Chapter 3

Five minutes to drop. Booting OS". The stork pilot's announcement, immediately followed by the steadily increasing glow of the screens and heads-up display, shook the pilot into awareness. His ran his tongue along his chapped lips – should've had more water to wash down the cheap whiskey, he realized – and idly thumbed the joysticks. The anticipation of action was always the worst part of the sorties. He couldn't wait for the rush of combat, the seamless, instinctual flow that allowed him to truly live. Even if it was just this one last time before he hung up his g-suit for good.

The pilot checked the array of display screens that surrounded him. The land around them was only rock and sand, a small dust storm far off in the distance the only feature that broke up the monotony. The stork had long since left the flight group, and was now alone in a vast desert, kicking up dust devils and debris in its wake as it headed toward the rendezvous. But not quite alone. He realized that the distant cloud of dust was from the client's stork. As the two helicopters approached and began to enter formation, the pilot could make out a worn, but distinctive thorny rose emblem adorning the right nacelle of the client's stork. It seemed almost like the emblem of some royal house from a time long passed. Idly, he wondered what sort of history lay behind such an ornate emblem. His own was a simple interlocked three ring design, one colored red and the other two white. Completely unremarkable, but then again he'd never given much thought to standing out in a crowd. Not that there was much of a crowd to stand out in, at the moment.

The two ultra-heavy helicopters continued on in tandem, the operators undoubtedly finalizing flight plans. The pilot just sat back in his seat and waited. Before long, the scattered metal structures of an empty fuel depot came into view. First one, and then more, the structures increased in number and concentration as they flew onward. Within the minute, the pilot could make out what looked to be the main compound, a tangled mass of metal piping and concrete buildings that clung to the side of a sandy cliff.

And hovering above them, shining in white and a deep, blood-red pink, were two armored storks and two ACs below them. Zodiac.

Obscured by distance and wind-blown sand, the pilot could just barely make out a heavyweight reverse jointed AC, with what looked like a medium-range loadout and a Lancelot head part. Its partner, a heavyweight biped, was packing at least one shotgun and a grenade launcher. Probably equipped for a close-range brawl, he thought. His own AC couldn't outrange them, and he didn't like his odds at having to out-maneuver them. He would have to rely on his HE ammo and superior rate of fire to carry him through this.

"Entering the mission area. Deploying AC."

The stork pilot's voice rang out, followed by the metallic clang of the disengaging clamps. On the leftmost screen, through his peripheral vision, he saw the client deploy as well. The two ACs kicked up dust clouds as soon as they impacted the ground, rear boosters igniting soon after as the pilot and client began racing toward the enemy.

The Lancelot-headed one had split from the brawler, ducking behind pipes as it began opening fire with what the pilot now realized was a Karasawa TE weapon. Hot plasma seared the building behind him as he moved in concert with the Lancelot. It was almost unreal, seeing the enemy duck and weave so gracefully among the pipes and buildings, as though it were a living creature, a red-trimmed predator, rather than a bipedal tank.

It became a dance: boost left-move back behind the concrete-boost right-fire the 37-pop off a round from the grenade launcher pop off three- boost further right- forward-left–right-back – the pilot was immersed in the fight. The Lancelot's maneuverability was something to behold. As the pilot weaved between buildings, he lost track of the client and the biped brawler. The Lancelot was unnaturally accurate, grenade rounds exploding too close for comfort around the pilot's AC even at range. Dodging another blast of the Karasawa, the pilot ducked behind a pipe, struggling to get his bearings and formulate a plan.

Something landed heavily beside him. He turned and saw – white and pink. The brawler had taken cover beside him, harried by the client's unrelenting gunfire and unnoticing of the pilot for now. It was definitely a machine, thought the pilot, not some beast covered in metal armor. The exposed wires and dented metal worn away by heavy gunfire left no doubt about that. But then, why did they move as though they were living? The Zodiac rotated, no, turned his head like a man, not with machine-precision of the usual head-tracking mount, but with the smooth motion of a living creature and for a moment, he thought the speck of light moving along the head unit blinked like an eye. The pilot wasted no time, moving the joystick and raising the grenade launcher toward his quarry. The brawler jumped backward, trailing flame and smoke as its boosters ignited. A shotgun blast hit the pilot's AC, rocking the cockpit and damaging the head part's camera, leaving a multitude of spindly fractures across the monitor screens. The pilot fired in response, his grenade going wide as the Zodiac boosted right. He boosted backward, firing the G37 in a wild spray that only by the grace of his FCS managed to impact the brawler. Another shotgun blast landed on the pilot's AC with a metal-rending crunch. To the pilot's relief, that one had hit his heavily armored core straight on, limiting the damage immensely.

Before the pilot could return fire, a spray of bullets caught the Zodiac by surprise, ripping into the unit's left arm and forcing it behind another array of metal piping. The client's AC came flying from the air, breaking concrete and metal as it landed and continued its assault, chipping away at the brawler and leaving gray scars where the unit's paint had been shot off. The pilot paid no heed to him, boosting further away in search of a vantage point on a nearby pillar. His close encounter had lasted less than seven seconds.

