[SENTINEL ONE, CENTCOMM CONFIRMS THREE TANGOS AND ESCORTS, ALPHA, KILO 3-NINER - ACKNOWLEDGE]

{-Sentinel One Confirm, Command-}

[ID TANGOS AND MAINTAIN CURRENT POSITION AND OVERWATCH FOR INCOMING FRIENDLIES - ACKNOWLEDGE]

{-Sentinel One Confirm-}

With thunderheads glittering upon the horizon ahead of him, Rai admired the shimmering purple-gray skies of Thanaquos VI. This planet's great storms were legendary in this system, and it was the visibility and size of those clouds that attested to it. The mountain range that divvied up that horizon was a few hundred miles away from his position at most, but the stormclouds were at least five times that distance. The storm was massive, and moving very fast.

He settled into his pilot's chair for the long haul.

Outside, rain began to fall.

Subtle neural-monitoring kept him aware of the potential positions of the targets as they approached his position. They were just generalized interpretations until he turned up the gain. Arms crossed over his chest, he scanned the open valley before him, his Mech, a gently modified SWALLOWTAIL variant, nestled comfortably amidst a forest-enshrouded defilade, invisible to all but the most testy of intelligent sensors.

The Coisoimos valley had been known as the "Hall of Cornucopia" once, back when it was a holy meeting place for the locals. This was years and years ago, long before a cult calling themselves the Cruinne Collective started a civil war with the native Thanaquiens. It was hotly contested, being a strong transport route between both C-C and Thanaquien military outposts. This strike would be but one of many.

The valley wasn't just a decent transport route. It was also a hellishly dangerous battleground. The fact that as much of the ancient forest that surrounded him now still existed spoke much of it's power to reclaim lost land, given how often fights would happen there. If the C-C was pulling a convoy through a route this embattled, they must've had a very important reason.

A brisk, gentle chime sounded as ATHENA, his Mech's Non-Human Person, ended the ETA countdown. As it did, the first pair of vehicles in the targeted convoy slowly drew themselves out from the underbrush, six-hundred yards ahead of him. Subconsciously he commanded his NHP into predictive mode and engaged her protocols.

ATHENA projected the display into a cockpit-encompassing view of the entire battlefield, with expected infil and exfil points marked as bright highlights. A series of thin, glowing lines, like pathways cut through the heavy growth, indicated predicted reinforcement routes, alongside likely targeting lines for firing positions. A series of red shapes, squares and triangles, popped up to call the new targets as specific types, followed by ID designations and at-a-glance details that might be pertinent.

As much a mental overview as an observably physical one, Rai began marking off targets as they appeared at the end of the clearing between the gradual slopes of the storm-ridden valley. Three armored transports, flanked and led by a pair of armored gun carriers slowly cut their way through the field before him. Rai designated the transports as OMEGA 1, 2 and 3, the Guncarriers as CANCER 1 and CANCER 2.  Moments later, three HASHMAL Assault Mechs stomped into view at the convoy's flank. Rai marked these as VAPOR 1, 2 and 3 and added exclamation points for priority targeting.

Twenty minutes passed until they were finally into his natural sensor range. As planned, he activated a marker-light on the Mech to the right of the convoy, VAPOR-1, its readouts and a glowing, red silhouette lighting up his HUD. This was instantly transmitted to the rest of the Squad through the network. One second later, his sensors detected a low-frequency "thud" through the ground nearby.

ATHENA instantly registered the armor-piercing round from the pair of snipers in their squad. Faster than sound, it streaked across the humid landscape, making a shockwave and a reverberating boom as it broke that planet's sound barrier. Per her predictions, the round missed, but Rai maintained the markerlight despite the blown element of surprise.

Patiently, Rai observed as two of the Assault mechs immediately began laying down suppressing fire in the direction of the sniper, the third Assault mech dropping prone in front of the convoy and following suit, their HAR's blasting rounds into the treeline with a steady "BOOMBOOM - BOOM - BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM" that would have been deafening if he were outside. He did not envy the men in the convoy.

