Jace climbed onto the purple-flagged MAC. He pushed aside the body of the previous pilot with his foot until it fell off the side of the hinged open cockpit. The controls weren’t actually much different than Jace’s basic MAC variant. Apparently, the man spent his money on weapons and accessories rather than on any improvements to the controls.
An idiot.
A fool that didn’t even understand what made MACs so impressive.
Jace was sickened by the idea that such a man was allowed to pilot these beautiful creatures of war.
He purged the weapons, each one falling to the ground with a loud thump. The softened dirt should be enough to keep the weapons undamaged. Jace needed a new loadout if he was to have any hope of pulling off his plan.
The machine on the whole was worthless to him, it was merely the weapons that Jace needed. The extra armor plating was enough to keep the pilot safe from quite a few barrages of these cannons, but it limited the mobility to the point where you would be nothing more than glorified target practice for all those big guns.
Although the machine wouldn’t be worth it to pilot, it would actually be perfect to help with Jace’s plan.
He ripped a few strips of un-melted material from the clothes he was wearing and started tying down levers. The MAC had been powered down, possibly to help avoid detection by those artillery pieces, but as soon as Jace started it up it would begin moving thanks to this setup.
He hopped back into his own machine and started to pick up the weapons. Some of them, like the missile pack, were interchangeable with his own parts. The standard variants would have a backpack locked onto the back that could carry extra ammunition.
Well, they were supposed to carry extra ammo. In reality, Jace’s pack was empty. The packs were just used as glorified storage more often than not and emptied out before operations. It was almost funny to Jace how many of The Stragglers lost their personal items when the MACs had to sortie unexpectedly back in the valley.
He ejected his own empty pack and connected the shoulder-width missile launcher. He ripped out a screen from the purple-flagged MAC and started trying to see which wires could go where. Jace was no electrician, but it was fairly important to know when you have a lock on when dealing with a missile system, so he got to work trying to get the monitor up and running. He kept trying to connect the wires to the vast assortment of wires hanging around in the cockpit of his own machine.
Another explosion in the distance was a sign that Jace was running out of time. He was sure that they would send in some sort of mop up crew soon enough.
Jace could handle that, of course. Especially considering all the signs that seemed to point to this group not having a fighting force worth of MACs. The issue, Jace knew, was that no matter how many he killed, it would just reveal his position to the encircling artillery teams.
Finally, a pair of wires toward the roof of his cockpit seemed to be the right answer. A brief pop-up notified Jace of the newly attached equipment. All Jace could do now was hope it worked properly as he spliced the wires together.
He traded out the handheld cannon for a rifle that fired nearly the same rounds. The magazine coiled around the weapon, giving him quite a few shots depending on how many this idiot wasted. With a bit of tinkering, although it was mostly just ripping off the camera and wiring from his old cannon and trying his best to attach it to the new rifle, Jace was able to get the weapon camera working with this new gun.
The last weapon to scavenge was probably the only worthwhile decision the man had made when outfitting his MAC: a massive hammer. It had no special qualities, it was just a solid block of metal attached to a pole. The idiot had clearly used it as an extra bit of canvas for his family crests and banners and what not. Jace ripped off as much of the fabric as possible and levered the hammer onto his own machine’s shoulder. The weight was incredible and his arm movements would be slowed down a bit, but his overall speed shouldn’t be impacted drastically. Jace was almost amazed that the man’s MAC could move at all with all the armor and weaponry covering the thing.
Jace hopped back into the purple-flagged machine.
It was a strange feeling.
Jace looked at the controls and felt the metal cage of the cockpit. He was turning this MAC into a distraction. It would allow Jace to scan the south-east horizon and hopefully pinpoint the rest of the artillery positions. And, considering the extensive armor on this MAC, it would probably last long enough to give Jace time to start wreaking havoc on those cannoneers.
He was turning this weapon of war into a sacrificial lamb.
He felt a tinge of regret and… and maybe sadness.
Jace hardly noticed the nearby barrage of cannon fire. He briefly wondered if his position had been compromised.
But that didn’t matter. All Jace could think about was what kind of monster would send his own companions marching to their deaths?
A gust of hot wind singed Jace’s face as another blast landed far too close. The ringing filled his ears nearly to bursting and it was as if the wind had been knocked out of him and had been replaced by smoldering gunpowder.
He found it oddly relaxing.
He activated the MAC and returned to his own, his head trying its best to push aside all the thoughts that had nothing to do with accomplishing his goal.
What the hell had he just been thinking? Jace knew he loved MACs and all that they were capable of, but the thoughts that were just running through his head seemed-
A full salvo from the hill-line batteries collided with the purple-flagged MAC. It suffered a few dents in its bulbous armor and the finer bits of the deep purple and golden gilded paint job had been blasted away, but it was still marching.
Jace was lucid enough to have been staring off to the south-east. He made a few more scratches on the insides of his cockpit and slammed his head into the busted monitor in front of him.
