DR: Time for Bit to kick Harry's ass!
Shadow: good. Now, less talk, more action!
Chapter 17: Champ Vs Champion
At the Judges signal, both zoids leapt into action. The Liger Zero sprung forward, landing gracefully within the Crater. Knowing that their best chance for success lay within the rocky maze in the centre of the Crater, the Liger charged forward at full speed.
Harry's Dark Horn was much less graceful, sliding as much as running down the Crater rim. The huge amount of armour gave Harry a lot of forward protection, but it did build up a lot of momentum, and that dragged the zoid forward. Harry would have preferred an open field fight, where his zoid would have been supreme. But here was fine. As long as he stayed…
Suddenly his missile lock warning system blared out. Harry's eye snapped open at the sight of four missiles curving over the Judge right for him.
"Long range missiles!" He quickly slapped the control panels. The Dark Horns custom shield formed, and the zoid lost a lot of forward motion. It continued to slide forward as the missiles plummeted down.
X-X-X-X-X-X
Pierce was in the process of filling out her forms for registration at the ZBC head office when she heard someone yell from nearby.
"Hey guys, look at this!" Other voices drifted across.
"Oh, that's going to hurt!"
"Don't be so sure. Harry Champ's really tooled up that Dark Horn…"
Pierce, intrigued, sat up and looked across at the far wall. Like in many bars and restaurants, the lounge in the ZBC building had one wall dedicated to showing zoid battles. Most of the time it showed small screens at each set of tables, showing what the people there wished. The main screen was usually used to display rankings in each Class, or for important battles like the Royal Cup. But when there was only one battle like today it seemed, the whole screen was fixed on it.
As she looked, a set of explosions bracketed the head of a Dark Horn. The zoid barely twitched. As the smoke cleared the zoid continued to slide down the hill, barely a scratch on its armoured head.
"Damn, Bit's got his work cut out…"
'Did he say Bit?' Quickly pulling up the small screen fitted to all the tables, Pierce called for battle detail. Sure enough, the contestants were none other than Bit Cloud and Harry Champ. Folding the small screen away, Pierce turned in her seat to watch the battle unfold.
X-X-X-X-X-X
Down in the Dark Horn Harry was enraged. "You really thought that puny attack could stop the man de…"
"'Destined to be King.' Yea Harry, we know." Bit grinned. "We've all heard it a hundred times already." He winked. "One has to start wondering if you're trying to compensate for something…"
Harry felt his blood boil, and he lashed out with the pulse launchers. His aim was nowhere near as good as he had intended, as the Liger simply ran right though the barrage without a scratch.
"Damn Harry, your aims worse than Leena's!"
Up in the Hover Cargo, Leena's eye's narrowed.
Harry screamed again as he fired his entire arsenal. But the Liger was nowhere near where the barrage landed. Firing the ion boosters, the white zoid dashed within the rocky formations.
Harry slowed his zoid up, unwilling to enter such a cramped area. His zoid was an open country combatant, not a street fighter. He needed Bit to come out of the rocks.
"Oh, so you are too chicken to face me on open ground, so now you're hiding in the rockery!" He taunted.
"Not at all," Bit answered calmly as he adjusted the setting on his LRMs. "It's just the quickest way to get to you." Bit was allowing the Liger to pilot now, since he couldn't fully concentrate on manoeuvring at such high speeds. It was credit to the Ligers systems and skill that he barely felt the motion. Finishing his changes, Bit cranked the missile pods up before unleashing another two missiles.
Harry watched with some alarm as two more missiles roared out of the rocks, but relaxed as they continued on a ballistic course. "Now your aims off Bit!" He taunted. "Those missiles will never hit anything…" movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention.
Both missiles had tightened their arc and were now falling towards him! "What? How are they tracking me?" He screeched as he tried to swing the Dark Horn around and raised the shield.
He only partly managed it.
Both missiles had been set to home in on any electronic broadcast, such as radio communications, while studiously ignoring the Judge. When Harry had taunted Bit, the missiles had something to lock onto. Raising the energy shield leaked a huge amount of EM static, painting the Dark Horn with one big target.
One missile struck the shield, detonating without doing any harm. The second slipped by and hit further back, right in front of the left rear leg. The single missile didn't have the punch to break though the armour, but the blast knocked the zoid about and buckled the armour itself.
While recovering, Harry caught a flash of white from his right. The Liger had emerged! But even as Harry swung round to engage, the Ligers shock cannons fired before the zoid leapt back into the rocks. Both shells struck the weaker rear armour. Fortunately shock cannons were most effective at close range. The armour held again, but was buckled enough that it would marginally affect the zoids motion.
