The desert sun was starting to rise, beating down on them all as they picked over the remnants of what'd once been a very well-equipped Militech mechanized battalion.
Now it was just shattered vehicles and pancaked soldiers.
"What kinda weapon does this kinda shit?" Cranson complained, as he poked at one of the gore-pancakes with a stick. "It's like they stood under a AV."
Jacob shrugged as he cracked open the door to a wrecked APC - both drivers were puddles of gore in the front seats and the windows were shattered, but the chassis looked intact - and they could always use more armor. He marked the wreck for the better-equipped salvagers - men in linear frames carrying plasma cutters - and began rooting through the vehicle's compartments for anything worth taking. Whatever had punched a crater into the hardpan desert seemed to have wrecked most everything delicate - pretty much everything in the medical kit was broken, save for a few metal tools, and any personal weapons had been reduced to scrap.
He moved on, taking a swig from his water bottle.
Around him, nearly a dozen Junkerknights and about that same number of 'nudie' salvagers, drivers, and techies were swarming over the battlefield. While it wasn't quite as good as, say, hitting a corpo convoy carrying ACPA or stealing a shipment of industrial frames - both of which would provide a bounty of the high-end artificial musculature they needed for major repairs and retrofits - it was still a ton of armor, scrap, and intact weapons. He'd already heard squabbling over who'd get the missile launchers that were still intact.
Half the Junkers were doing sentry duty, trying to make them too hard a target for Raffen Shiv or other wannabe scavengers to go after, but the other half, and all the support grunts, were doing their best to take the mess apart, himself included. It wasn't exactly the best, but all the jockeys were capable techs - hell, some had built their suits - and they needed as many hands as they could get to finish stripping the wrecks as quick as possible. In an hour or so he'd swap with one of the sentries and climb back into the blessedly air-conditioned interior of Lancer - in the meantime, it was working time.
It was kinda weird. Any other day, he could've ended up shooting at these people - it tended to work out that way, gangs hiring Round Table members to counter the ACPA the other gangs had on retainer - but when the chips came down, they'd cooperate. Hell, they were letting Ana handle Net traffic and comms, keeping the whole thing coordinated even despite the fact that implied letting a Netrunner near their systems.
Trust.
That was really what it came down to. The Round Table's knights would brawl amongst themselves, even kill each other if the job came down to it - but that was the job. The second something happened that'd help or hurt them all, they'd come together and deal with it, and the trust that everyone wouldn't stab them in the back made times like this possible.
Hell, most of the time, the job didn't even entail killing each other. Even Cranson mostly just made life difficult, and Jacob knew damn well that if the man ever decided to load proper AT-warheads into his suit missiles he'd cut a swath through any jockey whose suit didn't have flight or enough APS-cover. Using HE and concussive warheads that wouldn't punch right through a suit was a choice, one that had probably kept at least half of the Round Table's membership alive at one time or another.
It was strange. Only a few Junkers at the Table bothered cooperating for longer than a mission or two - he knew there was a pair of twins with a neural oscillator who ran together, and Mordred's crew of four, but that was pretty much it as far as he knew.
He guessed the reasoning was pretty solid - gangs didn't like hiring expensive mercs squads at a time and corpos only resorted to it if they needed something that their own resources couldn't give them, so singletons got to work more often, and banding together'd just mean getting rid of all the jobs where gangs hired Junkers to fight Junkers…but it still annoyed him.
Hell, someone like Tumble Real could probably run the whole show if she felt like it. The old ex-nomad was a war vet and had a combat history longer than a fifth of the Round Table put together, and even Mordred and Cranson paid heed to her. But, nah. Everyone had to feud and fight among themselves instead.
He shook his head, ducking into the shade of a slagged Basilisk - ooh, the autocannon housing looked mostly intact! The fuel had cooked off, but it looked like the blow-out panels had done their job - though the crew was definitely dead, it hadn't been because their turret ammo had blown up. He pried open the cockpit hatch with a crowbar and got to work removing the seat.
Damn things used an autoloader to save on crew, but the ammunition feed for the autocannon was standard 20mm - same caliber as most of the guns the Round Table's jockeys used. Shit design meant you couldn't get to that feed without taking the chair for the gunner nearly apart, but allegedly it was supposed to be failure proof.
