CHAPTER 7
Author's Note: The Ragnarok from the video game MechAssault carries non-canon equipment, namely Lava Gun, Javelin Missiles, and Lostech Shield. Some sources canonize these equipments into Battletech universe as Plasma Rifle, LRM (I think 1 Javelin equals 1 LRM10, but the detail is a little hazy), and Blue Cross Blue Shield (sorry, can't help it :LOL:) Particle Field Damper. It works well, I think.
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Shigata, Ashio,
Ashio Prefecture, Dieron Military District,
Draconis Combine,
September 28, 3074
The Word of Blake dozen chugged along at 35 kph to accommodate the Ragnarok, but pushed past 60 kph when they reached the city limit, leaving the Ragnarok behind. Two Toyama spread 300 meters apart in front of the Ragnarok as a safeguard while the rest took off on a highway in a group of 3.
"Renegade Falcon, set up a roadblock," Vash observed enemy's movement through his binoculars. "Force them to take 3rd Street toward the Reeducation Camp. My men had prepared a nice welcoming party for them."
"Acknowledged," Kiyomi replied as her massive tank rolled to the center of the highway. The remaining Marksman MBT took a spot next to her, and the Glory tanks moved past her. "This is our road!" Kiyomi's voice exuded violence. "Whatever happens, we stay in this road! DO NOT let them pass! If they want this road, they have to wrest it out of our hands!"
Two Tempests opened fire with their Gauss rifle. One screeched dangerously but harmlessly a meter above Kiyomi's DI Morgan, the other one hammered the front armor of a Glory. Sparks flew every which way, accompanied by sickening scream of grated metal. The front armor turned into a swath of jagged-edged gash, like the mouth of a beast coming out of children folklores.
"Stand your ground, men! Give them everything you've got!" Kiyomi roared. Sapphire particle bolts swarmed a Tempest, one of which seared a ton of armor from the chest. The Glory's followed suit, raining down missiles and high-explosive ballistics at the Word of Blake invaders who dare to contest their authority. A Grim Reaper took a RAC5 stream flush on its chest. Reeling, the medium mech regained footing and launched a quick retaliatory strike, but the rushed shot struck void. A wave of 20 missiles gutted the mech, picking up where the RAC5 left half a minute ago. Kiyomi's PPC punched through the weakened torso and cut off half of the power lines. The limp Grim Reaper fell forward, suspended by both arms.
The Word of Blake pushed forward, rallying on their biggest mech. Cerulean beam drilled Kiyomi's turret. Kiyomi groaned as she lost feeds from the outside, rendering her 100-ton tank blind. Autocannon rounds ricocheted off the hull, but laser beams turned the armored carapace of the DI Morgan into bubbling ferro-fibrous plates.
"Sweep the legs!" Kiyomi directed her troops. The Glory's adjusted its turrets, now aiming at the lower half of the Spartan. Missiles and HEAP rounds scourged the Spartan's legs enmasse. The Spartan staggered as shredded armor and myomer flew every which way. A 15-missile wave tore half of the myomer off the Spartan's left leg, leaving the assault mech stranded in an awkward position.
Kiyomi struggled to get her electronics working, but after much screaming and pounding of the console, her tank was back online. She lined up her crosshair at the Spartan's torso and let her cannons rip. Two PPC bolts gored the Spartan's right torso. The Spartan twisted to sink another PPC into Kiyomi's buttery armor, but a 15-missile salvo cored the right torso. The torso burst into flames, and the right arm came off spinning in the air.
With the lead mech immobilized in the open, an Orion and two Exterminators broke formation and took a swing to outflank the tanks. But they walked into Vash's minefield, and as soon as they turned into 3rd Street, the vibromines lit up the street. The Exterminators were deep inside the minefield, and any attempt to break free only made things worse. The mines tore their legs apart, and the two mechs lost their locomotion in a matter of minutes. The Orion, on the other hand, managed to clear the minefield, although with damaged leg actuators.
"Whoever thinks that infantry is useless against battlemechs is making an ass of himself," Vash growled over the comlink. "All hands, kill the Orion!"
The buildings came alive with traces of smoke, and missiles poured on the unsuspecting Shootist like dive bombers attacking a battleship from every angle. The Orion's bulky chest plates blunted the attack but the damaged legs caved in within a few strikes. The joints snapped and Orion lurched comically, tumbling with its face flat on the ground. Its awkward left arm twisted behind its back.
Two Avatars and an Excalibur took a swing to the left.
