Cavalier's Gambit 2 -ch 11-

Chapter 11

“Then… uhm… do the second one. The one with the up arrow,” Wendy murmured. “It’s gotta be upload.”

Wayne grunted and flicked a glance at his onboard computer. It’d only been about six or seven minutes since Wendy started walking him through what she believed to be the right direction.

“Oh! That did it. I’m getting the feed. This’ll be much easier. Sorry, Wayne. I was trying to make this easy but in the end just downloading it then sending it to me just works easier,” said Wendy as the data got upload. “Hopefully it’s worth it and I didn’t just waste your time.”

“I didn’t mind it. Honestly it was a nice distraction. The patrols are boring four to six hour trips with nothing but waypoint checkins and my people grumbling about it,” Wayne admits with a chuckle. “I can’t imagine when the other three squads arrive that they’ll be much happier than we are.”

“Well, I enjoy talking to you, too. More so now than ever before now that I gave up on… gave… gave up… huh,” Wendy murmured more to herself than to Wayne. “This was from a Tick you found hiding on our side of the lines. Right?”

“Yeah. Was slightly off from our patrol route,” Wayne answered. “Not really that far out of the way, but enough that honestly we probably would have overlooked it while being confident about it. I… one of the AIs I ate… tells me about anything with a signal. Anything at all. Even if it’s low power mode.

“Saw it, marked it, sent the drone in to confirm, and here we are. I made physical communication with Company H with arm movements and I think they disavowed the Tick. Why? What’s up?”

“That… that explains so much of what you can do but-but that’s not-this is a forward scout for an invasion. A ranger. Marking the way and what routes are open and ready,” she explained. “This one was sent specifically to see what you were up to and if your patrol route remained the same. The data you sent over wasn’t encrypted.

“Whatever Cyber-attack AI you have in there is a nasty one. It decrypted everything at some point and this is just… open. It’s open. It’s like reading a book. I’m going to go work on this immediately. The invasion isn’t due for some time yet but we don’t have a lot of time. It more or less happens a few hours after your route finishes.

“Anyways, I’m moving on this. Because if they’re pushing this hard with a terrestial invasion, they’ll need the fleet moving to back them up. That means a space battle, too.”

“Uh… do you need to put a suit on? One with oxygen and some type of propulsion device?” Wayne asked in a stupid way.

“I… apparently I do. Thank you for worrying. Maybe you should just cancel the patrol route and come back immediately,” Wendy suggested. “Your three other squads will be arriving  sometime today. Maybe before this kicks off, maybe after. Anyways, I have to go. I say break the patrol and head back immediately.

“Also, I wouldn’t put this on an open frequency. This one is encrypted and unused in general so there’s no way they’d even try to break it or crack it. Your squad channel? Entirely possible someone might’ve cracked it.”

“Fair. Be safe Wendy. Can’t go to dinner if you’re lost in space. I’m a shit pilot so it’d be hard to come and find you, too,” Wayne grumbled.

“Don’t I know it lover boy. You’re never piloting for us again. You’re Miss Daisy and I’m driving,” she said, sighed, then took a short breath. “Okay. I’m going. Thank you, Wayne. I swear… throwing myself at you has only ever benefited me. Whenever I slow down I always lose.”

There was a pop and Wendy was off the channel.

He swapped back over to the other channel with his whole squad. Wayne had cheated though.

In advance, he had briefed his people on a few keywords.

Trigger words.

That if spoken in a casual sentence would tell them more than the words themselves.

“We’re going to return to base briefly for a touch-point. This prisoner of war is coming with us. Pony up,” Wayne ordered. The keyword here being pony up.

When he had discussed all this with his squad, ‘pony up’ had been a keyword for ‘shut the fuck up, something is now wrong, we’re getting the hell out, don’t ask questions yet’.

There was a chorus of affirmative responses and Wayne and his squad, left.

They didn’t even take the Tick with them. They left it there, Cara carrying the prisoner of war in her left hand of Patchwork.

