Cavalier's Gambit -ch 16- (Patreon)

It only took two minutes to reach the ridgeline, but that was more than enough time for an entire battle to start and end.

A lifetime, one could say.

Reaching the peak, Wayne looked down into the line Michelle had been working.

He immediately saw the remains of her squad and what was happening.

Six Dashi Walkers had fanned out and had three Walkers from the Terran Confederation pinned down between some natural stone earthworks.

There were five Dashi Walkers laid out on the ground, as well as two other Confed Walkers.

“Line up on the closest one, ease down under the ridge and fire over the top. Ease your rifles over and hold the angle, keep yourself out of sight if possible,” ordered Wayne. “Use your FCS to lock-on and fire your missiles from here.

“We can resupply from the downed Walkers, so don’t hold back.”

Wayne did as he had ordered himself.

Squatting down behind the ridge, putting his heavy kinetic rifle over the top, and using the crosshair in his HUD.

The AI immediately popped up the distance to target and the crosshair jumped.

Wayne had designated a target for everyone else, but he chose to sight on an Assault Walker that had its cockpit facing him. He trusted his aim better than the others.

Firing his rifle, Wayne didn’t wait to see where it would strike.

He shifted the kinetic rifle around and fired again. Then again.

By the time the first round struck, Wayne had gotten five into the air.

Each following round slammed home into the cockpit. The rounds striking and blasting into the reinforced cockpit material.

Armor piercing my fucking ass.

I need to get a big fucking cannon that—

The cockpit crumpled on the onslaught of rounds. It didn’t blow out as the previous ones had, as if it hadn’t actually been pressurized for some reason.

Wayne had no idea what to think about it and instead pulled his crosshair over to the next in the line.

The five remaining Dashi, which rapidly became four as his squad-mates dropped one, all began scrambling away. They were in the open and firing back at Wayne, and his group wasn’t going to do much given their placement.

One of the Confed Walkers behind the stone stepped out, laid out a base of fire that managed to feel terrifyingly like an angry buzzing bee from this distance, and then stepped back into cover.

Another Dashi Walker went down, one of their legs catching an uneven ditch and the heavy fire from the machinegun-like fire causing it to misstep.

Then a large number of missiles from his squad pounded down into the back of the Walker.

Obliterating it.

One more of the three had been destroyed as what seemed to be an ammo storage went off in the left side of its torso. It was a fully operational Walker one second, then split in half from shoulder to crotch the next.

“Holy shit his missiles cooked off!” someone crowed in his group as the two last Dashi Walkers shambled into the hills. Quickly getting out of view and sight.

Following the line of the hill they’d taken cover behind, it was likely they’d stay in it till it ran into more rocky areas that they could move through.

A shuddering on the horizon line caught Wayne’s attention.

Almost immediately, a white box unfolded and spread out. Revealing to him that this speck in the distance was a drop ship.

“Fuck it,” Wayne mumbled and then stood up partly. He lined his kinetic cannon up on the ship.

His FCS was ready to lock on, but wasn’t bracketed in yet.

If he let it go full, the ship would know it was painted.

For his laser cannon, he’d already noticed the current cell was down to thirty-some odd percent. At the end of this fight, he would have to replace it regardless.

Instead, he began to charge the next shot, letting it build up slowly, since he wasn’t sure when the ship would be coming.

Though he knew it would.

The two Walkers that had made it into the cover of the hills had called it for sure.

Or so Wayne believed.

Admittedly it was an assumption, but it felt fairly reasonable.

Wayne tapped into his FCS and then forcefully pushed it into the other four members of his squad. Their computers responded in the affirmative in the shared targeting system information.

No-one could lock on since he hadn’t yet, and this was a shared targeting.

“What-what’re we aiming at?” someone asked.

“Drop ship,” answered Wayne. “Hold fire till I call it.”

Seconds ticked by and then the Dashi ship was coming their way. Shooting low across the ground and keeping its altitude to the bare minimum as it came on.

Guessing at the point where it would need to remain true and on target to reach its final location, somewhere beyond where they could see, that it could land briefly, Wayne readied himself. His laser cannon had been powered up and his kinetic rifle was leveled.

His AI plotted the trajectory against where Wayne was aiming, suggested a firing solution, and started a four second countdown.

Which made Wayne’s job a lot easier. He would have been guessing at the timing out right.

When the timer hit one second, he locked the FCS in, then fired as it ticked to zero. The ping of the lock going full droned in his ear.

Laser beams, kinetic rounds, and missiles, all flared out in what he could only think of as a “Launch”. As if everything had been hit at the exact same time.

The dropship didn’t even seem to know what was happening. Or hadn’t thought it was in danger.

More than seventy percent of the rounds hit the target, missiles slashed through the wings, and sent the ship to the ground. Skipping erratically across the terrain and bouncing wildly.

