Robotech II: The Sentinels
Rebirth
Chapter 6: In This World and the Next
"War does not determine who was right, only who is left." -Reader's Digest, 1932.
"Janice," Admiral Hayes said quietly. "Can you do an analysis and find the chances of the Invid taking the city?"
"I already have," Janice said. It was the first time Hayes had ever heard her somber. "The chances of an Invid victory are now 95% within the next 3 days."
Hayes fought off the sinking feeling, and strode back towards the massive glass cube in the center of the room that served as a tactical display: they called it 'the tank'. Arrayed around her were the highest levels of command in the REF contingent of the Sentinels: Major General Hutner, commander of aerospace forces; General Grant, commander of ground forces; Bela–newly arrived from leading a hovertank squadron in the fight above–heir apparent to the throne of Praxis and nominative leader of the free city of Eallgrenee.
While the people of Praxis were fighting and dying to secure the last refuge against the Invid on their world, they were hiding in a bunker beneath the palace. Hayes knew that it was necessary, they were the head of the snake, as Colonel Maistroff once put it, and they needed to be protected. She still felt like a coward, though.
"We need to take care of those Invid that are ripping apart the industrial sector. There are residential zones on all three sides," Hayes said. Entire squadrons of Invid armor had appeared out of nowhere and had taken out the city's power grid and were now ripping apart its industrial heart, destroying their ability to make new mecha and weapons. "Colonel Grant, how long will it take you to get the Knights deployed?"
"At least 30 minutes," Grant said. "Although casualties were light, we suffered severe damage to almost all units. The repairs will take time."
"Deploy as many as you can," Hayes said. She looked at the tank. "We'll have to bring the Wolfe Pack in."
"That will leave a vector for the Invid to get into the inner city," Hunter said.
"They're already in the inner city," Hayes said simply, and frowned at the tank. "They're so far away, though… Private Em, sent an APB to all members of the Wolfe Pack-" Hayes turned around and saw Janice's station empty, her chair slowly swiveling in a circle.
"Where the hell did she go?" Hayes exclaimed.
Janice rushed up stairwell after stairwell as she made her way to the surface, eventually emerging in the partially-underground level that had been converted into the palace's motorpool. She opened one of the segmented external doors and rushed out as it ponderously opened. The MODAT-2 (aka Cyclone) was waiting for her, humming with life and ready for combat.
She wondered for a moment if she had summoned it, or it had summoned her. Not for a moment did she consider her connection with the machine anything unusual. She leapt up onto the saddle of the combat motorcycle, and took a moment to ensure that the bio-cell-boosted Gallant pistol she had been practicing with was still in the saddlebag. She also ensured that the missile launchers were stocked with Scorpions; they were.
The headlight of the Cyclone cut a swathe through the darkness of the besieged city; only the palace and GHQ with their backup generators had power. Because of this she saw the Enforcer on her scanner screen long before she saw it with her own eyes. She already had a missile lock and had squeezed the trigger. The Enforcer turned around, and somehow Janice thought she saw it express surprise despite its mechanical uniformity; then the scorpion hit true and there was nothing left but a smoking mound of biometal.
"What the… Admiral, the Invid blips in the inner city are disappearing," Grant said.
Less than five minutes had passed since Janice disappeared; Grants was about to leave to join his unit as they disembarked. The Wolfe Pack still hadn't managed to disengage from the Invid in the outer parts of the city.
"Do we have any camera feeds?" Hayes said, walking over to the tank.
"I think so, those usually have backup batteries… just a second," Hunter fumed, fumbling with the controls of Janice's abandoned console.
Suddenly the array of screens set into the ceiling above the tank switched from tactical displays to live feeds from many different cameras in the industrial sector.
Prominent on many of them were Invid Enforcers, who were now in combat with a rapidly moving transport of some kind.
"What the hell is that thing?" Hayes said,
"Let me get a freeze frame," Hunter said, then a moment later one came up on his computer monitor. Grant hunched down to look at it and squinted.
"Is that a Cyclone?" Grant said.
"It sure looks like it, but that's impossible, we don't have anyone trained on those, even if we were using them in front line combat," Hunter said.
"Interesting that neither of you noticed who is piloting it," Hayes said.
Hunter leaned closer to the image; it took him a few seconds. "Is that…"
"Yes, Private Em," Hayes said, trying not to sound amused.
"She's really got some moves," Grant said, looking up at the monitor. "If Doc Lang knew it could move like that, maybe he wouldn't have canceled it."
"I don't know, I still think it has one too many wheels," Hunter said. "And we'd have to come up with better protection for the rider,"
"She's still going to need backup. Order the Wolfe's Pack to stay put," Hayes said to Hunter. "And once the Knights are ready-"
"I'll go," Bela said. She hadn't said anything since she'd returned. Hayes wasn't sure if it was because of how badly the battle was going, or that her hand-picked squadron had gotten wiped out while Gnea's hadn't sustained a single casualty. It was probably both.
Hayes tried to give her some words of encouragement, but words failed her.
Bela strode out of the bunker without another word.
They began to see the smoke when they were about fifty miles away from Eallgrenee.
"Holy shit," Jack breathed.
Jack, Gnea and Kaelyn were returning to Eallgrenee on surface roads using the only three flashclappers the Oofaran possessed; it had taken a while for Jack and the Oofaran mechanics to get them in workable condition again, so it was three hours after sunrise when they finally hit the road.
The other 74 warriors that Kaelyn promised them were coming through the forest on pack animals. Much slower, but their "power sources" didn't attract the Invid the way the flashclappers did.
"This looks much worse than any of the battles during the initial assault," Kaelyn said. "I think the Invid mean to destroy the city, not capture it."
"That would make sense, they would keep the other cities too scared to rebel," Gnea said.