Always with this shit.

Fucking therapist is gonna love this one when I get back to her.

***

Sitting in a chair in the hangar, Wayne stared at the tablet. Barbie, Cara, and Natalie were all nearby. Talking amongst themselves, though Natalie was staring at him.

Checking a sigh, Wayne caught Natalie’s eye, and crooked a finger.

Natalie moved forward quickly toward him.

Her malnourished youth, her scrawny figure, her slightly thinned out cheeks, were all gone.

Tink had forced Natalie to undergo a lot of medical treatments as a Confed citizen and it’d restored her to full health. Health that could only be gotten by extreme nutrition intake, a lot of medicine being flooded through her, and some procedures.

She’d never be able to get back any height or body maturity she lost from a lack of nutrition at a very early age, but she didn’t look like a teenager anymore. She looked like the nineteen year old she was.

Her blue eyes were sharp and piercing. Often filled with a fanatic bent that left Wayne uneasy. The short blonde hair had grown out just a bit, but it was still rather short.

Upon reaching him, she knelt down beside his chair, looking at him.

“Nat,” Wayne said, and smiled at her. “Do you ever feel like you do too much to show your respect to me?”

“No,” she replied instantaneously. It was so sharp and final that Wayne felt the word like a palm slapping to solid wood. “I feel I should often do more. Much more. You deserve so much, my lord.”

“Right,” Wayne said and then chuckled. “Right. As long as you’re happy, I guess, Nat. Happy and you realize I’m not asking you to be this way. I’ve in fact done my best to curb it.”

“I know,” Natalie said, a sudden smile playing across her lips, watching him. “I know you have. I just don’t care and I refuse to listen. I’m doing what I want. Exactly what I want and—”

The lights went out.

Then a klaxon started going off. Followed by emergency lights flickering on.

“Mount up!” Wayne shouted and started off toward Warhorse. “Be ready for whatever comes our way. My best guess is they just wanna break the world and make it an economic hole. Force a recovery and rebuild from House Zane and tie up resources in the reconstruction.

“That means they just want to blow everything up and call it a day.

“We’re staying out from under the enemy fleet if possible and we’ll go where ordered otherwise!”

There were shouts of agreement as everyone rushed off to get into their Walkers. Even as the klaxon grew louder and louder. Wayne had an ugly thought that it reminded him of an old movie he saw once. An ‘air raid’ siren going off and warning everyone of the impending attack.

Even before Wayne made it to Warhorse explosions started going off. Massive and heavy it made the ground thump and shudder. Distant cracks and booms as munitions went off.

This felt far earlier than it should be given what Wendy had said she predicted.

Except it was entirely within the realm of possibility that the enemy had noticed their changes and acted accordingly. Pushing up their timetable to a point that it was possible to launch.

Before House Zane could actually respond in full.

Wayne could feel a rush of pressure press against him and through him. A concussive force that made his teeth rattle and caused him to stumble to one side. It’d felt like his ears had suddenly wanted to burst. It reminded him of being deep at the bottom of a pool and the pressure of the water pushing on him.

“Fuck!” he shouted, feeling better the moment his mouth opened. Panting now he struggled to get to his Walker and clamber into it. Pulling himself upward along the built in grips and holds for feet and hands on the inside of the leg.

As soon as he could, he got into the considerably safer cockpit and pulled it shut. Everyone in his squad would be considerably well suited to ride out explosions unless they were a direct hit.

Everyone but Cara.

Looking over at Warhorse powered on, Wayne saw Cara closing Patchwork’s cockpit. The much smaller Walker was formidable, but these explosions felt like a lot more than casual artillery.

He had no way of knowing, but this felt a lot like orbital bombardment as a fleet moved in.

“Outside!” Wayne shouted. Being in the warehouse was more likely to get them killed by indirect fire shot at it.

A squad of walkers was a good target to aim at, but they tended to move. Warehouses, didn’t.

