The Marsok River Canyons, Kokpekty

Ningxia Prefecture, Draconis Combine

8 June 3061

Michael Clayne heard the thump of the high velocity round from the enemy's autocannon smashing into the left side of the dorsal hood on his Adder omnimech.

"Fuck!" he said, annoyed, seeing the damage indicators lighting up on his display. The damage was minor, but as outnumbered as he and his team had become, he would need every ounce of ferro fibrous armor his Mech had.

The shock of the hit tried to wheel the torso around but he flicked the control stick in the opposing direction to fight off the motion and remain on target. Pushing forward into the creek canyon he throttled down to make a sharp turn to the right and saw his targets some four hundred meters ahead, their backs facing him. The lance of four mechs didn't do anything about his approach as they were distracted with pumping heavy fire down-range away from him and into his fellow Black Wing lancemates.

Michael centered his crosshairs on the center left mech's indicator on his HUD and the display brought up info on his target – an SLDF BLR-1G Battlemaster. Biting back a word of regret he half-pressed the left trigger on his control stick and a gray circle appeared on the Mech. He then drew over to the mech on its right and repeated the process, his HUD changing to a display of an OSP-15 Osprey.

"What the...?" but he didn't have time to contemplate the serious implications of what it all meant now. The gray circle on the left had a red bar on either side of it climbing upward quickly. When it reached the top, the circle became red and a tone in his neurohelmet confirmed the lock. Less than a second later the circle on the right did the same and with a slightly higher pitch, accompanied the first in glorious harmony.

He slammed his finger down fully onto both side-by-side triggers and with only a fraction of a second delay, the missile tube coverings retracted almost instantly, uncovering the Mech's two arm-mounted Advanced Tactical Missile omnipods. A cloud of gray and black jet wash blasted back and downward from the metal limbs with a roar as nine standard grade advanced tactical missiles launched from each, speeding forth on fire breathing wings of death at his targets.

Michael was counting on the rear armor of the older model mechs to be very poor as most were. At the last moment the Osprey turned hard to its right and caught six of the nine projectiles but they spread out and failed to cluster in any one spot well, dispersing their harm all over. Still, the sudden hit rocked the chicken-legged titan and caused the pilot to fire the huge gauss rifle it mounted overhead of the cockpit aimlessly into the canyon walls.

The Battlemaster, on the other hand, did not fare so well. The arrows of doom clustered around the rear left torso armor of the old behemoth, penetrating its shell in a cacophony of explosions. Without a pause another, more resounding and massive series of explosions cooked off from within the eighty-five ton death machine. Nearly a ton and a half of Short Range Missiles detonated in quick succession and the internal blasts blew through the torso and chewed clean through the gyro and engine, turning it about in its death throes. It then toppled to the ground on its right side, plumes of thick black smoke beginning to billow out from the carcass.

A small blip on Michael's HUD winked out to confirm the monster had indeed been slain.

"Cutter!"

The blaring yell from inside his helmet was dampened by the comms system automatic volume control. The person yelling was his lance commander Tyrell 'Fang' Adamson.

The yell wasn't in anger, though, as it was a word of warning. The mech that had been on Cutter's far right, a Wyvern, had turned and dumped everything it had at him. The pilot was hasty, though, and didn't wait for a lock on any of his weapons.

Only three of the six Short Range Missiles hit as his low profile machine ran through the weapons fire. It pecked off some armor from his Adder's right arm, and a small laser scribbled a scorch mark across the right side. Everything else including ten Long Range Missiles danced about but failed to connect as he ran between the Wyvern and the wounded Osprey. There, he got eyes on Fang's Kintaro and it did not look good. Its whole left arm was gone and one of the medium lasers on its right arm was a mangled mess. Judging by the pock marks all over it and the gaping hole in its left leg, it wouldn't be long before his lance commander was out of the fight.

Michael also saw why Tyrell had moved up so close considering his Kintaro was a fire support design mounting mostly Long Range Missiles. Crystal Sandross's Jenner was just coming to its feet, but barely stood, wobbling on a mangled right leg, myomer exposed and tangled up with the foot bobbing around limply.

"Get out of here, Star!" Fang ordered her, but to Michael, it was apparent that she wouldn't get far. She tried to get the otherwise very fast mech to go, but as lame as it was, she was at a crawl compared to her enemies. And as long as she kept the mech moving and upright, she'd still be a target.

Cutter swung around toward her position, the Wyvern's pilot having a hard time tracking his position, no doubt due to the large amount of heat buildup it got from firing everything so aggressively.

The Osprey, on the other hand, was moving to outflank them when suddenly a call both over the radio and through external speakers broke through the impending fire fight.

