Greetings all. This is the recovered "Forth" chapter from Gall Force Battlezone Earth, i originally lost it when the disk i was saving it to had been damaged by the disk drive (damn that 386!) fortunately I still kept the disk anyways. And for shits and giggles i decided to try and read the disk from the drive of my current computer. Miracles behold, it worked and I managed to recover a little more than half of the chapter. This is basically a taste of what I had plans for the story before I started work on "The Mercenary". Now for the bigger news, for the two guys actually interested in this story. (You guys rule!) I'll be releasing a Redux Version of the story within the next three weeks (todays date being June 29th 2005). This redux has been a long time coming (7 years) and I think its time that I get started. Sooo, here is a little something to start everyone off and I hope you enjoy the Redux when it comes out.
Gall Force: Battlezone Earth
By Jason on the Gall Force series by Movic
Written on a 80386DX with Windows 3.1!
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Chapter 3-
Under Attack
Lufy woke up to an earth-shattering explosion. Then another one, this one threw her right out of bed, she hit the floor with a thump.
"Ow! What the hell!" The rest of them were awakened with yet a third explosion and raid sirens.
"What's going on!" Rabby tried yelling over the sirens.
"I don't know!" Lufy yelled back. A forth explosion.
"Red Alert! Base is under attack! All pilots report to your vehicles! Base is under attack!"
"Shit! Now what!" Rabby yelled over all the noise.
"We back 'em up!" Lufy lifted herself from the floor and got into uniform.
"Are you crazy!" Rabby yelled.
"You bet!" Lufy replied with a grin.
"Well then I'm coming with you." Rabby ran for the closet.
"What's happening!" Shildy asked.
"It's an attack!" Rabby answered, running out the door.
"Are our men out there yet!" Jim asked his second in command.
"Their suiting up now sir. The gun towers are holding off the enemy."
"They won't for very long. What do we have to strike back with!"
"Not much I'm afraid, they blew up two of our hangers. And one of the barracks were destroyed."
"Incoming enemy shells!" One of the adjustants screamed.
Three more explosions rocked the base. The medical bay was torn to shreds by the urilinoid artillery shells, flames emediately engulfed the wreckage.
"The medical bay is gone sir!" The adjustant yelled.
"Damn them! Are the slayers out there yet!"
"They're out now sir."
"Home base, this is slayer one, we have the enemy in our sights, and we're ready to engage." Trever said.
"Okay slayer one, rip 'em apart."
"Will do."
"Alright! Lets blast some ass!" Leo said.
The entire squad charged forward, six Urilinoid artillery cannons were sitting atop the crater ridge. As the slayers aproached the halfway point, a huge swarm of Urilinoid assualt troopers, tanks and siege mechs bounded over the ridge to confront them.
"If it's a fight you want! Its a fight you get!" Trever opened up on the closest Urilinoid infantry squad and ripped it to peices with his fifty millimeter machine gun shells. Laser fire was their response as they charged down the hill.
"Damn bugs! Don't fuck with me!" Leo blasted three tanks and a siege mech before an infantry squad opened fire on him. Already his sheilds were being depleated.
Conrad fired his banshee missiles at the artillery destroying 4 guns before he ran out. From there he tried concentrating on the enemy troops surrounding him.
"Theirs tons of them! How did they get so many down here so secretly!" Rob said, using his jump jets to throw of the Urilinoid infantry troops.
"Home base, please tell use there's back up along the way!" Trever yelled into his intercom. His mech was starting to feel the toll of the battle, and only three minutes into it.
"Negative slayer one, just try to hold them as long as you can, we're evacuating the archology."
"Shit..."
"No, wait a sec, the delta fleet just picked up our distress call, their coming in with some tanks and fresh troops, try to hold 'em for twenty minutes!"
Catty, Shildy, Amy, Spea, and Patty ran to the main control center. "What is happening!" Patty asked.
"We're under heavy attack, it seems that Uranus may have never been thier main target." Jim looked down at the map below him, it was displaying realtime info on the situation. It wasn't looking good. Ten of the slayers were killed.
