......A long time ago......
“This isn't what I signed up for...”
“You signed up?” The jab came from an older man, each deep line on his irritated face a testament to his decades of service. He'd just about had it with his subordinate's endless complaints.
Still a little more than a fresh recruit, the much younger Corsa Gallo laughed humorlessly back. “Ha ha ha.” But of course, she didn't stop talking. “Seriously, Captain, I don't know if this bucket has another battle in her right now. Not with how far out we are.”
Corsa, of course, had had as little choice enlisting as the bulk of their motley crew. The discovery of a sizable chi deposit directly beneath her childhood hometown had seen to that. Or rather, the corporations, with their ravenous bands of mercenaries had done that part. She could hardly complain, now that she was one herself.
After all, with parents lost while fleeing the embattled mercenaries, what could newly homeless children do besides enlist at the nearest garrison? It put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, at least while they remained in training.
Corsa was just one of many, and she made it out as well as she did thanks to her decent talent as a ray frame pilot. Not that any of it ever fixed her mouth.
Unfortunately, as the newest pilot, her perfectly average skill level only netted her a seat in her dubiously legal paramilitary unit's most trashed junker. The thing was an ancient Wildcat model. Nearly a decade of use hadn't done any favors for the frame that was known to under perform right out of the factory.
Corsa scratched her head in aggravation, grumbling to herself, then tapped at her fuel gauge anxiously. She was already down to a third of her tank. Going into combat like this would be asking for trouble. When she mentioned the issue to captain Medeo, he balked at her.
“How are you that low already?” he demanded.
Corsa barked back, “This piece of shit doesn't even have a compression tank!” how was she supposed to keep up when her ray didn't even hold half the fuel most others did?! The hollow ring of her punching the inside of her cockpit, and the pained, colorful language that followed, continued to hiss across everyone's comms.
But that didn't concern the captain. “Wait, what?” He twisted halfway around while walking, just to look at her. It was a subtly remarkable feat – at least to Corsa – made possible by his newer Aragon frame and its enhanced balance systems. Seeing it only further fueled Corsa's envy toward the pilots who got to use rays that weren't complete garbage.
“I thought the mechanics back at base swapped that out last month?” the captain questioned, mentally stepping back to try and recall when their squad's upkeep happened last.
“They were going to, yeah...” Corsa responded, already starting to clench her teeth. “Until Red got trashed again and they had to work overtime just to get his ray running!” With her shout, she jerkily threw one of her Wildcat's arms out in the general direction of his larger Cyclops.
Unfortunately, he'd already gotten most of an arm torn off again in an earlier skirmish. Which meant that when they returned to base, the work on her own Wildcat would inevitably be put off. Again.
Seeing this, “Ugh, come on Red...” the captain grumbled across comms. “Who's got the most fuel left?”
After a short back and forth between the seven members of their squad, it turned out the captain himself had the most. “Fine, fine,” he grunted. “But you'll have to wait a while, my tank's not down to half yet.” Corsa couldn't argue with that at all. If he tried decompressing the tank to open it for a fuel transfer before that point, it'd just explode.
Then the captain said the last words Corsa wanted to hear. “Run in max efficiency mode for now.” She automatically opened her mouth to argue, but he knew her well enough by this point to be one step ahead. “That's an order.”
That stopped Corsa in her tracks. Besides, she reminded herself, at her normal burn rate, there's no way the Wildcat would last long enough normally, so it was already a foregone conclusion.
“If I have to...” Not-so-silently lobbing curses at everyone and no one, she started hitting rows of switches on her dashboard. She cleared her throat. If she was doing this, she'd be a pain in the ass about it. “Zed, permission to initiate reactor burn.”
Rolling his eyes in his own ray, the captain grouched back. “Go ahead, Bocca.” When Corsa hit one particular button, slightly larger, with most of its blue paint rubbed off, a thrum spread from her unit.
It felt like a faint pull of gravity – not enough to affect the enormous mass of the team's other rays, especially at their spread out walking distances, but it could be felt faintly in the air nevertheless.
“Raising MMRs,” Corsa continued to drawl across the comms, unnecessarily reciting things exactly as they'd been trained... And then never used in actual combat, because it was dumb. There'd be so much overlapping radio chatter that way, actual information would be completely drowned out. “ESM bank one approaching redline...”
While she was cycling through dozens of switches across the sides of her cockpit's control panels, continuing to chatter inanely at her squad, a heat haze grew around her Wildcat.