The low gravity not helping it much at all as it spun end over end and cartwheeled along.

“Eat it, piece of spisht!” shouted someone in his squad.

“Frelk me, Cavalier Hesh. We just knocked a dropship out,” another said.

“Squad leader eighteen to squad nineteen,” Wayne said into Michelle’s com channel. “Do you need further assistance? Can we help?”

He was feeling rather pleased with himself, having rescued her.

“Our squad-leader’s dead,” a woman said in a low and frightened tone.

Err… Michelle is dead?

Oh. Uhm.

Okay.

“Your numbers are too small to carry out your mission,” Wayne summarized. “Come on over, you’ll join my squad for the remainder. We’ll take the bunker my squad was supposed to, then we’ll go see if we can’t complete your own mission anyways.

“If memory serves, you were supposed to just make sure there weren’t any gun emplacements that were crewed. That right?”

“Yeah,” said a different voice, though she sounded nervous.

“Fine… we’ll cover you, get up here. Pick up any ammo, weapons, or supplies from your comrades as you come if you can. We’ll probably need it,” Wayne ordered.

He felt amped at the moment. His adrenaline was on full blast, and his mind felt as if it were operating faster than he could truly comprehend.

Having just been in another firefight with his life on the line, he was starting to feel it was oddly normalizing. That this was a normal state of mentality as a Walker pilot.

“This was a mistake,” whimpered one of the voices on Michelle’s coms channel. “A mistake. I’ll never-no. Never again. A mistake.”

“Hush,” stated the other in a no-nonsense type of way.

“I’m sending you a coms channel. Swap over to it,” Wayne ordered. “We move out as soon as you clear some ammo for us and then we’re back on track for our goals.

“We’ll move at full speed to make up for lost time, then go from there.”

***

Wayne leaned out past the massive boulders his squad was hiding behind. He once again sighted the bunker and was immediately frustrated.

It was most certainly manned.

There was a field gun inside of it, along with two machine guns.

The former had enough punch to absolutely knock a hole through a cockpit in one go.

Both of the latter weapons looked to be a heavy caliber that could possibly punch through a Walker with enough rounds being put into the same area.

“How are we supposed to take that?” asked one of the people from Michelle’s squad.

“Take it,” Wayne repeated, thinking over his orders. “Take it?”

His orders were to neutralize the bunker and hold the position.

Nothing in those orders had said anything about actually maintaining the position. Which realistically wasn’t possible, since they were in Walkers.

There was a part of him that felt like he was deliberately misconstruing his orders, but this felt like a better option.

“Fuck it. All of you drop missiles on it,” Wayne said with a sudden thought. If they launched all their missiles, especially Wayne, since he had most of them, they could probably knock the bunker down outright. “Missiles all over it, in front of it, atop it. Just barrage it into the ground.

“If you’re feeling adventurous, lay down covering fire from your rifles as well. That’d work. We don’t need to take the location as much as neutralize it.”

His squad moved away from him, and he could tell they were all preparing themselves. Likely trying to get their FCS to lock onto the bunker.

Wayne peeked out once again and forced his FCS to lock onto the bunker through the AI. Then he ducked back behind cover and sent it by comms link to the others.

“Fire on my order, though feel free to lock on fully. It’s a designated location rather than a piece of equipment. They probably can’t tell,” ordered Wayne, doing exactly that.

Everyone went still in their Walkers.

“Fire,” Wayne said and launched his own pod. “Keep firing!”

At the same time, he got a failure.

One he hadn’t seen before.

His missile launcher just threw an error that said the whole array had shorted out.

That meant it wouldn’t be firing ever again.

“Freeeeelk me,” groaned Wayne.

Peeking around the corner once more, he found that the bunker was wreathed in explosions and thrown up debris.

Shaking his head, Wayne made a snap choice that’d probably be the death of him. Even then, though, he really didn’t think that the bunker would be destroyed as it was now.

Pushing his Walker to full speed, Wayne sprinted out from around the corner. The low gravity of the moon helped him as soon as he hit the open space.

Each step he took was controlled by the implant rather than the auto-run feature.

Wayne was more akin to a rocket himself at the moment, with the speed he was propelling himself across the barren landscape of the moon. The world sped up faster and faster as he went, though he felt more and more in tune with it.

In a flash, he reached the bunker.

Roughly about the same time that the missiles stopped falling.

That or he just didn’t even notice them anymore.

Staring into the opening of the bunker, Wayne realized he had a suitable answer to the question of how to get inside it, or at least, deal with it.

Pushing the left arm of his Walker into the entry, he fired up the cell to his cannon to full, ran it right up to the red line, then ejected the cell.

Right into the bunker.

