24.
The explosions as the Titans ripped the probe apart were picked up on the drop-ship's sensors as Sully fell through the low atmosphere. That gave him a good idea as to their location and so he was able to adjust course slightly to be able to land just behind the crest of a small hill overlooking the probe. He directed the drop-ship containing the Fuller's Thumper a few clicks back from that. Sully couldn't, however, get a location on Mason.
The explosions as the Titans ripped the probe apart were picked up on the drop-ship's sensors as Sully fell through the low atmosphere. That gave him a good idea as to their location and so he was able to adjust course slightly to be able to land just behind the crest of a small hill overlooking the probe. He directed the drop-ship containing the Fuller's Thumper a few clicks back from that. Sully couldn't, however, get a location on Mason.
"Mason,
you there? Cavalry's here" he broadcast at her. "I need a location
for tightbeam coms" this would prevent their communications from being
intercepted.
There was a
brief pause of static, before Mason spoke up. She sounded harried.
"Yeah,
burst link, er coming"
A small blob
of blue appeared in Sully's map overlay. Mason was on the opposite side of the
plain to where Sully was headed, not bad from a tactical point of view, but she
was very close to the Titans.
"You ok?
Y'seem quite close to those big buggers"
"Uh-huh,
just, er, testing their defences"
"The
verdict being?"
"Yeah,
er, it's pretty good. I'm pulling back"
"Ok,
I'll be on the ground in 15 secs. Standby"
If only it
was that simple. As Mason made her tactical retreat - suit smoking slightly,
charred down the right hand side - the Titans were able turn their attention to
the incoming drop-ship.
"Woah,
woah, WOAH" Sully exclaimed as targeting lasers and radar tracers painted
his ship. He frantically started running bypass scripts, try and convince the
Titans he wasn't really there, while the drop ship AI released chaff to try and
confuse any incoming ordinance. Neither of which, however, were enough to
bypass the Titans' sophisticated electronic suite.
They
fired.
Sully slammed
the eject button, thrusting himself up and out of the ship, while his two
Ostrich drones were dropped below it. The explosion of the ship as the Titans
pounded it into fragments sent Sully into a wild spin as he looped back down
towards the ground. Just about managing to arrest the spin, he fired the suit's
jump thrusters to cushion the landing, although it still came with a heavy
impact that made his teeth rattle. Within half a second he was up and running,
initially going silent, turning off as many active processes as possible to reduce
the chance of the Titan's tracking him, much as Mason had been doing as he
first came in to land.
He felt a
little safer as no more targeting protocols found him. Safer still when he had
the hill between him and the Titans. He gradually switched systems back on. The
scan revealing that Mason had moved back from the Titans, themselves having
started to move away from the now smouldering probe. He launched a couple of
side scripts looking at where the big war machines might be headed, as to his
naked eye they didn't seem to be headed towards either him or Mason. With that
running he turned his attention to assembling his pack of drones.
The Thumper
reported all systems green, as did one of the Ostriches, but the other was
sending in all manner of errors. Sully cursed and started to wade through the diagnostics.
It soon became apparent that Ostrich had landed badly after the ejection from
the drop ship. It's own jump thrusters misfired, causing it to land awkwardly
on one of its already delicate legs. It could still move, bit had been shorn of
the speed that made these drones even remotely useful.
"Ok
Mason, you'll be glad to know I'm ok, thanks for asking. What's is your
status?" Sully had to risk an encrypted general broadcast to reach Mason
as the hill got in the way of the more secure tight-beam.
"I'm
doing fine. Don't need babysitting"
"Uh-huh,
so you and your little men got the Titans beat then?"
"Will do
when I can close enough to the fuckers. But their point defence systems are
pretty full on"
"Why'd you
even test them? Thought Gumelar told you to sit tight?"
"Gumelar
says a lot of things. So are you gonna help, or just sit over there
whining?"