Entering high efficiency mode caused the myriad motors driving the frame's massive limbs to begin dumping out huge quantities of heat, which the ray's internal heat sinks struggled to vent. Like this, the huge machine could move as well as before, while consuming far less power to do so.
While Corsa lacked any real education, Captain Medeo had lived through the discovery of the so-called trifecta of hypertech supersubstances three decades ago, which underpinned the design of all ray frames.
He wasn't paid nearly enough to understand how their rays truly worked, but watching this, he could still appreciate whatever mumbo jumbo the designers had used to seemingly circumvent the laws of thermodynamics.
At least as he understood: more waste heat should have meant less efficiency. They'd been coined 'hypertechnologies' for a reason, he supposed.
By the time Corsa was done, her entire ray was visibly steaming. “You better help soon,” she panted, “or I'll get heat stroke in here.”
Between the hot summer environment, no overhead cover, the generally arid landscape, and her own frame spewing out absurd amounts of heat, there was no way for the Wildcat's meager cockpit AC unit to keep up. In reality, she'd likely start to boil inside her skin before the heat stroke even had time to set in fully.
Knowing as much, Corsa took a drought from her canteen, then punched the button to open her cockpit. It did so with a quick hiss, and a whoosh of cooler air through the cavity carved into the lower portion of the ray's torso. Even the hot, dry, near-desert wind that blew in helped now that she was sweating profusely.
She'd have hung out the front of this furnace too, if she could. But she was always working the pedals to keep her ray walking in formation with the squad, and couldn't actually move from her pilot seat. The best she could do was flick a switch to raise the shroud. The top portion of the torso armor lifted away, granting easier access – and more airflow – into the cockpit.
Corsa had to fiddle with some dials to account for the change in the Wildcat's center of gravity, but it was worth it.
Unfortunately, just as it seemed that they could keep on their patrol path in blessed silence, Corsa started right back in. “Ahh, the hell are we even doing out here? We didn't sign up for this endless, braindead war.”
No matter how tired they all were of listening to her complain all the time, she wasn't wrong. It felt like every time they went out on patrol, they wound up taking down more and more of those damned AI-run pieces of crap.
Lately, things had been hard. Whatever major power was bankrolling the other side in this little proxy war they'd been hired for, they'd clearly started throwing some more weight around, starting a couple months back.
Alongside the occasional enemy recon squad, there were suddenly regular raids from whole battle groups of the AIs. The amount of money they must have wasted, building entire ray frames just to stuff a computer inside...
As things stood, the AI run frames were barely a match for the lowest rung of human pilots... but they were getting better.
“Speak of the devil,” a new voice cut into their conversation. It was Spike, their recon specialist. “We've got incoming. From the north, looks like eight, maybe ten rays. They'll be on us in three minutes.”
“Damn it, Bocca, don't jinx us like that...” came a grumble from Jack, soon mirrored by most of the others.
For her part, Corsa just groaned and prepared herself for battle. Everyone spread out more, moving across the surroundings.
The region they were tasked with patrolling today sported very little in the way of vegetation, but it did have a few hills about, barely tall enough to hide their enormous machines, if they crouched down low.
Spike moved ahead, staying just behind the tallest of the local hills, forward from the rest of the squad. His optics extended just above the crest to get him line of sight over much of their surroundings. With a visual, he was able to conclude that the enemies numbered ten.
It was clear the squad hadn't been spotted yet, because the approaching group were in the process of fanning out over the area to begin searching. “Must have picked us up on long range radar,” captain Medeo commented. “With ten rays – I bet they're trying to punch through us here and use the gap to hit the base.”
“I think so too,” Spike confirmed. “They're already jamming comms.”
As he said, there was an audible static crackling to their radio communications. Over longer distances, it would be completely garbled. So, no calling back to base to warn them, unless they managed to take out whichever enemy ray was creating all the interference.
While everyone was triple checking all their weapons and systems, Spike continued to report on the incoming enemy group. “Looks like... five BDs, three Bogatyrs, and one... I don't recognize it.” A heavier air settled on the squad at those words.
A ray they didn't recognize could only mean it was either something new, exotic, or heavily modified. Any of the three spelled trouble.
He had to take another minute, carefully working his sensors to get a scan of the approaching ray, checking his scans against their database of different models.