"That's weird, I can smell the smoke already, like it's…" Jack said, then started flicking switches on the scanner screen. He then veered off the road and across a field. The others followed him.
Eventually they found a pile of burning metal; the fire had spread to the surrounding brush.
"I don't recognize that machine," Gnea said. "Is it some new Invid armor?"
"It isn't Invid, it's Zentraedi," Jack said. "It's a battlepod. Things must be going so badly that the fleet is getting involved."
"That would explain those energy blasts we saw in the sky last night," Gnea said.
The ground shook, their flashclappers bobbed as the ground their repulsors worked against momentarily shifted.
"Shit," Jack said, detaching his wolverine from the side of the flashclapper. "Get ready!"
Jack aimed the gun hopelessly at the mixture of morning mist and fog that hid the owner of the massive metallic footsteps.
Suddenly an amplified female human voice came through the mist. "Jack? What the hell are you doing here?"
On the monitor screen Jack lowered both his weapon and his jaw, and stared dumbfounded towards her Battoloid.
"Karen?" he said.
"Karen, have you found something?" Captain Parino asked on another channel.
"Yes, I think you need to see this," Karen said.
Miriya's red-trimmed Battoloid fell into step besides her as they walked towards the burning wreckage of the battlepod.
"Lieutenant Baker, I didn't figure you for a deserter. How'd you get two Praxians to go with you?" Miriya said.
"I'm not a deserter!" Jack said. "It was our day off, we went on a camping trip! We haven't been able to get back into the city because of the attack."
"You should be ashamed of yourself. You too Gnea, I thought better of you. I can't believe you let your romance get in the way of your duty!" Miriya said.
Karen held back a gasp, but felt herself sinking into her seat.
"You told her?" Jack said to Gnea.
"I had to talk to someone," Gnea said. "We sincerely apologize, Captain Parino," Gnea said.
"And things must be going bad if you're adding a third person to spice things up this early into the relationship," Miriya said.
Karen's mouth dropped open. For some reason this was more shocking to her than all of the carnage she'd seen this morning.
"That's-that's something we should definitely think about," Jack said, turning to Gnea, who gave him a dirty look in return.
Karen scowled; there was absolutely no doubt: they were even acting like a couple.
"So, uh," Karen said, trying hard to sound casual. "When did you two, uh-"
"For fucks sake, Penn; can't you see beyond the end of your own nose cone?" Miriya said. "We need to get back to perimeter defense, escort them into the city, and turn them over to Wolfe's squadron. They can take them the rest of the way."
"Yes, captain, right away," Karen said.
After Captain Parino's alpha switched back to fighter mode and flew away, Karen's transformed into GERWALK mode; the canopy flipped open and she leapt down to the ground.
"I take it the meeting was a success?" Karen said to Jack. She looked flushed; Jack imagined it was the heat of battle.
"You would be right. I am Kaelyn of Oofaran, it is a pleasure to meet you," Kaelyn said, and took Karen in a tight embrace.
Jack looked over to Gnea, who was rolling her eyes, which suggests that Jack's assumption was correct: Kaelyn was hitting on Karen.
"Uh, thanks, I'm glad you'll be working with us," Karen said, then sighed. "If the city survives, that is."
"Yeah, what the hell is going on?" Jack asked.
"The Invid have launched an all-out attack on Eallgrenee. I haven't seen anything this bad since the liberation of Tiresia," Karen said. "There's already a substantial number knocking on the city's door, and reinforcements just keep coming."
"They've tried to overwhelm us with numbers before, and we've survived," Jack said. "In fact it's a pretty unimaginative tactic."
"That was with Inorganics, though," Karen said. "That's another thing, they're fighting differently. They have the independence of mind of the Regess's Invid, but they're coordinating like Inorganics. It's almost like they're being controlled by an Invid Brain."
Jack sighed. "That would make things so much easier, then we could just wipe out the Brian. Unfortunately the Regess's troops don't work that way."
"Who told you that?" Kaelyn piped in.
Both Jack and Karen turned to look at him. Jack felt something surge up inside him. It took him a moment to realize what it was, since he hadn't felt it in so long: hope.
"I'm sorry, what?" Karen said.
"All Invid drones are controlled by Brains. It is true that they can operate independently when they're out of range, but they do so based on instructions that were given to them the last time they were in contact with a Brain," Kaelyn said. "That's why every city needs to have one."
"Eallgrenee didn't have one," Jack said.
"That's preposterous; it's the capital city, they wouldn't skimp on that. You must have just never found it," Kaelyn said.
"This is Skull Leader to all units, begin retreating for rearmament," Max said into his helmet's mic.
He felt filthy and his helmet channeled up the B.O. form his flight suit. It had been a very long day. Skull and Red Squadrons had been dispatched to hold an outer perimeter on the west edge of the city to stop reinforcements from joining the Invid armor that had already made its way into the city.
After a few hours of fighting they had been joined by a squadron of battlepods and a squadron of power armor from the Zentraedi ships in the fleet. They were all but wiped out this time. This more than anything else made Max worry that their cause was hopeless. The Zentraedi had been fighting the Invid for most of their existence; they had taught the REF to fight them. If they had been wiped out like this, what hope did their forces have?
"HQ, did you copy? We are retreating to refuel," Max said.
"We copy, Skull Leader," a familiar voice replied, and not the chirpy voice of Janice he had expected.
"Rick?" Max said after a minute.
"Affirmative," Rick's voice said over the comm.
"Isn't com-duty below your paygrade?" Max said.
"Don't ask," Rick grumbled.
"Anyway, we should return to the front before the next wave arrives. Red Squadron should be able to handle it."