Wayne didn’t wait though, he went straight to Cara and stood over her even as she went for the exit. Looming over her as she moved. He got the impression she realized he was trying to protect her when she went from sprinting away to a slow jog matched to the speed of Warhorse.

“Thank you, perfect Lord,” hissed Cara over the com line.

Several nearby explosions sent warnings through Warhorse. Alerting him to nearby explosions as percussion waves rolled over Warhorse. Sensors telling him that the levels and intensity were causing minor impact damage to the Walker.

Holy shit!

As the squad scrambled outside with Wayne just about stepping on Cara they finally all saw the extent of it. What was happening.

Far above them, from a distant horizon, blazing ordinance was shooting across the sky to them. Fingers of death from lasers, missiles, ballistic cannons, and unguided rockets. All of it pounding and slamming into multiple places across House Bertson’s forward lines from House Zane’s fleet.

Wayne could tell that multiple bases were all being struck at the same time. As it all came down and blew people, machines, and buildings apart.

Except that even as the enemy fleet concentrated and attacked the bases, House Bertson’s fleet was pummeling away at their counterparts. Streaks of fire arcing madly across the far distance sky above, in space itself. The darkening of the day and that sunset was only an hour away made it easier to see in broad daylight.

Multiple white boxes were appearing for Wayne. Boxes that told him there were multiple ships on both sides. Easily in the fifties and attempting to slaughter one another.

Flickering out with explosions, many ships of the Zane household being turned into debris and scrap far above the planet’s surface.

“Shit,” Natalie hissed. “This is so much more than I thought it would be. I know we talked about it but this… this is…”

“A single larger ship exploding is thousands of people,” Barbie remarked, all of them looking up at the fleet battle in the sky. Most of the attack that’d been sent toward the terestial targets seemed to be done now. The enemy fleet more concerned with their opponent in space. “I wonder how bad it is.”

Wayne watched as mutliple ships winked out, their white boxes folding in on themselves.

From both sides, in fact. Though Zane was taking a beating.

Their initial volley down to the planet had left them needing to reload and rearm even as they got punched up by House Bertson.

“Doesn’t that mean we’re about to have a bunch of Walkers, tanks, and infantry pushing into the lines?” Sal asked.

“Oh yeah we are,” confirmed Mick. “The shit question though is… can House Bertson even repel it. Or are we about to become the frontlines by the sheer fucking virtue that House Zane is gonna slam fuck us to the hilt and the back becomes the front.”

“Shit,” Sal said, then chuckled. “Whatever. We’ve already been through this shit once before.”

“Damn right,” Wayne rumbled, looked one way, then the other. “Squire, get me a line to god. I need to talk to the Herald.”

“Yes, Lord,” Natalie said and moved away to the side. She often had a lot of comms equipment on her Walk as well as back up mini-towers.

Just in case something real shit happened.

Like this.

Natalie went quickly over to a shack that had an antenna attached to it for something else. It wasn’t very large, but Wayne imagined she’d try to utilize it anyways to get a better signal. He didn’t understand the comms system one bit, but that’s why Natalie handled it.

Wayne looked out then up at the fleets above. Battling one another in space and fighting for their very lives in ways that made him queasy. The idea of being on a ship and not even having a chance to defend yourself sounded horrible to him.

At least in a Walker he could fight back and keep himself alive if he fought well enough. That his existence and his life was entirely beholden on him and his actions.

There was a flicker of white boxes in the distance that weren’t there before. Across the horizon though, not in the sky.

He had seen a number of white boxes out that way often.

They had all been aligned to House Bertson previously. All of them Walkers, tanks, or equipment of some sort.

What he saw now was a growing number of white boxes that were most certainly from House Zane and they were flickering to life. One after another after another.

A lot of them were tanks, but there were Walkers in there to. A great number of them as what looked to be the entirety of the enemy forces planetside.

