Chapter 132: Clash

Summary: Some views from the African Front...

Chapter 132: Clash

Lieutenant Fawkes slammed all his weight on his Shieldmaiden's right traversal peddle. He knew, intellectually at least, that putting the extra weight on the control mechanism didn't actually make the Mech Armor shift any faster. Thankfully, it didn't do any harm either, as the people who had made the Mech had understood human reactions and built all the cockpit control tough as fuck. Equally thankfully, the mech's shift was fast enough for him to keep stitching fire over the Ogre that was only half a meter shorter than him. It roared furiously, flinching away from his fire, missing his fellow pilot whose leg had taken some damage.

Blue Two was still a going concern, despite the damage, and used the opening to rotate into a thrust from the vicious plasma blade that the Shieldmaiden had been equipped with for emergency close combat. Mech Armors weren't supposed to get in that close, being originally envisioned as stand-off platforms meant to reign hell from a highly mobile, elevated platform. But the four squads that were currently in test deployment had realized quickly that for all their genius, the designers had massively underestimated their own creations.

They did serve brilliantly in their original role. Mad props for that.

But they were also 65-tons of mass, able to move surprisingly agilely with enough practice, and had armor for days. Toss in the detail that its creators had equipped it with a damn effective melee weapon, and it all added up Blue Two once again proving the Shieldmaidens were monstrously useful in close combat as well. As testified to by the pilot brutally gutting the Ogre before hobbling back a few steps with his remaining good leg.

The Shieldmaiden's weren't just stand off weapons.

They were get-in-their-face and shatter the fuck right out of a monster charge weapons too.

Yes, they were having to replace the armor plates a lot more frequently than had been called for by original SOP. But there, again, the developers had massively undersold how well the machines could be supported in the field. The best armor, the stuff you wanted on your vitals, had to be made in specialized facilities and shipped in. But cruder armor would be fabbed out of scraps using the field-service modules that the geniuses who made the Shieldmaiden had sent along with them. Already, it was becoming common practice to save the good shit for replacement only of vital plates, while strapping on the field-manufactured stuff everywhere else. A field-decision that was letting them use the Shieldmaidens as a wrecking ball to break charges and shatter fortified positions.

Now, if only they had about a good five hundred more of them, Lieutenant Fawkes would believe they could drive these bastards all the way back through the Gates. Still, as he traversed again and released some of his limited number of rockets to break up a packet of resistance, he smiled. After all, his two squads, along with the two assigned to Bravo Seven, were only the first wave. The initial prototype machines which were intended to test the idea and figure out how to best use them Mech Armors. Word was that dozens more of the Shieldmaiden design were already under construction, including modifications based on the feedback they were producing. Fawkes, for one, couldn't wait to see them start arriving in serious numbers…

… … …

Colonel Rebecca Swain barely held back a cheer of her own as her troops shouted themselves hoarse. Even so, restraint only went so far as she quietly fist-pumped, watching as the enemy position they'd been trading charges with for two weeks, without either side managing to come out on top, collapse under the onslaught from the Shieldmaidens. She hadn't been sure what to think of the Mech Armors when they'd first arrived and been assigned to Bravo. Part of her had half agreed with the sarcastic commentary from one of her more cynical sergeants that had quipped, 'trust the Japs to think Giant Robots were the solution.'

Yet, having now witnessed the damn things in action, she had to take back every unkind thought she'd had about the concept. Her fears that all the old arguments against such 'impractical' designs would hold up, and that all the time and money spent on making the prototypes could have been better used to produce more tanks and APCs. Thankfully, the Mech Armors were firmly shutting the doubters up by proving to have the one thing that more traditional vehicles lacked.

Specifically, agility.

All the old arguments by armchair generals had assumed you would be fighting enemies who were from the same tech paradigm as you were. Meaning that the opposing hardware would have the same general pluses and minuses working for its operators. That their cavalry would the same general terrain movement abilities and, far more importantly, the same inability to move sideways. Unfortunately, that's not what they'd actually been faced with since the Invasion started. Their enemies since that moment had been living creatures, some of them damn near as tough as modern tanks, and which could move fluidly.

As in, they could sidestep, jump, hit the dirt, and go through a whole damn range of motions that were flat out impossible to match with a tank or APC. The Americans were working on some sort of light hover-tank that could partially address the issue, or so she'd heard, but these Mech Armors had gotten in first. More, from what she could see, she didn't think the hover tank would be as useful. Not that she'd question having another tool if that design panned out too, but she was pretty sure the Mech Armors' unexpected ability to mix it up in close wasn't going to be matched by a hover vehicle!

Ultimately, anything was better than what they'd been stuck with. Until now, the natural fluidity of enemy elites had meant that the military was heavily reliant on whatever Heroes could be pulled from various countries to tie up the really big fish among the monsters. That had let the military both focus on the more human-scale enemies, and fire at the big fish once they were contained. It had worked, but it hadn't exactly been a great solution, since Heroes weren't quick-to-train and there just flat out weren't enough of them worldwide to do all the jobs they were now desperately needed for.

Which had left infantry dying by the score just to slow down a single elite long enough for someone with a big enough gun to get that gun on target. Or else dying to keep said elite in place while the big guns did their work. An ugly, ugly way to fight a war, and the casualty counts here in Africa had been painful as they were forced to rely on that tactic anyway. If not for them mostly managing to maintain air superiority so far, meaning gunship support was possible when things got really bad, they'd probably have been completely screwed. And munitions supply for those gunships was starting to put a painful crimp on how many fire missions they could be called in for. Another plus of the Mech Armors, whose designers had thought ahead about how to keep their main weapons armed in the field.

