Chapter 72: Steamed or Fried?

As the unit addresses their damages and tries to reduce as much as they can, the flow of water down the river suddenly drops to almost nothing and Max forms his thermal scanners towards the black cloud.

It is a Thermal shock wave from an intact mother ship collision with solid ground. It is too thin to show on satellite imagery, but that cloud is thousands of degrees and is flash boiling the flood waters. No wonder it isn't raining behind the wall, it will be a sauna.

[All troops, you have 30 seconds to get in a sealed shelter. That incoming shock wave is going to scorch anything left out in the open.]

There are a limited number of places in town that can be properly sealed, so everyone is running for the academy buildings. They are reinforced and with the link to a mecha power output, they can bring the temperature control back online. Nico is on that, kneeling the Tarith's Rage next to the building's emergency generator, which is currently offline. It uses a locally refined fuel that they don't have a supply of, so it has simply run out.

Captain Catan gets the power lines hooked up to the Crusader Class Mecha while his unit rushes inside. Most of the Line Mecha are staying in position, just taking shelter in the trenches to let the shock wave pass over them, confident their units can deal with the problem. Only those whose Pilot's compartments have been breached are joining the flight to the Academy.

The wave won't actually be here for about 3 minutes, just enough that even the slowest moving of injured that were well enough to still be on duty have time to make it to a safe shelter, and the All Clear calls start coming in.

General Tennant is more concerned about the wing of Crusaders that he sent out since a lot of them are in very bad shape. They were all functioning though, so hopefully, the emergency functions will be able to seal the cockpits of any units that need it. There is nothing to be done about it now anyhow, they are far enough forward that the wave has already passed over the top of them.

Max ducks Stalwart down even lower into his hole, glad he doesn't have any shoulder-mounted missiles left that might be damaged by the scorching heat of the shockwave. There isn't much to be done for the Shining Darkness though, he is too big to hide, so all the General can do is just stand there with his anchors set and wait.

The wave of burning air hits them hard enough that many damaged buildings collapse, and the heat blisters the paint on the civilian vehicles scattered through the village. The military uses a much more durable formulation, expecting attacks by energy weapons and flamers, so they survive mostly intact. General Tennant has to lean into the force to keep himself upright, and even then his anchors dig a deep furrow through the soft ground of the former sports field where he had made his stand during the last battle.

Behind the wave, the air temperature rises to just over fifty degrees celsius, brutally hot but not anything that the unit couldn't survive. The sensors on Stalwart show that it is safe to be outside, but for the next few hours, it won't be safe to come outside. All the doors and mecha surfaces are metallic and hold heat from the shock wave, making them too hot to touch.

[Any Casualties?] Max asks, and gets confirmation that every shelter the soldiers picked held up to the wave, though the ones that didn't have time to make it to the academy aren't too impressed with their new environment.

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The riverbed is almost dry, with only a trickle of water running through it at the moment, and the ground on the north side is muddy but mostly free of flood waters in the higher areas. The roiling cloud of the shockwave collected a large part of the moisture, with the extreme winds blowing the vaporized flood waters past them to wherever that nightmare finally loses momentum.

Two hours pass before the signal is given that it is safe to exit the building, though gloves are still recommended to touch anything. The men that are off duty all huddle in the Academy, where a fully fuelled but damaged line mecha has taken the place of Tarith's Rage to power the climate control. A few of the troopers aren't too upset about the change though. They come from a jungle world, and this level of heat and humidity reminds them of home, as uncomfortable as it is.

The lander is in good shape, and the munitions bunker where most of the units on Eastern sector duty sheltered is undamaged, so the work to reload and repair their units proceeds as fast as possible.

By the next morning, they have all the damaged but functional light mecha back online and reloaded, as well as Max's missile pod and Battle Cannon, and they even managed to repair the Anti Aircraft Battery from Tarith's Rage using the facilities in the lander. It's not optimal, but the unit is in much better shape than they were in a day ago.

The ground on the other side of the river, and in fact, on their side as well thanks to the currents, is littered with the carcasses of fallen enemy mecha, and that gives Max a great idea.

[All mecha units not currently on trench detail, head out into the fields and recover all rebel Light Mecha that you can. Our numbers are depleted, and they might have the spare parts we need to get back up to strength.] It is understood that they won't ever get to full strength again, even after the pilots that are injured have recovered, but they currently have more recovering pilots than recoverable mecha for them to pilot.

The Line Mecha move out, recovering what they can, and a few minutes later a cheer of victory comes over the intercom.

[Commander, this is unit 29. We found a full wing of Skyfire Pattern Line Mecha here on the North side. They were unmanned when their barge was tipped and appear to be in functional condition.]

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