The Ballard of Cairo
Part eighteen: Ronin

400km north of Idlewind City
Idlewind
The Draconis Combine

The stream of high velocity rounds from the Shadow Hawk's RAC/5 tore the armour from Retribution's left arm and shoulder. Armour plates gave way, opening up the old Orion's shoulder joint to the assault. Cairo saw the monitor image of his Mech's left arm go first red then black as the devastating attack snapped the endo-steel bone just below the joint.

Cairo felt his Mech shift to the right as its centre of balance shifted due to the loss of several tons of armour and weaponry. He repaid the pirate with a full ton of ammo from his LB 10-X. The Shadow Hawk's right torso gave way and the sub-munitions found the magazine for the SRM-4 pack on the side of the 55-tonners head. The CASE panels directed the bulk of the resulting explosion away from the Mech, but failed to save the adjoining arm.

The Shadow Hawk nearly fell as the severed arm fell, slamming into the leg below. Cairo tried to fire his LRM-15 launcher, but the weapon system reported a jam, no doubt due to the loss of the left arm. The Shadow Hawk began to bring its RAC back into line with Cairo's Mech, only to receive the full attention of Akira Goto's Grand Dragon.

The Draconis warrior scored with his PPC and LRM-10, but missed with his left arm Medium Laser. The PPC blasted the centre torso of the pirate Mech, stripping a full ton of armour off in one go. The LRM's worried the engine shielding that Cairo's earlier attack exposed.

The pirate Mech, suddenly finding itself fighting two Mech's, both of them bigger than it was, tried to break off contact, only to run into Go-cho Dancer's Centurion. Faced with the combined force of defending Mech's, plus the two lances of light Mech's that had just appeared on long-range scanners, the pirate raised its left arm in surrender and powered down.

Cairo had a look round for O'Brien. He saw her Panther lying on the ground, a gaping hole where the engine used to be. He flicked on his radio to a general channel. "Go-cho Dancer, what happened to Sergeant O'Brien?"

A reply came back in a decidedly un-Japanese accent. "Relax sir, that Blackjack gave her a pounding, so she punched out before her reactor went critical. One of the support units picked her up and took her to the nearest town to see a doctor. She saved my ass back there; I owe her a cold one".

Cairo smiled, before he saw a massive explosion from the direction of the pirate DropShip's position. He keyed his radio to a direct channel to the Wataru. "Jackson, speak to me!" he ordered.

The radio crackled into life. "Relax Steve; we just took out the pirate's engines. That bastard isn't going anywhere."

Cairo allowed him self to relax. His lack of concentration caused the Orion to fall onto its right hand side. A babble of voices clamoured for his attention, "Lt. Cairo, are you okay?"

He shook his head, trying to get over a dose of feedback from his neural-helmet. "I'm fine Tai-I Goto Akira san - I just forgot my Mech only had one arm. Won't be doing that again soon".

"I am glad Cairo Steven san. You are a formidable warrior. It would be a shame to lose you after the battle was over", the DCMS MechWarrior said solemnly.

To Be Continued...