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Red lights blinking, screens buzzing with static, coolant depleted… This was the worst case scenario for Amity, and it’s exactly as she feared.
Dishevelled and hardsuit removed down to her waist, Amity looked like she was going to dip out of consciousness any second. She peered at the readings on her radar; An Assault mech, an Ace, and an encroaching squad of Cataphracts, all remotely piloted policing mechs. One well-placed shot in her current state could pop Abomination’s reactor, so she had to play it smart.
The mottled purple plating of her Sherman’s left arm shifted as a barrel emerged from its wrist, a loud thump sounding out as a red-hot fuel canister was ejected from the projectile launcher and buried itself into the cockpit of the newly disabled Assault mech. As the Ace circled around for another strafe, both missile pods in Abomination’s chest opened up and fired out volleys of heat-seeking payloads, detonating the Ace’s flight unit and sending the crippled chassis tumbling down into the lush flower fields below.
As she turned to face the Cataphracts fast approaching, she realised that she’d made a fatal mistake. Her Solidcore had malfunctioned and locked up, and the Cataphracts were in a chaotic formation that made it difficult to hit them with anything but the powerful laser. She could do nothing but shut her eyes and wait as all five mechs came barreling towards her with their lances.
Eventually the ground shook and a thunderous crash echoed throughout the field, but the feedback of critical damage never came. When she opened her eyes, she could hardly believe what she saw.
There, kinetic hammer firmly stuck into a Cataphract chassis was a white and blue-coloured Raleigh with six arms, four of which were pointing lilac hand cannons at the remaining enemies before yet another deafening shot rang out and a gaping bullethole appeared in the motors of all four smaller mechs.
It was a new paint job and a new mech altogether, but when the slim, brightly coloured frame turned to face Amity’s purple Sherman, the bold red text emblazoned on its chest made it even more obvious just which idiot was behind the controls of the Raleigh.
Talk to the GLF, Witch.
It was her idiot.
The comms unit blared to life, a grainy image of Luz appearing with a nervous expression. “Sweet potato!” She said, her voice just as distorted as her image. “I hope I‘m not too late, are you okay? Do you read me?”
“I’m fine, Luz. Thank you. You came at the perfect time.”
Luz frowned as she replied. “Alright, you’re okay, but how’s Abomination? Do you need me to call for evac?”
“No, I won’t need evac. My vents are jammed and my radar’s reading bogies coming in from the east… My transmitter’s shot, too.” Amity sighed and began pulling levers and flipping switches. “I just need to flush the vents and stabilise the reactor, then I’ll be battle-ready again.”
“Don't worry about those mechs, leave them all to me hermosa!” Luz exclaimed with a wink, and Amity nearly choked. Whether it was the idea of Luz protecting her or the wink was anybody’s guess. As the video link closed, she got back to work preparing her mech for another wave, watching Luz through the glass of the cockpit as she did.
When that second wave of mechs came over the rolling hills they began firing at the graceful Raleigh, Luz deftly manoeuvring between enemies, dodging and weaving under swords and past bullets and taking large chunks out of her opponents with her matching set of hand cannons and kinetic hammer as she went. By the time she’d whittled down two Assault mechs, a much more imposing Demolisher appeared, towering over her Raleigh and beginning to reel back its hammer.
In one swift motion, Luz’s mech jumped into the air, twisting as it flew towards the defender class mech up until its right leg was positioned right at the police mech’s chest. For a moment, it felt like the world stopped before a shockwave strong enough to knock over trees and uproot the grass and flowers beneath the two mechs shot out with an ear-piercing bang. When the Raleigh righted itself after its acrobatic display, there was an enormous gaping hole where the Demolisher’s reactor would ordinarily have been, and it collapsed backwards onto the suddenly barren dirt.
The M35 Mjolnir cannon, one of few weapons fielded to be known as a deadgun for its capability to continue targeting and attacking enemies even when the pilot is disabled. Designed to compliment an aggressive close-quarters fighting style befitting a slim and sleek frame like IPS-N’s Raleigh. Only a few are still used by pilots, but fewer still use the GLF variant, named after the engineer who designed it with a much more versatile mode of combat in mind. If there was any pilot who Amity believed should use such a rare variant of an already uncommon frame, it was Luz with no doubt.
