Five full hours was a lot of time to set up a battlefield in your favour. The caveat, however, is that this is only true if you have the materials on hand to do so.

We... pretty much didn't. We had a bunch of raw materials, structural plating, some chemicals, an array of industrial tools, and a bunch of laser rifles. That might sound like a lot, but it really wasn't.

Problem; a tram is coming in with an unknown amount of probably-enemies on board. There is... no real solution to this with the stuff I have on hand, unfortunately. Grid 097 was in well established territory, and that meant that the entire transportation network between the Grids looked like it had been developed by someone who built megabases in Factorio. I couldn't cut the lines; they're huge, strong, and there's so many of them that I'd have better luck trying to collapse the whole Grid.

Was it possible to hide? It might have been, honestly. As mentioned, the interior of the Grid is where we had set up, and that place was a labyrinth at the best of times. On long-range, whatever was inside was basically invisible.

On the short-range, though... Well, those types of sensors were optimized for precisely such environments. If they were somewhat diligent, we wouldn't be able to hide activity.

So we did need to prepare.

The problem with that was that there were about a million ways to move around in, on, and through a Grid. Elevators, catapults, walkways, passages... Fortification in this place is all the worst parts of fortifying an urban environment, taken up to eleven because most everything could get at least some short termed flight going.

Basically the extent of what I could was pull some bulkheads into places that would make moderately more inconvenient to move around.

As for the rest of the defence... I used up most of the armour plating I'd made by this point to weld together some very basic physical shields. Big and heavy things that would slow down an MT pretty significantly, but against other MTs, they were worth it for the survivability increase. If they became a big enough problem, there was always the option of dropping them.

Aside from that, I dispersed the maintenance drones throughout the facility. There were plenty of out-of-the-way places to hide those, at least, and when powered down, most active scans wouldn't be able to pick them up against the background.

They'd be good for surprise attacks, at least. If I got really lucky I'd be able to employ their area denial mode. That'd be tricky, though.

Hah...

Nothing to do but wait, now.

An hour passed. Then another, and then another, and then another. The tram alerts came as every hour went, counting it all down for us.

I was able to track them on cameras when they were two hours out. Unfortunately, they were too lowly placed to be able to see inside the trams. To most other sensors I had, they were a blob of heat and electromagnetic fields, low power and wholly indistinguishable.

As they came closer, though, I started to sense more than just that.

I felt the faint buzz at the edge of my mind once more. Coral.

It was... a small amount - a very small amount-, and diffuse, flowing in a small, constrained area. Not one single mass, either. No, it was... more than ten, slightly more than twenty... twenty two?

One of the containers was stable, constrained, and had quite a bit more of it than in all the others, which were in a constant, if irregular pulsing motion.

"What is that?"

It was an unfortunately familiar sensation to me.

"Dosers." I replied. "That sensation is Coral, flowing through their bodies after being introduced into their cardiovascular system." Which didn't bode well, honestly. "Judging by the amount of it, I'd wager that they haven't gotten a complete high in a few days. That stable container must be their supply."

Dosers.

I did not understand Dosers. I had no idea why anybody who saw a substance as ridiculously energetic as Coral would decide to inject it into their bodies. What is it about the glowing red dust that made anybody think it would be a good idea to snort it?

Mealworms were one thing, those were a primary foodstock that many people didn't have alternatives to, but the people who took Coral pure?

I just... I don't get it. Drugs held no appeal to me. Even less so now, when I was the drug they wanted. I'd seen and felt far more than I'd ever cared to know.

"They won't be here for anything good, then."

"Probably not." I sighed. "Though we should double check just in case. You can never be too certain."

The tram continued its approach. It made the transition to the last track it could have taken, picking a station that was as close as you could get to the upper layers without actually being inside the PCA's watch range. The buzzing became stronger, and stronger. The other sensors started to pick up more things. We detected a network, an active one with plenty of chatter but it was closed, encrypted comms. Nothing insurmountable, but time-consuming nonetheless.

They were only a few minutes out by the time we broke the encryption.

"-ection again?"

"Oh, for- Okay. Lis'en. Open yer ears and close yer gob. NOBODY KNOWS, IDIOT!"

"But why not?"

"'S a derelic' Grid! 'Aint no'ody bin there in years."

"I really don't like listening to this guy talk." Ezra stated.

I couldn't help but agree, honestly. How do you slur every word like that? It wasn't even the same slurring consistent slurring, either. That had to be on purpose, right?

"Weh go'in, weh fin' tha dur, we go'on."

It had to be. Right?

The tram reached the station, slowing down with a long, loud groan of metal. With a pneumatic hiss, the doors opened, and-

Ah, fuck.

That's a Heavy MT.

That's a Heavy MT and twenty Light MTs.

That was less than ideal.

Okay. Okay. That's... that's fine. This is fine.

They've got a common colour scheme between them. All darker yellow, with black stripes. The Heavy MT has a big red five pointed star on its armour plating. An established group, clearly.

