Chapter 14
Three CH-47 Chinook helicopters had been working on a construction project at the oil rig there in the bay which was used by the Protectorate as a headquarters.
The helicopters had been flying to the PRT headquarters by the bay shore, picking up loads such as bits of framework and sub-assemblies, and flying those to the oil rig, then hovering there supporting the loads while they got welded into place.
The battleship was close in to shore, to shorten the time it took ferries to travel there, and so had had to turn off their normal automatic anti-air defenses, so they would not shoot down the nearby helicopters.
The moment that the troops of Wave 2 exited their vehicles, all 3 CH-47's turned and headed at their best speed straight towards the cloud hiding the battleship.
Two of them had to drop loads to do so, but didn't hesitate, since those had mainly been 'window dressing' anyway - meant to give them an excuse to be flying around.
They were over the battleship in moments, revealing it as the tremendous downdraft from their rotors blew away the cloud of mist which had been hiding the ship.
Doors, ramps, and trapdoors flew open, ropes flew out the openings on the aircraft, and troops began descending before those on the ship could react.
Captain Basil didn't want to kill any members of what passed for the local forces of law-and-order if he could avoid it.
This place was already chaotic enough.
It would only require flipping one switch to re-enable their anti-air defenses and shoot down the helicopters along with everything else airborne in the vicinity.
But there wasn't a need, so he restrained the impulse.
Instead, he used the ship's Telekinesis Console to grab the CH-47 nearest the ship's stern, and flip the helicopter upside-down and hold it that way. Its spinning rotors cut the ropes which had been beneath it, and dropped those troops into the ocean beneath. Boz then moved the helicopter over the oil rig, and set it down there, still upside-down.
Meanwhile, four repair robots that had been doing general maintenance work on the ship's deck and superstructure, received orders, turned as one, and used their own telekinetic tractor beams to push away the central helicopter.
The 2 tons of force each tractor beam could exert, all operating together, violently shoved the CH-47 away.
The troops already descending the ropes arrested their descent, now that they were over water.
The next troops in line did not get the message in time, and began their descent, then arrested that when they saw their allies still on the ropes below them.
A GP robot then used its laser to cut the ropes, and all those troops fell into the water.
That helicopter was not done yet. The CH-47 has very powerful engines, and the pilot used those to move his aircraft back over the battleship despite the force of the telekinetic beams pushing him away.
New ropes were then throw out and more troops began their descent.
Then the 4 repair robots shut off their telekinetic beams, and the CH-47 immediately overshot the ship
The same GP robot used its laser again to cut the new ropes and drop the new troops into the bay as well.
Then the repair robots began, under the direction of Simon, to play with the helicopter.
They started with all 4 combining to exert 8 tons of upward force on the rear end of the aircraft.
As soon as the skillful pilot had compensated for that, they switched that force from the back end to the front end of the aircraft.
The CH-47 almost lost control then, but not quite.
When the pilot regained control and came back towards the ship, the tractor beams suddenly switched from upwards, to downwards force, still on the front end.
They left it that way for just long enough for the pilot to react, and then switched to a sideways force on the rear.
The aircraft almost went into the ocean before the stubborn pilot regained control.
But this had been enough so that he had learned his lesson, and headed back to the PRT building.
In the meantime, the third CH-47 had been able to hover above the battleship while all 50 of its PRT troopers had rappelled down to the deck near the bow of the ship.
Ron had been working the Gravity Control Console, trying to oppose the big helicopter. He had increased the gravity on the CH-47 by a factor of three. It's powerful engines struggled, but held it aloft. Ron had been about to release the extra gravity suddenly, to toss the chopper high into the air, when he'd seen that soldiers were already on ropes rappelling down. If he'd released the gravity suddenly, they'd have been tossed up into the helicopter's rotor blades and killed.
Since these particular soldiers were just doing as ordered, and didn't have any affinity for hurting others, nobody on the battleship wanted to kill them if that could be avoided.