Then something occurred to him. "You know, don't you think it's strange that we haven't seen any scaeths?" Scaeth was the word the Praxians used for the "clamshells", the Invid troop carriers. It was so named because the shape reminded them of part of the female anatomy.
"Now that you mention it, that is pretty strange," Rick said.
Something clicked in Max's brain. "No it isn't! I think I figured out what their strategy is! We haven't been able to figure out what their overall plan is because we're thinking in terms of military strategy… Sorry, human military strategy. Have you ever seen bees swarm?"
"I suppose that makes sense, but why wouldn't they swarm in troopships? There are Enforcers walking across half-a-continent to get to us," Rick said.
"Because a troop carrier can be taken out by our fleet, whereas we only got like, what, 10 percent of them when we used the main batteries?" Max said.
"Something like that," Rick said. "But swarms spread out to fill the entire city, like the Inorganics do; these Invid are actually acting intelligently and attacking military targets."
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think they were controlled by an Invid Brain: they start acting individually once they are within range of the city. But before that, they rely on their numbers to get them through. These are the lousiest Invid I've ever fought, so that makes sense." Max said.
"You think there's an Invid Brain that we didn't find?" Rick asked.
"It would make things a lot easier, we'd just have to destroy it," Max said.
"I just wish we'd know where to start looking," Rick sighed.
"This is where we leave the road," Kaelyn said.
"What?" Karen said in confusion. "We're still miles from the city limits."
"This is how my people get into the city," Kaelyn said, gesturing to the swamp. Jack followed her gesture, but could only see swamp as far as the eye could see.
"I can't go in there, the ground is so soft the alpha will sink into it like it was quicksand," Karen said. "Why don't I just escort you to the city limits, like Captain Parino ordered?"
"I need to reestablish contact with our people in the city," Kaelyn said. "I'll need to go through the tunnels to do that."
"It would probably be safer anyway," Jack said, and then turned to Karen. "Besides, I think your unit needs you."
Jack had to imagine that Karen looked conflicted, as the cockpit was over ten feet above his head.
"All right, I guess there isn't time to argue," Karen said. "Take care, all of you."
Without another word she transformed into GERWALK mode, leapt into the air, and glided away.
They traveled for almost a mile into the swamp before the mound became visible. As they got close the ground curved downhill, and the mound became a small plateau. As they got closer Jack saw that there was an entrance cut into the side, reinforced with wooden beams as if it were a mine.
"Can we take our flashclappers in there?" Gnea said.
"We'll have to go single-file, but yes," Kaelyn said. "The tunnels were natural to begin with, the city was built on a swamp after all, but we've widened and reinforced them over the years so that we can get cargo in and out."
"I'll take point," Jack said.
Kaelyn looked at him in confusion. "But I'm the only one who knows where we're going."
"You'll have to forgive him, Kaelyn, it's a male thing," Gnea said.
"Ah, I see. Regardless, I'll take point," Kaelyn said.
"I'm second, then," Jack said.
"Uh-uh," Gnea said. "My backside is the only one you're going to be staring at."
"Just a minute-" Jack said.
"Forget it, Jack," Kaelyn said. "There's no point in arguing with her; she's just like her sister that way."
They got into formation, switched on their headlights and headed into the cave. After a few minutes the cave widened, and they switched to a triangle formation. This ended up saving them, as Jack's view was unobstructed and he saw the drone before the others did.
"Enemy at 10 o'clock!" Jack shouted, he pulled the Wolverine off the side of his flashclapper, flicked on the laser sight, and shot the Invid warrior between the eyes, its head exploded and it fell to its knees, and then flat on the ground. Its hand weapon clanked on the ground several times before coming to a rest.
"What the hell was an Invid drone doing down here?" Gnea said.
"We've been running into a couple here and there, even after you drove them out of the city," Kaelyn said.
"There's something else that's weird, that wasn't a normal Invid drone, it had a cobra-like head, just like Tesla. I think it was one of their scientists," Jack said. "The only place I've ever seen those is… Oh my god… Do you think the Brain is down here?"
"It very well could be," Kaelyn said. "But there are hundreds of miles of tunnels, and my people haven't come across it so far."
"If I can get to the sensor logs in GHQ, I think I can narrow it down," Jack said. "We should probably check in anyway."
"I suggest we split up, then," Kaelyn said.
"But I wanted to install you in my mansion, then you could start using it as our headquarters," Gnea said.
"I need to gather up my people first," Kaelyn said.
Gnea chewed her lip as she thought it over. Then she took a silver bracelet off her left wrist, it had a bright blue stone set in it, and handed it to Kaelyn. "Show this to the leader of my household guard, she'll give you whatever you need."
"And if there's anything your people can do to help us out…" Jack said
"I'm sure they already are. We won't work out in the open, but we'll help every way we can," Kaelyn said. "I'll lead you to the exit that's near your headquarters."
Colonel Wolfe was running low on power. He'd switched from Gladiator to Battoloid mode early on, once he realized just how large the Invid swarm actually was. The beam rifle was weaker than the turret cannot, and had to be aimed precisely, but Wolfe was a sharpshooter in the firing range, and those skills transferred over to his robotic avatar.
He was going to have to switch places with one of the tanks in the rear guard and return to HQ to refuel. He signaled Wolfe-28.
"This is Wolfe Leader, requesting relief," Wolfe said.
An agitated, breathless voice responded. "We kind of have our hands full back here, Colonel. Invid armor appeared out of nowhere and began attacking us."
How the hell had that happened, Wolfe wondered.
He switched frequencies. "HQ, has there been a breach in the perimeter?"
"Negative Colonel," a male voice replied.
"...Rick?" Wolfe asked.
"Don't ask. We are registering fire behind you, but there are no perimeter breaches. We've been seeing this all morning, Invid armor appearing from nowhere," Rick said.
