As numbers dropped across the board, Security and Reclamation forces scrambled wildly into and out of cover. Branches and tent-mesh ignited or tore, spraying fragments and particles into the air. HUD targeting systems were starting to glitch and distort with digital ghost data and false positives; iron sights zeroed in shaky and uneven. 

With a distant gunship far beyond the range of small arms raining down anti-personnel fire the advantage lay with the security forces; slowly more and more of them peaked over their crates and fallen trees, potshot snipes turning into full bursts of shredding fire. Intermittently the multi-barreled cyclic terror from above joined in as beams of near invisible bullets vaporized tree bark, reinforced metal, and the stomach area of a human body.

The upper torso slapped to the ground as the voice-suppression settings failed and a garbled patchwork of digitized scratching and inhaling gargling emerged from the half-person. A trail of bulb-like biosynthetic viscera, clearly not native to their body, twitched and squirted onto leaves and ashes as if signaling the the integrated armor backpack to split open across its seems. Contents spilled as four arachnoid limbs black and gleaming fresh dug splitting-tips into thick, blunt-toe-claw digits, draggint its body wounded and twitching across the ground. The rifle in its hand spat half brace against their shoulder, bumping against debris whether from the destruction of material or bodies. Volleys went wide but their ascending, diagonal pattern made them unexpected - a cybernetic human head splattered its contents out, chin to crown split open from a three-round burst revealing the wiring and digital-interfacing systems once concealed by meat and bone before crumpling to the ground.

The soldier's mind, even infused with stimulants and combat drugs, knew even such valiant efforts could not win the battle, not scattered and decimated like this. The voidhanger rummaging through tents and crates was a major target but in a rare blessing, the UCL strategy of saturating the air with fire superiority had a silver lining. As bullets big and small pelted off emplacements, crates, and disabled automata even someone like that could become very hard to spot. Not to the trained sense, distorted by the same chemical injections keeping its user alive, as the bisected scout. The now spider-like soldier crept closer, the trail of blood closing from clotting as internal maintenance parasites worked in overtime threatening to overheat and fall apart if they pushed themselves any further.

It was a surreal scene, the blurred and nonsense garble-speak of the insurgent punching the air with a free hand that threatened to slump over dead and useless. Salvator probably did not notice him, likely busy ducking behind cover as bullets and energy bolts competed with oxygen particles for dominance of the space between both forces. His scans indicated multiple tubular objects, 80% of them positively identified as anti-armor launcher systems but a disappointing 35% as possessing target-tracking capabilities rated for the range they were engaging at. The huge shipping crate diagonally sliced from the ensuing carnage, its top half having slid forth and digging trails into the ground, seemed to be where more than a few were located. A tempting target yet one exposed to the surviving security forces and for whom the tree cover was nonexistent.

The missiles whether detonating by choice or by Echo's active defence procedure had torn open the foliage above and revealed the bright sun above to glare on the piling bodies beneath. And the slanting half-cargo crate, big enough to fit a whole group of power armored UCL troopers, was precariously exposed to the air. 

There were other launchers around - to the right of the encampment nearest the cliff and a steep tumble there was some sort of heavy duty mounted missile platform. Sparking and with a few of its launcher tubes half melted by stray energy bolt fire but mmostly operational if they could start up its firing mechanisms. Underneath one of the gun-platform infantry support walkers, laying flat on its belly like a large dead gorilla, some sort of portable system lay hidden, one of the more high tech ones. The only problem was that it was at the front of the cover where the enemy survivors were trying to hold off the onslaught... and there was no telling if that support walker was actually dead. 

With their aggressively shortened stature, the bisected soldier waved their free arm towards Salvator, divided by an expanse of ground where one of the dead gealtirocht lay, corpse still smoking from fried systems punctured a thousandfold. A voice emerged from their helmet but the language was unintelligible; perhaps pained groans and alien tongue alike, too indistinct for translation software to un-distort. Yet the shaky hand with a raised index finger and the gealtirocht corpse it pointed at, one with a shoulder mounted rail cannon next to it, made clear its intent. 

Those weapons were intended for powered armor... but if these dead gealtirocht were still sparking, perhaps they could be powered or aimed even. They had advanced targeting systems typically meant for ground targets but hyper-accelerated bolts, even if they took a while to charge up, flew far, far faster than missiles.