So Ron had left the gravity alone, and had just turned on the ship's security system, set to non-lethal measures, including locking and barring all doors and hatches
The ship's automated firefighting system included many small, turreted nozzles scattered all over. These could switch between several feeding mechanisms, including options for firefighting foam, water, and other things. Ron now switched the nozzles covering the bow, and sprayed chemicals out of them, to form a cloud that would both nauseate and exhaust the PRT troopers when they arrived. Then he added in the reset chemical, since that tended to knock out - though briefly - anyone with much unprocessed stuff in their brain's trauma center.
Then Ron activated the Taser Grid too.
A taser delivers high voltage, low-amperage shocks to a target to overwhelm the body's normal signal pathways and thereby trick the muscles into spasming and locking up.
Ships are made of metal, and metal is conductive. This ship had, through Issac Fields' modifications, composite armor, which means armor made of several layers of different materials. That is mainly used to improve resistance to damage, but that is not the only possible use. Composite armor has some layers that are electrically conductive, and some that are not - also known as insulators. A capacitor is nothing more than alternating layers of conductors and insulators, which you charge up from an electrical source.
So it had been trivial, when changing the armor to a composite armor scheme, to make the ship one giant capacitor. That would have been quite powerful, but harder to control, so Issac had not made one huge capacitor, but, instead, many zones and sections, each of which was a smaller capacitor.
The capacitors themselves were completely 'under the ships skin', so to speak. For safety during ordinary operations, the outermost layer was not charged, except when the security system was on and they chose that option.
But it was charged now, and, as PRT troopers landed on deck and got Tased, it got recharged as needed from the plentiful other capacitors, so it could keep shocking newly arriving PRT troopers.
The troopers had on thick boots with rubber soles, but that proved to be no defense against the Tasers: high enough voltage can arc across significant distance to reach it's target, and this couple inches it needed to go in this case was nothing when compared to how far a lightning bolt can arc, for example.
Some attacking troopers had brought with them equipment designed to breach the battleship's hatches and let the PRT inside the ship. This included half a dozen with backpack-mounted cutting torches.
Ron switched the feed source setting on the firefighting nozzles, and hit those troopers with high-pressure, freezing cold, water. This blasted them off the ship: they went across the deck, over the railing and into the ocean. There, their equipment immediately changed from being an asset, to being a liability, since its weight would cause them to sink and drown. So all those troopers shucked their equipment as fast as they could.
All things considered, the attack that had been planned to be fast, dramatic, and overwhelming - full of rapidly moving figures and explosions - ended up being a lot more like having a load of 50 sandbags dropped on deck from above.
The PRT troopers crumpled on arrival, either unconscious, or too sick or tired to want to move, or with too many muscle spasms from being Tased to be able to control their movements.
Two grim PRT sergeants still crawled forwards despite all that, headed towards the nearest hatch with Thermite tape in their hands.
They got shot with rubber bullets, until they too collapsed, by the GP robots advancing from the rear of the ship to collect and disarm the new prisoners.
Three Protectorate heroes had flown in along with the helicopters.
Dinah identified them as Dauntless, Kid Win on a flying skateboard, and Armsmaster, who was riding a flying version of his motorcycle.
The three "capes" flew in as a group. Their trajectory gradually descended and slowed - aimed to land them neatly on the ship's deck.
That probably saved their lives, since, when they hit the ship's nullify field 50 feet from the hull and lost all power, they were already low and slow enough to hit the ocean rather than the thick metal of the ship's armored deck.
So all three splashed down into the ocean just a few feet short of the ship's hull.
GP robots at the ship's railings threw them life-preservers.
Dauntless and Kid Win accepted those, and were hauled aboard and detained apart from the other prisoners.
Armsmaster clung to his flying motorcycle and sank like a stone with it. With all his armor, he'd have sunk like a stone anyway.
A small monitor in the ship's command center showed that when Armsmaster reached a depth 50 feet deeper than the ship's keel, his armor and motorcycle reactivated. Then the motorcycle demonstrated that it could, for want of a better term, 'fly', underwater as well.
Armsmaster took off on it back towards the oil rig, staying underwater and clearly using some kind of re-breather now that his armor was working again.
He had only had to hold his breath for a few seconds.
The GP robots collected the 44 PRT troopers on the ship's deck, plus a couple dozen fished out of the ocean, and the 2 capes.
