There was no fleet in orbit, and Leanne launched two comnavsats to cover the whole planet, so we could figure out where we were most needed. By the time we had a good idea of what was going on, the pilots were finally formed up and ready to rift down. Fina and Dorm had already left their bridges to join them.
“I want a dragon or a wyvern with each squadron if possible. So they’ll need to go down one at a time. If the cats want to split up around the squadrons, they can.”
Tamsin nodded. Metunga’s face vanished as well.
“Can we go down with our squadrons?” asked Woof.
“If you want.”
They all vanished.
I can’t say I was surprised. What did surprise me was they stayed to ask. Serena was actually looking directly at me, instead of through her mirror.
“You want to go down too?” I asked her.
“Not really. But I was wondering if you were.”
“Not unless something goes really pear shaped.” As if to demonstrate why, I suddenly yawned. She grinned, and the two AIs kept their faces straight. “And someone will have to use magic to bring them all back.”
“Haynes and Gitte can probably do that.”
“One at a time?”
“Let’s just see. They might be able to manage a squadron at a time now.”
“They’re welcome to try. As long as those they try are up for it.”
Leanne chuckled, and suddenly stopped, looking surprised at herself.
“It was worth a chuckle,” I told her.
The squadrons went down. Vid feeds popped up, and we began watching what they were seeing. These were quickly augmented by overview feeds supplied by drones Leanne sent down.
The first thing I noticed was after the dragons and wyvern had shifted, they all picked up a new gun which suited their size, which had gone down with them. The first few shots from all of them went wide, but they’d never used them before. The first dinosaur to be hit by the single pulse the gun fired, simply became a spray of red all over the area.
Dinosaurs who saw the first one hit, stopped in place in shock for long enough for another dozen to go the same way. And then all of them turned away from whatever rats nest they were attempting to enter, and sought cover from what was coming at them.
The standard meson blaster punched a nice sized hole through them, but it was taking either very well placed hits, or a number of them to take each beast down. A head shot was the best, but they moved their heads so fast getting one to hit was difficult. The body was much easier, but we had no idea where anything vital inside was, so it was hit and hit again until it went down.
Things were not totally our way. Rawtenuga who found good cover were able to start hitting pilots who didn’t have any. It gave us an indication of their heavy weapon hitting power, and I had Tamsin throw suit integrity levels up on a screen, with the normal colour coding.
“Pay attention to your combat suit integrity levels,” I bellowed into the general channel.
A number of vids showed other pilots diving for cover, and their vids showed some actual diving going on. Several of them lost another percent of integrity from what they hit when they landed, or what they bounced off.
A suit suddenly went red, and dropping like a stone, I yanked, and the pilot landed heavily face down on Judge’s cargo deck, still with jaws embedded in the torso.
“A little help, please,” said the struggling pilot, who was quite unable to get out of the suit.
A cargo droid ambled over, ripped the jaws out, leaving extra-large teeth behind, and had to force the back open. The pilot levered himself out. He looked around, obviously discovering he wasn’t on the right ship, and before he could go anywhere, I shifted him to the bridge. He looked around, saw Serena and I, and the screens we were watching, and immediately took a seat.
Over the next half hour, we collected more pilots on the bridge, as combat suits failed, and I had to get them out of there. All of them found the alternative to being in the fight just as compelling as being in it. We saw one combat suit walk into an ambush, and I moved it to the other side of the dinosaur about to bite it, and instead the dino took a metal fist to the side of the head. It went down, but was only dazed. Someone else shot it.
Tamsin expanded one of the screens, and we all watched a dinosaur being chased by a dragon, and finally being eaten in a single bite. The crowd on my bridge cheered.
“Someone isn’t going to need breakfast,” said a female voice, and we all laughed.
“Do we have a count of how many Rawtenuga landed?” I asked Tamsin.
“Not yet. But it was a lot more than sixty four platoons.”
“Hello,” said Serena. “Did a squadron just move?”
“Looked like it,” said the guy I’d saved first.
Which meant one of my mages was stepping up a level.
Forty Three
Mopping up the last of them took hours.
The last dozen had thrown up a fairly solid fortification, and had resisted all attempts to get to them. I’d had to bring a number of cats back with too much damage, after demonstrating their cat suit could run on all fours as well as they could, but even leaping cats were still a good target to dug in dinos.
Of course, we didn’t even have a decent colonel on the ground, and no-one could even claim to be half-trained. In the end, I’d simply removed the fortification, and in spite of being surprised their cover had vanished, the remaining dinosaurs charged the nearest combat suits. It was soon over, given by then they were facing a seriously outnumbered situation.
Haynes and Gitte jumped about a third of those still on the surface back to their ships, and I did the rest, as most of them were from Judge. The gallery vanished without being told to. I also put a dino body on the cargo deck, where a cargo droid pulled it away for storage and examination. We’d had nothing from Haven about the one I’d sent them, and we really needed to know where the best place to hit them was. Leanne tasked a doc droid to figure that out. The mess being left as it was moved was then cleaned by little cleaner droids.
“I think we can skip training,” I said generally, without getting a laugh. “But normal breakfast time for everyone.”
Tamsin nodded.
“Did we suffer any actual injuries?”
“No, but several of the ones you brought back need additional armbands to replace the ones teeth shredded after getting through the outer suit.”
“Job well done then.”
“Have we heard from the rats?”
Serena started laughing.
“What’s up chuckles?” said Jill, now back on the console.
“I think the rats have coms problems.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Edna.
A screen popped up everyone could see, with the message ‘Leader come down’ spelled out in rats across what was obviously a sporting field of some sort. It was of course in their language, but we read it in ours just the same. The message ended in an arrow, with a single rat standing a short way off the end of it.
“Oh,” said Edna.
Woof started laughing, and everyone joined except me, as I was busy standing, and Serena who saw me standing, and also stood.
“Shall we?” she said.
“Let’s shall.”
We appeared in front of the single rat, and the word spelling ones all started to disperse.