1199 1199 In Time
Felicity deployed the shuttles from Absolution with Terraforming arrays equipped, and allowed them to race around the perimeter of the Alliance camp. Each pass dug the trenches a little deeper, and the high speed made them harder to target with light arms fire from the ground, should there be any more enemy forces close to their position.
Putting Mecha into trench lines was a bit nostalgic for Max. He hadn't used trench warfare tactics in a long time, but building a wall that was thousands of kilometres long wasn't feasible after the first attacks started. Trenches were easily cleared by the Mecha if they were collapsed or filled, but walls were difficult to rebuild. The earthen fortifications that had been made with the displaced dirt would have to be enough to defend the front lines from attack.
The Mecha were mostly there now, but other than the one eliminated scout team, there hadn't been anything for them to fight yet. The priority was just to secure the perimeter around their vessels so that they could start working on a more aggressive strategy without worrying about being overrun.
Unlike a conventional army, which needed trained personnel, the Android Armies could be rapidly replicated and sent out to support the rest of the Alliance forces. It was a huge advantage to them, and it should allow them to fight for a much longer duration than their enemy could.
When a bored God had stuck you all in an artificial battleground, a war of attrition seemed like the most likely outcome. It was the worst possible type of war to fight, but it was also the one that the Human forces excelled at.
[Commanders, we have contact at 342 degrees. Commencing countermeasures.] The Androids reported.
Max checked the feed from the shuttles, and ordered a wing of drones to head that way and assist, while Nico got an array of sensor drones sent up to high altitude to replace satellite scanning. They had been in this situation on the Golden Legion's planet, but this time they could send their probes higher. They even managed to make low orbit before being blocked. That was the best-case scenario. They might not be able to leave, but they would have a satellite image of the whole world within an hour, and ongoing communications with their forces as well as any other Alliance outposts that they found.
"Nico, when you get a minute, refine the portal generators so that we can upscale the micro portals to Mecha sized and send teams through to any location that we have detailed ongoing scans of. That's going to be our best bet to get all these troops moved around the planet.
The details that I'm getting are mostly hundreds of kilometres between clusters of life forms, like we're supposed to have time to build and dig in. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me." Max instructed.
"We will get right on it. The whole design team is here, so it shouldn't be more than an hour or two before we can get them linked to the orbital scans. Are we providing them to the others?"
Max considered that for a moment. "No, just use them in the cargo bays of the two world ships. If anything else needs to be sent out or emergency retrieved, we can do it from there. I recommend that we don't do retrievals for the moment, though. Not for the space considerations, but due to the chance of sabotage or unwanted guests."
Nico nodded in agreement.
"That works. We can also use them to do supply drops much faster than a standard delivery. If I have them open above the indicated location, there is more room for error, and we can make the deliveries with drone bombers or Thunderbirds."
That would be a terrifying sight for the Great Enemy, the fifty-metre-long Thunderbirds just appearing out of nowhere to disgorge an entire Company of Mecha or an entire mobile supply station for a fast attack team.
The Alliance had intended them for relief missions, but with a bit of tweaking to the packaging, the Reavers had quickly made them air droppable, and when you included an android to operate the sentry turrets, they were surprisingly dangerous, despite their primary purpose being the resupply of remote regions during a crisis.
Of course, the human version was much more heavily armed than the Alliance version, but since it fit in the Thunderbirds, which they had only just discovered with the acquisition of Creeping Darkness, they were perfect for expanding their presence in the area. They even had a shield generator included so that they could do more than allow the soldiers to fill their packs and leave.
Max noticed that the attack was still ongoing in the north, where the Mecha had reported an attack. A quick search of the sensors showed that there was a Great Enemy force there with decrepit hover tanks and their strange Mecha sized cyborgs hiding behind a hill to fire at the trenches.
Both sides had shields, and for now, they were holding, but that was mostly down to a lack of direct line of sight. Once they could use their primary weapons, things would change rapidly. But without the nuclear option, the Mass driver rounds were somewhat limited, and they were going to need a different high explosive option that would take out the enemy shields more effectively.
Perhaps this was part of the Myceloid sensibilities on war. They preferred a stand-up fight, and an indirect artillery bombardment that could wipe out anything that the enemy could field before it even knew it was under attack wasn't very sporting.
No matter how satisfying it was.
"Sylvie, do you have a situation like this in your records?" Max asked the AI.
"Processing." She replied, and began to hum her waiting tune as she searched through the damaged files in her battle reports.
"Roughly seven hundred incidents with limitations of an unknown origin are in my reports. That makes them over two thirds of one percent of all battles that I have data for." She replied after a few seconds.
So, this wasn't a new trick. Just a resurrected favourite.