“Just do the work. That’s all.” The faster Jace can get this finished, the faster he can find a MAC pilot out there who will kill him.
Finally, his mind found quiet as he immersed himself in the fight.
He activated the thrusters on each leg separately as he ran. If they did have any thermal cameras, he would be making himself into one hell of a target. But Jace was betting they didn’t. If they actually had any real tech, they would have been more thorough in this ambush. It was clear to Jace that this group probably had nothing more than mundane military weapons.
The alternating of his thrusters kept his machine from going airborne. Instead, each step with his machine covered a half-kilometer or more of ground as his MAC glided just under the tree line, hopping from one point to the next.
It had the added benefit of keeping him from being buried alive in any of the sinkholes. The moment he felt the ground start to cave in under him, he would boost out of harm’s way, moving ever forward to the northern section of enemies.
But each new lunge brought him closer to the next challenge. As soon as they noticed his approach, he would have to start dodging artillery rounds from every direction. He was moving fast, but not fast enough to destroy the artillery emplacements before they could reveal his position to the rest of their forces.
Jace admitted, as he closed the last few kilometers, he was at a disadvantage. His visibility was severely impaired, considering he was mostly just looking through holes in the armor and only had two functioning monitors. And, ultimately, vision is probably the most important aspect to trying to dodge kinetic munitions in a MAC. You can’t rely on anything else.
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Jace caught a glimpse of a metal barrel peeking out from under some camo netting. He hoped his own thermal cameras were working.
With his next step, he activated the boosters on both legs and shot into the sky. He twisted his core about one hundred eighty degrees to get a full sweep of the terrain. He watched his missile lock on screen and waited for the markers to turn green as he started to plummet out of the sky as any eighty-ton piece of metal would do.
The final reticle clicked from red to green and Jace pressed the button that he was hoping would launch the rods of death from his pack.
Spears of acrid smoke were birthed from the pack and made erratic trails in front of Jace’s machine. After they exited the scrambling field of the MAC, they straightened up as if fully aware of their mission. Jace peeked through a hole toward the bottom of his cockpit and saw a handful of explosions, each one larger than what the missile itself could produce. They were good hits.
A violent force threw Jace’s metal golem into a cartwheel as a well-placed shot tore into the machine’s head piece, but Jace had already won. His MAC fell onto the far side of the hill, out of the direct line of sight from the other artillery emplacements. They might still be able to drop shells on top of him, but it gave Jace a whole lot more breathing room than he had in that kill zone.
He couldn’t run any diagnostic checks, so he just had to hope his MAC could carry on.
He started up his run once more as he began to circle behind the hills, trying his best to mentally plot his course on his etched in map in the cockpit.
His next two salvos on the eastern and southern artillery placements went even better. Good hits on the enemy and not a single shot landed on his own machine. But now, as Jace approached the western hill of artillery, he was a bit worried.
They probably had a proper force to back up the artillery, right? If that’s the case, Jace was about to run into them.
He could either try his luck with charging the remaining artillery pieces head on. Maybe some of the surviving MAC pilots who were hunkered down would join him, although Jace had little faith in his comrades’ ability to do anything other than cower at this point. Or he could keep the same plan and circle behind them. He would just have to hope he wouldn’t get flanked this time as he made the final attack.
He approached from the rear in between two hills. He didn’t have much clearance, even a few extra meters off the ground would place his core above the hill line and in clear sight of any enemy force nearby. He tried his best to keep his machine low while not losing too much speed. These guys were surprisingly good for a bunch of dark-age mountaineers with no tech to speak of. Each salvo was getting closer than the last, though now those salvos were a whole lot smaller.
Jace judged he was in about the right spot.
There was nothing left to do but try.
He shot himself up into the sky and started to lock on to the emplacements beneath him.
But he’d gotten cocky. Jace realized his fatal flaw: he underestimated his opponents.
Just because they didn’t have a MAC didn’t make them any less formidable or any less skilled in the art of warfare.
The artillery emplacements were all turned toward Jace’s position. They were expecting him. Jace supposed he should at least be thankful that it seemed like there was no supporting force nearby.
Jace noticed the flashes at the last second, though it was one second too late. Four shells slammed into his machine. One shell lanced straight through the rifle in Jace’s right hand. The thing exploded along with all its ammunition. The fragments speared into the right side of Jace’s cockpit, some getting through the already-present holes. Another shell passed by the right side of his waist, biting into the armor but not meeting enough resistance to set off the explosive charge, likely preserving Jace’s life for a few moments longer. The third shell buried itself into his left foot and exploded. Jace had no idea how much of that leg remained, but he was guessing it wasn’t much.
The fourth shell had Jace’s name on it.
In fact, if it actually did have his name on it, Jace would be in the perfect position to read it.