He signaled to two of his men to fill in the gap he was leaving in the perimeter and rushed to the back ranks. There were only five Enforcers, but the lesser trained soldiers, most of them Praxians, were having a hell of a time taking care of them.
Wolfe took five quick shots, aiming for the center of mass. He drove a hole through one of the enforcers, missed another, hit the arm shield of yet another, and blew the legs off two of the others.
This ended up helping his comrades as it limited the Enforcers mobility and made it easier for them to skrag. After five minutes of fighting it was over.
"Wolfe-28, take my position at the front, it's between Wolfe-2 and Wolfe-8," Wolfe said.
"Yessir," came the reply, and her Battoloid changed to tank mode and was off like a shot.
"The rest of, spread out, we need to see if there's any more of them," Wolfe said.
A chorus of "yessirs" followed.
Wolfe switched over to tank mode–it was quieter–and started to move through the deserted marketplace that had become a warzone. There were overturned stalls, destroyed buildings, huge craters in the street and on the sidewalks. What had once been a park was nothing but burnt-out stumps. The fragrant red grass had been spared, however.
Wolfe yanked on the brake as he heard a familiar clanking noise. He brought up the auditory sensors on his screen and determined that it was coming from 45-degrees to his right. He hid his tank behind a building and jumped out, leaving it running just in case he had to make a quick getaway.
He peered around the edge of the building, although he heard the clanging, there was no Enforcer in sight. After a moment the Invid armor emerged through a jagged hole in the side of a building. It took to the air and headed in the direction of the main contingent of the Wolfe Pack.
What was an Enforcer doing inside a building? It might have been doing house-to-house searches, but that would only make sense if the Invid took prisoners, and they didn't.
Wolfe checked to see if the coast was clear, and then hoofed it across the street and into the hole that the Enforcer had emerged from. It was dark inside; he pulled the flashlight from his utility belt and gasped in horror at what he saw: a pile of bodies.
But wait, all of the bodies were wearing… swimwear? He walked closer and inspected them, and breathed a sigh of relief: mannequins. This had been a clothing shop, it looked like. There was a large hole behind the counter which revealed the backroom, which had a suspicious-looking hole in the floor.
Wolfe started to make his way towards the back, but stopped to look at a mannequin. It was wearing a blue one-piece that looped through the legs and tied around the navel. Wolfe imagined what Minmei would look like wearing it, and felt a little euphoric. He shook his head to clear the thoughts out of it, and made his way through the hole in the back room.
He peered down the hole in the floor and was shocked; there was some kind of basement under the main level, but its floor had been completely ripped out, exposing a tunnel beneath the store. From it came the familiar clanking noise, but far off.
That was how they were doing it, Wolfe realized. He took out his communicator, but then thought better of it. If this was where the Invid were coming from, it wasn't a good idea to stick around. He would order a sentry to stay here and snipe them as they were coming out; a concept better known as "camping".
Wolfe jumped back into his tank and plugged in his helmet com.
"HQ, I know how the Invid are getting around the city."
GHQ was as busy as a beehive. Soldiers were running around, mecha was going in and out at a rapid rate. Jack and company came in through the motorpool entrance, since it was the closest to the point where they came out of the tunnels. Jack was sure that every mechanic they had was at work servicing mecha. Both the mecha and the people were in bad shape.
"Gnea, where the hell have you been?" a voice said.
They both turned around and saw Bela, clad in a REF doublet and helmet, standing next to a beat-up hovertank.
"We were-" Gnea started.
"I don't care," Bela said, taking off her helmet and tossing it to Gnea. "Take back your unit, they're going to be used to patrol the inner city."
"Has the inner perimeter been breached?" Jack asked, aghast.
"No, but they're in the inner city anyway. I don't know why, don't care why, we just need to kill them. By the way Jack, get your ass over to the bunker, General Hunter needs you," Bela said, and then walked off without another word.
"I better get back to my unit," Gnea said.
"I'll start checking the sensor data," Jack said.
They kissed.
"May this not be the last time we kiss," Gnea said.
"Amen to that," Jack said with a grin.
Jack ran all the way to General Hunter's office and was relieved to see that his passkey still worked. He sat down at the terminal and quickly realized that this wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. He pulled up the current sensor data, and there were Invid power signatures all over the city.
He was also aghast at how much damage the Invid had done. The western side of the city's perimeter has been completely trashed, but the industrial area looked like it had been hit by a bomb. The display also showed that all of the city's power plants were offline or destroyed.
He looked around the lighted room, and then back to the terminal screen. They must be running off a bio-reactor, possibly the one from the GMU, which he saw the disassembled frame of in the hangar.
Jack felt helpless; what the hell was he going to do? One more soldier wasn't going to make a difference in this fray. If only he had a way to find the Brain, then they'd have a fighting chance. But he couldn't do that because the Invid armor made it impossible to find anything suspicious on the map. If only they'd gotten back before the assault had started…
Jack sat up. Of course! There were archives of sensor data; they kept logs for about a month, he thought.
He quickly searched and found that they had records of log data going back 3 months. He loaded the oldest record he could find, and switched it to composite city view, and it stood out like a firefly in the night.
It was a park that was not far from where he was sitting. In fact he remembered that's where they had played when Rick had tried to teach the Praxians baseball; and the right-fielder had shot in the back a runner trying to steal second.
He zoomed in on the area and was shocked to see a marker in the shape of an Invid troopship superimposed over the park. That simply meant that the signature matched the profile of that ship. There was a yellow pushpin next to it, Jack hovered the cursor over it. A message popped up.
Sensor ghost. Unrecovered Invid fuel cell?
Jack pulled out the special communicator that Kaelyn had given him and hailed the Oofaran leader. A moment later she responded.
