at whoever was shooting at him.

Each of the four barrels could pulse at only the rate of a few hundred beams per minute, and that was the full rate of fire for this generation of Colonial made weapon. The Captain was not firing his low mounted weapon at anywhere near the maximum rate of fire. Each of those pulses hit with the force of a locally made 60mm high explosive mortar round. This was soon joined by the slower firing hand carried ion weapons. Each of those bolts hit harder than the latest generation round from any MBT on this planet. Each bolt was just onto the mega damage scale by a dozen points. If the pilot needed to, he could increase the ion blaster's output manually. It could go all the way up so that each bolt fired was equal to a long burst from C-12 laser rifle.

Captain Fedewa went about taking out all the enemy positions that first were firing on him, then the ones that were trying to hide from him and his people. The captain had been, depending on how one looked at it, lucky or unlucky that he had landed in a thicker concentration of enemy forces. He was the last one to clear his buffer zone of all twenty-four machines because he had almost twice as many targets to deal with.

"Frak! I will have to be the one buying the beers and other drinks after this mission," thought the captain with a slight frown.

When the last blast from his leg mounted laser system had taken care of a rocket launcher team, he moved on to a new location. He started talking on his voice activated microphone as he cleared the smoke that had gathered around him during the engagement.

"Okay, people. Move at the slow walk, and advance. Keep your spacing! Don't blue on blue or blue on green someone just because you're trigger happy." As he was talking to his people, he took another step forward and started looking for more targets.

From high above the dropped troops. The assault craft co-pilot made a fine adjustment to a local built radio using data supplied by Colonials on the ground. He reached the local division commander and let him know what was happening in his area. It did not take the ROC division commander long, less than ten minutes, to have his reserve force moving to take advantage of the surprise Colonial help in his area of operations. By now, the stories about the mixed teams of Colonials and SF had reach legendary status to everyone from the generals down to the privates on the frontline. With today's access to cell phones and cameras, the stories did not even have to be improved on to have an impact.

An ROC mechanized infantry brigade had been held back to plug leaks and make localized counterattacks to help slow the enemy's advance. The frontline troops near the battling Colonial walking combat machines did not need to be told to advance. As soon as they saw what these new combat machines had done to the local PLA forces, they were out of their foxholes and trenches, barely needing to be spurred on by their officers and sergeants. This ragged line of ROC troops was joined by American made and modified M1A2's coming out of their defensive positions on their own without orders. They were also joined by the locally modified M60A3's called CM-12, CM-32 and CM 32A light tanks as soon as their crews had come out of shock.

The new ROC advance was slow. It was about three kilometers an hour or a very slow walk. But all the way down the twelve kilometer wide front that the Colonials were at, the enemy line was pushed back as the Colonial military equipped with Rifts tech destroyed all that stood in their path. This surprise counterattack being led by the Colonials was not all one sided for combat losses.

With weaker and more human like targets now exposed, more PLA defenders came to a stop and tried to kill the onrushing ROC troops and Earth built tanks. This just gave the walking combat machines more targets to address. Targets that had decided to stop moving for them. It seemed like nothing was going to stop the ROC advance in this area. There was a pause of about an hour for this unorganized ROC counterattack. Supplies had to be rushed forward to support the counterattacking ROC forces. It also allowed wounded or exhausted troops to be pulled back off the line for a few hours at least.

When the sun started setting over Taiwan that day, a ten kilometer wide and sixteen kilometer deep hole had been punched into the PLA's main line of attack, or what was now their defensive lines. The reason for the full stop of the counterattack was that the line they stopped at was one of the old defensive lines for the ROC military. It also just happened to be the best defense line with the greatest fields of fire, and it would not take that much work to get them put back into action. That is, if you had motivated troops, and after a few hours of beating the PLA back, there were a lot of motivated people. It was not just the normal military units that were fighting and repairing those fortification either. Joe public to MPs to supply clerks worked until their hands were bleeding and then they kept right on working.