The shell spiraled into the cockpit through the frontal plate of armor, burrowing far enough to get the tip to poke Jace’s chest.
Jace had no time to think. He could only focus on the fight. He launched the missiles prematurely while he was still falling. It was only locked onto two of the emplacements.
His MAC crashed into the ground and would have likely collapsed fully on its one remaining leg if Jace hadn’t activated his thrusters.
Jace burst over to the nearby artillery emplacement and brought the hammer down from his shoulder, completely flattening the cannon and sending up enough dirt to bury the surrounding crew in an Earthen grave.
Jace activated the boosters on his arms to pry the hammer back out of the dirt and get it back into position on his shoulder. The weight of the weapon nearly toppled Jace’s machine as he struggled to stay upright on a singular leg.
He stared at the tip of the shell for a brief moment before continuing on his rampage.
The final gun emplacement was to his right. He could see it clearly through the now-enlarged hole that had been opened up by his rifle exploding. They were bringing it around and adjusting elevation.
This really was an impressive team. They must have been paying attention to his boosters to see what directions they were pointing and how much flame they were spewing out because they were already adjusting the cannon for an airborne target moments before Jace jumped.
If Jace had a smaller weapon, he would have died on the descent. The next shell likely wouldn’t be a dud like the one now staring Jace down menacingly.
The hammer would be more than heavy enough to do the damage of a few bombs on the way down.
He did some fine tuning on the thrusters placed into the shoulders of his MAC and went into a spin to add velocity to the hammer as he threw it straight down into the emplacement.
The cloud of dirt that shot up into the sky managed to reach Jace himself. Clods of Earth shot through the plethora of openings in his cockpit. By the time Jace’s machine fell to the ground, half his cockpit was filled with soil and his actual legs were completely immobile.
The shell lodged in the cockpit still hadn’t gone off.
Jace took a moment to laugh at the absurdity before starting on the long trek of crawling toward that bunker in the center of this mess.
After all, he hadn’t even finished his mission yet.
He hadn’t managed to move more than a few dozen meters before hearing the familiar sound of a marching golem.
He rolled his own machine over and climbed through the hole in the right side that looked biggest. It still tore into his body on the way out, making a few new gashes that bled out onto his uniform, but it was nothing serious.
“You survived?” Jace looked up to see the purple-flagged MAC still resolutely marching along its path. The armor was completely blown off in some places, revealing the silver metal frame with wires and piping hidden underneath, and in other places it was dented so deeply that Jace could have crawled into one of the divots and gotten a half decent nap in.
The frog like head seemed like it was fully intact and the important armor around the core had plenty of scrapes and dents in its reinforced potbelly but ultimately still looked fit for service. The rounded armor on the arms and legs was mostly chipped away, but the exposed internals didn’t appear to be leaking or sparking.
He was glad to see the purple machine. Though it wasn’t really purple anymore. The paint was entirely blown off. A few golden inlays did manage to survive and gleamed in the sun. It was a sign of victory and survival that this machine had more than earned.
He gave his own MAC a farewell pat, “You did a great job out there. We’ll come back for you, ok?”
Jace wasn’t quite sure why he was talking to the machine, but he was sure it understood him. He climbed the fragmented armor chunks into the purple-flagged MAC and hopped into the cockpit. He removed all the scraps of cloth that were binding the controls and started to operate the beast on his own.
All things considered, it actually moved a bit better with all that armor blown off. He made his way over to the crater that contained his hammer. Jace would have liked to have some sort of weapon that shoots, but the hammer was his best bet for now. It took a bit more elbow grease than Jace thought, but the hammer came free in a spray of dust and body parts.
Jace almost laughed at the sight.
It was amazing what a MAC was capable of.
He got the comms up and running and tuned into the right frequency to contact the surrounding units, “The artillery is out of commission. Move to the bunker and get ready to search for survivors.”
Only two units responded.
They had taken heavy casualties.
Jace hoped the MACs could be salvaged.
He was making his way toward the bunker when he saw a faint glimmer near the entrance.
It seemed to shine like gold in the blazing sunlight of the afternoon, much like the inlays on Jace’s new machine.
Jace licked his dry lips and spit out the dirt that was apparently coating him. He approached the glinting enemy slowly with his hammer at the ready.
He saw legs and arms.
Here was his fight.
He raised the hammer horizontally in front of him and boosted into the clearing that surrounded the bunker. With no weapons for a long-distance fight, Jace could only hope to close the distance and force the enemy into a close quarters brawl.
The golden machine sidestepped his charge and brought a foot down onto his hammer, forcing it into the ground and causing Jace’s momentum to be thrown into a spiral. A spiral that crashed his MAC directly into the planted knee of the brilliantly dazzling machine.
It was pure art.
A move most pilots could only dream of pulling off.
And, Jace realized as he stared up at the golden knight-like creature, it was Ukko.
“You were late for the Trahir testing.”
Ukko did not sound pleased.