A plume of dust, the hiss of gas propulsion, and a thin trail of smoke that momentairly shrouded Kleo. Off in the distance, the gunship swung into view as it momentarily broke off. The missile was hot on its trail. Multiple auxiliary weapons spat death through the air, shredding off armor but the missile only twisted and spun as the vehicle grew further and further... before an orange fireball erupted in the air.

It remained an afterimage for a brief moment of relative peace... before smoke and residual flame spread and dispersed like fluid over an immaterial surface. The shape of the gunship, jet-cockpit, slightly bulky green body tinted with the blue of the UCL, short and almost stocky wings bearing multiple integrated launcher pads and under-slung cannons, all distorted in a shimmering dome of shielding. Oil-on-water colours warped across the zone of protection that comprised its shield, flaring across the left side with hundreds of little hexagonal shapes flaring up. An energy shield, one taxed by the blast but now it had learned its lesson.

Bullets were too good for these scum. Smoke hissed out of its "shoulder" missile pods to the sides of its cockpits. Two of the deadly guided projectiles shot out of one of the pods, twisting and streaking as they split - one following the trail of smoke back to the human operator who fired it. The other towards the large and unidentified walker further in the distance - a test shot, HE load meant to ignite the target, make it easier to track and target as well as to test how good the active protection system really was. It had destroyed a bunch of its smaller missiles but this was a larger, faster projectile.

It had not noticed the second anti-air missile being loaded by the other voidhanger.

Nor had it a very familiar weapon that went off just as its HE missiles slammed down - one detonating a mere five feet from the warform, bathing in flames and force, the other where the pilot had guided it to presumably where it last detected Kleo, a similar explosion ensuing at the location. It was not expecting a series of bolts to slam into its frontal shielding, hexagonal energy-field arrangements glowing and thickening as power expended itself to resist power itself. 

Heavy duty armor piercing bolts considered the equivalent of crew-mounted heavy machine guns slammed with kinetic force capable of crushing light vehicle armor, digging into the immaterial protection like nails as the bolts spun and drilled, arcs of power flashing from the impact point. The field of energy that jacketed each bullet transmitted itself to the protective barrier; hexagon-segments flaring and solidfiying before shattering as four rounds made it in.

Before safety measures could fully activate, a cluster of missiles erupted and the sectioned shielding across the VTOL-gunjet's front flared and shattered like kaleidscopic glass. It dipped forward as the pilot struggled with the controls, one of its missile pods disabled forming a huge hole in its defences, coupled with the left side's shielding being weakened. It was not out of the fight but they had momentarily knocked it out of commission, if only for a few fleeting moments. Pod and nose mounted guns were likely on AI targeting as the pilot attempted to keep it steady, letting its automated systems to try and target Echo's Endoform. 

The nose mounted chaingun fired wildly into the surrounding area, aiming for wide area suppression as two of its four rotary canons zeroed in on the endoform, whirring before a river of armour piercers descended the biped's way. It was halfway the distance it originally engaged from but its high powered heavy automatics were only somewhat less deadly.

As the firefight between ground and sky continued, the tent's flaps were opened and a tantalizing prize laid itself before Ilshar's eyes. A familiar one perhaps; the egg-shaped projectiles attached to a somewhat blocky, canister-like magazine that did not seem entirely congruous with the octagonal launcher with its strict geometric shapes and muzzled barrel. Large but not particularly long, League in origin and the hated foe of many guerillas flying modified spore-colony live-transport organisms, civilian biocraft heavily modified yet for whom the the so called "egg-peg" launcher (its real name a far duller and less amusing series of code-letters and numbers) took so many.

Someone once joked it resembled some malformed, clunky prosthetic limb one might see on a poor refugee camp dweller or those who stayed behind in old mycelial-networked hovel-towns. This was not the exact same as such but the it was hard to deny it was descended from the same bane as many a guerilla knew.

A clack from behind the crates, a stack knocked over, a sputtering form - one of the LMG automata from earlier. Ilshar's presence had triggered a proximity sensor and IFF had determined foe - its weapon swung horizotally, knocking out a hanging neon light with sparking flashes. It was in knife-fighting range and it was programmed to know that; augmented strength swung the barrel of its light machine gun (far from light at all for most) like a club at Ilshar's skull, the force capable of easily braining even a full grown human.