Reserved for first post.

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09:00, AE91 July 13 - Elysium, Armored Carrier Phillip

---

"This is your target."

Commander Harriet Heavensward, Captain of the Armored Carrier EDFS Phillip and commanding officer of Task Force Xyston-02, plants her palms on the edge of the conference table. Below the scattered papers and cups of coffee the surface flickers to life, showing a topographical map of an area roughly ten miles square. Most of the landscape is dominated by dense jungle, and most of it is fairly flat--except for the northeastern portion, where you can see tall hills trailing off the edge of the covered area.

A red circle appears at the center of the map, on the northern edge of those hills. After flashing a couple of times, it expands in size, magnifying your view of the circled area. The satellite footage is distorted by active ECM and Chroma Effect, but you can pick out the important stuff. Quickly constructed buildings, supply dumps, weapon emplacements, armored vehicles--and, most importantly, a large area off to one side. It has been bulldozed flat and crudely paved; a refueling tank stands off to one side next to a collection of shuttle support equipment, and off to another side is a large communications array.

"Alliance forces have been using this staging area to resupply their forward bases to the west. We've had a hell of a time finding them in this valley, but now the same factors that worked in their favor are going to benefit us." The circle contracts back to its original size, and a dotted line extends from it, heading west. "This is the road they're using." Sure enough--if you look closely enough, you can see a path through the trees, flattened and even graveled in places. "Our intelligence says they have three Myrmidons of unknown type. One stays at the base at all times; the other two patrol the path down to a main road, about five miles away." A yellow circle indicates the point at the westernmost edge of the map.

"Our plan is this. The Phillip will drop you off at point Alpha--"an orange α lights up near the southern edge of the map, due east of the objective--"and you will proceed north to point Beta. Between the foliage and the landscape, you should be able to remain undetected there for a few hours." An orange β marks a spot roughly a mile south of the base.

"At the same time, the Phillip will circle around to the east, and monitor for the patrolling Myrmidons. Once we believe they are far enough away, we will signal you to begin. You will have a short time in which your only opposition will be a single Myrmidon, and what we believe to be no more than three armored vehicles." The captain looks up from the table, meeting each of your eyes in turn.

"Take out the heavy forces there, then destroy all the supplies and the support equipment for the airfield. Whether you take out the patrol walkers too is up to you, but I want that base flattened. We'll be waiting for you at point Gamma." A blue γ flashes about three miles north of the objective.

---

13:21, AE91 July 13 - Elysium, Santori Jungle

---

Being in the jungle borders on sensory overload. Even in the shade of the towering canopy, the heat is oppressive. Condensation hangs off of every surface, as if the world itself is sweating, and any exposed cloth or hair becomes saturated within the hour. The constant chirping of bugs, the calls of birds, and the chitters of arboreal mammals fill the air with white noise. The rot of the jungle floor hangs heavy on the air, mixing with the smells of flowers both pleasant and otherwise.

You dropped at point Alpha about an hour ago, and have been standing by at point Beta for almost twenty minutes. Your wait has been a long one. It is now over.

The com channel crackles to life, and you hear the voice of Phillip's comms officer. "Xray Zero Two-One, commence! Say again, Myrmidons, you are cleared to begin!"

The heat was sweltering, so much so that the inside of the Valkyrie bordered on uninhabitable. As such, for the majority of the time spent at point beta, Rally was out of her Walker. With her uniform off, fanning herself with the manual to her mech in her undershirt. Despite the inhospitable conditions of the jungle, Rally couldn't help but feel a sense of wonder. She had spent so much of her life on Argos, in an underground bunker devoid of life.

It was shocking to see a land teeming with life, the sounds of it bordering on deafening, the aroma enticing, and the landscape utterly beautiful. She was disappointed when her com beaconed her to her mission, reminding her that she had come here for destruction, not peace. The thirty-odd minutes she spent here were pleasant to say the least.

