Hide

You immediately throw the message on-screen to get your pilot to move before the Bogatyr turns and sees you.

“Hide?!” the pilot spits the word out like venom. His tone is so hostile, you immediately revise the message.

Ambush

You even plaster a big arrow across the monitors, pointing him to the small section of the Bogatyr's storage hanger where he can to take cover.

With teeth bared in rage, the man only hesitates a moment longer, just enough that the potential enemy may have time to see you, before he snarls out a reluctant sound, and yanks on the controls, pitching you roughly sideways, ducking to your left.

When your left arm pulls you off balance, you practically crash into the side of the hanger to catch yourself, then spin into position.

It's a narrow section now that you've forced the hanger doors open, only leaving the small lip of space on either side. Just enough that you can kind of fit when you wedge yourself as far into the corner as possible. Your Ironside arm really isn't helping.

What you find once you've taken the spot, is the weapon stored inside the bay. It peeks out of the hanger's storage holster directly in front of where you took cover. You aren't interested in the weapon, since your subprocessors decided it isn't worth the risk of trying to figure it out during combat. That doesn't stop your pilot from reactively snagging the weapon when he sees it right in front of him.

With a better view, you identify the weapon and flash up a very simplified portion of importance.

Kelpie – energy weapon, rapid fire, short range.

As soon as your pilot has given it a glance, you mention his own holster, which he promptly shoves the weapon into for now, allowing you to go on.

Enemy: Bogatyr

You lay it out below, with a rough diagram of the enemy, you pop out various known statistics to help the pilot in the coming battle, primarily focused on the enemy's weapons.

With a few popups on the diagram, you indicate that most of the enemy's offensive potential comes from its left arm, with its built in rocket launcher and grappling hook. Besides the weapon your pilot just grabbed, you're sorely lacking in your own ranged attack options by comparison, so it would be best to ambush the enemy to bring the combat into melee range.

You clear the display and sum up your thoughts into a single sentence.

Ambush for best effect.

He grunts his understanding, even though he still doesn't look happy with the thought of hiding when he so clearly wants to attack, for whatever reason.

By the time you've gotten through the couple shorthand messages to your pilot, you can hear the stomp of the Bogatyr moving through the hanger. And it's coming toward your hiding spot. Did it notice you? Is part of your shoulder sticking out past the edge of the wall? Or maybe your pilot didn't get you into cover quite fast enough?

There's no good way of telling, and it doesn't matter anyway. The enemy is slowly approaching to investigate, putting you on a tight time limit for planning. At least it will give a good opportunity for an ambush, so long as you pilot can execute it well.

You rapidly work your way through the rest of the information provided to you, which should help your pilot greatly in the next moments. At the top of your list: the most important targets, where your pilot needs to focus his attacks in hopes of bringing down the enemy.

From most important, to the least, you list them out. First up is its right arm, the same one you initially freed the frame in order to take for yourself. With it as an enemy, the attached blades and small phaser it holds could pose an immediate danger that's best knocked out fast.

Next up are its visual sensors, of course, followed by any unexpected surprises it might have in store. After that, he should try to knock out the enemy's AI system, since the Bogatyr's info lists that it also has onboard AI like you do.

If all of that still isn't enough, or you can't knock out one of the other targets, then disabling the left arm should reduce its combat ability enough that you can just keep hitting it until the threat is destroyed.

As you flash each of these targets up one after another, your pilot's eyes fly frantically across the text. “Right arm, eyes, surprises, AI...” He pauses when he gets there, a moment passing before he turns his face directly upward, toward the top of your cockpit, examining the spot you were damaged earlier.

You don't know if the Bogatyr's autonomous piloting system is within its cockpit like you are, but either way, destroying that has to disable the enemy machine; there's no other way it could be operating since it doesn't have a pilot.

The difficult part is landing a hit. That's the best defended part on the enemy after all. You'll need to make it through all of the armor around the cockpit, like... maybe if you could go through the hatch, like what happened to you. But the Bogatyr should also have shroud armor like you do, to cover that weakpoint.

