It's a quick trek back out of town, and you're soon in the wilderness once more. Despite the fast pace Mouse sets on the way, the one of the other pilots soon comes over comms with a greeting.
“Hey, you're a new face. I'm Wayne.” He gives a small wave too. His ray is similar to the others you've been seeing, with its arms and legs changed out for ones from different models. It's a Cowboy, arms changed for the heavier Arc and legs from the lighter Black Cat.
It seems like a rather unbalanced frame at a glance. Especially with the sizable bulges on each side of the arms, indicating that there are multiple weapons built into both. It reminds you of when you used those Ironside arms, and it was a fight to move around properly. The disparity isn't quite bad here since according to your data, the Arc is a good deal closer to a medium weight frame than the Ironside is, and the Cowboy and Black Cat parts are both ten-meter frames. But those extra large arms still must make up a considerable portion of its total tonnage.
Nevertheless, Tendou returns the greeting. “Hi, I'm, uhh, Strider. I'm new in town.”
Falling back from up ahead where Mouse is, another raises a hand in a small wave. “I'm Gardenia, nice to meet you.” This one is a woman's voice, coming from a frame that stands in stark contrast to Wayne's. It's a nine-meter frame, the core of a Wolf, with everything else changed for Lynx parts. Where the Cowboy appears unbalanced, the Wolf is cheap. Even compared to your own shoddy production, the Wolf is intentionally bad.
Wolf – 9-meter light attacker. Produced as cheaply as possible, in batches of three. The batch's total price and expected effectiveness are similar to a single frame of other make. Large groups of Wolf frames can project particularly dangerous amounts of force.
After scanning over the log, you display it on-screen as a warning to Tendou. No wonder why the pilot changed out as many parts as possible. Even though the Lynx isn't a particularly good, at least it counts as a whole ray frame.
Even as his eyes scan the document, he returns Gardenia's greeting, waving back. A short pause follows, everyone except Mouse - who's still single-mindedly forging ahead - turning to look to the third of your new teammates.
This one remains silent, at least for the few moments it takes you to look over his frame and pop out information on the different parts you see. And what you see is immediately impressive.
It's composed of a Lodzic torso and head, with Milos arms, and Mir legs. They're all medium and lightweight parts, nine-meters tall. But unlike Gardenia's frame, each of the models are noted to be especially effective for a fast, flanking attacker. It all makes the large Mac demolition cannon mounted on the frame's shoulder even more conspicuous.
Finally turning to you all, the pilot answers. “Takashi.” The single word tells you that the man inside is old, very old. His voice has this deep, scratchy quality to it that none of the younger pilots have.
“Is, uhh, that your callsign?” Tendou asks uncertainly.
“Yeah.”
There's barely enough of a pause after that for Tendou's brow to furrow, before Wayne laughs. “Don't mind him, old dude's always like that.”
“Wayne...” Gardenia cuts in, her tone admonishing.
“What? It's true,” he continues to chuckle anyway. “Don't worry, don't worry, I've worked with him plenty of times before, Takashi's a super veteran, he'll have all our backs if things get hairy.”
For his part, Takashi just sighs across comms before his broadcast cuts out.
You still aren't that familiar with humans, so it's hard to say whether that all lightened the collective mood of the group, or made it worse. Even so, you all continue on. Then Mouse explains what you're all going to do, and everyone gets excited. Even Takashi.
When you reach the cliffs, it takes another short search to find the right spot. You roll aside the boulder you put back in place earlier, to keep anything else unwanted from intruding, and all crawl through. Wayne has some trouble with his larger arms, and Takashi with his shoulder cannon, but some creative wiggling eventually gets you all through the narrow crack in the cliff face.
“Couple hours out of town and no one found this,” Gardenia laments once you're through.
“It's a needle in a hay field,” Takashi responds, but receives an odd response from the others. They all look at him, saying they have no idea what he's talking about.
“What's a 'hay field' anyway?” Gardenia asks.
“It's- You know what, nevermind,” the man sighs, using his ray frame's hand to wave off the question entirely. “It doesn't matter. Let's just focus on the job.”
