Watery Grave_Mechanized Warfare on a Galactic Scale by CH Gideon & Caleb Wachter & Craig Martelle

Author:CH Gideon & Caleb Wachter & Craig Martelle [Gideon, CH & Wachter, Caleb & Martelle, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2019-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

13

The Push

“Confirmed, GC,” Jenkins declared after the three-minute meeting had concluded. “Operation Flyby in T-minus eighteen minutes, on your mark.”

“Copy that, Colonel,” Podsy replied. “Set your clock at eighteen minutes…now.”

“Good work, Lieutenant,” Jenkins offered. Deep Dive was already primed for extraction, having retrieved the salvage from the ocean floor, but even on the most optimistic timetable, that process would take at least three hours from the time they crested the surface to being returned to the Vercingetorix’s drop deck.

He had been unable to secure the surface on schedule, and that failure had placed the entire operation in jeopardy. Their Jemmin adversary (Jenkins believed there was but a single Jemmin operator left alive on the Pearl) had proven difficult to locate following its companion’s destruction. Not only that, but it had also done an outstanding job of keeping not only the Poltergeist command vehicle but also the vast majority of its Spectres and skimmers from view.

The benefit to Clover Battalion was that they retained most of their ordnance. Had the battles continued unabated, the mechs would have been running on empty. Jemmin had misjudged. Jemmin would pay.

Jenkins’ best estimates put the total number of Jemmin vehicles still on the Pearl at just under forty—one Poltergeist, fifteen Spectres, and the balance in skimmers. By any measure, destroying them would be a daunting task for anything less than a full brigade of armor.

Thankfully, Lieutenant Podsednik had once again proven his worth by crafting an ingenious if risky plan to even the odds.

“Clover Battalion, new orders,” Jenkins declared, forwarding details for the first leg of the operation via P2P. “Joker Company,” he continued, transmitting a similar packet to Captain Koch, who was in command of Joker Company until Elvira breached the surface. “I need Sargon, Cyclops, and Murasame on the line for this push.”

“Roger,” Captain Koch acknowledged as the quartet of Jokers moved out from the water’s edge at flank speed. “Units transferred to your command, sir.”

“Keep working on those checks, Captain,” Jenkins urged, knowing that three of Clover’s mechs were still down-checked at base camp. He thought that two of them might be able to contribute with long-range artillery in the coming engagement if Koch’s people stayed on-task.

And where Jenkins was going, he could use as much fire support as possible.

“Xiliang Pride will be weapons hot and mobile in eight minutes, sir,” Koch said confidently. “Tragedy of Taiwan will follow twelve minutes after that, but she’ll be stationary for another twenty minutes. Her drive train was hit harder than we thought.”

“Understood,” Jenkins acknowledged. Two more Razorbacks offering fire support at extreme range might not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but Jenkins had learned the hard way that sometimes a single well-placed shell could turn a fight. “All right, Metalheads,” he piped into the Flyby main channel, which included every element assigned to the critical maneuver. “It’s time to earn our pay. Form up as indicated and proceed to your assigned zones. Hold those positions at all costs until you receive new orders.

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