Hello again everyone. Sorry that there was another delay in uploading this thing. New job's keeping me busy, but the pay is good, so I can't complain too much. This is also my first real foray into the ground combat of the Ratchet and Clank universe, so I hope that I did a good job with it, and that it proves to be worth your time. As always, special thanks to Atlan, Captain Orsai, Boondock Jake, and Swordsman289 for their help and support. And to you, the readers, for taking the time to examine and read over my stories.
That said, here's the sixth Chapter to Ratchet and Clank: Legacy. Hope you all like it.
Chapter Six: A Bridge Too Far
Distress calls began to assault Ratchet's sensitive ears almost immediately. There were thousands of Arcadian heavy transports trying to get civilians out of the cities, their pilots too worried about the enemy ships ripping them apart to take off. Pinned down PDF platoons were calling in for support as enemy mechanized units pressed their position. It was a nightmare, Ratchet thought to himself as he watched another skyscraper crumble, a massive cloud of dust and debris coming up from the ground as the three thousand meter tall structure collapsed in on itself. He looked down at the sensor feedback that Aphelion was giving him from the ground, watching the sections of the city that the enemy held. From the looks of things, they held approximately thirty percent of the city, but what was interesting was that they seemed to be dedicating their forces to specific sections and spreading out just enough to establish some sort of foothold.
"Strange way to run an invasion," he muttered to himself as the radio crackled to life.
"Aphelion, we need you to link up with Blue Two and Red Six and head over towards the city's primary power plant," the voice on the other end was female and he could detect an undercurrent of worry.
"Enemy pressing it?" he asked, as he watched a Viper slip in front of him and another ship, Red Six, he presumed, fall in next to the Aphelion. It was bulkier than the other two and sported a number of weapon hardpoints, and Ratchet recognized it as a heavy fighter known as a Saber.
"It's surrounded and an unknown amount of enemy troops have gotten inside. We lose that plant and we lose primary power for the city, including energy for the grav trains and local theater shielding." The operator on the other end of the line said.
Ratchet nodded somberly. Theater shielding would have been what was protecting most of the civilian evacuation centers, and the grav trains would have been funneling the bulk of them out of the combat zones. Without them, they'd be exposed to danger and the evacuation would turn into a horrific logjam of panic stricken civilians and swamped security officers. He wondered for a moment why the plant didn't have its own shielding, but figured he'd find out soon enough.
"No pressure, then," Red Six suddenly spoke up. An image appeared on the holoscreen, and Ratchet caught a glimpse of the pilot. He had a blast visor covering most of his face, but the visor wasn't polarized currently, allowing him to see part of what looked to be a Cazarian face. The man's green eyes seemed to burn with an almost feral intensity, one that reminded him uncomfortably of the look in Alister's eyes when the general had finally snapped. Behind him, Ratchet could see another individual, the weapons operator no doubt.
"Do we know what manner of enemy troops are currently in the area?" Clank spoke up from his position at the rear guns.
"A mix of infantry and armor," the Operator said. "Or that's what was there at last report. PDF forces in the area were forced back inside by the onslaught. Nothing that we're really familiar with, design and soldier profiles are not consistent with anything in the databanks, so we don't really have a good idea of what you're going to run into."
"Guess we'll find out soon enough," Ratchet muttered as the trio of ships rounded a cluster of skyscrapers and caught their first glimpse of the power plant. The Lombax nodded his head in understanding as he could see around it a burned out series of buildings. So the plant had had its own shielding, it had just been pounded into smithereens by the enemy assault.
A warbling sound drew his attention back to the command console. "Alert!" Aphelion spoke up. "Enemy missile signatures detected, they're trying to lock us up!"
"Boost ECM!" Blue Two called out, banking hard to the left and pulling up, trying to get his fighter a clear view of the enemy down below. Moments later dozens of missiles streaked up from below the buildings, forcing the three ship flight to scatter.
The three ships managed to evade most of the barrage, but Ratchet was thrown around in his seat as one of the missiles struck the Aphelion. The shields were knocked down to forty five percent and the A.I. snarled as she started to dump the energy sinks and recharge them. "Enemy weapon analyzed. It appears to be a small fusion warhead, proximity charged and complete with a magnetic focusing field."
"Noted," he looked back over his shoulder as he activated the ships various maneuvering thrusters, pivoting her nose down and firing into the streets below, targeting highlights showing him the large, bipedal mech that had apparently been responsible for the shots. "Clank, any more of those come after us, try and shoot them down."
"Affirmative," the diminutive robot said as the forward facing guns slashed into the enemy mech. Armor was explosively vaporized as it shot back, raising a set of massive laser cannons and trying to swat the Aphelion out of the sky.
