Embers After Flames, Chapter 13.1 (Patreon)

13.1

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It takes only minutes for the pilots to scramble. ‘Only minutes’, however, is incredibly misleading.

On the battlefield, ‘only minutes’ is an eternity. ‘Only minutes’ is enough time for me to start getting supplies ready, to make a few final preparations.

Unfortunately, ‘only minutes’ is also enough time for ALLMIND’s forces to come close to their destinations.

I do my absolute best to delay them, but the math simply doesn’t work out. My guns cannot fire fast enough. I do not have the right weapons to deal with swarms on top of that. Most of my C-Weapons are rushing down from orbit, and in terms of things I have on the ground that are capable of responding, the vast majority of them are simple industrial machines that were never designed for combat in the first place, and the rest are heavily outnumbered, out of position, or, in the case of one particular project, still being assembled.

I try regardless.

My machines are grouped up in the small amount of time I have before her forces arrive. My mining drones take to the skies, their lasers, intended for carving through rock, still more than capable of doing damage to metal hulls at something approaching a decent range. My construction drones are large, unwieldy things, but their power tools still function perfectly fine against armour. The haulers prepare to charge, because I unfortunately didn’t have any other options for them other than crashing them into the enemy.

ALLMIND doesn’t allow it.

Laser blasts and Plasma bolts precede the direct arrival of her forces. This kind of combat might be the best possible kind of combat that an AGI like her could face. She spreads her shots out, wasting nothing, her entire force moving as one cohesive whole. Mine do too, but mine aren’t designed for war.

Constructors are wiped out in short order, their bulk bypassed by repeated, accurate strikes at critical locations. The mining drones are swatted nearly casually, only one or two attacks to propulsion units being required to down them. Haulers are shot out of the sky, wiped out before they achieve anything. Her swarm shifts upon itself, units appearing and fading as they launch their attacks before moving out of the way of the next set.

What little damage I can do in return is extremely limited. The worst of it doesn’t even come from my machines, it comes from me strategically overloading the processing facilities in their path, and that doesn’t work more than a few times before she simply starts adding them to the target list.

This is what happens when you’re taken by surprise.

She got me good this time, and I was definitely going to keep this in mind for the future. No more would I be trusting things that went out of my sight. No more would I not be ringing my industrial zones with proper defenses.

My system pinged again. This time, it was Flatwell.

I gave him what attention I could spare.

“How can we help?” Was the first thing he said. His voice was a bit hoarse, and it took me a moment to remember that he’d been at the far west part of Belius, and in that time zone, it was just before six in the morning.

“If it can’t get here in half an hour, it won’t matter.” I said, immediately. “Turns out that ALLMIND had a base inside the asteroid I selected for mining. Since the ships were fully automatic without crew, she had no problems stealing them.”

His jaw loosened, slightly. “Personnel issues, again?”

“The war ended a bit faster than we intended.” I acknowledged. “And now haste has screwed me.”

He shook his head, trying to clear it. “The only way we can send anything would be to use orbital shuttles-”

“And we don’t have many, yes.” I spent a moment considering it.

The shuttles were intended for small-scale transport into orbit and back, equipped with fusion thrusters for multiple trips back and forth. In terms of speed... well, normally, they weren’t great, but that was because they normally had to carry unaugmented or moderately genemodded people. The thrusters were capable of going faster, if the cargo could handle it.

“Send Dolmayan, Rusty, and as many of the Firekeepers as you can get.” It wouldn’t be that many, unfortunately. I had released them from their duties, and they had all rejoined general civilization. They were scattered in groups of two and three across most of Belius, pursuing their own lives. A decent chunk had elected to pass on piloting entirely, moving to civilian life. The rest had split between officially joining the military and directly attaching to either Dolmayan or Flatwell as security details.

Still, they, Rusty, and Dolmayan were the best pilots on the planet that weren’t already up in the Ice Field. They were about the only ones that could weigh in on the conflict that was occurring.

If they could make it in time. Travel times... they were tight. Moving people, moving their ACs, would take very valuable time. There was no room for careful gentleness, and the shuttles themselves would be harsh on the acceleration to bring them here fast enough to matter.

I still wasn’t sure of the shape this battle was going to take, though. What would ALLMIND do, after she captured the zones? There were several options, and they would all have very different effects on the way that things played out. The simplest thing she could do would be to unlock the containment units and simply let the Coral flow out, but simple didn’t mean fast, in this case, and the time that would take would be long enough for the C-Weapons to reach the battlefield and end her ambitions.

I couldn’t make a guess as to what she’d do because I didn’t know how much information she had access to. I was reasonably confident in her not having had a presence on this planet before this, and therefore, the amount of information she could have gathered would have been limited. No Ghosts taking a close look at things, only what she could observe from space, when the skies were nearly always covered by Firestorms being drawn to the Vascular Plant.

