“Gentlemen time to return home. Move to waypoint six. Out.”
The Kurita lance finished their sweep and turned back toward their main force. Hasegawa eased back in his seat, a bit weary, and not at all looking forward to the long trek back to base.
He toggled the comm-link, “Kurita base, this is KHL-22. Sector 34 is clea…What the blazes!?”
The mech immediately to Hasegawa’s right turned to shrapnel. Hasegawa instantly recognized the telltale signature of an internal ammunition explosion. But he had no time to react. His computer’s warning systems blared into his ears as his mech was nearly knocked off its feet.
“DEET…DEET…DEET. Critical hit. Left rear torso.” The calm female voice informed him.
”Damn. From behind! Turn full about! Enter inverse V formation. Pick your targets and fire at will!”
Hasegawa scanned his lance. Two mechs down. Almost everyone else had taken some damage. He torso twisted to the right careful to hide his wounded left rear. He spun to the right and glanced finally at his own damage statistics. He had lost some actuators and armor. His left weapons would now be slightly harder to aim. For a skilled pilot such as Hasegawa this posed a minor inconvenience. He turned his attention to his enemy. He could hear and feel the bass thumping of the weapons as the first exchange began in earnest. And now Hasegawa realized his error. His enemy had come from the forest!!
Angry at himself for such an amateurish mistake Hasegawa maneuvered his experimental Ballista and waded into the oncoming Davion mechs. He singled out a Phoenix Hawk and his finger never left the trigger. He could hardly see through his own SRM smoke trails, but in moments he had moved through them only to see the Phoenix Hawk stagger and fall. Another Kurita mech moved in and finished it off. The Davion mech exploded and showered the other nearby mechs with shrapnel.
A lesser pilot would have been angered at someone else stealing his kill. But Hasegawa moved on. As long as the Combine emerged victorious he would be victorious. He could see more Davion mechs moving to extricate themselves from the trees which until seconds before had shielded them from the Kurita sensors. Hasegawa fired two volleys of SRMs into the trees and quickly set them ablaze. The heat would hinder the Davion mechs from fielding their full firepower. He turned his mech again, instinctively knowing that only motion would keep him alive. He felt the subdued impact from a laser to his right. He torso twisted and began to run around the doomed mech who had dared to fire on him.
His large lasers lanced out again and again, their bright blue shafts accented by the staccato blasts of his medium lasers. His heat gauge crept upwards warning him that he was about to overheat. He fired one more blast from his Group 1 energy weapons and the final volley severed the arm off of the Davion mech, which was now turning to engage him. But Hasegawa’s mech was still moving around the Davion mech forcing the Davion mech to spin in place just to bring his weapons to bear. And all the while the Ballista moved in a deadly spiral that continued to bring the Davion mech closer and closer. Finally Hasegawa saw his mark. The gaping wound where the other mech’s arm had been blown off. Bits of armor and wiring glowed with electrical arcs and marked the way for Hasegawa’s aim. He loosed his SRMs and all of them found home. They burrowed their way into the enemy mech’s center torso and the Davion pilot didn’t even have time to eject.