Ducking out to the right, Wayne pulled his Walker out of the line of fire. He’d seen what was in that bunker, and didn’t want to stand in front of it for another second.

The guns inside had been far larger than he’d thought.

Standing there, Wayne looked back from where he had started. The distance was rather long and open. There wasn’t much in the way of cover, other than where the rest of his squad was.

A narrow ravine that led right up to the bunker perched at the top of it and looked down. An approach that wouldn’t do anyone any good for any reason.

The only decent way to get in was by Walker, and the guns put inside would have made that disgusting.

Wayne’s thoughts ended as the cell he had ejected went off.

Flames burst out of the bunker in every possible location. From the front, small cracks on the top formed by the missiles, and blowing out a small hatch that’d been disguised.

Then the flames were gone as soon as they’d arrived. Quickly chewing through what little oxygen and combustible material they had.

Racing back around the bunker, Wayne stuffed his rearmed laser cannon into the bunker’s front. Only the barrel fit, given it was meant for people outside of Walkers to inhabit.

There was no-one living inside.

Despite that, Wayne put the barrel at where someone could have been, in the back of the bunker and in an alcove. He pulled the trigger and swept the laser around.

As if he were power washing the inside of the bunker.

“Cavalier Hesh!?” came repeated calls over the coms.

“Shift up! On the fucking quintuple!” shouted Wayne. “When you get here, I want One, Two, Three, and Four here on this bunker and to hold it. I’m taking the rest of the squad up to take Michelle’s target!”

Wayne stared into the bunker and watched it even as the rest of his people joined him. Making sure there wouldn’t be any surprises coming out of it.

“Cavalier, we’re all ready,” said a voice from behind him. It sounded like one of the two people he’d picked up from Michelle’s group.

Glancing at his display, he confirmed that his people were here.

He had no idea how it worked, if it was radar, laser confirmation, or something else entirely, but it worked. All seven blips on the screen were blue and throwing back a positive IFF.

“Great, Five, Six, Seven, with me,” Wayne ordered and withdrew from the bunker. If there was someone in there, they’d get to live for now.

Pivoting, Wayne ran on from the bunker toward the massive artillery platform.

Which really wasn’t a platform, but looked more like a massive and squat bunker itself. Stretching from one side to the other of his view and at least two-hundred feet into the air.

While Wayne couldn’t see the top, he knew that it was loaded with massive guns that could knock things out of space and acted as a defensive emplacement.

He briefly wondered if it’d been active when the Dashi attacked, or if it did its job, but there were just too many.

A wonder-weapon, an impregnable defense, all of that is great, so long as it can handle the capacity. The burden.

What if they flood the skies with capital ships.

Would it even matter that this place exists?

With that thought, Wayne spotted Michelle’s destination.

In his head, he’d seen it as something similar to the bunker he took.

It wasn’t at all.

This was a full-fledged anti-aircraft emplacement that could knock even a full-sized military grade dropship out of the sky.

The type of ship that had armor comparative to some capital-ships.

A true problem if they wanted to land anywhere near this platform and take it to repurpose it.

Michelle’s mission had been actually somewhat more important than his own.

There was a massive cannon pointed skyward that was unmanned at the moment. Though there were pallets of shells not far off that could be loaded in a hurry.

“Damn,” someone said. “That’s… that’s no joke.”

“No, no it isn’t. Michelle’s orders were just to secure it as far as I know. Was there anything else?” Wayne asked.

“No,” said a new voice. It wasn’t someone who’d spoken yet. Which meant it was the third member of the group that’d been silent so far.

“Alright. Then we’ll secure it. The bunker isn’t worth as much as this, so we’ll remain here,” Wayne finished, then sighed.

“Contact,” someone in his group mumbled.

“What? Where,” Wayne demanded, turning and looking around.

“On the horizon,” the person said. “I saw it flash for a moment. I think it fired something.”

Wayne couldn’t even begin to imagine how they’d spotted that. They’d have to have been looking practically in the wrong direction.

Leaning back, Wayne looked the way indicated.

Instantly a white box unfurled itself.

A Dashi… battlecruiser? Holy crap.

The hell is that.

And why did I get information on it? How the fuck does this thing even work?

Whatever.

Uh… Dashi battlecruiser.

Alright. So you’re one of the bastards who’s being a shit-heel to Faesin.

Wayne realized that the Dashi ship was coming their way, or at least, coming closer.

Frowning, Wayne called on the AI in his Walker. He wanted to know where to put a shell if he managed to fire-off the anti-aircraft gun.

Then realized that was stupid, as far as thoughts went.

If he got out of his Walker, he’d be subjected to the vacuum of space, and so, wouldn’t be able to use the AI anymore. Nor could he actually use the cannon while in his Walker.

The weapons he had wouldn’t do much, other than blacken the paint on that battlecruiser either.

