Heading out into the wastelands of the old city and its outskirts, we began slowly making our way towards the target.

Elimination type skirmishes are the main reason conflict cities like Aurora are made, the benefits of them are many:

Eliminating all large groups of Old Beasts that leave their hotspot get killed and as such can’t attack other Arcologies, making the world safer for everyone.

The corpses of elimination targets (and any other missions that contain combat) get collected in scavenge-type jobs. Allowing an easy way to get weaponry that that can be traded on the open market (the corporation my friend runs is specialized in this you know?).

They allow a steady living for those who dedicate themselves to combat, making sure that our Arcology-riddled land always contains people who are skilled enough to defend it.

Etc.

So as you can see, Arcologies Like our Aurora are quite important.

So, since it was planned from the beginning to be conflict city, they named it ‘Aurora’ After Odio Van Aurora.

Eh? ‘Who is Odio?’ He was a warlord, strategist and a great philosopher who lived 3 centuries ago during “the 3rd World War”. Despite being the military leader of a fairly small nation, he kept his nation independent with an iron fist.

He became famous for the “Principle of Pain” philosophy of peace. As any time he lost land to an enemy nation, he would have his people help the enemy of his enemy to take the land instead. Rinse and repeat, or he would cause similar suffering upon the occupying force.

Eventually people gave up on trying to take his lands because they were far more trouble than they were worth, their land had no important strategic resources and any land taken from them was never quite successfully colonized. According to history books he even had his own citizens infect themselves with a weaponized strain of Polio during the “Occupation of Ergate” so that the enemy army would suffer.

They named the new form of warfare that he invented: “Weaponization of enemy Occupation Plans” heh, you can question his morals, but not his accomplishments.

Oops, rambling again. Sorry.

So you can translate our city name to: small, but unkillable and unoccupiable.

Well, while I was rambling within my skull, outside it we kept marching towards the target location.

The scout machines made the march quite peaceful. As we could mostly navigate around any hostiles.

...Yet of course we still ran into a few groups of Lessers, but they were easily dealt with.

Soon enough we came close enough to the target to keep track of their movement. So we began preparing our plan of attack.

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The coordinates were quite accurate, given some 1 kilometer drift. The horde was currently traversing along an Old-time motorway. 8 Lanes wide, built about 10 meters above ground-level.

If we approach from the side they will see us quite quickly, but the Lessers and other small troops would not be able to descend from the motorway.

if we used an earlier junction in the motorway to get our troops  to the same height, we should be able to reach considerably closer before getting spotted, but in exchange we would be swarmed by the smaller enemies.

The enemy had a single Heavy unit. (Lucky~) called a Behemoth.

Behemoth is an amalgam of flesh and metal with a varying number of tank turrets protruding On its back shaped much like a half a dozen story tall Gorilla. It also moves much like a gorilla. Semi-four legged.

What? ‘The job is a total overkill for 6 Weapons to take care of?’ Yeah, welcome to my life, the amount of Merit I have is too high, so I only get the suicidal job-types.

After some deliberation, we settled for coming at them from the side. First, we soften them with the mortars, then we take the survivor out at close range. Either by killing them as they charge from the motorway, or by climbing out there ourself.

After eating some rations (and me reassuring Alicia), we started shelling their location with the mortars and preparing for their counter-attack.

Immediately after the first shells hit the ground we began seeing the expected movement, Lessers scattering, smaller Mediums equipped with long-distance weapons shooting back from the motorway. And the bigger ones discarding the higher ground and charging at us.

“ALICIA! Fire at will! Take them out before they reach us.”

“CHARLIE, RASMUS, single shots, shoot where the flesh is frail. Support alicia”

“TWINS, Keep those fucking mortars going.” Aaron, our scout and the only one with a top-down view of everything, took charge.

And so, a nerve-wrecking wrestle with a foe of superior numbers began.

“BANG.” Recoil reverberates through Fea’s arm, I Take aim once more, “BANG” recoil, I repeat my actions. “BANG”

in the background, I could hear Alicia’s shots like a steady beat, this combined with the mortars from the twins sounded like the Devil's choir itself, the melody is provided by me and the old man, band of pain.

The battlefield is a canvas of our modern art piece, bright flashes from the occasional Napalm shells in the mortar rounds, the blooming red flowers among the little candles that spew lead at us, the old motorway coming down majestically in the background.

By now, the surviving Lessers and close-range Mediums are actually joining the battle, using the collapsed ruins of the motorway to get down.

Every second, they pushed closer and we pushed back. Charlie and I had already switched from single-shots to automatic fire. The Heavy had already joined the fray as well, judging from the tank shells being fired at us from afar.

“AH FUCK look sharp guys here come the Hounds!” Aaron yelled into the comms a dozen seconds before the horde descended upon upon us.

…”Who let the dogs out?” I could not resist responding, warranting a few chuckles from my compatriots, but after that, we had no time for jokes, as we engaged in a Medieval-esque melee.

Wide swipe with the primary hand, bayonet cutting enemies apart whilst the rest of the arm's length swung them away like a hit from a baseball bat, machine gun fire into face, thermal spikes to the gut, blocking a lunge with my shield. Everything always gets blurry at this point.

Luckily Alicia was further behind us and did not have to take part in this…

I am not sure how long our melee lasted, 20 seconds? A minute? 10? At one point I heard screaming in the comms resembling Charlie's voice. That is the last I heard from him. But as with all things, time makes them pass. eventually we got some breathing space.

I did take a few bites and some bullet holes. But I made it out alive, ignoring the torn open tin can that was once Charlie’s walker I continued firing at anything that moved.

...Firing continued...

...Most threats on the battlefield were dead by now, just some stragglers and the Behemoth remained. I got my head nearly blown off by that one a few times during the melee. Hell, I think it was a shell from that Beast that caused an arm to go missing from one of the twins.

Taking the Behemoth out is not something I can help with, I dont have the firepower (It is every step as sturdy, if not sturdier than a Rager, and it took dozens of people and a lot of time to kill that) so my and alicia’s job became keeping the stragglers away from the Twins, as such I did not see much, but I did hear the booming of the P77’s and the roars of the Behemoth that ensued.

...After the Behemoth was felled, we did a sweep to eliminate any surviving hostiles, before logging the encounter.

There we stood in the middle of a sea of blood, on a field of flesh just ready to begin decomposing, inside our machines of carnage.

‘Weapons.’ Ihat is the only name you can call things like us. Six of us went to battle, and everything within a half a mile radius is turned to dust.

Well, there is another name as well I suppose, perhaps more fitting...

‘Monsters.’