Then it fired another missile barrage and Ratchet flipped the ship around and accelerated away. Clank went to work instantly, the robot and the ship's A.I. working together to obliterate the incoming threat before they could get close enough for their proximity fuses to arm. The fusion payload would be inert and harmless until then, he knew, but once missiles like this armed, the onboard computer would calculate the distance to the target, and then generate a heavy energy field to channel the blast into the hapless ship in the crosshairs. This had the advantage of both insuring that none of the blast's energy was wasted and eliminating the risk that the resulting thermonuclear detonation would obliterate nearby friendly troops.
The last missile disappeared in a puff of fire and smoke and Ratchet once again rotated the ship around and renewed his assault. Dozens of strikes hit home and the mech collapsed as the laser bursts reduced one of its legs to a molten slag-heap. Another burst finished it off and it detonated with an apocalyptic fireball as its reactor cooked off. He could see other, smaller mechs moving around as well, firing up at himself, Blue Two, and Red Six.
"This is Aphelion, cover me, I'm going in for a gun run." He said to the two other members of the flight.
"Roger, hope you know what you're doing," Blue Two said. The communication's screen stayed dark, hiding whoever had been speaking, but Ratchet could hear the strain in the other pilot's voice.
Moments later the Aphelion streaked down into the buildings. Startled enemy infantry soldiers scrambled to get out of the way as Ratchet put the ship into hover mode and depressed the firing studs on the control stick. Beams of crimson death streaked down the streets, flash vaporizing the exposed infantry and ripping into the lighter mechs. Skimming just a few meters off the ground, looking more like a hovercraft than a starfighter, the Aphelion wreaked absolute havoc as her shields weathered a storm of hasty return fire. It took less than a minute for Ratchet to clear out most of the area around the power plant.
"Command, what's the status of the troops inside?" he asked.
"Unknown, but we know there's enemy troops still inside, along with the civilian worker crews," the operator at the other end of the line said.
Ratchet looked back over his shoulder, his hidden gaze meeting Clank's. The diminutive robot nodded his head and unhooked himself from his seat. He clambered over onto Ratchet's back, hooking himself in, closing his eyes and transforming his arms and legs into a set of maneuvering fins. "Blue Two, Red Six, I'm turning control of my ship over to the A.I. She'll keep moving with you. I'm heading inside to see if I can help out."
He could hear the shocked responses of the operator and his two other flight members as he popped the canopy and jumped out onto the shattered pavement below. The Hyperflux armor easily absorbed the impact and he pressed a button on his wrist mounted SDU. There was a glow and a second later, a shard reaper appeared in his hands. If the power plant was at all like the ones that he'd been in before then there would a lot of tight corridors and sharp turns. The perfect environment for a scatter weapon.
Back up in orbit, the battle continued to rage. Commodore Delacroix oriented her remaining ships to meet the new vessel as it came in towards them and braced herself for the fight of their lives. Support was just a couple of minutes out, so that was good. Still, the Mar-Sarian couldn't keep her eyes off the massive behemoth that was barreling down on them. It was more than twenty five thousand meters long, bigger than most cities. She'd never seen a ship that big in her life, never even heard of anyone attempting to construct a warship that large. At nine million kilometers, the enemy flagship opened up, and a swarm of missiles that dwarfed those of the other ships billowed out.
An icy chill formed in the Commodore's stomach as she watched them close in on her ships. There had to be thousands, tens of thousands, in that swarm.
"Full power to point defense cannons and countermeasures!" she screamed.
The ships turned their attention from the other two alien craft and instead focused on the missile swarm, returning to that flower-like formation that they'd been in earlier. In the time that that took, the swarm drew ever closer, the numbers so large that the targeting computers gave up any hope of being able to get an accurate count of them.
"Missiles at one-point-five million kilometers! Impact in ten seconds!" a frenzied bridge officer called out.
Those ten seconds were the longest in the Commodore's life, watching as her fleet tried to intercept as much of the swarm as they could. Hundreds were taken out, but for every missile and torpedo that was destroyed or had its guidance package burned out, there seemed to be ten more that made it through. Destroyers and frigates were pummeled, their shields crumbling under the barrage and then the armored hull plating started to melt and vaporize as multi-gigaton warheads punched into them and cooked off. Her display screen screamed warnings to her as the frigates Armand, Delco, and Zethar were obliterated under the sheer weight of the bombardment, while the destroyers Apoc and Gemini were reduced to bombed out wrecks drifting helplessly through the cosmos.
"Flank out around it, try to surround it and swarm its defenses!" The Commodore barked as the ship came ever closer.
