[Plus, as an arbiter of the peace, I'll shoot them down.]

[Err, nukes.]

[Srsly. How do I shift to smalltext?]

; Dropping The Hammer; Enter the AMS Wing City. Its massive bulk was held aloft by dozens of thrust-vectored nuclear fusion engines. Dozens of weapons arrays were studded along its brutish sides. They were active. ARMARX, military protectors of Terra, really didn't like this kind of shit. The Aschen, wantonly bombarding targets around the city with obvious air power, would be the first to go. Dozens of those weapons array opened up. Infinite Repeaters, Hellebores, KE Rails launched from mobile ramjet missiles, they all slammed towards the aircraft skirting the outskirts. Those directly over the city would be spared, lest they fall and kill more.

; On Your Foot; A small but skilled contingent of ARMARX personnel weaved their way across the countryside. They were the first, Rapid-Response troops intended to augment HUBPOL forces, but they were heavily armed nonetheless.

; Umm...; That was true. The forward echelons of those forces took heavy damage from the anti-tank weapons and artillery of the marine regiments.... until those Jennae-type drones went skyward. Those nifty little buggers shat out infrared decoys and sliced through troops and vehicles in a networked precision that made Metal Storm enthusiasts shit their pants. Their heavy solid-state lasers carved up troops in an almost comical fashion, leaving nothing but a thin line as men's torsos fell off their own intestines.

; ...Again and Again; By now, five minutes later, several autonomous artillery platforms had sped down task-re-purposed mag-rail tracks to Wing City. Two of them, to be precise. These slim platforms rapidly networked with the bunker-like AFVs and Jennae-class drones, giving them hundreds of new targets. As Hellebores from the AMS Wing City, lasers from the Jennae-class drones, and the Infinite Repeaters of the AFVS would hopefully bite into the Aschen forces, these artillery platforms would acquire their targets and rain hell. Already the ARMARX forces were going down; several of the Jennaes had been disable, three frontal AFVs were shot to hell...

; Funnily enough, the infantry casualties were relatively less than the vehicles. The power-suited soldiers with obscenely powerful DEWs and floating informational and personal kinetic shields pressed ahead, blowing foxholes with their weapons and vanished under the dirt into one hell of a killing field.

[Have fun. Gonna shower. Everyone but the AMS Wing City can die. It's still shelling you.]

[5 minutes.]

[Klorp, Klorp. :p]

[Anyone keep up with the writings of Harry Turtledove?]

; The BattleBuddy(TM) recorded it all. Wing City was a labyrinthine maze of foreign holdings, making any universal security system a nightmarish political prospect. But this, this was confusing as hell. The Aschen agent seemed to flip-flop between her position. He chuckled a little as Tagilo blew his lip. "Look at this guy..." "Okay... okay..." Turning to the Wing City province shareholders board, he launched into an annoyed tirade. "We don't know what they're doing. Their security forces are obviously trespassing on Terran property." - "Alright..." - "Say, we can work this out, we just need to make amends with them!" - "They won't budge." - "Now we have two courses of action: we can ask to them to leave, or we can make them leave. They give us good business when they're not "guarding" their assets, I'll give you that. They're unstable too."

; The meeting continued as the situation dragged on. "Issue a memorandum. Tell them they can only leave their Tech Con base without weapons. Otherwise they consent to death. No alternatives."

; James shrugged. "You refused to leave. YOU called in the troops. It's YOUR fault for being impulsive."

[Funny... all that over ONE man and his friendly combat drone.]

; The shareholders of Wing City province brought up the greater Board of Senior Partners that controlled ARMARX, and finally linked up with the Aschen.

; --- Through the magic of videoconferencing, all three parties could enjoy a heated debate.

; Wing City Province's board of shareholders and the Greater Board of Senior partners were connected with the Aschen via a sizable teleconference, hosted out of ARMARX headquarters in Deep Earth Cradle One, Forst Springfield ten klicks from Wing City, and for the Aschen, in the penthouse suit on the top floor of Gambit's hotel.

; President & Command & Chief Elect Eric Leidermeyer rapped his knuckles on the duranium desk before him. "Entirely unacceptable. Your offer to rebuild damage infrastructure is noble... but your actions are inexcusable. The Coalition, aggressive as they are, were spurned to his level of destruction by your retaliatory action. Furthermore, while at the time it might have been acceptable, maintaining a military presence outside of our own territory is not. We see that Aschen military... is too quick to the trigger. Yes, we know about the incident earlier today. That was unacceptable. There were other ways your agent could have handled the situation."