"What do
you suggest? I've got a Thumper and one functioning Ostrich, and you've got a
measly six plastoids. Hardly gonna leave the Titans shaking with fear is
it"
"Two and
a half" Mason replied.
"What?"
"I've
got two and a half plastoids"
"What
the fuck did you do to the rest?"
"Pirates
took one, and a bit of another. Lost the other two attacking the Titans"
"You are
properly fucking mental" Sully shook his head "So with our depleted
packs, you’ve some sort of brilliant plan I hope?"
"Rain
hell on them with the Thumper, confuse them with the ugly fucking Ostrich
getting under their feet, then I'll go slit some metallic throats. Job
done."
"Couple
of problems with that. First you've already fucked the job far as I can see.
The pirates fought you off and I saw from my drop-ship that the probe recovery
part of the deal wasn't going so well, what with it going up in a massive
fireball and all" Part of Sully enjoyed goading Mason, while another
worried slightly about the consequences of winding up such an unpredictable
marine.
"Not my
fault"
"Sure.
Also, even if I went for your 'raining hell' plan, the fact that Fuller
dedicated most of the Thumper's ordinance to anti-personnel stun bombs isn't
really gonna work all that well against massive fuck off Titans"
"The
dumb fuck"
"What?
You mean him actually tendering to try and do a good job rather than showing
off with your plastoid fettish? How dare he" Sully said irritably.
"So what
do you suggest then, genius?"
"That we
leave"
"What?"
"We can
easily declare force majeure on the tender. The probe, and probably the
pirates, are long gone, so there is nothing to keep us here"
"You
massive pussy" Mason was not impressed.
"You
can't just leave, dude" the slightly disconnected sounded voice of Lloyd
broke into the conversation
"WHOTHEFUCKSAIDTHAT?"
Sully exclaimed.
"Er, hi,
I'm Lloyd"
"I told
you last time what was going to happen to you Lloyd, now get the fuck out of my coms stream" Mason replied,
anger dripping off the threat.
"Wait.
You know this Lloyd person?" Sully was baffled.
"He's
one of the pirates, the hacking fuck"
"How'd
he break our coms?"
"Wasn't
too difficult in the end" chirped up Lloyd "I just re-routed one of
your geo-locat...."
"I
wasn't talking to you"
interrupted Sully.
"But
you've got to listen to me dude. Those big, er, droney things, we think they're
headed to the main water processing facility"
"So?"
Sully asked while simultaneously calling up the script he'd launched earlier to
track where the Titans were headed. The route computed by the tac-suit put them
on course for the large facility.
"The
facility is powered by a massive hydrogen fusion reactor" Chen explained.
"And who
might you be?" Sully was exasperated - did anyone else feeling like
breaking into his encrypted conversation?
"Doesn't
matter. All that does matter is if those Titans do to the reactor what they did
to the probe the we are all in deep
shit"
"That's
outside of our, er, remit" Sully felt pathetic even saying it.
"Your remit precludes preventing moon cracking
explosions?" Chen asked with more than a hint of angry sarcasm.
"The
facility is protected by Lanark Horishmo automated defence systems" Sully
was hurriedly looking up details on the facility, trying to make sense what was
going on.
"Protected
against Titans? Think about it, whoever is running the other ship wouldn't have
sent Titans just to wipe out a crashed probe. Maybe they'd send something a bit
more robust than those fucking things
your colleague sent over to us, but Titans are way over the top. Unless they
have another objective" Chen was firm in his assertion of the issues.
Having only narrowly escaped the destruction of the probe (twice for that
matter - the crash landing and the Titan attack) he was becoming fonder of
getting to the point more quickly.
"But why
would they want to destroy the facility?" wondered Sully, despite inwardly
acknowledging that the pirate might have a point.
"The
fuck do we care?" Mason broke in "Hey Sul, I'm liking your force
maj-er-thing plan. Let's fuck off outta here and leave the pirate fucks to
watch the pretty fireworks"
"Because
you want the science data from the probe" Chen replied calmly.
"The
what?" said a surprised Sully.