"This is Valkyrie sounding off, commencing operation," She said wistfully into her com as she stood up from the shoulder of her Walker, stretching a bit before entering her cockpit. Flicking a few switches and turning a few knobs caused to massive robotic humanoid to slowly stand to it's full height, the multiple lights at it's 'head' lighting up. The gigantic grey mech whurred to life with the sound of her engine thumping and pistons pumping. Slowly, the colossal man-shaped machine rose up.

"Entering combat mode," A robotic voice from inside the cockpit announced.
It was something Rally had come to expect when her machine turned on. The automated computer system chimed in with updates, usually involving the status of her device's current condition. It seemed strange, but she could never help but reply.
"Thank you, Valkyrie."

With her machine turned on, she scanned the area with its camera, making sure the other two hadn't pressed on without her. Flicking her com link back on, she hailed the two of them.
"Are we sticking to the initial plan? If so, you two might want to get behind me." She stated, beginning to advance her clunky machine. The gas springs audibly creaked with each step, keeping the immense weight from utterly crushing the ground underneath her with outright. Still, she couldn't help but frown at the sight of the damage in her wake, trampled shrubs and scattered woodland critters. Nevertheless, she made a steady advance toward the enemy encampment.

Marcus looked at the jungle through his camera, with the airdrop being automatic and a huge part of walker being on stand-by mode there is nothing for him to do but wait and observe. That doesn't mean that should slack off. A single moment could mean his death, a single moment would mean never returning and he refuse to be just a number. He observed the camp from the sky, marking its escape routes and potential encampments once wised up.

Then he focused on his eyes on the target, the enemy walker standing out like a sore thumb in the jungle. From the camera, he could make out the cockpit although the question whether it was habited or not is something he purposely decided to not know for now. He is a soldier and this is a war, no matter the scheme he initially used to get away from it. Why did he decide to get too impulsive, the walker application is an optional part of the academy. At least it was him who's here and not Ely.

Slowly and surely he landed to his target destination, a small cliff where a clear view of his target is available.

With a click of a switch, the Bumble Sting began roaring to life and it's rifle start being pointed.

"This is Bumble Sting, a visual on the main target is confirmed. Permission to pull the trigger."

"Alright, let's kick this sand castle!" he called out over the comms.

Albert couldn't suppress the excitement in his tone, much as he tried. Daedalus felt lighter in battle, faster, as if their spirits were united in eagerness to hurt the Alliance.

They weren't delicate in their movement; it's not like they were burning everything indiscriminately, and this wasn't exactly a stealth mission. The trees will grow back.

He heard what almost sounded like rain drops on sheet metal, and shook his head as he chuckled to himself. "They always try the guns." A guard vehicle quickly came into view, visuals highlighting it in red, to distinguish it as a hostile. A glance toward the communications array. "heh, Momma don't like no tattle tales-" Daedalus plucked up the vehicle, raised the claw arm, and pitched the enemy vehicle at the main dish.

Lieutenant Commander Leofric Hroderich, Lord Crystalfield, heir apparent to the County of Crystalfield, was having a bad day. Really, it would be more accurate to say he was having a bad month. And if you wanted to be most accurate, you might say that he was having a bad five weeks and three days, because that was how long it had been since he had landed on this godforsaken planet. It wasn't as if he had never been "outside"--large natural spaces had been incorporated into the colonies as they were built, and thanks to his birth he'd had more access to them than most--but certainly no planner had ever created a habitat with weather this extreme. Or, he mused, if they have, it could only be as a method of torture.

Presently he was doing his best to avoid the heat by parking himself in the little airbase's command hub. It wasn't where he was supposed to be, strictly speaking, but rank had its privileges, and Lord Crystalfield had never been shy about exercising them. Even if he wasn't actually in the cockpit, his Myrmidon was close enough, and the other soldiers assigned to his squad were more than capable of maintaining a patrol in this little slice of nowhere.

After all, if the dirtsiders haven't found us yet, it's because they can't. Just another couple or three weeks of this hell before we break through at the front, and then I'll see about getting reassigned somewhere less... moist.

---

The com crackled to life in the cockpit of Marcus's Bumble Sting. "Bumble Sting, permission granted. Repeat, weapons free!"