"Have you made it to the mansion yet?" Jack asked.
"Just about there, what's up?" Kaelyn asked.
He hit the Hard Copy button. "There's something I need to show you, I'll meet you there."
Bela had arrived back at the command center just as they got the report from Colonel Wolfe.
"The Invid are coming out of a tunnel underneath a building. I suspect that's how they got into the industrial district too," Wolfe was saying.
Hayes looked up and saw Bela. "Bela, do you know anything about tunnels underneath the city?"
"Yes, the city is built on a swamp, there are tunnels everywhere, it's also where we used to bury our dead in the early days of the city," Gnea said.
"Is your squadron out of commission?" Hayes asked.
"No, Gnea took back control of it, she checked in about 10 minutes ago," Rick called from his station.
"Put me through to her," Hayes said.
"Squad leader reporting," Gnea said over the com.
"Gnea, we believe the Invid are getting past our perimeter guard by using a network of tunnels beneath the city," Hayes said.
"Yes, I'm aware of them," Gnea said.
"Do you know of any entrances in your area?" Hayes said.
After a moment Gnea replied "Yes", in a tone that suggested that Hayes had asked a stupid question.
"Take your squadron down into the tunnels. Go on foot if they won't accommodate your hovertanks," Hayes said.
"Understood, getting right on it," Gnea said.
Gnea's squadron was less than a mile away from GHQ when she'd gotten the call. She could see the hangar from where they stood. The entrance to the tunnels was only about fifty feet away. She started wondering about fate.
"Turn on your headlights, girls, we're going underground," Gnea said.
"Yes, I know that place," Kaelyn said. "There's a giant cavern under that park. We used to use it for storage, but the Invid put some kind of installation around that area, and we kept running into their patrols in the tunnels so we abandoned it. We haven't bothered going back since you took over."
"That has to be where the Brain is," Jack said.
"I agree, they were doing some tunneling of their own around there, we thought it was mining at first. I really have no idea what it was they were doing," Kaelyn said.
"Is there an entrance to the tunnels near here?" Jack said.
Kaelyn took a pencil and made a mark on a warehouse less than a mile from the space.
"There is an entrance in the basement here, we stacked some boxes in front of it, you can't miss it," Kaelyn said.
"How many of your people were you able to find?" Jack said.
"There were only two of us left, and I got both of them," Kaelyn said.
"Not enough to strike this place?" Jack said, tapping the map.
"No, we'd have to wait until the strikeforce gets here this afternoon," Kaelyn said. "And even then we'd need ordnance, you can't take out an Invid Brain with just hand-weapons; and I bet you it's well protected."
Jack gritted his teeth and clenched his hands into fists, which he pushed into the table. There was really only one thing he could do at this point, as much as he didn't like it. He rolled up the printout and ran out the door.
"Baker!" General Hunter said in shock. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Gnea and I were out of the city camping, and we had a hard time getting back into the city once the battle started, but that isn't important right now," Jack said.
He ran to the conference table and unrolled the printout.
"The Invid's attack plan suggests that they are being controlled by a guiding intelligence. In other words, an Invid Brain-" Jack said.
"We-" Hunter started to say.
"Which means that there was always a Brain in this city, we just never found it when we took the city. Since the first day we set up the scanners we've been picking up a large Invid power signature from the park near GHQ. Now underneath this city is a network of tunnels," Jack said.
"How did you-" Hayes started to say.
"And in that system of tunnels there's a giant cavern underneath that park. Some kind of special project involving digging was going on during the occupation, and no one knows what the Invid were doing. But when we came in, it was just a park, right? I think they made an underground command center there, and the Brain is down there, controlling all the Invid up here. It won't be the same as with the Inorganics, but if we kill the Brain they'll be unable to coordinate and it will become easier to fight them," Jack said.
He pointed to the mark that Kaelyn had made. "In the basement of this building is an entrance into the tunnels, if we send a force down there, we can take it out."
"How the hell do you know all that?" Hunter asked.
Hayes walked in-between them, over to the tank. She zoomed in on that area in the tank. The phantom image of an Invid troop ship floated beneath the surface of the park.
"There is a definite power signature there, and it's too powerful to be part of a wrecked Enforcer or anything like that," Hayes said.
"That could certainly be the case," Hunter said, trying hard to contain his anger.
"Contact Gnea, send her this map and see if she can find a way there through the tunnels. If not return to the surface and enter through the point Jack indicated," Hayes said.
After he did so, Jack reluctantly walked over to his boss. He had to ask, even if he already knew what the answer was.
"Permission to join her team, General," Jack said.
"Denied!" Hunter said.
Hayes looked askance at Hunter, but said nothing.
Hunter stood up and shoved the headset into Jack's hands. "You take the com."
Jack felt himself being ripped apart. He hadn't wanted to tell them about the Brain, he'd wanted to take it out himself with the Oofaran. But he knew that only the REF would have the firepower necessary to get the job done.
"Okay," Jack said, taking the headset. "Sir," he quickly added.
He sat down at the seat the General had just vacated, and found it uncomfortably warm.
"That's it?" Hunter said, baffled.
"Yessir, as long as the Brain gets taken out, it doesn't matter who does it," Jack said.
"It seems you've grown up a little. But I'm not going to forget this; once the city is safe we're going to have a long talk about what happened these past few days," Hunter said.
"Yessir," was all Jack could come up with.
Jack was sorting com-traffic for about five minutes when the message came in.
"This is Skull Squadron, we have been overwhelmed and are falling back to the city limits," Max's panicked voice said.
Jack turned and looked at the tank, Hayes was standing before it and said what he was thinking.
"Along with the retreat of Red Squadron, the outer perimeter has collapsed. The forces entering the city should quadruple within the next hour," Hayes said.
