Quoted By:
Wait for the lasers to flash once more, then go.
Half a heartbeat passes before you Move, passing around the corner and visually identifying your target as a drab green Crab medium walker. Its primary armament on a cooling cycle, 7.3 seconds pass with you closing the gap and delivering a crushing punch to send it reeling forwards, then targeting the thinner rear armor with a pulse pays dividends in another thermal spike from breached engine.
Struck so suddenly, in quick succession, maybe a truly elite pilot could have caught themselves, turned, and at least taken a single shot at you.
Instead it flops down in front of you, face-first fall broken by the protruding snout of the machine, heat skyrocketing and engine spinning down.
You give it one more burst of blue photons in the center mass to ensure it will never stand again, and turn your attention to surroundings, and the remaining four active defenders.
One reactor spikes and fades to nothing with a crack-crack of explosions.
Three, then.
Headhunter flashily reveals their position, rising back into the sky on an obvious thermal plume.
Having discarded whatever thruster shrouding they use for stealth, tracers, lasers, and missiles follow.
Giving easier tracking and targeting to the sources.
Not that you needed it. Much.
A trainer mech, half your height, lofts missile after missile into the sky before you cut through the spindly left leg with an extended burn, leaving it to topple and helplessly squirm on the ground.
Too easy.
The show-off’s evasive ovals in the sky turns into a dive on a different reactor, before that winks out.
One last machine.
You race for it, ground speed comparing not so favorably to their airspeed, but they have a greater distance to travel.
The hapless victim gets the chance to fire off several rounds and lasers into the sky before you close to visual range, identify it as a green painted Shadowhawk, and pepper with repeated laser strikes.
It swivels to face you, returning the favor with its own weaponry, flailing about with its own myriad of mismatched weapons.
A roar of thrusters, a loud <span class="mu-i">ker-chunk</span>, and Headhunter makes your distraction fatal, taking it in the back with its queer melee spike weapon, then letting it go limp and collapse to the ground.
Like a puppet with severed strings.
Exhale.
Your pilot shakes her head, a spike of pain translating across the link.
Manageable. Nothing to worry about. Determination and steadfastness replace it swiftly.
Eyes lock on your ‘ally’, while they start walking towards you, at a much slower pace.
Grounded, they’re far more ungainly than you. Clearly it is a machine that happens to have ground movement as an afterthought. Vulnerable when grounded.