---

Leofric dropped the book he'd been reading as shouted reports came through on his earbud.

"We're under attack! Enemy fire from unknown position! I've sustained significant damage!"

He scrambled to his feet and rushed over to the door. Leaning out of the climate-controlled building felt like sticking his head in a sauna, but for the first time since he arrived, the climate was distant second in the young man's thoughts. The guard Myrmidon was too far away to see clearly, but even at this distance, he could tell it had taken some kind of damage.

A different voice--but with the same level of urgency--came through his comm. "Ground radar is picking up inbound!"

Leofric turned and ran in the opposite direction, slamming the door of the command center closed behind him.

---

Marcus became who he needed to be in that moment: a man shooting a target. The Myrmidon that was in his sights was no longer an enemy, but a bullseye.

As he pulled the trigger, though, the Sparos in his sights did something very inconsiderate for a bullseye to do and shifted slightly to the side. Not much--just enough to keep its foot from sinking too far into the wet ground, and to keep Bumble Sting's shot from being a kill. Instead of taking out the cockpit, the shot severed the machine's left forearm, which bounced off of the compacted dirt as the mech's head-mounted sensors swept around wildly.

Albert was the first thing it saw as Daedalus charged into the base's perimeter. Men screamed, falling out of the vehicle as the walker hoist it into the air, and his improvised projectile crunched into the base's communications array. Antennas were broken--sparks flew--and the transport finally stopped, hanging off one side of the bent dish. Albert had broken off the enemy's main line of communications--but in the process he had also broken ranks with his wingmate.

The scattered small arms fire he'd experienced so far was more a panic reaction from soldiers taken by surprise than any sort of real attempt at defense, but that reprieve was now over. An armored vehicle whirred around a temporary barracks, its turret already tracking the huge Myrmidon as it hove into view. The range was too short, and Daedalus was a large, slow target to begin with--the armor held, but there was no doubt that one had hit. The vehicle's autoloader slotted in another explosive shell as the tank zipped off, hoping to avoid retaliation.

Rally found herself farther behind her squadmate than she would probably prefer--but that vantagepoint and the remove from the action gave her the opportunity to notice two things.

First--the one-armed Sparos was raising its sidearm to aim at Daedalus. Her ally was turned fully away from the threat--but by the same token, the enemy wasn't looking at her, either.

Second--through her audio pickups, she could hear a faint rumbling sound, coming from just behind a nearby hill...

Rally groaned when she saw Deadalus rush off into battle like a whirling dervish of destruction. Her intentions of being a shield for her squad had been sullied in seconds, the mounted vehicles already pounding the allied vehicle with damage. Her focus was on the myrmidon, though, knowing her vehicle was far less effective against a faster, more maneuverable one. With a puff of steam from her exhaust, her mech buckled down into a fighting stance, moving to grab the blade from its back.

"Activating Ener-sabre," The voice inside her mech proclaimed as the sword's edge came to life with energy, illuminating her mech inside the thick jungle canopy. A flip of a switch, slamming a lever forward, and the thrusters on the back of her mech burst to life, eviscerating nearby flora as enough force was made to push the clunky Valkyrie forward.

Her myrmidon lacked the precision movement the Sparos had, and she knew this. A full frontal assault, however, she was banking on the speed of her thrusters to compensate for maneuverability. Valkyrie's feet shredded through the soft pommus of the jungle floor as she jettisoned forwards towards the enemy, blade gripped in both hands. As she neared the enemy, she thrust her blade forward, attacking the arm currently raising a side arm at her ally.

Marcus clicked his teeth as he saw the walker move at the last minute preventing him from finishing it in one single hit. He briefly entertained the idea making another shot but with Albert being close enough, a shift of priorities is on his mind. After all the war is not won just by killing soldiers but also by taking land. In other words he will go for their material.

He would start for those that can fight back as it would make his allies' attack more easier. In fact his sensors are already locking on a vehicle that already landed a hit to Daedalus.

Reload and Replace to Explosive Ammunition.

Aim and Lock on the Enemy Vehicle.

Then Pull the Trigger.

"Hahaha! Sorry, your call can't be completed as dialed!"

