The Vulcan ,so named after its quad rotary cannons , seemed to tense up its body as if restraints prevented its movement. It seemed to fight against an invisible force , twisting its head around like a chained animal. What Ryuki thought was a completely functional head , began to bulge and bleed from slowly widening gaps. Apertures arrayed around its clear plated face ,normally wide to absorb as much light as possible in dim environments, narrowed down into points.
The blood gushed forth from its face until the head itself split apart , forming a mouth with squared teeth and erupted with a chilling guttural roar. Parts of its armor shed from its body to reveal the toned musculature underneath. Instead of bare flesh , its skin was composed of semi-transparent reactive armor , a sort of scale mail.
Its roar rattled through the ships hull and right through the thick armor of Ryuki's mech. It tilted its head and turned to Ryuki. His mind was frozen on the sight of the red lenses glaring and the spiked tongue lapping. It seemed to be the true embodiment of all his fears. A monster that was relentless like the shadows and shrouded in trickling blood. It raised its arms.
Vulcan rocketed up onto the overhanging metal beams and perched there while the minions rushed across the gantry. The triple barreled cannons began to spin up. Everything moved slowly to Ryuki. The first muzzle flare seemed to last for hours before the barrels rotated. He watched his hands pull back on the controls instinctually backing there was only open air behind him. His body was moving faster than his mind could comprehend and before he could catch up he watched the metal grating of the gantry below him slip away.
In its place was the stark white landscape of the frozen wasteland and above him he could see the raging beasts toppling over the edge in their attempt to catch him. The scaffolding exploded from the impacts of the cannon fire ,taking the few remaining beasts with it. Then from the orange and black flames emerged the Vulcan, its teeth bared and its blood streaming.
Ryuki ignited his boosters , knowing full well that the reactors had reached their operational limits and the risk of overheating was nearly assured. It didn't matter to the Vulcan though, its tongue wagged in anticipation of the savory insides of the Lionheart.
They blazed out from underneath the rising super-freighter , heading towards the escaping frigate. The Vulcan no doubt intended to destroy both the Lionheart and the fleeing ship. Ryuki saw the monster screaming towards him but knew that its actual goal was to intercept the ship. He needed to give them enough time to escape into space and he knew of only one way to do it.
Ryuki pulled the controls back to send his mech in an upward climb and then pushed back down to reverse course . The Vulcan unit speed past him , its mouth jeering and its eyes pointed forward at the frigate. Ryuki activated the lateral thrusters, pushing him into a parallel course to the Vulcan. Together, they formed two contrails , each attempting to move as fast as possible.
The alarms blared and the red indicators now flashed prominently in every display. Integrity of the molten salt pipes had reached a critical level. The strain exerted by the overheating thermal fluids were pushing against the pipe walls causing them to buckle dangerously. Application of repair fluid , a greyish liquid filled with nanomachines and carbon nanotube strands , only slowed the fracturing process. The heat became to pierce through the reactor cores and slowly seep into the Lionheart's core-torso. Its own reactor was slowly losing its cooling systems as the entire mech began to heat up as Ryuki pushed it to the limit. Its armor plates weren't designed to absorb the amount of heat the air friction was producing. The charred black armor began to glow red as portions of the armor began to melt. There wasn't any time left to chase the Vulcan.
He engaged the monster with the head mounted heavy machine , firing off a torrent of armor piercing rounds into the sky. The Vulcan was smart enough to engage in evasive maneuvers, swerving and banking left and right as it attempted to overwhelm the auto-targeting systems. Its arms extended out from the shoulder joints , freeing them to turn backwards and aim its cannons at Ryuki. It weaved in and out from the stream of depleted uranium shells as the tracers whizzed past it so close that the heat of the rounds left gash marks where the metallic surface of the armor was softest. Its red eyes burned intensely as the rest of its body turned into a red hot comet.
The barrels of its chain guns spun up in unison before unloading a hail of fire. The muzzle blasts obscured its body and the direction its cannons pointed leaving Ryuki to guess where it was aiming. The targeting computers traced every round and calculated the expected trajectories and simulated the direction the cannons were facing. This allowed Ryuki to fly blind , relying on his suite of combat computers to guide him through the rain of tracers and shrapnel.
A single round whizzed past the concealing head of the armor pack , causing intense sensory distortions. The visual feed turned blurry and became too difficult to watch. Ryuki moved fast to purge the now worthless armored head to reveal the Lionheart's mane from underneath it. The sensors on the Lionheart took over and began to feed the combat data once again but the momentary loss of situational awareness had allowed the Vulcan to return to its chase.
The thermal levels of the reactors had reached the red line, everything the armor packs had absorbed so much heat that they could no longer discharge the extra energy into the heat sinks. It was only a matter of time before the core melted down and destroyed the Lionheart.
The autocannons mounted on each arm of the Lionheart were still loaded with a few problem, the fire rate and the muzzle velocity weren't enough to hit such a fast moving target. They were no use if he couldn't close in on Vulcan.