Rai called a shot on his original target and transmitted it to the sniper team.

A second sniper round arced out from the forest line in quick succession. This one blew right through VAPOR-1's upper torso, slagging the armor and it's internal skeleton and ejecting an explosive fan of orange-red-hot fragments into the forest beyond. ATHENA indicated an ammunition breach and the HASHMAL went up in a blaze of green and white flame.

At this point, the convoy had slowed and was turning around, trying to make the most of the cover-fire given by the Assault escorts. The guncarriers were now keyed into the sniper's positions and had begun their own defensive fire, covering the convoy's retreat.

On his TACHUD Rai watched his team of snipers retreat amidst the barrage. Their plan was to circle back and around behind Rai's own position, where they would split up and resume providing overwatch for what came next.

[SENTINEL 1 - CENTCOMM: SCORPION 1, SCORPION 2 EN-ROUTE. ETA 30 SECONDS. DANGER CLOSE.]

[SENTINEL 1 - SCORPION 1: REQUESTING SITREP AND ID ON YOUR MARKER.]

{-Sentinel One Confirm-}

While ATHENA sent the information to SCORPION-1, Rai kept track of the sniper's positions. As soon as they were set up, Rai felt a scout drone detach itself from the hull of his mech and tracked it as it hummed out in the direction of the convoy. Once at its destination, Rai grandfathered its intel into further transmissions directed to SCORPION squad and the snipers.

The snipers had continued their offense from two new positions, now. One round zipped past the convoy, ripping a gaping hole through the forest's edge, causing trees to explode and undergrowth to fly in a hundred different directions. The HASHMAL's had managed to cover a lot of ground in this short time as they retreated to the denser cover of the forest behind them, but another sniper round spanged off of the leg of VAPOR-3, almost blowing it off and exposing it's sensitive structure beneath.

The comm from SCORPION-1's NHP arrived through the Net.

[SENTINEL SQUAD, ETA IMMINENT, HOT HOT HOT. REPEAT: HOT HOT HOT.]

ATHENA sent the confirmation to SCORPION Squad on his behalf just as an alert of an orbital landing in his vicinity echoed through his connection. Seconds later, SCORPION-1 and 2 slammed into the valley floor before him, one to the rear of the convoy, the other to its front.

SCORPION-1, a Goliath, stood at the forefront of the convoy. SCORPION-1 had apparently landed on the guntruck at the head of the convoy, destroying it. The giant mech was surrounded by flames and it used this surprise to reach out and yank one of the HASHMAL's into its grasp. With a screaming groan, it hurled the Assault mech into the path of the remaining convoy, blocking off their escape.

[DISENGAGE NHP OFFENSIVE PROTOCOLS, LOWER YOUR WEAPONS AND EXIT WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEADS,] SCORPION-1's NHP announced over comms. SCORPION-2 stood over the fallen HASHMAL, the barrel of its massive assault rifle pressed hard against the side of the Frame's cockpit.

Doors began to open across the convoy as men and women stepped out, hands suspended. The cockpits of the two Frames opened up, the Lancer from the fallen HASHMAL coughing and catching their breath as they stumbled to the ground. SCORPION-2 adjusted its rifle in the direction of the group that was now gathering beside the stalled convoy.

[SENTINEL-1, SCORPION-1 - CALLIOPE-99: ETA 1 MINUTE TO TARGET EXFIL. APPROACHING ON YOUR 90. REQUEST OVERWATCH.]

Around him, a flickering node swiftly approaching from sub-orbital space appeared on his readout of the battlespace. ATHENA pinged this as CALLIOPE-99, an armored, heavily armed military transport. A chrono-readout appeared beside CALLIOPE's designator, swiftly counting down as it neared their target area.

[CALLIOPE-99 - SCORPION 1: CONFIRM. SENTINEL-1, MAINTAIN PROXIMITY TO TARGET. INBOUND ON YOUR PINGS.]

Immediately, SCORPION Squad lit up their signatures. Their sensors pinged on Rai's readouts like bright flares in the blue-green-black of his Swallowtail's tactical systems. Rai tried to relax the tense feeling from his shoulders. This was going to be the toughest part.