Suddenly, Deadalus' left shoulder lurched forward- he was sustaining heavier fire! It turned slightly, as if to give a dirty look to his assailant, and Albert grumbled to himself, "That was cheap, little punk-ass..." He didn't bother turning to retaliate; he also observed at least one of his allies were moving to respond.

He turned forward again, sighted the fuel station, and continued. "Right- eyes on the prize- let's light this fire cracker." Deadalus proceed to crash in a straight line, kicked his way through every vehicle and structure in his path. "Let's see, anything else I can throw at the damn thing?" Times like this he reconsidered the wisdom of declining weapons upgrades... At least a tweaked rivet gun, he thought, or something mounted over a shoulder?

Albert didn't ignore anything else on his visuals and audio, of course. Scowling to himself, he was unmoved by the screams as bitter memories flashed in his mind. "...They've brought it on themselves..."

Rally drove her thrust home at the Sparos's other limb, and with a screech of metal it found itself completely disarmed. The right arm fell not far from the left; the Sparos stumbled forward drunkenly before regaining its footing and turning to face the new threat. The pilot seemed to be having more of a run of bad luck than anything, because they reacted quickly enough. The moment the machine trained its sensors on the Valkyrie, it began backpedaling using its ground-effect thrusters. Its head-mounted antipersonnel turrets began firing as well, but the bullets pinged harmlessly off of Valkyrie's steel plates. They were fired more out of anger than strategy, since the chances of them doing any damage were as good as none.

Despite their frustration, the enemy pilot clearly did not intend to stick around. Even moving backwards, they headed away from Rally--and towards the single road out of the base--at a faster clip than Valkyrie (or Daedalus, for that matter) could manage. She'd managed to end the immediate threat to Albert--but if that Sparos got within comms range of its squadmates on patrol...

Marcus's luck held this time, and the explosive round impacted the tank in the middle of its turret. The tank commander's brief moment of elation--he hadn't had a chancel to see how little damage he had, in fact, inflicted on Daedalus--was cut short in a blinding flash. The penetrator tip of the Myrmidon-sized round pierced the thinner top armor before going up, and the detonation took with it the remainder of the tank's magazine--and the munitions dump it had been driving past at the time. The concussive blast blew down a nearby storage shed; what it did to any enemy soldiers who happened to be nearby hardly bore thinking on. Where there had been tons of Athenian armed forces supplies, now there was only a smoking, blackened patch of earth, strewn with wreckage.

The force of the blast washed past Albert, blowing an unmanned rocket artillery unit across his path like a 50-ton tumbleweed. Its launch unit had been damaged, but past the bent and jagged metal, he could see high-explosive rockets still held safely in their cradles.

---

Each of your cockpits lights up with a sensor warning--the fix is poor, but there seems to be another source of Chroma effect in the area, quickly gaining strength.

"Too easy, dangerously so." Marcus muttered as he looked at the destruction he caused. With how through the damage he caused, he is under no delusions that his action had no casualties.

This wasn't the time to think about it though. He had a job to see through and a battle to survive.

---

Marcus looked at the sensor as he made a decision, potentially reckless one but ultimately necessary for the team.

"I'll scout the Chroma," he called as the boosters of Bumble Sting comes to life. This will the end of stealth but with everything he did they would no longer need to fire support. "Bumble Sting is the fastest and could engage from afar so it is logical."

With those words the Bumble Sting begin flying away, loading an Armor Piercing Shell to it's main rifle. He hopes one shot would be enough.

Even within the steel cocoon of her cockpit, the force of her impact and the shredding of metal could be felt and heard from within. Her myrmidon's visual screen wasn't needed for her to know she had hit her mark with shocking precision, and the hand fell to the ground with enough force to shake the earth for anything of normal human size. Her blade quickly retracted, and she moved with haste inside the mech that the steel suit lacked, hoping to finish the deed, but to no avail. By the time she had managed to get the sword to swing once more, the Sparos was just out of reach, futilely hitting her with a caliber of bullet far too small to pierce the Valkyrie's mighty hull. Regardless, Rally moved the mech to lift the shield on its arm to cover it from further attacks.

