CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Base Fido, Nature’s Dawn, 20th of June, 2771
Colonel Toramaki Sen observed the display panel and grimaced. His expression was carefully studied and imitated by his subordinates, who surrounded the wide table into which the panel was embedded. Looking briefly south-west through the campaign tent’s mosquito-netted window, the colonel thought about the difficult decisions that lay before him. Grimacing again, he leaned towards his comms officer.
“The companies currently under attack are to cease offensive action and retreat. This retreat must be slow and organized, and they must head northwards into the Dogspine. Waste this monster’s time! Get it lost in the range’s folds and crevices, because the time we’ve made it lose up until now doesn’t yet justify the losses we’ve just suffered.
“As for the companies it passes by, once it’s in the Dogspine they are to harass the bakemono every step of the way.”
“Colonel, as for the casualties –”
“The bot casualties are of no concern. They were out-of-date anyway ...”
“I think he meant our people, sir,” an old major interjected. “They have perhaps two days of food left, the winds are arriving and the rains will soon follow. What about them?”
The colonel thought about that for a while.
ROWAC was an unusual unit in that the majority of its human components were not dedicated to frontline duties. Between logistics, resupply and the three Cs, ROWAC congregated more than two hundred personnel in its command base.
He had decided to locate Base Fido right in the middle of the pass that interrupted the northern and southern ranges of the Dogspine. The base was a highly improvised thing, of course, but its situation, well flanked by the mountain range’s tall peaks, and by the fast river that followed the northern slopes of the northern range, provided effective protection. The base was also situated on the axis MEWAC had forged in its passing, and his esteemed EWAC colleagues were at the moment improving the conditions of that axis from Fido to Lograin to favor a more fluid ROWAC retreat, and booby traps had already begun to be set there.
The base itself was concealed within the tall grove that grew in the pass, a smaller grove of nearby Diesel trees having blessed that spot as well. The Diesel grove had been spurned by MEWAC in their passing; their deposits were too meager to justify the effort of tapping for fuel to power those oil-guzzling armored Suits. ROWAC’s energy requirements were more humble, however, and the grove had proved generous enough to fuel all his bots.
The bots didn’t burn the fuel, of course. Their generators had instead been designed to saturate the oil with oxygen and infuse a small amount of initial heat, the resulting slow decomposition being enough to quietly and efficiently power their systems for a couple of days.
That grove had since dried up, not due to ROWAC, but to EWAC’s efforts instead. Contrary to common belief, MEWAC wasn’t alone in operating Suits; the Engineering Warfare Corps possessed some of their own, although their adapted Hammerheads were far more lightly armed and armored, having been exclusively tasked to combat engineering, mobility and counter-mobility works. It was EWAC that had dug the improvised command bunker in the midst of the more extensive pine grove. They had also dug the trenches for his elite praetorian bots, and opened up the ground surrounding the base to establish a killing field for the anti-armor teams, recycling the acquired timber into the central bunker and other key positions. Progress had become slower since then, the Suits having to depend on fuel resupply from Lograin, its arrival slow and difficult due to terrain constraints.
All combat was a race against time. The more fuel they had, the faster they would be able to build up the road. The faster they built up the road, the more fuel they would have, not only to continue building up the road and base fortifications, but also to dedicate their time to the setting of some very macho booby traps along the axis of retreat. Simply put, the more time they could conquer, the faster the base could become something to do some serious delaying of its own, the faster they could evacuate if things went awry, and the better their chances of dealing damage to the enemy Suit if it made the foolish mistake of using the road.
The decision was all too clear for him.
“Our combat personnel are to persist in delaying action until the Unmil is dead, or until they are dead, or until it loses interest in them and abandons their theater. Should it leave, they are to remote-detonate their bots, group into survival teams and move into the mountain range. They are to survive there in comm blackout until the sixth day of the following month. Whoever is still alive must then open comms so we can get a fix on their positions and evacuate them by air.”
“By air?!” the major blurted out angrily. “There’ll be no Lograin air base by that time, only drones could come in so deep, and they cannot evacuate a brown squirrel!”
“But they can make supply drops, Dennis. If that’s the only option, then it can’t be helped. The alternative is that the Unmil will get here while we are still weak, smash its way through and catch Lograin with its pants down.”
“And what makes the colonel think it won’t smash its way through even when we are better fortified,” a younger major asked.
The colonel sighed.
“If we begin to make such pessimistic assumptions, we might as well decide to surrender our families to something that might not even know what mercy is. This enemy is powerful and relentless, and as a result we are being forced to make some very difficult decisions, but there is no living thing immune to death, and this one is certainly no exception. We will face it, and it will tire. And then we will kill it or we will die trying.”
“If this command dies, it may prove impossible to resurrect ROWAC in the near future,” his lieutenant-colonel coldly warned.
“True, but if we fail to halt its progress and instead escape this theater, we won’t have the window of opportunity to manufacture a house-cleaning bot, never mind a force of combat drones. We’ll have to take the risk.”
“Be that as it may, if it becomes clear to me that it’s prowess is beyond all our measures, I’ll be pulling select men from battle whether you need them or not,” his right-arm man informed him.
The colonel sighed again.
Lieutenant-colonel Dale Arakaki was too hard-headed to warrant an argument with. The blue-eyed officer possessed the almond-shaped eyes of his Japanese ancestors, and they had narrowed to slits as he spoke. Like most transgens, Arakaki frowned on naturals like the colonel. Toramaki felt like explaining to his subordinate that he was still paying the debts for his three offspring’s transgenetic procedures, that he had opted to ensure that his children be spared the suffering that he had endured over his youth, and that he still had to deal with every day. Colonel Toramaki had progressed within ROWAC to a position that many envied, and he had done so despite being at an enormous disadvantage in regards to his peers. It was his sharp mind that had made up for that, but he still had to deal with men like Arakaki, who failed to understand why their senior would refuse to subject himself to the same treatments as his children.
“Feel free to do whatever you like, Dale, in full knowledge of the fact that if I survive such an event, you would later find yourself the subject of court-martial.”
The lieutenant-colonel gave him a stiff nod, apparently unconcerned over such an eventuality.
“Pass the orders on,” he ordered his comms officer.