What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[Negation]

All those free 2nd rate mech samples for Bolt to play with.

 

[Thomisannoyed]

Hmm, pretty sure that after this battle is when Bolt is gonna start earning his Vulture Title.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Well, the Hexxers have really stepped in it this time.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, combining this, the assassination or kidnapping of the designer of the Last Prayer just as it's impact likely starts to really be felt, with the fact the Hexxers stabbed the Fridays in the back just as it seemed like they were thinking of intervening to defeat the Sandman Invasion? This is the sort of thing where a narrative of 'The Hexxers just want all the 3rd Rates to die so they have an easier time killing off the Friday's is quite an easy narrative to emerge.

And whilst it normally takes lopsided ratios for a 3rd Rate to fight a 2nd Rate... There is a 2nd Rate already engaged and a lot of the surviving 3rd Rates are going to have an opinion along the lines of 'I already accepted I was going to die but I had a hope otherwise with my friends, and you bitches are the reason it died with my friends!'

 

[lost star]

Pup was an expert candidate. As a candidate, he got training every day, one-on-one mentorship with Lilly, and favored treatment in many areas. This favor did not get him out of normal every day duties though. In point of fact he sometimes got some extra chores just to keep him humble. Lilly had frequently and constantly told him to work on his mindset just as much as his skills while doing those chores. Something about willpower, focus, and so on. If he were to be honest, Pup really didn't get a lot of it.

What he did get was that he wasn't exempt from patrolling. He actually did a lot of guard duty for some reason. Sometimes they even had people try to mess with him too! Pup tried not to hold it against them, but he was getting really tired of being tested all the time! (Honing willpower required a lot of work, and the Rats lacked a lot of usual tools.)

That meant he wasn't that shocked when he picked up the scent of a mech. Or rather his mech picked up the scent. According to Lilly he had a surprisingly good talent with sensory systems. That was actually pretty rare and something they'd been trying to hone. To his mind this was just another test along that vein.

It was hard to track this one. Harder than usual. The ever-present mist they kept up as mild cover always sort of muted scents, but this was worse than normal. He had to press his mech's nose to the ground in some parts to follow it, and it seemed to split at several points. Annoying!

Then, when he finally got closer, he couldn't find the target visually! That meant they were going to ambush him somehow. Pup haaaated ambushes. They always shot at him and he still couldn't line up his shots as well as he wanted. He was getting better at it, but ick! Plodding into the area was a no-go too. He'd been scolded far too many times for that. 'Treat every training exercise like real life!' 'Don't walk into fights.' 'Pay attention Pup.'

Which meant that his next action was firing an napalm missile forward. The muddy ground would keep it from spreading, and he needed to illuminate the target. Napalm missiles were cheap, and he had lots of them, so they were great to just lob at areas when you needed to shoot something. The missile went into the mist, landed, and ignited some of the ground.

To his annoyance the fires didn't reveal anything.

That was when the first prickle of unease hit him. Pup fell back on pure instinct without questioning why every sense was blaring danger and threat at the same time. He jittered in place and switched to Hellfire, before firing two shots at different areas. Both missiles flew through the air. Whether chance or innate skill, one splashed against something.

"Alert!" Pup howled into his mic, to no response.

Which made no sense at all. He knew jamming. You always got static with jamming. This meant something! He just didn't know what.

He was also pretty sure that stealthy things were supposed to be caught when you got them with something. He could just barely see the foot. There was some blurring, but he could only see it because he could see the foot! Then the stealthy thing fired at him and the feedback from the hit made him scream.

Cerberus had decent armor. It was meant to take a hit rather than dodge. Even a pointblank shot shouldn't have done the damage it did. Pup could feel his mech staggering and then another shot hit it. That one ruptured his reactor and tore through half a dozen vital components.

Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

Unknown to Pup, he was fighting a second rate Hexxer mech. It was one of the less useful direct combat ones but still Second Rate. As a stealth mech meant to operate in areas of less supply it was weak compared to other Second Rate mechs. Its claim to fame was the near perfect stealth and long operational time. It was equipped with a singular dagger and a small suppressed handgun for offense. Both were relatively anemic weapons, for the tech level it came from. Against a Third Rate mech this meant it would merely break most of the armor with a few shots instead of causing catastrophic damage with one or two good hits.

As his mech slumped to the ground Pup saw his opponent approach on his fading sensors. Oddly, the only thing he felt was dread. Not for himself. He'd come to terms with death on his first sortie. The dread came from the fact that he knew his family was in trouble. He was supposed to warn them.

'Get up.'

Pup growled as he wrenched at the controls. The reactor was blown. There was no more power. There was just the dregs in the power cells. No amount of physical effort from him could move the mass of metal. He still tried.

'GET UP!'

