The Adventures of Whirlwind
Warfare in the Thirtieth
Century
Episode
1
The
Ambush
Email:
Lespion@msn.com
Chapter
1 Aellos
Victory
Planet Papadatos, Galactic
Rim, 2954
Aello tensed over the controls of her mechanical
assault vehicle, awaiting the squad leaders
signal. The thirty-ton
hulk she was piloting, fondly referred to as a mech, was not
large by the standards of the thirtieth century, but the larger machines
were only allotted to the most experienced
pilots. This was Aellos
first mission and it was a desperate one.
Her squad had been sent to intercept an enemy
incursion: several hundred troops in transports escorted by six heavy armored
vehicles. The squad of five light
mechs piloted by four rookie pilots led by the veteran squad leader was severely
outgunned and outmatched, but they were the only force available to deal
with the enemy attack. They had
only one chance and that was to stage an ambush in the desperate hope that
the element of surprise might compensate for their lack of experience and
lack of tonnage. The squad leader
had chosen a narrow tree-lined defile known as Hells Gate as the site
of the ambush, and so the five pilots waited, their systems shut down to
avoid electronic detection, and their masking devices on to hide their
presence.
The tension mounted as the enemy convoy
approached. Aellos hand
reached up to touch her hair in an unconscious gesture and encountered her
helmet. She smiled
briefly. She had pinned her raven
locks under her helmet in preparation for the mission, but had forgotten
it was there. The go light on
the console flashed green. Aello
flicked the relays restoring her mech to life, and pushed forward on the
throttle. The thirty tons of
armor and weaponry tore out of the grove of trees where it had been hidden
and emerged directly behind the enemy
column. There were six huge escort
machines in front of her.
Aellos assault and that of the other four machines in the squad
had alerted them.
The voice of the squad leader sounded in her
headphones. Shoot for the
legs, rookies, youll never bring them down
with body shots.
The smile flickered across Aellos perfect
features once more in spite of the tenseness of the
situation. Months of intense
training had prepared the squad for this moment, but it was so like the squad
leader to point out the obvious.
Directly in front of her was a massive eighty-ton
monster. Already its pilot had
swung the ponderous machine halfway
around. She and her squad mates
would have only a few seconds before it and the other enemy machines had
time to train their superior armament on
them.
Aello was piloting a
Centaur. It was a lightweight
bipedal armored vehicle. It was
a formidable fighting machine if operated competently and against appropriate
adversaries. It consisted of
a heavily armored torso elevated on a pair of titanium
legs. Attached to arms on either
side of the torso was a rail gun, each of which shot plastic projectiles
accelerated to immense speeds by a magnetic
field. A single plastic slug
was capable of tearing through up to six inches of the toughest
armor. The only problem was that
the opponents they were facing had armor up to a foot
thick. Even the best-aimed shots
would simply bounce off such massive
protection. Hence the reminder
from the squad leader to shoot for the
legs. For less well-armored targets,
such as light vehicles or infantry, the Centaur mounted twin 30-millimeter
gattling guns. Together these
deadly weapons could lay down a fusillade of 100 rounds a
second. The torso of the Centaur
also contained the cockpit in which the pilot resided and the complex electronics
essential for the machine to keep its balance and operate its weapons and
life support system. It also
housed the engine and fuel supply necessary to power such a complex
machine.
A hail of super-accelerated slugs tore toward
the turning enemy machines. Aello
noticed that almost all of the shots struck the chassis of the enemy mechs,
doing nothing more than scratching the
paint. She shook her
head. Except for the squad leader
Aello and all of her companions were rookies on their first
mission. Piloting a thirty-ton
mechanical monster at 80 kilometres an hour over rough terrain and shooting
accurately was a real skill. Only
the most gifted mech pilots ever achieved a high level of shooting accuracy
without considerable experience.
Aello opened up the throttle another notch,
pushing her speed up to 100 kilometres an
hour. Speed was a strong defence
against the hail of fire that would soon be heading her
way. At the same time, she twisted
the torso of her machine so that its armament was brought to bear on the
enemy machine closest to her. Her
target was a Titan; an 85-ton behemoth armed with twin fusion cannons on
each arm. At this range the power
of those weapons would strip the armor off Aellos machine as if it
were no more than varnish.
