Chapter 27

"Move, move, move!"

"Holy shit!"

"Out of the way, out of the way!"

Civilian and soldier alike tried to board the strange VTOLs that were their ticket out of the murder zone of the former caravan. However, some of them were too entranced by the spectacle happened just a few dozen meters from their positions.

The Steel Locust A-12 Avenger was really a modified A-6 Intruder TSA (Tactical Surface Attacker), which once was meant to create beachheads and defensive perimeters. The A-12 was instead modified with Hiden technology that wasn't meant to be used to that scale, but thanks to two AI's pooling computing power, they had managed to turn a formidable machine into a terror in the battlefield.

The gigantic Chariots (somehow) roared in challenge, to which the Avengers simply pointed their weapons forward. One of them tried an attack of its smaller brethren, jumping and bringing down its arms on one of the machines that dared oppose them.

The machine responded by catching its attack. Its arms caught its opponents own and held them. Around them a crater appeared as the force was redirected to its surroundings. A wave of force washed over the evacuees as they saw with astonishment the duel of titans.

The Avenger's carbonic actuators and electromagnetic servos kept the Chariot lifted in the air, until its shoulder modules moved and aimed at the Chariot's head. Its lone eye looked as the two barrels lined with it until they opened fire. Its body shook as 120mm Shotriser flash-forged AP shells tore through the monster, making it shake like some animal having a seizure. The Avenger finally let go of its foe and the dissolving carcass finally fell.

That served as the signal for the other Chariots to rush towards the line of Avengers, who aimed their arm modules and opened fire.

With 12 36mm Shotrisers each, the seven machines began mowing down the enormous chariots, one of them managed to get close enough to try and punch the machine with a haymaker. The Avengers caught it and held it down while its other arm opened fire at point-blank.

The monster shook as the shells began tearing it apart, then 120mm finished it off with a double tap.

The Avengers held the line and, as the Chariots found out, at range, they could engage multiple targets.

The noise of so many high caliber weapons drowned anything that might have made itself known. Including several civilians that despite everything, had managed to hold on to their cellphones and even with the chaos of the evacuation, were now live streaming the fight to the whole world.

"We interrupt your daily news with incredible footage coming from the Florida exclusion zone. Despite the government's efforts to suppress information to the public, we reaffirm our compromise to our audience to expose any and all… what the hell is that?" The Newscaster's remark was echoed by many other channels and the majority of their audience.
Some had heard of the disaster in Florida, but most had chalked it up to the hurricane making landfall in the state. Now the images showed something that didn't belong in reality.
The footage lasted until the Pelican's door closed, the las shot being of an Avenger ripping a Chariot's head off before shoving its arm module and letting all six of his 36mm Shotrisers make sludge out of its internals.

"Just what the hell were you thinking!" A senator shouted at Arthur from her little padded cubicle visible from her portrait. We were once again in another videoconference, this time with Congress. Once footage of our operation hit the web, and unlike last time, it managed to perfectly capture the battle and send it to someone in the media, there was an uproar.

I managed to get into this world's social media, and despite the familiar methods of the oligarchy, the information was out. Of course, that meant that there were the usual suspects that made everything seem like a conspiracy theory (they were right) and the usual people that inflated things enough that everyone thought the situation was nothing more than a montage.
But looking at Watts, the Secretary of Defense was stoic. I know he was a politician at his core, but this time he almost looked like a proper general. The face he made when I reported the successful evacuation was a sight to behold. Despite the casualties, we'd managed to save around 70 people.

Out of thousands.

It felt wrong celebrating that, but… yeah. Nothing else we could do for now. The beasts had been exterminated once the Thunderbolt TSF's came in and added their unique brand of firepower to the mix. The 60 or so giant Chariots were dispatched swiftly once we got everyone out.

"Mister Secretary, we demand an explanation! Deployment of weapons of mass destruction in American soil is a threat to our government, no, our very democracy!" …Right, you're upset no one told you about the giant robots… and no one offered to sell you one…

"That is a gross exaggeration, and this body knows it, Madam Senator." Arthur kept his cool. Damn. "We simply utilized the best means of securing our troops and citizens from the alien menace."