“Model ID... RND-ARC. Data says it's called an Arc. Looks like a long range support and bombardment ray. Shit! It's from last year,” he cursed when he realized just how new their approaching enemy's ray was.
'New' inevitably meant more powerful when it came to ray frames. Whether it was systems stolen and reverse engineered from other models, newly developed technologies, or just plain improvements on old tech, every year brought out new and better models.
“Well, we'll just have to get the drop on them, won't we?” the captain suggested, cracking his knuckles with a wide, vicious grin beginning to spread on his face. “Spike, you get them all tagged yet?”
“Yyyyyes,” he drew out the answer, just as he was finishing. “Done, they should all be on radar now.”
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“Good, everyone get your locks. Focus the grunts, we want them out of the way so we can hit the Arc.” At the captain's command, everyone began began putting in the commands on their consoles to do so.
In this case, that didn't include Corsa, Spike, or Red, since their rays were the only ones without any kind of indirect fire missiles.
“Fire on my command. Five, four...” Everyone went still at the captain's countdown, fingers itching on their triggers, until he shouted, “Fire!”
In the next moment, volleys of missiles exploded out, over the shallow hills between the two forces. Dozens exploded across the barely reacting force, shredding the huge machines with deafening explosions that sent quaking shockwaves through the ground and air all around.
Three radar signatures disappeared from their displays, utterly blown apart by the surprise attack.
Of course, things were just beginning. Before the billowing smoke had even cleared, their frames' internal ammo feeds were hard at work slotting another volley into the launchers. Within seconds, it was done, and another sporadic volley flew out as soon as each individual launcher could be used again.
Roughly two more volleys followed, before their Wildcat and Octagon had closed in enough to enter combat. Red wasn't far behind in his Cyclops, and the other three, with their longer range, heavier weapons, stood up on top of the hill.
Only Spike remained unmoving, his light scout unsuited for direct combat.
By this point, half of the enemy signatures had vanished, but the smoke from the continuous bombing was too thick for a proper visual.
“Still seeing them,” Spike informed everyone, his scout of course switching to thermal optics. “Careful, I see more than we've got on radar. About seven.”
Even as he spoke, the two remaining radar signatures disappeared. “That Arc must have ECM. Marking their area.”
Once he set that on their radars, Spike got to trying to boost his scanning systems to cut through all the interference.
Even if it was only a general location, with the new mark on the team's radar screens, their main attackers opened fire straight through the smoke cover. A twin pair of Tut frames, one carrying a heavy machine gun, the other with a large cannon, they pounded the entire countryside before them.
The show of force was largely inefficient without a proper line of sight, on top of being overkill and a huge waste of ammo. Any one of these would get the squad chewed out by their superiors later.
But being the ones on the field, they knew it was from overkill for such a new enemy.
A volley of missiles streaked from within the smoke, arrayed across the sky within moments. They didn't even have time to respond to their scout's shouted warning about incoming missiles, before they veered through the squad's automated anti-missile system fire which attempted knock them out of the air.
It wasn't nearly enough. The volley was almost as large as the squad's own from earlier, easily overwhelming the few defenses they had. The scene held an instant of horror that registered for each pilot. They knew the loadouts of the automated Badang and Bogatyr rays they regularly fought, and none of them carried missiles.
Then the explosives landed, pummeling almost every member of the squad at once. Their rays rocked, frames shaking. Armor dented or cracked, some tearing away.
Automatic balancing gyros kept most of them steady, but Corsa's underweight Wildcat was thrown clear off its feet, most of its frontal armor stripped away from the single barrage.
The others fared better, beginning to move evasively as they continued to fire. Their enemies had more expensive missiles; smokeless ones that provided no cover even after they went off.
Thankfully, by the time Corsa had frantically thrown her controls around to tumble her ray out of the fall, the volume of fire across the field had largely dispersed the earlier missile attack's lingering smoke, and their enemies came into sight once more.
To their elation, they had successfully shredded much of the compliment of AI frames, leaving the apparently undamaged Arc with just two Badangs and Bogatyrs each, which, sight restored, were returning fire of their own.
They initially targeted the closest, Corsa. She burst into motion, strafing sideways far faster than her ray appeared capable of, to stay ahead of their firing lines.
Her Wildcat was still running at redline from earlier, the heat rapidly building up when she pushed it at full combat speed like this. It allowed her to cover ground far beyond what the frame was rated for, but put her on a fast approaching time limit before either her or the Wildcat burned up.
