Embers After Flames, Chapter 7.3 (Patreon)

7.3

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“Captain?!”

Oh man~ 

That guy fucked up. 

Raven’s Pulse Blade had cut clean through the Core/Leg connection joint. That was a pretty fucking thin target at that angle and with that little warning.

“Unidentified AC has taken out the captain! Code 15e!”

‘Taken out’ usually had some implications of difficulty. That guy got Skill Diff’d.

The rest of them weren’t going to be too far away from following, either. Raven’s Boosters ignited, and the AC accelerated towards the battlefield at a rapid pace. 

I could read the hesitation in the three remaining EKDROMOI. For a Special Forces captain to have been taken out, just like that, so quickly and without any warning whatsoever... Well, nobody expects it.

Something I was happy to take advantage of.

I’d already picked my target. The smaller cannons of the SEA SPIDER fired again. In their shock, they weren’t able to manage the neat little dodges that they had achieved before. I had aimed for the head, but the beam instead went across the Core, the armour boiling as it did. If it had been a moment earlier, the shot would have taken off one of the Back weapons. A moment later and that tiny little head wouldn’t exist anymore.

I didn’t hesitate to keep the pressure up. Missiles streamed out of the SEA SPIDER, aiming at both of the other EKDROMOI just to keep them occupied for a bit. The SEA SPIDER itself charged towards the last one, prioritizing raw speed over trying to dodge its weapons. The Pulse bubbles washed over the hull, generating no small amount of havoc on their own, but compared to the Disrupter Needles, they were almost irrelevant.

Each one of those little things made the ACS scream in protest. The electromagnetic interference threw errors up and down the system, building rapidly towards an overload.

One of these days, I was going to make something that wasn’t so damned vulnerable to this. The Attitude Control System is impressive for how versatile it is, but seriously... 

I reached out, pushing my will into the C-Weapons. First things first, override the ACS, shut off all the internal links, then route the entirety of the feedback through the Coral rather than the circuits, do the same for the control signalling, and...

There we go. Full manual control.

The interference was like a buzz on the edge of my mind. Easily ignored.

The SEA SPIDER leapt into the air, boosters firing in sequence. The EKDROMOI I was targeting leapt backwards, trying to build some distance. I fired my cannons behind him, staggering the shots so that one of them would land where he was going and the other would land where he’d go if he decided to Quick Boost backwards. 

Either the pilot recognized that or their instinct wasn’t to dodge backwards. They went sideways instead, and while that saved them from the shots it also left them in the quite unsafe position of being close to the SEA SPIDER and briefly predictable.

I lashed out immediately, one leg flinging forwards as its Coral Oscillator activated. The SEA SPIDER was deceptively fast for its size, but the EKDROMOI wasn’t completely out of options. 

After all, Reverse Joint mechs were designed to jump.

The EKDROMOI went upwards, the Coral blade passing close enough that its heat bubbled the metal of the EKDROMOI’s feet.

This was truly an excellent pilot.

Unfortunately for them; I had been prepared for them to do that.

It went up, over the Coral Oscillator, and arrived directly into the path of the charged upper cannon.

The second most powerful Coral beam that the SEA SPIDER could produce met the EKDROMOI’s Core, and the Core lost. It ceased to exist, sublimated into its component atoms in a surge of heat and energy that would be more appropriate from a nuclear weapon rather than this cannon.

The explosion caused by its own vapourizing body launched the Arms and Legs free even as it almost shattered them completely.

It was now a two on two, and neither of the remaining EKDROMOI were at all prepared for this.

Raven’s Laser Cannon fired, a bright bolt of blue light that only barely missed them. One went left and the other went right, and Raven chose to pursue the one that had been closer.

The RANSETSU-AR thundered only a moment later, a tight burst of bullets striking the Core of the EKDROMOI. Its armour proved to be up to the task for the moment, but if Raven kept it up, it wasn’t going to last for very long.

Raven hit the ground, sliding along it as their boosters fluttered. I couldn’t help but admire the movement, the subtle shifts in hydraulics and weight distribution as Raven shifted over rock and sand. I was watching an artist at work, here. I was seeing a master of their class in action, demonstrating the kind of skill that I’d previously only ever seen from Dolmayan himself.

The EKDROMOI raised both Machine Guns, but by the time he’d fired, Raven had already Quick Boosted in the opposite direction. The bullets went nowhere useful.

Raven’s missile launcher fired. Again, the EKDROMOI went sideways- but this was a Split Missile launcher, designed specifically to catch that instinct out. Half the missiles slammed into its body, wreathing the EKDROMOI in a cloud of smoke and fire for a moment.

The other EKDROMOI tried to intervene, but their Plasma Guns only got a single shot off before my own smaller cannons punched a pair of red beams through the both of them, punishing the pilot’s split attention. The SEA SPIDER charged forwards again, moving straight towards the other EKDROMOI as another barrage of missiles fired. They were quick to weave between them, but the zig-zagging movement slowed their speed.