From her screen, she could see the newest issue. The outpost was in ruins; they had done that much, but the Sparos was retreating and fast. The Valkyrie could match its speed in a direct charge, but the Sparos had a maneuverability that it lacked. A single dodge or shift in trajectory, and suddenly she would find herself out of formation with a desperate pilot flanking her. Time was not on her side, and Rally was not a soldier. Impulsiveness won out over reason.

The Valkyrie maneuvered its sword back into its thrusting position, and the jets fired off again. Soon enough, the heavy mech was flying forward at its max speed. The shoulder-mounted machine gun blasting wildly at the foe, an equally futile attack, but one she was hoping would garner its attention.

Bumblesting seemed to have moved out, equally as impulsively. The battle wasn't even won, and yet he had his eyes on the loot. Rally could feel the cockpit heating up; she was pushing her thrusters to the limit, and the coolant system was struggling to compensate. If it was sweltering before, her cockpit was a crucible now.

"Deadalus, got another toss in you? I need to cut this Sparo off before he leaves the nest!"

Albert was picking up the artillery unit when he got the comm signal. He rolled his eyes as he heaved a sigh, but smiled at the serendipity. He'd have preferred to make a truly spectacular explosion, but, priorities. Perhaps they'd all dropped the ball; he hadn't anticipated something so practical as an enemy retreating when it was, well, the sensible thing to do in the present situation.

They needed it to be as long as possible before anyone knows anything is wrong, and be gone when the cavalry comes to investigate.

Deadalus turned, sighted the target. "Ok, remember, don't aim where they are; aim where they're going to be..." He called out over the comm channel, "Watch, you guys are going to love this!"

With that, he pitched the missiles, cradle and all, and waited to confirm the hit before he completed his objective and the mission.

Rally traded bullets with the Sparos, and the two machines began to dance deadly. The lighter machine kept its forward sensors on her Valkyrie, continuing to backpedal as it charged forward. Rally closed the distance--then--her thrust but a few feet away--the Athenian pilot's verniers engaged at maximum power. It spun off at an oblique angle to her attack, bounced an armless shoulder off of the Valkyrie's chest, and immediately shot off down the forest path at its best speed.

-----

If Rally was steaming alive in her cockpick, Lieutenant Lazarova's blood felt like it had frozen in his veins. Everything had happened so fast that he'd barely had a chance to react before his weapons had been neutralized, and his brain was working overtime to catch up. Beneath his fatigues, he could feel himself breaking out in gooseflesh as he realized how close to death he had just come, and how many times. That first walker who'd come charging in seemed to just be wrecking things--though the word "just" was doing a lot of work, considering Lazarova's job was specifically to stop those things from being wrecked--but the one in his rear camera was a different story.

Still--if his luck over the last few minutes had been abominable, he had at least made the most of a bad situation. Getting away from the ambushers' big, lumbering machines should be doable for his Sparos, and once he raised the rest of the squad, they could handle things while he got to a safe distance.

The Lieutenant grit his teeth and held the throttle down as hard as he could. The Sparos shot forward--then its pilot heard the chime of a comms request.

-----

Albert's throw, by all accounts, should have missed. Oh, the technique had worked well for him so far, and if you were going to do it, then the Daedalus was the machine to make it work. But rockets, while aerodynamic, are not meant to be launched by mechanical means--to say nothing of their mobile platforms.

And yet the rocket truck sailed in an arc through the air, as pretty as any shot thrown on a field. In fact, it sailed right over the Valkyrie--and as the Sparos engaged its thrusters, it shot forward right in time for the vehicle to take between the shoulderblades.

Myrmidon and mobile artillery alike went down, and before either could touch the ground the rockets exploded from the impact. The explosion washed over the front of Rally's machine, pelting the Valkyrie with debris; a cloud of dust and smoke now obscured the path leading out of the base.

