They made it to the double wide hallway entrance, its doors tightly sealed shut. Karin and Barry began cutting through with their plasma torches, a process that could take hours considering how thick the door was. This meant that the others had to set up a defensive perimeter. And hope no monsters showed up. The matter of the spider strider that had seemingly disappeared was still worrying them. Staying stationary was most definitely not helping with that.
Ryuki considered what he would do if it returned. He glanced over to the ammunition counter for the ballistic missile launcher. A single missile could wipe out almost everything inside the ship and he wasn't sure if that included them. While the mechs had full nuclear overpressure systems, there wasn't any assurances that the thermal energy from the nuclear weapon would not melt right through the reactor housings on their mechs. While they may be protected from exterior radiation, the molten salt heat exchangers could burst and spill superheated fluid onto the inner structure of their mechs. All he really wanted was a single useful warhead. At ten megatons, would not have been enough to heavily damage them.
He looked up the blast radius for the missile. "What was I expecting" he said once he saw that each warhead had a radius of 10 kilometers. The concussive wave from weapons that powerful would wreck the ship , perhaps even making the hull collapse like a wave of steel. There had to be a way to deactivate all but one warhead . Still, even with only one warhead igniting, the threat of overloading their own overpressure systems was still present. The risk of not using it though was more difficult to surmise. If the spider strider reappeared , along with its ever present swarm, what could they do other than use the nuclear missile? The plasma throwers had limited ammo, not enough to even stop the first wave of those crab-bots. It would be a slaughter.
There was no other way. Just not a single way. It had to be done. That warhead must be armed. The imminent threat was overwhelming. It was a matter of time before the horde returned. Spending that time waiting for that door to fall was just ticking down the doomsday clock.
He wasn't afraid of death anymore. That feeling had long since died after the unceasing fighting. A part of him even relished the idea of dying. It would be a fitting ending to a horrible adventure. But once again his responsibility to his soldiers kept those disturbing thoughts at bay. That fleeting moment ,those glances at the self destruct , they were just remnants of a state that almost overwhelmed him. Introspection showed how wasteful it would have been, to just let everyone else die because he wanted some peace. And though the shadows encroached on his mind , filling in the cracks that no sleep and poor nutrition had left, he would not let it envelop him. No, that was the true fear. That something that he knew nothing had the power to influence his actions when it was only its mere presence that was infecting him with doubt. He searched through the controls till he found the arming protocol for the warheads. He activated a armed a single warhead.
The question then was whether he would tell the others. Such a devastating weapon obviously was not meant to be unleashed in the confines of a ship. But this was a big ship, incredibly big. Each cargo hold was nearly 500 meters long and 50 meters all Perhaps,he thought, if the explosion happened away from them, in another compartment with the thick superstructure to block the waves of overbearing pressure and radiation , the effects would be much less destructive. That still didn't guarantee that the squad would agree to it. Should they even be allowed to make the choice for him?
Ryuki wasn't sure. If his team was hesitant with unarmed warheads than an armed one would be much worse. But he needed whatever advantages he could get against the onslaught of a superior enemy. So , he wondered, would it be a good idea to tell them?
Normally, having his team situationally aware would be the best route. Having everyone on the same page would make maneuvers much easier. But he knew that they would argue ,that the unit cohesion that was left would evaporate. They wanted out, they needed to escape. Fighting was no longer an option, it was just a quicker way to end up dead.
But he would destroy whatever trust they had in him if he did that. There had to be a way to make them understand.
He waited for an idea to appear before him. His headache was making any kind of deep thought nearly impossible. He had hoped that the quantum foam would spontaneously present to him the most bold plan he could think of.
The ground began to tremble again. The ship listed backwards just enough to cause the towering heap pile that had been their base to topple apart. Peaking out from the wreckage was the electromagnetic containment array of the plasma cannon mounted to the strider. And to his dismay, sparks of electricity rose up from those drums of super charged ions.
"Keep burning through that door. I've got a plan. If I tell you to take cover, make sure you do!" he yelled over the radio. There wasn't enough time for them to question him nor to stop him. He had already lifted off into the air, his mech obscured by the contrails pouring out from the various thrust nozzles. With a burst of energy , he propelled himself towards the slowly rising giant spider, leaving behind concentric circles of compressed pressure waves.
He began firing off a pair of Dagger rockets at a time to gain the beasts attention. The rockets exploded into fireworks as their terminal fuses ignited. The rain of flaming shrapnel smashed against the striders armor and ,for a brief moment, ignited the mottled fleshy overgrowth that crept across its body.
The plasma cannon turret swept up slowly with its beam at full power . The plasma raked the walls as it rotated in an attempt to hit the Lionheart EX , leaving behind a long running gaping wound of red hot molten metal. Ryuki activated the ventral thrusters to perform a quick dodge to the right of the colossus as its beam went over him.