Aellos forefinger pressed the trigger
on her joystick. Her aim was
perfect, a line of plastic slugs ripped into the leg of the Titan right at
the knee. The impact of
the slugs turned the metal white hot and then the knee joint tore apart,
sending the massive machine to the
ground.
Aello was in the midst of congratulating herself
when the Centaur next to her took a direct hit from another
Titan. The fusion cannons literally
blew her squad mates machine to
bits. Aellos own vehicle
reeled from the force of the explosion, nearly
toppling. Only the servomechanisms
built into the Centaur allowed it to recover without
falling.
An angry flush suffused Aellos
cheeks. The pilot of the doomed
vehicle, Aleksa, had been her bunkmate.
Strangely, she felt no sorrow, only
rage. Adrenaline pumped through
her, heightening her senses and quickening her
reflexes. Her fingers flew over
the controls. Her Centaur spun
on its metal feet, changing direction within seconds and bore down on the
mechanical beast that had destroyed her
companion. Her months and months
of training made all of her actions
automatic. How many times had
she pulled off this maneuver in the
simulator? Another burst of fire
from her rail guns and the upper leg of the enemy Titan disintegrated, pitching
the helpless machine onto its side.
Two down, she thought, four
to go. She wondered how
her comrades were doing.
She took a quick glance
around.
Disaster! Other than
herself, only the squad leaders machine was
still in the battle. Her squadmates
had expended all of their shots uselessly against the thickest armor of the
enemy, doing almost no damage. They
had paid for their lack of skill with their lives.
Her squad leader was hard
pressed. She had succeeded in
disabling one of the enemy mechs but she had been grazed by a couple of shots
herself. Her Centaur was limping,
and down to only half speed. She
was in the middle of the remaining enemy
machines. These were Ares, the
largest of the enemys mechs, immense 100-ton vehicles armed with twin
particle beams and an array of short and medium range
lasers.
Opening her throttle even more to bring it
up to its maximum speed of 110 kilometres per hour, Aello charged straight
at the enemy, firing as she moved.
With any luck her attack would create enough of a distraction to save
her squad leader from certain death.
It succeeded almost too well.
All three of the enormous machines
swiveled their torsos in her direction.
Aello realized that she only had moments to
live. She attempted a desperate
maneuver, firing the jump jets attached to the upper legs of her
Centaur. Her forward momentum
and the power of the jets caused her to soar over top of her
opponents. Such a tactic was
incredibly dangerous, because once airborne her mech could not change direction
easily and an airborne target was a sitting duck for a veteran
pilot. Aello was counting on
the element of surprise to save her.
If her timing was perfect her sudden leap would momentarily leave
her adversaries with nothing to shoot at.
The stratagem
worked. A murderous barrage descended
on the spot that her mech had occupied only moments
before. Already, however, the
enemy pilots were shifting their sights to bring down Aello as she leaped
over them.
Aello cut her jets, and fired her retrorockets
so that the Centaur spun in mid air as she dropped toward the
ground. Pneumatic systems absorbed
the shock of landing automatically as the Centaur hit the
ground. Even before she touched
down Aellos finger tightened on the firing trigger hurling a deadly
salvo into the knee joint of the nearest Ares, blowing the titanium leg apart
and dropping the monster into the dust.
By this time the squad leader had taken advantage
of the distraction. At point
blank range she directed the fire of her Centaur into the weaker rear armor
of the nearest Ares. Unfortunately,
the penetrating power of the Centaurs rail guns was not enough to punch
through even the relatively thin armor protecting the rear of an
Ares. Her shots tore strips of
metal from the enemy machine, but did not strike a vital part of its
anatomy. Reminded of their former
adversary both remaining Ares turned their armament on the squad leaders
mech. This time she did not
escape. A burst of laser fire
blew open the Centaurs cockpit.
The machine continued to move forward, its pilot dead, and then the
particle beams blew it apart.
Aello took all of this in while bringing her
weapons to bear on the closest Ares.
As she did so, she lined up the two remaining enemy mechs so that
one of the huge machines blocked off the line of sight of the
other. She pressed the firing
button. Again her uncannily accurate
shots ripped apart the enemy mechs knee
joint. With a shriek of
disintegrating metal the leg buckled.
Now only one enemy vehicle
remained.
