Chapter 126: The Ghost In The Swamp

Three infantry units, with the majority of their numbers made up of repair and maintenance technicians, were accompanied by four wings of heavy Mecha as they made their way to the battle site at the Uranium Mine. From here, they would be repairing the Mecha left after the battle and collecting raw materials from bulk drops to send out Mecha and spare parts all over the region in the upcoming weeks.

The swamp had been deemed temporarily cleared of enemy forces by the Mecha units that had landed near here and spread out to the edges of the zone, joining the various forces attacking Narsian entrenchments.

After the last round of Landers, more and more of the giants had started digging in to defend, instead of roaming around looking for targets to attack, a shift in the flow of battle that put the Kepler forces at the advantage.

The Narsians didn't really have a choice though. So many more Mecha had shown up that they couldn't just roam anymore, they had to do all they could just to defend the regions of the planet that they already held.

[General Mons, we have reached the Mine site. How long until your unit estimates that it will arrive?] The head of the repair and design force that had been assigned to the region asked over the secure Command Channel.

The intended recipient was, of course, the Pilot of the Mighty Phalanx Class Carpe Noctem, who had been quietly dropped onto the planet during the last wave. The Narsians didn't know that he was here, nor did most of the planetary forces, since Central Command didn't trust that there weren't still leaks and communications breaches in their ranks.

They now knew how the first attacks had been launched, poor digital security on the planetary side. But despite their best efforts and a change in security codes, there were no guarantees that the Narsian forces hadn't continued to monitor their communications.

To the south of the swamp, in a region where very few Kepler forces had been sent, a large city had been overtaken by the Narsians, and scans showed that the majority of the last wave of arrivals had come there instead of being spread around the planet.

To Central Command, that suggested that they might have brought a transportation device with them between planets, so the Phalanx Class Mecha was sent to eliminate them, but the battle plan called for the Mecha in the area to first prevent any reinforcements from reaching them in time to mount a rescue effort.

At the edge of the battlefield was an enormous crater, left by the repeated bombardment of the same location. At twenty meters deep, Carpe Noctem barely needed to crouch to get itself almost entirely hidden inside the murky waters, preventing the enemy from detecting the oversized threat and making preparations for its arrival.

The repair techs were already hard at work, building up defenses and repairing the more lightly damaged mecha. The thing that caught General Mons' attention wasn't the efficiency of the work though, but the way that the troops obviously and carefully avoided one disabled Mecha, a bone and bronze colored Crusader with blood red hazard stripes on the hull and red unit markings.

The pattern was unfamiliar to him, but the markings said that it came from Abraham Kepler, so the General zoomed in on the placard hung from the Mecha's waist joint, which was still wrapped in bloody razor wire. The hull had received the same treatment, and numerous Narsian skulls and weapons hung from chains and hooks around the pauldrons and top carapace armor.

The nameplate was obscured by the war trophies, but the sign hung on the front was clearly legible.

[Tarith's Rage. Final resting spot of Major Tarith Nico, who felled a hundred Narsian infantry in hand-to-hand combat.]

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There was a pile of Narsian infantry nearby, in the shape of a memorial pyre, though the area on top had been cleared away. If the sign was to be believed, that was where the enemy had put Major Nico, before the Kepler forces had moved her back to her Mecha.

General Mons recalled that Tarith's Rage should have had an Ion Destroyer on one arm and an anti-aircraft battery on top, but now it had a pair of Gauntlets, one hastily painted to a bone color to match the rest of the unit, with the fresh paint looking out of place among all the battle damage. It was clear that one of the arms had been broken off and reattached at some point, but somehow, it seemed that the damage was all cosmetic.

General Mons looked closer and realized that the unit itself was repaired. The damage was only one layer thick in the composite armor, with much of it being only paint damage, and all systems looked to be functional.

"What a strange way to build a memorial." He thought to himself, settling in to read a novel on his data tablet while the techs worked.

He was just getting to the good part when the perimeter alarm sounded, meaning that Narsian troops had been found in the area. General Mons ducked a bit deeper into the water, as it was essential that he wasn't detected in advance, and the defensive troops moved out to meet the threat.

It all seemed to be going smoothly until suddenly there were cries that an infiltration unit had entered the base.

Infantry scattered, and Crusaders turned to look, only to realize that heavy weapons would kill as many of their own as the Narsians, due to the close range.

Then suddenly the tomb that was Tarith's Rage moved with a burst of speed, unlike anything that a Crusader Class Mecha should be capable of, grabbing its sword and a battered combat shield from the ground and smoothly removing the heads of the nearest Narsian soldiers.

As the blood flew, the war horn on the mecha, used mostly as a warning siren gave off a piercing wail. Laughter, the mecha was laughing at them as it killed. The blade in its hand was a blur, mostly obscured by the fountains of blood from the dying infiltration unit for the next few seconds, then the weapons clattered to the ground, and the techs found that the Mecha was in exactly the same spot and position it started in, with only the fresh splatters of blood to show that the battle wasn't a hallucination.

[What the feth was that?] Someone called over the radio, and General Mons scanned the mecha again.

No signs of life, minimal power readings, as if it was set on standby mode like any other inactive Mecha, and the hatches were all sealed shut, possibly welded from the inside.

'Ghost. It's the Ghost of Tarith's Rage.' some spoke it aloud, some only thought it, but the consensus was that this mechanical tomb had become sentient.

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