Mike "Specter" Lettau looked out of the group of Spanish locals, their dark skin lit by the campfire that stood in the midst of the crowd. He hated having to uproot refugees from the homes they found, but he would hate himself more if he allowed them to stay in the face of certain death. He took a deep breath and began.
"We intercepted IMC communications to ground forces that have landed on the planet's surface. Our scouts reported back that they have a sizable force of ground soldiers and at least a dozen pilots armed with all three classes of Titans. We're coordinating with the Militia to get all of you evacuated as fast as possible. Drop ships will be here in half an hour to get everyone off world. You can take whatever you can carry, but you need to hurry. Go now."
The villagers scattered to their homes to begin deciding what shards of their lives would accompany them to their forced exodus. The other three pilots that had been standing behind Lettau stepped forward out of the shadows.
"You know they're already on their way, Specter," David Holland's deep, somber voice rumbled in more of a statement than a question.
"I do, but so are our birds. Thank God the moons aren't out tonight," Lettau answered.
"So it's up to us to keep those bastards off our people until they load up, isn't it?" Ginny asked in her usual dark-humoredly way.
"You know me too well," Specter replied. Ginny eagerly turned to her sister Charlie and the two fist-bumped to vent their building bloodthirsty excitement.
"So we get everyone on board the ships and then join them?" Holland inquired with a peaked eyebrow.
"Not exactly. Command wants us to implement a scorched earth policy. We're to set our Titans to detonate at key locations to prevent IMC forces from recovering as much information on this location as possible."
The sisters looked slightly crest-fallen about that. They had grown fond of their current Ogres and their AI's. Even though AI's don't have their own personalities per se, they do have a habit of developing their own quirks that would either cause issues with their pilots or endear them to them.
"Since we want to avoid leaving as much potential data as possible, I'm authorizing you to eject your Titan's AI when you do," Specter said with a smile. All three pilots looked cheered at that.
"So, get your gear ready and prep your Titans. We embark in ten minutes," Captain Lettau looked past the fire to the path through the mountainous region formed a natural funnel and saw a young boy running towards them. He motioned to Holland and went to meet the boy. Although Lettau spoke scraps of Spanish and Karmann's English had been improving, the boy was very excitable and when agitated became unintelligible to all but the most fluent of speakers, like Holland.
"Lo que está mal?" Holland asked the boy as he doubled over, attempting to catch his breath. Karmann looked up and saw both Lettau and Holland.
"Me...me vio. It saw me, Mr. Specter," he panted.
"Que fuè esto? Un soldato? Un Titán?"
"Sí! Un Titán, pero un nuevo Titán. Nunca he visto nada igual en mi vida!"
Specter's blood ran cold at the few words he could make out and he looked to Holland who obviously heard the same thing by the color leaving his face.
"Gracias, Karmann. Vaya ayudar a su familia y rápidamente!" Holland urged him. Karmann took off before he had time to notice how white the two battle-hardened pilots had gone.
"Maybe it was just a loadout he's never seen," Holland offered half-heartedly.
"Maybe. On the off chance he's right though, better tell the twins to embark now," Lettau half said, half ordered.
"Yes sir," Holland said as he sprinted towards their makeshift Titan hangar.
Specter touched his earpiece, "Did you get all that?"
"Loud and clear. Been keeping an eye on radar scans as well. All's quiet on the frontier, but we both know it won't stay that way for long," said a female voice in his ear.
"Let's see if we can find what spooked Karmann," said Lettau, pulling his Longbow-DMR off his back and jogging up the jungle path into the mountains.
Holland slid through the entryway into the Titan hangar the Militia had built into the hillside and hidden behind a wooden front. Inside, the Anderson sisters were busy readying their gear.
"Girls, Specter needs Bo and Peep at the mountain pass a.s.a.p.," Holland barked.
"Sure, Holly. What's the deal?" Ginny asked as she swung into her Ogre-Bo.
"Karmann might've spotted a new class of Titan. Specter thinks he was just excited but went to check it out anyway. He wants you two to guard the pass until he gets back," Holland answered.
"So we get to be the first to kick its ass? Hell yeah!" Charlie said excitedly, closing the hatch on her Ogre-Peep. The twin Titans stood upright, shouldered their 40mm cannons, and began loping towards the mountains.
The faint rustle of leaves as Specter pushed by them was that only announcement of his arrival on the mountain path. As he reached the peak of the path, he dropped to his belly and moved forward to survey the valley below through his scope. Dark jungle trees and lagoons filled his vision. Trees swayed and water waved, but no lights shone to betray enemy movement.
"Comms are quiet and radar is still," said the AI in his ear. Specter opened his mouth to thank her before the words left his throat the voice panicked in his ear, "Cloak, now!"
Obeying out of instinct, Specter shut his mouth and activated his cloak as a muffled rumble reached his ears from down the path. Carefully taking his eye off the scope, Specter looked down the path leading up to his position, and to his surprise he saw nothing. Looking closely at the ground however, he saw large clouds of dust that matched the muffled rumbling. He crawled sideways on his stomach into the dense jungle foliage.
The dust clouds continued closer and stopped once it reached where Specter had been lying and the sounds of mechanical whirring was suddenly loud in the still jungle night. Lettau's pulse thundered in his ears as he prayed his eyes were lying to him. In the middle of the path now stood a Titan unlike any he'd ever seen. It had the lean chassis of a Stryder but wore armor that looked like it had been modified from an Ogre-class Titan. Its hands were free of any gun or cannon and instead had reinforced gauntlet armor with spiked on the left hand that crackled with what looked to be arc energy. The Titan flexed its right hand open and closed and exposed vicious meter-long claws that also danced with arc energy. It rotated; surveying the path before appeared satisfied, cloaked and went back down where it had emerged.
Specter slowly let out the breath he didn't know he had been holding in and lowered his cloak, watching the dust clouds move back into the darkness. Shuffling back onto the path, Lettau put his rifle on his back and broke into a dead sprint towards the village. Between breaths he spoke to the AI in his earpiece, "Ona, put me through to the Iliad."