Yes. Rebcca was pleased so far with what she'd seen. They finally had a unit that could at least somewhat match their needs. The Mech Armors could do rapid direction shifts via the same sort of side steps as the monsters, rocket-assisted jumps, and so on. No, they weren't as agile as their enemies. But they were at least in the same general ballpark, and more heavily armored than even most of the tougher elites. Meaning they could soak damage when they couldn't quite keep up with an enemy in agility.

The concept was working. Now, they just needed a heck of a lot more of them…

… … …

Admiral Stefan Hilgert set down the latest report he'd read with a certain amount of grim satisfaction. The report had covered the results so far from the first four squads, sixteen in total, of the new Shieldmaiden Mech Armors. He, along with many of those assigned to the African front, had possessed high hopes for the concept. Many of their contemporaries had not, wanting more traditional weapons platforms instead of 'some new boondoggle.' Thankfully, not only had the developers been entirely independent of need for government funding and thus immune to the idiots, but those actually 'on the ground' here in the African campaign had all been picked for their ability to adapt and adjust for new concepts.

Well, picked or replaced, really. Quite a few officers had been pulled and reassigned for not being up to snuff in that regard, as the unusual nature of their enemy meant mental agility and ability to improvise and adapt was currently highly prized. It meant they had a wild mix of generals, admirals, and other senior officers from a couple of dozen different militaries, but the very adaptability needed for facing their current enemy let them adapt to odd allies too.

He, himself, was one of the highest in the African chain of command. In charge of the fleets along the entire Eastern Coast of Africa. It meant that he was working extremely closely with Generals Beaumont, Tezerin, and Emulda. All of whom were running major army groups in various parts of East Africa, struggling to keep the enemy contained. The fact that there were so many large, disconnected commands, had led to the very unusual situation that was Admiral Hilgert, a naval officer, being in charge of the overall campaign.

Of course 'in charge' wasn't quite accurate. It was more on point to say that he was simply the only one with a full view of what was going on, so the three Generals he was working with were trusting him to coordinate. He left actual tactics in the hands of the ground pounders who damn well knew what they were doing on that front better than he ever would, but handled getting them the support they needed and directing overall strategy.

All of which meant that he'd been one of the people to make the call about the Shieldmaidens. So far, he couldn't have been more pleased with the results unless the things suddenly developed the ability turn into overpowered magical girls in addition to everything else. To date, only three of sixteen Mech Armors had been mission killed, two of those were likely repairable once returned to Japan, and they had collectively had an impact all out of proportion with their tonnage so far.

He'd chosen to deploy them all into General Beaumont's area. The woman was trying to hold back the monster Forces in Ethiopia and Kenya. With Egypt having been one of the few African countries to hold the line, due to a combination of being well armed and having natural barriers in the form of their deserts, Ethopia and Kenya were where the monsters were launching one of their more vicious attempts at breakout. The reason for that was, frankly, the other reason that Admiral Hilgert was in charge of overall strategy. And it very much wasn't a piece of information they wanted leaking out into general civilian knowledge if they could contain it.

The enemy had attempted to both launch ships and open Aquatic Gates. The ship attempts had stopped quickly, when the monsters realized just how hilariously outclassed their war galleys were compared to modern naval ships. But the Aquatic Gate attempts were constant, and a major part of the work that his Fleets and their Marines were putting in. They had to patrol the entire coast of East Africa, identify attempts by the enemy to open Gates on the coast, and blow the living hell out of those attempts before the bastards could get literal sea monsters into the water in significant numbers.

So far, they'd been largely successful, and the few aquatic monsters that had gotten through had been hunted down by water-based Heroes that patrolled with his Fleets. Thank God the enemy didn't seem able to open underwater Gates, or even Rifts, for whatever reason. As it was, they were stuck trying to open Gates close to the water and funnel their aquatic units to the ocean that way. So far, containment was holding as a result of that limitation. But that was only because the Egyptians and General Tezerin had managed to secure the African side of the Red Sea, and General Beaumont was keeping the enemy off of a full third of the rest of the Eastern Coast. South Africa was literally the only holdout in southern African at this point, with a ton of foreign troops under General Emulda now there to help hold it. Which helped a bit as well.

Thankfully, the Western coast was actually in better shape. The Empire's advance had been stopped in a rough front line that went through Niger, Nigeria, and Libya. Meaning that everything west of those countries was still under United Nations and World Hero Association control. But from Cameroon to Nambia, his own counterpart to the west had the task of shutting down the same attempt he was faced with. They had to keep the African disaster contained to Africa, or they were all screwed and they knew it. Global trade was hanging on mostly because the enemy wasn't fielding naval assets yet due to their own efforts. If that containment failed…then the disruption of global logistics would go from 'bad' to 'possibly unrecoverable.'

Whatever anyone else thought, the war for Earth was going to be decided in Africa.

Oh, probably not the war against the Empire overall. He was well aware of the stalled plans to counter-invade. But that was sort of the point. Most of those plans had stalled. Some limited offensives were being managed here and there, to keep the Empire from having it all its own way. But for the most part, everything freed up anywhere was being poured into the African front to try and plug the potentially mortal wound Earth had already taken. They had to push the enemy at least back from the coasts, hopefully out of Africa entirely. If they didn't, it was only a matter of time before they broke out and used the oceans to hit everywhere else in numbers far harder to deal with than the Rift Bubbles.

If that were to happen…well, the only thing Admiral Hilgert could see to do at that point was to manage a fighting retreat off the planet entirely. Something else that was only being made theoretically possibly by the same people who'd made those Mech Armors. To think that the fate of the world might come down to the genius of two 19-year-old Japanese college students and a sentient Quirk. He supposed that all those anime he'd watched when he was younger had gotten it right. Giant robots and all.

At least he wasn't yet taking orders from a high-school student council. It might be time to throw in the towel if it ever degraded quite that far…