The surviving ships made haste to comply and Delacroix was tempted to breathe a sigh of relief a moment later as the second and third task forces warped in. They were going to need all the firepower they could muster to beat down this behemoth.
Ar-Zel's eyes narrowed once again as he watched five of the enemy ships disappear from the targeting computers. Eight down in total, another sixteen to go. Navigational alarms sounded and the A.I.s began spitting out data a split second later and he watched two more fleets of equal size jump in. He ground his inner jaws together in frustration and surprise. Why hadn't his long-range sensors given him any advanced warning? Was there no end to these wretches?
"Laxor?" Elbrion's voice echoed in his mind.
"Deal with this fleet first, then move in to target the new ones." He growled to his second in command, who hastily relayed the orders to the other officers on the bridge. Then he returned his attention to the data screens in front of him. The ships were moving to flank and surround the Dreadnought. Let them, he thought to himself. This was a Judgment Class Fleet Command Vessel, designed to spearhead assaults and break planetary sieges by plowing into an enemy fleet or orbital defense group and tearing it apart while its dual-layer shields and hundreds of meters of armor plating absorbed whatever punishment it wasn't able to evade. "Jurit, Canto, move back to the planet and assist with ground operations. Tell the teams securing the generators that they need to double-time it."
A second missile and torpedo salvo was launched and screamed in towards the enemy craft, while the Dreadnought's pulse lasers, plasma cannons, and ion cannons came into play. The monstrously huge capital ship and the Mar-Sarian fleet converged as all the ships opened fire. In the chaos that resulted, the Dreadnought hit its foes like a shark charging into a school of fish. She shuddered under the impacts of multiple missile salvos, bridge officers calling out as massive gravitational fluxes ripped into her shields, but the defenses held. Her energy weapon batteries ripped apart another trio of destroyers as she charged through the enemy fleet and began to bank around for another pass.
"Laxor, sensors detect a fourth enemy task force coming in!" there was a note of worry to the navigation officer's 'voice'. "Creators! These things are fast!" The fourth enemy fleet materialized into real space mere moments later.
Ar-Zel clenched his fist again, and then lowered his head. This position continued to grow untenable. Another enemy frigate disintegrated under a merciless fusillade, but he wasn't blind to the hits that his own ship was taking. With so many of the flagship's generators offline, they couldn't put as much power into the shields as they could normally, and with Dreadnought's heavy fabricators damaged, it would take some time to replace the missile stocks that they were expending around this planet. That was to say nothing of the massive gashes in the Dreadnought's aft, starboard armor plates where a Tribunal sub-fleet had managed to cut through it. It was possible, however unlikely, that a lucky shot there could damage something that could not be repaired under these circumstances. He let out a growl of frustration and opened up the command channel.
"All ships, this is the Laxor speaking. Enemy reinforcements are coming in faster than we can deal with them, instruct your ground forces to extract the generators that they have secured and pull back up to orbit." He rubbed his helmet, feeling his concussion throb suddenly. "All other forces are to commence withdrawal and be back in orbit inside of fifteen minutes."
"What?" Elbrion asked, looking over at him. He couldn't see his second-in-command's face, but he could sense the other Shartan's shock.
"We are taking too many losses, Tesarect, we shall grab what we can, fall back, and lick our wounds." The Shartan commander said. "We are being bled too heavily, and even the Dreadnought cannot hold indefinitely. We have gambled and come up short; we must quit the game while we still have something to show for our efforts." He said. "In the meanwhile, we shall protect our fleet while they recover our ground forces."
Back on the ground, Ratchet shouldered his shard reaper and entered the blasted remains of the power plants main doors. The walls were covered in carbon scoring and he could see where bits of ferrium and duraplast had been reduced to slag by the fighting going on around them. He shook his head back and forth, unable to believe everything that he was seeing. The carnage reminded him far more than he'd like of the stuff Tachyon's imperial troops had unleashed in their quest to exterminate him. Here and there, he could see bodies lying on the ground, some of them where the symbol of the Arcadian Planetary Defense Force, a picture of their world set against a large, silver star. Others were bodies of the attackers. Ratchet walked over towards a couple of the fallen attackers, kneeling down and examining the bodies.
Their bodies were covered in a black and green, segmented armor. They had a lanky, bipedal build that reminded him of a Blarg, with two additional appendages coming out of the back of their shoulder regions, each ending in a four-fingered "hand" that had the digits set at ninety-degree angles to one another. Overall, they had a rather insectiod look, and as he removed the helmet of one of the corpses, he could see six black and red eyes staring back at him, and a quartet of large exterior mandibles surrounding some wicked looking inner jaws. He pushed the body to the side a bit, looking at the weapon it was clutching, a gunmetal gray rifle of some sort, with two barrels set over each other.
