“Accept,” Zayd told the system. Glancing at the final crippled Enforcer, Zayd flexed the ‘muscles’ of his armor and jumped from the carnage of one mech to the torso of the other. Walking up to the cockpit with his maul resting on his shoulder, Zayd scanned the cockpit before toggling on an external speaker and addressing the enemy pilot. “Are you dead, or just playing dead?”
Zayd knew the answer. His scan had already reported the steady if accelerated heart rate of the pilot along with steady, shallow breathing. Sioban’s crippling drone strikes had disabled weapon systems before destroying limbs and incapacitating the mech but her attacks fell short of killing the pilots. In the end, it didn’t matter, at least, not to the pilot of this mech.
Seeing that the enemy pilot insisted on playing dead, Zayd didn’t hesitate any longer and brought his maul crashing down on the cockpit. The first hammer strike was already enough to shatter the cockpit and claim the life of the pilot, the two follow-up strikes served mostly to ensure that the damage to the mech’s control systems was irreparable. As Zayd looked at the bloody carnage of the cockpit, his lips twisted in a sneer. What a stupid death. It might not have changed anything for the pilot but he wished the man had possessed the courage to draw a sidearm, to try to overload his mech, to do anything that demonstrated the will to fight to the end. Instead, the pathetic employee of the mighty Braxis-Quan Holding Company had cowered in his cockpit, hoping to be left for dead as though he expected his enemies to be just as incompetent as he was.
“What did I expect?” Zayd said to himself with a shake of his head. “I guess they’re only human.” Somehow, it wasn’t until this moment that Zayd truly felt like he’d left humanity behind. His modified body could still largely pass for human and he had thought of himself as an ‘augmented human’ ever since Eirian operated on him, but now that he stared at the pathetic human who had died a coward’s death, he couldn’t find anything in that man to feel kinship with.
[BONUS MISSION PROGRESS: 1/5]
“Fist Leader,” he said after scanning the wreck of the Subjugator destroyed by Caedril and ensuring that its pilot was already dead. “Sorry for the delay. I’m good to go.”
“Let’s pick up the pace everyone,” Sioban said on the team channel. “We still have two hundred meters to go until we reach Delta Sensor Control.” Once everyone started moving, she opened a private com channel, this time to Haelith Duum. “Haelith, I need you to keep an eye on Champion Zayd,” she said, her voice unintentionally softer than it needed to be, as though she was afraid of being overheard. “He’s not in as good of shape as he thinks he is and I’m worried about him losing it again.”
“Anything you ask, love,” the winged Fae said sweetly. “But you know that Lady Nimue doesn’t want any special treatment for him on this mission. I’m not supposed to bodyguard him.”
“Screw special treatment, I’d give you the same orders if it was Saeyd freaking out on his first mission.” the Fist Leader replied. “Just remember, these humans we’re fighting, they’re his former companions. I don’t know if he’s trying to prove something with that brutal display or what and now isn’t the time to ask, but there’s more to what he’s doing than just killing the enemy.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Haelith promised. “We can talk about the rest when this is all over.”
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The team moved rapidly through the corridors, letting Haelith and Caedril take the lead while Zayd fell into a defensive position next to Sioban. In less than a minute, they reached a junction a level above their target.
“Bad news everyone,” Sioban said as she reviewed the feed from her miniature scout drone. “The enemy’s officers aren’t stupid. No Parapets but they put a cluster of Stevedores and Enforcers outside our target. We’ll have to get past two of each just to get to the door into Sensor Control and there are another four on the opposite side of the door.”
“I can handle the Stevedores,” Zayd said confidently. “Just keep the enforcers off my back.”
“Take Haelith with you,” Sioban said after a moment’s consideration. “There’s another lift in twenty-five meters, the two of you can descend there and approach from the opposite side. Broll, you and Saeyd follow Caedril and drop first, draw their attention to your side, and see if we can pull the Enforcers away from Zayd and Haelith. The corridor isn’t wide enough for those Stevedores to pivot rapidly so you’ll likely only need to deal with two of them. Broll, let Saeyd and Caedril worry about the kills, I want you to take out the heavy guns on the Enforcers first, it’s the most effective weapon they have that can actually do enough damage to kill us. Understood?” Seeing a wave of acknowledgments, Sioban smiled. “Go!”
Zayd put the other side of the team out of his mind as he fell in with Haelith to race toward the lift to the next level. Already, he could hear the sounds of weapons fire as the other team got to work, drawing attention and creating the opening they needed. “Lady Haelith, that hand cannon of yours,” he asked. “Can it breach a cockpit?”
“You want me to make some bomb windows for you? I can do that. Want me to spare the pilots for you to finish off?” she asked sweetly.
“Actually, yeah,” Zayd said without offering any extra explanation. The lift doors had opened at Sioban’s command and they both dove into the empty shaft, relying on their flight systems to descend to the next level before rushing into the corridor and charging at the waiting Stevedores. Bursts of poorly aimed laser fire surrounded them as they charged, growing increasingly frantic when Haelith’s hand cannon snapped out crackling bolts of energy that shattered the cockpit viewports.
Zayd ignored the uncoordinated laser fire, focused entirely on his bombing run, lobbing explosives into the cockpits and charging through the gap between the two massive mechs.
[BONUS MISSION PROGRESS: 2/5]
[BONUS MISSION PROGRESS: 3/5]
The explosions attracted the attention of one of the Enforcer pilots who turned away from reinforcing the other side of the corridor to let loose a pair of grapples aimed directly at Zayd and Haelith.
Haelith laughed openly, pivoting effortlessly through the air and slicing through one of the cables holding a grapple with the sharpened edge of her wings while her curved sword flicked out at the other cable, severing it cleanly before it could get close to Zayd.
“Thanks,” Zayd said curtly, rushing up to the unprotected back of the Stevedores attempting to suppress Saeyd and his side of the team. Moments later, twin explosions rocked the industrial mechs, detonating their power generators and unleashing a wave of energy that penetrated the thinly protected cockpits of both mechs. One pilot died instantly in the explosion, the other died moments later when his hasty ejection brought him face-to-face with Zayd’s maul.
At the same time, Haelith dispatched the last of the enforcers that had fired grapples at them and the corridor instantly stilled. For Zayd, however, things became even more still as his consciousness was pulled fully into the scorched and broken world of the Mech Destroyer System.
[BONUS MISSION PROGRESS: 4/5]
[BONUS MISSION PROGRESS: 5/5]
[ACTIVATION MISSION COMPLETE. BONUS MISSION COMPLETE. CALCULATING REWARDS. BEGINNING ACTIVATION…]