He began to rake the strider with his autocannons. The shells exploded on impact with powerful HDX explosive shape charged warheads. Small sized pressure waves bounced off the hull of the mech taking along with it bits and pieces of the flesh armor. A few more rockets slammed into the head, its control center.
He hadn't noticed that as the strider lifted itself up from the ground, a swarm of crab-bots streamed out from under it. Some began to climb the beasts' legs while others marched towards his team. As he continued to fire at the giant, he spotted a few of them on its body and realized quickly what was happening.
He yelled into his radio , warning the others of the incoming waves. Even if they were ready to defend, they wouldn't last long. Ryuki had to draw them off into a concentrated kill zone and wipe everything out in one strike. He disengaged from his fight with the spider and rocketed towards the swarm.
The plasmathrowers had enough pressure to shoot out a flame nearly 45 meters long , with enough fuel to run for nearly 5 minutes continuously. Perhaps that would be enough , but that would still let the buggers slip through if he didn't catch them all in his swooping attack. So instead of attacking them head on, he decided to manipulate their path.
Much like the firewalls that prevent fires from spreading through drought ridden forests, the plasma fire would halt the rapid advance of the crabs by forcing them to change direction lest they fry in the flames.
Ryki fired on the ground to create a firestorm to push the crabs back. As he built the flaming walls, the four legged machines took notice of him. The threat was no obvious to their piddling rudimentary brains and this caused them to change their target to him. The spider strider too saw this and like a hive queen began to direct its minions towards him along with its plasma beam. The air burst into tiny sparklers as the beam past overhead , close enough to hear the crackling of the oxygen burning up under the intense heat of the plasma.
He herded the bugs towards their queen with the fire lanes but a few did get breach the front line. His team was on alert waiting for the stragglers to show up , leaving only Barry to continue to cut through the door. They waited for the first to crawl over the horizon , a long wait it seemed before any showed up.
The first group popped over the wreckage of a ruined mech , their mandibles snapping at the air. Karin fired off swarm of Dagger rockets at the group before opening up with the shoulder mounted chain gun. The rockets splashed on the crab bugs before the chain gun rounds exploded on them, riddling the first group of enemies with enough holes to use them as water filters.
Then came the main assault. Nearly 50 appeared above them , scampering around on the walls and over the wrecks. Karin began firing off with her autocarbine while she bombarded one side of the engagement with rockets. She released the AI constraints on the chain gun and allowed it to fire on targets of its choosing. The bugs began jumping at them while a few began to fire off whatever weapons that weren't subsumed by flesh. She swung her left arm over her torso and deployed a shield from out of the arm.
Ross was engulfed in flames as his plasmathrower had been critically hit and its fuel canister exploded onto him. As his mech attempted to smother the flames with fire retardant foam, his head sensors became obscured with foam. With the autocarbine useless he was forced to use the retractable blade on his shield. Getting to melee range was incredibly dangerous and with only the torso mounted weapons functional , it provided too little defense. Aggression was the only way to survive the encounter, he decided.
His thruster nozzles burst to life , propelling him forward like a battering ram , slamming into everything in its path. He smashed into one of the bugs and thrust the shield blade down into its thorax, splitting it open to reveal its still throbbing organs inundated with greenish blood. He fired off his thrusts again , this time using the head mounted heavy machine gun to take out stragglers before bashing the rest with the shield. He dashed once more , turning his side of the battle into a typhoon of white smoke and sinew.
Dizzy and Wasp use the grapples on their thinktank to maneuver around the horde while they fired down using two mandible mounted machine guns. They fired off explosive impact grenades from the manipulator arms , raining down a hail of explosions on the vulnerable topsides of the crabs.
Reaper had stayed frozen as the fighting continued. He saw the snarling beasts with their barbed suckers and blade like mandibles as nightmarish creatures that were merely delusions. His cracked mind was unable to comprehend the onslaught. Even watching his teammates struggle did not snap him from his listless state.
As the monsters approached him closer and the fires of combat began to encroach on him, an idea emerged. This was all a dream. Nothing more. Even if he were to die, he would just wake up. In a land of scrap ,surrounded by the shrill screeches , it couldn't be anything else. Everything was airy, light and incorporeal. The pain,the hunger and the fear were just his brain trying to commit to memory some useless information from the day prior.
While his mind slowly drifted away from reality, the infected mini-mechs began to swarm around him with their mandibles slashing at the armor. As the weight of the possesed machines began to pile onto his mech, the weight soon became too much causing it to topple backwards. The loud bash prompted Barry to turn around to see Reapers mech covered in those devilish monsters.
He aimed his autocarbine and fired the underslung plasmathrower. The entire pile burst into flames. The skin and flesh burnt to a crisp , leaving only the shriveled mechanical wreckage behind. Reapers mech had lost much of its armor with only the internal structure remaining.