"Well, we know they can be killed," Ratchet muttered. "Hope they're not as tough as their capital ships."
"That would be rather ominous," Clank spoke up from his position on the Lombax's back. "Still, I would advise caution."
"Caution's my middle name," Ratchet said, his look of indignation hidden behind his helmet.
"Says the Lombax that created a fusion powered rocket sled…" Ratchet swore he could hear the smirk in Clank's voice as he spoke.
He narrowed his eyes and pressed himself against the wall, his eyes darting about as he tried to locate any of the attackers. This corridor was empty. He slowly moved forward, his finger tense against the trigger as he looked around and approached a four-way crossroad. Why were these power plants always a damn maze? He thought to himself. Moreover, why, for that matter, was there never a helpful "you are here" sign around when you needed one?
"Might be time for the old standby," he muttered quietly.
"What? Wander around and listen for the sound of weapons fire?" Clank asked.
"Yep." The Lombax said and checked his motion tracker. Nothing. He sighed, and headed straight ahead.
He advanced slowly, cautiously. There was almost no room to maneuver or evade in these corridors. He suspected he was on the right path, judging by the bodies and the scoring along the walls. There were overturned tables and chairs here and there, the occasional flash of an alarm light, and the hiss of steam from where some pipe had been hit by a stray round. The doors along the corridor were all sealed off, locked, but as he passed one of them, the Lombax thought he heard a thump behind it, and his motion sensor picked up a spike. He backed away from it, his shard reaper pointed at it.
"Clank, fry it," he growled.
"On it," the tiny robot said. One of his arms transformed into a rod of sorts, surrounded by fins and antennas. He reached around Ratchet's body, and fired an EMP burst at the lock. There was the groan of overloaded machinery, and the lock clicked open. Steeling himself, Ratchet flexed his grip on the gun, stepped forward, and kicked the door. It gave a tortured groan as it slid inwards, and the Lombax readied himself to leap to the side. Much to his surprise, though, was that he found himself staring not at hostile soldiers trying to ambush him, but a group of terrified workers. Hands in the air, several of them visibly trembled as they stared at the armored soldier in front of them.
"Civilians," Clank muttered.
"Regular captain obvious," one of the workers muttered, a blue-skinned Bartran. The man flexed a three-fingered hand, his breath coming in deep pants and he gestured to the shard reaper. "Can you put that damn thing down; we've had enough stress today to last three lifetimes!"
"Sorry," Ratchet said as he lowered the scatter-gun. "Wasn't expecting to find anyone alive in this part of the plant."
"We got lucky, I think." The man said. There was a strip on the front of his suit that identified him as an "A. Carlton" and said he was a shift foreman. "Damn bugs found us earlier, in one of the break rooms… thought we were gonners." He reached up and wiped some sweat of the back of his forehead.
"How'd you escape?" Ratchet asked.
"We didn't. They just didn't shoot us." Carlton said, shuddering a bit and walking over towards a supply container. He sat down on top of it and let out a breath. "We tried to hide out here after that. Guess it wasn't the best spot."
"Wait, they let you live?" Clank asked, sounding rather shocked.
"Yeah. Maybe they didn't feel like killing unarmed civilians, maybe they just didn't want to waste the ammo. I don't know, and I don't care, to be honest." Carlton said.
"Hmmm, evidence perhaps of a civilized side to these aliens?" Clank ventured.
"Yeah, except for the whole 'drop out of warp and blast the place to smithereens' bit," Ratchet fired back.
"Point," Clank said and nodded his head.
"Regardless, I'm here to help show them off the planet," Ratchet said. "Which way did they go?"
"That direction, I believe," one of the other workers pointed down the direction of a northern hallway. "They were headed for the primary generator area. Not sure what they want with it though," the man said with a shrug.
"Thanks," Ratchet said, and frowned. "Ummm, what about you guys?"
"I think we're just going to stay in here," Carlton said, moving back over towards the door. "You've spoofed the lock, but there are other ways to barricade yourself in a supply closet."
The Lombax simply nodded his head and turned to head down the corridor that the workers had suggested. It did not take him very long to locate the sound of a firefight, and he pressed his back up against the wall, sliding his way up towards the corner. He could also hear garbled radio transmissions from the defenders.
"Jankovskie, watch your angles! They're about to press us again!"
"Suppression fire, suppression fire!"
"Oh, fething hell, they've got a pair of heavies with them! Where the hell's that launcher?"
Heavies? Perhaps something akin to the smaller mechs that he'd fought outside, Ratchet wondered as he edged up to the corner. Granted the term 'fight' was stretching things. Aphelion had made it more of a one sided slaughter. Unfortunately, these corridors were just a wee bit too tight for the starship to fit in, Ratchet thought sardonically. He distantly heard the rumble of rockets accelerating, followed by a screeching, thundering detonation.