A few swipes of a floating screen gave him access to the fuse and warhead settings for the autocannon. If he couldn't hit it then the best he could do is impede it with airbursting shells. The flare launchers were still operational and thankfully the munitions were phosphorus missiles, designed to reach imitate hypersonic rockets to thwart counter-missile batteries.
The fuse settings were changed to proximity detonation, with a range of twenty meters. While this would have worked on an agile target, the Vulcan was moving too fast for shrapnel to do its work. The explosives used inside the warhead weren't high enough energy to propel the shards of metal fast enough to intercept the red comet.
Flares though obscure view and Ryuki guessed that whatever is piloting the mech isn't as smart as a human at the controls. Panels opened up on the shoulders of his mech revealing several tubes. One by one the flares burst out , speeding past the Vulcan and exploding into brilliant white flowers. The missiles steered the mech away from its flight trajectory. WIth that , Ryuki knew he could fool it to fly right into his autocannons line of fire.
The beast made a sharp turn as the flares burned away at its eyes. Its lateral thrusters spewed out white smoke , pushing it to the side while making it lose speed. Targetting solution was set. The cannons were armed. Each fired two shots , sending four shells up to the blind Vulcan.
One by one the shells exploded , spreading their superheated shells at supersonic velocities. The shards scattered over the entire body of the Vulcan, leaving ever widening tears in its armor until its bleeding core exploded into pile of parts The blooming debris scattered across the sky like tiny rockets racing with plumes of black smoke trailing behind them. Ryuki nearly collided with a large chunk of the torso but remained unharmed as he approached the frigate.
The alarms were now solid. Systems were shutting down to preserve core functionality. Emergency systems came active to prepare for terminal state. What that meant was that the pilots nest was being flooded with nonconductive coolant while the thermal fluids were being evacuated out. There was still one thing left to do though, even if the heat was now a warming his back.
His fist came slamming down on the manual override safety box. Underneath was a switch that needed to be pulled up and then turned before the safety systems would deactivate. The viscosity of the coolant though made everything move slower including his arms. So what should have taken a few seconds was taking dangerously longer. The joints on his suit had become lubricated from the liquid , which meant he could do something not so smart.
He sent a verbal command to his suit. "Deactivate restraints" he said and endured the neon bright warning messages appearing inside his could hear through the vibrating metal the motors changing to a higher RPM, almost sounding as if a blade was grinding against a ceramic block. He knew a misapplication of force would break his shoulder in two but he needed to make the final turn on the override.
His hand moved precisely and deliberately, making a smooth quarter turn of the switch. When the green light on the base of the switch turned red, he pushed the switch back down. With that the warnings stopped and the fluid drained but the heat still radiated through the mech walls, turning a few overhanging bits a dim red. His hardsuit would not last long even if the mech would otherwise.
"Slow down!" he yelled over the radio, hoping someone was listening. "Cap, you're late man, hurry up" Dizzy yelled back. "Give me a second, I need to do something" , he replied as he slowed the mech down to reverse his facing. The frigate slowed until it was flying above Ryuki with its cargo bay doors wide open to catch him.
With two missiles left he decided to make a lasting impression on the surface of Glacius. The missile silo slammed down another rocket motor while the warhead dispenser quickly screwed in the warhead. The launch rails flipped over his shoulder so that it could launch straight down at the super-freighter slowly ascending. He could see on its surface a gathering of mechs waiting to reach them.
A burst of light and smoke erupted from the rocket motor's tail. The missile raced out from the rail down towards the ship , taking a swirling path to avoid the gunfire flying up from the ship. Flaps on its body opened up giving it pitch and yaw control. Still more panels opened, this time by blowing off the body. The ventral and dorsal thrusters gave it lateral movement, making the missile seem to fly much like a bee would.
Before the warhead could separate from the motor, Ryuki fired off the last nuke for good measure. "Just to be sure" he yelled over the radio as his team watch from the cargo hold. The second missile now parted the widening plume of rocket exhaust left by its brother. Down they went, in formation through the flak and explosions.
Their flight computers determined it was best to launch the warheads simultaneously, either for a tactical advantage or to make a great light show. The warheads detached , now free falling with their own control fins.
Before long, the warheads separated and the nuclear devices speed into the freighter. A total of eight streaked downward but three were destroyed moments after they had launched. The other five hurtled downward. Ryuki wondered how many duds were among them considering how old all the equipment seemed to be.
As the missiles flew , Ryuki began the process to purge the armor from his mech. One by one , the conformal packs and armor plates dropped away in a cloud of smoke as tiny explosive charges separated them from their host. Like meteors breaking up in the atmosphere, they fell apart as the microexplosives erupted over their surfaces and joints.
Free from the overheating coffin, Ryuki boosted up into the cargo hold with ease. "Im in!" he yelled on the radio which prompted Dizzy to close the bay off. A split second moment, when the bay door was almost sealed shut and the nuclear bombs exploded flooded the bay for a brief moment with a brilliant white light that would have fried anything not inside armor or radiation resistant hull.
"So, mission accomplished" Barry called out from his mech over its loud speaker.