"Damnit. At least work!" He jabbed at the comms in his cockpit. That had emergency internal cells. It could broadcast. Or at least it could if not for the jamming.

The enemy was going to kill him. They were taking their time doing it, but they were going to kill him. Trying to keep sound down? The shots had been muffled hadn't they? That shouldn't matter. His shots had been pretty loud, but there was a chance they hadn't been heard. He was a decent distance out, and the lack of radio meant bad things.

'Get up or everyone dies.'

"No." The young man growled out and grabbed at something. Maybe the eject system? If he got out, could he run to someone to warn them? His hand tapped at the Heart Crystal as he realized that he'd have to outrun the enemy mech, which was impossible. "Damnit!"

Something burned in his breast, and he felt something spike in his head. Pup grabbed at the controls again with nothing but instinct and his mech lurched. Resonance roared as his willpower demanded a response. The mech surged with electricity as its systems powered up for one last time.

Both the right and left heads of Cerberus exploded as the launchers were forced to function far beyond their capacity. Missiles were unloaded without regards to space or sense. A dozen Hellfire missiles roared into the air and ignited everything around the downed mech. The approaching stealth specialist was caught dead center of the entire mess.

Hellfire ate everything. Against a Second Rate being covered wasn't a death sentence. It was more than enough to cause serious damage still. The pilot did as trained and dashed out of the sudden inferno as fast as possible. It was enough to stop it from dying. Nothing else. The stealth system was absolutely fried and half it's systems were done from that one strike and it had to retreat out of the general area. A hit from literally anything else would likely spell its doom.

"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" Pup screamed out as the fires roared around him.

One miracle. That was what the universe owed Pup, and what he collected. His voice was heard. Through the jamming, through the lack of power, through the impossibilities that prevented him from being heard, the warning made it through.

The pilot of the stealth mech wasn't quite aware of that. Despite the shout, she was in a sealed mech and attuned to a specific tactical channel. She couldn't hear Pup's warning. Only the jammer could hear that the transmissions had been pierced.

Relaying that information turned out to be relatively pointless though. Pup's warning caused the mountain to go on red alert. The ones observing things could see the doors crashing down as the place was sealed. Shields were raised up, and mechs were scrambled.

It was too late to abort. The stealth mechs carrying the kill teams had already deployed them. Plan B was therefore moved up to the primary plan. The Kill Teams moved into the mountain and the mechs moved to intercept Wrench Rat forces. The swordsman moved forward and the battle began in earnest.

Pup's mech was left to burn with the semi-reasonable assumption that the Hellfire around him would eventually kill him as it spread. It was a semi-reasonable assumption. It might have been true had the pilot not been drilled repeatedly for scenarios like this. Pup's only regret was that it would take an hour to get back.

 

[Simonbob]

So....

Created a second Expert against them?

Should give the Hexxors a atomic thank you.

 

[foo-jin]

So....

Created a second Expert against them?

Should give the Hexxors a atomic thank you.

Click to shrink...

Are nukes still used in this setting? Regardless, I feel like the only way the rats can retaliate against the hexers is via the MTA putting pressure. Not sure if the rats have the pull to really affect things all that much on that front.

 

[Negation]

Regardless, I feel like the only way the rats can retaliate against the hexers is via the MTA putting pressure.

Click to shrink...

Remember all the holding back Bolt does with mech design working on other people's intellectual property? That just went out the window regarding Hexer technology.

 

[Mr.Feen3y!]

Additionally, isn't Ves a semi prisoner/collared collaborator of the Hexxers right now? So that means Bolt gets to rip apart some of his tech and not feel bad about it yeah?

 

[lost star]

The defenders had two problems and no ways of knowing about them. The Kill Teams forcing their way into the mountain, and the mechs outside. The jamming from the Second Rate mech absolutely overwhelmed all attempts at wireless communications on the mountain. Only Bolt's comm was able to penetrate it, and that was fairly useless without something to receive it. Neither Bolt, nor Lilly knew what was coming in. It should have been a very fatal scenario. Should have been.

Several factors prevented this from being a massacre. One was that the MTA had not skimped on making the mountain a fortress to pay for the masterwork they'd taken. The construction itself was mostly Third Rate materials, but they'd done it with First Rate technology and made it possible to upgrade. They had only underpaid compared to the usual bounty they gave for masterworks on the surface. In truth, their work on the fortress had been a textbook example of making a fortress capable of withstanding disproportionate assault with limited resources. There were enough redundant alerts that once the big alert had been sounded they were able to identify a vague area where the enemy was.

Breaking into the mountain was also not as simple as destroying the doors. Getting past the first set of doors after the alert had been sent out quickly required that the mechs take the time to break some of the shields in key areas and then ripping open the outer doors with their mech grade weapons. Getting past the second set of doors needed blasting charges and time. This significant delay and noise allowed for the Rats to respond and organize their response through the jamming. (Another black ops would have aborted by this point.)