A stupid thought once more popped into Wayne’s head.

Digging into the AI even as it tried to compute a firing plot for him, Wayne ejected the hard connection of the heavy kinetic rifle in his right hand.

There was a boom that mildly shook the Walker as the weapon was disconnected, falling to the ground, though he couldn’t hear it.

He only felt it rumble through the ground.

Wayne walked over to the anti-aircraft cannon and looked at it critically.

The whole thing was bolted into place on a turret looking type of thing. It was easily twice the size of his own Walker.

Given its placement, even if he got out, there would be no way of lowering it enough to actually fire at the battlecruiser.

It was a rear-loaded weapon though, which meant he could probably make something happen here. It’d just be super fucking awkward.

The whole of it looked very manual, without any electronics attached to it at all. He had no idea why, but that made it easier for him to actually make this happen.

“Hey, everyone come over here, you’re gonna help me fire this,” ordered Wayne.

Lifting his left hand up, he fired a long beam from his laser cannon into the turret’s base plate. He didn’t stop until the metal had become a bright glowing orange color.

Ejecting the spent cell, he then grabbed the massive cannon and began wrenching it backward and then forward.

Three other Walker hands joined his own and they pushed and pulled at it.

With a tremor, the turret tore free of its emplacement, and the cannon clattered to one side with a ground rumbling thump when it hit the ground.

Wayne grabbed up the front of it and angled it toward the oncoming battlecruiser. Almost as soon as he did, a red crosshair appeared.

In conjunction, a targeting point appeared as well.

It was way too high.

“Someone fucking load me,” Wayne ordered. “Another one of you hold it at the base so I can keep it straight.”

“Isn’t it too big for this?” asked someone from Michelle’s group. It sounded like the woman who’d been on edge.

“Yeah, I’m a big boy. You’ll need to use two hands and grip me firmly. You might all need to get your hands on it, or you won’t handle it right,” quipped Wayne while angling the barrel around. There was a bark of laughter on the comms at that and someone else snickered. Thankfully, it sounded like the same woman who’d just spoken. Once again, humor had broken the tension. “I need a flatter trajectory. Lift it at the base. Tell me when we’re loaded.”

The barrel slowly tilted downward as someone lifted the back end of the cannon.

“Yeah, hold it there,” Wayne ordered as the crosshair dipped below the firing point. If it was below, he could adjust upward.

Now, the ship was somewhat visible. He could just barely make out that it was indeed something large and moving toward them.

“Loaded,” someone else said.

“Great, get another round ready. No reason not to fire a few times if we can,” Wayne growled.

Lifting up the barrel, he got the crosshair on the firing point. Only to realize he couldn’t shoot it.

“Fire,” he said, wondering if anyone knew how to actually launch this fucker.

He kept the crosshair on the firing plot and waited.

Surprisingly, the cannon fired.

A shell that was probably the size of his Walker’s leg tore out of the cannon and blasted off and away.

The recoil was so strong that it slipped several inches out of Wayne’s death grip.

Pushing it forward, Wayne levered it back into position and held onto it. There was a lot of movement behind him on the cannon though.

To the point that it even slammed forward.

“Loaded!” someone called.

Oh. They were reloading it.

Nice.

Wayne lined up the next shot, the same as the first. The firing plot had shifted downward some, though it wasn’t moving wildly.

“Fire,” Wayne commanded.

This time the shot was instantaneous.

The barrel also didn’t recoil as badly this time. As if everyone held onto it more firmly.

Once again, Wayne moved the big cannon around till he had it where it’d been originally. Before he’d even settled though, he felt the thump of the gun being shut tight again.

“Loaded,” came the call.

“Fire,” Wayne ordered immediately.

Which happened instantaneously again.

As Wayne pushed the cannon into position, he watched as the third shell flew off. All three had been glowing slightly as they went.

The first two struck the battlecruiser and didn’t seem to do much.

Much like the first two, the third did the same. It landed on the target, though the now visible battlecruiser kept coming.

“Loaded.”

“Fire.”

Flying off, the fourth round looked to be tracking perfectly on target to hit.

Except it missed.

Badly.

The Dashi battlecruiser had just fallen out of the sky. The prow of the big spaceship dipping down suddenly and then planting into the ground.

Except, the ass of the ship kept coming.

Slowly, the whole thing went head over heels. Grinding the front of the battlecruiser into the rocky terrain.

Until the rear end of the battlecruiser slammed into the ground.

Only for the propulsion systems to explode. Blue and orange flames shooting outward in a strange sphere.

“Frelk me,” whispered the woman in his squad. “You took it out.”

“Loaded,” came the statement from his loader.

Wayne grinned, then began to scan the horizon.

If anyone else decided to show up, he’d be happy to greet them too.