For the rest of the night, the ROC Army pushed more and more troops into the pocket the Colonials had helped create that day. Support units also were able to recover damaged equipment, both ROC and PLA from this part of the battlefield. Some of what was recovered would be returned to service by the time the sun rose again.

This movement of new ROC units was a prime target for the massive amount of PLA artillery that still was in operation. They were firing into the small pocket as fast as they could load and fire their heavy weapons. They were so focused on the small pocket of ROC troops that the higher commanders forgot about the counterbattery units. Soon the PLA's artillery started to die after putting only one or two rounds down range, particularly if they had not taken the time to shift location before firing again.

With so much pressure on the PLA from the growing allied, Colonial, and ROC weapons being fired onto the mainland, the launching area for the IRBM's and MRBM's were not able to keep up the rate of fire that they had been able to put towards the Trading Post Islands. It is very hard to launch a long-range missile when you are being hit by enemy missiles at the same time. They only had so many pre-sighted and mapped out launch points without being able to use sat nav that the Colonials had taken out. You had to know your location within a few centimeters of your launch point, to have a long-range missile hit within a kilometer of the target you had selected. A heavy weapons unit didn't want to use a firing point that had been attacked by the enemy only a dozen or so hours before. It was called self-preservation.

Charles was not going to leave the major Colonial base that was his home open to any attack. Fortunately with the reduced pressure of the incoming weapons, he could now shift one or two more of his attack capable craft to the warzone every duty shift. It might only be for a few hours that the additional Colonial support would be there. It would also be done in such a way that it would not be patterned out, at least not in the short term. With so few Colonial aircraft available, they needed to be used to collect as much coup as they could in that limited amount of time on station.

Tonight, a Raptor that the ground crews and the island staff had been working on for some time now was getting ready to launch. It was something that had come up while working with a few of the local attached military personnel to the Colonial island. This Raptor was outfitted with a larger number of pulse lasers mounted under the wings and connected to its scouting systems. It was going to try to go after every long-ranged artillery weapon the PLA still had on the island of Taiwan. It was expected that she could not get them all in one mission, but after a while it should have a telling effect on the battlefield. The first test flight and mission worked out very well for the Colonials. The PLA had no idea what hit them, they only knew that they lost many of their heavy artillery pieces overnight.

When all of the data was reviewed from that one mission, it was hoped that those types of units did not want to draw her attention again. Even it if meant that certain PLA officers had accidents during the next night so that they could stay hidden. The only time the Raptor was not looking for those long shooters was when the locals launched their own aviation assets to go after something or when the counterbattery unit had rounds coming too close to the stealthy Colonial attacker. Being hit by a 155mm round still sucked if you were in a Raptor. It would not kill you, but it was not something you would want to experience once much less repeatedly in your lifetime.

Early the next morning, before the sun was up, the ROC Army and their allies were on the move again. There were only two items that slowed down the counterattack's advance today. One was renewed air attacks launched by the PLAAF. The other was the massive number of surface-to-surface rockets ranging from 107mm to 300mm falling around them as they advanced into the teeth of the defending PLA fire. The air attack would only last for a few minutes at a time before the survivors had to be pulled back to refuel and rearm. The PLA Artillery now was shooting and scooting as fast as they could, but that cut down on the number of rounds per hour they could fire into the still growing counterattack.

This time the ROC military was supported in the counterattack by the refreshed, rearmed, and reinforced mixed teams of Colonial and SF operators. They were attacking out of the mountains along the northern areas. Now that they had been resupplied at the front through the repaired roads. The rest of the ROC Army was attacking along the northern edge to support the coastal axis of attack the Colonials big' guns had started on their own.

For today's renewed attack the company of Colonials was split up. Two platoons or a dozen machines pivoted east where they were to support the attack to open the breach in the Chinese lines wider. The rest, led by the Captain Fedewa, started moving forward like the perfect shock troops with the ROC rolling along behind them over the battle-scarred land. This was an old style heavy breach, and like a lot of things that were called old school back in World War 2, they still worked. Sometimes they worked very well even if they were from a bygone era.