"And there's more on the way," Hunter said somberly.
It was so quiet that Jack could hear the ringing in his ears. It was over, there was no possible way they could defeat the Invid force that was bearing down on the city.
"Janice was wrong," Hayes said. "We didn't even make it half-a-day."
Jack was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't hear Hunter the first time he said his name.
"Jack! Look alive there!" Hunter said.
Jack looked up, Hunter was standing above him, a haunted look on his face.
"If you can manage to catch up with them, you can join Gnea's squadron," Rick said.
"What about the com-station?" Jack asked.
"Don't worry about it, it'll give me something to do," Hunter said, leaving unsaid: until we all die.
Jack handed him the headset. He dashed out so quickly that the soles of his boots squeaked.
"This isn't my tank," Jack grumbled.
"No, your old one is out with the Wolfe Pack," Sparky said. "But this one is even better, it's the new model: made right here on Praxis. Look at that blue trim, ain't it a beaut?"
"Yeah, swell," Jack said flatly.
"And of course it's the officer model," Sparky said.
Jack furrowed his brow, and then realized to his astonishment that he was an officer, and had been for half-a-year.
"Say, we've been hearing things, is it true that Skull Squadron is retreating?" Sparky said. "Because we just patched up Red Squardron, and they're helping out the Wolfe Pack…"
"There's nothing to worry about," Jack said. "The outer perimeter is secure."
Sparky let out a sigh of relief. "I'm glad to hear that."
"Off I go!" Jack said, twisting the throttle and barreling out of the hangar like a bat out of hell.
This was the worst day of Karen Penn's life, and that included a day wherein over seven-and-a-half billion people had died. She had been at a university in the middle of nowhere that hadn't even been touched, she hadn't seen anyone die.
But not today; Monroe, Cassidy, Grey, Wagner, Logan: people she had been at the academy with, people she'd flown with and whose lives she had saved dozens of times, just as they had saved hers… They were all dead.
Red Squadron has fallen back, with Skull squadron covering their retreat. Of the 24 souls that had gone into battle more than a day ago, only five remained, including herself and Captain Parino.
They had switched to Battoloid mode and filled in the gaps in the Wolfe Pack's defensive position; the Hovertank squadron had been equally decimated.
Skull Squadron had since joined them, suffering an even greater defeat, reduced to two Alphas: Captain Sterling and Lt. Graves.
Shortly after Skull Squadron had arrived, the wave of Invid armor they had fled from came with them. The REF forces appeared to be making headway at first; the Hovertanks had been designed to fight ground assaults, whereas the Alphas were primarily designed to fight in space. But, as always the sheer number of Invid mecha overwhelmed them.
While Karen was destroying Enforcer after Enforcer, a mecha that was out of her line of sight blew off the bottom part of her Battoloid's legs with a stream of plasma discs.
Karen quickly switched the mode lever over to Fighter, but nothing happened.
She then tried GERWALK mode and breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the usual clank-clank of the transformation sequence. She popped the canopy and hit the ground running as Invid fire destroyed what was left of her Alpha.
After she ran what must have been a mile, she turned around and saw that the Invid weren't following her. They were instead engaging the mecha that could still fight. There was plenty of time to deal with her later, she guessed.
She went into a bombed-out house that was missing its roof and sat in a corner and listened to the firefight going on less than a mile away. She took her communicator out and prepared to call HQ to request a replacement mecha; but she just stared at the communicator for a very long time.
It was over; they had lost; there was absolutely no doubt of it now. The Wolfe Pack wouldn't last another hour at this rate; and the only thing they had to defend the inner city were Praxians who didn't know how to pilot their mecha, and those armed with hand weapons.
She dropped the communicator and grabbed her knees, and clenched her eyelids together as hard as she could.
All that remained was for the Invid to find her, or a stray shot to destroy the house. It would all be over soon.
"I will not hide here like an Oofaran!" Bela shouted.
"A what?" Lisa asked.
"I am going to meet my fate on the frontlines in battle, as a true Praxian should! Tell your mechanics to have my Hovertank ready!" Bela said, and then stormed out of the bunker's command center.
Rick remembered a situation like this, when Minmei had asked him if it was over, if they were just waiting to be destroyed. He had replied that they still had their lives, and they should fight to defend them.
He took off his headset and set it on the console; he had no help to offer in any case. He walked over to where his wife was sitting, her eyes fixated on the holographic tank, which was telling them just how hopeless things were.
"I think it's time that we considered evacuation," Rick said.
"This city has over 3 million people in it, the logistics alone would take months to work out," Lisa said.
"I'm not talking about them," Rick said.
"You can't be serious! The Praxians are our allies, more than that!" Lisa said.
"We have to be practical, Lisa. We were helping the Sentinels because it was better to fight the Invid out here than at home. Our first priority is the safety of Earth, and I don't see how dying here, right now, helps that," Rick said.
"We still have Gnea's squadron," Lisa said.
"That was a longshot, and you know it," Rick said. After a moment Lisa nodded in silent agreement.
"I feel like I'm at the fall of Saigon," Lisa said. "But you're right, start prepping the shuttles and give an Alpha to anyone who can fly it. We'll reserve the shuttles for staff and any refugees who want to come with us. Being Praxians, I don't imagine there will be many of those."
Rick rested his hand on her shoulder. "We did our best."
"It just wasn't good enough."
"Hey Gnea, you having any luck?" a voice said over Gnea's headset.
"Jack? What are you doing on the com?" Gnea asked.
"I've been added to your squadron, I went in through the entrance that Kaelyn pointed out to us, if you lock in on my signal, you should know if you're going in the right direction," Jack said.
Gnea felt her heart fill with joy: she would be going to combat, the best of life, with the man that she loved. She couldn't imagine a more beautiful thing.
