We are at war with civilization, chanted Sokol inside his helmet, the ravager mantra keeping him focused as he used some of the onboard booster modules to enable him to duck out of the way of an incoming salvo from one of the turbo-lasers.
Our people are the Bottom Line, continued the pilot as he extended his right arm and tucked in the mech’s legs to help the stabilizer fins steady the mag-cannon for target lock.
“Death to the false idols of currency,” growled Sokol, this time into his headset, so that the other falling mechs could hear him, as he fired his mag-cannon.
The heavy rounds roared out of the barrel of Sokol’s mounted weapon and streaked down towards the turbo-laser emplacement below. As the distance between the mech and its target shrank by the second, Sokol could see the explosive rounds rip through the flimsy armor of the large gun. As the hardened shell of the rounds was stripped away by the various impacts, the explosive core of each one detonated with the force of a grenade. The four cor-sec troopers that had been crewing the gun were sent sprawling, at least two of them in pieces.
“Meat for the tribe,” answered Morgan as Night Witch appeared on Sokol’s far left flank and opened up with her autocannon, pulping the survivors and another trooper, perhaps a medic, who had appeared to be rushing to their aide.
Sokol activated his boosters and pointed them upwards, causing the war machine’s descent to slow tremendously and suddenly, which allowed the pilot to land with something approaching grace. Ogre One slammed into the inclined wall just behind the grisly remains of the turbo-laser and its crew. The mech’s claws and the pitons on its feet bit through the enamel and into the concrete as the joints of the machine compensated for the impact. In the blink of an eye, Ogre One launched itself up over the battlement and began sprinting across the open passageway where the would-be rescuer had emerged.
As Sokol entered the passageway, which was wide enough to contain the war machine but afforded him little in the way of mobility, several cor-sec troopers began to fire at him. Small arms fire rang off the armored body of Ogre One and Sokol whipped his head around to see that troopers had appeared on both sides of him, others having approached from the opposite passage. Their weapons were unlikely to penetrate Ogre’s thick hide, however enough concentrated fire would damage his gun systems and possibly his joints. The cor-sec troopers lost no time in attempting to do just that, and Sokol begrudgingly had to acknowledge their tenacity.
The reputation of Fatalis and its cadre of war machines must have preceded them, Sokol reflected as he turned his auto-cannon on the troopers in the passage ahead of him, riddling two of them full of holes and forcing a third to duck into a side passage for cover.
As the bloody fame of Fiat Lux spread from sector to sector it seemed that the prey grew ever more relentless in their self-defense. The pilot extended his mag-cannon and took a precious additional moment to line up his shot perfectly before firing. For a bunch of low rent cor-sec troopers to try a stand up fight with a mech implied that there were prices on the heads of the ravagers, larger perhaps than they had been since the last good kill, large enough that men with little hope of victory went on the offense against a superior foe.
Sokol fired the mag-cannon, having given his targeting system time to acquire all four hostiles, and his patience was rewarded. The two mag rounds tore through the riot grade body armor worn by the pair of cor-sec troopers who were firing from a kneeling position. One round, that had gone through a man’s chest, exploded upon impact with the body armor of the cor-sec trooper behind the first. The second round went through a man’s neck, losing little of its outer shell in the process, and then tore off the leg of the trooper behind before exploding upon impact with the passage wall.
The pilot did not revel overlong in his swift victory, as his instincts, combined with Ogre’s sensor array, took note that the flak battery at the end of the passageway ahead of him had turned its quad-barrels away from the Fatalis and towards him. The Coyote class mech bunched its legs beneath it and leapt upwards just as the flak battery gunner squeezed the triggers.
Sokol lashed out with his left hand and sank his claws into the top of the wall and used his momentum from the jump to swing the mech’s legs up and over the battlements. His other clawed hand bit into the concrete to steady him as he kept his momentum going and twisted the machine’s torso hard, keeping his legs moving. The maneuver resulted in him being able to land Ogre One in a crouched position atop the battlements, using the thickness of the wall as a perch, effective, if precarious. He was out in the open, he knew that, but at least he wasn’t in the passageway, which was being scoured by anti-air fragmentation rounds that would have chewed apart the vital systems of his mech.
Sokol rose from his crouch and rushed across the top of the battlement, sensing other guns being trained on him, even if he could not tell from where. It was a sizeable fortress, and he was rushing across the top of the wall out in the open. He was not surprised when gunfire began to spatter the wall at his feet and zip past his careening machine. He had been Ogre One’s pilot for several years now, yet still he marveled at the functional magnificence of it.
Many corporations in the universe had mech warrior programs, even if the majority of them were modest at best, and usually the machines were used for crowd control or ceremonial duty. Helion’s mech program, however, was something more advanced. Not just by way of technological prowess, but the amount of time and resources placed into it. While Grotto might raise a penal legion and march them into the enemy’s guns for a fraction of the cost, there was a sense of corporate pride that swelled in the breast of every Helion battle trooper when one of their mech warriors strode into war.
He might have a festering hatred for his former corporation, thought Sokol as he brought his mag-cannon up and began to spit rounds into the flak-battery, but the mechs built by Helion were without peer.
Secondary explosions blasted apart the flak-battery and for a moment turned the gun emplacement into an inferno of detonating fragmentation rounds. Sokol looked down and saw a group of cor-sec troopers struggling to bring around a grav-mounted auto-cannon, seemingly to put themselves and the gun between the mechs and what appeared to be a reinforced gate that presumably led into the bunker style complex.
Sokol leapt off the wall and began sliding down the inclined outer wall in a shower of stripped enamel. With his right claw dragging furrows through the concrete to slow and steady his descent, Sokol raised his left arm and cut loose with his own auto-cannon. The cor-sec troopers managed to activate the grav-mount on the weapon before the salvo of rounds hit them and two men managed to heave it out of the way. Sokol’s attack shredded the body of one trooper who moved too slow, and the mech moved to compensate.
The cor-sec troopers were fighting for their lives, it was well known that Fiat Lux ravagers took no prisoners, and the men were fighting in top form out of pure desperation. Sokol had to give them that, and though it might frustrate the likes of Captain Kochi to encounter more of a fight than a clean takedown, the pilot himself was thrilled with the difficulties of the day. The cor-sec gunners did not disappoint him and they returned fire with the auto-cannon.