He peeked his head around the corner, ready to pull it back before an enemy had the chance to shoot it off. He could see an armored bulkhead in front of him, the door lying off to one side, smoldering and shattered. A torrent of laser fire crackled back and forth at the next junction over, red, green, and blue-purple beams crisscrossing in a furious exchange.
The Lombax moved forward and gritted his teeth behind his helmet. He'd have to risk contacting the defenders and hoping that they'd be up to trusting them. He opened up his comm. and spoke.
"Check, check, anyone getting me?" he asked.
"Who the hell?" came the startled reply. "Who's on this frequency?"
"Name's Ratchet, I'm one of partisans that responded to your planetary distress signal. Command gave us a priority mission to help secure this plant." He said, and he looked up at the wall across from him. There was a yellow sticker on it that identified the corridor as a one "J-67". "I'm in corridor J-67, about thirty meters from a rather large firefight. Which side of it are you guys on?"
There was a moment of silence, and Ratchet suspected he knew what was going on in the head of the other person. Was the new person on the line really what he proclaimed to be, or was it nothing more than a clever enemy ruse designed to get them to drop their guard? "Suppose if you were with the enemy, you wouldn't bother talking to us. None of the bastards have so much as uttered a peep since we started shooting them." The voice finally responded. "At any rate, name's Haften, and we're in the J-68 Corridor south of your position."
Ratchet looked up at the internal compass that was displayed across the top of his HUD. "That would make you the ones shooting the red and green bolts?"
"That's us," the man grunted as a blast rocked the corridor and Ratchet heard one of the PDF troopers suddenly scream, close enough to hear the man both over the radio and off it. The Lombax grimaced and looked over his shoulder at Clank.
"Ready to rock?" he asked his partner.
"As ready as I ever am," Clank said with a nod of his head.
Ratchet looked back down at his motion tracker. It extended about thirty meters in every direction, and he did some quick mental calculations. He lowered his shard reaper for a moment and flexed his right hand. The gauntlet of his armor glowed for a moment, and a plasma grenade appeared in his hand. He slunk up towards the fighting, ducking to get through the blown out bulkhead door. Then he moved up to the very end of the junction, watching as all the energy bursts flew back and forth. He depressed the arming stud on the top of the grenade and then hurled it around the corner with all of his might. He heard the distinctive clanking of the little orb bouncing off metal surfaces, and the sound of booted footsteps as the enemy made haste to get out of the way. There was a boom, a flash of blue light, and the distinctive 'whump' of the detonation shockwave.
"That your doing?" Haften spoke up.
"Yeah," Ratchet said, before hurling a second grenade. "No idea how effective that was though."
"You got two of them I think, the rest scattered," the Arcadian muttered.
"Is it safe to move towards your position?" Clank spoke up.
"Now or never!" one of the other PDF troopers replied, before a fusillade of green and red bolts ripped up the corridor. A smattering of the bluish-purple ones came back, and he heard another soldier cry out in agony.
Ratchet primed another grenade and hurled it down the corridor. "Friendly, coming in fast!"
"Rodger that, covering fire!" Haften ordered, and the corridor came alive with the crackling of laser rounds.
Ratchet dove outwards, sending a signal to the thrusters in his hover-boots as he did so. Clank simultaneously activated his own thrusters and the result was that the duo was sent rocketing towards the cluster of defenders. He hit the floor and there was a shower of sparks as he slid up towards the makeshift armor plates (which looked like they'd been pulled from an APC of sorts) that the defenders were using for cover. He slammed his arms against the ground and vaulted forward, clearing the barricade and then hastily dashing out of the way. As he did so, he felt the thud of a laser bolt impact hitting his shoulder, and hissed instinctively. The hyperflux armor held up, but he could see where the shot had made the shoulder pauldron glow white-hot.
"You okay back there, buddy?" he asked Clank. The diminutive robot nodded his head.
"Affirmative. I guess it pays to be a small target." His partner said. Letting out a sigh of relief, Ratchet grimaced and flexed his shoulder. He should have been faster than that, he thought bitterly. His armor had stopped this particular shot, but there was no guarantee the rest of their weapons were as weak. He was no good to these people missing limbs.
Ratchet looked over to his left, and found the troop leader standing there. Haften's name was emblazoned on the front of his armor, which was a dull gray, carapace looking getup. A polarized, gold-colored visor stretched across his face, and just above it was a silver bird of prey, which Ratchet gathered was the symbol of whatever subdivision of the Arcadian PDF the man belonged to. The other interesting thing that he noticed was that the markings on the man's shoulder seemed to indicate that he was only a first-class private.
