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You jerk downwards, plummeting to send the laser off-target again. Not yet, fool. Such a pathetic display could not touch you. But you did get a snapshot of what’s waiting for you.
In a temporary hangar, viewed through a gaping hole in the roof torn by a Long Tom direct hit, a familiar superheavy tripod is trying to power on.
It’s the Pyramid unit, again.
The Blackout jammer unit it was equipped with when you last fought is undoubtedly the source of the current jamming. It lacks the missile racks that you tore off, but seemed to have undergone some repairs. Not wholly successful ones, considering the leaking reactor. Or maybe it was damaged again when artillery blew a hole in the roof.
Now, if you can just reach it to shred it before the reactor stops malfunctioning and causes one more powerful combatant to join the field, or a catastrophic destabilization removes most of the important facilities and supplies you are here to recover.
And get this harasser off of you, the smaller ground-bound mech repeatedly chases your thruster plumes, coming close with some of its Yi-powered bursts, and finally cutting you off just after your movement passes into the outskirts of the camp. Irritant. You have much larger prey to remove.
You bypass it again, lasering a thin hangar wall and smashing into it to break line of sight. Humans scream at your violent entrance, scurrying beneath your feet while you take three steps in and smash another hole out the other side, then thrust into the air again over the next building. You Must reach Pyramid before they get operational.
Up, left, forwards, another burst, and you’re crashing through the hole in their roof, widening it a little as you land in front of the machine, smashing a pile of components beneath your feet. No screaming engineers and scientists greet you, this time.
Pyramid is still a titanic machine, that would tower above you, should it be standing. But you killed it once, brought it low with Sophie. Its wounds have merely been papered over, a new white paint job not hiding the tears the Demon claw rent in it. Components had to be replaced, or couldn’t be, such as with the missile racks. Myomar muscles added, perhaps. Sure, it’s the same machine. But lesser, now. Like you and your arm.
And now it lies in a hangar, slumped on its side, the massive disk-head on the ground rather than in the gantry above it.
Case in point, its cyclopean central eye is on, a shade of blue instead of the red it used to be. It’s flickering in a rapidfire blinking pattern. A pair of antipersonnel lasers flank the eye on gimbal mounts, frozen in their sockets. The only signs of activation are the eye, and the repeatedly fluctuating reactor temperature while it stalls, fails, and tries to spin up again. And again. And again.
You must be halted for two seconds before closing the remaining distance, readying a fist to begin the pounding assault right where you Know the cockpit to be located.