Aellos Centaur was turned directly toward
the remaining Ares. Without even
aiming the enemy pilot let loose with everything he
had. Most of the shots missed,
but several laser beams and machine gun rounds struck home, blasting a hole
through the transparent canopy of Aellos Centaur and vaporizing sections
of its external armor.
Aellos Centaur staggered under the hammer
blows of the Ares salvo.
Using the time gained, the enemy pilot turned his full armament directly
upon her. There was just one
chance left for the rookie Centaur pilot.
Opening the throttle wide, she drove her mech like a battering ram
directly into the huge enemy vehicle.
There was no chance of Aellos Centaur having any success in
damaging the massive Ares with this tactic, but so huge was the enemy mech
that the maneuver took the Centaur right under the Ares
weapons. Unable to depress its
armament sufficiently, the Ares fired futilely over the top of the much smaller
Centaur.
The respite gave Aello the opening she
needed. For a few seconds the
giant Ares could not hit her, but she was right next to the enormous
machines legs. Firing her
weapons point blank, Aello took out the last of the enemy
mechs.
The assault, however
was not yet over. There were
still the troop transports to take care
of. During the melee these had
moved off several hundred yards in order to steer clear of the
carnage. Aello took off after
them. Her attack was sheer
butchery. Caught out in the open
without their escort, the poorly armored transport vehicles were literally
ripped apart by the Centaurs gattling
guns. Panic-stricken soldiers
ran in all directions as the mech raged amongst them spewing death in all
directions. A few soldiers fought
back with small arms, but Aello moved too quickly for most of their shots
to be effective. The few hits
that she did take were easily absorbed by her
armor. Finally, Aello stopped
firing when she had run out of targets.
She had avenged her fallen
comrades. The fury within her
died. Already she was feeling
the pangs of sorrow over the loss of her
companions. She had been warned
of this by the squad leader, and she knew that she had to put it from her
mind. Pilots that grieved too
hard over fallen comrades did not last long in
combat. They either quit the
profession, or distracted by their grief became victims
themselves. She breathed deeply,
her exhalation more of a sigh than a
breath. She still had one more
job to do. She turned back to
the site of her encounter with the escort to finish off the disabled enemy
mechs. Then she could return
to her base with news of the encounter.
Slowly, she turned the battered Centaur
around. She was both elated at
her victory and saddened at the loss of her
comrades. But she was a warrior,
trained to accept the death of others in order to be
successful. Stoically, she guided
the Centaur toward the scene of the
battle. Her first victory; she
would remember this day for the rest of her life.
The scene of the battle was strewn with the wreckage of the mechs once piloted
by Aellos comrades. There
was no hope that any of them were alive.
Warfare in the thirtieth century was a brutal affair, fought with
weapons of great violence. Some
five hundred years earlier humanity had reached the stars and begun its rapid
spread throughout the galaxy. It
had encountered few sentient species and certainly none as dangerous to life
as the humanity itself. Due to
the vastness of space and the lack of a strong central government, regional
differences and the ambition of local authorities had led to the division
of the human species into dozens of rival star and planetary
systems. The result of these
regional rivalries was war. And
on Aellos home planet, located near the near the galactic rim, and
settled 500 years ago by colonists from the ancient nation known as Greece,
rival clans battled for supremacy.
Aello had trained all of her life for such
battle. It was a dangerous choice
of occupations. The life of a
mech pilot was usually violent and short.
But she had grown up in a very traditional
society. For a woman, military
training offered a way out. And
no favoritism was shown to anyone in the cockpit of a
mech. Those who were chosen were
good at what they did or they were
rejected. Aello was better than
most. As a matter of fact, she
had graduated first in her class and had shown a
coolness behind the controls of a mech that her instructors had found
astonishing. She had now shown
that the proficiency she had shown in training had translated into ability
on the battlefield.
After ascertaining that her comrades were indeed dead, she looked for the
enemy pilots, but they were gone.
Their wrecked machines littered the battlefield like the skeletons
of some sort of extinct monsters.
But the damage to most of them could easily be
prepared. There would be good
salvage. Her superiors would
be pleased. She tapped her
console. It was time to contact
HQ. She radioed a battle report.
And then with mixed feelings turned her mech for
home. She had experienced her
first battle and come out living up to her name;
Aello,
the Whirlwind.
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