Lucas was back in New York. For more than one and a half hours, he had fought. He was on his fourth machine by now, which was good, because it meant that if this was the same for anyone of the still fighting, they were getting more machines produced then destroyed. Although that was only true because only the 50000 best operators remained. The others had been sent home, because they could not afford to run out of Battle-Robots.

Still, the situation was not good. Reducing the number of Battle-Robots might have made certain that there would be a steady stream of them, but sometimes, you just needed bodies to throw at a problem. It was better if those bodies were replaceable and not a human life was estinguished for every body lost.

He sighed, and readied himself for another assault. But, shortly before he could start attacking the enemy, he got new orders. At least they now had working leadership and everyone was coordinated well, but sometimes it was annoying. Generally positive, but being recalled from an assault, which was planned at least in part because ones ammo was running low, only to go to a defensive position, which meant big ammo expenditures? Not fun, and a sign that things were getting desperate over there. His ammo levels were after public. Admittedly totally stupid from a security standpoint, but they still could not stop that transmission. At least not without cutting his abilities to communicate with everyone else to shreds, so the risk was accepted.

Just two minutes later, he was approaching his new position, and not one second to late. Enemy units had already stormed the barricade. He sighed, and lost around half of his remaining ammo mowing the attackers down. One must love the heavy machine gun mech, especially in this kind of combat, but a hundred rounds could be used up far to quickly. At least he started with five thousand, so there was that, but still. He called out, over the network: “Can only do that one more time, afterwards I am out!”

“OK, saved our bacon over here. More of your guys are coming, we will fall back then, this is getting to hot for squishy humans”

“Understood. Stand back, it would be stupid to die now when not absolutely necessary to keep the evacuation going. Isn’t that the Academia over there?”

“Yes, it is. No clue were you are?”

“Not really anymore, although I am in this unit now for a glorious 20 minutes. Will loose it in five at the most!”

“Oh, see there, the cavalry is here. I am out, we are going back, resupplying and then it will either be helping the evacuation, or another barricade.”

“Good Luck!”

“Good Luck!”

Lucas used his HUD to bring up the view of the general direction the police officer had pointed into. He could count 13 Battle-Robots, in different configurations. Before they are even there, the enemy started another assault. But luckily it was beaten back quickly, although Lucas ran into a particular problem afterwards:

“I have exactly 17 rounds left, friends, and I am a machine gun mech. Any special place you want to see blown apart?”

“Not really, no, but that over there does not look good. They are getting cocky, please show them why it is a stupid idea.”

Lucas looked at that particular group of enemies. It was large. And it was getting larger. Just breaking that formation would be helpful, so he began his advance, planning to use his last shots against enemy anti-armor teams or fleeing enemies. As he had traversed roughly three quarters of the distance, multiple things were happening at the same time.

First, he saw a series of warnings. Collision warnings, he thought, but he was not certain. They seemed to come from above and behind him, which was strange, and he instinctively decided to speed up. Then, just a few milliseconds at most later, Everything exploded. He was thrown in the direction of the enemy. He activated the self destruct and emptied his magazine.

He was awake again. In one of the anti-armor mechs, but luckily not another coil gun design. He got immediate orders to move through a Gate, which would lead back. Before he could ask what was going on, he was informed that everything would be explained as soon as his current mission was either accomplished, or they got breathing room otherwise.

After he went through the Gate, he realized he went through one of the main Gates on the campus of the Academia. Gates which should be used for evacuation. And Gates took time to reconfigure, not a whole lot, but a bit. He knew that Battle-Robots had been brought into positions near the main evacuation Gates for emergency purposes, but he thought it was a desperation measure to even think about using them.

He moved to his old position, the one something had hit.

It looked like hell, like an asteroid had hit it. Or was that the wrong word? No matter, it looked horrible. He was one of the first there, and saw a series of tanks attacking. At least none of the super heavies, he would need to loose a lot of ammo to punch through the protection over their engines. It was possible, but. He concentrated on the matter at hand. And that matter was killing those seven enemy tanks that tried to storm the position.

He realized that they were missing infantry support. Maybe that was what he took out when that, whatever it was, hit? He now had them in his sights and opened fire. The enemy had not realized he was there, and two tanks died in rapid succession. But he also took at least one hit, which punched right through part of his ammo storage. Nothing blew up, luckily, but he now had lost access to at least half of his ammo and another quarter he was unsure about. Still, that left him with 100 shots he was sure about, and a single tank went down in anything between five and fifteen hits. So he still could deal with the rest, at least if he was not hit a second time.

