We’d closed half the distance when I saw a blip on the comm-net that might have been one of the Ceta jockeys.
“Papa, did you see that?” I asked.
“See what?” he replied, but I didn’t have time to answer before a clatter of small-caliber fire erupted down the street at the perimeter of the anti-aircraft park.
Ardennes picked out the staccato of infantry-operated machine guns, which meant the rebels had threatened the second battery. We were close enough to catch their boosted Mil-freq radio comms even through overcast.
“Contact, contact! Enemy armor and infantry at the east checkpoint. Request backup!”
“Never mind,” I said, picking up speed, “friendlies taking fire.”
Felix moved up, spreading out to my left side as we made to intercept the attack on the battery. “Give ’em a hand. But remember, Vandal, don’t get drawn into a brawl. We need to pull him away from his allies.”
“Copy,” I said.
Another wave of outgoing missiles streaked out of the battery. The crew did well to maintain their fire discipline with enemy uprights knocking at the door. Unlike the short-range rotary cannons, these were hardcore anti-air missiles firing at targets as far as fifty kilometers away (though how they acquired targets through Overcast I couldn’t say. Onboard AI maybe). As the missiles flew up and east into the blue haze, I glanced over my shoulder, wondering what they fired at.
Noise ahead of me drew my attention back to the ground. A building near me had been flattened, and the shadow of an upright stepped through the dust and debris, turning to face me.
Reacting out of pure self-preservation, I slammed my ballistic shrouds to front and brought my Bulldogs to bear before I recognized the black and yellow checkered livery through the dust. It belonged to the ramshackle recon upright I’d first seen aboard the Winter: Theseus.
“Dancer?” I asked, confused, but I understood as soon as she cleared the gap and I looked at the white and gold Paladin Devil standing on the other side in a heavy MBU.
“Contact! Paladin upright!” I shouted, opening up with both cannons.
This was no scout looking for targets of opportunity and spotting for artillery. The 200-ton monster in my sights had been designed to take a beating and keep coming. And that’s exactly what he did, widening the hole in the building left by Dancer with sweeps of his thick gun barrels. Dust billowed at his feet as he forced his way through.
He tried to take a shot at the retreating recon, but the impact of my alternating AP and HE rounds threw off the Paladin jockey’s aim just enough to carve out the face of a short hab tower instead.
Naturally he turned his sensor ball to address the idiot actually shooting at him, following with his turret. And boy, was that a lot of firepower turning my direction.
“Vandal, get out of there!”
I couldn’t say whether it was Rocco or Felix who shouted at me, but it was all the encouragement I needed. I launched a smoke canister from my front tubes and stepped back while it burst into a thick cloud.
With my shrouds angled toward the Paladin, I pivoted and looked for an exit. Those violet beams lanced through the smokescreen where I’d just been standing, clipping the edge of my shroud. A flourish of rockets followed them, creating swirls in the smokescreen. They exploded somewhere behind me, and shrapnel peppered my flank.
Then I felt massive footfalls as the Paladin jockey broke into a run. We thought getting the Paladin to break off and follow us would be the hard part. But right now, I was more concerned with keeping him away. I had the speed, but the tight confines of the factory districts limited my ability to maneuver.
I pivoted, putting my shrouds to position four (rear) and breaking into a run. I wanted something, anything solid between us. You can’t imagine the itch of waiting for those lances to hit you from behind, like a hot wire at the small of your back. For good measure I launched a half-dozen loitering seekers, arcing the missiles high into a holding pattern where they looked for a target still enshrouded by thick phosphor smoke.
I slid behind a row of short buildings and turned west, toward the support I hoped would be there. I covered three blocks in the time it took the Paladin to take down every single missile I sent skyward, along with the comm drone, and cut me off from the rest of the formation. I swore and held off on launching another, lest it also get shot out of the sky. My comm board greyed out. I had been isolated from the rest of the Chevaliers.
Violet beams carved through the street behind me, clouding the lane with a fountain of polycrete dust and debris that pattered off Ardennes’ hull. A second beam swept along the rooftop level, shredding the top half of my left ballistic shroud and welding three of my 190-millimeter tubes closed.
I stumbled, stomach lurching with the unexpected movement. Those beam weapons felt like being hit by a smoothbore cannon round. Somehow, I managed to keep Ardennes’ feet under her, but I’d lost the delicate rhythm of her run and slowed to avoid going ass over tits.
I hunkered down, spinning and training my Bulldogs through the debris cloud. I wasn’t going to die from a shot in the back. The Paladin’s radar washed over me as he entered the street through the gap he’d just made, looking for me as well, but the Overcast Doctrine helped dilute his returns.
I think the only thing keeping me alive was his reliance on advanced tech to acquire and engage targets. But then, that was the whole point of Overcast. Still, Ardennes couldn’t beat a monster like that helmed by a more experienced jockey. I just couldn’t hit hard enough to end the fight quickly. The Paladin pilot would eventually compensate. And then I would die. Like I said, playing for keeps.
I edged away, keeping my shrouds up, and angled back to hopefully reflect some of the energy, waiting for the inevitable beams.
Only, when I saw them, all I saw was the diffuse light in the billow of dust, refracting and turning the polycrete cloud the color of an old bruise. He wasn’t shooting at me.
Well, he had to be shooting at someone. It was the perfect opportunity to withdraw, now that the Paladin had been distracted. I likely wouldn’t get a better chance. But whoever had just saved my ass wouldn’t fare any better than I was going to. Now I don’t like thinking about how long exactly I hesitated. But I launched another comm drone and dove back into the cloud.