"Never fear! Falcon is here!" yelled the maniacal man in the Mongoose as it crested a ridge behind and to Cutter's left. The twenty-five ton bipedal mech, looking very much like it's namesake didn't stop for the upcoming drop and instead leapt off the ridge despite not having any jump jets to save it from a disastrous fall. Calvin 'Falcon' Derro fired everything he had at the enemy Talon that had come around from behind the downed Battlemaster to close in on Fang's Kintaro. All three medium lasers hit their mark scorching armor off the surprised Talon, but it didn't deter it.

Due to his high speed, Falcon's Mongoose flew through the air, and managed to draw fire from all three enemies. The Talon's Particle Projectile Cannon drew a bright energy-flecked line past Calvin's right shoulder and both of its medium lasers dug trenches into the canyon wall below where he had jumped from. The Wyvern pilot had learned from his mistake and snapped off a shot from his Large Laser, which criss-crossed with the two medium lasers from the Talon. The Osprey added to the confused energy weapons fire with three more medium lasers, again all of which seemed to be unable to connect with the thin flying machine, and for a moment, Calvin 'Firebrand' Derro was the hero he'd always wanted to be.

Then the whole head of the Mongoose exploded violently as a two-hundred and fifty pound nickel-cadmium slug drilled through it, a nearly instantaneous line drawn from the Osprey's main, devastating Gauss Rifle.

Everyone seemed to pause, even the pirates, as the long-legged mech slowly fell to the ground, hitting legs first then tumbling end over end in a cloud of dust, coming to a stop in front of the Talon. The pilot didn't seem to expect this and rushed feet first right into the obstacle, tripping his mech over it and tumbling onto its right side with a crunch.

"FALCON!" cried Star, but Cutter was already out for revenge on her behalf, moving the toggle at the top of his control stick back, his HUD's weapon-ammo listing to 'HE'.

A series of rotors in the arms of his mech cycled loudly as the tubes were pulled internally of ammunition and new rounds loaded in their place. While this was happening, he was not wasting time and half-pulled both triggers and the gray circle with stacking red bars dropped on the center of the Osprey.

When the crimson circle appeared and hungry tone rang out, Cutter wasted no time in dispatching the eighteen High Explosive ordinance at the killer pirate. The darts fanned out and then moved in for the kill, but as they did, they were joined by a swarm of Long Range Missiles and side-by-side lines of Short Range Missiles from Tyrell's Kintaro. Another four SRMs flew from Star's Jenner then four bolts of green streaks appeared briefly. Only two of her Medium Lasers hit the target, but at that point, it didn't really matter.

The pirate's automation disappeared in an overwhelming wave of destruction and only Michael's sensors could tell him what fate became of the mech through the expanding fireball where it had been. The little circle indicating the mech vanished, an inferno of fire with legs crashed to the ground where once the Osprey had been.

"Take that, you son of a bitch!" was the last thing from Fang as four Autocannon rounds pounded into his Kintaro's already maimed chest, splitting a wide ravine through its innards on its left side. Right where the mech stored all its ammunition.

"Eject!" Cutter yelled, but in his heart he knew that the grizzled warrior would not.

The KTO-19B Kintaro seemed to just fade into a bright yellow and orange ball of mist then came apart, flinging shrapnel all over the battlefield.

Michael turned his mech and twisted the distinct mech's torso towards the assailant to see a Jaegermech lopping toward him at four-hundred and fifty meters, its long gun arms raised in his direction. Behind it came another mech, then another. He quickly cycled his targeting computer and thumbed the ammo toggle forward to standard rounds. Then he saw the indicators come up for a DV-1S Dervish, a fifty-five ton mech just as he pulled behind a bend in the canyon.

"Star. Get back to the drop..."

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"Die!" She cut him off as she screamed and fired all four of her lasers and SRMs again directly into the fallen husk of the Osprey. Almost immediately waves of heat sprung up from her mech.

"Star!" he called to try and get her to snap out of her emotional lapse in judgement, but somewhere in his mind he knew why.

Cutter had used the terrain to his advantage, putting the steep winding walls between him and the advancing mechs just in time as multiple rounds drove into the rock facings in front of him. The hits sent clouds of scattering rocks and dirt flying, but more than that, he had also maneuvered behind the fallen Talon, and sure enough, the light mech began to stand. Cutter started to lock on to the hapless mech but right before his targeting computer could confirm, the inexperienced pilot planted his mech's right foot on top of the downed Mongoose again. The foot slipped and then rolled at the ankle and he failed to compensate, throwing the mech to the ground again – this time on its back.

The lock tone came up for a split second, then the target shut down.

Michael almost couldn't believe it. The computer on board the Talon must have shut down due to the pilot falling unconscious. But he'd be needing a lot more than simple luck to get Crystal and himself out of this jam.

