The Inorganic bipeds seemed to be the last word in the strangely perverse Invid design preferences, misshapen and wrongly articulated to Earthly eyes. The low-hanging arms and malformed bodies-stick-thin here, bloated there-made them appear as if the Invid had set out to make them as repulsive as possible.
Not that the Sentinels needed that added incentive to fight; Farrago and all her personnel were committed now and the only way out was victory. Inorganics flew into the air like burning, bursting marionettes, or were blown back into the ones behind them, to explode.
But the Invid were firing back now, their annihilation disks and beams ranging in among the Destroids. With the last of the Destroids down on the landing surface, the big Earth mecha stood shoulder to shoulder and put out a stupendous volume of fire, a walking barrage that reaped rank after rank of the troops who had been drawn up for Tesla's review.
But with each enemy down, another moved up to take its place, firing dispassionately. And Enforcer skirmish ships darted in overhead now, to fire on the flagship. Many of the upper hull batteries had to turn from ground support to AA fire. Lisa was just glad the task force drawn from Karbarra had taken away its Pincers and Scouts and Shock Troopers; that left a lot fewer flying mecha to contend with, a critical point in this battle plan.
The biped Inorganics were doing their best to contain the Destroids' advance, as the Earth machines began a slow march, traversing their fire here and there, pounding away at the enemy in an inferno of skewing cannon beams and boiling missile trails.
A cluster of Scrim made a stand, and concentrated their fire. A Spartan, busy emptying its racks at another target, was riddled; it lurched and then flew apart in flame.
The Karbarrans had all fled for their lives, ducking into the first shelter they could find. The Destroids suffered another loss, a Raidar X, and a skirmish flier got a shot through a weak point in the upper hull shields, disabling a powered twin-Gattling gun mount on the Gerudan module of the ship.
Nonetheless, the Destroids had driven the Inorganics back from the landing area. Damage reports were pouring in, but the ship was still spaceworthy. But, it was a sure bet that the Invid were moving up more reinforcements. Lisa gave the order for the Destroids to move out and secure the area-dig in and hold. Then she gave Vince Grant the go-ahead, and the GMU began to uncouple from the Farrago.
The enormous Mobile Ground Unit rolled out on its eight balloon tires, tires some hundred feet or so in diameter. Once out from under the flagship, it could add its own upper-hull missile and gun batteries to the antiaircraft defenses.
Lisa wasn't too worried about the skirmish ships; there were fewer of them than there had been a while ago, and she was sure the Sentinels could handle the rest. Nor did the Invid seem to have any supercannon-anything in the GMU's class, anything big enough to take out the flagship with a single round-in Tracialle.
No, this would be a battle of ground mecha, Destroid and Inorganic. It was already beginning to the east, where a quartet of Odeons had arrived to try to dislodge some MACs, and they were slugging it out almost toe-to-toe, the hastily-abandoned buildings collapsing around them. But the MACs' multiple barrels, firing beams and solids both, were beginning to tell.
There were requests for reinforcements from another sector, and reports that the Invid were bringing up more troops and even some Hellcats from a third.
Lisa did her best to look calm. Max, Miriya-Rick! Hurry!
In the sanctum of the Living Computer, the Invid brain seethed with something very much like wrath. Far above it, the sounds of battle sent vibrations through the entire colossal concrete-and-glass mushroom that was the capital city.
"The Karbarrans have somehow betrayed us!" it said. "Give the order! Slay the children; exterminate them all!"
The Hovercycles and airbikes and the rest had checked out all nearby outposts and seen nothing; the VTs and Hovertanks closed their pincer movement and swept in from every point of the compass, converging on the objective.
The mecha swept down with half of each unit in Battloid form, the better to sweep through the compound, while the rest supported them in Guardian or Gladiator mode, or flew cover in Veritech.
Battloids needed no special forced-entry tools; they simply ripped the buildings open and peered inside, being careful because they didn't want to hurt the hostages. They ran from building to building, pulling doors off or prying up roofs, calling in amplified voices.
It didn't take long for the report to be relayed back to the appalled Max Sterling. "Results negative, sir. They're not here. We hit the wrong place!"
"Come onto course 115," Lron roared to Rem.
"But-the locator says-"
"Do it!" Lron shook the bulkhead with his anger. "I see a Sekiton fire over there, where the old processing plant is. The Invid don't build infernos like that, and the Karbarrans have little cause to, but the Gerudans love signal bonfires. Do it, I tell you!"
"Take 'er in, Rem," Rick said. "All of you, get set."
"Sensors are picking up a lot of heavy Protoculture activity over in the direction of the city, Admiral," Jack told Rick. "Looks like the party started without us."
"Rem, floor it!"
Rem wasn't sure exactly what Rick meant, but he made a screaming approach, handling the shuttle with quiet skill. In seconds, they were retroing in over the camp, looking down on a scene that made them all gasp.
An eerie blaze had been started in a processing pit, flaring in the indescribable colors of Sekiton, being fed by a chain of what looked like Karbarrans. But Inorganic bipeds were headed that way, and still more were approaching from the far distance along with the sinewy forms of Hellcats moving at top speed.
Most of the Crann, Scrims, and Odeon, though, were ranging around an area marked off by what the Sentinels had come to recognize as energy-wall pylons. But the energy wall was gone.
Apparently the enemy media were intent on keeping the rest of their prisoners from escaping, and hadn't been given the command to execute them-yet. The bipeds were firing short bursts into the ground, driving the vast majority of the Karbarran children back toward the barracks area.
One tiny figure, crouched behind a building, jumped out to let a Scrim have it with a fierce wash of brilliant blast. The Invid was rocked and its fellows halted. Their counterfire smashed and consumed the corner of the building, but by then the sniper had fallen back. Only he had no place else to hide; he had his back to the flames.
"Hard-nosed little runt, that Kami," Jack said admiringly.
"Karen…" Rick called to her. She was seated at the main fire-control station.
"I've got 'im, sir," she said with vast composure. With one shot from the shuttle's pumped-laser tube, Karen took out the Scrim Kami had hit, and traversed the stream of brilliant energy to the next, bisecting it.
As the shuttle zoomed past, the third Scrim turned to fire at it, but Rem's evasive piloting frustrated it. Kami took the opportunity to duck past it and around the building, headed for the blockhouse. He would have cheered at the shuttle's arrival, but he didn't have time and couldn't spare the breath.
Kami hadn't had to shoot up the pylons of the energy wall because he had discovered a power-system junction, over by the blockhouse where he had found his Owens gun and power pack.
Shutting down the barrier was simply a matter of wrestling down a Karbarran-scale knife switch.