Vandread: Mejalian Knights

Because F it, that's why.-Note to any questions that may arise in veiw of recent direction. Yes, they are like Terminators, minus skin. I have always enjoyed the one scene that had the giant red Beetle type. I DO love the phrase "Freely interpreted," thank you for asking.

Disclaimer: I don't own Vandread.

#8: Cover Me

"A Monument to all your sins." The letters etched in the silver, telescoping tube Casey had resting against her shoulder, end supported by a bipod, gleamed in the reddish afternoon sun. The words weren't hers, and she couldn't remember where she had heard them, but she liked it none the less, especially as no one else understood them any more than she. She was laying on her stomach in the second floor of a boomed out building that seemed to have been a house, peering through the side mounted scope of her rifle. Because of the diameter of the rifle, the side mount mad more sense than a standard top mount, and allowed her to wait more comfortably. She, Barnette, Eva, Ethan, Jack, John, and Vinn, were stirring up trouble about a half mile out on the north side of the city, while other teams were doing the same to the West and East. The idea was to do enough damage that it would draw in forces from the south, so another team could lead a large group of survivors up from there into the city proper with the Dreads lead by Jura providing cover for the ground troops. Casey was mildly surprised, the history she had researched had Jura playing a much more limited role in the command of the Dread squadrons, but she seemed to have really stepped up. Here radio clicked in her ear three times, and she sent a two click counter acknowledgment back. Time to get started.

Gunfire echoed out of a few places, and the response was immediate as six of the Bi types rose from the shadows and opened fire, 5 with slug throwers, and one with a cobbled together rock thrower. The blurred shapes of her squad mates dashed back and forth, dodging and spraying fire as Casey selected a target, thumbed the fire selector switch to "small target."

"Wait for my go…" Barnette said. She was positioned in a different building then Casey, and was also providing sniper cover for the ground team. Barnette was a far superior riflewoman, so she got to call the shots. She kept sight on the bot that looked the newest, and waited with her crosshairs on the robots head. Just when she began to wonder what the hell Barnette was doing, when her voice came over her headset.

"S**t, alright, take 'em." Casey heard the flat, ringing retort of Barnette's rifle, exhaled, and squeezed her own trigger. The robot jerked it's single eyed head at the sound of her gun, throwing her aim off slightly, so that the slug hit it in the shoulder and spun it around. A second shot took the grounded enemies head off. Unlike Barnette, who was using a rifle firing standard slugs, Casey was using a prototype weapon system in place of a standard rifle. The long, pentagonal telescoping tube Casey fired was state of the art and fantastically expensive. For the cost of one o these new rifles, you could build 4 Dreads or 6 Vanguards, from scratch, including labor and shipping. She was field testing it at the behest of the company that manufactured it in hopes of securing a contract if the weapon was effective, which the company guaranteed it was. Essentially, from what parts Casey could decide were true in the manual, the inside of the rifle, when elongated, was a high powered compression chamber. It took a highly corrosive gas, and pressurized it down to the point where it was a near solid mass. After this was compressed onto a pill capsule sized projectile, a thin, tough skin was, and the manual did not state how, formed around this super compact gas before being fired at high speed. On contact with a hard surface, the shell ruptured, propelling the deadly corrosive explosively outward. As Casey examined the decapitated Bi type through her scope, she noted that it was correct, as the metal was dissolving from the shoulder and neck of the dead bot. It was reloaded via canisters of the gas, each good for 10 small shots, or 2 large shots. A large crunching sound echoed across, followed by the sound exploding stone, and swearing over the radio.

"Ah, hell, Beetle type inbound… OH S**T!" There was another explosion followed the cutoff of the transmission.

