A steady stream of deadly rounds raced towards Ogre One, though Sokol accurately judged their fire trajectory and got out of the way. He pushed the Coyote class mech to the edges of its capacity for agility as he pumped the legs and used both claws to half crawl and half fall away from the incoming. He dared not return fire till he was on flat ground, as the gunners tracked him almost as swiftly as he moved. When he finally met the ground, Sokol gathered his legs underneath him and pushed off with every ounce of juice Ogre would give him, knowing that if he was even one second too slow the gunner would catch up with him.
As Sokol launched himself he used his boosters to rapidly rotate his alignment. He slammed into the hard scrabble that passed for the ground on this little planet his auto-cannon spitting death at his enemies.
The low angle of the weapon caused dozens of rounds to slice through the legs of three cor-sec troopers, causing them to fall forwards or backwards into yet more rounds. The gunner, to his credit, ignored the fact that his left leg was missing at the knee and used the gun to support himself. Sokol’s eyes widened as the auto-cannon swiveled to put his mech square in its sights.
Two burning projectiles converged on the gunner and his weapon, slagging everything in an instant, making it appear to the naked eye as an explosion. The ground shook as Night Witch landed between Sokol and the ruined heap of meat and metal that had been about to seal his fate. The Night Witch said nothing, simply rising to a standing position and unleashing plasma fury against the reinforced gate.
Sokol was deeply attracted to Morgan, though if he was honest it was Night Witch and the way she piloted the war machine that truly ignited his passions. The woman inside the machine had a compact physique and the sort of plain face a man could easily overlook in a crowd of more striking beauties, and yet when she became Night Witch there was nothing more alluring to him. Angron shared Sokol’s passion for the woman, which had led to multiple confrontations before Morgan made it clear that she intended to have them both. She was fierce, that one, thought Sokol as he urged his own mech back to its feet. Morgan had been born and raised in the commune, and disinclined to yield to the ideas and customs from the corporate world. A self-taught mech pilot and Red List ravager through to her grindcore.
Ogre’s sensor array picked up the staccato of Swift Hammer’s thud guns and as Night Witch burned away at the gate, Sokol started running around the wide end of the bunker’s base. Even over the storm, Sokol could hear Thunder Walks pounding at the other gun emplacements, and assumed that the large mech was somewhere on the outer wall, taking out key targets and keeping cor-sec response teams at bay. The swarm barges would be circling the fortress by now and ready to converge once the flares were sent up.
The lack of radio chatter on the part of the ravagers was something of a pirate tactic, one that Sokol felt was rather effective. Most of the military forces engaged in combat had encryption and anti-encryption programs running at all times, which meant that about half the time one side could hear the traffic of the other. Pirates couldn’t afford that kind of tech, so developed what amounted to memorized tactical responses, in addition to drilling the plan over and over. The ravagers of Fatalis had plenty of high end hardware, though cared little to do the encryption dance. Instead, Captain Kochi insisted that all swarmers and mech warriors do battle with their headsets engaged, so that if anyone on the other side happened to be monitoring radio traffic all they would hear would be the sounds of the battle they were already losing. It was as devious as it was brilliant, and Sokol smiled wickedly as he imagined what the sound of Angron’s Titan level mag-cannons was doing to the morale of the cor-sec defenders.
While he pushed Ogre through the sleeting rain and churning mud of the courtyard perimeter, the deep purple and green flashes of ship-to-ship combat lit up the sky seconds before the near deafening booms of the massive warship batteries reached his ears. The Fatalis was a Fenrir Industries warship, built to look and function like the fast attack gunships that most other corporations used, only twice the size. While Captain Kochi would not dare pit the Fatalis against anything resembling a fellow warship, facing off against a cor-sec security frigate was within tolerable risk parameters. It was one of Kochi’s many wisdoms, and Sokol imagined what the interior atmospheric battle looked like right now, that he thought like a pirate but fought like a soldier.
As he rounded the edge of the complex he could see that Swift Hammer had landed just behind the battlements and had been punishing the cor-sec defenders with his specialized anti-infantry armaments. The sheer number of rounds his weapon was capable of hurling into the enemy was tremendous, and as Sokol surveyed the scene before him it was clear that Swift Hammer’s attack had been devastating. Strewn about the courtyard were the bodies of pulverized cor-sec troopers and two lite assault skiffs. As Sokol watched, Gregory turned Swift Hammer in the direction of what appeared to be the primary loading docks.
The Titan class mech did not have nearly the same articulation that the Coyote class did, and so Swift Hammer’s movements were ponderous and clumsy compared to what Ogre One was capable of. However, what Titan class mechs lost in agility they made up for in armor and firepower, as evidenced by how Swift Hammer simply shrugged off the counter attack by another grav-mounted auto-cannon crew that appeared from inside the small garrison building set into the outer wall. A fusillade of bullets that would have rendered Ogre One useless, if not destroyed it outright, simply pinged off of Swift Hammer’s thick hide.
Sokol strode forward and activated his targeting systems as Swift Hammer blasted apart another skiff that was attempting to exit the loading dock. The Titan class mech used sustained fire to disable the doorway mechanisms and tear apart much of the gate in the process. Sokol fired his mag-cannon several times and wiped out the cor-sec gunners as they were reloading their weapon, not that it would have helped them against the Titan.
Two bright yellow flares suddenly soared into the chaotic night sky, making Sokol aware that it was day cycle for the crew of the Fatalis, though here on PM2258 it was just approaching midnight. Night Witch must have finally penetrated the gate, as the flares were her color, signaling to the pilots of the swarm barges that she had breached the fortress.
In seconds, the unique sound of the barges filled the sky and the transport craft appeared over the edges of the complex walls. No sooner had they crossed the threshold than the hatches on the barges blew open and ravager infantry began pouring out from within. Each of the ravagers was armed and armored according to his or her individual preference, and it gave them a discordantly menacing appearance on the battlefield.
Sokol pushed Ogre One into a sprint and reached the loading hangar ahead of the stormers. He used his powerful claws to tear the door the rest of the way open and then swept his targeting systems through the interior. He dared not fire indiscriminately for fear of damaging the very spoils they were here to raid for, though he did manage to draw the fire of several cor-sec defenders. As he’d hoped there were several of them attempting to hold the hangar. In the tight confines of the chamber he would not be able to use his mounted weapons.
The mech warrior flexed his claws and smiled, it was time to bring this fight in close.
Sometime later Ogre One emerged from the hangar bay, the stormers having infiltrated and quickly seized the complex. Sokol would have kept going, but the mech was simply too large to move about the interior beyond the hangar bay, though he had gotten what he’d come for. Ogre One’s dusty yellow armor was splattered in blood and the mech’s claws were dripping with gore. In the end it had been the sight of the Coyote class mech tearing men apart in close quarters melee combat that had finally broken the will of the defenders.