CHAPTER 10

Review Corner:

cklammer: Assault mechs are tough but she was fighting greenhorns. If those Commandos and Sentinels are any better than new recruits, the Sagittaire would not look that tough.
Also, trash talking is important for dramatic effect, especially in American culture =D

Ulquiorra9000: of course it's going to be a narrow victory. Blowout victory is boring, losing is not an option, so that's the only choice.


Strantor Military Academy,
Strantor, Lyran Alliance,
November 8, 3073

The Crockett's shotgun belched fire, spitting hundreds of explosive submunitions at the Sagittaire. Noloty winced, riding the shock when the shots sandblasted her damaged armor. The Sagittaire shuddered, hard, flexing all its artificial muscles to keep it from tumbling backward. Black smoke wafted from the lacerations. The interior of the cockpit fared much worse. Acrid smell of burnt coolant seeped into the cockpit. Half of the console burst like dozens of sparkles. Panel doors zipped left and right. Fire broke out in various places, prompting the fire extinguisher systems to spray chemicals, which turned Noloty's stomach upside down. Klaxons blared out of control, but Noloty was too preoccupied to care. They all gave her the same message anyway.

But Noloty was too stubborn to fall. And so was the Sagittaire.

"Get up get up get up!" she groaned as she pulled her joystick as hard as she could. The myomer bundles strained to coax the 95-ton platform to stand upright. The Crockett raised both arms but Noloty beat it by a mere second. She clenched her hand on the joystick and hammered her alpha-strike trigger. Brilliant strands of energy vaporized a good ton of torso armor, and the HEAP shells gouged what was left deep into the structure. The entire cockpit rattled as she held her trigger, letting her twin UAC10 eat the ammunition. The Crockett backpedalled with its arms flailing to maintain balance. Noloty's assault carved a massive gorge on its right torso.

Noloty didn't like to flirt with shutdown sequence but this was a matter of life and death. She fired her jump jets, bringing the Sagittaire to the air, away from the Crockett's firing zone. Waste heat bled into the cockpit like leaking reactor. Her eyes were heavy with tears. Her skin felt like on fire. And every breath she took felt like filling her lungs with molten armor. Yet she overrode the shutdown sequence, risking ammunition explosion and nuclear meltdown. In desperate move, Noloty dumped the coolant reservoir, bringing the temperature to manageable level. But there wouldn't be next time.

The Sagittaire landed behind a manufacturing facility. Noloty pushed the throttle and the Sagittaire swayed left and right as it wobbled to find cover. The Crockett jumped over the facility and sprayed its missiles in a wide arc. Noloty triggered her jets to slide on the pavement, and the missiles slammed into the ground in a series of fireballs. Noloty returned fire with her rear-firing lasers, digging craters on the Crockett's center torso, but failed to do harm. The Crockett launched a laser tandem attack, but Noloty pushed the Sagittaire to take cover behind some manufacturing cooling tower. One laser beam destroyed a supporting structure of the cooling tower, forcing it to lean with just 3 supports.

Noloty saw this and backed up her mech until its back touched the leaning tower. As the Crockett eagerly swung to clear the tower, Noloty throttled back as hard as she could. The Sagittaire nudged the leaning tower, augmenting the inclination until all supports broke. The cooling tower creaked and rumbled before crumbling, bringing tons of rusty beams and machineries right on top of the Crockett. The Crockett fired its jump jets to get out of the way but it was too late. The tower disintegrated into a heap of metal, with the Crockett as the center.

Noloty trained all weapons at the metal heap, ready to singe the Crockett if it survived the crash, but it didn't happen. It seemed too easy for a mechwarrior his caliber to be taken down by a cooling tower, but if it was what it was, she'd take it. Her Sagittaire could not sustain more damage. She turned on her comm system which, along with her radar, amazingly still operational. She put it in general frequency and reached for the ground team. "Gryphon… Gryphon, this is Heishi Noloty. Come in Gryphon…"

"Holy shit, Noloty, you're still alive!" Gryphon's voice crackled intermittently.

"Beginner's luck," Noloty forced herself to smile. "What's the sitrep?"

"Start up sequence at 80-percent. We're dustoff in 5 minutes. We have rooms for one more, but you've got to hustle. I'll send you the coordinate."

"Ryokai." Just as she turned her back to rendezvous with Gryphon, the metal heap moved, and the Crockett's legs and cannons started to emerge from the rubbles. Noloty knew Nachschatten wouldn't go down that easy. She readied her weapons and radioed Gryphon, "Scratch that. New threat inbound. Don't wait for me."

"You still have 4 minutes! Move it, Soldier!"

"Negative. My mech is shot. I won't make it in time. Go on without me."

"Noloty…"

Noloty cut off the comm system and lined up her crosshair with the Crockett, still struggling to free itself from the rubbles. As its torso emerged, she thumbed her trigger, firing the last rounds of her UAC10. Shards of fragmented armor flashed in the air as the shells carved new cracks in the torso. The Crockett twisted and turned in violent fashion, but its legs were still trapped under the rubble. Noloty took a good, hard lock at the Crockett's torso, then let her PPC blazed in anger. The blue streak exploited the cracks in the Crockett's torso. The cylindrical body of the 85-tonner arced rearward as if it would split in the middle. Static charge crackled as the Crockett seemed to be stunned. Noloty slammed home her medium laser trio, burning the last ton of armor on its left torso. Black oily smoke billowed from the deep trench from the top of the left torso down to the leg joint.