"Damn it, you have rockets! Fire the rockets! That is why you have them! No, stop looking at me, SHOOT. THE. ROCKETS!" Jack was yelling at someone, but Casey ignored the chatter as the bright red Beetle ambled into the alley in front of her. Apparently whoever Jack was yelling at got their act together, and a trail of exhaust connected with the left side of the carrier. The explosion that followed threw the beast sideways into the building in front of her own, and shook the foundation. The bot rose on its six legs, shook the dust off, and spread its short wings. From underneath the wings, six Bi types climbed up, and dropped of the sides. Casey, ignoring that, thumbed the selector switch to large shot, and aimed at the accordion style joint between the torso and head. She waited, and just like she thought, a second rocked sailed in and hit the already dented side and crumpled it further, killing the 3 Bi types that had dismounted from that side. The Beetles shoulder repulsers glowed to life, and as it began to turn toward the rocketeer, she squeezed the trigger. The force of the shot leaving the barrel pressed the barrel all the way back to its shut state. The round, about the size of a ping-pong ball, roared out, hit the joint, and exploded. The bottom of the joint ripped free, and the corrosive liquid sprayed over the head and torso, dissolving the armor and decapitating the robot. The body slumped and rolled over as another wave of Bi types moved in. Casey, having three shots left in her gas rifle, so she timed here shots well, and took down three of the advancing bots. After the third dell to a center of the head shot, the remainder turned, and began to move at her.

"Well, Chambers, looks like our shiny friends have taken a liking to you. Vinn, John, use the Grenade Launchers, and see if you can…" The transmission broke into static and the air seemed to rip as a thick white streak tore through the area parallel to the street, 8 feet high. The static faded as the… whatever it was passed, and Jack was confused. "What the hell was…" There was a thunderclap, and the ground shook in great spasms. There was a whooshing noise, like air getting pumped into a balloon, followed by a enormous explosion and a quake so violent it made the previous shaking seem like a slight vibration. A minute later, a rain of pulverized stone and soil fell, darkening the sky. Casey was under an overhang of what was left of the floor above her, so she didn't have to seek shelter. The wake of the passing object has shattered all of the robots she could see had been shattered by the overpressure and shockwaves. That is when a new enemy appeared.

It looked like a larger, dark red Beetle type. It was as big as 4 normal Beetle, two stacked by two forward. The first noticeable difference was that there was a large several meter long tube running along the dorsal spine of the machine. There was little question as to what it was, as three flat slats sprang outward near the base of the tube, where it was mounted to the back of the beast, and a monstrous shell casing slid to the ground. The casing was basically the size of a five gallon bucket, but was a meter tall. It's six thick legs were jointed multiple places, and suspended armor sat around each joint. One of the remaining rockets the team had was fired, and the suspended plates swished over the joints, protecting them. When the smoke cleared the armor retracted, and it turned swiftly toward the area the rocket originated from. In the forward shoulder area, two plates shifted, and single belt-fed heavy cannon emerged on each shoulder, then the plates snapped back in at the cannons bases. The Cannons rotated, focused on the same point, and began to chug out projectiles the size of twenty ounce soda cans at a rate of about 1 a second. Concrete splintered, metal shattered, and walls crumbled under the stream of projectiles and the man who fired the rocket ran for cover.

Faced with this new, rocket resistant enemy, Jack figured he ad to call in the bug guns. He bit down, switching radio frequencies, as his cloak fluttered in the wing generated as the assaulted building collapsed in a cloud of dust.

"Bounder 1 to Eye In The Sky, over."

"This is Eye, I already told you, we don't do food deliveries, Bounder 1, over.

"It's cool, Eye, we got what looks like a Beetle Tank or something messing up our street, and I was wondering if you had a spare can of Raid we could borrow?, over."

"On the way, Eye out." Velour was covering the western sectors retreat into the city, and they had just finished the maneuver, and the gates were just sliding shut. She banked hard, pushed up her accelerator stripe to half power, and headed toward the group of dots her FOF tracker labeled as Bounder team. A minute later she came into range, throttled down to minimum, and began shedding altitude. When she was about thirt feet above the highest rooftops, she leveled out and activated her targeting systems. There were several small dots, representing Bi-types in the surroundings, along with around 6 of the larger Beetle-types. Then right in the middle of the 7 blue dots, was a giant red blob with an unknown classification, that she guessed had to be her target.

"Heads down, Bounder team," she said after switching to a freq. all the troops in the team would receive, "Two heat seekers coming in hot." She thumbed the button on her right hand flight yoke, and the Dread shuddered as two missiles launched into the air and chased after the target.

Casey, still prone in her safe position, watches as the two missiles flew in at the Heavy Beetle. When it detected the threat, an area on either side of the long cannon, a long slip of armor raised and slide out of the way, and eight smaller tubes moved up slightly in a graduated stepping order. The tubes whoofed aswhat Casey guessed were mortar tubes lanched flares into the air, and the missiles chased them up the street and into a building.

"Uh, sorry, Eye, but looks like the bastard has flares, no hit, over." Jack radioed, and Velour took her dread into another tight turn.

