Here is the scene just before
what I showed you guys.
I still need to improve the wording and connect the pieces, but if you forgive me, I will post more excerpts of the book here:
***
He watched the radar screen: five bogeys moving fast at his direction. It was his fault to be in such a FUBAR. When his half-destroyed company was being chased down the canyon by the enemy mechs, he told everyone to keep moving while he would stay behind and buy them some time. They tried to argue, but everybody knew his
Stalker was the slowest in the group. Judging by how fast those unidentified mechs were, he had no chance to escape. So he positioned himself in a turn, back against the canyon wall and waited.
He didn’t have to wait for long. The enemies strode confidently, reaching almost 200 meters of distance. Nan chose that spot so he could fire all his guns at optimum range. He couldn’t win this showdown, not against those foes, but he would at least ruin somebody’s day before going down.
The mech at the front was impressive. It reminded a sleeker, more modern
Catapult with
Marauder's arms. It was painted with a giant green bird of prey in its torso. The other mechs followed just behind it.
Nan stepped out of his cover and fired his six lasers and two missile launchers at the first mech. The enemy surprise was very brief. As dozens of missiles still splashed all over his mech, the pilot kept the aim and fired in return. "He is good", Nan thought. With his Stalker rocking by the impact of laser and missiles, Nan noticed the enemy mech was still charging in his direction, while the other mechs stopped. What are they doing? But Nan didn’t have time to think much because his weapons were ready to fire again. As he shot all guns the second time, he felt an oppressive wave of heat flow into his cockpit. His
Stalker wasn’t designed to keep firing all weapons in so short space of time.
Soon as his last missile hit the enemy mech, Nan saw with horror that it was still in one piece and getting closer. It was unstoppable! Nan quickly turned off his missile launchers – the target was so close now that they wouldn’t be effective. The opponent didn’t fire any weapons this time, so he was either toying with Nan or he built up too much heat himself.
For a moment, he got the impression he saw a sixty glowing spot in the radar, but his whole mech was overloaded with the temperature and the sensors were flickering. The lasers were ready to fire once more and Nan did it at point blank range. Even with the fading crosshairs and failing sensors, all the lasers connected, burning through the side torso and blowing the enemy Mech's left arm, still not stopping it. Messages of "Heat Level Critical! Shutdown Imminent" showed in is hud. "That’s it, I’m going to die", thought Nan. But there was no shot in retribution. The elegant metal beast started finally to lose balance and suddenly felt, nose first, right in front of Nan’s
Stalker.
But Nan didn’t have any time to cheer because his mech, unable to cope with so much heat, entered in automatic shutdown. He was sweating hard and almost passing away, but through the cockpit glass he saw something strange. There was a mech up the ridge moving in direction of the enemy formation. He recognized the crimson red
Hunchback: it was Yamato.
Those few seconds until his mech turn on were blurry and unreal. The largest mech in the enemy formation, a blocky machine, started walking forward with four menacing cannons pointed at him, but didn’t shoot. Meanwhile, Yamato threw his
Hunchback from almost 20 meters high just above the three remaining mechs and engaged them in a savage brawl.
The
Stalker finally turned on. Nan had just the time to bring the aim against the new target and when he was about to press the fire button, his mech’s left torso exploded, shaking him from the seat. What was that? PPCs, he guessed. The ammunition stored in his torso blew up, but thankfully the CASE system worked, isolating the explosion. He was half stunned but miraculously managed to keep the mech standing up. There was a lot of smoke now inside the cockpit and red lights blinking – if he wasn’t deafened by the explosion, Nan would hear all sort of warnings. The screens showed he had just lost half of his weapons. If only one salvo from the enemy mech did that, he had no chance. He reached for the ejecting lever but couldn’t pull it. “Stuck! Now I’m screwed.” And this time he saw the four man-made lightening rays discharged against his
Stalker. There was a big explosion and everything went black.
Edited by Odanan, 02 September 2015 - 10:40 AM.
111
cdlord, on 27 August 2015 - 09:08 AM, said:
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