She and her squadron had been working their way through the tunnels for the better part of an hour; constantly running into dead-ends and having to backtrack. They were using ground RADAR and GPS positioning to get closer and closer to the chamber where they hoped the Invid Brain was located. They'd run into three of the snake-headed Invid who had all run when they saw them going; they had all been dispatched with.
She set the ground RADAR to overlay the position of Jack's signal; they couldn't get an exact fix without triangulation, but they should at least know if they were going in the right direction.
Gnea hummed in excitement as she looked at the radar screen. There was a clearly-defined set of tunnels between her and Jack, they wouldn't have any trouble at all getting to them.
"Follow me, girls, I've got a better lock-on!" Gnea said; they responded with cheers.
Jack was standing next to his tank when they arrived, and Gnea felt filled with joy. She leapt out of her tank and gripped him in a crushing embrace.
"I was worried I would never see you again," Jack gasped.
"Do you have so little faith in my abilities as a warrior?" Gnea said in a mock-stern tone.
"It isn't going very well up there," Jack said in a pained voice; Gnea imagined him frowning under the helmet of his doublet. "If we don't find the Brain, we're all dead."
"I'm sure your people would leave before that happened, they're very pragmatic," Gnea said.
"They probably will, but I'm not going with them. When I was a child my world slipped away and I wasn't able to do anything about it. I'm not going to let the same thing happen to Praxis. I will die to defend this city and this world," Jack said.
There were murmurs of approval from Gnea's squadron, Gnea felt herself on the verge of tears.
"Come on then, our people are dying while we tarry here," Gnea said.
"Right! We've got a giant brain to kill!" Jack said, and leapt into his tank.
Janice threw her helmet onto the nearest table and made her way to the console that she had abandoned that morning. The command center was abandoned, she had a pretty good idea of where they'd gone.
She gave the tank a somber look, the situation was hopeless.
She took out her communicator and plugged the Y-cable into it, and connected the source end to the console and the other end into her headset.
She pulled up vi on an xterm and quickly wrote a program in straight machine code. It didn't even occur to her how strange it was that she was able to do this.
She ran it, and the screen simply said:
ONLINE
She was now broadcasting on every frequency, and not just the ones that the military used. She also had access to all PAs within the city that could be controlled remotely.
She only wished that she had a better quality microphone for this.
The familiar song started, and she began to sing: "Life is only what we choose to make it, let's just take it, let us be free. We can have the glory we all dream of, and with our love, we can win. Still, we must fight or face defeat. We must stand tall and not retreat. In our strength we'll find the might. There's no fight we can't fight together. All together, WE WILL WIN!"
"What is that?" Gnea shouted to be heard over the music blaring out of their helmet com.
"An old song, and a prayer. Something I think we all need right now," Jack said.
"It's kind of annoying," Gnea said.
Jack shrugged.
They were less than a mile from the cavern by the way the crow flies, but who knew how far away it was with these curly-wurly tunnels?
They turned a corner and to their shock found themselves facing an Invid Enforcer. It seemed almost as shocked to see them, as it didn't move.
Jack pulled the lever to switch to Gladiator mode; Battoloid would take too long. He was already pressing the firing stud when the cannon became active, but he hadn't aimed and ended up hitting the armor in the shoulder. It shot back with a stream of annihilation disks that struck the wall behind them. The tunnel began to shake and rocks fell from the ceiling.
Jack shot again, and this time the aimed shot hit the Enforcer right above dead-center, the place where they'd learned the pilot sat; the armor toppled over and ceased to move.
"Sorcha, do you read me?" Gnea said over their com channel. At least that's what Jack thought she said, it was hard to hear her over Janice's singing.
"Affirmative, commander," the voice of Gnea's second-in-command replied over the com.
Jack turned around, and the confusion disappeared. The tunnel had collapsed behind him, only he and Gnea were on this side of the tunnel.
"Lock onto my signal and try to meet up with us again, we're going to continue on," Gnea said.
"Roger that," Sorcha said.
Jack marveled at how much Gnea's squadron, which was technically a REF unit, had picked up the lingo and mannerisms of Earth soldiers.
They continued on, suddenly the reinforced earthen walls gave away to stone ones, and the tunnel widened.
"This must be what the Invid were doing when they were digging down here," Jack said.
"Good, that means we're getting close," Gnea said.
Suddenly their headlight illuminated a fork in the tunnel. Jack looked at his ground RADAR screen, but he couldn't see anything but more tunnels for both paths.
"We should probably split up," Jack said. "We don't have time to backtrack."
"You will call me if you find it, won't you?" Gnea said.
"Of course!"
"Jack…" Gnea said. "Don't get yourself killed, don't try to be a hero, you already are one."
"I promise, I won't go in without you, but you have to promise the same thing," Jack said.
"Granted. Although our paths now part, I hope that one day they shall cross again," Gnea said.
"What's that?" Jack said, furrowing his brow under the mask of his helmet.
"A prayer, but a real one this time," Gnea said.
As Jack made his way down the tunnel, he worried that he would never see Gnea again. It was strange that someone he hadn't even known a year ago had become such an important part of his life. Once he'd thought that maybe Karen would be that for him, but things don't always end up the way you expect them.
Speaking of that, less than 200 feet down the tunnel, just behind the ground RADAR's range from the fork, Jack emerged into a giant cavern. It was at least 100 feet high, suggesting they were much farther under the city than he had assumed. It was at least half-a-mile in diameter.
Sitting in the center of the well-lit cavern was an Invid ship. It was not, as the sensors had indicated, a troop transport: but it was a drop-ship of some sort. Jack recognized it as the same type of vessel that the Invid scientist drones had used to escape Karbarra after the Sentinels had destroyed the Invid Brain there.
