67 Chapter 67 Getting Comfortable
It doesn’t take long for all the light mecha to be restocked, but the last of the repairs aren’t finished until the next morning. The trenching machine worked all night, and now they have a deep gun line dug between the river and the village, with most of the debris from the trench piled five meters back to form a secondary firing line.
The Trench only covers the riverside and the far western border but the machine is still working until the scouts positioned two Kilometers out report an incoming convoy of Rebels. 6 vehicles with trailers, 2 Armored Personnel carriers and a large wheeled loader.
Infantry and vehicles, with supply trailers. Exactly what they were hoping to find to bolster their own provisions.
[Snipers, take positions with line of sight to the road. I want those vehicles operational if at all possible. Everyone else, try not to hit the trailers. Captains, you know what to do, so get them deployed. We’ve got a thousand mouths to feed, and this convoy might have something better than ration packs.] Max instructs his men.
A portion of Charlie Company is currently scouring the village for supplies, since the bunker they took had very little in the way of food. There are hundreds of tons of grain and flour, so they are well stocked to make biscuits and oatmeal, but it looks like the village was otherwise looted dry.
When the convoy gets to one kilometer out, they hail on the radio for the bridge defense unit they believe to still be in charge here.
[Bridge Control, Bridge Control, this is Convoy Hotel Juliet seven. What’s the good word, is the bridge intact?]
Before anyone can think up an answer, Nico’s voice comes over the Rebel channel. [It’s been a bit Obscene Convoy. Proceed to cross at idle.]
[Clearance confirmed. It’s good to hear from you Bridge Control, we feared we had lost you when you didn’t check in.] The convoy answers her coded response.
[If only we were all still here Convoy. Long Range comms have been damaged. Can you spare us a mobile unit?]
Her quick thinking and hacking Innate Talent worked together perfectly. The whole convoy stopped as the driver of the lead truck got out to grab them a radio from among the supplies the convoy was carrying.
Two seconds later a hail of fire brings the convoy to an untimely demise. Every driver of the supply trucks is killed simultaneously by Snipers and the Armored Personnel carriers are destroyed by the Ion Cannons of the Light Mecha.
[Excellent work gentlemen. Keep your eyes open for survivors. Light Mecha Squad 3, you go in first and clear the area, then Bravo Company can send in drivers to move the supply vehicles. Take them to the sports field on the west side where the Anti Aircraft vehicles are set up.]
That area is mostly intact, so the infantry have scattered all through the buildings there for shelter. The school is a Central Government pattern academy structure, though a small one. But that still means that the school structures are built of reinforced Synthetic Rock Crete, and intended to be able to survive a direct bombing run.
Charlie Company has made that their barracks, while Bravo Company spread out through the handful of government buildings sturdy enough to feel safe.
Scattered fire sounds from the Line Mecha, double tapping any Rebels who might possibly have survived, before they give the all clear to move the supply trucks and begin to carry the destroyed Armored Personnel Carriers back into the woods.
One of the men takes control of the loader and drags the bucket down the gray gravel of the road, hiding the signs of recent battle before driving the heavy equipment over by the lander in case it is needed later to help with repairs and disabled mecha recovery.
[Get me a rough estimate on those convoy contents Bravo Company. I want to know what we have to work with, preferably before the sun is fully up and more troops attempt to cross the bridge.] Max instructs.
The truly only takes a few minutes. [We’ve got 500 liters of fuel for the Light Mecha, fifty Anti Mecha rockets, at least a hundred cases of Rifle Ammo, and four full trailers of field kitchen canned supplies.
[Best news I’ve heard all morning. Get those supplies somewhere safe, but leave the transports out in the open as decoys. Seeing their own markings might convince the bombers to avoid us.]
Captain Catan and Captain Tarsus wholeheartedly agree with that optimism. Getting bombed daily on Belmont wasn’t exactly their idea of a good time.
The supplies are moved to the air raid bunker at the school, hidden deep underground where they will be safe, and a kitchen is set up under a tent in the field. Two meals a day of “fresh” goods, with a ration pack in the middle if necessary will stretch out their supplies as long as possible.
These off world Rebels were very well supplied though, none of this would have been brought with them, it must have been looted from one of the nearby cities to be distributed to their troops.
With that being the case, they can expect more convoys to come from that direction. Not just supplies, but large units of troops as well as mecha.
Fortunately, the Trench line is making good progress with their mechanical assistant in the lead, and it is fully completed on the south side before the scouts report the next movement of Rebels coming their way from the same direction as the first convoy.
This is no lightly armed supply convoy though, it is a scout mecha unit. Uncommon among the Kepler Army’s main combat fleets, these are more commonly used as local police or sent to worlds that haven’t been settled, where exploration is the objective and mobility is more important than combat capability.
They are led by a Lightfoot Pattern Crusader, a slender and elegant humanoid mecha with powerful legs and high speed hydraulics for rapid mobility, as well as improved thrusters for jumping canyons and other obstacles.
Behind it, twenty Sentinel Pattern Light Mecha follow, looking like an Armored truck cab on stilt like long legs. They don’t even have any sort of arm or grappling capability, just a Laser Cannon mounted on a top swivel.
As a design, they are awkward and gangly, but their firepower shouldn’t be underestimated.