Quoted By:
The first sign you see of Headhunter’s assault beginning is an alarm raised.
The second sign is the thermal plume of an explosion. Something large. Ammunition dump? Fuel bunker? It fades too quick to be a runaway fusion reactor.
Your cue. Sophie lends her voice to the confusion.
“Patrol, Icicle One responding to unknown explosions in the south.”
Obviously fake, but gives you a vague reason to be moving directly through the campus to your target.
Moving now, every second counts. Ready-five pilots would be racing to their machines if they weren’t already there, leaping into cockpits and powering on weapons.
Target in sight. Line up primary weapon.
A massive building, large enough to walk a mech into if desired. A monument to structural engineering, covered by a wide dome, slanted to allow snow to slide off under the current chilling conditions. Vulnerable.
Collapse the building, kill all those inside.
Sunburst finally spins to life, a blue-white beam spraying thermal energy into the outside edge of the wide dome. Metal twists and flexes, melting under a long burn. Slowly. Too slowly.
Switch to short-range, high power mode, and aim at another section. Perhaps the Sunburst isn’t an ideal weapon for this task.
The groan of the strut is audible, crying out, before transforming into the snapping crunch of a single support failing.
There is a faster way to accomplish this.
Thrusters catapult you up above, before letting gravity take hold to send your full weight down on the roof. The effect is immediate and dramatic, the remaining roof collapsing in its entirety, sparks flying and lights winking out.
A brief scramble to keep your feet in the falling metal is a challenge, but a manageable one.
The cloud of dust raised by the demolition is still falling while you engage in further destruction, one arm swiping back and forth from the inside to tear ferrocrete chunks out of the interior.
Sensors confirm the building was occupied by many people.
Dust and debris settle.
From the end of the timer to the destruction of the target, 62.2 seconds. You should have just opened with the physical strike.
Either way, mission accomplished. Targets eliminated?
Sensors sweep over the rubble.
Heat from the interior escapes through the vanished roof, appearing oddly on your thermal sensors.
There are many unmoving bodies, cooling swiftly. Ones that do move brighten briefly under Sunburst’s attention, before becoming unrecognizable in milliseconds.
Targets eliminated.
Your minds turn to extraction.
Legs propel you back out of the ruined stadium, over the edge and out.
Eyes look south, to the flashes of Headhunter’s explosions winking in the storm.
Reactors are powering on, the inevitable response. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Then to the west, to the training grounds, where already online mechs scramble to aid.
To the north, free and clear, yet completely the wrong direction.
And to the east, unknown yet seemingly clear.
