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Strays [Strays] The Higaflan Mutant Crisis

Freehold - The Great Cerg

Surface, City Outskirts


An hour later, Vega stood with her team, her repairs complete and her Dynamiteon ready for whatever came next. The tunnel they had fought their way through was behind them now, but her focus had shifted entirely to the massive construct before her. Some of the others were calling it a “landship,” though the term hardly seemed to capture its scale. The hulking structure loomed within the pit like a beached leviathan, its rusted bulk scarred and aged by years of use—or neglect. From her vantage point on the lip of the bowl-shaped arena, Vega watched, silent and still, as the chaos below played out.

In the pit, small groups of beings fought viciously, their silhouettes flickering in and out of view as dust and smoke swirled through the heavy air. The cacophony of distant shouts, the clash of weapons, and the crackle of energy fire reverberated up toward her, blending with the quieter conversation among her team. Vega’s red-on-black eyes narrowed as she observed the struggle. The fighters seemed desperate, scrappy—just like her team had been not so long ago.

She half-listened to the discussion playing out nearby, words filtering through her thoughts like smoke through her fingers. Chips and Joe’s voices anchored her to the present. She heard Joe praise Huthang and Yam for their resolve, the faint note of encouragement barely masking the pragmatic tone that followed.

His words echoed across the pit as Vega’s gaze drifted over the landship’s enormous frame. It was true: taking such a construct was no small feat. Its sheer size hinted at the thousand—or more—crew it might house. The battle raging below was brutal, but for now, it was contained. As long as the crew inside held the line and the tech-raiders didn’t get a foothold, the odds were surprisingly balanced.

Vega frowned, the analytical part of her mind ticking through possibilities. Joe’s assessment was hard to argue with. This wasn’t their fight—yet.

“We also don’t owe them nothin’,” Chips added coldly, and Vega couldn’t help but glance his way. His blunt practicality rang hollow in her ears, though she couldn’t deny the truth in it. The idea of stepping in—of saving a struggling crew for little more than a “favor” and fleeting goodwill—was a risky play, and in their line of work, altruism rarely paid dividends. Chips wasn’t wrong. Letting the two sides weaken each other did present an opportunity. A cruel opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless.

Her eyes flicked toward the others scattered along the pit’s edge. Voidfolk, scavengers, and rogue tech crews mingled nearby, watching the fight with their own quiet agendas. They were like vultures circling a dying animal, waiting to see which side would fall first before making their move. Vega felt the tension in the air, like a wire pulled taut and ready to snap. Everyone here was thinking the same thing: Who wins? Who loses? And how do we profit from it?

Chips’s voice brought her attention back as he moved toward the edge of his cockpit, his last words cutting through the tense quiet. Vega watched as he casually dropped from his cockpit, the lower gravity of the area softening his descent as he landed with an awkward stumble. Chips almost faceplanted, but in typical fashion, he recovered quickly, already walking toward the nearest group of Voidfolk. The Inheritor joined him, the two of them moving off into the growing crowd, leaving Vega and the rest of the team scattered along the bowl’s edge.

For a moment, Vega remained still, her gaze lingering on the landship as her thoughts churned. It wasn’t just a rust bucket to her—it was potential. A landship like that could change the tide for a group like theirs, turning scavengers into something greater. Yet, it was also a liability. If they tried to take it now, they’d be torn apart between the two sides still duking it out below. But waiting too long meant the opportunity might slip through their fingers, claimed by someone else—or reduced to little more than scrap.

Vega exhaled slowly, her second pair of hands curling against the sides of her jacket as she forced herself to stay grounded. The pit was loud, alive with motion, yet her focus remained sharp. Let Chips play the diplomat, she thought. Her own skills were better suited for the fight that might come next. Whatever plan the others devised, she’d be ready—her Mech repaired, her weapons primed, and her resolve steady. She would follow orders, but she would also keep an eye on the landship, that hulking beast of rusted potential, as if she could already see its future: rising from the pit, under their command.

Her attention went to Lisa, she liked her, she seemed nice, "so we going then?' she asked for confirmation.
 
Yamog, on the other hand, was very much uncombfertable with letting Roger Chips handle the negotiations. They didn't have a nuke at hand this time, which made the grizzly potential either worse or better, depending on how you looked at it... Still, wasn't sitting on the fence just as bad?... Those trapped in the giant tank could probably detect the Strays just sitting up here... That made them vultures, carrion feeders, just as bad as the tech scum swarming around the trapped goliath...

The other four armed girl watched Lisa leave with a similar bodily posture, through their tone was a little more dour. "I'm... not happy about this... Going in without a plan? That's bad news..."

Monoeyed gaze slipped across the mechs availble, and considered their general options, then glanced across the sillohette of the vast fallen tower before them.

"...You know, my flyswatter is retooled for slicin', Vega's got a light little skipper for nailing footsloggers, and Huthang's scorpion is kinda flat- What do you say we's all have a look at the bottom of that megatower, and sees if we can't climb up inside?..."

Yeah, that would certainly get them to the tank without being shot at... If the enemy had the same idea through, that might be problematic.
 
Freehold - The Great Cerg
Surface, Rim of the Pit


Except for when executing an ambush, Huthang had no great experience or intuition in matters of tactics or strategy. This in large part helped explain why the mutant had no idea how to best organise their eclectic group for the coming fight. Technically, he supposed there wasn't even a need to fight as the Strays could certainly scuttle away with their collective tails between their legs. Unfortunately Huthang really didn't want to run away - there was just something about that giant mobile landship that called to him, resonating on some deep level like a siren call to his soul. As a result, his current thoughts were along the lines of: 'Step One: Free landship. Step Two: ????. Step Three: ????. Step Four: ????. Step Five: Drive off into the Freehold sunset atop of our rusty nothing-like-new mobile base.'

