Those suck. This is Clan war; suck it up and soldier.
Kyra was 35th level, even if all her mech’s weren’t dune attuning to the new state yet, and the Ten Who Were Taken, her command in the Defenders of Bunny, massed a respectable 740 tons. The problem was bearing down on her command of ceremetal, steel, and niode driven fury. Michael warred for the Smurf Legion, bringing 925 tons and 40 levels of experience to the party. He had met and defeated her easily earlier, before she leveled up to 35, true, but her mecha were little changed, and that left her over matched badly.
Her Namtar, The Lady of Pain, with her minions, Shapeshifter, and The Limper in their own Namtar’s looked upon the advancing ranks and snarled. Lady was facing Michael’s Freon “Ice Man”, while her Namtar wing men were facing two nameless shiny red Inferno. This was the rank he didn’t outnumber her, as the disparity was actually greater in the next two ranks.
She could see her mecha shifting nervously, getting defensive and preparing to try not to lose, which tactic could only prolong a loss, and not actually lead to a win. Kyra snarled. She was the Lady of Pain, and they, the Ten Who Were Taken. People feared her, she did not fear anyone. The Taken feared only her. It is time they remembered.
“The Ten Who Were Taken will advance. I expect kills from all of you, and I will have the flesh of the back of anyone who falls without blood on their weapons” She kicked her Namtar into a graceful run. The big machine was overpowered, and the delicate balance between an engine that size in too little space meant compromises on shielding that often led to “kickback”, but what that danger bought was agility unusual in a heavy mecha, and she used it with deadly efficiency.
Hearing the howls and shrieks of her minions, she closed with the surprised Smurfs, and actually shocked him into a staggering halt when the golden plasma of her Smelter caused his Fire Shields to flare bright as lightning before failing and letting the ravening fire carve deep flaming claw marks in Ice Man. Kyra’s savage laughter was swallowed in the roar of the square flames that punished her advancing Namtar’s, but she cared not, first blood belonged to the Taken, and the Bunnies.
The odd lurching gait of The Limper was worsened by the hammer of flame that flared down his starboard flank, but the old killer’s heart was colder than deep space, and he rode the recoil of his mecha’s reaction to bring his own guns on line, and flashed a Blizzard Ray into the Inferno, its shuddering lurch arguing it had neglected to shield against ice at all. Pity that.
Howling in rage, the shocked pilot of the Inferno cut loose with his Plasma Torch and carved deep into the chest armor of the Namtar, exposing its vulnerable internals, but not actually breaching them. Kyra reacted to the danger to her pilot with cold fury. She had to finish Michael if she was to aid The Limper. Overriding her targeting, she selected her Galaxy Eye, and let her eyes unfocus. She took a punishing blow from Ice Man, as the Freon continued what it believed was a fight, unaware it had become an execution. Kyra waited almost through the Freon’s recycle time, until the flicker of shields that she noticed preceded his firing happened again, and then she punched the over-charged Galaxy Eye through the breach, and deep into the internals of the Freon. It disappeared behind a cloud of white smoke as its reserves of coolant and nanites breached, and when the smoke cleared, it was as if the Freon knelt to his conqueror.
The Limper was shut down, but Michael’s own Ice man was destroyed, Lady and Shapeshifter pitted their Namtars against the twin Inferno, and the massive Niode mecha reeled beneath the assault of their smaller, weaker, crystal foes. Namtar and Inferno swapped Liquid Torches and savaged each other, while Lady’s Galaxy Eye carved great slices of her Inferno foe, slowing the ponderous machine further. The next exchange saw both reeling Inferno broken, and the Smurfs second line charged forward.
Four on two, and those wounded, it didn’t last long. The lead Oggun avenged his comrades with a spread from his Goliath rack, hammering the battered Shapeshifter into scrap. But the Lady’s reply with her Smelter cost the Smurfs the catastrophic kill of an untouched Freon. Battle was shifting, in the minds, if not reality, towards the Taken, and the Bunnies. Ogguns and Freons combine their fury, with focused Icers and Smooth bores hammering the battered Namtar Lady to its knees, but as the stricken mecha falls, she triggers a final Blizzard Ray that flenses half the armor off her killer. Now an untouched Bunny line charges to avenge the Lady against the half broken line of the Smurfs. The Ten Who Were Taken have seen the Lady draw blood, and the weight of numbers and metal nearly evened. Their fury will do the rest.
The Taken second rank hammers their opposite numbers, and scars badly the rank behind. The battle quickly dissolves into a close range slug fest, with neither side attempting to dodge, only to close and kill.
Fury is not enough, not against skilled opponents in top rated gear. Michael’s line of Krampus met Oggun and Orrester in what should have been a walkover, and yet was not. Again both sides battered themselves to scrap. Michaels reserves stepped in at last, a Megazome, two Orresters and a Namtar faced a Fides, two Orresters and an Oggun. The weight of metal, experience, and weapons clearly favored the Smurfs, but they faced The Ten Who Were Taken, who wile less than sane in many respects, were utterly without fear when the fought under they eye of the Lady.
The squat Megazome stalked the tiny Fides, the giant spider against the little spider in an unequal contest. Lacking the armor, shielding, and extensive weapons selection of its better armed, better armored, cousin, Shadowspinner trusted his Fides to the Lady’s teachings, and eschewed defense in an unwinnable fight and went to full attack. Jumping his Fides forward and left, he triggered his Galaxy Eye in a blue scream of defiance. Under the blue fire of the eye, the massive spider seemed to burn like a flesh spider in a lighter, crumpling around the sun hot beam as it sliced deep into the sensor nexus and control systems of the mecha, causing critical overloads in every system, and setting off a chain of internal explosions.
Whisper and Toadkiller dog faced their opposite numbers, the nameless Orresters of the Smurfs. They were not nameless, they were Taken. The Ladies own. They surrendered a little armor to their foes, but were otherwise closely matched in everything but fury. They used that fury. Closing the range, they hammered their siblings with ice and fire, before stopping dead, and unloading a double ration of ferrite tipped Large Fury missiles at their cousins, watching the missiles shriek in to exploit the point damage of their earlier weapon strikes. One nameless Orrester diverted to slam a rail cannon into Shadowspinner’s Fides, killing it, even as the nameless Namtar hammered Stormbringer’s Oggun, trading Smooth Bore for Rail Cannon strikes.
Toadkiller Dog threw back his Orester’s great black head and howled; his Black Rain answered, as sixty missiles launched in a rippling double wave to embrace the enemy Namtar and Orrester in a glorious double kill. Whisper’s own reply was quiet as her name, as a slowly sequenced ripple of aimed Large Fury missiles took her terminal guidance to gnaw away at the last of the engine shielding on the final Smurf Orrester, and see the pilot choose to punch out, before the erupting engines burned him out.
Outmatched, out-massed, outgunned, but not outfought; the Ten Who Were Taken stood above the shattered wreckage of their foe and howled their triumph, while the mad laughter of the Lady of Pain gave answer. Never give up, never stop fighting. This is Clan War, and victory belongs to those who want it most.
Submitted by John T Mainer#28840