File 9.1 - The Twin Devils

Quiet ticking rang out through the open air. The island life made things a little strange for all. It had reminiscent feelings of them being on Equuleus, which was modeled after fittingly enough ancient times on Earth like where they found themselves now. One might have even found it calming, if not for the eerie haze that hugged the north horizon or the heavy overcast clouds that never left.

A day passed with everyone keeping their head down and saying nothing that wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t the first that they lost someone and they knew it wouldn’t be the last either. Still it didn’t make it any easier, especially the time that they had been together. They all knew each other since the war, apart from Schir and Rinn.

Cal took it the hardest from the group. They were his team and his orders. He sent men to die before, not that it made it any easier, but worse was that he couldn’t have done anything to change it. It was out of his control. There was nothing to focus on, if he did this or did that. It happened because they were surprised. It was his fault, but he couldn’t do any better so that Noinel lived.

The only thing he could focus on was making sure the rest of his team lived. That was the only thing he could do now. The only thing to keep him moving forward. Having a better plan than the enemy. Even though they had been winning, in the loose sense of the definition, neither of their engagements with the real enemy were successes. They lost both times. A third time could not happen.

Above him, the roar of the hover jets firing to stabilize interrupted his thoughts. He stared up taking a break from his planning. Rinn and Wells had left early in the morning on a supply run. Thanks to their efforts of pillaging system networks of the cities and their hit-and-runs on the security forces, they mapped out a route to sneak around the cities unnoticed.

Judging from the way the small stolen delivery craft banked, they were successful in finding components. Cal walked over to the landing site as they locked the craft down. The rear hatch opened down revealing the mountain of crates and open parts thrown together along with Wells. “You should get in the pirate business when we get back.”

“And give up my commission?” he joked. Wells marched down handing over the manifest of what they had stolen. “We still need to make several trips to make this work, but this is all of the time consuming pieces.”

He nodded in agreement and looked back at the Jiao’s with their armor plating ripped off. “I’m more worried about the Skins. One ship to another isn’t too different, we’ve already been able to find that we can make them work with some creativity. But they don’t have Skins and even if they did we probably wouldn’t be able to make any of them fit.”

“None of us are engineers either. We might be able to steal some drone parts, but it’s going to be really messy.”

“And getting the onboard systems to actually accept them is another story.”

It wasn’t looking good and they needed all of the fire power that they could. Together they couldn’t even do any serious harm to either of the Twin Devils and expecting to succeed with less than their full power would be impossible. “How have you been wasting away your time, Cal?”

Tapping on the pad, a rendering of Torton displayed, something he had seen hundreds to thousands of times already. “Looking for weaknesses.”

“Found anything?”

He motioned over to the command table, which really was just a holographic protector and three chairs encircling it. “Now that you’re back I can go over the plan.”

“Sounds good!” Wells clapped his hands together eager to finally kill some Devils.

Beckoning out to the rest of the team, they all gathered around as Cal hooked up the pad to the projector. “I’ve been going over everything we’ve compiled from the fight and simulations on the computer. I’ll be honest, it’s bad. No matter the way I run it, even completely surprised, we just don’t have the necessary firepower to destroy even one. Even the most optimistic plans have us all dead inside of ten minutes.”

“If I wanted to hear bad news, I’d go listen to their news propaganda, Cal. What do you actually got?”

Cal tapped the pad changing the holo display from the battle to the two machines. “These are the enemy’s Skins. From all of the analysis run, they are completely unlike anything available. None of the rest of the world uses this level of military technology. This is likely their state-of-the-art machines.”

“Meaning that they won’t have anything worse?” Schir asked, hesitantly.

“Correct. If we can accurately get the limits and range of these machines, even if they have more or make more, we can within a reasonable margin estimate what we can expect from them going into the future. More than anything, more than winning, more than killing them, we need to get that data and give it back to Command. It’ll secure our future victories.”

“Cal, you’re not just making plans for running away are you?”

“No, of course not. I still want to destroy them. That is our first objective to achieve, failing that we can’t fail the other.” Highlighting the first Skin, the one that they met on their first day grew to fill the inner circle of the command table area. “I’ve codenamed this the Black Devil.”

“Clever.”

“Thought you might like the name. The Black Devil’s basic performance completely out strips any modern Skin made today. Nothing from Jade comes close, even Kami’s for energy output pales and Novensides and Olympian for size and power. They’ve managed to make a true monster on this planet. In a straight up one-on-one fight our Skins will always lose.”

Flipping to the known weapons seen already in combat, the massive cannon enlarged on the display. “The primary weapon it possesses is this large particle beam cannon. A full charge from it only takes 4.53 seconds, which is actually improved from the first time we saw it fire. They’ve clearly been working on it. We don’t know if it can do partial discharges or not, but right now assume it does. The firepower is easily comparable to a battleship.”

