INTERLUDE 7
Iscariot, Ashio,
Ashio Prefecture, Dieron Military District,
Draconis Combine,
January 25, 3075
The Word of Blake Legacy staggered under the assault. Millions of watts of pure energy whittled its armor, turning it into bubbling mass that drooped down its legs. The plasma bolt pushed the temperature to feverish pitch, making the myomer move in debilitating pace. And the Gauss slug punished the sagging armor, cracking the hull of the Legacy, exposing the engine and ammo bins to the next shot. The Legacy's knees buckled, and despite its effort to continue fighting, the damage was just too severe.
Tsagoi watched the failing Legacy from the cockpit of his Pillager, smiling in demented lechery. Somehow all the thrashing and the writhing about of the Word of Blake mech reminded him of Noloty, wracked in pain and pleasure during their many nights together. The side-to-side twisting of the Legacy under heavy assault from the Pillager was a mirror image of Noloty's body contorted in the heat of passion. The grotesque hull, nearly stripped naked from constant battery, reminded him of her warped grimace. And the dripping coolant down the leg of the Legacy's evoked the fun recollection of similar occurrence during a particularly long, steamy, intense session.
Oh, how Tsagoi missed Noloty.
Shifting uncomfortably in his command seat (and not from the heat or the critical hit from the Legacy), Tsagoi recalibrated his targeting system and let his lasers fly. Pure energy singed the Legacy's ammunition bins unabated, and the explosion tore the center torso apart. A blinding fireball swallowed the Legacy.
As a hail of metal shards rained down on the Pillager, the CO of the 13th Legion of Vega looked around to see how his unit fared against this depleted Word of Blake force. Not that he was concerned. The Word of Blake force was but a pale shadow of what it was a few months ago. The Ryuken-go had severely damaged the Blakist's Level III and cut it off from its mercenary arm, the Markham's Marauders. What was left in Ashio was an emaciated army barely hanging on. Two other Word of Blake Legacies engaged two Legion of Vega's Akumas. Laser, missile, and ballistic tracers whipped back and forth between the two sides. Chipped armor flew every which way as murderous blows whittled down thick armor platings. The foursome locked themselves in a circle of death, strafing whatever passed in front of their crosshairs.
There was one more Word of Blake mech, registered as a Ragnarok, staying in the shadow, covered behind decrepit buildings far from the heat of battle. Like most modern-days commanders, the Ragnarok directed the course of the battle from a secure position, letting its troops take the brunt of enemy's charges. The practice had become such a paradigm in recent wars. But Tsagoi would not have it. He would not fall into tactical fallacy that had plagued most Inner Sphere regiments for the last thousands of years. He wanted the Ragnarok, and he would get it himself.
Tsagoi moved his heavily-modified Pillager, dubbed 'Gypsy', across the war-torn city of Iscariot to engage the Ragnarok. The Ragnarok acknowledged the Pillager's intention and fired the opening salvo. Missiles leapt from the tubes, slithering in between buildings and running down the Pillager with the intention to kill. Tsagoi fired his jump jets to give the Pillager a boost to take cover behind a building. The missiles smashed into the building, taking down half of the empty structure.
The cloud of debris worked for Tsagoi's advantage. The Ragnarok's radar was hampered, and for a brief moment it lost track of the Pillager. Tsagoi shuffled left and fired his Gauss rifle, in what looked like a retaliation. The Gauss slug hammered the corner of the building in front of the Ragnarok, taking out the only remaining support. As the building collapsed, the Ragnarok was forced to move out. Yet the concrete debris hampered the Ragnarok's radar, and when it realized it had jumped into an open field, it was all too late.
The Ragnarok took the offensive with its Plasma rifle. A long stream of superheated matter scourged the Pillager at the shoulder. Molten armor flew to every direction. Eager to press the attack, the Ragnarok fired its twin Gauss rifles. The thumps from the massive guns reverberated throughout the empty streets of Iscariot, as if making a statement that the Ragnarok was a force of nature. One missed miserably, but the other one blasted the Pillager's left thigh. The armor blunted the onslaught, but the casing was compromised, and one more Gauss shot at the same place woud certainly breach the leg.
