Chapter 13: You Can’t Win Them All
We spent the next three days in hiding out in the doctor’s house waiting for Annika to gain consciousness. Doctor Issac was a how you say…good sport…allowing us to stay in his house while we waited on news of our fallen comrade. Finally on the third day, like Jesus himself, she gained consciousness and returned to us.
As we were about to celebrates Annika return to the living, when the Marine noticed some commotion outside. Going down the street was one of those human sized Invid flanked by a pair of Southern Cross soldiers in there duty uniforms.
They went up to every house on the street and knocked on the door. At each door, whoever answered the door was shown a wanted poster of me. It figures that the stupid militia must have put two and two together and figured out that I was somehow involved in the escape from the warehouse.
As they came up the street we tried to figure out what we could to avoid a potential firefight with the Invid and Southern Cross troopers. I offered to drive away in my Cyclone to distract them, but the Doctor didn’t like that idea. Eventually it was decided that we would let Doctor Issac answer the door and we would prepare for the worse.
Doctor Issac answered the door and told the search party he hadn’t seen me or anybody associated with me. Fortunately for us, the party believed me and moved on. As we took a collective sigh of relief, we then focused on the situation at hand. We were in the middle of a hostile town, low on supplies, and having an injured member of our party.
We needed to get out of town, but first we desperately needed some supplies (such as rockets for our Cyclones). The Doctor pushed for us to strike back against the miltia and take out supplies from them. Initially, the rest of us were skeptical but as we thought more about the idea we slowly bought into the plan.
That night, the Comrade, Doctor, and I decided to go out and see if we could gather some information on the militia. The others thought about leaving me behind briefly, but my command of the French language proved too valuable. The Doctor helped me put on a disguise (the first attempt by myself was laughable at best). The Marine and the Sergeant stayed behind to guard Annika and our supplies.
The three us began to traveling to the militia base. As we headed through the town we saw the two same two Southern Cross soldiers talking to a third person Southern Cross in a dark alley. It appeared whatever they were up to, they must not wanted the rest of militia to know. We headed over to find out if they were friend or foe.
As we approached, the third soldier recognized me even through my disguise. He turned out to be freaking CDFC, the Southern Cross air police. Figures, but the fact he didn’t immediately try to arrest me was encouraging. The other two soldiers were Tactical Corp soldiers. The three had enough of being under the thumb of Invid, they too wanted to strike against the Invid. I had my doubts, but the rest of group wanted the soldiers help.
The soldiers and the Doctor and the Comrade began to formulate a plan. The militia base was staffed all mercenaries (except these three). Routinely, there was at least twelve of those small human-sized Invid. The militia used a renovated medieval castle and kept the turrets manned at all times. In addition they had a motorpool where they kept their remaining six or so Hummers. And of course, they kept an armory inside their main building.
The idea was to lure off most of militia (and hopefully most of the Invid) with a diversion. Then the Southern Cross soldiers would drive in our Hummer with a “prisioner” (the Comrade) into the castle’s motor pool. There they would steal a second Hummer and make their way to the armory. At that point, the three Cyclones (the Doctor, the Marine, and I) would attack. The Marine would secure the castle gates, while the Doctor and I would break into the armory and load the Hummers with all sorts of goodies from the armory.
That was the plan anyways. One of the Southern Cross soldiers was a demolitions expert and set up a remote-ignited able fire inside an abandoned building. This would ignite my spare ammunition of my hold out pistol, the Tomcat. It was small and easy to conceal, I carried just in case I had to go somewhere were Joan and Charles could not.
Anyways I digress, the militia immediately sent three Hummers worth of militia to see what was going on at the building. A few minutes later, our Hummer went in. It immediately went to motor pool to obtain a second Hummer. As it entered the Motor Pool, our attack went off.
The Marine raced into the castle gateway. He shot the castle gate to immobilize in the up position. He then took a shot at one of the three human-sized Invid on patrol near the gate, but missed.
The Doctor immediately jumped on the eastern castle wall and told the castle defenders that they should not work for the Invid and they should fight for the resistance. Many of the militia defenders immediately hesitated. The Doctor fired into another patrol of three human-sized Invid near her part of the wall.
I then jumped up on a turret on the west wall where I came across another patrol of human-sized Invid. I immediately put a grenade into them, hitting one of them in the back. I noticed that they had dragged the remains of our battloid inside and left in the middle of the courtyard. Of course, everybody else noticed the battloid as well.
Immediately three more patrols of human sized Invid arrived and we found ourselves in trouble. Two of the patrols fired began firing on me, but fortunately the turret’s wall protected me from most of the Invid’s energy weapons. Another two patrols fired on the Doctor’s whose Cyclone managed weather the fire pretty well. One of the remaining patrols raced over and fired into the Marine, who managed to avoid most of it.
The Hummers immediately raced out of the motor pool. A Tactical Corp and CDFC in our original Hummer, the Comrade and the other Tactical Corp guy in the newly acquired one. The original Hummer made a beeline for the castle gate, while the other Hummer tried shooting up the Invid.
The Doctor and the Marine each managed to take out an Invid in with their shots, but I couldn’t hit the Invid I was facing with the pair of Bushmasters I was using. The Invid began landing lots of hits, they destroyed our Hummer which had all of our stuff in it! The Doctor’s Cyclone took a lot of hits and was pretty badly damaged in the fighting and the turrent wall I was hiding behind looked more like swiss cheese when the Invid were done with shooting.
The Comrade managed to escape with the second Hummer before it was too badly beaten up by the Invid. The Marine went for a desperation shot and raced over to the Battloid. He fire on its power plant to deliberately cause it to explode and create a huge distraction for the enemy. He jumped in midair, fired, and landed on the roof of the barracks. I saw a huge blinding explosion as most of the insides of the castle exploded.
I immediately took off in hopes of getting away. I jumped back and hopped my way to a nearby abandoned building. I then transformed the Cyclone in motorcycle mode and head back to Doctor Issac’s house.
It was there I met up with the survivors of the raid. The Comrade had returned with his captured Hummer and a demolitions kit. The surviving Southern Cross soldier gave it to him and wished him the best of luck, stating he wanted no part in our future adventures. The Doctor and Marine arrived at the same time, each had covered each other in the escape and had managed to get back to the house okay.
We had to get out of town…now and Annika was still too weak to travel long distances. The Sergeant agreed to stay behind and guard Annika. The Doctor offered her boyfriend’s house as a place to stay. We made our goodbyes and head out on the long, lonely road…
Tags: Memoirs Robotech Mekton
