Chapter 4: Mech it happen

"Fall back!" Will shouted as he piloted his Salamander battle armor to a withdrawing maneuver. The horde of vipers were raining deadly acid down upon his squadron, and despite their thick armor, the noxious liquids were rapidly eating through the titanium hull that had been specially designed to withstand high heat.

The fire-resistant material, however, was not impervious to acid. The vipers' acid ravenously chewed through the scattered Salamanders, exposing the once sealed cockpits of panicking pilots to the air.

The brutes bulldozed their way through, launching their horns in a destructive volley that punctured the bipedal walkers and killed the hapless pilots outright. The general order from HQ had been sent out to retreat, but Will was sure that the rolling carpet of biological monsters would catch up and wipe them out immediately.

However, he had sworn to serve the Emperor of the Terran Empire, and the commander was an extension of the Emperor's will. He would not go back on his oath now.

The new Smart Servos upgrade allowed the Salamanders to swiftly transform from their battle armor to scout buggies in under a second. With that, they roared away from the unfurling infernal mat. The vipers and brutes continued to rout them, catching a few of the fleeing Salamanders with their biological projectiles, and Will cursed when he saw that only half of the original number of his squadron remained.

"Where do we retreat to?" one of the other pilots hollered, his voice stricken with fear. "They're coming after us! We can't run forever!"

"Forward Base 2," Will replied when he noticed the holographic screen lighting up next to his windshield. The instructions from the commander was clear.

The vipers and brutes moved a tad slower when they exited the broiling inferno that heralded their invasion and corruption of this dimension. However, Will was aware that the human forces were being pushed back bit by bit, until they were cornered to the wall.

"The forward base is just ahead! Hang in there!" he shouted over the growl of his engines. The all-terrain buggies practically flew over the rough ground, their suspensions shrieking from the sheer pressure, but they managed to surge ahead of the living tide of blades and acidic maws.

The decimated squadron of Salamanders reached the third HQ center, where Engineers bustled about, ferrying shipments of minerals in their claw-like arms. A fresh squadron of Salamanders had been newly constructed to reinforce them, their gleaming armor standing up straight.

They wouldn't stay pristine for long.

"Put the gear in the rear!"

An engineer shouted as he hurried over to start repairing the damaged Salamanders, who transformed from their scout buggy forms back into the battle armor forms. Sparks flew as the engineers got into gear, their mining lasers welding broken plates together and cauterizing fissures in the hull.

The radar tower at the center of the forward observation post pinged as its satellite dish whirled about, and Will caught sight of dozens of red icons closing in on them. No…over a hundred. This was not good.

"They're coming!" one of the other pilots shouted.

"Stand and fight, Salamanders!" Will roared, composing himself. "Until death!"

"What, you run out of marines?" One of the engineers complained sourly, appalled at the thought of being sent to the frontlines along with the combat units. Armed with only a single close-ranged laser drill meant only for mining, it would be suicide for them.

"I see them!" another Salamander pilot hollered. Will swallowed when he saw the huge mass of vipers and brutes ascend over the hill, the serpentine forms of the former and the large bulk of the latter slithering and charging forward like an unstoppable freight train.

Raising his fire-resistant combat shields – for all the good they did against such an alien, organic enemy – Will grimly took a step forward.

"Fire at will!" he shouted. Then he jumped when all of his subordinates turned to aim their incinerators at him. Apparently they had misinterpreted his order because he was named Will. "No, don't fire at me, you blithering idiots! The enemy! Burn the enemy to ash! All of them!"

"Yes, sir!"

Boom!

However, before the vipers and brutes could come within range of their relatively short-ranged flamethrowers, something screeched through the air before landing in the demonic midst and detonating. The explosion blew demon corpses into the air, their carcasses ripped apart by the sheer explosive force and shrapnel.

"?!"

Will consulted his holograms, and then saw in his rearview screens that a column of slow but heavily armed tanks had rolled up to taken position next to the HQ center. Mechanical anchors extended out of their thick hulls and drilled into the grounds, locking the massive tanks in place. Their turrets transformed and were elevated, the barrels pointed toward the heavens. Several were already in place, but the newly anchored tanks were just in time to join the first batch to fire in concert.

With a resounding boom, the tanks rocked as they expelled high explosive shells into the air. The artillery projectiles arced downward before bursting into incendiary shrapnel that blew up once more even as they sliced through bellowing demons on the ground below. Flowers of flame blossomed across the horde, consuming the foul creatures and reducing them to ash or bloodied splatters.