The 2 capes went into the ship's brig, but that was nowhere near big enough to hold the rest. So four JATO-assisted Chinese junks were Replicated, floating next to the battleship, and the troopers were placed there, handcuffed, without equipment, and guarded by GP robots, until there was time to decide what else to do with them.
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Meanwhile, the assault on Wave 2's objective had been going on.
The moment the vehicles stopped, the LAV's dropped their rear ramps and fourteen GP robots and all ten Duplicates of Big Tom got out and rushed the building.
The first two GP robots got cut down by a heavy machinegun firing from the second floor of the old hotel.
Beth had been too busy to see it and warn them.
From another second floor window, a man started throwing grenades.
At almost the same time, a flamethrower in the next window fired and bathed 3 more GP robots in flame, though only for a second or two before return fire silenced both it, the machinegun, and the grenadier.
The active foes would have been shot sooner, except that the attacking force was trying to be careful to limit collateral damage, so they used fewer heavy weapons and took more time aiming the precision weapons they did use.
They knew where every mind in the building was, due to Beth's good work on the sensors, but bullets, especially big bullets and cannon rounds, could travel through quite a few interior walls, and they didn't want to take any chances of hitting their own folks, or of bringing the roof down onto them.
The grenades fell only among the leading robots - Big Tom was bringing up the rear.
The robots shrugged off the blasts of mere fragmentation grenades with no damage, as usual.
And two seconds of flame was not enough to do any real damage to the GP robots, so they continued on.
When the first two GP robots entered the hotel's main entrance, that room exploded violently, destroying both robots.
The other robots continued on, unperturbed.
They shoved their way through the wreckage and on into the building.
Big Tom's Duplicates followed.
Twice, submachinegun fire met the robots, and was answered in kind. The incidents were over rapidly.
The assault force scattered to take care of separate duties, with most of the robots headed upstairs to individual, occupied, rooms.
Later, they would search the rooms that Beth had identified as unoccupied. But the first priority was to rescue people and deal with any remaining gang members.
Big Tom's Duplicates surrounded the room where his crew-mates were being held.
The room had held a large indoor swimming pool, as well as a diving pool. Both were now empty. But the diving pool served adequately as a temporary prison.
The room also had several entrances, and 2 guards, one of which was at a heavy machinegun and the other was holding a hostage as a human-shield.
Tom had an advantage, in that Beth had seen the entire room and described it to him.
She was watching the guards in it at this moment.
They had heard the gunfire and explosions, so they knew action was imminent. But they did not know how imminent.
The heavy machinegun was currently aimed at the main door to the south, while the other guard tried to cover, with his pistol, both the rear door to the north, and his hostage.
To the northwest, the pool room had a door to a small, glass-walled exercise room, with some stationary bicycles, treadmills, weightlifting machines and free weights.
To the pool room's northeast was a door to the locker room. Beth said the locker room had a lot of women in it under guard by one guard, but none of them were their crew-mates. So the locker room was a secondary priority.
Big Tom wanted to surprise the guards, as much as possible.
He took a minute to prepare to do so.
It helped that all Big Tom's Duplicates could act with perfect synchronization, since they shared a mental link.
When all the copies of Big Tom were ready, Big Tom-2 kicked in the outer door to the exercise room, and Big Tom-1 charged across the glass-walled room, in full view of the guards in the pool room. Then he dove behind a stack of big steel discs - weight plates for the free-weight sets. Bullets started hitting those plates immediately after he arrived.
The guard with the hostage tried yelling some demands, but nobody took any time to listen to him.
Big Tom-1's charge had been a distraction.
While both guards changed facing to deal with Tom-1, his Duplicates blasted 4 new doors - basically simple archways - into the room using explosives. Besides that, they also burned 2 additional new doors in through another wall, using thermite strips.
Then they all simultaneously charged in all 6 of those new doors, as well as through the main and rear doors.
Tom's Duplicates entered the pool room from all directions at once.
The Duplicates in front of guards, who looked like they would be shot at, dodged and dove for cover.
The others used particle beam pistols and laser pistols - precision weapons - to carefully take out the two guards without hitting any hostages.
They lost Big Tom-1 and 2 - both of whom had had good cover, which proved inadequate versus the heavy machinegun - anyway, before both guards were down.