There were four Invid Enforcers guarding the ship, but they didn't seem to have noticed him. Jack tried to find an outcropping or corner to hide in, but the chamber was smooth concrete. He did find a shadow to hide in, and felt stupid as he switched his headlights off.
He hesitated; was he really going to keep his promise to Gnea? Wasn't it a little early in the relationship to start lying to each other? Then he remembered that the inner perimeter was on the verge of collapse, and Invid could, at this very moment, be swarming the city.
"Gnea, I found it," Jack said.
"I copy, be right there," Gnea said.
She emerged from the tunnel a few minutes later, Jack flashed his lights at her, and she joined him in the area of the cave where the Invid lamps didn't reach.
"We need to take the Enforcers out first, I figure if we hit them in Gladiator mode we can take each one out in one hit," Jack said.
"I concur," Gnea said.
"I don't know about getting inside, though, I don't see any hatches," Jack said.
"If we can't find a way in, we make one," Gnea said.
They both transformed into Gladiator mode, Jack lined up the second-to-right Enforcer in his sights.
"Ready, set… FIRE!" he shouted.
The Enforcers erupted in flame; the other two looked at them in confusion, and didn't even have time to turn towards their attackers before the second volley took them out.
They rushed over to the massive ship in tank mode, as it was faster, but switched to Battoloid mode when they reached it. True to her word, Gnea blew a hole in the hull of the ship which they then climbed through.
They were immediately set upon by Invid scientists with hand weapons, but their beam rifles made quick work of them. Jack wondered why there weren't any Enforcers; the hallways were large enough to accommodate them.
They dealt with three more groups of the scientists, the size of the groups growing as they went along, suggesting they were getting closer and closer to the Brain.
Jack experienced deja vu as he turned a corner and once again walked into a large open chamber. The center of the room was occupied by a large glass tube, filled with a clear liquid, within it was the twisted form of the Invid Brain.
"This is what has caused all this pain," Gnea said. "Everyone who has died in this battle, was killed by this… THING."
Jack moved his hand toward the mode switching lever, but it froze halfway there. He thought back to what General Hunter had said about him growing up. He'd wanted to go on this mission because he wanted to be with Gnea… but was that the only reason? Did he seek the glory of being the one who destroyed the Brain?
"This is your shot to take, Gnea. I suggest using the Gladiator cannon, though," Jack said.
Gnea's Battoloid transformed into the one-legged Gladiator mode. She took her time aiming the cannon, and fired. The brain was hit dead center and the nutrient fluid caught fire, the brain writhed in pain even as it fell apart.
Gnea fired again, and screamed so loud that he heard it through the armor plate and didn't need the com. "Fire, damn you fire!"
Jack didn't bother to change form, and shot at the desiccated and crumbling brain. Within moments it was nothing but a black husk crackling in the fire caused by the ignition of the nutrient fluid.
Karen wondered if she was dead; if she hadn't heard the plasma bolt that ended her life. There was nothing but silence, all she heard was the ringing in her ears.
She opened her eyes and confirmed that, yes, she was still alive. She rose slowly to her feet and walked out of the shell of the house and into the street. The dusk had turned the concrete as red as the grass of the backyard.
She walked down the street that she had taken here from the battlefield, and came across the burned hulk of her alpha. She jumped and prepared to run when she saw the Invid Enforcer; but quickly realized that it wasn't moving.
She wondered if this was some kind of trick, and jumped again as she heard a tremendous crash. She turned around and saw that another Enforcer had crashed into a building and totaled it.
Even though the Enforcer was more-or-less intact, it was as motionless as the first one Karen had seen.
The entire city was filled with an unearthly, uncanny silence.
As Karen walked through the streets of the ruined city, she remembered the song that Janice had sung to her weeks ago, when she was on a recon mission and missed her mother.
"You can hear the click-clack of my shoes as I walk across the cobblestone promenade," she sang sadly to herself.
Then she heard it, it began slowly and got louder as it went on. Soon it was coming from every direction.
Cheering.
It was soon discovered that the destruction of the Invid Brain had caused such a shock to the Invid drones that they had either died from respiratory failure, or suffered such horrific strokes that they became vegetables. The end came swiftly. Both Bela's last-resort squadron of hovertanks, and the alphas that had been preparing to escape to space gladly destroyed the stationary Enforcers wherever they found them, and within an hour none remained.
The death toll was horrific, over 30,000 Praxians had died. Proportionally the REF did far worse. More than 80% of the Skull and Red squadrons had been destroyed, and the Wolfe Pack hadn't fared much better. Only Vince Grant's Knight squadron, who had been tasked with protecting GHQ, remained mostly intact. Even the backup Vermillion squadron had suffered a 95% fatality rate, with Rem being the only survivor, and in his case he only survived because his assignment to the STC overrode his reserve station in the squadron, and he spent the battle repairing mecha.
Worse yet was the damage done to the industrial sector and power grid. It was estimated that the city wouldn't have partial power for at least 72 hours, and it would take months to return to full power. All of the factories that made the REF's mecha and armaments had been destroyed. They had run out of parts for most mecha, and abandoned many of them that they were now unable to repair.
Gnea and Jack were treated as the heroes they were; they had explained their absence with the story they had concocted together and stuck to. They had been camping, and the battle made it hard for them to get back into the city. Admiral Hayes and Bela accepted the story, but General Hunter seemed suspicious. But he had other things to occupy his mind.
All strategic assessments agreed on their prospects: it would take them almost a year to get back to full strength. In the coming weeks they would be unable to defend themselves from even a minor Invid attack force, even though the Brain had been destroyed.
As Pyrrhus of Epirus had said at Asculum: they could not survive another victory like this.
To Be Concluded…