Blade grimaced. Myrina hadn't responded to his mesage, and the bandits were pressing in closer. Rounds chewed away the cover they'd taken shelter behind, and splinters of shells and debris pinged and whacked off of the lightly armoured hide of the [i]Harlock[/i] and the other GEARS. 
"Shit," muttered the fox to himself. "If this keeps up then there won't be much to hide behind." 
While the GEARs had been pressing them from the front, the fast attack vehicles - FAV's - had closed around from their flank, and began to pepper the trio of LDF GEARs with their automatic grenade launchers and heavy machine-guns. Swearing bluntly again, the fox felt his ears flatten under his helmet once more, and he bared his teeth. 
Curling his finger around the trigger on the GEARs' control stick, he opened fire with the autocannon rifle, playing the crosshair in his visor over the nearest of the light space-frame vehicles. With no armour and a light structure, the machine was no contest for the heavy rounds, and withered to pieces, flipping over in a cloud of expanding wreckage. He repeated the exercise with the second vehicle, moving sideways in an evasive strafing action as the rounds from its' heavy MG lashed toward him, impacting the GEAR with hammer-blow hits. A couple of minor warnings sounded, but nothing that took him out of the battle.
"Press them to engage!" he growled at the other pilots close to him. "They're outflanking us, and we're penned in!"
He volleyed hi-ex rounds toward the closing GEARs, and felt a slight rise of relief as Arcades' GEAR began to move, opening fire and moving in an aggressive push. The rounds from the blocky, older-model GEARs autocannon tore into one of the modified [i]Brahma[/i] GEARs, slamming it around like a jerky puppet, before it collapsed. Pressing the advantage, he moved onward. Blade moved to support him as he saw the second [i]Brahma[/i] move out in a flanking motion, and one of the FAV's close in to the rear. Gunfire peppered his GEAR as he tried to move - and then Arcades' GEAR was engulfed in a cloud of flame and smoke as the smoke trail of of missile from the [i]Brahma's[/i] shoulder-mounted launcher connected the two.
Blade's muzzle went dry and he couldn't believe the sight: one of their number was down, in their first sortie. He'd been unable to act effectively to prevent it, and right in front of him one of their number had been cut down. There was no chance he could be alive: the centre torso of the GEAR was a flaming wreck, charred and blackened. No one could have survived that. 
Snarling and seeing red, he charged forward, one shoulder-mounted shield hammering under the impact of machine-gun fire from the FAV, before he drew the [i]Harlock's[/i] Kukri blade and slammed it through the hood of the vehicle. Nearly simultaneously, he dived into a forward roll, coming up on one knee with the GEARs' targeting focused on the remaining [I]Brahma[/i]. The indicator turned red, and he fired a missile, near point-blank. The hostile exploded in a roiling fireball, and he stood slowly, the posture of his GEAR, slumped shoulders and arms by its' sides almost reflecting the somber, solemn mood of its' pilot.
"Hostiles are no factor in this area," he said with a bitter edge to his voice. "We have a pilot down," he added with a quiet voice. 

***

At the mine, the hostile GEARs moved with lethal precision and efficiency. With two of their number down and under attack, they moved and acted with military-level skill. Taking cover behind the terrain and offering each other covering fire, the heavy machine-gunner volleyed firepower towards Mike's position, giving the Marksman time to take cover and begin drawing a bead on the [i]Prowler.[/i] Meanwhile, the three 'regulars' moved in careful steps. Rather than splitting up and taking on Aiden, Adrian and Kuraiko one-one-one, they concentrated on outflanking and dominating the trio of Roughriders with concentrated firepower. Moving in a leap-frogging evolution through the cover, they managed to keep up a steady pinning torrent of fire toward Adrian and Aiden, which was only broken when Kuraiko's manoeuvre slammed rounds into the side of the leader, forcing them to adopt an all-round defence, weaker and less aggressive, but still worthy of respect and caution. After all, their rounds were no less lethal than any others. 

***

Ken's firepower had done as expected against the unarmoured light vehicles and their riders. The high-explosive unguided rockets stirred up a storm of lethal fragments and fiery destruction, along with the concussive forces of the explosions themselves. After the dust cleared and settled, all that was left was a field of scattered machine-parts and torn up bodies. 

***

On the Landcrawler, the rescued hostages stood to the back of the group, huddled together for security, as much as safety. The couple, Luke and Cynthia, discussed amongst themselves in low voices, whispering in a hard-edged dialect, tinged with a vague Northern Empire accent. There was a hissed discussion, before Cynthia slashed a hand through the air, ending the discussion and tentatively stepped closer to the Roughriders' infantrymen.
"Excuse me," she said, quietly at first, and then repeating herself louder over the noise coming from outside. 
"Excuse me - I know where the rest of the hostages are. Where they took them, I mean. I thought it's something you should know. The bandits - they took them to the mine. They took all the cargo elsewhere, I'm not sure. They said - something about meeting someone, moving somewhere else? I thought it may be important".