"You
heard. So here is the deal, you stop the Titans from breaking Europa in half,
then you give us passage back to your ship. We give you the science data.
Everyone wins. You might even get a bonus for protecting the facility. I know
how your paymasters get hard thinking all about the VFM in that"
"What's
stopping us from just coming over there and taking the science data?"
there was a sneer in Mason's voice.
"Firstly,
you don't know where we are" Chen was right, despite Sully's best scans,
he couldn't pinpoint them. "Secondly, if we've got a guy that can hack
your coms and foil your location scripts, don't you think we're capable of
protecting the data? Now, do we have a deal?"
"Ok"
said Sully.
"You
fucking kidding me?" argued Mason "You want to do a deal with these
fuckers?"
"Can't
see a better alternative. Plus you actually get your way and we take on the
Titans"
"Good
point" Mason's mood brightened "Time to get our hands dirty"
"Excellent"
replied Chen "Then we shall leave you to get on with it" the pirates'
link to the marines dropped off.
Sully, Mason
and the lone functional Ostrich were easily able to catch up with the lumbering
Titans just over ten clicks away from the facility, but were careful to stay
out of range of the big machines' heavy weaponry. The Thumper didn't need to
catch up to be useful, while the limping Ostrich and what was left of Mason's
plastoids were left back near the destroyed probe. Neither of the marines had
yet come up with a plan that could both agree might work. Sully had tested for
himself the Titans’ point defences, lobbing a few stun-bombs from the Thumper
which were all easily intercepted by the shoulder mounted beam weapons. Mason,
predictably, favoured a frontal assault, hope that they can dodge the Titans'
weaponry for long enough to get in close and try and locate a weak point to
focus on. However, Sully had not failed to notice the vicious scarring down the
right side of Mason's tac-suit from the last time she had attempted such a
move.
By the time
they’d stopped arguing the facility was only 7 clicks away. They'd eventually
agreed to coordinate a missile attack on the Titans, try to overwhelm them by
firing what few missiles the Thumper had along with those from the Ostrich and
their own tac-suits. Sully even threw over more stun-bombs to try and confuse
the Titans. A few missiles and most of the stun bombs made it through, but were
not enough to do much more than dent some of the Titan's thick armour. They'd
need many more missiles than they actually had to do any serious damage. But
something did strike Sully with slightly more of an impact; an idea.
"Hey
Mason, how'd they know to target the missiles first, then the stun-bombs?"
Sully asked, but suspected he already knew the answer.
"They're
running some pretty neat targeting software. It actively prioritises the threat
level of the incoming ordinance. I tried bypassing that, but nothing
worked."
"So
given that the missiles are highly explosive, and the stun-bombs less so, it intercepts
the missiles first"
"Yup"
"Even if
that means a few of the bombs get through, cos anything that does get through
will be of lower priority and therefore less damaging"
"Yeah.
Are you deliberately being slow, as this isn't exactly hard to understand"
"Just
working something through" a hint of a smile in his voice.
"What?"
"If you
were sophisticated targeting software, how would you rank a high-explosive
missile versus, oh I don't know, say a lump of polymer carrying a knife?"
"The
hell you on about? Oh" Mason began to follow "I'd target the, er,
missile first. Then maybe the polymer ordinance would get through.
"Exactly"
"So how
do we get the plastoids launched at the Titan then? They can't catch up on
foot"
"Have a
look at this" Sully beamed over a picture taken from one of the damaged Ostrich's
cameras. It was difficult to make out what was happening to start with, as the drone
was in an unusual position, on its back, legs bent above it.
"Er,
what?" Mason was confused, the sensation irritated her.
"Say
hello to the all new mark one Sully industries plastoid catapult. All
aboard!"
Again, it
took a few seconds for Mason to follow Sully's slightly bizarre train of
thought, but then she understood. She commanded the plastoids to climb on to
one of the Ostrich's feet. To hang on.
"Launch
all remaining missiles on my mark, then I'll lob over the plastoids" Sully
commanded.
