5.4
I saw the PCA coming well before they actually arrived. It wasn't difficult; they certainly didn't bother to hide.
No, they flew clear through the skies, above the Outer Shell of the Grids, where anybody else on the planet would have been promptly shot down by the PCA's satellites.
It was one heck of a power move, I'll give it that. Bolts of light falling from the stars like a vibe check from God. It served multiple purposes; on one hand demoralizing everybody else, knowing that the PCA would clip the wings of any who'd dare to fly too high; and on the other providing an uncontested corridor that provided a perfectly safe space for the PCA to transport themselves as quickly as they wanted, which gave them damned good time for their strategic movement.
But, I digress.
My cameras caught sight of the transports when they were only minutes away, careening across the uppermost edge of the atmosphere where there was effectively little air that would slow them down. Their descent was a harsh thing, wreathed in fire from the friction until they finally turned their thrusters around and started deccelerating at a pace that would have killed a lot of unaugmented pilots. They went straight to the underside of Grid 339, flying right into the open docking sector surrounding the main tower as though they owned the place.
There were three transports, and two helicopters. The helicopters took point, while the transports opened up and disgorged a horde of machines. My numerous cameras kept watch, and evaluated.
It was, for the most part, a relatively standard investigation squad. A pair of AH12s, for dealing with the particularly belligerent; a dozen AM14 Sentries, PCA advanced MT-equivalents, that were equipped with a considerable array of weaponry, from lasers to missiles to grenades, with one of them even carrying a flamethrower; and finally a swarm of unmanned, autonomous weapons, which were a grand total of forty AM01 Repairers, the small, crablike drones carrying handgun equivalent weaponry, and twenty AM18 Auxilia, the new disposable Light MTs.
The total number of machines was seventy four. The total number of Humans, only sixteen. For a squad whose only real purpose was to investigate, smash the small problems, and call in backup for the bigger problems, that was more than enough to get the job done.
At least, on any day other than today.
"This is the Planetary Closure Administration!" One of the AH12s broadcasted, filling the airwaves with an impossible to miss signal. If, somehow, you did happen to miss it? PCA records stated that it had happened, and therefore missing it wasn't a good enough defence. "A mandatory inspection is now taking place. This facility will be investigated. Noncompliance will be regarded as hostility, and you will be treated as such." Read: If you don't do exactly what we want, we'll shoot you. "The PCA makes no exceptions."
Ah, how generous the PCA is. 'We're coming in and we're going to blow up all your stuff and we don't care what you think about it.' Truly, they had a way of making things very straightforward and uncomplicated.
I powered up a laser emplacement.
Now, I should be clear here. The PCA had made a mistake in their choice of landing zones, but I'd be saying the same thing no matter where they had chosen to make their entrance. With that in mind, the exterior underside docks of the Grids were wide and open, with plenty of space to maneuver, with walkways, bridges, cranes, and all sorts of other paths providing potential routes through the area. Upsides to that area was that there were basically no directions you couldn't go. Downsides to that area was that there were basically no directions you couldn't go. Offences and defences could both occur from any vector and location.
And I had been here a lot longer than they had.
The laser emplacement began to charge.
"Energy surge- Code 15! Evade!"
And with that, all hell broke loose. The squads scattered, the pilots well trained and the autonomous machines more than capable of reacting in time.
It didn't help very much.
The laser bolt went clean over them, straight into the thruster of one of the three transports that had brought them here. My aim was excellent, and the bolt had neatly gone straight into the thruster nozzle, flash-heating the interior well beyond anything it had ever been engineered to take.
The entire thruster popped, plasma and coolant spraying into the air. The sudden imbalancing sent the transport into a spin, and though the systems tried to bring it under control, it wasn't able to do so before it spun into a second transport.
Both of them went down, neither of them even remotely prepared for the collision. It was a bit of luck for them that they hit the platforms nearby rather than careen off the edge and then have a multi-kilometre long drop to the surface.
The AH12s didn't wait, both of them boosting upwards to gain a bit of height. Twin scan pulses rang out, raking over the docking bays.
I would have given a lot to see their faces in the aftermath. The sheer number of contacts that must have returned would have made them hilarious to see, I'm sure. Alas, I simply had to content myself with imagining it.
I sent more commands, and the area really started to come alive.
"So many- Code 16!" One of the pilots called. The AH12s split up, weapons beginning to spin up. One of them shot a barrage of missiles towards the laser emplacement, which had just begun its second charge. The missiles hit without problem, and though the front plating weathered the strikes as much as it could, it wasn't enough.
It didn't matter. By then, other emplacements were already active and acquiring targets.