From the top of the concrete pillar, the pilot could see the cratered and smoking battlefield in its entirety. The client and brawler were duking it out on the outskirts of the depot's center, but the Lancelot was nowhere to be seen. The pilot sent out a recon unit, letting the UAV do its scouting while he quickly moved into the cover of a cluster of buildings and piping. He waited a moment, and sure enough, the recon unit displayed a 1 on his HUD: enemy unit found. The pilot executed a series of boost jumps toward the top of a nearby structure, the impulse from each boost weighing down on him like water. The UAV's report told him that the Zodiac was likely moving to flank the client as he was engaged in a fight with the brawler. In its eagerness for an easy kill, the Lancelot had relegated the pilot to a secondary priority. He'd make sure that would be a fatal mistake.

Navigating through the smoke, the pilot moved in for the kill, unloading as much of his ammunition from above as he could toward the enemy. While the Zodiac's reactive armor blocks detonated several of the pilot's shots before they could hit their mark, a multitude of HEAT rounds and grenades impacted the Lancelot, ripping off thin panels of armor and turning the white paint into a charred black. He saw the Zodiac's Karasawa letting loose arcs of energy as the Lancelot attempted to charge the weapon, the Zodiac turning to face him so that it could return fire in kind. The pilot instinctively weaved back and right, a cloud of broken concrete and dust chasing after him as he dodged rounds from the Lancelot's grenade launcher.

After several such maneuvers, he thought that he'd put sufficient distance between him and the Zodiac, and began executing a boosted turn in order to re-approach it from another angle. No sooner had the pilot engaged the rear boosters when he caught a blue flash out of the corner of his eye, filtered into a glowing, fuzzy line though the cracked monitor. He cut power to the boosters and dropped 15 meters to the ground with a hard thump, the sudden impact bruising his arm on the instrument panel. Overhead, a brilliant blue beam streaked across the space where he'd previously been, leaving a trail of crackling ozone and static discharge in its wake. Had he taken the full brunt of the charged Karasawa, the heat by itself would have be enough to melt wiring and armor, let alone taking into account the force of the plasma impact. As it was, the pilot almost thought he could feel the static charge through the insulated cockpit.

Having avoided the blast, the pilot began moving through buildings again, the clumsy leg parts of the AC carrying him on a bumpy ride as the boosters recovered from their sudden shutdown. The recon unit had traced a path through the depot, putting out another alert to the pilot's HUD: 300 meters, 9 o'clock angle. Refresh. 250 meters, 9 o'clock angle. Refresh. 200. The Lancelot was closing in fast.

The pilot boosted again, moving toward some pipes and fuel tanks, the AC's engines vibrating in an almost-staccato: boost-halt-boost-halt-boost. 150 meters, 9 o'clock. Refresh. 120. Refresh. 100.

The pilot pushed his AC past the fuel tanks and piping, still out in the open. The Lancelot came moving into view. It had switched out its Karasawa for a lesser, lance-shaped plasma rifle. A series of rapid, uncharged shots hit the pilot's AC, each shot impacting with the sound of bubbling metal. The pilot dodged another grenade round, all the while backing up as the Lancelot came ever-closer. He let off round after round HEAT and grenade at the Zodiac: its reactive armor couldn't counter all of it. Already dented and sparking with broken wiring, one HEAT round knocked a hole in the Zodiac's core armor, exposing part of the generator. A grenade round took off its right arm, hand and plasma rifle falling to the dusty ground. Still the Lancelot continued to press its attack, firing its RF12 at the pilot as it charged forward. Whoever this thing's pilot was, if there was even anything in it that could be called a pilot, they weren't going to give up and retreat. The Lancelot never so much as faltered amidst the hail of ballistics.

With a click, the G37 ran dry. No secondaries meant that the pilot only had his grenade launcher to fall back on. He checked the ammo counter on his HUD. Four rounds left. Not much of a fallback.

The Lancelot continued onward, boosting closer. The pilot thought through his options in a blink. Left with no choice, he began closing distance with the Zodiac in kind. His timing wouldn't have to be exact, but it had to at least be close, lest he go down with the enemy. The Lancelot seemed to realize the pilot's intention and began taking leaps backward, boosters flaring with each jump. But it couldn't get far enough fast enough. The pilot fired. The round impacted. And the entire area seemed to come alive with flame and light.

The pilot's AC was intact enough that it survived the blast and protected the pilot, though he could still feel the massive change in pressure even within the cockpit. The fireball had engulfed both of them. As the dust settled, he saw the Lancelot, core on fire, in the debris. In those final moments before the Zodiac's engine overheated and shattered the unit, the AC's head turned toward him and, though it may have been a trick of the light and smoke, seemed to convey a curious expression. And then there was nothing left of it.