Mythos Effect

Chapter 6: The Next Moves

"This is fucking boring!"

Jacob rolled his eyes as Jon complained for the fifth time about the distinct lack of action after their assault. Once the mecha and Engels had established a secure landing area, word was sent to the carriers stationed in Shanxi's orbit to begin landing the ground forces. The skies of Shanxi now teemed with activity as shuttlecraft made their way to the planet's surface. The complement of the Xerxes was the first to make planet-fall; troops, support vehicles and supplies were all ferried down. As for the squadrons, their orders were to hold their positions until all ground personnel were down and ready, and so for the past hour, Jacob and his team lounged beside their mecha, trying their best to amuse themselves and failing.

"Well, that's war, Jonny," Alison said. "For every hour of actual fighting, there'll be another six of waiting, often a lot more. It's not like in the vids with action every other minute."

"But why the hell did we stop?" he groused. "We were kicking their asses six ways to Sunday! If we kept on going, we could've routed their entire goddamn army! This whole battle would be over before the next day!"

"No, it wouldn't, balls-for-brains," Alison replied. "We were able to do so much damage because we caught them with their pants down. By now, they know we're here, and they can prepare for us. With that in mind, if we charged in right now, we'd soon find ourselves overextended and without support. Our mecha can take a beating, but my computer picked up some pretty nasty readings off of their big guns; some of them even got lucky enough to rip holes in a few Engels, which I might remind you, have armor as thick as our Sword-classes. Enough of them aimed at us, even the Nazzadi's mecha won't be able to dodge them all, and unlike Engels, our mecha can't regenerate. Our damage control systems can only do so much." She leaned back against the massive leg of her Claymore. "It's Tactics 101."

Jon crossed his arms and grumbled, doing his best impression of a pouting child. He was quite successful, so much so that Jacob and James snorted with laughter at the sight. Then, a voice suddenly blared out in front of them.

"Let's go, people! We're burning daylight! I want us ready to roll out when we get the word! Schnell!"

Jacob turned to look at the source of the voice; Captain Johan Reiner, commanding officer of B Company (dubbed Butcher Company), 97th Heavy Infantry Battalion, strode about his unit, voice like thunder. He was a bull of a man, six and a half feet of iron muscle with the only fat present on his body coming from the meal he had aboard the Xerxes. He was encased in heavy combat armor, pitch black in color with his Captain's insignia stamped on his helmet in stark white. While his armor was more cumbersome than the versions worn by the Light Infantry units, it also came with a fully sealed and self-adjusting environment, along with superior protection.

He was armed with an electrokinetic assault rifle, which Jacob recognized as an AR-30; it fired a five-round burst with each pull of the trigger which would tear across the field at insane velocities, but that wasn't what made it truly dangerous. Each round was laced with a potent cocktail of neurotoxins, a trick the Federation military had picked up from the Migou. The difference, though, was that the toxins were not made simply to incapacitate; they were made to kill, and kill quickly, ravaging the nervous system with remarkable efficiency. You get so much as a flesh wound from a bullet, and you'd be dead before you even realized you had been hit.

The soldiers themselves were outfitted similarly to their captain, protected by the same armor and armed with various electrokinetic guns, as well as a number of heavy weapons, including plasma guns, heavy rail guns and missile launchers. They also carried a few scaled-down charge beam battery mounts, capable of taking out something the size of his Gladius with one good hit.