Worse yet, the hostage took a pistol round to the cheek. That looked really bad, and probably felt even worse - at least before Tom-7 administered morphine - but it was not life-threatening and could easily be fixed up like new in the ship's hospital.
Big Tom's Duplicates were mostly paying attention to the wounded girl when the door to the locker room burst open.
All but Tom-7 spun to face the new threat, remembering there was a guard in there.
"Was" turned out to be the operative word.
That guard had no sooner turned his back on the women imprisoned in the locker room, when those women rose and charged him. He had kicked in the door just as they got to him and commenced to attack him. They jumped on him, clawed at him, bit him, kicked him, and beat him with anything they could get their hands on.
It was over in seconds. It was not pretty.
Then those women - former sex-slaves all - started begging for freedom. They wanted to come with the rescuers and get out of that place.
Of course they were accommodated.
Big Tom's Duplicates cooperated on getting their crew-mates - both those awake and those still unconscious - up and ready to be evacuated, the former slaves organized and seen to, the armored column informed, and everything else ready to get out of the place rapidly.
Other sex-slaves, found by GP robots chained to the beds in the upstairs hotel rooms were similarly checked over quickly and added to the crowd getting ready to leave.
The armored column outside popped smoke grenades to obscure the area, as a precaution against snipers. Then, since all the vehicles could see through smoke easily, they shifted positions on all the vehicles, to further complicate things for any snipers - though there had been none for a few minutes.
The new positions left the 10-wheeler truck right by the front entrance of the hotel-turned brothel.
Big Tom's Duplicates led the girls out in groups of six. Each marched right past the truck and got into an LAV.
Between them all, they just about filled the LAV's, though the wounded girl did still have room to lay down.
Meanwhile, GP robots had been loading the 10-wheeler truck.
The plan was to pretend the rescuees were in the truck, and towards that end, they wanted it loaded down with something, since an empty truck handled differently than a full one.
First, the robots put into the truck 2 different safes they had removed from the hotel. Then went in some cash boxes, ledgers, a few art objects, and a whole lot of weapons.
They found what looked like a medium-sized chemical laboratory too, and, since the truck was big and the former prisoners were moving slowly, took that as well.
While they were loading, the only gunfire was a burst from an LAV's autocannon, which took down Lung again as he'd started to get up.
In just a few minutes, they were ready and moved out again, with the 10-wheeler at the center of the column, surrounded by fighting vehicles and robots, as if it contained a precious cargo. Indeed: they wanted any observers to assume it contained the rescued prisoners. In fact, all it contained was some loot that was ultimately unimportant, plus some GP robots.
The column started retracing its steps, with GP robots and combat robots rejoining it every block and running alongside the moving vehicles.
GP robots started falling behind, since they could only run 20mph and the column could go 35mph, but that was OK: they'd at least complicate any plans an enemy was making.
The two remaining Tiger G tanks led and trailed the column, with the King Tiger in the middle, just in front of the truck.
The lead Tiger G, due to Ron-3's whimsy, had a robot, waving a captured sword, sitting on the tank's driver's hatch in front. It was the three-quarters scale GP robot that had been serving as a loader in one of the two destroyed tanks.
Ron-3 had nicknamed the robot Floyd.
As they passed by, Lung started getting up again and the trailing Tiger G shot him with an 88mm high-explosive round, pulverizing him and putting him back down.
Before they'd gone 10 blocks, Beth warned them.
"The bridge you came over before has a bunch of guys attaching crates to it and running wires between the crates. That doesn't look good."
The original Abe, in the command center, went over and looked at Beth's screen, which showed a visual display of the men moving on and around the bridge in question.
Then he looked at a map of the area.
Then all the vehicles driven by Abe Duplicates changed direction at the next intersection, while Abe explained.
"They are wiring that bridge for demolition. So we're heading now for another, lighter, bridge. It can't support the weight of the 3 tanks, but that means they won't expect us to use it. And we can get the tanks across using the ship's Telekinesis Console. The new route is shorter anyway."
The column arrived at a simple concrete bridge across a small gorge just after Abe finished speaking.