Even that did little to help her nearly empty fuel tank. Soon, she'd be running purely off of reserve power.
Heedless of those issues, she fired in bursts with her phaser while running. It was a longer distance than her short range weapon was designed for, and her awkward shooting angle did her no favors, so she accomplished very little.
From the back lines, the now concentrated fire of the Tuts on their own hill achieved far more.
With well practiced, surgical precision, they called back and forth across comms. “BD right... Down. BD left... Down.” They were focusing fire and taking apart the enemies one at a time.
Between their heavy armaments and the AIs exhibiting their normal carelessness, not taking enough evasive action, they'd already blown away the remaining Badangs by the time the Bogatyrs got caught up and really started moving.
But the grunts had bought enough time for the Arc to take cover and reload. Partially behind the crest of another hill, there wasn't much for them to hit with their direct fire weapons, and it was still thwarting their scout's efforts at reattaining a target signature for further missile locks.
The hill did nothing to defend them from the second salvo of missiles the Arc fired. At least they knew what was coming this time, everyone scattering and ducking on sight. Even shielding themselves with weapons or arms, to soften the blows to their torsos, which housed the really important internals that kept their rays operational. And their cockpits, of course.
To their surprise though, most of the missiles passed straight overhead, leaving them unscathed this time. All except for the back line, where the two Tut frames took the entire brunt of the bombardment.
“Jack, Brow! You still with us?” the captain called across comms.
“Still here,” came from Jack immediately, even as the explosions were clearing. When they did, the sight was dire.
Relying on their high offensive power and squadmates to cover for them, the discount Tut rays they had were glass cannons. Budget cuts left them without even maneuvering thrusters to avoid some of the missiles.
The few hits earlier had done a number on their armor. Taking a whole salvo though? They were completely wrecked.
Even having shielded themselves behind their large weaponry, those were reduced to shattered metal fragments, with the rays in no better shape.
Each had heads and both arms blown off, and Brow's was missing a half of the torso's armor, extending from the shoulder. Even as they watched, flames poured out of the hole, the entire frame slouching over sideways like a puppet with its strings cut.
Any one of them could immediately recognize that the unit's power had been knocked out completely.
Before the huge machine crashed to the ground, it's cockpit was already opening. After the impact, Brow could be seen sprinting for dear life, away from the quickly burning ray.
He only made it so far, before Spike was there in his Wolverine. The scout may not have held up in a straight fight, but it was the lightest and fastest member of the team, as well as being the closest on the back line. He dove between Brow and the burning Tut, just in time for the massive ammo stores inside to ignite, detonating the entire metal frame into spray of metal shrapnel, firing in every direction.
Even shielded by the nine meter tall wall of chi-enhanced steel and armor, Brow was laid out on the ground and visibly concussed from the shockwave alone. But he wasn't a splattered streak on the ground.
The battered Wolverine immediately scooped him up in a hand and retreated back over the hill, leaving the main combat to the others.
Jack was retreating similarly, still talking fast over comms. “Energy levels dropping, retreating.” His ray was moving more sluggishly, the steps heavy and labored. It was obvious engine damage.
If he pushed it, the damage would easily cascade through the rest of his systems and his whole ray would shut down. At least he wasn't on fire.
Meanwhile in the field, the combat hadn't stopped. Only able to keep an eye on their retreating back line with occasional glances, their front line was still engaged with the remaining Bogatyrs, trying to push through them to get to the Arc in the back.
The AIs were equipped with long range rifles, so as soon as Corsa pushed up close where she worked best, she was making quick work of them.
Red had finally covered the ground in his somewhat slower ray, charging directly at them while unleashing waves of quick firing, short range unguided missiles. It forced the AI units to pay attention to him, allowing Corsa to take them apart unopposed.
The captain, being the slowest moving of the three, was still working his way closer, even as he kept his fire on them from a distance.
It was only Pup in his Octagon who could actually engage the Arc. As the team's mobile flex member, he was the furthest out from the main field of combat, angling with his marksman rifle to keep the Arc in line of sight, even if it was partially in cover behind the low hills.
Unfortunately, that meant the best he could manage were potshots, trying to hit the main cluster of sensors in its head. A minuscule target at this range, but if he could manage it, the enemy would have a much harder time keeping missile locks on everyone.
Before the next missile salvo came, the three frontliners took down the remaining dumb bots, but Pup couldn't manage to disable the arc's sensors.