"Heads up, Ryuken! Three bandits are making a run for Renegade Falcon's broadside!" Vash said.
"I'm on it!" Scarlet replied. Her Xanthos slithered between buildings, using jump jets to make hard turns. For a hundred-ton battlemech 3 times the length of an Atlas, it moved with grace and litherness only mechs half its size could match. "Come on, you lazy bums! Keep up!" she hollered at Noloty and the Marauder.
Noloty gunned her jump jets as hard as she could but she still lagged behind Scarlet's Xanthos. She was in awe, watching her CO navigate tight corners as if her hundred-ton quadruped was as lithe as an Uziel. The Sagittaire's wide profile allowed her to take but the widest streets, making keeping up with her CO even more difficult. But she had jump jets to make up for the lack of agility. The Marauder had no such luxury, and the speed and profile advantage of the heavy mech proved to be useless in a dense jungle of concrete.
"Whatever came up first, I want fusillade on center mass!" Scarlet slowed down to let the other two catch up with her. "I want it out by the first turn! No mercy for the Word of Blake!"
"Ryokai!" Noloty replied, and held her joystick fast with both hands. The Excalibur cleared the building and into the open, dropping its arm to give the Xanthos a lethal dose of Gauss rifle. Noloty held the trigger, firing an extended burst of UAC10, sacking the Excalibur on the right torso. Armor shards grated the building next to the heavy mech. The Excalibur twisted and turned under the onslaught. The Marauder added PPC strike on the torso then buckled the Excalibur's knee with a perfect Gauss shot at its hip. Scarlet added a Heavy PPC strike, evaporating a ton of armor at the midsection, then exploited the fissure with her Light PPC. Noloty switched to her lasers, burning the last layer of torso armor, and Scarlet's lasers went through the structure into the power generator. A chain explosion spewed out engine parts and electronics, blended with sparks and smoke. The Excalibur swayed mindlessly, then crashed into a building, with the Gauss slug intended for Scarlet still lodged in its barrel.
One of the Avatars cleared the building next, and Noloty fired everything save for the ERPPC. Her lasers burnt slabs of armor, and the HEAP shells carved gorges on the unscathed torso, turning it into a grotesque visage. The Avatar hung on to dear life, then recovered faster than Noloty anticipated and sent its answer. Scattershot muntitions ricocheted off the Sagittaire's flat snout, followed by a long train of missiles that cascaded onto its right torso. Noloty held on to her harness as she was thrown every which way, nearly off the command couch. The Sagittaire shifted from left leg to right as its right torso armor was shredded to bits.
The Marauder came to the Sagittaire's aid. Twin cerulean particle beam robbed the Avatar from its firing position. Its Gauss slug came next, digging a crater just below the twin lasers on the center torso. Short, snappy laser bolts scourged the right side of the Avatar as it staggered. The Avatar directed its attention at the Marauder but the Xanthos slammed home a triple-PPC salvo, overloading the 70-ton omnimech with heat and static charge. Sparks from short circuits ignited the stored ammunition, and the omnimech split into three parts in a raucous explosion.
Unfortunately the excessive heat caught up with the Marauder. As it slowed down to a third of its maximum speed, the two Toyama fell to position. Missiles and laser bolts rained down on the Marauder, chewing up armor at alarming rate. The Marauder turned for counterattack, but inadvertently exposed its torso to the Ragnarok, incoming slowly but surely to join the fray. Two Gauss slugs hammered the Marauder, one of which struck deep into the cockpit. The Marauder jerked, swaying mindleslly like a drunk in the brink of collapse, then sloshed to the ground as if its structures had turned to pulp.
Suddenly Scarlet and Noloty found themselves outgunned and outnumbered.
"I'll take the Ragnarok," Scarlet charged forward. "Get the other three off my back!"
"Yes Ma'am!" Noloty brushed off the headache from the Avatar, then fired her PPC at the farthest Toyama. The Toyama's cocky stride turned groggy when Noloty's shot scrambled its sensor, turning it temporarily blind. The other Toyama joined forces with the remaining Avatar to unleash smorgasboard of laser strands, but Noloty fired her jump jets, coercing her Sagittaire to slide while keeping the two heavy Word of Blake mechs at bay with autocannon rounds.
Scarlet trained all cannons at the Ragnarok's midsection and launched an alpha strike to the left breast. The recoil from the PPCs forced the Ragnarok to take a few step back, but much to her dismay, the hundred-ton mech shrugged off her attack like it was a mere shove, and retaliated with cascaded missiles. The Xanthos reeled as half a dozen warheads gored its left armor with murderous intention.