"I've got ID tags." Ezra spoke.

"Thanks." I said, checking through the public networks I had access to.

I found a match. RLF Public Service Announcements, Doser Gang 'Walruses'. Known to have once committed banditry, murder, theft, destruction of civilian property, and more. A splinter group that had emerged from a larger Doser gang that had been destroyed by the RLF, currently considered a low priority due to not operating in areas with civilian presence. Three notable individuals, but two of them were confirmed KIA. The last one, a self proclaimed 'Boss Karl', ringleader of the Walruses, had an open bounty on his head, and seen to pilot an MT whose specs...

I looked at the ID tag that Ezra had picked up. I looked back at the ID tag specified in the RLF PSA document.

A match.

ID Tag MUSC-TRAC-HEAV-0876-2343-7775, Heavy MT, equipped with a rifle, a laser blade, and a missile launcher.

Mmm.

Well.

"What do we do?" Ezra asked.

"If we had an AC, I'd say that we should smash them to bits." I sighed. "But we don't have the AC yet. They have twice our numbers in Light MTs, and if that pilot is worth anything, that Heavy MT will be worth ten on its own."

Heavy MTs were bigger, tougher, mounted better equipment, and worst of all, usually faster than Light MTs to boot. They were in a sweet spot of current material sciences, where the increased size afforded to Heavy MT Generators and Boosters helped them more than the overall increased mass hurt them.

They weren't universally better, though. Light MTs were still more agile, and much better at operating in tight, close-quarter environments, on top of being significantly less expensive. After that, there control; a pilot good enough to take full advantage of a Heavy MTs capabilities was significantly rarer than what was required to get the most out of a Light MT. There were lots of factors in balancing the cost-effectiveness of Heavy MTs.

Only those first two factors would matter to me right now, though.

"If they're just going to stick up there and go to another tram, then we'll ignore them for now." I said. "It's better than risking everything we've currently got set up."

"Right."

The entire squad of... Walruses... exited the tram, spreading out into a loose group with the Heavy MT at the centre. That spoke of some training, which was even more unfortunate.

As for the MTs... All of them were armed, but five of them were carrying large packs on their back, leaning forwards to counterbalance them. Supplies, it looked like to me. I could see a decent amount of ammo there, mixed in with some smaller crates. One of them was the Coral, that much was obvious, but the rest... food, probably?

There were another five MTs with missile launchers, which looked like fairly standard forwards-faced four-cell launchers. Three of them had some actual physical shields too, which looked fairly used.

As for their guns, it was an eclectic array of physical weapons. Burst rifles, assault rifles, one of them even had a linear rifle.

All in all, it was an undergunned squad of ACs by old standards, but it wasn't that bad these days. It was certainly more firepower than my MTs had.

The squad moved forward, going along the passage line. I followed their chatter as they did, which, for the most part, was just a bunch of addled bandits shooting the shit with each other.

One of them found a route, and they went along it. It was fortunately not one that required them to enter the structure, so that was nice-

One of them stopped moving as they passed the door. A few seconds later, most of the rest did the same.

"Hey, boss? I'm getting some power readings on my scanner."

"Oh dear."

"Oh dear is right."

There was a pause, and then our sensors registered a considerable interference spike as twenty something mechs all simultaneously launched scan pulses.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" That voice in particular came from the Heavy MT, and this time, it was over open comms. It was boss Karl himself. "Seems like we've got some squatters! No idea who you are, but you just found yourself in a world of shit!"

"Seems like we made the right choice prepping for combat." Ezra hummed.

"Indeed."

They turned around, approaching an elevator, but there was absolutely no way I was going to let them have that one. It would have taken them uncomfortably close to my actual setup.

I sent a few commands through the system of the Grid. Somewhere in the walls, one of the maintenance drones yanked on a cable, and right as they arrived, the elevator suddenly lost power, no longer responding to the hacking attempt they were already making.

One of the MTs tried the physical failsafe, but that had rusted years ago. It groaned, and snapped in the MT's hand.

"Well, well! Seems like we've got someone with a pair of braincells to rub together!" Karl laughed. "But it ain't gonna help you! Smell that, boys? It's fear!" He laughed, before his voice cut off and he continued much more calmly on the private comms. "Keep an eye out, everyone, we had no idea anyone was here. Where's another entrance?"

"I think I saw one down on the left."

That was... one of the better options they could have picked, for me.

"Sure we should be hitting this place, boss?"

Yes, please, reconsider. Fuck off and come back when I've got my AC.

"097 is our escape route for the battle coming up. Whoever these people are, they need to go." Karl replied. "Everyone, head left. Don't be sloppy."

Well, that's that then. I'm interested in whatever this battle is, but right now... "Seems they're committing. You ready?"

"Not much of an option either way." Ezra observed, before one of our MTs shifted as he took direct control over its systems. "Preparing the high energy welcoming committee."

"Alright. Let's go."