“Good call, I'm picking up something,” Mouse cuts in, sliding quickly toward one wall of the narrow pass while she draws her weapon.
“Let me check,” Gardenia offers, and steps forward. Unlike Mouse, she doesn't pause to wait for whatever sensors she's checking, before she says, “Multiple targets ahead. Large. They must be ray frames.”
“Shit,” Mouse curses. “It's only been a few hours, how'd they get here so fast?”
“Got me, but they're here now. Pinging now... No response. They must be Hex.”
“Prepare for combat,” Takashi commands, stepping forward while drawing a Drake and Rubicon from the holsters on his side and back.
Without any hesitation, the rest of the group falls in behind him, weapons drawn too. A step behind, Tendou picks up the rear, drawing the Mitchell from your back.
You continue to wind through the narrow valley, Gardenia calling out more information as you get closer. “Two targets. Nine-meters, moving slowly... toward us. About... forty meters past here,” she notes, as you pull up alongside another turn in the jagged rock face. At forty meters, you're just beginning to pick them up too, right at the edge of your radio scanner.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“They're coming toward us?” Takashi asks. When she confirms it, he nods. “Once they're at twenty meters, we light them up. Wait for my mark.” Everyone waits, pressure building, and you expand your map for Tendou, until Gardenia speaks again.
“Twenty meters.”
Takashi says, “Three, two, one, go!” Together, you all dash out past the turn in the cliff. There are two Badang frames right there, lumbering in your general direction. You raise your rifle as you slide, coming to a stop.
In the same moment you draw a crosshair on-screen for him, Tendou is already pulling the trigger. The weapon gives a rapid series of cracking snaps as it fires for the first time in over thirty years, only to be drowned out by the other booming gunfire all around you.
The Hex don't stand a chance. They hardly have time to raise their weapons before the wall of point-blank fire tears through their cheap armor and shreds the internals beneath. They haven't even hit the ground yet when Takashi raises a hand and calls for everyone to hold fire.
In his seat, Tendou stares forward, weapon still aimed at the fallen Hex on the ground. He's panting slightly. Takashi steps forward, one by one kicking the weapons away. They look like some kind of light machine guns, but you can't tell the models due to all the damage.
“Good, let's keep going.” At his word, everyone moves on, stepping over the two decimated wrecks. Again, Tendou takes a few extra moments to pull his gaze away, and follow after them.
From here, everyone is quiet, and the air in the group is more tense. With Takashi at the head of the group now, you all continue further in. When you're near the factory, Gardenia calls out, “More contacts. A lot more.”
The team slides against the side of the canyon again, while Gardenia spends more time with her sensors now. “There's... seven, I think? I don't know, my readings aren't really clear near the factory...”
“Mmm...” Takashi rumbles.
Gardenia continues. “Six are nine-meter, probably more badangs, but one's definitely bigger. Eleven meters, heavy. We've got a real threat here.”
“Well, shit,” Wayne gripes. “What's the plan, boss?”
“Hmm...” Takashi spends a while thinking, so Mouse speaks up.
“The next area is pretty open, no real obstacles right in front of the factory,” she says.
Gardenia adds on, “The six are about halfway to the factory, like fifty meters away, the heavy is toward the left wall, about seventy meters out. None of them are moving.”
After another long pause for thought, Takashi finally says, “I don't like it.”
“Don't like what?” Wayne questions. “Don't we just hit the chaff hard and fast so we can focus fire on the heavy?”
“Not necessarily,” the old man sighs. “They're in front of the factory that we don't want to hit.”
“Oh yeah...” Wayne chuckles nervously.
With another long sigh, Takashi goes on. “We should try to bait them out of that field so we don't have to worry about hitting the factory. If that doesn't work, we have to circle around to the far side, so we can angle our fire away.”
Everyone agrees, and together, you all begin backing away from the edge of the cliff. Once you have a little distance, Takashi holds is rifle off to the side, and fires a couple shots, the gunfire ringing out loud, echoing back and forth between the tall cliffs.
You wait.
…
“They aren't coming...” Gardenia growls.
