*****
“KAISER!” Lippard roared over the loudspeaker, armored footpads pounding over the forest floor as she momentarily ignored her scurrying foes. It was a useless exercise, the deafening noise produced by the surrounding suicidal infantry drowning out her calls.
The question of whether the locals had any fight in them had been answered in capital letters. Her oculars had already been damaged several times, and she suspected that snipers were deliberately aiming for them. The stock of oculars that were stored in her helm was down to two-thirds capacity after less than a minute of battle, with no end in sight to the engagement.
Nothing enraged her more than the sort of tactics she was witnessing at the moment. Whether one called it a human wave attack or a banzai attack, what she saw before her was an almost alien, inhuman commitment to resistance. That fact alone was enough to make her blood boil, but the rage was compounded by the fact that Kaiser had been taken prisoner by the heathens.
How could he?! How could he allow himself to be captured? Deadhand was dead, a gigantic loss for their team. Kaiser’s Suit was beyond repair, which was perhaps an even greater setback. But if Kaiser were somehow forced to speak, the consequences would be disastrous. They hadn’t as yet established themselves at the mines in any way that would allow them to counteract their lack of manpower. And yet the Ebony Tower, hermetically sealed and sanitized in its methods of thinking as it was, had decided to forbid any rescue operations.
All of which meant absolutely nothing to her. The mobile Suit she currently possessed was thermonuclear powered, her lasers feeding on the very same power source, and only food supply limited her autonomy in any appreciable way.
Several rockets suddenly impacted against her frame, the detonations sending her into the dirt below. The performance sphere cocooned her securely, considerably reducing the force of impact. It was, however, entirely inadequate to shield her pride, and it was there that the fall most injured her.
“Das ist es! JEDER STIRBT!!” she roared, her hoarse voice breaking with the effort.
Planting her footpads securely on the ground, she lowered her center-of-mass and gave her system the appropriate orders. All movements in her field of vision suddenly sprouted bright red reticules, and another larger reticule appeared directly in the center of her field of vision. Turning her head, she centered the large cross over the many smaller crosses, the Suit’s OS making the appropriate calculations before activating the co-axial laser. That laser, sharing the space inside her helm along with the oculars and ocular replacement equips, had only one purpose: antipersonnel. It cut through the landscape and bodies fell, and Lippard began for the first time to wonder whether her attackers were human at all. Where was the screaming that usually accompanied its use, where were the bodies cut in pieces, and why were so many exploding into flames? It wasn’t their ammunition that was doing that, although she could hear them popping off as the flames enveloped their burning bodies. Some continued to fight as they burned, and she watched, horrified, wondering whether they were under the influence of narcotics.
One more flash and, somehow, through all the shots and explosions, Lippard began to hear a wailing, screeching sound, shortly followed by someone shouting. The sounds were music to her ears, and she grinned viciously as she turned her armor towards her enemies’ left flank. The screams slowly became less pronounced as she moved along the trenches and foxholes, cutting and burning her way through the vegetation and all who hid there until she could no longer hear anything at all.
Before long, Lippard was moving in silence except for the impact of projectiles against her frame, the occasional explosion, and the tearing sounds produced by her laser beams against their targets. One particular target died hard, hit below by her pulse-rifle and then seared by her co-axial laser, but it kept on firing as it burned, making no sound. She halted her advance and pulled the warrior’s rifle from its hands before picking it up for inspection.
Inside her performance sphere, Lippard’s eyes hardened as she turned it over in her hand, suddenly aware that no amount of force from her gauntlets would be enough to kill it. The vessel in her hands had never known life. It stared at her as it burned before beginning to chirp beautifully, as if encased somewhere within its metallic body a talented songbird sang.
Lifting the obscene creature over her helm, she launched it out into the wilderness, a champion’s throw that would keep it airborne for a few moments at least, flying and singing as it left a charcoal smear across the windy sky.
“KAISER! GET ME OUT OF THIS NIGHTMARE!” she screamed, the loudspeaker of her Suit failing to amplify her words to the volume she felt they deserved. The forest around her smoked and burned, the rising pillars slanting to the north-west as the strengthening wind pushed them away. The scurrying figures continued to fire at her, their obsolete projectiles impacting against her armor to make obsolete sounds.
Then the figures began to retreat towards the mountains. Lippard hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do. Then she began to follow them, lost and uncertain, but aware that among those tin cans some humans could be found. The screaming from before made her certain of that. She would find one of them and squeeze his body as she asked a few questions. Crushing pain was about the worst pain that one could feel, and she had learned by acquired experience that even the toughest combatant could sing like a canary if enough pressure was applied.
She relished the thought, shivering and smiling as her footpads began to pound the earth again.