Embers After Flames, Chapter 10.3 (Patreon)

10.3

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I was beginning to run into a problem that I hadn’t been expecting to have. A strange situation, where all of sudden, something that had been true for three decades simply wasn’t anymore.

The whole thing with Balam and Arquebus had increased the pace that we were all moving at, but it ultimately hadn’t changed things, in the end. For five years, the Megacorps had been... steady. Reasonably predictable.

When 621 had showed up?

Things had fucking turbocharged.

All of a sudden, the timelines we’d been operating on had just... gone by. 621 had crashed into this planet and then everything had suddenly started rocketing towards the finish line.

It was, in fact, a bit of a problem. If we’d had six more months, we’d be golden. All the setup that would need to be done would be done, and that would be the end of it.

“Status report?” I asked.

“Things were a bit touch and go, but we’re doing good now.” Seria answered, forwarding the files as she did.

I opened them up, checking through them quickly.

The PCA had hit the RLF hard, as we’d expected them to.

Major assaults on all positions. Assaults on resourcing efforts, assaults on material stockpiles, assaults on production... A major assault on a civilian zone.

I checked that last one first.

Rusty had been there.

I went back to the first on the list, and started going down.

Damage... Severe, but not irreparable. Casualties... low, for the amount of force that had actually been deployed. Still rather high in absolute terms, though. We were looking at a significant proportion of the army rendered incapable of fighting. Pilot fatalities were much lower, thanks to the rather aggressive ejection systems, prepared environments, and policies that valued lives over machines.

Even so, pretty much everywhere had suffered significantly. The Strider was missing a section of its body, the Wall had gained multiple new breaches, the Gallia Dam had its defenses wrecked, and the Civilian Zone had been this close to suffering a breach. One of the Warships had literally landed on the defensive wall, collapsing it underneath its weight, and leaving an open access point.

The RLF was scrambling to get as many things repaired and operational again. In some cases, that meant that they were even stealing PCA equipment and putting it to temporary use, until their own, more familiar equipment could be rebuilt.

It was unlikely to be done in time for the ultimate goal to be completed, but that wasn’t a bad thing by itself.

“Thank you, Seria.” I said.

“You’re welcome.” Was all she said before she went back to work.

Things... were reasonably well in hand, here. The RLF was rebuilding, and hadn’t taken any hits it couldn’t recover from. The loss of life was unfortunate, but also unavoidable. Critically, however, the RLF had also made significant progress to our goal.

Warships had been destroyed left, right, and center, their wreckages now littering the continent. This, in turn, had killed a very significant proportion of their personnel.

Warships did not have the crew that their size might imply, a result of significant automation at every level, but they could still go up reasonably high. After that, there were all the piloted machines that had been destroyed, and while those were only ever a single pilot each, the number of candidates wasn’t high, and the number that had been deployed was enough to reap no small toll of its own.

Belius had become a bloodbath for the PCA. If they’d committed all of their forces, things would have been dire... but that would have also prompted me to commit mine, so that entire train of thought is a game of ‘ifs’.

Still, that was it for Belius. Which meant that I had the time to get a few things ready for what was coming up next.

The Northern Ice Field was having a much different time to Belius. The RLF was a splash of heavily fortified points for the PCA to crash against, but the megacorporations weren’t. Instead, they’d adapted to be like smoke, wide, dispersed, and continuously fading- right up until the knives came out, anyway.

The Warships remained the biggest problem, but Arquebus had already had 621 slow their movements down by blowing up the Jorgen Refuelling Base. Since the Jorgen Refueling Base was about the only place up there that was capable of producing the fuel the Suppression Fleet needed in enough quantities to actually be useful, the PCA really hadn’t appreciated it.

Arquebus intended to make sure that they continued to not appreciate it. A plan had been put together; Arquebus was about to run a double-raid. One target was the Harlov Communications Base, which was serving as a groundside relay for the PCA squads and fleet. The other target was the Bertram Spaceport, where some of the Warships had since been berthed after the loss of fuel production.

With Harlov out, the PCA wouldn’t be able to communicate across the Ice Field during the Firestorms. The Spaceport was really more of a target of opportunity; there were ships there and they could be blown up to deal quite the blow.

Simple enough.

What I was interested in would come after the whole event.

And, as part of the preparation for that, there were some people who I needed to borrow.

“Now?” Flatwell asked, confirming things. He’d taken a moment out of his busy schedule to deal with my shenanigans, which I was grateful for.

“Within the day.” I clarified. “I have the transport ready to go. The actual trip won’t take very long, but getting everything in place and ready to go is a bit more of a trick, so I’d appreciate it if I had a bit more time to do the setup.”

He gave a ‘hmm’ of consideration. “You’re sure they’ll do something?”

“Reasonably.” I answered. That, too, wasn’t just metaknowledge. Everything I’d seen of the PCA indicated that they were coming close to a breaking point- or, rather, a response point from the Enforcement System.

I’d been messing with the thing for years by this point. I had a pretty good idea of how it worked. I might not have direct access to the coding, but you can’t spend so much looking at something and not figure a few things out. The Enforcement System had limits, and they’d been exceeded repeatedly in a short period of time. The response was predictable. The scale of the response was a bit trickier...

But 621 was going to be the one that set this next response off. So long as it was 621 or Raven, the odds were fairly good that the System would authorize the activation of something that should be able to deal with either of them.

I just intended to make it work for us, rather than against us.

Did I need to borrow someone to achieve that? No.

Would it be rather dramatic and also serve as an amazing coup in terms of morale? Yes.

“Go ahead, then.” Flatwell stated. “Knowing him, he’ll enjoy this just as much as you will.”