[30 SECONDS.]

Amidst a wash of white fire, the chunky, elongated frame of CALLIOPE-99 peeled down and into the rain-soaked fields of alabaster grass that were so invasive on Thanaquos VI. Flash-fried by it's descent boosters, the armored transport thumped to a stop beside the stalled convoy.

[SCORPION-1, CENTCOMM: CONFIRM TOUCHDOWN. EXFIL IN 120 SECONDS.]

At the opposite end of the convoy, SCORPION-2 let off a quick burst of fire from the defensive anti-personnel autogun in it's torso, the rounds blasting into the empty grass at it's feet, followed by a command to the prisoners to make their way to the transport. Immediately people began moving, hurrying towards the transport with their hands held over their heads.

Rai monitored the battlefield from his SWALLOWTAIL, marking off points of progress on a timeline for later submission to CENTCOMM for their own dissemination and analysis. That information would be forwarded to the local Thanaquien militia to help them better strategize a counter-offensive and take back their planet.

Ahead of him, CALLIOPE-99's engines went from idle to warm-up, lighting up bright orange and red on his heat sensors as it the ground around the transport's perimiter rose in temperature. IVY, CALLIOPE's NHP, started a networked countdown and SCORPION-1 issued pre-evac orders to SENTINEL 2 and 3.

As she was doing so, a question pinged across Rai's field of view from ATHENA. At his request, she had been doing a much higher definition, time-dilated analysis of the proceedings up until their current point. From this analysis she picked out a specific, repetitive occurrence of atmospheric abnormality in the immediate vicinity of the convoy, an abnormality that was separate from the thermal considerations of their visible targets, the assault team and planet's natural environmental inclination.

Rai reviewed the analysis, frowning.

He had seen similar readouts like this before, but only in hypothetical training scenarios against intrusion-hardened tech-focused Frames. What those micro-abnormalities were telling him was that there was a fourth mech out there, a stealth-based frame, it was part of the convoy and they had walked right into it.

{-SCORPION Squad, CALLIOPE-99 - SENTINEL-1 - We're detecting anomalous temperature readings in your vicinity; Advi-}

Rai's report was immediately cut off as a pair of mutual screams echoed from the comms of CALLIOPE-99, one from the mech itself that was the sound of tearing metal, the other from the pilot and NHP within. With his holoprojection focused on the assault area, he watched with jarring clarity as a red-hot line of molten slag divided the armored transport in half before igniting its combustive fuel stores and exploding, obliterating both the transport and the majority of the convoy.

Over his comm channel, SCORPION-1's calm demand for situation readouts was cut short in a burst of shorted, max-volume static as that same line of red, melted slag divided his mech in twain from the shoulder to the hip. SCORPION-2 took immediate cover behind the burning hulk of the transport and started throwing an entire magazine downrange.

Rai and ATHENA focused on narrowing the ID on their invisible enemy. When ATHENA pulled up a theoretical holo of its potential weaknesses, Rai engaged one of his SWALLOWTAIL's auxiliary arms, aimed at a hypothetical hotspot in a sea of hotspots, and fired a subsonic hollow-point round in the direction of the stealthed unit.

A weird, razor blade fan of limbs phased into view, spinning blindingly fast, the hollow-point bouncing off of it and slamming into one of the burned-out trucks with a loud "SPANG!" Those limbs were attached to a longer, skeletal armature, which retracted into a main shoulder-mount on the equally skeletal-looking torso.

Immediately a high-density sphere of fragmented information rained down across Rai's console like a grenade going off on his sensors. They'd been snooped out. He came down out of predictive mode and left the comms to ATHENA. Around him, his mech rose from its tomb beneath the ancient loam and began to move into retreat position.

[ALL UNITS - ATHENA: PROTOCOL 8-5. UNKNOWN CHASSIS. IMMEDIATE EVAC. SUCCESS PROBABILITY WITH CURRENT DATA IS %0.00000002. REPEAT, PROTOCOL 8-5 INDICATES A STATISTICAL AWARD DECAY DUE TO NULL CONDITIONS. DETERMINATION TO FOLLOW. . .]