"Whose means? Who owns such impossible machines?" the woman was red in the face and I thought she might have a stroke or something from the not-quite foam at her mouth.

"We do." White interjected with no hesitation. I saw everyone's eyes focus on the beautiful woman on my left. We were the only ones sharing a terminal, everyone else had their individual ones. The almost hysteric senator got all wide eyes at our appearance. "We are Special Taskforce Steel Locust. We were the unit best tasked for the evacuation efforts as any other branch was still organizing from their retreat."

"Retreat? Are you insinuating that our forces are cowards?" Some guy said. Huh, didn't know they could run that young…

"I believe the appropriate word is 'smart'. As you can verify from the footage, the enemy is quite resistant to conventional weapons. Even the tanks that were near the area struggled to pierce through the Chariot's hide." He shut up once images from the aerial drones that swarmed the place once the Archangels were cleared out came up next. Some Abrams had deployed and begun firing on the giant beats to no avail. But they had distracted one of the Chariots long enough for an Avenger to cave its head in.

"These Honkai… as you call them… what are they after?" an older guy asked.

"For now? They are acting according to the one creating the Hurricane currently parked on Miami City. Once she gets what she wants? Our deaths."

"And what does she want?"

"According to our data? The capture and torture of one Agent Kristoff Matthews, the capture and torture of the ones responsible for Project Alphabet soup, the capture of an object known as the Roswell Shard and the elimination or subjugation of all American citizens in existence." White's voice was so matter of fact that it took several minutes for them to react.

"Preposterous!"

"Such Insolence!"

"Who do you think you are making demands of us!"

"Quiet." And at that word, everyone got shut up. President Howard McNeil wasn't imposing or intimidating, but the fact is that I could see someone that actually was in control of his ship. "This is not a hearing. I called this meeting to formally declare EMERGCON along with DEFCON-3, possibly 2 if the situation demands it."

"That is…!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, we've already had civilian casualties in the millions, our troops attacked and our cities destroyed. Had this happened in our allies' land we would be already mobilizing to their aid, but why is it that when it happens in one of our own states, do we not come and meet our attacker?" his voice dared anyone to contradict him and defend not responding to the attacks.

"The message this will send to our allies…"

"Which one? That we will meet any attack with our own or that we're willing to take it laying down?"

Things calmed down after that.

So, with all that said and done, we had the backing of the entire US military. The president had drafted an executive order for us STF (Special Task Forces) Fire Moth and Steel Locust. We could operate 'freely' (within supervision, of course) in the entire southern east coast of the continental US. We were both military contractors and PMCs, despite the UN's old resolution on creating Fire Moth and us having to work overtime to justify our own.

Now, we'd briefed the new faces to Operation: Tokyo-3 and now we'd finally begun drafting an offensive. Much like it had been done in the future, we would split the Herrscher's attention into as many objectives as we could. Then perform decoy attacks and finally a fatal deep strike to the Herrscher.

Only problem is that now we had BIXI, the walking laser mountain. With him denying the airspace covering our land route to the Herrscher, we had to take him down first.

Now that we had more manpower though, Stee Locust could focus some more specific parts of the plan.

The Avenger's energy shields had performed extremely well on the last battle, but I thought to err on the side of caution and added a third Greater Shard of Lightning and try and tune up the shield emitters. Naki would chew me out for doing this to the Avengers but I had to, for the next part of the plan was going to suck.

We would send the Avengers to catch BIXI's beam, while smaller TSF's and flight units would try and nuke it from the inside.

And I would be the one to press the button.

"This plan is utterly insane." Tesla was holding her head between her hands.

"I've already sent the proposal to Arthur and the Generals, its been approved." I admit I was a bit too blasé for being sent on an almost suicidal mission, even if it was my own idea.

"So quickly?" Einstein's voice had genuine surprise.

