Chapter 45: Kidnapping XXI - Boiling Point

“No! Anne!” Belevere cried. She watched in horror as a series of explosions shook the earth right over the tunnels where Annabelle was last seen from the transmitter. Dirt fell back down to the ground, while lighter particles and smoke continued to billow upwards, obscuring the ground from sight.

She switched to her other sensors and scanned the ground, sighing with relief as she realized that the ground had not sunken in. The tunnel hadn’t collapsed.

For the time being, Annabelle was safe, but for how long? As long as these thugs from Vesmelda Florent were here, Annabelle was in constant danger. She had to eliminate them at all costs.

“Unforgivable!” Belevere growled. Her sensors quickly picked up signs of mechs on the ground—the Terror Riders—hidden in the cloud. Zeroing in on one of them at random, she fired off a shot, blowing a hole through the dust. 

More cannon than rifle, the massive round her gun fired smashed into the targeted mech, crushing through its armor with ease, breaking through countless components and shredding its internals. 

The mech stalled, as it should, but after a moment, it began to move again as power was rerouted through redundancies. As a melee swordsman mech, it was a bit more resilient than its ranged counterparts.

Belevere gritted her teeth. Persistent!

Ejecting the spent shell, she rammed another round into the rifle’s chamber and fired a second shot. The destructive ability of two rounds from above was too much for the mech to bear, and the mech finally lost power from its reactor completely.

Confirming that the mech was no longer active, she switched targets.

Beside her, the rest of the Academy Guards opened fire as well, firepower raining down on the mechs on the ground. 

“What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know that Annabelle Florent is in that tunnel?” Maxwell shouted. “Are you trying to kill her?”

But the leader of the Terror Riders did not grace him with a reply. The remaining mercenary mechs still in the air soon put a stop to the one sided shooting and three beams of laser hit and scorched holes into the Guards’ armor

The uneasy truce fell apart and the location erupted in chaotic battle again.

The remaining swordsman still in the air burst into action, charging straight at Belevere. 

“You bitch!” its pilot shouted over the public wave.

Belevere wanted to fire a few more times, but even one more shot risked the swordsman catching a cut on her. Reluctantly, she engaged her boosters and flew away in the swordsman’s opposite direction and trained her gun on him instead.

She had to constantly adjust her aim to the swordsman’s dodging, more and more as the swordsman came closer. When she finally fired, it was coincidentally when the swordsman changed direction and the round went wide, not coming even close to hitting the mech.

She couldn’t afford to dally anymore.

Laser fire raked her armor while another swordsman mech, piloted by Ares Synton, began to fly toward her. 

She was much more afraid of a pair of swordsman mechs compared to the previous laser and swordsman combination.

Lasers didn’t work well in the atmosphere and she could afford to take a few hits, but two swordsman mechs could corner her much more easily than one can, and getting close to a swordsman mech was a death sentence.

She looked over to the battle fought by the remaining Terror Riders and the Academy Guards. What she saw disheartened her—although the Academy Guards were good enough to avoid being shot down even while outnumbered, actually grasping victory was much more difficult than merely staving off defeat. 

With more even numbers, the ferocity of the Terror Riders more than made up for their unpolished skills, 

“Hang on, our reinforcements will arrive soon!” Maxwell said, trying to bolster their morale.

After the initial free for all, some semblance of order returned as each mech sought out their opponent and mostly stuck to them. The battle seemed to be at an impasse again, leaving her alone to deal with three enemy mechs. 

How was she expected to beat three of them? Maybe if she specialized in aerial, long ranged mechs, but she didn’t.

With a start, she realized that she was getting further and further from the battlefield while she escaped from the incoming swordsman. That was unacceptable. But heading back meant giving up gained ground. Not to mention Synton was on his way.

“What should I do... Can I take him out?” she muttered eyeing the swordsman mech that was slowly falling behind, but will catch up like a rabid dog if she ever let up. If she shoots him down, she’ll be able to return to the status quo from before, a two-on-one against Synton and that laser marksman. “I can try...”

Continuing to avoid the lasers that grazed around her, landing a solid hit every now and then that she did her best to spread out over her entire armor, she flipped mid flight and fired, almost without aiming. She bet on the fact that the pilot would not be expecting it.

The pilot’s reaction was a bit late, but her aim was off as well. The shot disappeared behind the pilot without so much as scratching him.

Two rounds left before reload. I should have practiced a bit more instead of focusing on the spear, she lamented.

While she loaded the next round, she finally decided to head back. Instead of flying in a straight line, she began to loop around in a large circle. Sure enough instead of following after her, the swordsman mech began to cut across the circle to intersect her.