"Yes
si...er...Sully" Mason responded, caught off guard by the authoritative
tone of the other marine's voice.
It took Sully
a few more seconds to butcher one of the Thumper's aiming scripts, combine it
with some of the data blueprints from the Ostirch's leg assembly and finally
come up with a firing vector for the plastoids. With no slight trepidation, he
instructed Mason to fire, followed by the makeshift catapult; the Ostrich
rapidly extending it legs and flinging the plastoids. Missiles arced in from
four angles, raining down onto the two Titans. The point defence lasers started
to light up, flashes bright as beam and missile met.
Then came the
plastoids.
A green blur
to the naked eye, but Sully used his tac-suit to slow the footage down, and
watched as the three little men fell on to the Titans. To Mason's credit, she'd
taken to the plan well, and combined with her intimate knowledge of the
plastoid as a device of the battlefield, was quickly able agilely jump one of
the three across the gap between the two Titans while the other two went to
work on the one they had fallen upon.
It was a
fascinating assault, the plastoids climbing over the Titans like some kind of
viscous insect, searching for a weak point to exploit. The Titans couldn't work
out how to respond, unable to adapt to an unforeseen route of attack. They
halted, trying to bring their weaponry to bear, none of which could. The
shoulder mounted beam weapons rotated ineffectually as they sought a firing
angle.
Minutes
passed, Sully feared that the plastoids would not be able to find a weak point
as they prodded and poked. The Titans might well have calculated the same as they
moved off again towards the facility. Sully risked asking Mason how it was
going, wary of distracting her.
Give them time was her simple textual
response as she concentrated fully on commanding them.
It was the
lone plastoid, the one missing its head, on the Titan furthest away from Sully
that made the breakthrough. Just below where the shoulder blades would be on an
equivalently sized human it had managed to prize up the corner of a piece of
armour. Its knife was jammed into the gap made, violently worked back and forth
to bend the armour a little further back. This time the knife ripped a little
deeper.
Then the
plastoid disappeared.
At first
Sully thought it had fallen off, but he couldn't see anything on the ground
around the Titan. So he replayed the footage, slowed it down. The plastoid had
disappeared inside the Titan. Sully
felt a bit sick.
Learning from
their headless brother, the two plastoids on the other Titan quickly manoeuvred
around to the weak point in the armour and went to work. Then they too
disappeared into the Titan. It took more agonising minutes until their attack
from the inside of the Titans showed any evidence on the outside. The Titan
with the two plastoids inside it stumbled, then dropped to one massive knee. It
attempted to get up, but quickly fell back onto both knees. It then fell
forward, attempted to use one of its weaponised arms to support it, but the
large barrel crumpled under the weight. The Titan fell onto its side,
motionless.
The other
massive war machine marched on, heedless of the fate of its brother-in-arms.
Sully feared that the headless plastoid had maybe malfunctioned, or got trapped
in the machine's inner workings. It wouldn't be long before the Titan was
within firing range of the facility. Sully wondered why the defence systems
attached to the factory hadn't powered up yet. Maybe more AI oddness, he
wondered.
Sully
commanded his tac-suit to pick up speed and head in front of the Titan. If the
Plastoid wasn't going to work, then he and Mason would have to try and engage
it directly. With no missiles left, that would be difficult, but hopefully not
impossible.
Then he
spotted a movement on the front of the Titan, a piece of armour in the centre
of its chest started to work its way free. It took a little more time, but the
armour then fell to the ground. The plastoid clambered out, smoking slightly,
left arm melted. With only one arm it took a little while for it to climb up
the front of the Titan. To get to eye level with the Titan.
To give it
the finger.
The Titan
exploded, heat and pressure waves washing against Sully's tac-suit as he stood
in awe. After a short while Mason moved up next to him, but didn't say anything
for a while, the two just watching the smouldering drone.
"Gumelar is never going to belive that actually
worked" remarked Sully after a few minutes.