The Mechaneer

Chapter 36: Fire Support

Rudy winced as his back impacted the Magpie's hard floor for the second time in ten minutes, again when Chloe landed atop him. He eased her aside and rolled to his feet just as another tremor rocked the transport.

Chloe looked around frantically. "What in the world?"

"Sounds like Stephan's goons didn't live up to your expectations." Rudy sprinted across the rocking deck to the screen on the far wall. A touch of his palm brought up the view from outside.

It wasn't pretty.

The Black Rook, shedding silver and no longer glowing like a wannabe Imperial, smashed through a pair of line mecha and into the battlecruiser's hull. One of the aristocratic mecha's arms ended at the wrist. One of its thruster-wings vented fuel from a severed tip. The Divine Auric Drake and two smaller Wyverns swept down after it, backlit by the vast searchlights of the Reformer as it pressed weirdly through the gravitic distortion of the larger capital ship's shields.

"I take it back," Rudy said.

Chloe joined him at the window.

"Stephan's the one who isn't living up to expectations,” Rudy continued. “Slava must've made a run for it because his boss is getting his ass kicked."

"We have to –" Chloe bit her lip.

"What? Help him?"

"Stephan is risking his life for us. For me, anyway."

"Bully for him," Rudy said. "For once, though, he has the right idea. Namely, that we need to get the hell out of here. We're already taking fire from the Reformer, as seen by our unfortunately-timed trip to the deck."

Chloe looked away. Either she didn't want to concede the point, or thinking about them almost kissing clammed her up.

Rudy suppressed a sigh. When it wasn't her spacer morality or his acting like an asshole, the universe just had to step in and throw a wrench in the proceedings, didn't it? If he'd been a religious guy, he'd have had to question the beneficence of the Almighty Principle.

As though to emphasize his doubts, the Errant Magpie shuddered again. The Reformer's secondary guns tracked the transport, spitting shells bigger than the mecha fighting outside. The Magpie's shields couldn't create a gravitic distortion big enough to throw those anti-capital-ship weapons off course.

"Not too concerned about collateral damage, are they?" Rudy muttered.

"Why would they be? Me being with Stephan raises the stakes. They can't let somebody they think is an Imperial end up with the aristocracy."

"Point." Rudy had always hated watching others fight. With his and Chloe's lives on the line, he found new reserves of loathing. "I wish those guys up top would hurry. At this rate, I'm gonna get so sick of sitting here and watching things play out, I'll hop in a mecha and save Stephan's worthless ass."

Said ass certainly looked in need of saving. The Black Rook dashed one Wyvern against the battlecruiser hull with straight telekinesis. No light show now that he was fighting for his life, apparently. The Divine Auric Drake effortlessly rolled around the wave of invisible force, his remaining wingman close behind him.

Avalon's polearm shot out. Stephan turned the blow less than a meter from his cockpit, shearing off part of his mecha's shoulder and leaving a sparking line scored in the battlecruiser's hull.

Drake and Wyvern hurtled back from what had to be some kind of telekinetic shield, but while the smaller mecha struggled to correct its momentum, Avalon recovered almost instantly and surged back in.

Rudy whistled. "The hell'd he learn to fight like that?"

"He seemed very good at the Wellach Cup," Chloe said. "He almost beat you, right?"

"Yeah, but this is just over the top. Hell, at this rate, he's gonna practically solo a nob. I've never seen Marcel pull off moves like this."

"Maybe he's never had to."

Rudy shot her a glare. She ignored it.

The Black Rook seemed just as surprised as the Crimson Phoenix. He flew backwards across the battlecruiser's hull, dodging lightning thrusts from the Divine Auric Drake, weaving between the weapon and sensor mounts protruding from the dead vessel.

One of those mounts exploded, raining shrapnel. Stephan rolled away. Avalon plowed through, batting aside debris almost casually.

Chloe gasped. "Now what?"

"The Reformer is sitting inside the edge of the battlecruiser’s shield bubble. Half its guns can fire through it," Rudy said. "Marcel must have called in fire support."

The two mecha circled. Against the gigantic backdrop of the battlecruiser, they looked like two armored men facing off. The other Feds backed off, apparently less confident than their leader in their ability to dodge the Reformer's fire. Or maybe less confident the destroyer would hold its fire on their account.

The Black Rook stretched out a palm. The Divine Auric Drake tried to dodge, but instead of blasting Avalon, Stephan pulled him forward. The once-again-black mecha's other arm shot forward to meet the gold with the telekinetic blast Avalon must have expected from the first gesture.

Then both disappeared into a cloud of swift-dying fire and cascading metal.

Chloe glanced at Rudy, her eyes wide with confusion.

For a few seconds, he could only return the same look.

Even with his mechaneering experience, it took until another explosion rocked the battlecruiser before he understood what he'd just seen.

The Reformer had found the range to the mecha dueling beneath it. Every one of its shells massed more than the Divine Auric Drake and the Black Rook combined and slammed into the battlecruiser's composite armor with more acceleration than the best inertial dampener in the galaxy could negate. With its attacker inside its shields, even the battlecruiser itself couldn't survive that kind of pounding.

Two mecha on its surface sure as hell couldn't.

Had Marcel Avalon actually killed Stephan Kyrillos?

Had he died trying?

Or both?

Rudy leaned toward the screen, fists balled. He didn't know who to root for, or whether he should hope both men dead, but he sure as hell wanted to know what had happened.

Despite the violence of the impact it hurtled from, the debris moved painfully slowly. The last inflamed battlecruiser atmosphere burned away, the artificial asteroid field of shattered armor parted. Something metallic moved under its own power within the cloud.

Then the scene collapsed as the Errant Magpie's compression tunnel warped the light into unintelligible patterns.