Embers After Flames, Chapter 11.6

11.6

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A wall of metal blasted towards Raven and Ayre. Both of them split up, one going left and the other going right.

CATAPHRACT BALAM went straight through the middle of them, Boosters flaring with a truly obscene amount of energy. Michigan did not slow down. Instead, the machine’s wheels turned and twisted, rearranging. More Boosters ignited all over the giant machine, and it turned with alarming speed.

This also incidentally brought a large amount of its weaponry to bear.

The original CATAPHRACT had been a heavily armed thing. The PCA had started it out with a pair of gatling grenade cannons mounted on the front of the chassis above the main treads, a pair of smaller -though still larger than most ACs- gatling guns on the turret, a thirty two-cell Missile Launcher, and a Laser assembly with nine independent emitters that could either fire in a wide arc or concentrate all that power into a single beam.

That was fifteen years ago.

The last version of the CATAPHRACT had been covered completely in independent Pulse Barrier emitters just like the AH12B had been, the Missile Launcher given an upgrade in the form of Plasma Missiles, the Laser assembly shifted to twelve emitters, and then a pair of Laser Blade emitters had additionally been added to the side.

Balam, true to form, had then only gone even further.

First, they’d taken the old gatling weapons and made them bigger. The gatling cannons? Now high explosive. The ones up on the turret? Double gatling guns, now. They’d stripped both the Laser assembly and the Missile Launcher, making room for a pair of absurdly oversized and overengineered septuple gatling guns.

Yes.

Balam’s engineers had strapped seven fucking gatling guns together into the same assembly, on the same feed, and had then put two of these things on their new piece of modified hardware, making a total of twenty fucking gatling guns. Two of which were lobbing cannon shells.

They hadn’t skipped on defense, either. Thick slabs of armour now covered every flat surface. The Cataphract’s traditional weakness, the stupid baby carrier design with the MT in the centre as a control unit? Yeah, they’d slapped a skirt of armour around that son of a bitch, too.

This should have slowed the thing down quite a bit, but with the old laser cannons torn out, all that extra energy was going to extra Boosters that they’d slapped in wherever they could.

There was no damned way this machine was going to be anything other than the most magnificent hangar queen ever designed... but hell, that wasn’t going to be Balam’s problem for very much longer, was it?

Michigan pulled the trigger.

The sound that all those guns made was nearly a symphony all of its own. The noise of the guns spooling up, the bullets ripping through the air, the barrels whining as they spun, underpinned by deep thump-thump-thumps of the gatling cannons going off at the same time, and then made even stronger from the echo of the space they were mostly enclosed in letting it all linger.

It was an almost literal river of bullets that shot towards Raven and Ayre. Michigan split his firepower among the both of them, the occasional tracer round that was in the feed still appearing like a stream of light just from the sheer rate of fire.

Ayre made full use of her lack of Human limitations. Her AC twisted and bent in ways that no Human pilot would be able to withstand, Boosters firing brightly and powerful every moment. She circled quickly, racing against the tracking of the gun and battling its predictive algorithms. It wasn’t enough to escape everything, but it was enough that her Primal Armour could handle the rest.

As for Raven, even this wasn’t enough to score to a hit. Raven did back off a bit, but not nearly as much as one really should have needed to do in order to properly dodge that.

In between it all, however, Raven still somehow managed to find time to return fire. Raven’s gun, this time ALLMIND’s Multi-Energy Rifle, lashed out with quick, careful shots.

Each and every single one of them hit a barrier on the forward right tread, plinking away at the barrier. One, three, five- and then the sixth disabled that section.

Michigan spun the machine around, treads grinding along the ground with an awful shriek, moving to present a different part of the shielding to Raven.

Ayre was quicker.

A bolt of crimson Coral flashed towards CATAPHRACT BALAM as it turned. Ayre’s aim was perfect, and Michigan had been briefly distracted focusing on trying to prevent the threat from Raven.

The Coral beam hit the armour of the tread, and the armour exploded off in a shower of vaporised and molten metal. She hadn’t managed to hit the emitter directly, but it had landed near enough that it didn’t matter, the thermal dump alone more than enough to detonate that entire section.

“I’ve seen videos of it in action, but damn!” Michigan laughed. “That Coral really isn’t a joke, huh?”

Ayre fired again, this time swapping to rapid bursts. Each hit splashed against a different section of the Pulse Barriers, taking them out with a singular shot.

Michigan’s Boosters flared again, and the machine shot forwards, this time aiming at Ayre.

My daughter didn’t hesitate. She raised an arm, her Coral Lightwave Blade charging up. She dodged at the last possible second, Boosting to the side with such a narrow margin that the treads of the CATAPHRACT actually hit her Primal Armour even if it didn’t hit her AC.

She swung as Michigan went past, unleashing the wide, powerful strike. It went straight across the side of the CATAPHRACT, gouging into the portions that she had just stripped the shielding from.

Molten metal spewed outwards, the Coral Lightwave blade carving a long, angry line across the armour of the CATAPHRACT. Michigan reacted quickly, firing the Boosters again to spin the machine around once more, but even just from that glance I had seen enough to tell that most of its entire right side was now missing defensive Pulse Barriers, and a significant amount of armour on top of that.

