Quoted By:
You track the footfalls of callsigns ‘Buck’ and ‘Romeo’, their fuzzy heat signatures vanishing from distance and fresher flurry of falling snow.
Just two remain, now. Less to spot your frame. You lean forwards, starting-
“Hold, Beta.”
Sophie interrupts.
Hold?
One leg sticks out, bending to arrest your momentum. The strain of halting so abruptly gives a gentle yellow warning on the status of myomar bundles in the left leg. Really? You put them through more under baseline combat conditions.
A second passes. Two. Three.
You run another examination of the remaining duo. As available, anyways. There’s only so much that can be discerned from thermals, mag-scan, seismic, and the other sensors mounted when visuals are this poor.
Communications exchange.
“You pick up anything?”
“I thought I had something on seismics. It’s gone now.”
A brief exhale from your pilot is the all-clear sign.
“Now, slower.”
<span class="mu-b">Requiem for a Class used, 2 uses remain</span>
“Understood, pilot.”
Slower it is. Even if it means more time near the patrol. More chances to be detected. More Inefficiencies with the path.
Besides, her damaged visual sensors mean that You are the one doing All of the work in regards to movement.
—--------------
As Sophie demands, you take more time than initially allocated to move past the patrol.
The cautious pace does leave them behind, though, so when the airwaves come alive minutes later with a call of ‘Contact’ and the deadened rumble of explosions further behind you, it only irritates you Slightly.
It wasn’t you that alerted them.
Their second starts an outbound communique.
“Icicle Two to Heron, one-”
Before you silence them with the Predator array, muddying the airwaves with junk transmissions. No need for more help to come.
The path to the south is inviting, snowy and hidden and free and away. So tempting.
Your sensors peer back north again. Faint thermal spears of lasers firing mark a battle started.
Seismic reads the mechs you just avoided accelerating, clearly starting their run to reinforce their compatriots.
Even in the static of the jamming, you catch a few scattered signals from something emitting a very simple message at maximum power.
‘TAMAR–GROUNDED–HELP’
Between that and the further explosions, it’s not hard to guess that Headhunter’s seemingly gotten themselves in an engagement.
Are you going to turn around, on a burned-out pilot, with nothing standing in your way on finishing the mission?
Headhunter’s survival isn’t strictly mission critical. They are ringing the alarm bells on their own, calling every Loyalist mech in the area on top of them. Through your jamming, even.
>Just go. They’ll win on their own, or lose. Or leave. They have proper, full, flight, after all.
>Turn back. Regrettably.
(Engage in combat, default is from stealth at medium-range to minimize risk to self)
>Write-in
Something else?