Even Synton’s swordsman mech began to catch up.

At this rate, she wouldn’t be able to make it back before she ran headlong into the swordsmen at melee range. 

Kiting the two melee mechs around, she fired round after round at them, but only succeeded in blowing off one of their legs when he dodged too late. She couldn’t even touch Synton. It would be weirder if she could—Synton was skilled and had many years of piloting his mech of choice, while she was frankly barely better than a newbie at this.

Since she wasn’t good enough yet anyway, she gave up on him to focus on the swordsman who she did manage to hit once already.

There was one more bullet left in her magazine. She steadied her breathing, focusing on the swordsman mech’s movement. Left, right the same amount... no, just short, and then dodge up. The computer and her mind worked together to dissect the patterns in the swordsman mech’s movements even as his own mech was likely warning him when he became predictable.

In the end, the advantages that the computers brought were usually canceled out and it all came down to intuition. And now, her intuition told her that she needed to fire. Her computer told her the same this time. This is it.

As her brain sent the signal to fire her weapon, the tone of the platoon channel that she had tuned out in order to concentrate shifted, and a new voice burst to the forefront of her attention. She jumped, and the weapon fired a fraction of a second late.

By then the swordsman mech was already past the trajectory of the attack.

“No! Damn it, what is it this time?”

The new voice was young and full of energy. “This is Vesper speaking. Captain, please hold on. We will arrive in less than five minutes!”

It was the other mechs that made up the on duty Guard platoon, the ones that had stayed behind in the Academy. Belevere checked her radar, looking at the data that the Academy’s Mech Command provided to all allied mechs, including hers. 

Five mechs flying at the upper limit of subsonic were closing in fast on her location. Soon, they would register on the sensors of even the Terror Riders.

Five minutes was merely the time to physically get here. Mechs could engage from much further away, and even before that, the Terror Riders might decide to give up once they realized that they were outmatched.

Despite having the numbers advantage, the Terror Riders were still down one or two mechs depending on whether or not the laser marksman that Maxwell just knifed out of the air was permanently disabled.

Having reinforcements be arriving in short order made the Guards much more bold as their morale skyrocketed. She even saw some of the Guards trading hits, deliberately holding still and eating a shot from a laser in order to fire a more accurate burst. 

Even if they fell, so what? There would be another here soon to take their place.

Maxwell burst into laughter as the situation turned around in an instant. “Hahaha! Ares Synton, was it? Your time grows short! My reinforcements are coming soon, so just give it up! If you can’t beat us when we have less mechs, how will you match us when you’re the one at a disadvantage? Leave now!”

Synton’s reply did not come immediately, but the movements of his subordinates spoke volumes as every single one of them disengaged from battle and flew toward the craters. They only made the barest effort to dodge.

Belevere quickly reloaded, the mechanism in her ammunition pack seeming dreadfully slow as she realized what was going on. She chased after the mercenaries.

“They’re going to try again!” Belevere cried. “Stop them!”

As the Guards got over their surprise from the sudden movement, they began to fire on the diving mechs. But before they could do much damage, the knights rose to present an obstacle against the mechs. Even though one of their shields was heavily damaged, courtesy of Belevere’s long rifle, they were still quite resilient against the smaller calibers rounds.

The reload finally completed and Belevere whipped her rifle forward, aiming straight at one of the knights. The one she targeted was the one with the damaged shield. One of her shots created a crater and weakened its integrity. She doubted it would hold against another one.

“Out of my way!”

With a huge boom, her gun fired again. The shield exploded this time as the round smashed squarely into the previously created indentations, focusing all of the round’s power into that center point. Fragments of the round and shield flew back, mangling the knight’s shield hand.

Taking advantage of the lack of defense, the Guard focused their fire on the knight. They didn’t even have to aim much as they could count on the knight to not dodge—it would defeat their purpose to expose their comrades behind them to danger.

Although the other knight quickly reacted and tried to cover his exposed fellow knight, he was not fast enough. Dozens of mech-sized rounds had already impacted the knight’s frontal armor, arms, and legs. The sheer volume of firepower mangled the targeted locations beyond recognition. 

Belevere gritted her teeth and fired again, her shot hitting a weakened armor plate and pierced through completely, scattered pieces of metal into the internals. Retaining much of its force, the shattered round forced its way out the back of the mech.

The mech fell.

“Serves you right,” Belevere growled.

With only one knight left, it was not enough to provide cover to the majority of the retreating Terror Riders. Belevere drew beads on the mechs closest to the ground and fired, blasting into the top half of the mech. Despite the damage, the mech remained active.