Much more worrying for Michigan, Raven was already moving to take advantage. Raven came straight after the CATAPHRACT, LOADER 4 Assault Boosting towards the larger warmachine. A charged Plasma shot went out from the rifle, instantly breaking on the Pulse Barriers, and only a moment later, Raven landed on the frame of the CATAPHRACT, Pile Bunker raised and ready.

Raven thrust it forwards. The Pile Bunker triggered. Its spike shot outwards, hitting dead on against the CATAPHRACT’s armour plating.

It punctured with a sound that was more akin to shriek than an impact. Something inside the machine went off, either a capacitor or an energy feed, and fire spilled through the entire tread.

Pulse energy started to flicker over the Cataphract, and Raven Quick Boosted backwards in an instant, building as much distance as possible.

Wise choice, too.

The CATAPHRACT’s Assault Armour went off a hell of a lot stronger than normal. Easily five times more energy than usual, which meant that they’d probably stocked up on extra capacitors specifically for the Assault Armour. A hell of a surprise, and in this location specifically?

The energy shockwaves crackled through the air, bouncing off the ceiling, flaring with electricity and heat as the cataclysmic blast was reflected in that closed environment. It was strong enough that it stripped nearly the entirety of Ayre’s Primal Armour, despite her having been nearly three times further than the typical safe range for Assault Armour.

Raven avoided all of it by the simple virtue of not having stopped going backwards.

“Gah!” I heard Michigan release a noise of pain. “There’s no good options between the two of you is there?”

Anybody else, and he probably would have killed them with that attack.

CATAPHRACT BALAM shifted, going through a series of quick movements as Michigan tested out how much damage his machine had taken.

It was obvious enough to me that the worst of it was to the tread that Raven had attacked. It was still on fire, and that was generally not a very good thing when the machine wasn’t designed to do that. The tread itself spun slowly, and the Boosters on that particular piece were obviously sputtering with much less power than they should have.

However, Ayre had also done significant damage on her side. No emitters and compromised armour, obviously, but again, the Boosters had been damaged. They weren’t as badly damaged, but it was a significant reduction to Michigan’s mobility.

“Alright, fine!” Michigan shouted. The treads shifted again, reconfiguring before slamming into the ground. “If it’s going to be like that, then-”

The sound of metal groaning interrupted him. There was a brief moment of confusion, before the ground tilted.

“Eh?”

“Oh, motherfu-”

Metal shrieked. Something in the structural supports gave way.

The floor dropped out from underneath them, peeling downwards.

They spilled out into an open section of the Grid, now in the interior. Falling pieces of metal went past the lot of them. All three engaged Boosters, but obviously, the two ACs had a much easier time in flight.

The floor of their previous arena crashed into the exterior grid. Megatons of metal met megatons of more metal, in a collision that sounded like an earthquake and wasn’t far off of one, either.

Michigan landed less gently on the next floor, the CATAPHRACT certainly not intended for such a fall, but still capable of it anyway.

The new arena wasn’t the flat, open space of the previous one. No, this was an exterior dock, multi-layered and full of openings and cover. For the ACs, this was great. For the CATAPHRACT, not so much.

“That could have gone better.” Michigan grumbled. “Alright, round two!”

Michigan opened fire again, sending more bullets towards his opponents. This time, however, both had more options than just dodging.

Ayre went downwards, ducking through an opening in the Grid’s structure. Bullets perforated the ground for a moment, before the guns tracked back upwards towards Raven.

Raven, however, simply went backwards, going behind a metal base of the local cranes. That was about fifteen meters of solid metal, which was more than enough to handle the bullets and cannon shells.

Michigan went sideways, strafing around the area. The moment he went far enough, Raven shot out of cover, and promptly went right over the edge of the docking yard before flipping backwards and going under.

“Oh, you’re going to be a bunch of slippery shits, aren’t you?” Michigan grunted. A moment later, his machine’s Boosters flared, and he launched himself forwards.

From the ground underneath him, bolts of Coral burst upwards and outwards. Ayre fired in double shots, the first to weaken the ground and make a hole, and the second for actually trying to hit the CATAPHRACT. Michigan avoided them with the warning given by the first shot.

He also shot over the edge, and much like Raven, immediately turned around. He went after Ayre, his CATAPHRACT plowing into, and then through, the structural supports. It was a bunch of long, thin pieces of metal, meshed together diagonally.

Not nearly enough to even slow the CATAPHRACT.

Ayre fired several more shots as the CATAPHRACT closed in, bolts of Coral sloughing away the armour of the CATAPHRACT. In turn, Michigan’s bullets, despite Ayre’s best efforts, quickly started to strip away the Primal Armour that surrounded ECHO. It breached quickly in the face of the sheer amount of firepower coming her way, and Ayre quickly Assault Boosted towards Michigan.

She flew just above him, the guns not able to track quickly enough. Michigan cursed, spinning around and activating the lower Boosters, starting to rise after her.

Raven came in from below at that exact moment. Michigan saw LOADER 4, and quickly switched targets, cutting the Boosters.

CATAPHRACT BALAM began to fall. LOADER 4 flung itself from side to side, up and down, as Raven pushed the machine to its absolute limits. Michigan only had a few moments, but he unleashed the totality of CATAPHRACT BALAM’s firepower on Raven.

Pulse energy sparked over LOADER 4’s form.

CATAPHRACT BALAM landed on the ground, but it was already too late. LOADER 4 was underneath it, inside the armoured skirt that protected the warmachine’s core.

The Assault Armour detonated.