“Cover!” the captain shouted, just before he thought it was time for the next attack. At least, it was about the same period between the first two salvos.
He was close enough, both him and Corsa diving close behind Red. Off on his own, Pup activated his own pseudo-ECM system. It would help somewhat against incoming missiles, but couldn't cover him if he was moving.
The rain came once more. Most were directed at the trio in the center of the field, landing against the wall of armor that was Red's Cyclops. He jerked about in his cockpit under the overwhelming fire, watching a few of his systems flicker dangerously from the sheer force of the impacts through his armor, before they sputtered back to life.
He did spot some serious damage creeping in from his right side though, where he had lost what remained of his previously damaged arm. The lack of armor where it had been left it much less well defended. At this point, he elected to ignore it and press forward.
On his end, Pup only had a few missiles curve his way. Thanks to a small cloud of radar blocking particulates disrupting their precise targeting, most of them scattered into his immediate surroundings, and only one landed cleanly. His Octagon's armor was sturdy enough to shrug it off without issue.
Across the field, the Arc was already in the process of retreating to keep its range advantage. It had made it halfway across a dip between this hill and the next. Out in the open, the squad finally got a good look at it. Everyone could see that the Arc carried nothing but missiles; shoulder mounted, back mounted, in the chest, legs, arms, and even with a hefty missile launcher in its hands. No wonder it could match the long range missile power of their entire squad.
But that left it effectively naked in close combat.
Ducking around Red's side, Corsa took off like a shot. For the first time, she was entirely free of incoming fire while the Arc reloaded. She crested the hill and bounded straight down the other side, despite the visible struggle to manage her wild ray's balance at such a breakneck pace. A trail of heat waves followed after.
“You're mine!” she shouted at no one, ignoring that she could barely get the words out. She even ignored the blaring warning sirens in her cockpit, and her hands clamming up on the control sticks.
While the others crested the hill and began firing as they continued their quick approach, Corsa tossed aside her gun and drew the sword from her back. It was light and flimsy as melee weapons went, but it'd do if she rammed it straight through the enemy cockpit!
Fuel reserves dry and all of her heat readings blaring red, she was deaf to the warning klaxons.
With her final bounding leap toward the retreating enemy, Corsa got both hands on the weapon's small hilt, and didn't bother trying to arrest her momentum at all. With a mighty thrust-
She hit nothing but air.
At the very last instant, the entire central section of the Arc's cockpit fired out, rocketing away into the distance. It had an emergency eject system?!
Still with her full momentum, Corsa crashed headlong into the now unmanned Arc ray. It was so much larger and heavier than her own, that she couldn't fully bowl it over, even at speed.
The automatic balance stabilizers alone kept it mostly upright, only slowly sinking backward, to land on its rear end.
Meanwhile, she tripped head over heels through the air, spinning once. “Fuck!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, before the Wildcat crashed down flat on its back.
The impact threw her around the cockpit so hard, she felt like she had whiplash in the aftermath, at least for a few moments before she finally took note of her screaming warning sirens, and mashed her controls to drop her motor power back to safe levels.
Leaving the Wildcat lying there, Corsa threw herself out of the cockpit, rolled clumsily down the ray's side, and made it a few meters away before crashing down onto her own back. Steam rose from her burning skin, and she panted at the sky.
She felt like a half-boiled lobster, her entire throat parched, lips dry. Holding her canteen limply, she took another long drink. There wasn't a dry patch of skin on her body, her clothes soaked through and clinging to her with disgusting sweat.
Canteen empty, her arm flopped to her side. “Fuck,” she groaned, and promised herself she'd take a shower when they got back to base.
As for the rest of the squad, they'd gathered together, including their members who had retreated from the direct combat area.
While both Corsa and her ray worked on cooling off enough to function, the others grabbed up the most valuable – generally the least damaged – portions of the destroyed enemy rays to bring back to base with them.
“We may have lost a Tut,” Captain Medeo chuckled, “but look at that. Guess we've got ourselves a shiny new Arc. The rest laughed along too. Apart from the few hits they'd landed at a distance, they'd barely even damaged the thing's armor.
Though, they would also need to repair their other Tut, which was almost completely trashed as well, and the Cyclops was missing an arm again...
“God, we're still gonna catch shit for this, aren't we?” The sentiment was similar throughout the squad. But that would come later. For now, they had to drag their sorry asses back to base and report in.
Little did their small squad know, but even their meager way of life was not to last...