"He's DEAD, Star! Get OUT of there!"

She responded with an incoherent scream and turned toward the oncoming attackers just in time to receive a single autocannon round to the good leg. It sheared off armor, but luckily, didn't penetrate through to anything important. She forced the gimpy mech headlong at them in defiance.

"Shit." he angrily spoke as the beleaguered mechwarrior slammed the throttle forward to full and felt his iron mount speed into a run.

He came out from behind his cover already moving fast to draw down on the advancing heavy mech. A claxon warned an incoming lock and Cutter looked to see ten missiles arc through the air, tracking him, their smoke trails leading back to the Dervish. At the last second Michael whipped his mech back to his right and the missiles tried to turn to get him, but half of them plowed into the ground next to him. The others scattered across his mech's armored hood and indicators showed the damage, again minor, but annoying.

The thunder of a sundry of supersonic rounds whizzed past his cockpit window, indicating that the maneuver had also thrown the Jaggermech's pilot off as well, but he wouldn't be able to say the same for the Hermes that came his way.

The head-dressed medium mech lashed out at Michael's with its autocannon tagging him in his left arm and its medium laser at maximum effective range raked a molten scar into his left leg.

But Michael would not be turned away so easily and returned fire with controlled and calculated coldness. The flight swarmed at the Jaegermech and explosions belted its legs and breast. So much so that the sixty-five ton goliath stuttered in its step. Thrown off guard the pilot lost control and his mech reeled then toppled to the ground. It began to recover quickly, though, not out of the fight.

Crystal lurched forward slowly, realizing Michael had taken the target off her and fired only one of her Jenner's four lasers to cool down her already over taxed engine. It melted armor and blackened the recovering mech's left arm. It wasn't much, but it was something.

Both the Dervish and the Hermes II fired their jump jets in unison, launching themselves into the air to make themselves more difficult targets and seeming to leave their fallen comrade to his fate, but Cutter didn't take the bait and kept his throttle at maximum, running right past the slowly recovering pirate, then turned hard left toward the aerial duet. Instead of splitting his fire, Michael instead put his bead on the Dervish and cycled over to high explosive charges. As he predicted, the slow moving heavier mech couldn't pivot in time to get any shots off before he launched his own strike, and let fly a salvo of the most deadly target-seeking explosives devised yet by the clans. The Dervish had adjusted its orientation mid-flight to try and track Cutter, but the massive explosions that engulfed him changed everything. The medium mech pitched forward then rolled to its right, plunging head and shoulder first straight into the unforgiving rock facade, its leg curling up behind it in an impressive impact.

Jump jets had always been a double-edged sword for inexperienced and veteran mechwarriors alike for this exact reason.

The crashed Dervish made no move to get up, but also did not shut down, which gave Cutter a brief pause. One just long enough for the Hermes to strike him again.

Just after touching down, the more veteran pilot triggered off his autocannon and laser again, but this time the shots punched into the Adder's right side damaging the leg and arm.

Star had managed to stagger her mech within ninety meters of the pirate Jaegermech then gave the arisen giant everything she had, throwing the heat from the fusion engine over its critical line. Three of the four radiant emerald lances struck the larger form, peeling yet more of the plated protection from the barrel chest and right arm. Only one of her four short range missiles locked on and blasted its left leg.

Despite her efforts, the heavily wounded beast casually faced her just as the safety mechanisms engaged and powered down her JR7-D Jenner's reactor, and it came to a dead stop. She was a sitting duck.

"Eject, Star! Eject!"

A small explosion in the head had Michael worried that the first shot from the much larger enemy had killed her, but the canopy of the outstretched head blew away and Crystal, strapped to her cockpit seat, rocketed upward well out of the reach of her foe.

Almost in a quiet defiance, the villain shot anyway, barreling the poor thing over to the ground, its wounded leg finally giving way and rending the shin and foot from the rest of the structure.

A scattering of three lasers interrupted Cutter's surveillance to make sure Star's parachutes deployed – a nasty and unfortunate failure that occasionally befell mechwarriors – especially from older mech models such as hers. Michael turned to see a new foe, a FLC-4N Falcon landing inside the canyon at his two-o-clock.

"Ffffff..."

Outnumbered and over-extended, Cutter circled his light mech and then drove straight at the enemy Hermes II. He stamped the fire buttons on the ATMs early, letting the shock of his sudden attack freeze the pilot in place. The ordinance splashed all over, but most missed his stunned mark as it returned fire. The autocannon smashed into his mech's right shoulder and the laser buried a steaming hole into the chin just under the cockpit where Michael was sitting.