"Where is the commanding officer of the defense effort?" Clank asked as the firefight renewed behind him. His partner pulled back instinctively as he heard the crackle of energy bolts zipping by or slamming into the armored barricade.
Haften cocked his head to the side and rubbed the back of his helmet. Ratchet had the distinct impression that he was looking rather nervous. "Ahhh, yeah, funny thing that."
"Wait, don't tell me," Ratchet held up a hand. "He's dead, and you're the highest ranking person left?"
"Pretty much. At least in this sector of the plant." Haften shrugged, and then pulled back instinctively as something exploded in the corridor next to them. "There could be others, but we're not really sure. Radio hasn't exactly been buzzing. Once things went to hell, we grabbed as many civvies as we could and barricaded ourselves here. The enemy's pressing us, but they're acting more like they want to keep us bottled up, rather than trying to flush us out." He looked at the Lombax. "At any rate, what does that make you two? Mercenaries?"
"Specialists," Ratchet replied smoothly. "Just point us at the problem and stand back."
"Well, sounds just like what we need," one of the other soldiers said, as she unleashed her laser rifle on full automatic. "Someone give him a map and tell him to give us a hand."
"Working on it!" Haften growled, clenching a fist. Then he shook his head and pulled out a PDA. "Here, this has got a map for the plant on it. Download the info, and then I need you to kill anything that doesn't look like one of us." He gestured to his PDF armor.
"Are we to assume you meant to include the civilians in that roster as well?" Clank spoke up.
"Yes, yes, them too!" Haften's correction was hasty, and if the situation wasn't as dire as it was, Ratchet might have been tempted to chuckle. As it was, he took the PDA and downloaded the map to the power plant into his armor. It popped up on his HUD, showing him where he was, the junctions, where sub-stations and the like were, as well as other key areas of interest.
Looking things over, there was a large room behind him, a cafeteria of sorts. The Lombax was going to go out on a limb and assume that that was where the civilians were holed up. The main antimatter generator was about three hundred meters to the northwest, and fifty meters down, actually under the surface of the ground. Between him and the objective was an unknown number of extremely aggressive aliens. Always the same, no matter where I go, the Lombax thought to himself. For a moment, he contemplated asking a few of the PDF to come with him, and then he looked around and thought better of it. There were at least as many bodies on the floor as there were manning the barricade, and even more that were slumped back into one of the junction hallways, nursing wounds. This spot was already dangerously undermanned. Best bet is to do what Clank and I do best, take the pressure off them that way.
"Okay, all set," he gave Haften back his PDF, and flicked his left hand in a certain manner. His shard reaper disappeared, replaced by a predator micro-missile launcher. "Fire in the hole!"
A couple of the PDF troopers continued to exchange fire with the aliens that were down the opposite side of the corridor as Ratchet flipped the detonation switch on the side of the launcher from "impact" to "airburst". He held the trigger down and sent a stream of four micro-missiles rocketing down the corridor. The aliens stiffened for a split-second and then made haste to get out of the way, leaping and scrambling from one side to the other as it reached the junction that they'd been taking cover in. The quartet of missiles detonated and the explosion rattled the whole corridor. Thick, oily smoke began to float up and along the top of the hallways, and Ratchet nodded to himself as the predator automatically reloaded itself. He sent a second volley down the hall as well, just to be sure, and then took off down it.
"We have got to get some of those," he heard one of the PDF troopers say as he switched his predator back out for the shard reaper.
Ratchet continued forward, his weapon raised and ready to mow down anything that might have survived the earlier barrages. Nothing showed up on his motion tracker, but that didn't mean that there couldn't be some of these things playing dead. His adrenaline started to spike again as he reached the junction and snapped around it faster than most eyes could track. In a split second, he'd checked out both side of the corridor, and was convinced that nothing was alive. The only thing he could see was dismembered bodies.
"Well, they certainly do not appear to be as tough as their ships are," Clank spoke up. "I do hope this trend continues."
"You and me both," Ratchet muttered as he pressed on.
It did not take him long to find the next group of enemy soldiers. He turned the corner and found himself looking down a forty-meter long corridor with a "T" junction at the far end. There were a half dozen of them, guarding the end of the junction. The two groups saw each other at the same time and the enemy raised their rifles as silently as ghosts. Ratchet cursed under his breath as he opened up with the shard reaper, hoping that his superior reflexes and armor could hold out. He squeezed the trigger and cycled his weapon rapidly, sending a hail of razor sharp flechettes down the corridor. Some of them impacted harmlessly along the walls, but the two center-most aliens stumbled and then collapsed as the razors tore through their armor. Purple ichor dribbled out of the lacerations and they twitched as they lay on the floor.
