Interlude 10
The Great Mech Robbery
Checkmate Part 2
Coromodir
18th June, 3025
Foxtrot Platoon
The sound of a cataclysm filled the air as the gantries surrounding the Knight exploded into a furious avatar of mechanistic fury. It's guns spoke with depthless hatred as the strike platoons devolved into a flurry of men and women seeking cover and their vehicles attempting to back out of the mech bays.
"In Blake's name put down that monster!" The only moments relief being that the control feeds for its carapace mounted launchers had been successfully disabled as a battle cannon shell punched one of the gravity tanks from the air. Large Laser fire spoke and stabbed into the machine as it fought to bring its higher functions online, without a pilot its efficiency suffered greatly, but with a glut of targets to choose from every burst of fire increased the tally in its favour.
"Kill it!" Another of the team leaders shouted as his main turret fired, the large laser scoring deeply against the rabid war machine and escalating himself to the top of its threat recognition before a burst from its avenger sawed the man in half before he could button down inside the vehicle.
Crisscrossing fire began to shred the structure and the war machine tried to keep its Ion Shield but without human intuition it's threat-recognition sensors were too slow to recognise the dangers before they manifested. As such the damage quickly began to escalate, if not on par with the casualties the ComStar specialists were suffering.
Ravi
"Speak to me! Tell me what is happening." Ravi monitored the situation on his tactical computer with something approaching concern. The casualty rates for the platoons that were supposed to be capturing the Knight were spiking heavily.
"This is Foxtrot Lead. The damned machine has berzerked! I don't know what's happening, there is no damned pilot and it's still killing us!" The comms were awash with static as the man gave orders for everything to fire on the mech, "Sir. We can't capture it, the damned thing is psychotic. It's shouting stuff like Purge the Unclean. Burn the Heretic and the like, we're blasting it into pieces. Sorry sir, you'll have to be content with salvage."
Explosions continued to sound. "Alpha, report." Ravi said as he turned to the next screen. There were no active voices this time, only the rapid clicking of coded short-burst signals that said they were proceeding deep into the wing and 'assassinated' several key personnel. "Bravo Report."
"Mission accomplished. Bravo falling back to phase line. The hell below has been a good distraction."
Alpha Platoon
The halls were awash with blood as the snatch teams moved through the halls, palace security had discovered the intrusion and was reacting fast. Half a dozen men had already been slain before they found the right room. The first man to enter it dropped, his torso absent as the beam weapon in the Sacristan's hand discharged.
"Surrender yourselves to judgement!" The Sacristan shouted.
Hand signals allowed the team to switch to stun weapons as they breached the door, another of them falling before the hellish beam before a woman in blood red robes wearing a blacksmiths attire. Her head was absent of hair, instead being a hellish forest of metallic plugs. The weapon fired once more, not from her hand but from a mounting on her shoulder.
The volleys of weapons fire from the snatch team rapped against her body in a punishing volley and still she had time to kill a fourth man before a hit to the temple knocked her out cold.
"Grab her! Lets go." He broke message silence. "This is Alpha, we have secured the package and are falling back to the pickup. Send in our cavalry."
Ravi
The data scrolled in hellish figures, the only two bright sparks being the success of Alpha Platoon, Bravo had already fallen back, their mission accomplished, but Golf platoon had been wiped out and both Foxtrot and Charlie had taken catastrophic losses. Reports were coming in of the crippled mech having bought time for some of Kamea's mechs to reach their machines, however crippled they were and the pressure was mounting.
Charlie Platoon
"All guns! On the Knight!" The senior surviving officer of Charlie called and the direction came at a crucial moment. The Knight was still without a pilot, and was smoking from a hundred wounds that should have killed a lesser mech outright, and still its guns blazed, the battle cannon had been silenced minutes ago, whether its ammunition reserves were exhausted or damaged he couldn't tell.
The concentrated fire of the surviving grav-tanks hammered into the front of the Knight, a trio of shots causing the ion shield to fail allowing the following salvoes of fire to burn through the chest armour as volleys of missile fire caused one leg to break off from the main body, causing the lethally crippled machine to topple.
Even then to his horror it fought on, the smaller gun continuing to chew up infantry. "This is Danse to Lead. The machine is crippled. But Restoration forces are getting too heavy, we can't get even salvage!"
The order was expected, but not desired. "Fall Back. We're using the eraser."
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Kamea
Kamea collapsed to the ground as her advisors and bodyguards continued dragging her for the secure bunker, the intensity of fighting too high to risk allowing their sovereign to try and reach the Knight. "You don't understand! He's dying!"
The ghosts in the implants were screaming imprecations of hatred and litanies of pain and agony as they fought as they'd never fought before. Wisely her people chose not to heed her distressed begging to be reunited with her machine. Alexander sighing sadly as he bodily picked her up and carried her the last twenty steps, the heavy bulkhead closing only a moment before the apocalypse was unleashed.
The Santa-Ana was a smaller warhead, but it was still a nuclear weapon, and when it went off they felt it even within the bunker as an artificially induced quake shook the palace. They were spared the flashing blast of incandescent light from the initiation of the device. Spared the heat and pressure wave that destroyed the mech bay virtually entirely.
And spared the sight of jet black gravity-vehicles fleeing the detonation to the safety of their concealed dropship.
Spared the screams of a Sacristan named Helena Graham begging for help from the Omnissiah