Chapter 22
July 1, 2394 ADRoss 128, Arcadia, 10 kilometers south of the capital city of MegalopolisFriday, 3:26 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
The capital city of Arcadia was known as Megalopolis, with all the ancient Earth historical references intended. The governor's mansion sat on a hill in the middle of Capitol Park. The park was actually a forest reserve. The mansion was the only building in any direction for twenty kilometers, and surrounding it was a dense hardwood forest reminiscent of the oak trees that grow in the Appalachian Mountains of North America. There were three small rivers that met just south of the mansion, and there was ample Arcadian, as well as imported, wildlife living in the park.
Capitol Park was surrounded by four districts known only as Capitol North, Capitol South, Capitol East, and Capitol West. Capitol North was mainly a business and political district. Capitols East and West were manufacturing districts. Capitol South was the analog of the defense industrial complex district. A government building designed in honor of the Pentagon housed the leaders of the planet's Armored E-suit National Guard. Just to the west of the Capitol Pentagon was the armory for the National Guard as well as several airstrips and hangars. The planet had a small air force, but the ground forces were quite impressive.
Smaller city suburbs tied the four main cities together in a giant ring of humanity, pavement, steel, and streetlamps over forty kilometers in diameter. The local natural vegetation still covered the region where there were no obvious signs of civilization. In essence, Megalopolis was a giant ringed city about ten kilometers in width surrounded both within and without by wild natural forest land. There were roads that led into the governor's mansion from each of the four main extensions, making the city look like a giant wheel with four spokes when viewed from space. The three rivers running through the forest were mostly straight and formed a Y shape with the intersection on the south-sided lawn of the mansion. The legs of the Y met the outer ring at the five, one, and nine o'clock positions. The rivers added three offset spokes to the wheel of Capitol Park and the Capitol Districts.
Colonel Mason 'Warlord One' Warboys had been, just seconds before, on the QMT asteroid forty thousand kilometers straight up, looking up at four supercarriers of the U.S. Navy fleet being pounded on by several enemy battleships. The U.S. fleet ships were heavily outnumbered, and things didn't look too good for them at the time. He was ordered to prepare for immediate teleport. Rather than tac-nuking the capital city and risking large numbers of casualties, the plan was to drop ground and air forces to take back Arcadia. After all, President Moore had promised to minimize civilian casualties.
So Warboys prepared himself as best he could. He loaded as many of Colonel Ramy Roberts's Robots AEMs onto the surface of his tank as would fit and then told them to hold the fuck on. For a brief instant he thought he saw a flash of the inside of a supercarrier tank bay. Then the next thing he knew he was in the middle of a forest staring at about fifty enemy tanks and a line of Arcadian armored ground forces only two kilometers away. The enemy troops detected his presence almost instantly and started firing on his position. Small caliber railgun rounds and larger caliber armor-piercing rounds with tracers filled the air all around him.
'Holy shit! Roberts, get off my mecha!' Warlord One shouted over the open tac-net to the AEMs. The armored e-suit marines dove for cover almost as soon as they materialized from the QMT teleport.
'Move it, Marines!' Warboys recognized First Sergeant Tamara McCandless's voice. His DTM view showed the blue dots scrambling for cover behind trees and rocks. The trees didn't seem to be helping the AEMs that much, as the larger rounds passed through them like a knife through hot butter. The anti-mecha rounds from the enemy guns plowed through a ninety-year-old oak tree just to Warlord One's right like it was nothing more than balsa wood.
