Heavy machine guns erupt from the tree line, riddling the frames of the Mechs and sending warning alarms blaring in the cockpits.
[Bombardier: Hull Point damage sustained. Armor integrity - 94% and falling]
[Ranger: Hull Point damage sustained. Armor integrity - 82% and falling]
[Ronin: Hull Point damage sustained. Armor integrity - 85% and falling]
[Templar: Hull Point damage sustained. Armor integrity - 81% and falling]
Multiple unseen targets are shooting at them!
“Where are they?” Chase demands. “Who’s hitting us?”
“In the trees,” Hanami says. “We are surrounded. They were waiting for us.”
“It was a bloody trap?” Kora yells. “Put your shields at full!”
“Remember, shields only slow the velocity of ballistic weapons, not block them all the way!” Reo shouts, moving the hearty Bombardier to block the less defensible Templar with its bulk.
The blitz continues, but the fully boosted shields do reduce the damage being done by the machine guns.
“But who the hell are they? Is this friendly fire or are these genuine bad guys?” Chase barks, pivoting his Mech to try and get a look at their attackers.
“If they are Neo Yamato…” Hanami says.
“I’ll buy us some time,” Kora says. “Been wanting to try this one out.”
Kora activates her Deployable Dome Shield Generator. She pulls the single-use device out from a compartment on the back of Templar and slams it down into the ground, right in the center of the four Mechs. The generator springs to life, and immediately a large shimmering energy dome encloses the Mechs.
The firing continues, but through the double layers of shielding, the damage to their armor is nearly halved.
We cannot fight back until we identify the enemy! Hanami thinks.
“Activate the QPS! They already got an entire surprise round of attacks on us. We need to find out what we are dealing with,” she says.
All four pilots reach for their Quantum Probability Spheres and feel the sensation of relative time dilation kick in.
Hanami is the first to act. She zooms in with the scope of her ballistic LR Cannon, first to the east, then to the west. She can see multiple black armored vehicles between the trees with heavy machine guns mounted on their roofs.
Over the Comms she says, “Multiple targets engaging us. I see several armored vehicles and—”
Just then she notices two mobile Multiple Rocket Launch Systems, in the same all black color. No, FOUR of them, at least. The one nearest her had already begun launching when she hit her QPS.
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Multiple rockets shimmer through the double shield and explode adjacent to Hanami’s position, sending her Mech careening backwards from the blast.
[Ranger: Significant Hull Point damage sustained. Armor integrity at 68%]
Chase feels adrenaline course through his veins. He sees Hanami’s Mech knocked to the ground. Several rockets are launching his way. He hits the jets and boosts straight up into the sky. The narrowly avoided explosions below rattle his Mech as machine gun tracers follow him.
Damn, what am I supposed to do?
[Ronin: Armor integrity - 80%]
Reo is pulling as much power from his dual Fusion Cores as he can into his shields as his Mech physically blocks Kora from the nearest tree line.
[Bombardier: Heat rating moderate. Armor integrity - 91%]
Then two rockets slam into him. BOOM. BOOM! They ignite against the double shielding and Reo braces his Mech, the explosive shockwave pushing him backwards a few meters, leaving large gashes in the island soil.
[Hull Point damage sustained. Armor integrity - 80%]
Explosions are supposed to be MY specialty!
Reo activates a double move, using his jets to boost forward across the ground as far and as fast as he can manage in this Heavy Mech. He leaves the protective bubble of the dome shield and approaches the tree line.
“Be careful!” Kora yells as Reo charges directly into the line of intense firing.
Kora activates both of her Directional Energy Shields, holding out Templar’s hands to the east and the west of the battlefield, absorbing and slowing as much as she can that is coming her way.
Hanami wipes a trickle of blood from her nose onto her sleeve, sustained from slamming her face against a console. She tightens her harness and wills Ranger to get up. This is chaos. This is carnage. And they still don’t know who they are fighting.
These MRLS will destroy us if we stay out in the open like this.
Hanami activates her jets and double moves away, blasting up and over a large craggy outcropping. She huddles Ranger behind the big rocks and activates her installed Aerial Topography Drone.
The drone detaches and flies out from a compartment in Ranger’s upper back and hovers high above the island, mapping the terrain and projecting it in a 3D grid onto Hanami’s holoscreen. Now she has a full view of the battlefield, but still can’t see the assailants as they are hiding underneath the canopy of trees.
“Do you see any identifying marks whatsoever on the enemy?” she asks.
“Not from here, but I’m getting pissed off and ready to start firing back!” Chase says. Ronin hovers in the air, trying to dodge the tracers tearing through the sky. “But I’ll hold my action so I don’t kill your second cousin or whatever if this turns out to be your military.”
Kora finds herself alone in the clearing, the other three Mechs having charged off in different directions. She checks her screen.
[Templar: Armor – 70%, Heat – Moderate]
Cheers for that generator, but a few barrages from those rockets could crack me open like an egg.
Kora spins, pivots, balletically shifting her directional shields all around in defense as projectiles fly this way and that.
“They’re going a bit aggro on me here. Lend a girl a hand, ay?”
A rocket explodes nearby, the blast sending Templar careening to its hands and knees. With the dropped shields, the machine guns light Kora up.
[Armor – 62% and falling]
If they break through the armor, I die. I remember that part distinctly from the lecture!
Kora forces herself back to a standing position, re-engaging the Directional Shields and standing her ground in the center of the dome.
Reo forces Bombardier into the tree line, smashing trees out of the way with a one-handed swing from his Impact Hammer and uprooting them with his other hand. He stands before an armored vehicle firing its roof mounted gun at him nearly point blank. Reo sees the fire ricocheting wildly off his cockpit, ignoring the armor updates flashing on his screen.
The antagonistic vehicle is almost completely black and lacking any kind of insignia. The windows are fully tinted. Reo drops his melee weapon and grabs the vehicle with both hands of his Mech, lifting it off the ground and ripping it in half. The firing stops as sparks explode from the vehicle’s innards.