Raven went forwards, straight into the smoke and fire. The cloud lit up in blue-green, and when both machines came out on the other side, Raven’s Pulse Blade was piercing straight through the area that his RANSETSU had left weakened in the armour.

By now, the last EKDROMOI was panicking, and rightly so. Down two guns, left with nothing but a pair of missile launchers that would not accomplish much of anything against both a C-Weapon and an AC who was clearly both better than what they’d been prepared for and better than them.

They didn’t have much of a chance to do anything. The upper cannon of the SEA SPIDER fired again, and the EKDROMOI made the mistake of being predictable.

They dodged left. The cannon’s beam followed. 

The cannon tracked faster than the EKDROMOI could move, and a smoking husk of a machine was all that was left of it a moment later. 

Raven’s Pulse Blade disengaged, and the AC straightened up, turning slightly so that the SEA SPIDER was positioned to its side. The AC’s head turned, looking across the shoulder towards the SEA SPIDER. 

It was sheer showmanship, that. That kind of movement, making an AC shift as though it weren’t just a machine. It spoke of great skill, and incredible familiarity. 

Hah... Would that I had the time to engage in this little bit of theater. It would have been greatly entertaining. Unfortunately for the both of us, the PCA was definitely still watching, and if we didn’t get out of here now, the next wave was going to be an overwhelming one.

Still...

I sent a pulse across the shortwave, sending a tightband message a moment later. General purpose BAWS header, obvious to anyone who received it.

Which, in this case, was just Raven.

The content was simple: Three sets of coordinates across the continent in various different locations and a timestamp set for two weeks from now,

It was an open invitation.

And with that, the SEA SPIDER went on its way, boosters reactivating as it took to the air again.

This time, Raven didn’t follow.

+++

The SEA SPIDER made it to the canal with time to spare, thanks to Raven’s intervention with the Special Forces Squad. If it had been forced to fight that battle alone... Well, in all honesty, I probably would have lost the thing without Raven’s intervention. The SEA SPIDER was pretty good, but four EKDROMOI, especially ones that had been properly kitted out for the job?

I might have taken one or two of them with me, but it would have required revealing a few tricks. This outcome, I was satisfied with.

In any case, once the SEA SPIDER was safely underwater and making its way back to base, I checked up on the RLF.

There hadn’t been an assault yet, but there soon would be. As such, I refrained from informing Flatwell about what had happened in detail, simply telling him that the job had been done, but there’d been another matter we’d need to talk about after he had a moment to breathe.

The assault properly started half an hour later, as Arkvidavat’s forces arrived at zone eight, one of the main processing hubs where the RLF packaged up various foods, medicines, and goods for distribution to the civilian zones. I wasn’t worried about that place, because Dolmayan and Freddie were there and between the two of them, a corporate army wasn’t much of a threat.

The mercenaries, on the other hand, arrived nearly simultaneously, appearing at zones three, five, and eleven within a window of about thirty seconds. Tight timing across such a large distance without direct communication lines.

There were twelve of them; four for each zone. Zone three was a major food production facility, and had received reinforcement by the Strider and one of the newer RLF pilots, Paramaz. Zone five held the Gallia Dam Complex, where Dunham, Messam and Sahag had been sent. Zone Eleven was The Wall, and aside from Garabed, who’s AC was still being refitted from its prior battle damage from a skirmish a few days ago, it had not been reinforced.

Zone nine should have been attacked by Marzan’s army, but they had obviously been chewed up by the SEA SPIDER. As such, it went unassaulted- and also unreinforced in the first place.

Now, four ACs in the remaining areas was a considerable amount of force, but it wasn’t too bad. We had less ACs than they did, but that ignored everything else on the battlefield.

Generally speaking, if you’re going to fight something, you want to have at least more forces than your enemy does. Exceptions can be made for the concentration of force, for strategy, for tactics, for the specific kinds of weapons involved, but you’d still generally at least want that.

When you’re assaulting a fortified position? Conventional wisdom dictated that you wanted at least three times what your enemy had. In the age of Armored Cores and also Core Theory in general, that wasn’t always the case, but it was still a good idea.

The RLF typically dealt with numerically and technologically superior forces. The presence of an AC or AC-equivalent on the battlefield wasn’t unknown to them. They had the tools to deal with the problem. Zone three was the worst off of all of them at a four-to-one ratio of ACs, but the Strider was also present there and, well.

It wasn’t as big of a nothingburger as it had been in the game. 

It had been outfitted very well. I’d even lent my own expertise and a decent amount of resources, though all of it had been non-Coral in nature. So long as it wasn’t an A-lister, I was confident in its ability to handle ACs.

That didn’t mean that absolutely everything was already active, though. The RLF usually saved all the heavier anti-PCA stuff for when they actually showed up, just to make sure the PCA didn’t decide to remove the problem in more unconventional manners.

Once the battles had progressed a bit, I’d send the Firekeepers out. It would hopefully draw the PCA’s attention a bit. How much that would help was still to be seen.

I allowed myself to settle, my attention pouring through the network.

We were about to be very busy, after all.