Kara had been running away from things for a long time. It started with racing her siblings across the LeRoux estate, speeding through the idyllic vineyards as fast as their legs could carry them. They would try to outpace their keeper bots, rarely succeeding for more than a few seconds. After her parents' fall from grace, she had run messages for those who preferred to hide their dealings from the Corporation's listening ears. Those runs had been her first experience running from serious authority. A jury-rigged jump kit and sheer adolescent ballsiness had kept her out of the jail cells long enough for Hesperides to declare independence. A few months after that the IMC had showed up, and then she started running again.
She was still running now. Her legs burned as she pounded across a riven courtyard, the choom-choom-choom of her target's autocannon shaking the world around her in concussive bursts. A planet loomed over her head in the cloudless sky. The planet was called Galatea, a resource-rich gas giant orbiting a red sun whose name was a string of numbers Kara didn't care to recall. By most measures, it was worthless. Not situated on any big shipping routes, not containing any noteworthy facilities, and utterly devoid of any indigenous life whatsoever. Its only redeeming quality was that it was chock-full of raw, unrefined hydrogen. Enough to power a fleet of warships for a century. That made it extremely valuable both to the Militia and their IMC counterparts. And so it was that the planet's only moon, Pygmalion, was taken, fortified, and supplied by the IMC's 103rd Garrison. And so it was that the Militia had come to take it.
It was Pygmalion's sodden earth that she trod now, pounding through the mud of a fractured agri-dome towards a blinking red marker on her HUD. Resistance had been light so far, the dome abandoned in favor of more defensible locations. Kara sent a quick prayer to the burning skies above that it stayed that way. Her target was a titan, equipped with an experimental autocannon capable of doling out an unthinkable amount of punishment. Its relentless volleys had been tearing apart anything that came within view of its guard post. She was the only pilot within ten miles. All she had to do was make it across this field, and she would be in sight of her target.
She was a hundred yards from her waypoint when the first mine went off.
Her enhanced senses barely had time to register a beep! before the jet-black soil erupted in front of her. A concussive blast tore her carbine out of her hands, sending her flying backwards. Her piecemeal helmet systems struggled to reboot, icons blurring and warnings flashing. Dirt came rushing up to meet her, and the air left her pained lungs as she skidded to a halt. The initial burst of panic quieted to a dull fear as she lay unmoving in the filth. Every instinct in her screamed not to move, not to flinch. Her heart thumped at even the slightest shift in her lithe frame. She quieted the fear, breathing slowly in and out, just as her mother had taught her. She had a mission.
Moving slowly, deliberately, she hauled herself to her feet, eyes darting across the uneven ground before her. Her onboard systems were unhelpfully telling her that the explosion originated from beneath her. Kara's jaw clenched beneath her helmet. In any other circumstance, the mines would stand out, broken ground marking their locations. But in the upturned rows of planting soil, she couldn't tell one furrow in the dirt from another.
She couldn't go forward. She couldn't risk going to the sides. Doubling back was not an option. Down was suicide. Kara had one option left. Raising her gaze to the shattered honeycomb-like structure of the dome, she thumbed a button the side of her left pointer finger. With a snap of pneumatic cabling, her grappling hook snaked upwards like an arrow from a bow. It punched into the steel above, thousands of microscopic barbs latching tight to the cold metal. A final check of her surroundings assured her of her plan. She would have to leave her carbine here. It lay too far away, nestled into the earth muzzle-first. To retrieve it would be both dangerous and time-consuming. A pang of regret tugged her gaze towards the scrap of cloth fastened around the weapon's stock. A memory of home. Maybe once the fighting died down, she could retrieve it. Wishful thinking, maybe. But wishful thinking was all that kept Kara going most of the time.
She thumbed the trigger again. Micro-motors in her glove began to whirr as she was tugged into the air. The farm floor rushed away from her as her stomach turned upside-down. Inertial compensators grafted into her skull struggled to keep up with the acceleration. To anyone other than a pilot, consistently using a grapple like this one would be fatal. Kara yet again marveled at the wonders of modern technology inside her.
The grapple gathered the last of its thread with a dull thunk. Preserving her forward momentum, Kara swung herself upwards and through the opening in the dome's hexagonal plating. She was greeted with an ashen sky, heavy with chemical smoke from a month of war. The setting sun far in the distance made the black sand dunes seem highlighted, ribbons of gold painting the ground in stark contrast. The ruined cityscape smoldered below, stretching out for miles before giving way to the desert beyond. In any other circumstance, she might have taken a moment to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings.
But she didn't have time for that. Focus on the mission. The target was in sight now, a few hundred yards from the base of the dome. Her HUD optics zoomed in, framing the titan in perfect detail. Seraphim-class chassis, built with two giant blast shields rotating on manipulator arms around a ring on the machine's waist. The cannon in its hands was powered down, for now. A modified chaingun. Captain Landiger had told her in the briefing that it was capable of firing arc-based munitions. Its pilot had foregone a dash engine in favor of a large shield projector, feeding power to a shimmering sphere of light that haloed the Seraphim's form against the stark streets it watched over.
Seraphim-class was tough. Only recently rolled out by the IMC, the militia had been almost completely unable to reverse-engineer its technology, or the advanced polymer in its shields. Kara ran a hand over the barrel of the Archer tucked to the small of her back. Not good enough, she thought to herself. She needed muscle.
She flipped open the comms unit on her helm, opening a conduit to the orbiting battlegroup above. +++RK-0766 neural link established+++, came the pulse of psychic data. Kara set a waypoint at the base of the dome. A timer began counting down at the edges of her vision.
"Rook? I need you down here."