The other four opened up, two of them kneeling around the corner while the other two stood and leaned out to fire. Ratchet jumped to the side of the corridor as he continued to fire. A tightly clustered shot-pattern took the head off another one, and then he hurled a grenade as a burst of shots cut across the cuirass of his armor, making it glow white-hot. Fortunately, it held up, and the Lombax nodded to himself as the plasma grenade finished the group off. He double-checked his motion sensor and then took a moment to assess his armor's condition. Some minor discoloration, a small dent or two where the hard-light defenses had been penetrated and some of the underlying metal had been vaporized; nothing serious, or even beyond the capabilities of the hyperflux suit's self-repair systems.
Off to a good start, he thought to himself. But best not to get too cocky. It was highly unlikely that the enemy had no military capability in-between "lightly armed infantry" and "twenty meter tall mechs."
It took the Lombax about five minute to get down to the level where the generator itself was being housed. He'd fought his way through a number of other enemy squads, but resistance was getting heavier. There'd been no sign of Arcadian PDF, at least not any that were alive, just a few pockets of terrified civilians. Now he stood at the auxiliary entrance of the generator area, his progress halted by a large group of enemy soldiers, including a type he'd not encountered before. He suspected that these two soldiers must have been the "heavies" that Haften and his group had referred to. They appeared to have the same general "shape" as the regular soldiers, but were encased in some sort of heavy-duty powered combat armor and stood close to three meters tall. Where their hands would have been were a pair of massive, eight-barreled rotary cannons, and the armor of their shoulder appendages ended in integrated, multi-barrel rocket launchers.
The Lombax ducked back around the corner as a rocket rippled past him and exploded twenty meters down the hallway, bathing the area in flames and white-hot shrapnel. He flung his last plasma grenade around the corner, letting out a sigh of frustration as he heard it cook off but the motion data from the two monstrosities stayed on his sensors. He heard a whine and activated his hoverboots, jetting away from the door, the ambient temperatures skyrocketing as the plasma-rotaries opened up and melted the bulkhead around the door a little wider.
"I wonder why they are not advancing," Clank mused, calm as ever despite the circumstances.
"Just keep watch in case they try to flank us or something," Ratchet said as he edged back around, only to pull back a second later when a rocket shot past the doorway. The Lombax spent a moment and tried to figure out what his options were. The shard reaper wasn't cutting it, he was out of plasma grenades, and something told him that the predator's micro-missiles might not stand up against all the armor plating that the alien troopers had encased themselves in. The handful of deployable micro-turrets he had brought with him had the same problem, which meant that it was time to bring out the heavy artillery. Ratchet nodded to himself as he reached his decision and activated his storage deck. A moment later, a long, silvery-green weapon appeared in his hands. He braced it up on his shoulder and began to prime it. The five charging panels up by the barrel spread out and a silvery, wisp-like distortion began to appear around them.
"The alpha cannon?" Clank sounded incredulous.
"When in doubt, err on overkill," Ratchet said.
"Yes, but are you sure that it is a good idea to discharge a weapon like that in here?" As his robotic friend spoke, another furious barrage of plasma fire shot out from the doorway.
"Well, if you're worried about bringing down the house, look at it this way, Clank," Ratchet checked the charge level of the gun, it was full, and ready to go. "We keep standing around here much longer, and these guys are likely to do that job for us."
The Lombax sprinted up to the junction, leaned around the still glowing metal, and depressed the firing studs on the weapon. There was a high-pitched whine and the disruptor fired a blue-white bolt of energy. It struck one of the alien soldiers dead-center and plowed through the armored suit that it was wearing, ripping a hole through the creature large enough that Ratchet felt he might be able to crawl through it. The bolt continued onward and 'vaporized' two of the normal soldiers before striking the far wall. The beam splashed over the metal, and a four square meter chunk of the wall just seemed to vanish without a trace of molten slag or steam. The heavy trooper teetered back and forth for a moment or two, and then started to tumble forward. The ground shook as it slammed against the floor, twitched a couple of times, and then went still.
The silence was what was probably most unnerving, Ratchet thought to himself. No matter how he'd dispatched them, with shard reaper, lancer pistol, plasma rifle, or fusion grenades, these creatures never made a sound. No growls of pain, no cries of agony. Nothing.
Even its companion was eerily quiet as the plasma cannons on its arms whirred up. The alien soldier unleashed all four of its weapons and Ratchet reactivated his hover-boots at the same time that Clank turned on his thrusters. Both of them rocketed back down the corridor as the power armored warrior sliced apart the bulkhead. The walls began to glow red, and then a yellowish orange before they fell apart and plasma bolts slashed into the corridor.