Takashi groans. “Damn. They definitely know we're here. And they're forcing us to fight in a bad position. So the heavy is a commander, and it can think tactically. This is going to be rough. We're going to have to beat them in a straight fight. Everyone get ready.”
I'm going to charge up the motors to move faster, but it'll get hot in here.
You put up the note on the side of the monitor for Tendou to see and get to work on that, while everyone heads back to the edge of the cliff where it turns. It's a tight turn around the edge, going left, into the wide open space out front of the factory. You can't detect where the Hex are at this distance, so you'll have to spot them fast.
With nothing else to do for it, Takashi speaks slowly. “Get to the far side as fast as you can to get an angle, then take out the little ones. Try to maintain a position with the factory on our side.” Everyone confirms. “Everyone ready. Three, two one, go!”
Together, the whole team makes a break for it. You and Takeshi both fire your thrusters, flying ahead of the rest of the group. And you're lucky you do. As soon as you turn your head to see the enemies, they open fire.
There are six of them, two Badangs and four Bogatyrs, all carrying light and heavy machine guns, their gunfire tearing into the group behind you.
“Crap!” Takashi gasps, spinning mid-stride and jumping upward. He aims down, but doesn't fire his rifle. Instead, there's a boom from the cannon on his shoulder, the large shot like a cannonball streaking down, where it hits the ground in the middle of the smaller frames. The explosion is huge, flinging away three of the Hex, even though they're pretty spread out.
That helps to blunt the unexpected offensive against the rest of your team, just as you're getting far enough across that you have a clear shot without the factory behind. You turn and open fire at one of the Badangs that's still upright.
Tendou's hands are shaking at the controls, throwing your aim off despite Pilot Assist's effort to steady them. Your shots spread out, some missing, but most cutting through chunks of cheap armor, all across the frame's body.
Some fire begins to turn your way, from the larger frame behind. You call it out onscreen, outlining it in red, with its name and a couple pertinent facts. Namely, that it's a Thor, an eleven-meter, heavy attacker frame, with a lot of weapons.
You see two large energy weapons mounted onto each of its arms, and another two at the shoulders. And all of them are turning on you. With an alert sound, you flash the screen around it. Your pilot's eyes move off his target, aim going wide, but he sees the threat, and slams the controls to the side. Your thrusters flare, and you lurch sideways, only taking a few glancing blows instead of the brunt of the attack.
The Thor is slow to follow, but it does follow, and you have to keep moving to keep it off of you. The seconds stretch long as you run and gun, keeping at a distance, and then your team is reaching a fire position. The small Badangs go down, then the Bogatyrs follow. Despite your strafing, you're forced to cross back through the Thor's fire a few times, since you have to keep doubling back to stay in the small area where you don't risk putting the factory in the crossfire.
But everyone is starting to shoot for the Thor now. And while it has a lot of weapons, the armor isn't as heavy. Your team took a beating in that initial barrage, but now you've isolated the heavy and it's just a matter of taking it down.
And then a blur streaks across your view. You aren't sure if Tendou even noticed, until he turns to follow, and there's another ray frame you didn't see earlier. It's rushing across the middle of the field, thrusters flaring, straight toward Wayne. It's big, ten or eleven meters, moving impossibly fast. You do a lookup but don't get anything.
You don't know what kind of ray frame that is.
You're flashing up question marks all around it, as Takashi calls, “I'll deal with it!” and rushes off to intercept. You dodge back to avoid another volley from the Thor, then your whole body lurches, staggering as something blasts into you from the side, ripping off the extra, external armor mounted to your right arm near the shoulder.
You spin, and there's another one. A Firebird. It's an attacker, with beefy arms, weapons built into them – leveled directly at you. It's standing just inside the door into the factory, which the Hex must have gotten open somehow.
“Crap,” Tendou breathes.
-----
Vote:
[ ] Focus on one target
-Which?
[ ] Don't focus on one target
[ ] Focus on offense
[ ] Focus on defense
[ ] Stay at range
[ ] Get in close
[ ] Regroup with allies
[ ] Run away
[ ] Write-in