"Bastard! Die, you sonofabitch!" Scarlet fired her jump jets to realign her mech, then blasted her Light PPCs as soon as they recycled. The bolts clobbered the armor, inches away from where her first salvo hit, but the Ragnarok seemed immune to her attack. Scarlet's masterful PPC salvos, which should have stripped a ton of armor, only chipped the outermost layers, like hitting a concrete wall with a baseball bat.
Livid, Scarlet fired her medium lasers in a frantic attempt to score big, but the Ragnarok returned fire with its plasma. The already hot Xanthos blazed like an inferno. The cockpit turned into a super-heated sauna, so hot her vision tunneled down to a grey spot, and her skin felt like peeling. With the Xanthos debilitated by waste heat, the Ragnarok took a long hard lock on the quadruped then unleashed a vicious 2-Gauss volley at the Xanthos' torso. The Xanthos convulsed under the onslaught. Its rear legs buckled, leaving the front hull open for more punishment.
Noloty braced herself against a swarm of clustered munitions from the two Toyamas, but her peripheral vision caught Scarlet's Xanthos writhing under the intense assault of the Ragnarok. It disheartened her, watching her CO who had been an over-poweringly dominant force in the battlefield, now in the cusp of being dismantled by a rarely-seen Word of Blake mech. A quick skim on her database, and she wondered if the Ragnarok's Blue Shield PFD was the culprit behind Scarlet's inability to pierce its defense.
She gunned her jets, taking the Sagittaire 50 meters into the air, then quickly twisted left and rained down her armor-piercing shells upon the Ragnarok. The Ragnarok torso bowed forward as depleted-uranium slugs tore into the thin rear armor. The Word of Blake mech quickly twisted to protect its rear armor, then fired its Gauss rifles. Noloty's jet exhausts blasted in high-pitched scream, taking the Sagittaire off the Gauss slug's path.
"Yankee, the Ragnarok has Blue Shield!" Noloty cried out as the Sagittaire skidded on the ground. "It takes away half of your PPC punching power! You've gotta hit more or find another way!"
"The Blakes and their electronics!" Scarlet growled as she pulled the Xanthos back up. "Get out of the way, Tango! I'm gonna rip its electronics out its chest and shove it up its ass!"
"Ryokai!" Noloty twisted right, slammed home a particle bolt into the Avatar's midst, then leapt over a Toyama's head to get a clear shot at the Ragnarok. Her medium laser cannons glowed, spitting laser arrows that converged on the Ragnarok's right shoulder. Globules of molten armor sprayed onto the adjacent building. The Ragnarok shrugged it off and fired its missiles, followed by the two Toyamas. Noloty cut off the jets and let the Sagittaire fall short of the mark. The missiles struck void, blowing up concrete and asphalt bits and a plume of smoke, but the Sagittaire was unscathed.
The Ragnarok's momentary shift of attention bought Scarlet a much-needed seconds. She realigned her mech then bombarded the Ragnarok's torso with everything she got. The Ragnarok's Blue Shield blunted her attack but Scarlet's relentless assault on its torso started wearing it down. A long swath of crack gaped from where the missile launcher joined the torso to the underbelly just above the waist.
The Ragnarok turned toward the Xanthos again, blasting its Plasma Rifle in a rushed attempt to keep the Xanthos in heat problem. But Scarlet anticipated this move. She ducked as low as she could. The superheated beam grazed the upper corner of her cockpit, melting the window frame but failed to do much damage. Anxious, the Ragnarok launched a double-pronged attack aimed at the Xanthos' heart. Scarlet turned left, sacrificing her right hull armor to blunt the attack. The Gauss slugs pierced the side armor and the missiles capitalized the breach, tearing into the flesh and internal structures. Scarlet ground her teeth as she was tossed around like a rag doll. Her console flashed in furious fashion, screaming damage reports she didn't really care. Her Light PPC and two medium lasers went off line, and the Xanthos' right side couldn't take anymore hit without catastrophic damage to the engine.
But the Xanthos still had a fight in it.
"Is that your best shot?" Scarlet sniggered. She pulled her mech up, carefully centered her crosshair on the Ragnarok's cracked torso for best result, then fired all remaining weapons. Her PPCs managed to widen the gap, and the sole medium laser weakened the armor further. The heavy momentum of her PPCs forced the Ragnarok to lean on its right leg. It quickly returned to fighting stance, but the Xanthos were already flying, landing behind a building to take cover.