"Bit, you're going to have to get closer." Jamie called. "At that range the shock cannons don't have the strength to penetrate even the normal armour."
"Relax Jamie, will ya?" Bit smirked back. "I know what I'm doing."
The Liger dived out of the rocks again, but almost immediately leapt back in as Harry rattled off several dozen rounds from the Vulcan cannons. A couple winged the Liger, but the rest torn up the rock face.
"Too slow Harry!" Bit taunted, as the Liger flashed past Harry's line of sight within the rocks. Roaring with rage, Harry began to liberally spray fire down several rocky alleys, hopping to catch the Liger out. He stopped firing when the Liger appeared on top of one of the rocky up thrusts. Bit fired the shock cannons again, but this time both shells struck the Dark Horns massively armoured head, barely damaging it. The Liger leapt away again before Harry could respond.
Harry was quickly losing what little control he had. "Bit, come out here and fight!" He cried.
"Why should I?" Bit asked, leaning back in his chair. He knew Harry could see him, so he pulled out his biggest, cockiest grin. "I don't have to come out. Sooner or later, that overloaded block of metal will fail, simply because it can't handle that weight. The longer this fight goes on, the better it is for me."
Harry felt a trickle of sweat run down his spine. Bit was right. The Dark Horn may be almost untouchable head on, but all that weight of armour was a big problem. Despite the extra reinforcement he'd had added to the fore legs, the zoid could only hold its head up for so long. After each battle Harry had let it rest on a specially built cradle.
Harry needed to win quickly, otherwise his zoid would simply collapse, or the head could snap off. He had to drive Bit out of there!
"Bit, you're a coward! Hiding amongst the rocks!"
Bit raised an eyebrow. "How am I a coward? I launch attacks… like this!" The Liger appeared to Harry's left. The shock cannon fired again before it dived back amongst the rocks. Within the Dark Horns cockpit, Harry felt the impacts shaking his zoid. That had been much closer. Alarms warned that the left armour was cracked.
"It's simple battle tactics Harry. In fact, one could say I'm laying a challenge at your feet now…"
"WHAT?" Harry roared again.
"Simple. Are you willing to enter these rocks after me? Or are you too chicken?" Bit cocked an eyebrow. "What's the matter Harry, you claustrophobic or something?"
"I'll show you Bit!" Harry bellowed as he lurched the Dark Horn into the rocks.
X-X-X-X-X-X
Pierce smirked as Harry dived into the rocky region after Bit Cloud. As long as Harry had stood outside the central area, Bit would never have gotten close enough to defeat him. Harry's zoid was a pure open country zoid, and would have pummelled the Liger to bits on an open plain. But in the tight, twisty confines of those canyons and ledges, Bit's Liger Zero was the more powerful combatant. The Dark Horn might have had a huge ranged advantage and very heavy frontal armour, but the Liger was faster, more agile and lethal at close range.
Pierce was also enjoying another chance at watching Bit and the Liger in action. During their few battles, she hadn't had the time to marvel at the way the two worked together. The living grace of the Ligers moves. It truly was the greatest example that zoids were alive, not a connection of metal parts.
And the level of skill and daring that those two produced! They reacted to events so fast it seemed as if they knew seconds ahead what was going to happen. As the dance progressed though the rocks, the battle became a torturous game of cat and mouse. And it was clear who the cat was.
Harry however was not making it easy for Bit. He either stayed away from all the walls in the widest routes, or hugged one wall and inched along. Bit would dive out of some cross route, or from above, but almost every time Harry managed to bring his zoids head to bear to block Bit's shots, or forced the Liger to jump again before it could shoot. The few shots that landed on the Dark Horns body cracked the armour, but never quite managed to penetrate.
But if Bit was having little luck in downing his opponent, Harry was barely scratching his. None of his linked pulse blasts, powerful enough to send the Liger sprawling, were on target. They made nice holes in the surrounding rocks though. He had more success with the linked Vulcans, but they needed to stay on target to do any significant harm, and the Liger always got away before they could. It had been raked a few times, but very little harm had been inflicted.
Still, Harry was able to set the pace for the battle. With such a solid zoid, he could afford a few hits, and Bit had to work around him. The rocky formations were getting denser, with fewer routes though the maze, dead ends interspersed between them. If Harry managed to corner Bit in one of those, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, with a shotgun.