"We're the new guys in the block, despite all our tech, they don't trust us, it's easier for them to let us die than to lose any of their own forces or hardware. Besides, I know some people from Intelligence would love to poke around our corpses." I added with some humor on my voice. It was not appreciated.

"That is… even with you have, are you sure you can survive?"

"Hey, I took 96 nukes to the face before and came out fine, don't sweat it."

"…What." Tesla's voice was flat.

"Yeah, back at Nagazora, that's how I got to know Secretary Watts, he ordered the city to be leveled to stop the eruption's effects from spreading."

"…Those reports from the northern sea, that was you…" Dr. Mei had remained in our little CIC for the time being, I found no problem in letting her in the know. She would share the weight of this situation with us.

"Yep. Might have caused the Kremlin to make people live with active cold war protocols for a while, but no one got nuked… except for me and some fishes…" Well shit. I completely forgot to clean that up. Last thing we nee is another Bikini Atoll with all the poison in the water… eh, I'll log it for later…

"Every time I settle for a new level of ridiculous, you come and dive even deeper…" Tesla sounded frustrated.

"Try to stay whelmed dear. This is a train with no breaks."

"So, how will it go?" Einstein asked, she pointed at the terminal to which I nodded and activated its hologram function. I saw them all widen their eyes before sighing… I guess they didn't see the button on the terminal…

"We will deploy the Avengers and the Condor airships. We're refitting them to use improved energy shielding. We use those as cover for TSFs to slip by and get into position here and here." I pointed at the area where BIXI was located. Thanks to being mostly flatlands, our only cover was the rubble of the nearby destroyed city. "I'll go along with some of our troopers right behind some TSFs. The Avengers will provoke BIXI into attacking as many of them as it can. We hope to make it either spend all its energy or to stop him from engaging that super-beam coming from its mouth. If it can overheat, bonus for us. We then move as it engages the Avengers and go inside it."

"What." This time it was Mei's voice that went flat.

"Our scans show that its hide is way too thick for our weapons. Anything detonating from outside will be shrugged off like dust mites. But we can use that in our favor. Anything detonating inside will have no place to go but outside. And if the thing has any resemblance to a normal animal, making it cook its own head off will kill it. If the explosion inside it doesn't do that already." The silence at my words was deafening. They looked at the hologram, then at me, then at the hologram again.

"You're crazy." Tesla broke the spell. She pointed at the data in the hologram. "You're basing all this plan on some hope it follows some sort of biological common sense when its clearly a giant alien monster. There is nothing to guarantee that you plan will work."

"Ah, but that is where you're wrong. This monster didn't manifest on its own like the undead, or the other smaller beasts… don't you see?" I pointed at the hulking figure in the images.

"What are you… ah." Mei wasn't a genius for nothing, I think that despite her avoidance of common human hobbies, she saw what I was pointing out. Also, she was Japanese. Her culture knew about these things.

"What is it?" Eins asked the girl.

"The monster… it looks like someone tried to remember a movie from my homeland and got it wrong…"

"Yup, the Herrscher most likely asked for something to lay waste to the cities, and the Honkai energy took the form of the memory of what she saw as the proper thing to do just that."

"The Honkai can read our memories?"

"I can only guess that happened because of how in-tune a Herrscher is with that energy. I said Honkai energy was Psychoreactive, didn't I? While its hard for us to influence it in any way before dying, those that can resist it must be able to shape it subconsciously, even before turning into a Herrscher." Really, like any energy from another plane of existence, the stuff was as marvelous as it was lethal. Sometimes I think the only thing worse to appear in this place would be argent energy….

"What is the Honkai, really?" Mei asked seriously, but I saw Tesla and Einstein paying attention at my words.

"My best guess? Something from anther place, where the laws of science don't apply. Either it was called here, or something drew its attention, who knows? It wants us dead… but at the same time it could deny us from learning about it, so it wants us to eventually use it… so, I can't say for sure what it wants. But right now, the Honkai is our enemy."