Blue-white laserfire stitched across her weakened plating, seeking and finding the gaps created by prior explosives.
There were four of them in play, her tormentors all operating lighter but faster machines than the Deva that she piloted.
And with the ammunition readout of the railgun blinking a harsh red, her secondary particle cannon battery could only match one of them, if she even tried to stand and fight it out in a slugging match.
The only real advantage she had was mass, but bringing it and the tempered left arm-mounted blade to bear at point blank was an unlikely prospect while the wolfpack of medium-weight mechs could pull away.
At least terrain was being somewhat helpful with the uneven wilderness and impeding their attempts at doing complete surrounds, and sightlines being broken up by the uneven terrain at the base of the Kozice mountains.
Another ton of Durasteel plate dripped and pooled, melted by the laser, and a drop of sweat hovered at the edge of her organic eye.
It is hot. Probably dangerously so.
Her body thought so, while the particle cannons returned fire, snapping and crackling, scything through trees to score hits back.
Warnings screamed and blared. Those same trees covered her, catching a stream of missiles from a different enemy as Thea dashed away.
Up, down, sway to the right to avoid a flickering quartet of green daggers, then crash through another tree stand and spin, snapping two shots back.
Another light blinks red, and a stabbing sensation is felt in the shoulder.
Through the pain blocker.
Biting down doesn’t help. The next footstep hammers the ground hard. Too hard. A black-painted StateSec mech lets loose with its autocannon, striking the unbalanced Deva. She tries to compensate. Tries.
And crashes onto her right side, on the ground.
When she rises again, the stabbing shoulder pain is gone, but so is the right arm. The punishment handed out proving simply too much for her mech to take.
With the arm, her useless primary battery, one of the particle cannons, and a chunk of her fusion engine shielding is scattered over the ground, leaving the remaining functioning parts of the power plant to spew out heat and radiation, sending up a clear ‘shoot me’ sign on the thermal sensors.
At least…at least Caldwell got away.
Organic eye sealed shut by the heat, pain steadily cracking through the blocker, Lieutenant Romanov deploys her blade in one last act of defiance.
But death does not come for her today.
