Chara and the Planet

Chapter No. 27

Chapter No.27.

A week later, and it was time to sound the call to arms. Ryan gathered his troops, including Chara, to begin the preparations for battle.

Chara stood at attention waiting on orders from Ryan. "It's time to have the main flanking forces get into the water near the shores. Make sure they're all armed and that their power sources are at full. Have the reserve forces in the tower hidden but ready to move when needed."

"I will do that, Ryan," she said before she left.

"Okay, the rest it up to us," he told the men and woman. He pointed at the six women. "Use passive scanning only. We want to make them think that no one's home. If they try to blast this facility, fire the weapon, but only if you can be certain to take them out." He turned to the four men. "You should go out near the shore and be prepared to lead the androids into battle. Myra and I will stay back here and lead the shock troops into battle when they attack the tower."

The men and women left to go to their stations, leaving Myra and Ryan alone.

"I hate this," Myra said with her face twisted with disgust. "We could be killed, and for what?"

"If nothing else, we'll put a real hurt on them. They will not be able to mount an attack on Earth with what's left."

Myra sighed. "Shit!"

"I think it would be better for us to split up. No use having them take both of us out at once."

Myra nodded and trotted off. Ryan made sure that his weapon was fully charged before he hunkered down and prepared for the worse. He was able to view the main battle on a monitor.

Surprisingly, the battle cruisers didn't attempt to fire missiles into the facility. Evidently, it was because their scans indicated that there were not many defenders in it. Chara's shock troops were well shielded, and the flanking armies were just now coming out of the water and moving up to engage the enemy forces.

The battle began with the Space Command forces splitting to engage the android flanking forces. What Space Command didn't realize is that the android army was much larger than they had anticipated. The battle was ferocious, but the androids were just too much for the human forces to handle. Space Command soldiers were falling as if they were straw soldiers being harvested.

Janus led his android army around the back of the main Space Command invasion force. He figured that it would catch them off guard and slow their progress. He didn't realize that the enemy unit had already split into two groups, a mistake in tactics that caught him in a squeeze. His androids assumed a back-to-back line to fire on both enemy groups. Human and android soldiers were suffering casualties faster than either could react. Janus took a hit that was fatal. His android army continued fighting without him, eventually overcoming their human adversaries.

Evan had better luck. His android army caught the invading Space Command troops in a flanking maneuver that defeated them. His other human comrades had similar luck. Despite losing several androids, they were able to take out the invaders.

Despite this, a sizable Space Command contingent made it to the tower, but they were met by Chara and her android shock troops. Chara led her troops into the melee without as much as a flinch. Her shock troop androids tore the Space Command contingent to pieces. The fighting was intense, but Chara remained calm and kept her androids from breaking rank.

A small number of Space Command troops got back to a battle cruiser and fired it up to escape the debacle. As soon as their vessel gained altitude, the women in the tower fired the main energy weapon at them, blasting their ship to blazing pieces.

The commanding officer and two of his commanders made it into the tower unscathed. Ryan blasted the two officers, but his gun refused to fire to take out the Space Commanding officer, who made the mistake of taunting Ryan before he killed him.

"Well, we meet again, Hoffman," General Stenson said in a taunting manner. "You are a traitor to the cause, and I will have the satisfaction of completing your original sentence." He aimed his gun at Ryan.

Ryan braced for the blast, but Stenson's head literally exploded before he pulled the trigger. Chara moved from the shadows holding her weapon. Ryan stared at her for a moment before he approached her and held his arms out. Chara did the same, and they hugged.

"We did it, Chara," he said. "We did it."

"Yes, we did, Ryan," Chara replied.

Evan, Gary and Vince came into the tower. "We lost Janus," Evan said. "There's a lot of damaged androids out there."

Myra appeared. "Yeah, we probably lost a few thousand of them. Although, we should be able to repair some of them."

Ryan nodded. "That's good. Let's get the human dead and burn their bodies. Have the androids collect up their comrades that are damaged and bring them to the lab."

Myra nodded and ran off. She had a big job to do. Damaged androids were scattered all over the place. She had to organize an android task force to systematically find the fallen and transport them back to the lab. This triage process required time and patience.

After the cleanup, Ryan told Evan and his surviving buddies to go check the battle cruisers that were parked out on the tarmac. He and Myra began the process of determining which fallen androids were repairable and which were not. Chara and the surviving androids spent time making sure that their weapons were charged and ready for a second invasion wave. Ryan realized that the main attack was more than likely the last, at least for the immediate future. The androids had killed over ten thousand Space Command troops. Combined with the loss of six battle cruisers, it was unlikely that they would return for quite some time, if ever.

When Evan and his buddies returned from rummaging around in the battle cruisers, they had something to reveal that would change everything.