Certain that the Xanthos could do no worse, the Ragnarok gave chase, going around the building to take a direct shot at the quadruped. The Xanthos was seemingly trapped in a confined space, and the Ragnarok exerted its superiority, firing all weapons at once to finally end the protracted duel. But the Xanthos unexpectedly shifted away, using its jump jets to slide left, and the Ragnarok's awesome firepower was wasted on an empty building.
Now without working weapon, the Ragnarok tried to take cover, but Scarlet took her time, making each shot counted. Her Heavy PPC arced and finally compromised the left torso armor, after so many duds. Her Light PPC and medium laser found their marks on a heat sink. Tongues of flame flared, and for the first time since the two giants traded blows, the Ragnarok was hurt.
The Ragnarok enlisted the help of one Toyama, which broke engagement with the Sagittaire and pursued the Xanthos. But Noloty read its maneuver, then turned around buried a 3-laser salvo on its back. The Toyama's thin rear armor glowed in read, and the heavy mech twisted, spreading its arm to get a shot at the Sagittaire. But Noloty took to the air, then stabbed the Toyama in the back with her PPC. The Toyama lurched forward, hinging back and forth on wobbly knees. It summoned all energy to pivot, but Noloty's HEAP shells found home at the eviscerated rear torso. The Toyama spasmed as the engine burst in a shower of sparks. It slumped to the paved road, suspended by its right arm as the left went off line entirely.
The other Toyama launched a brutal assault on the Sagittaire, with the Avatar running circle to trap the Sagittaire in crossfire. But Noloty knew what they were doing. She pumped up her jets, leaping over the Toyama and landed on its rear. The Avatar fell out of position while the Toyama twisted to reestablish firing arc, but the Sagittaire's rear-firing lasers jabbed it in the arm, turning the left arm shield into a grotesque piece of smelter. Noloty fired her jets to quickly changed direction, then fired all energy weapons, peppering the Toyama's left side. The Toyama's left arm blew off, coaxing the heavy mech to lean on its right leg. Noloty let her UAC10 rip, pushing the Toyama further right, and the 75-ton mech crashed onto an abandoned apartment complex.
With no aces up its sleeve, the Ragnarok charged forward, firing everything it had at the Xanthos. Scarlet ducked and sidestepped the attack, but half of the missiles cored the front armor, already shredded by the Gauss slugs. Two warheads exploded inside and dislodged the gyro. Fire and smoke bled from cascaded gashes on the Xanthos' hull, and its legs rattled loudly, a sure sign the 100-ton quadruped was done in.
But Scarlet just wouldn't let the Ragnarok win. With its last breath, the Xanthos pivoted, lining up its crosshair with the Ragnarok, then threw everything it had left. The Blue Shield stopped the PPCs but the laser torched the ammo bin. A fireball barreled out from the lower torso, splitting the midsection in two.
If the Ragnarok pushed on, the Xanthos would probably be destroyed in the next turn. But nobody would ever know, for the Ragnarok chose to retreat, calling the remaining Toyama and Avatar to cover its limping gait.
"Yankee Tornado, Tango Sakura. Word of Blake is retreating," Noloty reported. "Permission to give chase, Ma'am."
"Damage report," Scarlet replied between labored breathing.
"Armor at 15 percent, ammunition at 5 percent. I'm running low on ammo, Ma'am, but still 45-percent combat effective. That Ragnarok is the lead mech of whatever force the Word of Blake put in here, Ma'am. We kill it, we'll break their backbone."
"Negative, Tango Sakura. Stand down."
"Ma'am?" Noloty didn't expect Scarlet to play safe, considering her reputation.
"The Toyama and Avatar would tear you apart before you get to the Ragnarok. Stand down, let them go. We've made our statement."
"But…"
"We still have to deal with the Markham's Marauders. I'd hate to do it without you."
A long sigh of disappointment occupied the comlink for a few seconds, but in the end Noloty followed Scarlet's order like a good soldier that she was. "Ryokai. Standing down."
Scarlet leaned back on her command couch and closed her eyes. It was the closest to defeat she had ever been, and without a little intervention by Noloty, she would've been gone. She threw her gaze outside her window, watching the Sagittaire forming up on her. It was just as battered and bruised as her Xanthos, but it was moving around with its own power.
"By the way, good work, Noloty. Very good work."
