Titanfall Stories
Cerebus
1- Mog Villaine
Mog Villaine had been here before. Not in the Stratosphere of Arkom IV, the IMC held moon of the gas giant Glorious, but here in the back of a ship, wondering if the next explosion of AA gunfire would be the last. It didn`t matter if he was a pilot, a superhuman soldier, the best of the best, the king and dominator of the battlefield if he got killed during insertion. It was something that all pilots had to deal with, especially during such incursions.
Mog checked his EPG rocket launcher as Ben and Smiley checked their standard issue R201s. He only knew them by the Heads Up Display in his pilot helmet, but didn`t talk to them much. The quick stats were encouraging though: Ben was close to being a veteran with nine battles under his belt and 3 pilot kills. Smiley was already a vet: She`d been in 15 skirmishes, and was already gathering some black ink on her stats: Missions with more clearance level than Mog had.
Not that Mog was new. No, quite the opposite in fact. He was a soldier of fortune so never hung around long enough in a faction to get promoted. As long as the IMC or Ares weren`t hiring him, the other factions were okay with his work. Mog was a professional canon-fodder: He had no interest in intrigue or espionage. He went around with a rocket launcher and piloted Vulturo - His Legion titan - so well that the fastest and best pilots could only regret in their last moments as he melted them with a barrage of his chain canons. And that only if they knew they were about to die in the first place.
"Okay pilots." Said a female voice over the coms, "It`s time to earn your keep. Secure those AA batteries and eliminate all pilots. It*s important that you give them hell. There`s other things at stake here!"
A rousing cheer and collective of acknowledgements all across the board. Mog didn`t even wait as the back of the ship opened. He jumped out It was a 50 meter drop, but nothing some well-timed jump jets wouldn`t solve.
Distant vague industrial buildings and tracer fire of AA batteries became the oily hot smell of machinery in action and the cacophony of gunfire and energy discharges. Small humanoid forms resolved into spectres - mechanical soldiers - and Mog spotted one figure that was moving way too fast and precise to be a mere spectre. A pilot.
He brought his gun to bear even as he landed and bullets strafed where his head used to be. He rolled, fired a shot and disintegrated five spectres that had come out to greet him. Flying over his explosion.
This was it. Hundreds of hours of combat both real and simulated millions of credits of investment in the best possible equipment, an obviously difficult and abnormal childhood and Spartan-conditioning was reduced to the instances of a second. One of them would die, the other would live.
Mog didn`t die.
Mog switched from his two hand grip to a single hand, stretching his EPG launcher out with his right hand and closing the gap between them that much, tracking the enemy pilot`s vector all the while.
He squeezed the trigger. There was blue. An explosion. Meat. One kill.
That made kill number 224
Mog slid through where the pilot used to be and kept on running. The fight went on.