The following day slowly dawned, though it seemed that the sky had a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the idea. The light cloud cover of the previous days had darkened and was now turning to an inky black with ominous purple lightning.
Even two hours after the sun should have come up, you couldn't navigate without might vision or a System Ability.
Then the rain began to fall, a faintly oily torrential downpour that stubbornly clung to everything while the infantry rushed to get everthing that they had set up dismantled and moved inside. Max had already ordered the infantry to take cover, seeing on his sensors that a wall of water was approaching across the fields north of the river, but it approached too quickly for them to finish the job in time.
The only remaining sound was the constant boom of lightning and an ominous background roar that reminded Max of the hissing shriek the Feral cats of the slums made when they were injured, only deeper pitched, as if from a much larger animal.
All communication with the outside world was cut off due to interference from the storm, and as far as they could tell, nothing was moving.
It wasn't until the blue flashes of Ion Cannon fire joined the lightning that Max realized what they were looking at. A damaged Cygnus Mother ship had left orbit. The storm was the burning air from the atmospheric entry, and the oily film was spilled fuel from their lander supply tank.
Despite a planetary landfall that it was never designed to make, the fifty-kilometer wide ship was still fighting against the Kepler navy as it fell.
The two Kingdoms had been at war for generations, and now it made sense where the Rebels got the bravery to dare to turn traitor; they were expecting outside assistance.
[Anti Air Weapons, get ready to engage. That Mothership will fire all its drop pods before it crashes.] Max calls his troops over the radio and intercom, hoping they can hear him.
Cygnus is a lifelong fan of the "Bigger is Better" theory, and their mecha are enormous. Where Kepler makes their Crusaders smaller and more heavily armed than most Kingdom's average, the Reaver, their Cygnus counterpart, is over sixteen meters tall to their ten.
Due to a technology gap, the two are on par in offensive capability; you just had to avoid being grabbed and torn apart.
The ship is still higher in the sky, and Max's analysis of the weather and the time they would have been in the atmosphere didn't add up. The rain began too early. That can't be the only ship that the Navy has shot down.
The pods have begun to drop already, still a hundred Kilometers from their location but closing fast.
Nico and the Anti aircraft vehicles are getting ready, and Max is preparing his Pulse Laser Battery for a test against Cygnus drop pods when a streak of light brightens the sky, burning away a section of the clouds for the moment, and the falling Cygnus ship explodes into fragments.
The madmen of the Fleet just used an orbital Lance, intended to destroy cities in a single strike, to destroy the enemy ship.
One after another, explosions beyond the horizon begin to turn the artificial night to the brightest of days as interstellar drive reactors go critical.
A hail of metallic fragments rains down on Stalwart for the next few minutes before everything calms, and the skies return to a more normal-looking thunderstorm.
[Well, that's new and unpleasant. Any casualties?] Max asks.
[Negative Stalwart. All green. As long as this rain washes the fuel spill off our equipment.] Captain Catan answers.
[Expect the torrential rain to last. Someone dig a spur out from the low spots in the trench to keep them drained.]
The order seems better to Max than abandoning the Trenches until after the atmosphere stabilizes. That number of enormous vessels exploding as they left orbit will likely leave everyone fighting in the rain for weeks.
[And someone find us a bunch of fishing nets and heavy chains to string up across the river to block debris.] Nico adds.
The bridge is their reason to be here, and if whatever the inevitable flooding washes down river damages it, their mission has failed. The far bank of the river is lower ground than the village they are stationed in, so if they create an artificial blockage with whatever comes downstream, it will also flood out the road and prevent light vehicle traffic for weeks.
Good thing they have provisions.
Their fears turn out to be well founded; within the first hour, trees begin floating downstream, being captured by Tarith's Rage and driven into the river bottom vertically as pilings for their makeshift dam. Following that with some shovel work diverts the flood waters north and turns the formerly well-tended fields into a swamp.
But the rains show no signs of slowing, and the level continues to creep up.
"Mighty kind of the Fleet to give us an island vacation, isn't it?" Colmar jokes as the infantry officers gather for an evening meal.
"Could have done without the fuel bath, though. At least the flooding is slowing down the enemy advance." Captain Catan agrees.
"Maybe they just don't care about a bridge in the middle of nowhere with everything else that is going on?" A Lieutenant says hopefully, making the others laugh.
"We aren't just in the middle of nowhere, convict; this is the main highway between two major cities now that the main motorways have been destroyed. Trust me, they care." Colmar laughs, amused at the naivety of the young officer.
He had just finished officers' school when his unit got the bright idea to hack the Central Bank. As far as anyone can tell, this has been his first real taste of combat.
The loader they pilfered is doing double duty now, both bringing gravel for the bottom of the Trenches to keep them from getting washed out by the rain water flow, and digging a berm upstream to keep the rising waters away from the village.
The Line Mecha are helping as much as they can using farm equipment, and Max's math says they should be safe now unless the situation changes again.
That's better than they can say for many units, who are reporting that they are trapped in destroyed buildings or have had entire teams washed away by raging waters.
Nothing has moved for three days until Max suddenly gets a communication on the secure Command Channel.
[Stalwart, this is the Phalanx Class Carpe Noctem, traveling north with a heavy escort. We must know, does the bridge stand?]