Still, the swarm of demons kept coming.

"Fire at will!" Will shouted again, and this time his squadron obeyed, turning the nozzles of their flamethrowers toward the approaching enemy and torching what few were left after the devastating bombardment from the tanks.

Thankfully, there were so few left.

The brief interlude of peace didn't last long. Just when Will thought they had won, a scream overhead absolved him of that misconception. A massive blob of bio-plasma soared in the skies before slamming into one of the stationary tanks and immolating it in superheated matter. The highly charged particle punched through the supposedly impervious armor and detonated within the huge vehicle, cooking the crew alive…

…and that was assuming there were any who survived the moment of impact…

"Behemoths!" Will shouted, adjusting his vision. The enormous siege beasts, which had been specially selected among ranks of brutes, which were then forcibly mutated, now sported a massive cannon-like maw that had grown out of their broad backs, generating vast amounts of bio-plasma within their bodies before catapulting them across large distances and into the ranks of enemies.

The tanks fired back, their own high explosive rounds arcing over the gulf to detonate amidst the slow, limbering siege beasts. Three of them went down almost immediately, their thick hides unable to endure the anti-armor shells from the venerable tank company.

While the two siege units traded fire across vast distances, more of the demons showed up, hellhounds galloping alongside brutes and pockets of vipers here and there. The squadron of Salamanders formed an impassible wall of shields between the advancing demons and the tanks, opening up with an expansive torrent of flames that turned the battlefield into a raging inferno. Demons screeched as they were immolated, their tough bodies burned into crisp and reduced to ash from the sheer firepower the mechanical Terran army brought to bear.

"Watch out!"

A pilot from somewhere to Will's right shouted a warning, only for those to be his last words. A tide of acid washed over him, disintegrating the towering battle armor almost immediately. Spinning around, Will caught sight of multi-headed serpents crawling over the terrain.

Hydras. Evolved from vipers, these new gargantuan creatures were several times larger and many times deadlier. Spitting acid from all nine heads in conjunction, even a small squad of these terrifying creatures could wipe out an entire army of infantry.

"Fall back! Stay out of range of those things!" Will hastily reorganized his collapsing lines. He thumbed a switch. "Armored company! Target the hydras at coordinates 4-80!"

"And leave the behemoths alone?" the tank commander, Ted, snarled. There was a concussive boom as he fired off another long-range shell that knocked over another behemoth, destroying its head and causing the rest of its carcass to topple over.

"Just for a few seconds…"

"No. orders from above. You understand."

Will wanted to swear, but his loyalty to the Terran Emperor was absolute, so he hung his head bitterly.

"Don't worry." Ted seemed to sense his mood. "Reinforcements are on the way. Heard it from the head honcho himself. Just hang in there, and we will…"

He was interrupted by a howling burst of energy that rippled through the air and punctured a huge hole through the lead hydra. The maimed serpent hissed ferociously as it staggered, two of its heads blown off by the strike, and the rest of its heads flailed about as they tried to locate their assailant.

Another beam seared through the space between them and disintegrated three heads this time. The hydra wailed as it crashed back, its sole remaining head almost weeping bitterly.

Then a third charged particle beam obliterated it before it could retaliate with one last wave of acid.

"The Titans are here!" one of the Salamander pilots cheered. "We're saved!"

The titanic bipedal walkers, which were easily twice the height of the Salamanders, marched forward, their charged particle cannons spewing deadly rays of destruction. Another hydra went down, its many heads cut off by the searing beams. Then the Panzer tanks fired in concert once again, their high explosive shells raining down on the clustered hydras and blowing them to bits.

A growl from above signaled the arrival of a squadron of gunships. Heavily armored, with four jet thrusters spewing plasma, the hovering platforms soared toward the embattled hydras and behemoths, their plasma turrets firing superheated bolts at the scattering demons. Broadsword heavy gunships, they tore through the demons like a hot knife through paper. Even though the vipers and hydras were able to spit acid high into the air, the energy shielding that protected the broadswords resisted the noxious fluids and they continued to circle the area, blasting the offending creatures to bits.

Despite their overwhelming domination over the ground army, they lacked anti-air weaponry. The demons, probably from previous experiences, knew this and sent a flock of gargoyles at the Broadswords. However, the Titans raised their anti-air missile pods and sent flak rockets spiraling into the air. The high explosive payload detonated amongst the scurrying airborne demons, ripping them apart in bursts of flames.