Learning the gravity of the situation, the Crockett trashed with more urgency until it freed just enough part of its body to return fire. Its arms spread wide, and a long burst of energy charged the Sagittaire. Noloty brought her mech to sidestep the attack, then turned around and broke into a sprint. By her calculation, she only had to keep the Crockett busy for 3 minutes to give Gryphon a chance to escape. After that, she didn't care.

The Crockett finally broke free and blasted its jets. Missiles rained down on the Sagittaire from the sky, followed by explosive pellets. Noloty banked hard right, dodging the missiles but catching a few LBX sub munitions on the legs. The Sagittaire's leg armor dulled the explosions. She turned behind a large storage building just as the Crockett's twin large lasers flashed, trying to hammer her thin rear armor. The Crockett jumped over the building and landed directly in front of the Sagittaire, but Noloty turned into the building, missing the Crockett's small lasers by a mere inch. The Crockett followed the Sagittaire into the building but Noloty fired a laser salvo on the wall, then busted out through the concrete.

Noloty jumped to clear a building, but the Crockett pulled the same stunt. Its laser cannons flashed, drilling craters on the Sagittaire's legs. Noloty fired her rear-firing lasers, missing the Crockett by a whole meter, but still forced the Lyran to veer off course. Her proximity alarm squealed, tagging the incoming missiles. Noloty ducked, and the Sagittaire's low profile let her dodge the warheads, which destroyed a row of abandoned trucks a few dozen meters behind. The Crockett locked on the rear armor of the Sagittaire, but Noloty fired her jets to glissade. The Crockett's twin bolts slashed the void where the Sagittaire was half a second ago, savagely, but harmlessly. A few armor-piercing shots riddled the Sagittaire's right torso, but whatever was blunted the attack. It was more scary than destructive, as Noloty realized a full shot of LB-10X in that area would certainly be fatal.

"Fight me, coward!" Nacthschatten howled through his external speaker. The frustration in his voice was imminent. "There is no escape! Die with dignity or live in shame!"

Noloty had been running around, buying time for Gryphon to prepare for dustoff. If her calculation were correct, she had 1 minute left. Whatever happened to her, the Crockett wouldn't be able to stop Gryphon from launching. Witih Gryphon's safety a certainty, she decided she had enough running. It was time to settle the score, or die trying.

Growing restless, the Crockett peppered the Sagittaire with missiles as soon as the launchers recycled. Noloty turned right and braced for impact. Her right side still had a little bit of armor left. The missiles brutally tore up her right arm. The weapon console burst in static.

Noloty realigned her crosshair and fired her particle cannon. Multiple PPC hits on the Crockett's torso started taking its toll. The blast breached the armor, turning the internal structure to mush. As the Crockett staggered, Noloty followed suit with her lasers. One bolt missed the head, but the other two singed the remaining armor on the left torso.

The Crockett steadied itself for a return fire, but Noloty rerouted all energy outlet to whatever myomer she had left. The Sagittaire swooped right, strafing the Crockett's left flank with lasers. The Crockett blasted its jets to adjust its position. Its big guns flickered, and bright yellow muzzle flash blended in with emerald glow. Noloty gritted her teeth as the submunitions ravaged the Sagittaire's internal structures. Sparks bled from under the cockpit. The light blinked as if the mech was losing power.

Noloty was certain the Sagittaire would explode any moment.

In an act of defiance she lined up her cockpit with the Crockett. Her crosshair had long gone. She didn't know if she would hit the Crockett. She didn't know which weapon was still operational, so she just fired them all. Her finger abused the trigger in a series of taps. Azure particle beam decked the Crockett in the midsection, and three emerald bolts burnt the remaining stored ammunition on the left torso. A fireball barreled out from the ammo bins and split the Crockett into 3 parts in earth-shattering explosion. The part with the head disintegrated into pieces while the remaining two caught fire and crumbled a hundred meters apart.

Noloty leaned on her chair and closed her eyes, waiting for that big, bright flash to come and take her somewhere else, far from Lyran Alliance territory. It never came. There was just that choking, gut-churning smell that wouldn't go away. As bad as it was, it anchored her to reality, a sure sign that she was not yet dead.

"You still here, Hamlet?" Noloty chuckled. It sounded silly to talk to a machine, but after what she had been through, she felt the need to talk to somebody, didn't matter who. "Yeah, me too. That last one… that was something, isn't it? Never thought we would go that far, but here we are."

Slowly she turned her mech around to see a Trojan-class dropship shot up to the sky in a long trail of smoke. "A life for a life," Noloty sighed. "My debt is paid."

Her mission might be accomplished, but the fight might not. Her radar bleeped, and four more battlemech signatures appeared on the screen. A Mad Cat, an Uziel, a Shadow Cat, and a Cougar.