“Holy shit,” Wayne whispered as distant explosions started reaching them. The sound of heavy cannon going off as well were being picked up by Warhorses external microphones.

This really was a full on invasion and it seemed house Zane was tired of taking is slow. They were going to make their push here and now or not at all.

Which somewhat made sense to Wayne since their window wasn’t very long before the system would start to spin away. If they made their move now, they could recollect, change, and make another attempt or a different direction.

Waiting any longer than they had only risked far too much.

“Line up, Lord!” Natalie called on the comms. “I’ve got the Herald but it’s spotty at best. Sounds like it’s through a relay.”

“Squire you’re amazing,” Wayne said and flicked himself over to the channel he shared with Wendy. “Herald! Cavalier here, whole fucking sky just opened up to piss on us. You got anything?”

“Oh I got something for you,” growled Wendy. Her voice was somewhat static filled but he could mostly make it out. “They didn’t believe me. Didn’t believe you. Didn’t change or do a damn thing.

“So I got the hell off their station and went to the Confed station. I don’t have half as much information as I damn well should but there was no way I was staying there.

“I literally pointed out where the plan had targeted the station directly with more than a few damn heavy damned missiles. They were literally the sizing of an Atlas-Cracker. Hell no am I staying on that.

“Just barely got into the race for the Wayne, no way I’m going to sit there and—nevermind.

“I’ve got information for you, orders too, but Bertson fucked up. They ignored everything we sent them. I kept the data as a backup and sent it up the chain as well as to Josephine. I’m sure they’ll want to spin it into a PR thing later one way or the other.

“Because I wouldn’t be damned surprised if Bertson command for the defense of this planet won’t try to weasel out from knowing this was supposed to happen.”

Wayne just listened to Wendy as she went on her tirade. There wasn’t a reason to inerupt her and it was good information to know. It did indeed sound like the Bertson Defense Force in charge of the planet had squandered an opportunity.

“Anyways,” Wendy huffed. “Our ass is covered but Bertson command is fucked once this goes live. I assume your cockpit recorder is getting a lot of this?”

“Yeah, had some good shots of the incoming fire before the fleets engaged one another,” Wayne confirmed. “What’s our orders? And what’s our exfil look like?”

“Exfil is already ready. I got your company dropship pushed into orbit hours ago. It’s hidden but nearby and ready to get you off planet. The rest of you company arrived and is here on the Confed station. I didn’t let them transfer over. Wasn’t sure how this would all turn out and technically they’re not Bertson forces. Confed forces.

“As to orders, the general in charge of defense has asked that you move along the route I’m sending you right now. You’re moving to reinforce a defense at the largest Combust-7 refinery in the damn system, let alone across multiple systems. It’s damn massive and not exactly built to withstand a direct attack.

“The Bertson fleet had been positioned in a way to make sure it didn’t get hit and their front lines in orbit had been set up to protect it all. In the attack plans, that damn refinery was going to get so much pressure it might as well have been a civi-plateau’d world wondering if it’s social service care was going to hold up when all their citizens went gray.

“At least six companies of Walkers.

“Bertson command is pulling a large number of resources in to make sure it doesn’t go up in a fireball. Cause if you don’t know, Wayne, Combust-7 is literally an additive that gives better burn in space. Better burn and less stress on the engines.

“Which, you know, kinda really needed all of a sudden, but not as much only a few months ago.

“It also explodes fabulously if six companies of walkers shoot at it.”

“Shit,” Wayne muttered. “Alright. Orders received. Anything else, my beautiful and glorious Herald?”

“Don’t die. You owe me dinner tonight, tomorrow, and the day after,” growled Wendy. “I’ll keep you updated.”

The line popped.

Wayne looked to his display and saw a new route had been sent into his computer.

“Squire, pack up that radio-dick. We’re fucking off,” Wayne ordered and got his people moving, calling up the route to the refinery and sent it to the rest of his squad. “We’re gonna go play bodyguard to a god damn bomb.”