[center][h2][b]Ilshar Ard’sabekh[/b][/h2][/center]

He could not keep this up, Ilshar thought as the mechanical soldier’s fist slammed into his shoulder and sent him staggering, his still restrained arm twisted in a way that would have been painful to someone with a less diffuse nervous system. The automaton’s reeling at his own blow had allowed him to twist and take the swing on the stronger plating of his pauldron, but even so the thing’s entire body was a weapon, and he felt the outer layers of corded fungal tissue in his shoulder liquefy under the impact. If this fight went on any much longer, it’d leave him crippled, if not permanently then enough to get him killed here. The renewed gunfire from outside and comm crackling did not sound encouraging.

It was time to get out of the tent and join in finishing it. The automaton had dropped its rifle, which meant he could safely turn his back to it as long as he put some distance between them. The machine’s hand was holding him high enough that most of its grip was on bare skin rather than armour; this would play to his advantage now. Clenching his teeth, Ilshar sent an impulse through his neural web to the organomechanical implants built into his fungal muscle. Unbreakably firm as it was, the metal hand on his elbow began to slide as the arm under its fingers - or at least the upper layer of its porous skin - slickened and quickly dissolved into a dark putrid sludge, the pungent stench of accelerated decay filling the tent. This reaction was designed as an emergency insulation measure, but it would have to do.

Snarling, Ilshar tore his oozing arm from the automaton’s unstable grasp, taking a long step back in time to avoid its brutal downward swing. Moving as rapidly as his battered body could in the cramped and increasingly chaotic confines of the tent, he shoved his way past some toppling crates and out into the open, the hand of his intact arm reaching for his machine gun. One of his eyes glanced with some regret at the stocky egg-launcher he’d originally dived in to retrieve before that Nexus-damned robot had gotten in the way. If they both survived this firefight intact, it could at least make for a nice trophy.

He emerged in time to see the remaining League forces scrambling into a counterattack, and Rasch materializing in their midst. Ilshar did not have time to load the Ulvath with something that could damage the walkers, but the humanoid troops with them were no less a danger. Propping his gun’s barrel up with his oozing forearm, the fingers below still momentarily numb from the necrosis impulse, he fired a burst towards the assembled troopers - inaccurate even by auto fire standards, but more than adequate to cover the rest of the squad.