One at a time, the LAV-25s and truck drove across the bridge.
The 3 tanks were lifted across, also one at a time, by telekinesis from the ship.
As the last tank got lifted across the gorge, Ron-9 spoke up. "I looked to see if there was any music in this entertainment center suitable for flying tanks & didn't find any. But I did see it comes with a really funky headset. I wonder why, since it has perfectly good speakers."
A moment later, a giant tooth appeared in the road before them. It pulsed, throbbed, and glowed red, as if in pain.
The gun turrets in the column were pointed in various directions so that, no matter where a threat may appear, at least one turret would already be pointed that way, or nearly so.
So in less than a second, one vehicle machine-gunned the tooth, followed by a 25mm autocannon hitting it a moment later.
But they stopped when they saw the projectiles pass harmlessly right through the 5 foot tall molar.
Then a nine-foot tall dentist appeared next to the huge tooth, and started to work on it with a jackhammer.
The tooth and dentist then vanished, and were immediately replaced by a cherry red Ford Mustang convertible.
In a heartbeat, the Ford Mustang was itself replaced by a Ferrari - also a red convertible.
Then that too was replaced, in rapid sequence, by 4 dogs, 3 women, and a huge plate of bacon 'tacos', with taco-shells made of alternating strips of bacon woven into a sort of sheet. These were stuffed with crumbled bacon, chunks of bacon, and more strips of bacon. Next to the plate was a side dish of bacon-wrapped bacon, and a glass of bacon.
Ron-9's voice cut into the babble of confused voices. He sang, using the "Favorite things" tune from "The Sound of Music" movie, the words "These are a few of my Favorite things!", before explaining, "No need to be concerned folks, all the stuff you just saw wasn't real - it was just my imagination."
He laughed "You see, I was thinking about my sore tooth when I put on the funky headset & the big tooth appeared. The rest was me thinking of stuff I like to think about, to see if it all followed that. It does. Apparently the entertainment center and headset can 'hear' whatever thoughts I concentrate on and project them as realistic images."
"That could be useful," Simon noted dryly.
They discussed it as they drove, and experimented with it too.
That discussion briefly paused as they had to shoot and put down, once again, a pursuing Lung.
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Victor reviewed his tactical deployments with pleasure.
Things looked very good for his side.
His side was, of course, the Empire 88 gang of Brockton Bay, and they were about to ambush a column of armored vehicles run by, as rumor had it, Colombian drug lords.
That same armored column had just taken on the best that his rival gang, the ABB had - it had taken the ABB on, smashed it up good, and was now coming, more or less intact, towards Victor's ambush on it's way back to the sea-coast.
From the reports Victor had heard, he doubted the ABB would ever recover from the beating it had just received. He certainly intended to do his part, as a high-ranking Empire member, to make sure that was so.
Victor was a cape, and his super-power was focused on gaining skills. He'd learned strategy and tactics, and other things, from the best former-military men they could find. And he was getting good value from using that now.
He had noted, on their way in, which bridge the armored column had used, and he'd wired it for demolition, trying to make sure that they'd be seen doing so. He didn't want to blow the bridge up - it was convenient to have it there.
No, he wanted the tanks and other vehicles to change direction and go over a bridge that would be more convenient for Victor's ambushers.
And they had - even though that bridge could not support the tanks, they had found a way across, as he'd expected they would.
And now they were advancing straight east, towards the sea to get back to their ship.
Not coincidentally, that was also straight towards Victor's preferred ambush location.
Preferred was the operative word here - Victor knew better than to depend on anything too much.
So his ambush was mobile.
Victor himself, with a few helpers, was in a former UPS delivery truck, set up as a mobile command post, just over a quarter mile from where the action was expected to be. That seemed like a reasonable balance of safety and proximity - and you had to keep close enough to the battle to have a good understanding of what was going on and so give orders which were both timely and relevant.
Victor's wife, Othala, was also a cape. Her superpower did nothing for herself directly, but she could grant temporary superpowers to others.
So she was on a motorcycle, staying close to the groups which would engage in combat, yet personally staying out of any fighting.