-----

Leofric looked back and forth between his displays, expression frantic. His comms request to Lazarov had gone unanswered; now, the status light for the lieutenant's Sparos went from an amber "Damaged" to a red "Unreachable". He punched a button on his comms panel, displaying the other armored elements in the base; even those telltales were now showing far too much red and amber. He could hear the base feed coming in through his headset, as well, and the panicked screams of the soldiers fed his own fear.

"Discretion is the better part of valor," he mumbled to himself, guiding his machine out of the cave's hillside entrance.

-----

Marcus's sensors began honing in on the Chroma reaction they had detected; the signature was growing rapidly in strength, and it wouldn't take him long to spot the jungle canopy rustling--and a flash of white--in the valley below, as something large moved through the trees.

With a chuckle to himself, Daedalus turned, and proceeded to finish the job; a swipe with the the fork/claw, and braced for an explosion that may or may not ruin a paint job, if it had one, maybe even do superficial exterior damage, but- quick and dirty was the order of the day.

He opened all channels, and swung as he cried out, "REMEMBER NEW AVALON!!"

The Bumblesting begin operating to its at maximum mobility capacity, giving considerable strain to him and the machine. At this situation he had no one rely but himself and singular mistake might mean death.

He cannot afford to die, he needed to go back.

He cannot leave Elizabeth be alone.

Marcus took a deep breath as Bumblesting have chase to what he thinks is an enemy Myrmodon. Firing shots at the slightest indication of movement even as he speaks through open channels.

"Unknown Myrmodon, I suggest you surrender and you'll get to keep your life."

Vallyrie didn't bother pulling up it's shield, not just because the machine gun fire wasn't enough of a threat but because it would cause her to slow down, and Rally couldn't afford to slow down. She heard the bullets bounce off her hull, a few managing to Peirce the bulky sheet of metal and ricochet inside. Her focus did not shift, even as the Sparos bobbed and weaved she did her best to keep it's attention set on her.

"Watch, you guys are going to love this!"

That was all she needed to hear as she blasted forth and ended her facade in a deliberately telegraphed thrust of her energy blade. The Sparos had no trouble dodging something so clumsy and simple and she braced herself as her interior sensors alarmed her for the incoming shoulder bash. The impact sent the Valkyrie sprawling backwards, slamming with enough force to launch Rally from her sitting position and knock the air out of her.

"Hull integrity at 73%" the computerized voice said calmly as Rally scrambled to return to her controls.

A second impact caused her machine to rumble, but this time it was not her being hit. Her cameras picked up the mini mushroom cloud formed by whatever deadalus had managed to throw. Her com sprung to life with his zealotry, spouting his valor loud enough to make her wince. Rally couldn't help but feel far less excited about their victory. From her mech she could see the destruction they had wrought on this innocent jungle. Trees lit aflame and scattered. Still, she knew better than to chastise battle hardened warriors, at least not while they were in combat.

"Good job, Deadalus"

Her mech slowly rose up, dented but altogether no worse for wear.
"Any word from bumblesting?"

Albert's strike tore a great, ragged gouge in the fuel tank. The contents spilled out, evaporating almost as quickly as it could fall to the ground, and the aerosolized fuel blossomed into a cloud of flame. The fireball washed over and around Daedalus's bulk; in the cockpit, Albert's sensors flashed various warning as the flames temporarily blinded his sensors, but it took only seconds for those flames to recede.

Black smoke still clouded his visuals, and the fire licking out of the ruptured tank blinded his thermal sensors, but he could at least perceive the rest of his surroundings again. For the most part, those surroundings were blackened and smoldering. The shuttle support equipment--set next to the fuel tank for the sake of speed--was still standing, but only as a structure. The metal was blackened and sagging; the plastic fittings looked like stalactites; the sensitive electronics were no longer even identifiable.

Rally's gaze swept over the devastation.

Pillars of smoke were issuing from the burning munitions and shuttle depots, forming an black haze in the sky above the base. A military transport hung limply from the antenna array; two of the armor contingent had been crumpled by explosions. Wounded and dead Athenian soldiers lay on the ground, here and there, collateral damage of the task force's ambush. Most of them were clustered around the path of devastation left by Albert.

