Interlude 10
The Great Mech Robbery
Checkmate Part 1
Coromodir
18th June, 3025
Alpha Platoon
"Advance by pairs." The instruction went out as they entered the palace grounds having scaled the outer wall avoiding patrols. The Comstar troopers advanced two at a time across the open grounds counting on the stealth properties of their armour to prevent detection. The guards were less alert than they should have been, the time of the raid chosen to capitalise on the greatest weariness of the men and women providing security, near to the end of their shifts thinking of warm beds and relief instead of why the shadow on the lawn moved.
Even still, there were those who were more alert, kept so by remembered treason and ptsd. For whom every flicker of movement on the grounds was cause for alarm. "Contact north quarter, two-fifty metres."
A whickering sound was heard in the night as the fire teams sniper fired a suppressed shot. "Contact down. Move move move." A body was down, the window was closing on them.
Foxtrot Platoon
Charlie and Golf platoons flanked as they moved in past the main walls. The stealth armour on the gravity tanks keeping them from easy discovery as some kilometres away the night was lit up with fire while Delta and Echo platoons engaged the mech patrol in the canyons near the capital, the sound of weapons fire drawing attention away from the advance of their machines. The two mechs left on active patrol of the Palace were powering up to a run towards the site unaware of Alpha or Bravo teams actions.
But even so, the clock was ticking and their drives powered up to full as they headed for the mech hangars. Sirens were beginning to blare and people were waking in fear or anger as the peace they'd fought so hard for was disturbed. "Mech Hangars in sight. FIRE!" The order was given and volleys of fire stabbed out from the gravity tanks as they charged for the structure. A Highlander stepped out from within and fired its Gaussgun only to be cut down as all of the gravity tanks turned on it with disturbing precision.
The star league era mech was powerful and well built, but it was never designed to handle the volume of fire it was subjected to. But even so it did not go alone, one of the gravity tanks carved open by its own weaponry before it succumbed to the concentrated fire, the battle between mech and tanks allowing the APCs unimpeded access past it into the cavernous doors of the mech bays where armoured troops spilled from their vehicles like a midnight black tide. Whickering volleys of fire criss-crossed as the battle was enjoined. Comstar specialists fighting to keep the mech jockeys from rejoining their machine as, taking pride of place, the Knight watched on.
The machines eyeslit glowed dimly as its cycled down reactor rumbled to machine dreams of war. The panopoly of sound calling to its spirit. But in the deepest standby mode it occupied it could do little about the battle raging around it as an engineering team began to cluster around it like a horde of fire ants. But even a slumbering machine spirit is never totally quiescent, the rituals to restart their reactors from complete shutdown processes that could take days and weeks. And so, when the lance of machine-pain as the first cutting torches flared to life amongst its joints the machine flared to primal awareness. Without the bond with its pilot the Knight could not engage its highest functions, its ion shield too delicate for such base awareness.
But for the man secured to the gantry leaning in under its shoulder plating he had only a few moments of panic to realise that the carapace stubber mount had swivelled and a fullisade of high velocity large caliber munitions scythed him apart like so much confetti. Other lances of pain struck the machine, this time in desperate, even panicked recognition that the machine was at least partially autonomous.
But still its intellect was low, and it struggled to come to full awareness of its surroundings.
The dimly flickering lights as it tried to rise to a higher awareness in spite of the absence of a pilot left some comforted who sawed off its stubber with reckless abandon as they fought in the joint. The sound of clacking heralded a greater problem as one of the ComStar mechtechs stood in front of it, ready to begin working on the head.
The lights within the armoured shell snapped onto full brightness. Lenses irised open then closed in on the tech. The cold clinical white changed.
A blood red gaze fixed in on the tech. A red aura that felt colder than the depth of space zeroed in on him.