Group 1, which he was calling Valkyrie group, was hidden near the intersection of 19th street and Elm street. They would block 19th just before Elm, to trap the column in place. The block between Elm, at the east, and Birch, to the west, was a long one, between tall apartment buildings made of brick and stone, and should be a good place to trap the vehicles.
The cape Rune - whose power was to touch something thereby placing a glowing rune on it which allowed her to use telekinesis to lift it and move it about - would shove concrete road-barriers called k-rails into the road before and behind the armored column, trapping it in place. She would have to keep at that, since the tanks could possibly climb those, shove them out of the way, shoot them, or otherwise defeat them if they were not continuously being reinforced.
The core of Valkyrie group, was of course, the 2 Valkyries, Menja and Fenja, whose cape powers let them grow into 30 foot tall giantesses with amazing strength and ability to resist damage.
This armored column was dangerous, so that ability to resist damage had been reinforced by Othala.
Othala had a list of powers she could grant, but could only grant each to one person at a time.
So Menja had been granted Invulnerability, but Fenja would have to make do with Regeneration, and the protection that the 4th cape in that group, Stormtiger, could give her.
Stormtiger could control winds - enough to make bullets miss, or even stop entirely. He could do other things with it too, but his focus for this fight would be to stay hidden but keep bullets from hitting Fenja.
Normally, getting Stormtiger to stay hidden would have been difficult, but today he was feeling a little more cautious than usual - a little less full of himself - since, earlier today, he'd been cut up badly and almost killed by lasers fired at him by the same kinds of robots present in this armored column.
Othala had gotten him back in service by granting him regeneration for a while. But he was still more conscious of his mortality than usual.
The cape Alabaster was in Valkyrie group too, included to help out where needed, and then to help motivate the enemy to leave their turned-over tanks. For that, he'd been issued a flamethrower. He'd also been granted, by Othala, the power to fly, on general principles, since that came in handy so often.
Alabaster's cape power was to recover, every 4 seconds, from any damage he'd taken, whether physical or mental. He also felt no pain. So he could take insane risks and do things others did not dare do, like carry a small suitcase full of explosives right up to an enemy tank in combat, and take his time to place the bomb carefully. He had a couple such suitcases ready in case of need.
The plan was for the 2 Valkyries to hide inside buildings - at normal human sizes - until the column had been halted, then grow to giant-sized, which they could do very quickly, rush out, and tip vehicles over onto their sides.
A tank on its side can't move itself or its turret, and might even have its turret fall out - they had some regular gang members nearby to act as snipers in case a turret fell off or the crew got out.
They hoped that, by tipping all the vehicles onto their sides and making them mostly helpless, they could then either make the crews come out, or just wait them out, and then capture the vehicles. Those vehicles, especially the tanks, would make a great addition to the power of the Empire gang.
Menja would start in the middle of the column, tip over the King Tiger, then the 3 LAV-25's in front of it, and lastly the Tiger I leading the column.
Fenja would start at the back end of the column, tip over the Tiger I there, then the 3 LAV-25's in front of it, then smash the 10 combat robots around the truck.
The truck would be trapped between immobile combat vehicles, so would be helpless. And it did not seem like it was any threat in any case.
The armored column was moving faster than their man-shaped robots could go, so a large group of just over 20 of those had fallen behind it.
Group 2, which Victor was calling Wolf group, would take care of them.
The plan for Wolf group was for the cape named Fog to do the obvious and make fog, so the enemy could not see.
Then the cape named Night, who could shift into monster form when she could not be seen, and who saw through fog just fine, would go among the robots attempting to destroy them, or, failing that, at least trip them and otherwise cause them difficulties.
Normally Night's monster form - fast, strong, and armed with plentiful blades and spiked insect-like legs, though no hands - had no trouble taking down opponents. But Victor estimated the blades would do no good against the armored robots, and even the spiked legs, backed up by her enormous strength, might not be enough to penetrate their bullet-stopping armor and defeat them.
But in that case, tripping them would still help while her teammates took out the robots.
And Othala had granted temporary Pyrokinesis - the ability to control and generate fire - to Night, in hopes that would help, even though there were reports that these robots had resisted flamethrowers before.