Here was where another factor came into play. The Wrench Rats were very savvy and technologically inclined. They'd honed their art with the bare minimum of resources. They had a history of dealing with people trying to kill them in their bolt-holds. Everything in the mountain was hard wired and hardened against attacks assuming that the enemy would have a technological advantage. The Hexadric Hegemony forces had tried to hack the doors open and get into the internal network as their first steps. They'd failed because the Rats had compartmentalized everything with custom programs and outright physical triggers. The doors were all shut and could only be opened physically from the internal side. They were also simply physically thick and heavy enough that getting them open required an effort. All their hacking had done was make it harder for the defenders to pinpoint their position.

This meant things were not going as planned for the Hexxers. Every second meant they were losing time and advantages. They still had a lot of both, but aware targets were significantly more dangerous than unaware targets. Lilly and Bolt in particular were already enacting emergency plans. Lilly was sprinting to her mechs. Bolt was heading to a defensive position.

This was different than what others would suspect. There were many safe rooms. That was where the civilians and children moved to. Bolt's secured area was in different location by plan. He moved to a bay nearby where Lilly was deploying.

His wife grabbed Dowry. Morning Star was good defensively, but against unknown enemies she wanted something with speed and the ability to survive surprises. Dowry's full capabilities were also relatively unknown to the general population. The expert mech had not had a proper battle since its remodel. She left the mountain and to engage the enemy forces with nary a word but with a lot of love and determination.

Once she was gone Bolt made sure everything was secured behind her and began his own preparations. People thought of designers as weak and easy targets. They were morons. Most designers were morons too truthfully. They worked in places that built weapons. They never turned their thoughts as to how to defend themselves with that. Bolt specifically had.

On the Hexadric Hegemony's side, the Kill Teams had quickly realized that their poison gas was ineffective. It had been designed to propagate through filters of a Third Rate nation. It was not. It was either going inert or lingering around the deployment modules instead of spreading through the base properly. Unbeknownst to them, the Rats had a very long and very dark relationship with gas. A very frequent saying they had all heard was: 'The proper way to deal with Rats was poison.' They did not wear masks as a joke. They wore them because people frequently used it against them, and they frequently used it in turn. The one request they'd made towards the MTA was to have an excessive amount of proofing against gas attacks in the infrastructure. (Which they'd agreed to with something resembling amusement and a very tiny bit of actual First Rate tech.)

The team leads had a brief conversation and decided to switch back to a modified plan A. They had the location of Bolt thanks to advanced sensors and the limited system hacking they had accomplished. One team would go after him, and the other would have to intercept the oncoming security forces.

While this was occurring Bolt had secluded himself in the bay and had done some basic fortifications. At the moment he had no idea who was attacking, where they were attacking, why, and so on. All he knew was an alert had been given and some very powerful jamming was happening. Simple precautions had him seal the bay shut and set a few things to defend against intrusion. He was still very much in the dark.

So, in an effort to reassure himself and perhaps help, he warmed up the mech printer and started up a small designer program on his comm. His new idea was pretty sudden, but he felt like it would work. He finally had an idea of how to crack the stone shaper's mech technology! All he needed was one of the many, many spare Heart Crystals he had set aside and a bit of mental effort.

'Anyone care to help?' He first asked the spirits in the little sanctuary he made.

Gratifyingly, there were many volunteers. Bolt communed with them as he designed. The design itself was quite simple. Just a tiny man-sized mech. In fact, there were more than a few pre-made designs that did what he needed. Dubbed Fu-dogs, they were typically computer powered security things. Most of them were really crappy, putting it bluntly. The AI was horrible and they were prone to being hacked. Bolt could fix both of those issues! They just needed to be stripped of a few things, needed some more armor, the computer simplified and isolated. Bolt actually removed the weapons too. He'd re-add them later, but his intuition said he wanted something fast. It wasn't like they need weapons anyway. These were as large as a man. That much metal was a weapon in itself.

A few minutes later he had his new creation printed out and assembled. The big mass of metal was mostly inert and would stay that way without something special. It had a few batteries for power, and a simplified and very isolated computer that couldn't actually run anything. It was there to be a communication medium rather than the main AI.

His idea was fairly simple as well. Instead of having the spirit control something in a virtual environment he was going to have a spirit control something in a real environment. This was how the stone shapers had done their 'mechs,' sort of. They'd used something adjacent. The tech should be the same. Bolt charged the Crystal Heart containing the spirit some before he set it into the tiny mech and then placed a hand on it. The spirit that had volunteered was going to need a bit of a push and he needed to link it to the mountain conceptually...