Going over all of this now reminds you of something vital you hadn't gotten to yet. Your own pilot hasn't lowered the shroud armor to defend himself inside your cockpit. A single hit from, say, the rocket launcher or phaser, could absolutely destroy him. But lowering the shroud creates a blind spot in the center of your vision, where he needs to see.

You only have to weigh the options for the tiniest fraction of a second to know which is better.

Entering Combat Mode. Lowering Shroud.

You can't actually do it yourself, so you get Pilot Assist to do it for you, as well as fixing the automatic balance issues it causes when your center of gravity suddenly drops by almost a meter.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

In the cockpit, the pilot is looking around in anxious confusion, no longer able to see out of the front with the extra armor covering it. You try to account for the blindspot this creates by messing with your monitors, altering the way it displays what you see.

Adjusting...

You throw a couple lines up in a cross to mark the center of your field of view, and slide the whole display sideways until the middle of your vision is showing on the monitor just to the right of the missing hatch.

He watches this happen, eyes narrowed in focus, before moving his own head slightly. As it's been doing all along, Pilot Assist moves your own head to mimic, allowing the man to get accustomed to the shift in the precious few seconds you have left.

While you can't see it, backed as close into the tiny corner as you can, the sound of the Bogatyr's slowly approaching footsteps tell you that it should be somewhere very close to the small storage space now.

You turn your head all the way to the side, seeing just past the edge of the narrow wall that hides you. You're positioned on the Bogatyr's right side, so it should be possible to land the first attack on its right arm, so long as your pilot pulls it off...

Two more steps echo just beyond the wall as you pilot eases you as far over as he can, nearly seeing past the edge without giving yourself away. You still can't see anything, but you can feel the vibrations in the ground now. The Bogatyr is close.

With the next step, your left arm rises up, overhead, its massive weight supported against the wall. A pause, then another step, and you feel like the enemy is in position. You feel like you can just see the edge of something from around the corner.

You sound a low beep, and he moves. Hands clenched at the controls, he shouts. Much of the rage from earlier is gone now, replaced by something fear, or at least anxiety. But he shouts anyway, and you kick off, launching just past the edge of the wall, to reveal the Bogatyr, mid-step just in front of the open storage hanger.

It begins raising its arms to defend, but it's sluggish, even compared to the massive arm you've been hefting around. The arm which your pilot has you bring down in a blow backed by the entire weight of your body.

It's a beautiful attack, barely deflecting off the Bogatyr's rising hand, to crash directly against its head. The armor buckles instantly, the whole enemy recoiling... and then you go spinning.

Your balance was already bad from dashing out of cover like that, so the massive weight of your arm spins you around like a top, feet completely sliding out from beneath you. Your arm actually collides with door frame along the way, denting it in and breaking off the concrete around it, while you topple and slide a short distance.

You're pilot hangs on, whipped around inside the cockpit, and immediately fights to get you back on your feet as soon as you come to a stop. The Bogatyr is a step ahead recovering, staring to come at you before you've made it fully upright again.

It's the perfect opportunity to use either of its weapons, to potentially devastating effect – especially its rocket launcher.

But it doesn't.

You don't know if it is out of ammo or can't fire for some other reason; instead of lighting you up while you're in a vulnerable position, it bull rushes directly at you. But it's still sluggish. You manage to twist, spinning on your hands and knees, just far enough out of the way that it merely dings your shoulder with its knee as it passes, to minimal effect.

While it's rounding on you, you get back to your feet, and you watch its movements. They come in awkward jolts, reminiscent of your own first battle. Before you'd charged your motors.

You realize it now, the Bogatyr just started operating within the past minute or so. It hasn't had the time to divert all the power necessary into charging its own motors, so it must be running at a heavy power shortage. In combat, it might have barely enough to keep itself running, using what little is left over to get up to speed.

Operating like this, it won't be able to use its phaser either. Or potentially, much of its arsenal outside of physical attacks, assuming the rocket launcher is offline too.

This realization immediately forces you to reconsider your plans. You'd originally been leaning toward a more safe, drawn out engagement, allowing for potential stalls and stalemates so you didn't jump into anything unnecessarily risky.

Now, it looks like your best bet may be to hit the enemy hard and fast, to take it down before it can come up to full power.