Amity watched as her reactor’s temperature levelled out, and Abomination began to stride towards Luz only to freeze as its pilot watched a car-sized projectile tear one of the Raleigh’s arms clean off. Her HUD quickly traced the projectile’s path to a Sniper not far away, and without a second’s thought she pushed her mech right back into the danger zone to boost right into its line of fire. She deflected a similarly sized bullet, which would have gone clean through Luz’s cockpit if not for her quick thinking, off her Sherman’s angular hull.
Amity took a deep breath as she weighed her chances, her hand hovering over a button on the centre console labelled Coreburn Protocol. She glanced at the radar, the distant enemy formation closing in from the west, and then at the ETA for the all-clear to leave from command. Seeing no other choice, she pressed it down and closed her eyes at the resulting blinding light merging from her Sherman.
When Amity opened her eyes she saw a clean straight line of fire from the grass in front of her cockpit up to the hill where a crumpled wreckage laid still, utterly annihilated by the Solidcore’s devastating fully-charged beam of energy.
She pushed her mech upright, rebooting a few systems that seemed to have crashed after the Solidcore fired, and looking around to see Luz’s Raleigh face down in the grass. In a panic, Amity establishes a comm link with Luz and tried to flip her mech over. After a few seconds, a video feed of a confused looking Luz showed up in the Sherman.
“Luz! Luz, do you read me?” Amity practically shouted through the link.
Luz groaned, shaking her head and groggily adjusting herself in the cockpit. “Sweet potato? Amity? Is that you? What happened?”
“I took out the sniper. The next wave is still a few klicks out, so it’s just us for now. The sniper, uh…”
“It took my arm. At least it missed everything important.” A sigh of relief escaped both Luz and Amity. They silently sat in their cockpits and smiled at each other for a few moments, both knowing that danger was fast approaching. They could be preparing right now, but it always felt a little special when they had time alone during a mission. Willow’s team, the Emerald Entrails, must have been getting close to done with evacuating the civilians in the nearby factories and farms, which meant that there was only a few minutes before the extraction shuttle came for both Luz and Amity. Amity was about to help Luz’s Raleigh stand when a thought struck her.
“Hey, Luz?”
“Hm?”
“I was wondering, how did you know to come help me? You were supposed to be with Willow and the others, and my long-range transmitter is busted, so you couldn’t have seen my vitals, right?”
Luz nervously chuckled and looked away from the link’s camera, scratching her face as Amity raised an eyebrow. “Well, to be honest, I just wanted to spend some time with you.”
Amity snorted, before outright bursting into laughter. Luz pouted at her, and Amity had to take a breath before she could explain. “You don’t need an excuse to be around me, Luz. After this we can ask Willow if it’s okay if we work as a team again, just the two of us, okay?”
Luz’s sour pout slowly turned into a fond, and maybe a little bit embarrassed smile. “Okay. I’d like that.”
Again, the two of them just sort of sat in comfortable silence before an AWACS alarm on their radars forced them out of their gay stupor. The enemy mechs were almost within firing range. Time to get back to work. Amity pulled Luz and her mech to their feet before running a diagnostic check on all of their weapons and picking up her Andromeda-pattern laser rifle from the once beautiful, now wartorn, soil.
The two of them looked out over the horizon, the triple suns starting to set behind the distant city skyline and casting the shadow of skyscrapers onto the grassy fields below. Casting shadows against the sky, a squadron of Aces flew toward them at breakneck speeds, but things weren’t so dire this time. Not when they were together.
Weapons in hand, Luz looked at Amity, and Amity looked at her.
“Well, Blight, what do you say we show these robots what it means to fight the best lancers this side of the diaspora?”
“It would be my pleasure, Noceda.” Amity said, aiming her mech’s heavy laser rifle at their flying enemies before squeezing the trigger.