“That’s completely excessive for a Skin,” Elle noted, her personal experience with the machine made her well aware of its firepower. “Skins are designed mostly for Skin to Skin combat and Skin to ship combat. Though, it’s rare these days for anything to be decided by anything more than Skin to Skin combat.”

“Clearly, the engineers had different things in mind when making this than our typical warfare.” Cal called out more points on the machine with the technical notes to accompany them. “An armor coating that deflects beam weapons and a surface that renders it difficult for traditional targeting systems to get an accurate lock, this is a machine meant for long range stealth missions. The computer has concluded with something that I agree with. This machine was never meant for single combat. It is a heavy assault machine meant to combat multiple simultaneous targets at the same time. It’s meant for large scale combat and is actually disadvantaged in more limited skirmishes.”

Schir shook a little hearing that. She knew the power of it like Elle and hearing that made things even more frightening. “You’re saying that we haven’t even seen what it is truly capable of doing?”

“Sadly no. As we stand now, it could wipe out an entire squadron of Skins in moments or strike deep through our lines hitting our carriers and battleships. It’s the worst of the two machines and the one I want destroyed most if we can.”

“I want it dead as well,” added Wells.

Flipping to the other enemy Skin, “I’ve designated this the Blue Devil for ease like the other. They have unique paint jobs that make them appear more like custom models rather than production line machines. Given that, we may indeed only be facing a few enemies.”

“But wouldn’t they want to send their most powerful, sir?” Schir asked.

“In war, you want to keep your trump cards close and only play them when you need to. Revealing your hand too early makes it easier to counter in the future when you absolutely need the win. So either we’re dealing with tactical amateurs.”

“Which is possible given that they haven’t fought a war since before the Fall,” Elle inserted.

“Or they have nothing else to play. Everything we’ve seen from them suggests that, especially given the data from the first and second engagements with the Black Devil. The first engagement compared to the second seems to imply it wasn’t working fully. They may be short staffed or supplied. Given the focus on terraforming rather than military, it makes more sense. Also, if they had a production model, they would likely have them deployed more widely around the world. Their military arm would be more visible. But it’s not, as we’ve seen, they’ve nearly no military presence and everything is handled by policing forces. Anything military seems to be focused in Antarctica.

“Meaning we’re dealing with custom models. The Blue Devil makes that very clear. Though structurally they read similar, their construction and purpose are very different. We never saw the Blue Devil before yesterday, but from everything we saw it looked made custom to be partnered with the Black one. Data even suggests there are parts that match for some unknown function, possible interlocking for support features. Scans are inconclusive on it, but it’s meant to be paired with it. And given its specialty, it makes a lot of sense.”

“That insane shield,” Rinn tossed in, still bothered that it did nothing when he fired on it.

“It’s a defensive machine, meant to protect the assault machine from direct enemy fire. While the Black one can protect itself, the Blue one is meant to make sure that’s unnecessary.”

“They failed at that,” Wells pointed out.

“Given what we saw, they are probably inexperienced pilots and maybe not even used to fighting together. That’s something we can use to our advantage.” Calling up the shield data, he focused on the worst thing. “This is defense to the extreme. A massive shield that would be unwieldy in combat and worthless, but it can move it with ease. The machine is powerful without it and there are several armaments on it not even used yet. The pilot seems more reserved and cautious than the other. But getting through the shield is going to be the hardest part. While not invulnerable, it is strong enough to take a ship cannon directly, but not without being damaged.

“We didn’t see it during the fight, but data suggests you had an effect on it. Three concentrated beams should be able to pierce the shield from the ship's cannons.”

“That’s still a massive amount of firepower. No normal Skin can even scratch it.”

“We were able to make some dents with our close range weapons, they have a more tightly controlled energy frequency for cutting, so we should still be able to cut through it, but it will still take multiple hits to do so. Something the pilot appeared to be aware of and made adjustments to block with different parts to keep the integrity balanced.”

“So they know the weaknesses of their machines, but are bad in actual tactics.”

“Yes. Which is where we will beat them. We need to out-think him and not play to their strengths. I’ve devised this plan accordingly.” A map of the city Cal picked along with target objectives for the team.

Wells leaned in with a slight smile creeping up. “Interesting plan, a little disappointing that this will de-emphasize the Skins. But I’ll take a kill any way I can get it. War isn’t about being fair or honorable, but securing victory through any means.”

“I want you all to look at what we’ve got and make adjustments to your work based on it. We will still need to do everything we can to have the Skins all fully functional, but this plan can succeed without them working at their peak. We’ll win, whatever way we can.”