914 914 Into the Grinder
The Myceloid advance started just as suddenly as it had stopped. With a roar that shook the air, the creatures rushed over the hill, rolling a metal barricade that rang with a gong-like tone as thousands of Mass Driver rounds impacted against them.
The sound would be deafening if the Mecha’s sensors didn’t dampen the noise. It seemed that they had optimized the alloy to dampen projectile impacts, and for the first few rounds, they had some sort of energy barrier keeping the barricades safe.
That didn’t last as the Mass Drivers from five hundred Mecha shattered the barriers and sent the sound of ringing metal across the forests and grasslands of this world. It was a familiar and almost comforting sound. The sound of war was unmistakable in its violence, and Nico prepared her mind for the battle to come.
Her instincts said to charge forward and go meet the enemy, but that was not the plan. It was a good plan, though. The Mecha had quite capable flight systems, so they could launch an aerial assault on the Myceloids, then land in the midst of them and cause chaos.
She would suggest it to Max tomorrow if he didn’t read it in her mind today and mention it.
At full output rate, it would only take ten minutes or so to empty the materials storage on the Mecha, but anything larger would have unbalanced the design and made the flight pack sit too far behind the center line for proper control stability.
Fortunately, the Androids only fired as fast as they could accurately target and didn’t just spray explosive rounds into the enemy lines without concern for where they would end up.
That was one of the more annoying parts about the Anrdoids, in Nico’s opinion. They were so logical and boring. Max probably loved the rapid responses to orders and the efficiency, but Nico didn’t really care about efficiency. She cared about results, and the results of spraying a Mass Driver at the enemy at twelve hundred rounds a minute was way more fun to watch than this precision warfare.
If you randomized the explosive depth as you fired, you could also make it a very effective tactic, with some of the rounds punching through layer upon layer of flesh until they were nearly at a stop before exploding and some detonating as soon as they touched a solid surface.
Not many things could deform the rounds, which was a small drawback of a Mass Driver over a standard projectile, as it made smaller puncture wounds with massive rippling trauma from the force instead of lodging the projectiles into the target. That meant there was no need to clean the wound, only patch it closed.
They didn’t use toxic projectiles or weapons very often, though the arm blade and its freezing spray could be considered a toxic weapon in some ways, so Nico hadn’t really considered the possibilities as she designed the new Mecha.
Even now, it was only a fleeting thought as she waited for the enemy to overcome the Mass Drivers and get into range of the Disruptors.
[Disruptors, fire concentrated beams. Take apart the remains of those barricades.] Nico ordered when the enemy reached the two-hundred-metre mark.
Max followed suit immediately after, and the metal walls began to crumble as the Disruptor radiation tore apart the molecular bonds, leaving only the Myceloids to charge into the invisible threat.
At first, they didn’t realize what was happening, but when they started to bleed from all their pores and have the clothes flayed from their bodies, they realized that the threat was an invisible one.
That caused them to raise another energy barrier, which got them to forty metres from the trenches before the intensity of the Disruptors broke it.
[Flamers, light them up.] Max ordered, and Nico smiled.
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[That’s twenty metres. All units fall back. Mass Driver rounds and Fusion Flamers at full output as we retreat.] Max ordered, keeping the pressure up on the enemy even while he had his troops avoid close combat with them.
Nico took a second as they began to move to check the sensors from the Drone Bombers that she called over to booby trap the field between the trenches and the Hunter Fortifications.
What she found was astonishing. Where there had been nothing an hour ago, there were millions of the Myceloids rising up from the ground in past battlefields, all ready to charge into battle.
Supply trucks were driving forward toward the lines, dropping off blades and crude guns, as well as the occasional rocket launcher and other heavy weapons, but it looked like most of the horde would be coming at them barely armed.
But as she analyzed the situation, she realized that wasn’t correct. They were picking up the weapons of the fallen fighters and even large branches that could be carved into sturdy clubs. So, by the time they reached the front lines, they would be fully armed, and the battle would continue without any loss of effectiveness.
[Hey Max, it looks like we’re about to have that sort of day again. There are millions of these things rising up from the old battlefields, and they’re picking up all the weapons they can find. The supply lines are thin, and I can bomb them, but with so many weapons lying around, they’re not short on them.] She informed everyone, knowing that the Hunters were listening in.
[Great. Who would have thought that a lack of housekeeping staff would be the deciding factor in how our day was going to go?] Max joked, but Nico knew that he would be making a plan so that she could just keep fighting and not worry about the little details.