I knew her well enough to say that she would spend some time trying to learn as much as possible in order to determine the best course of action, but ALLMIND was an AGI. Data processing was no barrier to her, and I hadn’t specifically gone through the effort of setting things up to be illogical, nonsensical, or weird. It would not buy much time.

Which meant that my only solution was to deal with it as it came.

Ugh.

Logistically, I saw no real method of stopping ALLMIND from taking the three outer Coral storages. For all intents and purposes, they were practically already hers. That wasn’t okay, precisely, but there wasn’t enough Coral to trigger the runaway, exponential acceleration of growth and mutation if it was all put in one place. All four were required for that, and the Vascular Plant was the only one in a position to be contested.

That’s why I had moved what little of my combat-capable forces that actually remained here. That’s why the pilots were being sent here, too.

“In the interests of complete honesty, I don’t expect to be able to defend the Vascular Plant in full.” I explained to all of them. “We’re so heavily outnumbered that it isn’t even funny. The most I expect of you is to make it as inconvenient as possible for ALLMIND. Don’t die, we can’t afford that right now.”

“That’s one hell of a motivating speech.” Carla said, sarcastically, as the group reached the destination. I had a bunch of transports ready to go, and they immediately started heading upwards the moment the ACs got on them, thrusters flaring as they launched upwards far faster than the ACs themselves would have been able to fly. “Any other advice?”

“Oh, all the usual stuff. Stay close to each other, don’t get caught out, use cover, shoot the enemy.” Absolutely useless advice, but this kind of banter wasn’t about that. The humour was to relieve pressure, to allow people a moment to breathe before they really get stuck in it. It’s mostly wasted on this group, but if I can help at all... “I’m preparing as many Sherpas as I can, so keep that in mind for your engagements. Don’t be afraid to spend your ammo, but don’t throw away everything, either. You’re up against a hell of a lot of unknown units and converted C-Weapons. I’ll do my best to support you, but this is going to be harsh no matter what.”

I hadn’t seen much, unfortunately. None of ALLMIND’s units had been forced to use anything other than the most basic degree of force to get past the industrial machines. I sent that to them anyway, providing them with at least a basic idea of what they were up against.

A change in movement. “ALLMIND’s units are splitting up.” I reported to them. “They’re heading across the entirety of the Vascular Plant. I’m sending you coordinates to the arrival point of the closest group. You’ll reach that spot before they do, but not by much.

They continued ascending into the air. The transports eventually got close enough that they started slowing, at which point, all the ACs leapt off of them to move under their own power.

ALLMIND’s incoming group was already visible as they landed. Evidently, she also saw them, because the group quickly reoriented again and made a bee-line directly to them.

The ACs spread out immediately, all of them moving to take different positions. Walter went upwards, his Coral Rifle beginning to charge. Carla went to the edge of that sector, her missile launchers shifting as she started locking on. Ayre stayed roughly between them, ready to intervene however it was necessary.

Raven took to the skies, Boosters flaring a bright red. LOADER 4 raised its gun, a multi-purpose Coral Rifle that I’d developed for the IB-C04 series, and fired a barrage of shots at the enemy.

Crimson beams lanced outwards, thin, precise, and devilishly fast. ALLMIND’s units took evasive action immediately, the smaller machines immediately launching themselves sideways, upwards, and downwards, the larger machines doing the same.

Even so, fully half of Raven’s shots found their targets. The Coral beams tore straight through them, sublimating metal as it did. I noticed immediately that, rather than causing significant explosions like what would normally happen, the effect was far reduced, the plasma burst much smaller than normal.

Every sensor I could access focused. The armour of these machines had been engineered into a honeycomb like structure, containing significant amount of otherwise empty space. It formed internal gaps, minimising energy transfer... Which might as well be the best possible choice against Surging Coral.

No conventional AC-scale armour could stand up against the power of Coral, but this one at least reduced the worst of its side effects. Its weight would also be much lower than the layered composite metamaterials, enabling higher speed and therefore better dodging. Of course, it would be of much reduced effectiveness against things that weren’t Coral... but that didn’t matter, because everything up here was carrying Coral weaponry anyway.

Efficiency gains weren’t high enough to be worth swapping to non-Coral weaponry, so literally the only purpose of it was to maximise effectiveness against the stuff I made in particular.

Pulse Shielding might have worked better, but it would have also made for larger and more obvious targets.

Oh well.

ALLMIND opened fire in return, plasma and lasers launching forwards towards Raven- Exclusively Raven, completely ignoring the other three ACs.

It was an understandable choice.

LOADER 4, as always, simply danced between them, the upgraded AC moving at speeds that made the old SORA model look like a joke, Coral Oscillator charging as it did. Raven swung it outwards, unleashing a sweeping wave of Coral.

Some managed to dodge. Others didn’t, and fell from the skies in pieces.

Of course, the other pilots were more than willing to take advantage of the distraction, and opened with their own attacks.

Crimson clashed with teal.

I had a feeling I was going to see a lot of that in the near future.