The soldiers she could see still moving around seemed to be slowly organizing themselves. One clump was moving towards the most sturdy-looking building on the compound--a sandbag-and-sheet-metal affair that covered a steep section of the hillside. Another group could be seen heading towards the motor pool--there were a couple of armored vehicles still parked there, but no way to tell if the soldiers headed that way were tank crews or simply looking for anything that would get them to safety in a hurry.

But for all the furious activity, Rally noticed one other thing--at least for the moment, no one was shooting at them.

-----

Major Renzo grit her teeth as she watched the enemy machine walk away from the explosion. Totally unharmed, from everything she could see. Damn that aristocratic ass! She should have had two Myrmidons out there--at least then Lazarova might have had a chance. She'd liked the young man--better than his superior officer, at any rate.

Where's your damn 'tactical reserve' now, Leofric?

-----

Leofric hissed as the shot hit the ground next to his foot. The Myrmidon-sized round chewed up the earth, sending up a geyser of dirt and plants. He kept running; another round came close to hitting him from the other direction, and he swore, half-diving to one side in reaction. That move brought him stumbling to the edge of a clearing in the canopy.

Still off-balance, his Myrmidon half-crouched, swinging its head back and forth to bring it sensors to bear.

Shaking hands punched a button on his comms panel, locking in on the frequency that had demanded his surrender. "Iden-dentify yourself first!" His demand came out in a thin voice; he coughed, then, more confidently: "And show yourself! So I know you're not about to shoot me in the back!"

-----

Marcus, as the message comes through, you finally get a good lock on your target, just inside the treeline of a small clearing. All indications are that he hasn't spotted you, and if he hasn't jettisoned his weapons, he doesn't have them at the ready either. The clearing in front of him could easily serve as a landing point.

It also provides a perfect line of sight.

Marcus let out a sweat drop from his forehead. It's him and an enemy alone with no foreseeable reinforcements. There will be no second chances and the question of who will get to walk away is going to be decided by a game of chicken.

"This is Bumble Sting of the EDF." his distorted voice spoke matter of factly as he pressed on. He has no interest at being an aggressor or surrendering a good advantage to his enemy.

"If I want to shoot you in the back we won't be having this conversation." He pointed out as he stabilized his aim at the torso just slightly above the cockpit, just one click and battle will be over but not yet.

"I have no reason to face you in the open, so you either disable that walker or I'll destroy it at the count of three." he announced as the other began hearing a count.

"One!"

"Two!"

"BANG!"

There is no three because Marcus would rather be liar than a dead man.

Somehow worse than the destruction to the canopy was the sounds of the wounded and maimed. Soldiers without a chance from the start had suffered far worse than she from the blast. Her initial charge had inadvertently caused a similarly gruesome wake of crushed and broken soldiers trampled by her sudden forward rushes. Deadalus had caused far worse carnage than her, but the sounds, the feeling, the heat. It reminded her of her first time wielding the valkyrie.

Collateral damage was to be expected, and these were no saints. All the deceased were Athenian soldiers, but Rally couldn't grasp how anyone could deserve this. She found herself lost in thought on the battlefield, a dangerous thing to be. She was no soldier; she hadn't been desensitized and prepared for this. Her pause was enough time for many of the soldiers to reconvene. She saw them gathering on the cliffside. It looked like a last stand if she had ever seen one. Rally grit her teeth at the idea. No doubt Albert would gleefully dispatch of an unwhelming Hail Mary. She didn't want to end any more lives than she had to, and a cornered enemy was always the most dangerous kind. Her hand reached for a switch on her comlink, and the voice in her machine replied in synch.

"External frequency activated"

Rally moved her myrmidon be closer to the cliffs. The massive mech unit hardly needed to look up to match the perceived gaze of her enemy.. For emphasis, she stuck the massive end of her blade into the ground.
"Do not throw your lives away fighting for a lost cause. Your base is destroyed, surrender, and I promise the Elysian board will treat you fairly," She stated sternly, like a mother scolding a child. She used an authority that she did not have, but stayed resolute in her position.
"The sooner this battle is over, the quicker we can tend to the wounded"