Within forty meters, Cutter, with a dead bead on the Hermes, pulled a tertiary trigger just below the primary dual mains. The four Clan Micro Pulse Lasers made a 'WUB WUB WUB' sound in unison as their primary capacitors discharged and cut into the dumbfounded raider mech then Michael made a very dangerous and sharp cut to his right to bypass it.

THUMP!

An autocannon round hit his mech in the rear and penetrated the armor there, but it was a small price to pay as his plan worked perfectly. The larger mech behind him had seen the very opportune target of Cutter's back and patiently lined up a shot not expecting the perilous ploy.

Three of the autocannon rounds and both lasers hits blew through the Hermes's chest, shredding just about everything inside, delivering a lethal blow.

Michael turned from watching his enemy's unfortunate friendly fire incident to receive a battering from the Falcon that had entered the fight. It had closed in and peppered Cutter's bruised Adder with two smaller standard lasers and two machineguns – the light projectiles resounding off his armor.

Michael kept his mech moving but twisted the torso to bring his retticle over the annoying mech, but in an unexpected maneuver, it rushed right up to him still firing – the weapons nibbling at what little remained of the protection his mech had.

Just as the lock was confirmed and the ATM pods angled in to get a shot, the Falcon pilot brought up his mech's arms and planted them firmly onto Cutter's side torso and shoved. All the momentum the Falcon had was transferred into Michael's and abruptly, his mech's center of mass was moving in a different direction from his legs.

"You. Mother. Fu..."

His pride and joy slammed into the rocky terrain on its left side at almost fifty kilometers per hour, sending sparks flying. It came to a halt having ripped nearly a ton of armor from the side of the torso, leg, and arm.

Luckily, the headrest and Michael's experience paid off in the fall and he was not injured. At least not physically - as he realized he had pulled the triggers on his primary weapons system, and the ammunition counter ticked down to minimal levels for the devastating ordinance.

He looked out his cockpit window to see the guided missiles fly upward into the sky. The little swarm seemed to playfully gad about toward the clouds, then in a swift shift of movement they became their own little cloud of doom over the unsuspecting Falcon.

The rounds turned and plunged downward on top of the unfortunate light mech, punched through its central chest cavity and ignited over a thousand pounds of machine gun ammunition stored inside. The concussive forces then tore through the encased fusion engine and its gyroscopic stabilizer.

The thing faltered, smoking, and still giving off small explosions, fell face first into the rocky terrain with a definitive boom that echoed off the canyon walls.

Michael strained at the controls and punched up the computer's righting protocols. The gyro went into high gear, forcing the myomer controlled limbs to execute the high-strength motions to get its feet back under itself and stand up.

After what seemed like minutes, his mech fully righted just in time to get hammered by his last foe, standing wounded but proud in taking easy shots against his banged up mech. The enemy lasers peeled the last remnants of armor from his Adder's right arm and leg, while the lighter autocannons pecked at the torso, causing some minor internal damage – luckily nothing he couldn't live without. One of the larger autocannon rounds missed and Michael counted himself lucky. That is until the other came in behind it and drilled into the armored cockpit canopy.

Cutter's vision blurred and the ringing in his ears told him that he was still alive, but not in the best way. The targeting display in front of him jumped about in his vision but he wasn't sure if that was him, or if it had been damaged. He locked onto the enemy mech and fired, but nothing happened.

Right. He'd forgotten to cycle over to standard rounds, and the mech wouldn't fire until he did so. Damn. He fiddled with the top toggle with his thumb, but it was sluggish.

He finally got it set and looked up to see a strange blue glow appear on the bandit's Jaegermech, and without warning a massive explosion of metal, sparks, and electrical discharges engulfed it. The monster shook violently from the sudden hit and all Michael could do is watch the strange spectacle.

"Die, pirate scum!"

Despite the tinnitus, Cutter heard the communication as if it was inside his head. While it did not do his newfound headache any good, he recognized the voice and was somewhat relieved.

A second later after the first PPC, a boom from overhead sounded along with a second blue-lit explosion on his last remaining enemy that shattered the larger mech's left shoulder and tore the arm from the mech. A second boom accompanied a rain of long range missiles homing in on the already devastated foe.

The pirate mechwarrior tried to turn to run, but it was far too late. The hail descended on him and tore the mechination limb from limb before Cutter's eyes. Off in the distant skies the two aerospace fighters – a light Spad and the twice as heavy Gotha circled around back toward his position.

"We get him!?!" asked Aria Hawk – the pilot of the Gotha.

Michael tiredly flicked the switch on his comms console over to the wide frequency.

"Yeah," he said as he watched the flaming wreck in front of him drowning in a number of smaller explosions, "you got him."

It had not been a good day.