The gathered crowd watched spell bound as the battle pushed onwards. Even Pierce found herself desperately hoping Bit would win. She overheard several members of the audience place wagers with each other, nothing more serious than a round of drinks, or dinner, that sort of thing.
As she watched, the situation she dreaded formed. Harry was in a section with only three spars in addition to the central route, one of which was clearly a dead end from above. The Liger approached along the lone channel on Harry's right.
"Come on Bit. Don't take the right route. What ever you do don't go right…" She whispered to herself.
It was another classic attack. The Liger leapt clear of the walls, landing gracefully behind the Dark Horn. Harry began to swing his guns round to bear. The Ligers shock cannon fired, sending a pair of armour cracking shells into the saurian zoids rump. It then danced away, ahead of the rotating guns, firing its ion boosters to leap with grace…
…Right into the dead end.
X-X-X-X-X-X
"Oh hell!" Bit cried as he saw the rock wall rushing at him. The Liger cut the boosters and planted its paws, carving deep furrows in the loose gravel and underlying rock. It skidded to a stop sideways, just shy of the end.
"Phew, that was too close." Bit mopped his brow. He could have reached out of the cockpit and picked up a souvenir, without having to stand up.
As the Liger turned to double back, Bit's face fell. He'd been hoping that Harry would have missed which canyon he'd gone down, but there was his Dark Horn, filling the end of the canyon. Its green eyes blazed out from under the heavy brow armour, and the weapons on its back were trained dead centre.
Up in the Hover Cargo, shock and horror permeated everyone. They all could see since a remote camera was sitting on the edge of the canyon at the mouth, beaming its images to the Judge, and so out to the world. The Liger Zero stood with its back to the wall, roaring in defiance as the Dark Horn slowly ambled down towards it. They all knew that there was nothing that Bit could do. He couldn't hurt the Dark Horn from that facing, and there was no room to evade the return fire.
Leena couldn't watch, and she buried her head in Leon's chest. Vega was close to tears, and Naomi clung to Brad, wishing that what she was seeing wasn't true.
Harry gloated as he brought up his zoids shield. At last he had the great Liger Zero trapped! There was no way the Great Champion Bit Cloud could get out of this!
It was only just in time though. Harry could feel his zoid struggling to respond now. The battle had lasted almost too long. If he wanted to get the Dark Horn back to its cradle before it fell flat, he had to finish Bit off quickly.
Never the less, he had to call Bit to gloat. "Well Bit, how's it feel to be pinned like the worm you are?" Harry laughed manically.
Bit didn't respond: he was too busy trying to think of a way out of this. "Liger, any ideas?" he asked hopefully. The Liger had vastly more experience than he did; maybe it knew a trick or two.
The main display blanked, before it threw up a simple line schematic of the canyon they were in. A ledge part way up the right side blinked red.
Bit looked up and out. There it was, a crumbling ledge, barely large enough to support a Gunsniper. "Liger, we can't stand on that!"
Liger roared in response, and Bit's troubled look vanished into a grin. Up in the Hover Cargo both Sarah and Vega looked up, hope beginning to return.
"Did you catch what it said Vega?" she asked. "I only got that it is confident of victory!" The others turned to look at them.
"No," Vega said shaking his head. "It was too fuzzy and distant. He's got a plan, and it involves the mini-missiles…"
"Of course!" Leon yelped, stunning Leena who still had her head buried in his chest. "Bit hasn't used them yet, and without any external clues to their existence…" Hope flooded back into the Blitz.
"Prepare to lose Bit," Harry taunted. "To a man destined to…"
"Be soundly thrashed Harry!" Bit shouted back. "NOW LIGER!"
Harry, indeed nearly everyone watching the match, was stunned when both cheeks of the Liger belched fire. Dozens of tiny exhaust plumes traced the paths of the swarm of micro-missiles launched. Each tiny warhead had a very simple emission-seeking tip. Any EM output within their field of view would draw them in. With the Dark Horns shield up, it was like a nova on the EM bands.
Harry screamed in surprise as dozens of small explosions went off all around him, rattling him around despite the zoids dampeners and flooding his view with smoke. When the detonations stopped, he glanced at his displays while the smoke dissipated. No harm done except cosmetic.
"That the best you can summon Bit? That was so…"
"HARRY!" Mary screamed. "Look out! UP!"
He did the only thing he could. He looked.
The Liger Zero sailed over the top of his shield frill, the left front claws glowing, hanging down almost to touch the shields edge. Further back the edge of the rocky ledge the Liger had noted crumbled from the force the Liger had used to push off from it.