"The casualties are mounting sir! The ground troops defending the outer parimeter are being overwhelmed. We count at least a thousand Urilinoid troops, looking at the numbers we're actually doing pretty well, but we won't last very long." The adjustant was looking grim.
Just then, Catty snapped to attention.
"Catty, what is it?" Amy asked.
"My sensors detect two Urilinoid warships in low orbit around this moon. That is where the enemy is coming from." Catty said to Jim and the rest of them.
"What! Our sensors didn't detect them!" Jim looked at the orbital display, all looked clear. Patty walked up to take a look. The seventeen-year-old squinted at the screen, then she spotted them.
"Catty, I didn't know you had scanners." Shildy said to her friend.
"Right there!" She pointed at two black areas, then called Jim's attention to the faint red outlines, the silhouette of two medium sized Urilinoid ships suddenly appeared in front of them.
"How did you see that! I can barely see them, but now that you've called my attention to them, yes, that is definately them. I am impressed by your skill. Especially at your age." Jim said in congradulations
"I was the weapons and scanner specialist on my ship, commander, nothing gets by my eyes." Patty replied.
"Hey, what happened to the other two girls?" Jim asked, now that he was looking at the five of them, there should have been seven.
"Lufy and Rabby went out into the battle." Spea answered.
"WHAT?"
Lufy and Rabby climbed into two of the remaining mechs. Lufy strapped herself in and turned the mech on. "Are you ready Rabby?"
"I couldn't be more ready."
"Okay, lets hit it!"
The two mechs bounded out of the docking bay and into the battle field.
"Aaauurrggg! -Frizzt-"
"That's another man down! There's only twelve of us left! And the artillery is still pounding shells!" Yasou yelled through the coms, while blasting away another squad of infantry.
"Keep fighting! We only have nine more minutes!" Trever said trying to reassure them. The battle field was covered with craters and wreckage from the urilinoid forces, but more would continue to come. The ground was littered with the bodies of dead Terrans and Urilinoids, while still more would pile on, more would be Urilinoid as the Terrans were being worn out.
"They just keep coming!" Leo tried whipping his torso turret back and forth to throw off Urilinoid troops, the seige mechs were moving closer and closer to the base as the slayers struggled to keep thier mechs from being weighed down by enemy infantry.
"Damn it! Mechs are useless against infantry!" Rob tried crushing the Urilinoids under the feet of his mech.
Dirk pushed his mech forward, he had to stop that artillery. He finally came in range, just then his mech fell to a ripper beam, which sliced off the right leg of his mech. "Ah, Shit, I've bought it!" Dirks mech fell with a hard crash and rolled down the hill.
"Oh, fuck it! Watch it people, I'm going to do something crazy!" Leo switched his torso turret to manual control and took aim at the edge of the ridge that was about 100 meters from the left side of the artillery row. He fired his ripper beam at that point of the ridge and did a shallow cut all the way across the ridge and ended it at the other side of the row. "Time to squish all of these guys at once!"
The land below the artillery began to slide, and soon the entire ridge formed a land slide, which buried most of the Urilinoid infantry and crippled the siege mechs. "ALL RIGHT!" But his joy soon ended as a fresh squad of Urilinoid battle mechs were waiting behind the ridge.
"Oh shit! Guys, we have fifteen enemy battle mechs coming striaght for us!" Rob turned around the face the new enemies. The others began finishing up the last of the initial wave of troops.
"You guys don't know when to give up do you!" Leo charged forward to face his new enemy.
"Filthy animals! You don't stand a chance against the Urilinoid master race!" The Urilinoid lead mech charged forward to meet Leo's challenge.
Leo and the Urilinoid began to follow a parallel path, with thier turrets turned ninty degrees to face each other. They bounded away from the battle field and ended up outside the crater. Suddenly Leo did a hard brake sending his foe charging forward, he fired at the Urilinoid with all he had, only hurting it's shields. "Oh, shit, I'm out of ammo!"