That was likely the pilot's plan all along, given how he launches you forward now. His own movements aren't quite as smooth as before; even if he's mostly adjusted to the view-shift, his coordination has noticeably suffered. It's still easily within permissible range, when the alternative is him potentially getting killed instantly from one wrong move.

During your own charge at the Bogatyr, you inspect the damage from your first attack, zeroing in on the dented head. It has mostly crumpled from the right, where your blow landed, crushing at least some of the enemy's sensors. A few more hits may disable them entirely.

You outline the targeted enemy system's on your display, to help him see everything more clearly. His eyes jump between each of the marks, his chest heaving with rapid breaths, almost like panic, but different now.

The Bogatyr braces itself, hands up, and catches your charge, sliding back a short distance. Your new parts actually give you a small weight advantage over the enemy. It stabs out with a pair of long blades mounted on either side of its right wrist, which you block without much trouble, though they do cut a good way through even the heavy armor of your left arm.

That allows you to counter-punch, right into the Bogatyr's face, the enemy too slow to block, even when it clearly sees the attack coming. The punch is off-target and shallow, but the blade on your own right hand helps, busting a couple more of the enemy's visual sensors. Ramming it with your shoulder, it falls back another step.

Your pilot doesn't immediately move to pursue. In the cockpit, his eyes have taken on a different look, wide and wild. “It's slow,” he says to himself for some reason. It seems like your pilot has realized something beyond the enemy just being slow, but you couldn't say just what that is.

He has you strafe sideways, to the left, putting most of the hanger behind you, and the hanger wall behind your enemy. The Bogatyr turns to follow, coming at you once it has recovered its footing. Going into a low stance, you wind up with your left hand. It's so telegraphed, the Bogatyr easily blocks. The fifteen tons of steel doesn't care, shoving the enemy back, even if it nearly throws you off of your own feet again.

The Bogatyr hits the wall, recovers, and again, charges straight for you. It's unclear whether it has no other options given its current state, or if it simply can't think of anything else to try.

You deflect a slash from its right, and slam it back again. It bounces off of the wall, just long enough for you to step in and pin it.

Hands jerking on the controls, your pilot shouts, “Right!” He sweeps its right arm far out away from its body, using your larger, heavier left arm, then comes in with the right. It takes four punches with the shoddy blade on your right hand, which breaks off in the process, but you cut directly through the shoulder, disabling the enemy's right arm at the joint.

Without any of its weaponry functional in its left, the best it can do is land a few punches against your side and back, which your pilot ignores, letting your armor take the hits. Then you grab it with your own right hand, forcing it into a stalemate, given your similarly powered arms.

That leaves your very large, very powerful left hand completely unopposed. “Head!” Leaning all the way into it, your left hand pulverizes the head, crushing it against the concrete wall in a single hit.

“Surprises, none!” He punches again, right in the center of the enemy's chest, flattening it against the wall once more.

“AI!” With one blow after another, he pummels the Bogatyr's midsection. The thundering impacts ring out as he dents, then crushes, the heavily reinforced shroud armor. It crumples into the hatch, bearing the brunt of numerous impacts as the entire lower half of the torso caves in a little at a time.

The whole way, the Bogatyr continues to struggle, but you hold your ground. It almost feels too easy, since the enemy can't properly push against you when it can't run at full power. So you keep it pinned throughout the entire ordeal, until the Bogatyr's cockpit has completely collapsed, at which point, it finally stops struggling. Wherever the autonomous AI module was within the cockpit, it must have finally been crushed.

A long silence passes, your pilot staring at the unmoving enemy frame, before he has you step back, and it crumples to the ground. Then, he finally relaxes, slumping back in his seat to sweat and pant in apparent exhaustion, even from the short fight.

By comparison, you're doing great. With the enemy so heavily weakened, and without any of its weapons, you only suffered a few hits to your armor. The most damage is honestly to your left hand, from punching the thing so many times. And you broke off the cheap blade on your right. You sustained more damage opening the doors.

While it's unclear whether your pilot did it intentionally or not in the heat of the moment, but by disabling the right arm at the shoulder, he left the arm itself in one piece, so it will still be usable.

Overall, a very successful battle.

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