Hookwolf, for whom Wolf group was named, and who had just escaped from Armsmaster earlier that day, had the same difficulties that Night had with respect to the robots. He normally depended on blades and hooks that would probably not be effective against the armored robots.
The group was named for him, not because it depended on him, but because he also had high rank in the gang.
Hookwolf had been granted temporary super-strength by Othala, and hopefully that would enable him to defeat armored robots, though it would have been more useful if he'd had hands able to use tools.
But, at least, Hookwolf could carry and deliver some explosives - one at a time in his mouth. And several of those had been pre-positioned for him to use.
The explosives would do the job, given the enemy would not be able to see, or stand up long, and would constantly be harassed and confused. Hookwolf and Night were both quite resistant to damage, in case the enemy got any lucky hits.
The last member of Wolf group, Cricket, was likely going to carry that group to victory. She was unimpaired by fog or other visual problems, had super reflexes, and had been granted temporary super-speed by Othala. There was more she could do, but that was enough. With that, and her backpack full of explosive devices, she could run through the group of robots dodging any shots they may take, and deliver a bomb to each of them, then get out before the explosions caught her. Each bomb had little glass pellets full of super-glue along one side, so it could be pressed up against a surface, such as a robot's back, breaking the pellets and releasing the super-glue to hold it there - the British had originally thought that up, and called it Limpet Mines. Each bomb also had a simple lanyard, so it could be slung around a robots neck like a necklace if all else failed.
And not long after Wolf group engaged, the 2 chase groups - Horde 1 and Horde 2 - would catch up.
Horde 1 was 3 busses full of 100 heavily armed regular gang members following the enemy armored column, 2 blocks to the north along 17th street, and a few blocks behind the enemy.
Horde 2 was the same, but 2 blocks to the south, on 21st street.
The 200 or so members of Horde 1 and 2, were carrying, between them, every Panzerfaust antitank launcher Victor could get, as well as most of the gang's Panzerwurfkörper 42 - PWK42 for short: an antitank grenade launched from a flare pistol.
That was almost 80 Panzerfaust, and more than 200 PWK42 - you needed such things to help the regular gang members have a chance when facing enemy capes, so they kept a lot around, just as the other gangs did.
Victor reflected that most capes, including his wife and himself, could be taken down by a simple pistol shot, and light antitank weapons would handle most of the rest. So gangs kept a selection of such weapons, and heavier ones still, just in case, and almost everybody went armed with at least a pistol.
The government liked to claim that private gun ownership was almost extinct, but that was a simple lie to make them feel better. The world was more violent now than before there were capes, and it was more obvious than ever that the police could not be everywhere and do everything. So almost everyone went around armed, in the hopes of protecting themselves at need.
The Hordes were along to help keep the enemy moving, to cut off any thoughts of retreat, and to join in the fray once the enemy was busily engaged with the groups of capes.
Victor was confident his side would win, which was good, since, with this amount of his gang's resources under his control - 11 capes was roughly two-thirds of all the capes in the gang, for example - they were taking a big gamble and failure would bring punishments commensurate with that.
Victor anticipated capturing all 3 tanks, 6 LAV's, the truck, and lots of robot parts, which they could hire someone to examine with an eye towards making more of the same.
The vehicles, once their occupants had gotten out one way or another, could easily be righted again, and may not even need any repairs before they could enter the service of the Empire, adding significantly to the force available to them.
Victor smiled, thinking now may be the time to take over the rest of the city: Victor would recommend that to the gang's leader, Kaiser.
The ABB had been their main rival to that, and they had just been severely mauled by the same vehicles that Victor would soon capture.
The other significant gang in town - the Archer's Bridge Merchants - would not be any match for the Empire, even without the vehicles, if the Empire could really focus its forces on them, which they could, now, with the ABB down.
The PRT and Protectorate liked to make a lot of noise, but at worst they just put people in prison, and it was never long before escape was arranged.
They were no threat, as long as one were careful not to be a big enough nuisance so they felt the need to call in help from elsewhere.
And the Empire was pretty good about that - they could be in charge but not so obnoxious about it as to require the cavalry be called in, so to speak.
Victor watched on his monitors, as the armored column approached his trap. He called in a couple minor refinements to his orders, and awaited his upcoming triumph with great anticipation.