Mercenaries prioritized fielding resilient mechs and the redundancies that played a large part of achieving such resiliency kicked in. It took another shot to disable the mech for good. Belevere had the illusion of shooting fish in a barrel now that most of the enemy mechs didn’t bother dodging all that much.

Finally, a Terror Rider reached the ground. From an auxiliary pack, it retrieved one of those burrowing bombs from before. It knelt, reaching toward the ground.

A ballistic round smashed into the bomb, scattering it before it could even detonate, though the mech’s hand was gone. Breathing hard as she concentrated, Belevere cleared the chamber for another round. I have to stop them at all costs...

More mechs reached the ground, and the first one had two hands. It simply tossed aside its laser rifle and retrieved another bomb. A horrible thought flashed through Belevere’s mind. What if she shot the pack that the Terror Riders carried the bombs in? They looked large enough to hold four.

Up until now, there had been no deaths despite the destroyed mech. An explosion with the force of multiple of those bombs will surely kill the pilot of the mech that carried them. Although some of the safer explosives won’t detonate when destroyed, these bombs looked far too space efficient to contain such safety measures.

Can I do it? Belevere swallowed. The answer was never in question from the start. I can.

Narrowing her eyes, Belevere took aim and fired with no hesitation. An instant later, a huge explosion rocked the battlefield as the small bombs designed to shift vast amounts of earth exploded above ground. 

When the fireball disappeared in a column of smoke, she searched with her sensors for signs of the mech whose pack she had targeted. She found it quickly, a collapsed husk of a mech with its back blown apart. Scraps of superheated, but rapidly cooling, metal displayed vividly in the infrared spectrum.

No signs of life were present—she couldn’t even find the cockpit that had been buried deep in the mech. The pilot of that laser marksman was dead, without even a body left over. 

Belevere searched herself for any signs of guilt, but she felt nothing. To her, killing that person was as natural as breathing, for he stood between her and what she wanted. Is this... normal?

She didn’t know. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of those extraneous thoughts. Returning to the present, she surveyed the ground, trying to see the reactions to her deed.

It was mixed, and some were more obvious than others. 

Especially Maxwell, who immediately opened a private subchannel to her through his authority as the leader of the platoon. “Lady Odis! Was it necessary to kill him?!”

“Yes.” Belevere frowned. “The source of their bombs are those auxiliary packs they’re carrying. Destroying them nips the trouble in the bud and teaches the rest of them the consequences of continuing.”

Before Maxwell can protest or reply, she shut down the entirety of the platoon channel on her end. Twice now it had distracted her. 

Sighing, she looked back at the battlefield.

How’s that? You should understand that if you continue, I will detonate your bomb pack. There’s no way you’ll continue, right?

As she read the results of her sensors, she realized that her judgement had been wrong. Instead of being put off by the death of their comrade, it merely pushed them on to do their job faster.

By now, most of the mechs had landed and the second batch had already placed the burrowing bomb on the ground, waiting for its burrowing mechanism to start up.

Belevere quickly fired the round in her chamber and rushed to reload, but even though she managed to destroy one of the bombs along with the mech’s hand, triggering an explosion this time, the other managed to send off the burrowing bomb in the time she took to chamber a second round.

By the time she fired, the machine already burrowed further than she could shoot into the ground.

Once again she had failed to stop them. The Guards, even the ones with a clear shot on the grounded mechs were too focused on the knight to care about what happened to the tunnel. She was only one person.

She continued to shoot, reload, and shoot, but she couldn’t keep up. The sheer number of mechs that the Terror Riders had overwhelmed her. By now, she counted three of those burrowing bombs that had managed to escape her.

Three against an underground structure weakened by a previous shockwave.

At this point, Belevere could only hope that Annabelle had run far, far away from the location of the collapse. She closed her eyes in prayer, unwilling to see what would happen, but something forced them to open, to witness what she had failed to prevent.

Anger welled up inside her. Anger at the Terror Riders for opposing her, anger at the Academy Guards for their inaction, anger at herself for her weakness. Since she met Annabelle almost a decade ago, she had already decided that Annabelle would be her whole life.

How could she allow anyone to take that away from her.

The anger gathered and compressed, pressuring rising until it reached a breaking point, until the emotions that had been bottled up spilled over into her entire being, seeping through her connection to the mech to saturate the entire machine, forcing it to yield to her emotions. 

The Inkbird gladly welcomed her and together, they watched the ground erupted upwards in a massive column of dirt. She descended as swiftly as a diving hawk, silently peering through her sights at the knight mech that held up the entire half-platoon of guards, her movements in the aerial sniper smoother and faster than ever before.