"We can win this!" Will shouted as he moved his Salamander forward to incinerate a horde of hellhounds that were lunging at the bulky, unwieldy and clumsy Titans. While the massive bipedal war machines were devastating against equally large, heavily armored targets, they were vulnerable to being swarmed by numerous smaller units. Their charged particle cannons, while highly destructive, were ineffective when it came to targeting the much faster and more agile swarm units.

That was where the Salamanders came in. Stepping forward, they set the smaller creatures ablaze, and the immolated demons fell over, shrieking as they were burned into ash.

"It's not over yet," Ted warned from his tank. Will glanced up and spotted a couple of Mastodons emerging over the horizon, bigger than even the hydras and behemoths that formed the enemy's line of biological artillery.

""Just two of them?" Will scoffed. The Titans lumbered about to address the new threat, their charged particle cannons blasting the poor Mastodons apart before the mammoth demons could reach them. Though their quadruple scythes would be devastating in close range, from afar they didn't pose much of a threat. Even then, the Titan commander knew that he couldn't allow the gargantuan creatures to get close or they could single-handedly rout the Terran line.

"Incoming Fallen," the pilot of a Broadsword warned. Evolved gargoyles, with much bigger wings and bulk, the humanoid creatures sailed through the air. Though similar in structure, they dwarfed the smaller gargoyles, had larger claws and were aimed with twin Devourer bio-cannons that launched large globs of acid that could melt through even the Broadsword gunships' energy shielding. These dangerous winged giants were dedicated anti-air units, and more heavily armored and durable than the gargoyles they evolved from, and the Titans' high explosive payload, anti-air flak missiles were ineffective against them. The Fallen shrugged off the Titans' anti-air fire and ripped through the Broadsword gunships, forcing the airborne squadron to quickly retreat.

"Damn, we need to take those Fallen out!" Will growled when he saw one of the venerable gunships swing into a doomed spiral before crashing onto the ground and blowing apart from the impact. "Where are the Raiders?"

However, the superiority fighters never showed up. Instead, the Titans growled mechanically as the transformed, the missile racks on their backs rearranging themselves. Swapping the ammunition racks, the Titans then fired off a new type of missile at the Fallen.

"High Impact Payload?" Will wondered. "Is that a new upgrade for the Titans?"

"We've made quite a few technological advancements over the years." Ted chuckled. "By the way, the research facility just finished your Infernal Pre-ignitor upgrade."

"Excellent. Just in time too!"

The Salamanders turned to counter a new wave of hellhounds and vipers, and engulfed the enemy demons in superheated flames. The new, upgraded flames were so hot and intense that they were now blue rather than orange. While the hellhounds were incinerated instantly – much faster than before – the upgraded flames were now capable of burning through the vipers' armor, and even took out a hydra or two that accompanied its viper brethren.

Boom!

Will glanced up and saw a Fallen blasted apart by a major missile. The anti-air projectile, rather than detonating amidst the flock of flying monsters, had instead chosen to burrow deeply inside its target before blowing it apart from the inside out. The new anti-air missiles were less effective against swarms of countless, more numerous targets, but they were deadly against the highly armored and slower Fallen. The mutated gargoyles were blasted to bits by the new anti-air, anti-armor ammunition.

With the skies cleared, the Broadsword heavy gunships surged ahead, most likely to raid the enemy base and destroy their infrastructure. They left the lingering ground forces to the line of Salamanders, Panzer tanks and Titans, which were more than sufficient to mop up the surviving demons, which by now numbered less than a dozen.

It was a rout.

"Good work, everyone." The commander's voice streamed over the radio. "The enemy has surrendered. We've won."

"Hah." Will leaned back in his seat and exhaled. "This was a piece of cake…"

"Yeah." Staring at my computer screen, I stared at the victory notification and clicked on it before analyzing the scores. That was a fun game, but as I expected, hard difficulty was so-so. Maybe I should have tried Brutal instead. Next game then.

But at least I was familiar with a couple of changes. The Titan's new anti-air mode, for example, made it more effective against enemy heavy gunships and their equivalents. That was something I should take note of and incorporate into my strategy. Before, Titans were pretty bad against enemy Broadswords and Fallen, as well as the gargoyles' second mutated form, the massive flying anti-ground Guardian. The AI hadn't evolved its gargoyles into the Guardian because it was preoccupied with taking out my Broadsword heavy gunships, but I wondered how the Titans' new anti-air missiles would work in the matchup.

Well, this was the first of many games that I would be playing. For now, I should check what new changes the other race, the Psidorks, received.