A returning barrage of missiles fired from multiple locations. Both AH12s went into evasive maneuvers, flares firing as they did. It only helped a little, drawing away maybe a third of the missiles- but that was nowhere near the entirety of the firepower that was starting to go in their direction.
"We stepped straight into a fortress!" One of the Sentry pilots shouted. "All units, find cover! Lieutenant, Code 79!"
"Contacting the System now, sir!"
The drones started moving, most of them boosting away. Most of them promptly ate shit from whatever gun happened to be pointing at them, but it at least brought enough time for the piloted mechs to duck into cover. Some of them picked a wall to hide against, some of them chose to use the now crashed transports that had brought them here in the first place, and some of them elected to use the various shipping containers in the area.
It only helped a little. As I had said, I had been here for a lot longer than any of them had. Preparing to flush them from their cover was as simple as marking their coordinates for bombardment.
The two AH12s, on the hand, were now enjoying the wonderful realm of bullet hell. The missile streaks didn't end, a new set firing off right as the last one ended. The AH12s could handle short bursts of dodging perfectly fine, but the kind of maneuvering that would have been required to dodge all incoming fire in this environment was well beyond them.
One desperately tried. The other, an undoubtedly more experienced pilot, focused instead on spreading out the damage as much as they could, not letting any firepower concentrate on their frame, all the while returning fire with the AH12's missiles and gattlings.
It was the more inexperienced pilot that made a mistake first. Continuous hits built up strain on the Attitude Control System, and so, trying to alleviate that, the pilot elected to boost upwards, where they would normally be outside of FCS range.
But this was a Grid, and there were weapons at every elevation. The only thing this stunt did was expose them to even more of them.
Missile strikes quickly overloaded the ACS, and when the system tried to stabilize, it became very predictable- and even more vulnerable.
A wall of firepower was promptly pointed directly at the AH12. Kinetic rounds slammed into the vulnerable joints, laser bolts burned and melted thrusters and weapons, but worst of all were the missiles that rained from above, lined up squarely with the rotor housings. Those slammed into their targets in a stream, one after the other in very short order- and, inevitably, even the extremely durable metamaterials the PCA used to make these absurdly large helicopters work had to give way.
The noise of shattering metal was not audible over the continuous explosions, but the consequences were readily apparent nonetheless. One rotor broke apart, the helicopter blades flung away, and the entire machine tipped sideways as it was unbalanced. The ACS, already overloaded, couldn't even try to fix it, and the machine plummeted downwards.
It was completely upside down by the time it smashed into the ground- directly into one of the weapon emplacements, as it happened.
Hah... That's really annoying. Well, fine. I have got plenty to go around, and it's not like I'm going to run out any time soon.
The other AH12 was smarter. When it needed a moment to breathe, it went down instead of up. I did still have guns on the undersides of each level, but not nearly as much, and since the levels mostly widened as they got further down, there was significantly less overlap in their fields of fire. Not zero, but at least enough to not be an instant death sentence for something as heavily armored as an AH12.
As for the MTs and drones... Well, they had no good options.
"Missiles incoming!"
"We need to find vertical cover!"
"We'd have to go through the cargo sectors for that, and they're full of guns!"
"Everywhere is full of guns! Get moving!"
They were caught out of position, with bombardment ready to go the moment they held still for more than three seconds, couldn't make use of much of any of their vertical mobility without getting shot out of the sky, and had no real air support. All of this combined was known tactically as utterly fucked.
Nevertheless, they didn't give up. The Auxilia and Repairers died in droves to keep the Sentries alive, baiting as many shots as they could while the rest of the group hauled ass towards one of the relatively covered sections, a tram unloading dock.
'Relatively covered' were the important words there. While the structure of the loading dock itself blocked a lot of firing angles, it didn't get all of them, and it also didn't count against the weapons I had inside the loading dock.
Which they just ran into.
"What?! Emplacements inside the cargo dock!"
"Launch missiles now! We need a hole, and whatever's in there isn't going to be as bad as whatever's out here!"
"The system has given a verdict! Support is on the way!"
Hey?
"Code 79c is now in effect!"
Hey! That's exactly what I wanted.
Codes 78, 79, and 80 were all the 'support required' codes. 78 was for backup against mobile enemies, 79 was for backup against stationary targets, and 80 was for fleet deployments. The letter afterwards went from 'a' to 'e', representing an expected threat level
What a Code 79c meant in this case was that I was about to have a whole bunch of PCA forces attending this scene. Subject Guard was going to get pulled from everywhere around to drop on this Grid. With any luck, I'll be able to escalate that response over time.
I'll have to keep the escalation going carefully, mind. I didn't want them to just write off the Grid- not yet, at least.
The party had only just begun, after all.