The speed of the advance this time was at about eleven kilometers per hour on average but it was not steady. There were times it had to stop and other times, like when there was a major surge after a main defensive point was overcome, it went a lot faster. The follow-on troop and armor were right behind the Colonials with leg infantry and support units of all kinds right behind them. Patton eat your heart out.

By noon, the ROC and offworld force had overrun and wiped out the only amphibious mechanized infantry division on the PLA's active rolls. By nightfall, they had pushed the PLA all the way back to their northernmost footholds, the beaches that the Chinese had captured as their landing zones at the end of the first day of this war. It was at this point that orders were given for the ROC and Colonial units to advance only if they felt they could. They were to rest and resupply and let time work for them. There is a reason that military experts say that amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics.

It was at this point that the number of surrendering and captured healthy mainland troops started outnumbering the ones that were dying on the island. Units up to the size of wrecked platoons were dropping their weapons and raising their hands as a unit to the ROC forces. When field hospitals were overrun by the Colonial and ROC troops, they would just grow as ROC medical units were added to the numbers of personnel already on site. They might not have been able to add that much in the supply department in the short run, but the ROC did have a lot of medics and doctors to help with the workload the war had caused.

By the dawn of the third day of the Colonial heavy weapons being on the island, the word had gotten out about other units giving up the fight. By evening what was left of companies and battalions were swinging barrels to the rear and/or holding up white flags to the island defenders. Not all units gave up the fight. More than half of the landed units would fight to the last man that even could think about holding up a weapon. Everyone knew it was over, including the Warlord hiding in his very deep underground bunker. Some units handled the issue in different ways instead of fighting or giving up to the people they had been trying to kill all week. Fire, for some reason, was very popular with those beaten troops.

When the reports from his own SIGINT units came in about the ROC orders to hold the current battle line or for limited advances only, the Warlord ordered the pullback of what remained of his warship and transport assets. Most of those ship commanders did not even try to evacuate any of the ground troops after they were given the recall orders from his command post. They just left them to do whatever they thought they could for the greater good of China. The ships headed over the horizon going back home with barely a look over their sterns toward the island that had cost so much blood.

As the warships retreated from areas around the island, they were not given a free ride home. They were under heavy pressure from the slowly growing US Navy presence and other allied navies in these waters. Hands down it was the US Navy that was the most aggressive about pursuing the Chinese fleet back to their mainland ports. It was a long hard trip home for the PLA's surface and subsurface ships. They had to run a gauntlet of torpedoes and anti-ship missiles as well as rail gun rounds falling without warning onto their ships. This run was something that very few of the Chinese warships of any size would live through.

The only units that had any luck getting home were the helicopter aviation units that had deployed in whole or in part to the island. No one thought about firing on the low and slow flying units if they were not attacking or overflying the front lines. Many of the longer range aircraft of this type made five or six runs back and forth over the narrow strait. The mainland forces lost more helicopters that day, but not one was shot down. Mostly they would come down because of mechanical issues caused by the hard use. Those flights pulled a few thousand more very upset ground troops to the mainland with them before the crews were just too tired to do the job any more.

The Warlord's Air Force tried to give the retreating ships cover, but after a dozen days of hard combat, there was not much left to fight with both in pilots and in serviceable aircraft. Their bases were being bombed and just wear and tear on the high-tech craft brought the number of useful aircraft even lower each passing hour.

The attacking Warlord's territory was not the only area of the mainland that was under attack by a vengeful world. Any group that might have supported him and people like him were also attacked. The only group not fired on were the Russians but that was only because it would take years for their involvement in this war to surface with enough evidence to be made public. Not without someone handing out aluminum foil hats. By the time that finally happened, it was too late and the world was looking at other issues.