"Damnit!" Ratchet hissed as he kept flying backwards. The Lombax started to charge the alpha cannon once again, ready to unleash the destructive beam the moment the enemy poked its head or other part of its body out of the door.
Only that moment never came. The plasma fire stopped and the hallway was filled with silence except for the sound of rising steam and the drip of molten metal. Ratchet's eyes flew to his motion tracker, fearing for a moment that the enemy had somehow managed to flank him despite Clank's alert monitoring of the situation. Nothing there as well. The Lombax narrowed his eyes, and then started forward, keeping his finger held down on the alpha cannon's trigger. Slowly, carefully, he advanced towards where the slagged door and hallway were, and peeked around.
Nothing. Not a soul in sight, just the bodies of the PDF soldiers that had been killed, and the dead alien troopers. He frowned, noting a secondary access door at the far end of the room. He contemplated bolting after the attackers for a moment, before thinking better of it. They might have left some surprises behind, and he didn't want to blunder into those.
Ratchet opened up a line to the command and control channel that he'd been on earlier. "Command, this is callsign Aphelion," he said. "I've reached the primary control room of the main generator, and the enemy seems to be retreating."
"We confirm that, Aphelion," came the operator's voice. "Local PDF units and the other volunteers are reporting the same thing. Sensors are indicating that the enemy is falling back into orbit."
"Ma'am, do you have any indication as to why the enemy is suddenly withdrawing?" Clank spoke up.
"We've got more fleets coming in, that might have something to do with it," there was a pause and he had the impression that the CINC operator was shrugging. "Right now I need you to link back up with the surviving PDF in the complex and get back topside. We need to make certain that these guys are gone for good."
"Roger that, what's the extent of the damage, anyway?" Ratchet asked.
"Reports are still coming in… it's pretty bad. A lot of buildings are down and most of the military bases around Arcadia City and New Midgar are smoking craters," came the reply "We've got partial blackouts across some sectors of the city as well, and we're trying to reroute power through alternate channels."
"Sounds like it's going to get worse before it gets better," Ratchet muttered. "Pulling back now."
"Laxor, we have managed to retrieve three generators, and the transports carrying them are safely back on their cruisers." A navigational officer spoke up and Ar-Zel nodded his head.
"Good. Get the rest of the transports and fighters secured. Those that cannot find shelter on the escort ships are to move in next to them. Once that is done, extend warp-fields around them and the rest of the fleet is to withdraw one hundred lightyears away from this position. The Dreadnought will followed suit as soon as they have jumped."
As he spoke, the Dreadnought's massive weapons batteries pummeled another hostile cruiser, slicing into its armor plating and shattering it. So far, over a score of enemy ships had fallen prey to his flagship's guns, missiles, and torpedoes. Nevertheless, more ships seemed to be arriving by the minute, and they would not be able to hold this position much longer. Already, the first of the Dreadnought's dual layer shields had been compromised and the enemy task forces were hammering his ship with fire so quickly that the energy sinks could not keep up. He could feel the faint vibrations as a lucky hit occasionally got through the frequency based energy shields and was unable to shake the concern that each one might be the prelude to something worse.
They needed to go, now.
It was with a sigh of relief that the Laxor watched the remaining ships warp out of the system a couple of minutes later. "Escort ships away, sir," a nav officer said.
"Good, follow their example. Concentrate forward firepower and get us clear of the enemy ships, the moment we've got a clear path, jump us out of here!" Ar-Zel barked.
His crew complied. Torrents of missiles, torpedoes, and energy weapons streaked away from the ship, blasting aside a couple of frigates and other ships as the Dreadnought's enormous ion engines sent it streaking away from the battle and the planet. Weapon's fire continued to rake her as the enemy gave a half-hearted pursuit and then pulled back towards the world that they'd been battling over. The Laxor leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as the comforting, familiar sound of his ship rumbling to warp speed filled his ears.
For now, the fighting was over, and maybe, just maybe, those three generators that they'd managed to abscond with would be enough to get all of his ship's communications arrays and sensor suites back up and running. Enough to locate the rest of his scattered fleet, regroup, and plan their next move. He certainly hoped it would be enough, at any rate. He didn't know how quickly the powers of this galaxy could communicate, but he had little doubt that word of this battle would spread and that other planets would soon be on the lookout for his fleets. Even in this new galaxy, it seemed as though war would once again be a constant companion.
Okay, hope I did a good job with this one, and that the combat was exciting and well detailed. I am more than open to constructive criticism and other forms of feedback, as I want this story to be the best that I can make it. If you have any advice or suggestions, I welcome them with open arms.
Until next time, everyone, please stay safe, and have a good day.