A third tank died, and in return, his cover, some still standing portion of the barricade, was blown into smithereens.

Then, suddenly, the other four tanks were destroyed by fire coming from behind him. The cavalry had arrived. And it promptly had some comments to make: “Hey, any idea what happened here?”

“Not really, although I was here when it happened. A shockwave had thrown me away, I guess into those tanks infantry support. I did not make it, although admittedly I was out of ammo at that point, but they also did not make it, I guess.”

“Oh, great. I think it was an orbital strike. Come on, it needed to come at some point, and we are lucky it took them so long to make it happen!”, a third person bud in.

Someone else answered: “You might be right. That might mean bad things happening.”

Lucas thought for a moment and then said: “Hey, I lost my main ammo storage during the fight, so I should go counter attacking or something. Does anyone want to come with me, any preferences for targets?” That last part he mostly added to benefit the TacNet AI’s, hoping those had a target for him.

In total, there were no 23 Mechs here. Nine of them decided to join an counter attack, although the AI’s told them that they should wait for a moment.

Somewhere else

“Well, the good news is that most of the strikes happened away from the evacuation lines. Sometimes dangerously close, but they do not look like they have been targeted. The bad news is that our defense is in shambles and although the mechs took the brunt of the dying in this case, we still lost a lot of police and some special forces while that was happening. Some of their follow up attacks were devastating, we lost at least one Gate completely in Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, Peking, Frankfurt, Paris, Moscow, and a whole lot of other places, each. This has devastated our ability to evacuate more, and a lot of civilians are now prisoners. Any one having more good news?”

“Well, we are now certain that the enemy brought 7 new ships in, all gigantic, but judging from the shape, more optimized for transport. The ships originally entered the system at around 16:49, and they were really quickly near enough to fire more of those damned pods… This explains the amount of forces we have seen by the way. Also, we now have another confirmation, they do not use Gate technology, but something different. We have seen the ships slowly appearing, on camera, so it was not stealth that made it possible for them to get the drop on us.”

“Well, while that is not great news, it is at least something. Anything we find out about them will help us in killing them latter on. Another thing. While this was a desaster for us, the enemy lost a lot of units during the attempt, and while they can always send more ships, that takes time. We suspect now that we can reinforce quicker than they can. Sadly, it is very likely, that we have less reserves than they have. But we got even better news. We have a series of prisoners, and while they have a totally alien language, it would not be the first time that we decipher one. Admittedly, we generally can actually observe the group speaking that language without them knowing, but we should be able to do it. The more prisoners, the faster, but our experts are certain that they can get it done in just a week or so without any more aliens.”, someone else added.

A fourth person asked: “OK, while communication does not work right now, we have at least a timeline. Until then, how are the evacuations proceeding? I know, those took a hit, but we need them done. They do not need to be perfect, but we need to have less civilians in the area?”

“OK, but not quick. We need roughly two days, active fighting makes evacuating significantly more difficult.”

“That’s not good, but cannot be changed. Well, our job is it to figure out how to hold the line until that is done, so we should do that.”

Someone butted in: “On that note, we have managed to get access to some really fun toys. No permanent damage, besides the craters of course, but my team thought that we could use them to attack the enemies ships. The satellite carriers can actually carry them, and they can reach the enemies ships. No idea how many can get through their defenses, if any, and how much damage they would do if they manage, but it would be fun to try.”

“How long do you need?”

“We can have a strike with every available warhead in three hours. Setting up production will take at least two days to start up. So, launch in three, hit in three thirty, if we go through with it.”

Everyone decided to make the enemy at least think that they were not invulnerable was a good idea, so that plan would be carried out, although it was mostly an empty threat. While they could gather a lot of missiles, or well, technically rockets, they did not have a lot of warheads. Which meant, that for the foreseeable future, this would be the only launch.

A new arrival told them all: “Rejoice, we get heavy equipment in less than a week. Brand-new, somewhat modern equipment I mean. The only problem is, that we will need to find all the small bugs that new equipment always has. And we likely will need to do that under combat conditions.”

Everyone looked not too happy about that. But on the other hand, nobody looked to unhappy either, which was a sign to how desperate they were for anything but a bunch of gamers using far to powerful and badly designed war machines to stem the enemy tide.

“Well, lets continue with our work. Right now, it never ends. Also, did anyone figure out where the heck the formulas for the combat stimulators are being stored?”