"Don't worry! I'm on my way!" Trevor charged over the ridge to finish what Leo began, but his mech was in even worse shape then Leo's. The Urilinoid swiftly blasted off Trevors legs and the rest of the mech's body tumbled down the hill, knocking Trevor unconsious.
"Trevor! No! That's it bug! If I'm going down, you're coming with me!" Leo pushed his mech to top speed. Reaching down, he lifted a plastic cover that shielded a red button, the self destruct. Then suddenly at the second to last moment, a huge plasma blast engulfed the Urilinoid mech as it's shields were whiped away, and with a follow up blast of around one hundred Auto-Cannon bursts, the mech was turned to scrap.
"That's another one down! Have you been keeping count Rabby?" Lufy said over the comlink.
"I count around seven new kills. I got four myself." Rabby said.
"Took you long enough!" Leo was relieved he didn't have to cut his life shorter than expected. Then he remembered what happened to Trevor and Dirk. "Ah geez, we have to get some medical trucks out here right away."
"Not yet, there are still two more of those guys lurking around." Rabby said, keeping track of the killed battle mechs, "If I killed four, and Lufy killed seven, that would be eleven, and then Yasou and Rob killed two more of them, that would be thirteen. There are definately two more hanging around.
"Most of the Urilinoid attack force has been defeated sir, the rest are all in disarray and in full retreat." the adjustant gave a smile of relief.
"What about the Delta fleet? When should they arrive?" Jim asked.
"They are in Titan orbit, but they are being attacked by the two Urilinoid warships, and they're losing..."
"Damnit! Why can't we fight in space as well as we do on land?" Jim muttered as he began to pace nervously.
"Sir, if it doesn't bother you, could we be of some more assistance?" Shildy walked over to him.
"In what way?" he asked.
"Give us two ships, fighters to be exact."
"Fighters? What for? Don't tell me you plan on attacking those ships up there!"
"My people were most skilled in outer space combat, all it would take to destroy those two warships is me and Spea."
"Hey don't forget me." Patty cut in "I'm a pretty good pilot myself."
"Even though i don't like the idea, I'll go along with it. Follow me to the hangar." Jim led them out of the room. The halls smelt of smoke and burned metal. The archology had sent in medical officers to help the wounded, but it was very difficult without the main medical dome of the base.
Spea coughed, "How far is the hangar?"
"Not far, I only hope the monorail transport still works." Jim held a cloth up to his mouth. The medical teams had gas masks, Jim wanted to kick himself for forgetting those. They arrived at the monorail station, fortunately it appeared the artillery didn't hit it.
"Okay, now it shouldn't be too long now." Just then a message for Jim came out of the comm link, "Sir, the delta fleet was destroyed, the Urilinoids are preparing to drop more troops."
"Shit... Lets get going." The train moved out to the next dome, where the fighters were.
Jim, Shildy, Spea and Patty approached the door. Jim entered the authorization code and the door opened. "Okay this is them." Jim motioned his hand in the direction of the fighters. The solnoids were disgusted, "Mother! What peices of junk! You fly these things!" Spea stared at the small compact fighters in front of her face.
"What are you talking about? These are state of the art." Jim was offended.
"You guys MUST be brave to fly these things!" Shildy looked around, she noticed hundreds of design flaws already. She figured Lufy would probably notice thousands more.
"Well, at least they're here, are we gonna go or what?" Patty grabbed a helmet and space suit, she knew what she needed to do. Shildy and Spea nodded in agreement and did the same. Jim backed out of the hangar and told the techs to get the catapults ready to launch the fighters. The entrance doors closed and atmospheric transition began.
Shildy looked around at her cockpit and familiarized herself with the controls. It wasn't perfect, but it worked for her.
The floor began to rise to a seventy degree angle and the ceiling started to open, reveiling Titan's greenish sky. "Launch in T-minus 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... 0..."
The fighters bolted out of the hangar and into low orbit around Titan, the ugly hulking masses of the two Urilinoid warships were in plain view as they floated among the debris of the Delta fleet. Shildy, Spea and Patty blasted forward as they got closer they could see more drop pods leaving the larger of the two Urilinoid ships. "I hope Rabby and Lufy can take twenty more of those guys." Patty said noting the drop pods.