"STRIKE LASER CLAW!"
The claws sliced right along the Dark Horn, from upper shoulder to lower hip. The left Vulcan cannon was sheared right off, and the armour plating was torn to shreds. Worse, the left rear leg suffered heavy damage at the hip joint, the claws digging deep and tearing huge chunks out of the actuators. The Liger in fact shut the claws down early, and used its purchase on the Dark Horn to spin around. Now their situations were reversed, except the Dark Horn was facing the wrong way.
Despite the hideous damaged inflicted to it, the Dark Horn didn't keel over. Bit's claws had not penetrated enough for the command system to freeze the zoid to prevent fatal damage.
Harry worked his controls, desperate to turn around, but he forgot two things.
One, the shield drew power from the zoids actuators, slowing it and making it very sluggish to turn. Two, the left rear leg was dragging, hindering the turn. Harry began to swing the guns round, but it was too late.
"Let's finish this!" Bit cried. The Liger roared in agreement as a new attack flashed up on the main screen. Planting its feet, both sets of cheek laser generators powered up, spreading a gold glow around the canyon. "ALPHA STRIKE!"
To Harry, looking over his shoulder at the Liger, it was like looking into a volcano. All three ranged weapons on the Liger, the shock cannons, the long-ranged missiles, and the micro-missiles, fired at once. The micro-missiles were charged up with laser energy from the generators behind them, creating two shafts of gold linking both zoids.
The shock cannon shells hit first, shattering the remaining armour on the Dark Horn into fragments: they were at point-blank range, and the force delivered was incredible. The micro-missiles struck next, tearing into the zoids body and sending chunks of armour and zoid flying. The laser charge they carried super heated the metal alloys of the Dark Horn, allowing incoming missiles to punch even deeper.
Lastly the long-range missiles hit. Although intended for distant combat, they could still be used at close range. They simply lacked the fine guidance systems needed for close range missile fights. At point blank range though, they couldn't miss.
The powerful rocket motors pushed each missile deep within the Dark Horn before they detonated. Flame blasted out the right flank and stored ammo for the Vulcans cooked off, shredding the interior of the zoid. The left hind leg was blown completely off.
The Dark Horn was thrown several meters by the shock cannons, before being jolted several more by the missile impacts, before it finally fell to the ground on its flank, a shattered hulk. The Ligers attack had torn the guts out of it, spreading the parts across the rocky ground.
After a moments silence, the Judge sounded his claxon.
'The Battle is over! The Battle is over! The winner is… Bit Cloud and the Liger Zero!"
In the Hover Cargo, everyone was wild with cheers, Leena the most vocal. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn't notice.
All around the planet, people cheered and let off whoops of joy at the declaration.
Pierce sat back in her chair, amazed at the flood of emotions that raced though her veins. That fight may have been under the ZBC's rules, but it had more excitement than she had ever seen in any battle she had fought with the Backdraft! If all their battles were a tenth as thrilling as that one had been, Pierce would be in high heaven!
In a distant corner of Europa, a man sat back in his seat, having watched the battle. "I have one thing to say about that last attack. Ouch."
His reddish-brunette haired companion nodded in agreement, while across from them the other couple - one with dark brown slowly greying haired, the other a very pale, almost silvery blond - were smiling with pride.
Down on the battlefield, Bit was the only being not cheering. He was staring at the wreckage that had been Harry's Dark Horn.
"Umm Liger, we'd best save that for desperate circumstances…"
#Agreed# Even the Liger sounded awed by the destructive potential it had unleashed.
"Ah, we didn't kill it did we?" 'Please, say we didn't…' Bit prayed. The Liger took its time to answer.
#No. The Core is undamaged# The Liger was as relieved as Bit. #It will fight again another day#
"Thank god!" Bit heaved a sigh of relief. Then as he turned the Liger away from the remains of Harry's zoid and began to head back to the rest of the team, he perked up. "Say, we won! That means…"
#One million credits# the Liger stated empathically. #Enough money to get the Blitz team out of debt, fully restock all our ammo needs, and remodel both the Hover Cargo and the base to handle a larger team# The Liger rounded up. #There may be enough to get the Fury up again…# A note of excitement was in Ligers voice.
"You are looking forward to fighting alongside him then?" Bit asked cheerfully as the Liger powered out of the canyons and up the rim towards the Hover Cargo.
#Oh yes!# The Liger roared out in triumph.
Shadow: Oh yea, take that chump!
DR: Hope that states all your battle lusts for now...