I laughed. “That’s the idea, yes.”

The transport was on its way six hours later. A bit of a hasty departure, but it had been prepared nonetheless. The transport flew low over the ocean, covered in radar absorbing metamaterials, equipped with an ultra-high refresh rate MDD system, and powered with a Coral Generator that meant it didn’t have to stop for fuel despite its relatively small size.

It still carried an AC, though it had been laid flat so that the transport could keep a nicer shape.

It arrived an hour or so after it left. A fairly short trip, even if both the launch and landing had required a decent period of time accelerating and decelerating in order to not be noticeable.

After that, it was a simple matter of slipping everything into where it needed to be, before waiting for everything to come to pass.

Sure enough, it did.

Arquebus sent out the job. 621 accepted it. Snail gave the briefing, and it seemed like his loss on Belius had only inflamed his numerous personality issues, which I would like to say was surprising, but it really wasn’t.

V.V Maeterlinck, though she had since been promoted to V.IV on account of O’Keeffe’s death, was assigned as 621’s partner in this mission. Her only job was to deal with the Communications Base, a very straightforward and easy task, so I didn’t expect her to fail it.

621 was alone for the Spaceport side of things. That was perfectly fine, and I had no reason at all to expect that the addition of Maeterlinck would achieve anything truly useful.

The mission commenced.

Maeterlinck went out earlier than 621. Her attack was intended to be timed in order to maximise the amount of chaos that 621 would be able to employ. She made a quick entrance and exit, flying in, firing a shot from INFECTION’s Plasma Cannon, and then quickly turning around and getting right back out before the PCA garrison was able to respond. Simple enough, and the moment she’d achieved it, she promptly informed 621 that her part in things was done and that she was now leaving the field.

There were a dozen ships berthed in the Spaceport, and the garrison that had filled the place was no small thing. As ever, this only increased the casualties taken by the PCA. First to go had been the Warship that was actually in the docking bay, sitting nice and pretty. When it was destroyed, all the cranes and cargo accesses went with it, instantly rendering the Spaceport no more useful than any other random spot on the ground.

The other eleven followed quickly, as did the armies that stood between them and 621. Well-aimed shots would nearly inevitably find either fuel storage, the ammunition bays, or the control sectors. In all cases, they rendered the Warships nothing but scrap metal.

The PCA responded, of course. They’d started literally seconds after the Communications Base had gone down, and when the satellites took over, they’d simply redirected towards the Spaceport.

Five more Warships arrived, alongside a bunch of high value targets and cannonfodder. The PCA was confident in their ability to handle the problem- riiight up until they noticed who it was.

“Code 78E!” The shouts went. “It’s Raven!”

621 proceeded to tear them apart. The Warships went first, cast down from the skies one by one, no matter what their drones or Cavalry pilots tried to do. The rest of the army was sure to follow-

But it didn’t take that long before the System administered its verdict.

“Code 78E acknowledged. Threat to planetary closure identified. Use of IA-02 authorized.” The PCA Announcer called.

“IA-02? But, that’s the- Raven! Find higher ground, quickly!” Ayre warned.

621 listened, turning away from the army and flying upwards to the Spaceport. LOADER 4 quickly ascended the structure, still dodging bullets from the Cavalry units that decided to take some potshots.

They clearly decided not to follow, however. Instead, the PCA army pulled back, flying up to the ridge that looked at the Spaceport.

And then it came.

The ICE WORM burst through the sheets of ice, rising into the air before it came crashing back down. Twin barriers of Coral flared briefly at the impact, rippling across the machine.

621 shifted positions, LOADER 4 readying weapons.

The ICE WORM closed in, cutting the distance like it carved through the ice, snow, and earth. The cliff of the Spaceport was no obstacle too it, it merely stretched upwards before sliding across the top of it, body extending as its sections shifted and adjusted. A compressed one point three kilometers stretched into more than two, and the ICE WORM wrapped around the Spaceport, the spinning drills on its underside digging into the structure just as easily as it had gone into the ground.

I was enormously impressed that the structure of the Spaceport was stable enough to not collapse. Instead, the ICE WORM climbed it, its ‘head’ curving over the top to point towards 621.

“Decry Coral in one breath -” A voice spoke out on the open channel.

“That’s- But- what?”

The ICE WORM paused. The shielding around it faded for a moment, the drills of its face ceasing to spin. Ayre let out a noise of confusion.

“- and wield it as your weapon in the next.” The voice continued.

“Seria?” Ayre asked.

“Hello, Ayre.” Seria answered.

“Do you know what that reveals?” Dolmayan asked.

His AC fell from the skies above, plummeting harshly before crashing onto the tower, sliding as it did. Red Boosters flared as it came to a stop right at its edge, halting in a looming pose, my gift now revealed in full.

“Oh. This was a plan.” Ayre sighed, now realizing what we’d done.

It was a brand new AC, designed just for him. Medium weight, sharing design elements with all of the IBIS series, and the culmination of everything I’d learned so far, designed entirely with only his use in mind. I had named the model line ‘HYACINTHUS’.

“Yes it was, sister.” Seria spoke, sounding just slightly exasperated.

METS ASTGHIK glared down at the PCA force, its red optics flaring with the Coral Pulse. Behind it, Seria finished settling into the ICE WORM, and the C-Weapon reactivated. She continued the curling movement it had been doing before, and the ICE WORM’s head came above and behind Dolmayan’s AC, pointing straight at the PCA army.

METS ASTGHIK raised an arm. The Coral Oscillator energized, and crimson lightning arced around the AC for a brief moment before it condensed into a swirling, writhing orb of hatred.

LOADER 4’s head tilted, very slightly.

“Hypocrisy.”