"Solnoids, this is base command, your fighters are equiped with dual firing plasma cannons and sixteen guided missiles, you know your targets, the best bet for you though, is to attack the bridge or the engines, don't wasted missiles on the bulky parts."
"Gotcha, we're movin' in." Shild, Spea, and Patty splitted up and picked thier targets. Patty picked the smaller ship while Shildy and Spea attacked the big one.
"DAMNIT! There's more of those things comin' down!" Lufy noticed the pods falling to the planet's surface, and she knew there wouldn't be any help from that Delta fleet. "Leo, run back to the hangar and see if you can reload, find anyone else who is in fighting condition to get themselves over here, we need to protect the wounded."
"Right, I'll be coming back." Leo ran his mech out of the battlezone while Lufy and Rabby prepared for the impending enemy onslaught.
"I see three of the enemy come over that far rise. They're light mechs, we can take 'em easy." Lufy targeted one and blasted off it's leg with a high energy particle round. "Go for the legs, don't waste time and ammo on the heavy stuff if you can help it."
"Right." Rabby did the same to another one. Lufy charged forward to bring the fight farther away from trever's downed mech. Rabby followed.
The Urilinoid battle mechs fired endlessly at the two solnoids, depleting their shield power, but Lufy and Rabby had skills in warfare that neither the Urilinoids nor the Terrans possessed. "Cutter beam charged!" Lufy jolted her jump jets to life and her mech blasted forty feet in the air and performed a 240 degree turn while landing behind two Urilinoid mechs, slicing both in half with her cutter beam. She then pushed the mech at top speed and jutted her right laser cannon out at a distance from the main chassis. She charged forward at her enemy and rammed the cannon into a Urilinoid cockpit, simulating the way a Bronz-X would punch a hole in a Paranoid drone. The enemy mech bursted into flames and she followed up her attack with a few well placed shots into the Urilinoid behind her latest kill. Two Urilinoids fired at her but by that time her shields had recharged and ready to take more punishment. She hit the jump jets again and aimed the feet of her mech into the top of her challengers, they were crushed under the greater weight of the heavier Terran built mech and exploded beneith her. "Hell yeah! You guys think you can take me?" Lufy fired her missiles into another foe, "Try it! I dare yah!"
Rob bounded over the hill to join in the fight and saw the deadly precision of the two solnoids. "Jesus! They're taking on the whole lot of them and winning!" Witnessing this his spirits were boosted and he pushed his mech onward to back up the two women warriors. Leo after reloading returned to battle and observed the battle infront of his eyes. Taking careful notice of Lufy's technique, Leo jumped into battle as well.
'I just have to be as good as her...', he thought to himself. He had never thought of doing the things with his mech that Lufy was doing, it was almost as if she was using a completely different machine. Even that Rabby chick was doing it. 'Time to push this thing to it's limit!'
Leo, mimicking Lufy's techniques, tried a trick of his own. By walking over a rock just right he set his mech off balance near his desired target, and just when he was off balance enough he boosted his jump jets. His mech flipped horizontally in the mid air until it's feet had contact with the cockpit of his target and threw it to the ground with a crunch, Leo braced for the jarring impact his mech would make when it hit the ground but after its rough sideways landing it rolled a bit and he hit the jets again sending it back into the air and onto its feet. And with that he fired six grenade rounds at a Urilinoid about to attack Rob.
"Urilinoid fighters are launching from the big ship! Watch yourselves people!" Shildy circled round her target trying to find a blind spot, but unfortunately, the Urilinoid were pretty well covered. Anti fighter lasers were coming from both ships relentlessly for the past nine minutes, now there were fighters.
Patty pulled her fighter away from the ship and turned around to get a clear shot at the poorly defended engines. She fired three missiles into it, jarring it into an eratic course. Closer and closer Patty flew her fighter back at it, firing a full barrage of lasers, cutting away at the weak armor of the ship's engines.