"Alright, then, lets see if he can block some non trackers." She was talking to herself, miffed that the tank would make her was her missiles, as she still had four hours left before relief, and that was her heaviest ordinance. As ah came within half a klick she hit the realese, and four pods dropped free, popped, and the eight missiles flew in a downward arc at the tanks. Casey watched as the tank lowered itself to the ground, sealed the mortars and cannons, and locked its joint armor down. The missiles struck two at a time burring the Beetle under fire and smoke. When the smoke cleared the Beetle had alread unclamped, and had turned its face, with its five yellow eyes arrayed like the five face of a die, toward the aircraft, and its main cannon was twiching up and down ranging the target. Casey bit her mic.

"Eye, evasive now, incoming shell!" a second later, the cannon roared, blowing the entire back section of the Beetles body backward, car sized springs absorbing the recoil, ands blowing dust in every direction. Velour hit her emergency thrusters and did a wig over to the right, narrowly getting missed from a direct hit, but loosing her right wing and get throw off to the side. She managed to bring it into a near stable flight, and made for the inner city.

"Sooty, Bounder, but I am out of this one, not going to be able to keep her up, I'll try and get another fight on the horn." Jack Shook his head, and then spoke over the radio.

"Negative, Eye. Strike had zero effect, we'll figure out something. I'm just glad these bastards don't have air burst rounds. Safe landing."

"Heh, more like safe crashing, see you when you get back. Eye out." Jack switched freqs. again. "Alright, team, any ideas on how to bring this big boy down?" Casey had already swapped gas canisters while the conversation with Eye was taking place, and she was now sweeping the tank looking for a good place to shoot. After a few seconds, and no obvious weakness, she settled for the accuator connecting the forward leg to the body, thumbed the switch back to large, and fired.

The motion and aural detective systems on the tank registered the shoot, point of origin, and threat level in a fraction of a second, and the armor around the joint locked in in time to deflect the blow. The corrosive liquid splattered on the armor, searing, but not melting the heavy alloy. The force of the shoot had served to dent the plating, and the tank registered the fact when the plates had trouble sliding back apart. Not pleased with this, the Beetle ordered its slug cannons to ascend, and targeted the building the shot had come from. It took a 3 seconds to deploy as it turned, loosed the safeties, and began pumping out projectiles.

By the time the shooting started, Casey had already rolled over the gun, which folded up into its smallest form, about a foot and a half long, and clipped it on her back. She had just managed a low crouch when the concrete began to come apart around her. She dashed, still keeping low, the large slugs ripping everything around her to shreds, and peppering her with small, sharp bits. She contained to move toward the rear of the building, hoping to get farther away from the souse of the frightful fire. She knew she was about run into the furthest wall from her survey of the building from earlier in the day. A slug burrowed its way through the floor, created a ridge under her foot, and she fell face first to the floor, sliding a few feet on the surface of her body armor. She looked up, saw a window, did a push-up, and dashed full on, sprung and jumped into space. The wall of the neighboring building came up fast, she hit, and somehow managed a kind of slide down the wall, until she passed a window and slipped inside, landing hard on hr back, head and shoulders hanging in space and almost pulling her back out. She managed to check her fall, carefully rose, and made for the stairs. The Beetle, not happy with this turn of events, unsheltered its mortar tubes, and launched 2 barrages of 16 rounds each. Casey heard the characteristic whine of the falling explosives, but it didn't register as she hit the door to the fire stairs, and the roof started to explode. The building bucked and shuddered, throwing her to the ground away from the stairwell. She stared at the ceiling as it bloomed into a cracked mosaic, and began to fall. She rolled, a large chuck of stone landing where her head had been, and continued until she hit a wall. The building jumped as the explosives continued to wreak the top floors and steel supports snapped. The bombs were still falling when the third floor down, with its weakened supports couldn't hold up, and crashed down, smashing the floor below it, and sending down more rubble. The door to the fire stairs had fallen of, and Casey watched as an avalanche of debris flowed down. The whole structure groaned, she heard some more snapping supports, and the floor started to sag. She screamed as the floor dropped from under her, slid backward down the steep floor, and fell four feet to the floor bellow. Battered and bruised, she managed to roll onto her back and look up, just as the ceiling let loose a final moan, and collapsed over her. She felt a sharp pain everywhere, and was gone swiftly into the dark.