Considering that Militech had had the balls to slap a 20mm on a high-speed cargo hauler and call it a tank, he didn't take that as gospel - but ammo was ammo.
And wouldn't you know it, there was still most of a full load in this one, even if the feed had been wrenched right out of the cannon mechanisms by whatever had tossed the upgunned cargo truck around. He got to work with smaller tools, half-listening to the conversations of the sentries. Tac names only, just to be safe - well, really NCPD reporting names, but that was what ended up being their monikers.
"Look, Brassbody, choom, you can't strap a third cannon to that thing. Any more weight and you're gonna start falling through floors."
"Yeah, well, I've gotta gun up somehow, don't I?"
"Just pay out for a Kang Tao design or something, the micro-rockets work just as well and aim better, and I hear the Lizard paid out his share from smashing that ganger armory up in the guns they were running."
"Stop shilling that Chinese crap, Kaiser, you know it's fulla spyware. Not hookingthatinto my baby."
"Yeah, but you're gonna try and hang another ammo pack off your frame no problem? I can hear the poor thing's servos squealing from here. Just do what Lancer did and trade out your carry-guns for a laser, you've got the juice-"
"Heads up," came the voice of Mantis, who had the best sensor suite among the sentries. "Got incoming. Looks like a decent sized Shiv pack. Two converted haulers, a dozen technicals, call it fifty or more nudies on ridealong or motorcycle. Drawing close, but not headed right for us yet."
"Nomad scavvers…guess they don't see us yet, they never have the firepower to handle our weight…" Brassbody said. "Guns up, people. They'll scatter once they see what they're dealing wi-"
Jacob nearly banged his head on the autocannon housing as the distinctive crack-boom of a heavy railgun cut off Brassbody's words and his end of the comms went dead.
"HIVELOCS!" Tumble roared, a call reflex-echoed by pretty much everyone on the line as he pulled himself out of the wreck and hugged cover, drawing his smartpistol and dropping into the shaded bulk of the Basilisk. The snarl of automatic weapons fire ripped through the air, the growl of engines growing closer.
His suit. He needed to get to Lancer. All the Junkers were parked in the trucks when they weren't in use -
The hammering blasts of missile fire cut off his train of thought, and he heard both Mantis and Kaiser scream as they were ripped apart. Comms went down entirely a second later, and Jacob spared half a thought to worry about Ana, if the Shiv had brought a runner -
"Lancer."
Tumble's voice, distorted by the suit, carried even if comms were fucked, and the thumping stride of the uparmored middleweight suit she wore drew his gaze.
"I'll cover you. Make for your tinskin, soldier."
Her voice…that wasn't her. Not how she normally acted.
But it didn't matter.
Jacob ran, the sound of weapons fire chasing him.
—-
Lieutenant Lorren Fields (-that wasn't her name, not anymore-) was in her element.
The enemy had hit them hard with rocket artillery and high-velocity guns, inflicting heavy losses while their vehicles closed in. She bounced from cover to cover, shoulder-mounted gun blasting a bandit technical to blazing scrap as she ran, auto-shotgun spraying suppressing fire. Sporadic small-arms fire from her dug-in elements (-the Round Table, allies, not soldiers-) and charging bandits alike ripped through the air, and smokes had already been popped, rendering visibility a non-factor.
Pull back, regroup, rearm, then send them packing. Stalled and confused armor was dead armor.
Comms were still down, so she sprinted, suit compensating as she zigzagged towards the van with the (-Slavica kid, half her age-) Netrunner backup. Two of her men (-the Round Table's techies-) were down, and the armored van's loading door was open. It looked bad.
Then one of the bandits went hurtling back out to splatter against the rocks, and a hulking suit Fields couldn't identify the model of stomped out. Zduhac, it's IFF proclaimed.
Comms spiked in her ear, static clearing, and Slavica's voice came through loud and clear.
"Tumble!"Was that her?"I've managed to punch through their jamming, but range is fucked. Who's -fuck, they've cut us in half! We need to get suited and delta!"
No. No running.
The world slowed to a crawl.
Sandevistan time. Plenty of time to think.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Four of her pilots were down, a fifth with a damaged suit. Three more were in the fight, alongside sixteen nudies and two dismounts, but the one she needed was pinned down out of position.
