When he reached the third checkpoint, Alexandre turned his radar on to full power. He circled a few times to let the dish get a thorough picture of the area. The radar beams bounced back, revealing in detail what was solid, what moved, and most importantly targets. He saw that there were some solid moving IFF-transponder-negative objects a few dozen clicks to the East. He banked towards them, flying death.
Three and a half minutes latter, he pointed his hi-res TV cameras at the blip on his radar, and saw the back of a Cicada. Scanning to the left he saw the back of a Dragon, and further on a pair of Wolverine backs. He decided to take out the Dragon first, as its PPC and LRMs would be a major nuisance and because it was the most likely to be the commander. As he gently eased the piloting stick to put the crosshairs for his AC/20 over the piece of metal his finger started to act like an anxious subordinate twitching for the kill, but he kept calm. When he got to six hundred meters the mech started to turn, Alexandre muttered a prayer for the pilot, and then pulled the trigger at four hundred meters from the mech and one hundred meters altitude. The 210-millimeter shell rocketed forwards having the velocity of his Mechbuster added to its powerful gunpowder-filled brass casing. He had to pull up before the bullet struck or he risked crashing in the turbulence of the impending explosion, so he watched in his rear-view camera as the mech stumbled from the detonation. The Grand Dragon had been hit in its left arm, causing the remaining shoulder joint to move in rapid jerks. Various projectiles and laser beams were thrown at his rapidly climbing Areofighter, but no hits were to be had. He flew a few Kilometers out to wheel around, while turning his radar back on keeping a lookout for more hostiles. When he was within visual range of the lance again, he decided to finish off the Dragon. Then grimaced as an LRM flight swerved after his chaff and detonated inside the cloud of hot metal. Then the Large lasers and PPCs started to fire forcing him to dodge, or risk the 500kg bombs hanging under his wings, and his autocannon ammunition exploding. With one last barrage of fire to fly through he released his second shot at the Kuritan mech. This time he was higher, so he simply banked to the left then rolled right over the rest of the lance to watch the tracer streak towards the evading mech. The heavy round hit the ground a few dozen meters behind running feet, obliterating a whole acre of lush savannah. Again he pulled away, followed by return fire, though this time three missiles and a laser struck his underside making his shoulders get tickled by the firm padding on his harness. On his return trip, he noticed that the two Wolverines were slopping through a deep muddy stream. He plucked the opportunity straight from the branch.
Lieutenant Takashi was angrily watching the garrison Mechbuster climb to safety, while listening to the sounds of battle hundreds of clicks away over his radio, and his company commander chew him out for not making an ungodly amount of progress over this soft planet. He armed his LRM-10 and PPC as the mech killer barrel-rolled away from the Wolverines lasers. His LRMs got a lock seconds before his PPC recharged, and fired them both at the winged beast quickly closing the last few hundred meters of its weapon's un-effective range. Oddly this time he was rocketing towards the pair of Wolverines instead of him, he had figured that his mech's weapons, and the faint rank symbols painted on his shoulders caused the last two attacks. But why would he not finish the mess he had caused, even though there was no way for the Steiner pilot to know, he had put an incredible amount of strain on the Dragon's gyro during that last attack and Takashi was afraid that by fighting to stay upright had damaged his leg actuators. A loud, low rumbling startled him from his half-sleep. The two Wolverines were vaguely visible in the cruel amount of fire and smoke that surrounded them. His eyes caught the retreating Mechbuster disappear behind a cloud. When he looked backed to the seen of devastation, one of the Wolverines had fallen from the force of the bombs, the other was missing an arm and a leg. He radioed his subordinates for a sit rep. Robertson answered immediately complaining about his Cicada's lack of ranged weapons.
"Yes!" Alexandre yelled. Laughing he rolled, and then looped to attack before the pitiful mechs could recover. He sank, the altitude meter on his HUD streaming through four thousand meters. He targeted the mech that was slowly standing up, when he saw that he had fragmented the entire right side of one, again he muttered a quick prayer for the Kuritian as he prepared to kill his avatar. Aimed at the struggling mech, the large-bore autocannon in the nose of the fighter burned and spit a high explosive anti-armor shell at the oblivious mech. He slammed the brake lever, turned his engine down to a minimum, and settled into a wide circling dive. Watching his tracer hit the Wolverine square in the back, while his AC/20 reloaded, he relished his position. Just as he had stenciled on his cockpit, he truly was the Mech Reaper. He was like a devil, taking the souls of the foolish invaders from the world below him. As he pulled up to prepare another attack run, when his Missile-lock alarm went off. He swore, and dived back down as he released hot chaff. Again the glittering metal easily distracted the multipurpose missiles, and they greedily detonated in the middle of the cloud. As he maneuvered out of his dive, and into his escape vector, multiple laser beams melted hundreds of pounds of armor off his sides and belly. Checking his instrument panels he saw that a few actuators, and various secondary systems had been damaged to some degree. He quickly decided against going home so early, he wanted to use his last two shots.
Now Takashi was starting to get scared, he watched as the Steiner pilot casually observed the destruction he had incurred. It angered him so much that he shot his LRM without a lock, and watched in delight as they started to track to circling monster. It must have angered Robertson too, because he saw the little mech emit beams of light at the out of range fighter. Again Takashi was astonished to see the lasers hit the Mechbuster, he decided his luck had turned. Out of shear hopefulness he fired his PPC, it missed, and he got angered again. He walked over to where the two mech-less mechwarriors stood, and dropped the boarding ladder, it would be tight, but they would all be able to fit in the miniscule cockpit.
Alexandre watched as the two dots climbed the ladder to the opening in the mech's head, on his TV display. Well, if they died they died, he thought after saying yet another prayer.