Rather than retreat, Rai saw SCORPION-2 fire round after round from its heavy machine gun into the direction of this new enemy. A second spinning blade emerged from the flame-flickered night, its edges wreathed in white-hot flame. Rai watched as a piece of burning darkness broke off from the surrounding landscape and flicker-fluttered in the growing high winds of the storm overhead.

A streak of lightning lit the battlefield. That shadow-shifting cloak seemed to conceal a four-armed skeletal frame, two arms holding fans of white-hot blades, the other two wielding what seemed to be a single-edged heat blade and a firearm of some kind.

SCORPION-2, laying fire into the strange new form, only watched as the high-velocity rounds phased through its target, splashing harmlessly into the thick jungles beyond or somehow disappearing completely. An insectile head turned to appraise SCORPION-2 as it hooked the rifle to its side. Raising a hand, Rai detected a strange surge of data from the direction of the battle and watched as ATHENA disseminated it into something readable.

{SCORPION-2, evasive!} Rai shouted into his comms.

At the same moment, SCORPION-2's own rounds phased into existence above its head after having traveled through time and space to get there. They blew down through the top of the Goliath's head and straight through the cockpit. With a squealing thud, the frame sagged to the ground, venting oil and hot, liquid plasma.

In the flickering fire, Rai watched as the unknown frame raised a hand and fired a single, burning flare high into the sky above.

Across his monitors and half inside his own head, ATHENA anxiously screamed an alert algorithm that Rai had trained for, but never hoped to experience:

[ALL UNITS] came ATHENA across the bridge. [OMEGA RULE: VOID-VOID-VOID - REPEAT: VOID-VOID-VOID - NEGATIVE LIFE-SUSTAINING POTENTIAL IN THIS AREA OF EFFECT UP TO 2500 KILOMETERS - HIGH-VELOCITY ANTI-PERSONNEL PROJECTILE INBOUND FROM THE FOLLOWING COORDINATES - ESTIMATE IMPACT ON THIS MARKER IN TWENTY SECONDS - DEEP-SCAN PRE-ANALYSIS INDICATES SHORT-BURST, HIGH-TEMPERATURE VAPORIZING ATMOSPHERIC INCENDIARY MIXTURE - OMEGA RULE: VOID-VOID-VOID REPEATING. . .]

Shoving his SWALLOWTAIL as fast as it would go, he pushed through the undergrowth. From the information she was giving him, and if Athena's guess at the temperatures were even close to reality, the dangers wouldn't just be at ground zero. Every living thing even remotely close to this vicinity was going to burst instantly into flames. Gritting his teeth, he stared ahead as he navigated his way through the darkness, keeping one eye open on the retreating navigation of the remains of his team. In one corner of his eye Athena had placed a countdown, her estimated ETA to impact. It was distressingly short.

[ALL UNITS - SCORPION 2: GOD SAVE U-]

Behind them the world experienced a kaleidoscope roll of rising temperatures - orange, red, blue, white, one after the other. The jungle around him became nothing but a black silhouette as the darkest night became the brightest day. His temperature readout went from a mild, if damp humidity experienced at this time of year, to that of two stars mashed together, well-exceeding anything even remotely suitable for human life. The sudden temperature difference clashed with the descending cold front of the approaching megastorm. It only lasted for barely half of a second, but what followed was an exothermic reaction so massive that it shifted that side of the continent a mile deeper into sea-level, and in the future caused scientists and researchers to descend upon Thanaquos VI to research its long-term effects, some of which lasted for millennia.

All Rai remembered was ATHENA disconnecting and settling into her sarcophagus before the sound and rocking blast of God himself descending sent his SWALLOWTAIL spinning ass over teakettle into the ancient, foliage-choked canyons beyond the valley forest's edge and straight into unconsciousness.

When next he would see it, the Coisoimos valley would be the Coisoimos crater.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:55, Mon 16 Mar 2020.