Tsagoi angled his mech a little to the left, protecting the damaged leg, then fired his Plasma rifle down the middle. The Ragnarok sidestepped the attack but the superheated plasma carved a bad gash on its right arm. The Ragnarok twisted right, protecting its Gauss-laden arm, but Tsagoi fired his jump jets, providing him with a small window of opportunity. He let lose a laser medley at the arm, two beams of which exploited the wound more.
The Ragnarok now fought with the sense of urgency. It blasted the Gauss rifles in volley fire, hoping to catch the Pillager's leg with concussive punches. Only one connected, shredding the center torso armor. The nickel-ferrous slug bounced off the Pillager's chest, but not before splitting the outermost layers right down the middle. As the Pillager staggered, the Ragnarok tried to exploit the damaged armor with lasers, but Tsagoi twisted and turned so the laser bolts hit fresh armor plating everytime.
As the Ragnarok flirted with heat trouble, Tsagoi linked all his energy weapons and fired a calculated shot at the Ragnarok's injured arm. The lasers exploited the gap, and the Plasma bolt fried the Gauss gun. The right arm exploded in a geyser of shards. The Ragnarok shuddered, careening heavily to the left, before the mechwarrior had the mech under control.
Left with only one Gauss rifle, the Ragnarok was quick to let it rip. The metallic ball bludgeoned the Pillager's right shoulder, close to the rotator cuff. The Pillager twitched, but shrugged off the attack and recalibrated its crosshair. The Ragnarok pressed on with its missiles. The Pillager sidestepped the attack, missing half of the warheads by mere centimeters. The rest of the missiles swarmed the Pillager from every direction, but failed to breach the armor, save for cracks and chaps.
The Ragnarok shifted left to aim for the Pillager's left flank, but Tsagoi hit his jets, bringing his hundred-ton battlemech leaping some 50 meters forward. The Ragnarok backpedalled, tracking the Pillager's sudden maneuver, but the Pillager was half a step faster. It's 10-grade buckshot cannon roared, spitting armor-piercing submunitions at the Ragnarok's right torso. The pellets sandblasted half a ton of armor. The Ragnarok spread its legs to keep its balance, opening a window for the Pillager to launch a debilitating strike. The plasma bolt seared the right torso, already weakened by the LB-10X shot. A trail of black smoke was proof of critical hits, exacerbated by the extreme heat.
The Ragnarok was hot, but it kept on firing. Risking catastrophic ammo explosion, the 100-ton Word of Blake metal beast launched a calculated missile attack, followed by a Gauss slug from its remaining arm. Thirteen warheads turned the front armor of the Pillager into scarred carapace, with jagged-edged canals and craters running on the long side. The Gauss slug exploited the perforated armor on the ribcage, just under the left armpit. A jet of shards burst from the impact. The entire protective layer was gone, exposing the engine behind a curtain of sparks and smoke. The Pillager reeled, leaning heavily on its left leg, compensating the loss of mass.
Yet the strike hurt more than do good. The waste heat from the missiles pushed the Ragnarok into shutdown sequence, a territory it could not afford to enter. It could not fire its Plasma rifle, a shot that would certainly wreak havoc on the Pillager's side torso. Left in a lumbering, sluggish state, the Ragnarok could only twist as the Pillager rose and fired its main guns. The LB-10X shots perforated the damaged armor on the right torso, and the Gauss rifle punched a hole in the chassis. The laser beams clobbered the engine, and the entire right torso erupted, sending scorching debris to a hundred-meter-wide radius.
As the Ragnarok slumped in defeat, the Pillager walked in circle, like an apex predator waiting to deliver its killing blow. It raised its Plasma rifle and stabbed the smoking gash where the Ragnarok's right torso used to be. The Ragnarok exploded, sending tremor throughout the empty city that served as the death knell for the Word of Blake 23rd Division at Ashio.
As the Word of Blake mechs disappeared one by one from his radar, Tsagoi lit a cigar and let the taste of completion sink in. He opened the hatch to let fresh air in. Reports from his men started rolling in, stating the full retreat of the Word of Blake force. His aerial recon flights sent him images of the last Word of Blake position, a train of dropships where the surviving mechs raced to regroup at, hoping to get out of Ashio safely.
"Move the Shiltrons into positions," Tsagoi smiled wolfishly. "I want no survivors."