The Fu-dog stood up without any order and the armor around the Heart Crystal clamped shut before Bolt could verify anything more than it was working. Just in time as well. To the side, the bay doors blew open as the kill team moved in. Dressed in black with faceless helmets and rifles, they were completely unidentifiable to him. Not that it mattered much. The weapons were all Bolt needed to know. He moved before they could even get close to getting a bead on him.

Bolt ducked behind some armor plating as they began to fire in his general direction. His precautions went off as several dead drops dropped several tons of metal plating in strategic places to break up sight lines. In between them the newly made dog pounded forward on four heavy legs. There was a flash of light as one of the attackers attempted to hack it with some sort of remote tool but it did absolutely nothing. If anything it allowed the dog to approach with even less opposition and it rammed into the leading woman with a chomp and a growl.

Clad as she was in compressed Second Rate armor, the operative did not die from the sudden bite. She probably wished she did, because the dog decided that the next thing to do would be to shake her like a rag-doll and then throw her into one of her teammates. The violent motion bowled both of the operatives over and caused them to hit the ground in a tangle of limbs that would have broken an unenhanced person's bones. The others spread out and began to fire.

None of this mattered much ultimately. Their weapons were state of the art laser rifles meant for infantry grade armor. The Fu-Dog was a miniature mech piloted by a spirit that had once worked with an expert. The standard shots just got through the first layer of protection. The thing was solid mech-grade armor. They all had weapons capable of handling that much defense, and tried to use them once it became obvious the dog was un-hackable, but it was a futile effort. The dog was close enough only the armor penetrating swords they carried were useful, and the spirit piloting the dog was very familiar with how to deal with swords.

The miniature monster took great pleasure in proving that over the next few seconds. While it couldn't actually penetrate their armor easily, weight and mass were enough of a weapon that it didn't need to do so. It just crushed limbs, twisted parts, and broke bodies. It was not pleasant. It wasn't particularly fast either.

Bolt felt relatively pleased with the results anyway. He was a bit confused why his new defender bounded out of the room when it was finished, but decided to trust its judgement. He took a moment to close the doors behind it, and then moved to a different bay and secured that one as well. Now that he knew what was happening he was going to be sure to keep very secured behind a few doors, barricades, and heavy objects.

In the meantime the Fu-dog bounded through the corridors. Its target was the other kill team. They'd been having an easier time.

Easier time, not a good time. Rat ground forces were an entirely different beast than their mech forces. Mech pilots were valuable. Ground forces were a dime a dozen, so the good ones had remained on the planet. More importantly, they practiced, and frequently fought for their lives through sometimes bitter fighting. Several of the men had grown up warring through tunnels before finally achieving peace in the mountain. These were men who fought with all the grace and skill of cornered rats with families behind them. Fanaticism didn't even come close to the emotions they had at the moment.

This didn't mean they threw themselves at the enemy in an attempt to kill them. It meant that they got mean. Once they'd located the kill team they'd identified the tech and fallen back without orders. They'd then used grenades, trip wires, dead falls, gas, acids, and and barricaded doors to make the Hexxers pay for every step. Some had literally thrown themselves at the attackers were killed. No quarter was asked, nor was it given. The fighting was bitter, brutal, and obscenely bloody. Low tech solutions could kill just as well as high tech solutions in the proper situations.

Genetically augmented and indoctrinated, the Hexxers didn't lose morale at what they were dealing with. They didn't really get physically tired either. They were still losing women. The constant kill zones and deadly tricks were starting to add up. The armor could only do so much. Each attack only had to get lucky once. Some of the traps were outright vicious and disabling no matter what happened. Dead drops that dropped slabs of metal onto people might not have crushed them due to the reinforced armor, but it could most certainly pin them down and keep them from moving. Tunnel fighting was hell, and these defenders had been born in it.

The kill teams might have won still. The tech and training still told quite a bit, and the gas they'd brought was still viable if used properly. If the Hexxers had gotten to a few open vents they might have still accomplished some of their goals. They most certainly would have attempted it.

Sadly for them, Bolt's Fu-dog was not going to even the chance of that. Follow its directive to protect the fortress it found the backs of the invading forces and rammed into them like an oncoming train. They fared little better than the other group. They fared worse actually, because the Rats capitalized on that distraction immediately.

The last Hexxer commando died by the dog crushing her head with one paw. The defenders took the time to spit on her body before giving the dog a tentative pat. The mass of metal wagged his tail in response and got a chuckle.

"Bets on this being a special trick from our Wonder Boy?" Someone asked roughly.

"Suckers bet."

 

[Dan O'von]

Hexxer Go Home.

 

[SV-Knight-Radiant]

Who lets the Dogs out?

 

[Simonbob]

I knew the Rat's would be a really hard target.

Now, we just need to see what Lily does.



Huh.

All the Kill Squad's women. With the standard, but only for Hexxor's, gene edits. Obvious bad guys are obvious.