The high-velocity gun boomed, taking a neat chunk out of one squad's cover and splattering two of its members across the desert. The smoke wasn't enough, the enemy had sightlines, and was probably only holding fire because they wanted to confirm kills.
Stalled armor was dead armor. They needed to change the equation, and fast.
Sandevistan time stopped, and Lorren Fields made her call.
"Zduhac, Lancer, on me. We're pulling Cranson out. Alecto, De-rez, make noise and cover the nudies.Go."
She took off without warning, felt more than heard Zduhac follow, its pilot bitching in her ear. Lancer stuck to her other flank a second later, the pilot she'd given cover to returning the favor as the railcannon on its shoulder cored another technical. They skidded to a halt behind the wreck of a missile carrier, and Flynn Cranson, brow bloodied and left arm pocked with light shrapnel but otherwise unharmed, saluted (-flipped her the bird-).
"Fuckers couldn't wait until I suited up, ungrateful pricks!" he shouted over the roar of engines. "You ready to die together? Cuz no way can I make that sprint without them shooting me!"
"That will not be a problem," Fields said through her suit's external speakers, before she picked the man up wholesale.
"Zduhac, Lancer, cover and retreat."
"Hope you've got a plan,"Lancer's pilot said.
Fields did not answer.
She ran.
The jump boosters kicked in mid-stride, hurtling her and her passenger forwards - she felt the backwash as the high-velocity gun round slammed into where she'd almost been standing, and left it behind an instant later. Dust erupted from the sands as she touched down, the suit's broad-hoofed feet digging trenches in the hardpan as she skidded to a halt less than five feet from the vehicle holding Cranson's suit.
Cranson staggered out of her grip, puked over the side of the van, and, swearing vehemently, crawled in. Good enough.
The bandits (-Raffen Shiv, exiles and lowest of the low, the Wraith bastards-) were encircling them, packs of riders trying to cut them off. She let her auto-shotgun roar, shredding a couple on motorcycles, but more were already getting into the mess, driving her people from cover and picking them off. They needed a game-changer, before the main pack of them got in too close…
The loading door of the van fell open behind her, and the grotesquely over-gunned four-legged, four-armed shape of Prometheus stomped out. "Can't see shit through this smoke, give me a target!" Cranson shouted over comms as the 20-mike in his suit's lower set of arms spat lead.
"Can't just - cheap ass bastard, buy better optics!"Slavica shouted. "Fine! Fucking - no bandwidth? Go suck a scop, you - transmitting now!"
Fields's HUD lit up, locators firing for most of the bandit vehicles as - was that a Ping? What was that basic quickhack going to do -
The sound of the twenty-odd missile tubes Prometheus mounted along the sides of its centaur-like body firing answered her question. The missiles rained down, hammering the bandits where they stood. Infantry were torn apart and technicals reduced to scrap, the hiveloc cargo-hauler going up in flames, and just like that, they broke. The surviving nudies ran for their vehicles, while the other hauler and it's escorts fishtailed around and booked it back down the road.
"Fuckers zero'd," Cranson proclaimed. "How about that, chief…chief?"
Lorren - no.
Tumble staggered, tasting bile in the back of her throat. Again. She'd thought…no.
She shook her head. Lorren Fields was dead and gone. It didn't matter if her ghost came back for a bit when she got into scrapes like this, scrapes that reminded her a bit too strongly of the past.
"Tumble?"Lancer - no, Jacob, asked. "You good?"
She wasn't. She really wasn't. But…damn.
"Sound off," she croaked. "Who's still alive?"
One by one, calls filtered in. About half. Better than she'd expected.
Okay. Simple. Direct. They…well, some of them were following her. That'd have to be good enough.
"I'm not going to order you around-"
"You pulled our butts out of the fire," Jacob interrupted. "Far as I'm concerned, you're in charge. What's the plan, boss?"
Tumble Real stared at the fading dust cloud of the Wraiths.
"Anyone who wants to come teach the Wraiths why it's a bad idea to fuck with the Round Table, follow me. Ana?"
"Ping's already in their systems. I can trail their vehicles from as far away as we need."
Tumble smiled. "Wounded and infirm, sit tight and call in the others for help. The rest of you, with me."
"We're going hunting."