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Here's the picture: Posted Image
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When our lance, consisting of an Atlas, Hunchback, Catapult, Cataphract, and myself in an Awesome, dropped down onto this acidic valley I could sense everyone's hearts drop into their gut. The coms where quiet except for the subtle hiss of noise. We knew what we were in for and we knew it was going to be rough. Before the drop our commander seemed nervous, my best friend who pilots the Hunchback had some doubts if he was ready for this, and our Catapult pilot was only halfway through her training. We're running short on men, but things have never been this rough. I flipped through my mind like a catalogue on everything that I've been trained, the mission briefing, the state of my teammates, and my mech’s arsenal. As my mech powered up, I listened to the comforting voice end the start-up sequence with, "All Systems: Nominal."
*bmf...* The first footstep was taken by our commander in the Atlas to my left. "Here we go..." I thought to myself; followed by my own mech's footsteps.
Forward we went. I felt good about the desolate landscape. Chances are we won't even see any mechs today. Although, I massaged the smooth surface of the trigger; ready for anything. My finger stopped and placed a firm grip on the trigger as we ascended the caldera’s slope and stopped. Nothing was in our sights and I felt comforted. Our atlas took it upon himself to start going round the leftside rim of the caldera; we followed shortly behind him as we watched the valleys and hills on our 9. With still nothing insight, we descended the backside of the caldera and stopped just short of some buildings and 6 massive vats of liquid in the ground. As we were inspecting the site and reporting information back to HQ, I heard our commander's heavy footsteps go again.
*bmf bmf bmf.*
I torso twisted around to see his direction and put my hand on the throttle, but something was wrong. He wasn't moving. I looked around from side to side. No one was moving. I hear over the coms from our hunchback, "Uhhh..... does anyone else hear that??"
"BACKS TO THE HILL!" I hear our commander scream. Without hesitation I slammed the throttle straight back and we marched in reverse towards the hill and away from the structures, side by side - just like clockwork. We halted at the base of the hill and panned our torso’s, scanning the area, ready for action, but not sure what to expect...
*bmfbmf bmfbmfbmf bmf* There was more footsteps. Louder, too...
Over the coms we hear our commander say, "Switching-" and it was then I knew exactly what he was about to say. I didn't like that what it was, but I did the same anyways. "-to thermal vision."
What I saw then were fields upon fields of mechs, all of them invisible except to our thermals. Who they were, where they came from, what they were doing - we didn't know. The coms were instantly cluttered with everyone’s voices, "OH MY GOD!!-" "They never said anything about this!" "HOLY ****!!! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE" "WHAT THE ****!!!" "****!!" "OPEN FIREEE!"
In my last moments I took aim, and squeezed the trigger...
Edited by MoonUnitBeta, 11 November 2012 - 10:29 PM.