He turned his attention to the tactical displays, considering his options. While his glassmaker had the power and range to do the job, Huthang wasn't sure that the temporary repairs would hold up enough for accurate sniping attacks against the weakpoints on the spider mechs' legs. Then there were the macro lasers, which could put a dent in the enemy army, but after the battles in the tunnels Huthang wasn't confident he had a sufficient supply of energy cells to handle enough of the enemy to make much of a difference there. His Scorpion had a limited number of missiles left and the available payloads rendered them as weapons of opportunity. There were always the Trencher and Claw, but the mutant was entirely confident that the enemy would shoot him to death long before he could go all psycho squid and stab the enemy to death. No - if he was going to make an effective contribution to coming fracas, it would be with the glassmaker.

So, unless he was missing something obvious, that significantly reduced his effective options. Huthang had a feeling that the others wouldn't end up in favour of an all out battle so his actions would have to be surgical. As much fun as sniping the legs off of the spider mechs appealed to him, the mutant knew that such wasn't the best option. His eyes once more moved over to the spire pinning the landship in place. Enough sustained fire might sever the spire, or maybe...

"Titania, the cables fouling that spire pinning the landship in place? Think we can cut them?" While his faerie ran the math on that, Huthang switched to the Strays' comm channel. "Okay, Titania is running the math, but I reckon I can cut away enough of the crap holding our new base in place to let it move away..." The mutant snorted.
"Anyone want to play distraction? Or make the run to our new base so they can be clued in?"
 
Tunnels, After the battle

Joanna climbed out of the cockpit of her Dynamiteon, assessing the damage it took during the battle. Seeing the side that just tanked a plasma shot, flashing a light on its warped surfaces, she sighs. She starts working immediately, planning to get it to an adequate condition for combat. Her mech now recharging, she goes around for parts that she could use to cover up the now bare structure of her mech's left side. After a while of tinkering, the worn-out areas were covered by plates that was just salvaged, and on top of it, a large metal panel that acts a shield has been attached to the left knee.

-------------------

Surface, outskirts of the city

Standing alongside the rest of the Strays, Joanna listens in to the chatter. They have a point, it might be better for them to wait and pounce once only one side is left, it isn't pretty but she is aware of their current situation. She watches in silence as Chips and the Inheritor walk away. A plan that lets them win without needing to directly confront an entire army? Sounds like something from a TV show where a student who plays chess leads a group of rebels. She looks at the hulking landship pinned down by a pillar and the chaotic fireworks at the bottom of the pit. She knows that even with her unit's speed, the sheer number of enemies down there would quickly overwhelm her and even if it didn't, her batteries would be drained very quickly.

"Everyone down there is fighting for their lives" Ilayd said with a sad tone, referring to the battle in the pit.

But the bunny and Fairy's moment of contemplating was interrupted upon hearing Huthang's plan.
 
Freehold - Surface, Above the Pit

<Maybe!> Huthangs fairy, titania chimed quizzicly after doing some processing before clarifying, <You wouldn't have to cut all of them; Just enough for the weight to shift enough for the end to slide and then let gravity do the rest!>

She continued to explain that while the tower was clearly bent and under stress it was not under significant tension and would not flex or snap back if they managed the feat but that there was a sum greater than zero chance that cutting enough cable to cause the further end of the tower to shift and slide off of the landship might cause it to swing like a pendulum and that the weight might pull more of the tower down with it. And while it wouldn't be in the path of landing atop the landship it could potentially cause a stress fracture in the tower where it had bent and bowed over to capitulate and take the rest of the tower down into the pit; with whoever was on it along with it.

Though she also stressed they could always just eject or somehow manage to run 'really fast' back down it and whatever section collapsed with it and hope they made it in time. That with all their jumpjets none of their fairies saw any hope of breaking that kind of fall with the drop at hand that didn't end in being crushed into what Titania described as 'smushed'.

Looking from where they were at they could make it to the tower rather easily. Past most of the other onlookers and following the lip they could see around a few structures and up a level to a slightly higher elevation through what looked like some kind of highway onramp or exit that ended right where the spire had crashed through it and still pressed up against. From there the spire seemed to start at a verticle angle from wherever it started in the ground at some base before bowing and bending like a fishing rod getting progressively more level and horizontal before it seemed to break into several chain-like segments of spire and exposed cabling which rested on and then dropped over onto the landship and then onto their side of the pit almost like a bridge where it had crashed into their section of the city and currently rested.

To get to the flange of the spire was the easy part; Just follow the lip!

To get to the nearest section of cable to cut would require using their mech to jump from one section of spire to the other multiple times over the breaks where the cabling was exposed and couldn't be more than five to ten meter gaps each but would be required to reach the helpfully highlighted segment areas their Fairys marked that would need to be cut practically right ontop of the landship.

Their mechs could easily maglock to the spire... Probably. With just about everything on freehold exposed to the void there was enough conducted metal used in the structures it was good odds. But doing so would limit their speed for the sake of safety and mean whoever amongst them chose to go cut at the cable would need to go in a single-file line, hopping one at a time over dangerous gaps hundreds of meters off the ground, and while being in plain sight and exposed to everything beneath them if they were spotted cut enough of the cable to cause it to drop or shift and then somehow need to book it back down the other side of the cable either onto the landship itself or to the other side which would put them on the other side of the pit of the lip and a lot closer to the warfortress than they were now.

"What are our odds in the pit?" Micah asked as though he would merit the same kind of voting power for bad plans despite lacking a giant death machine.

"50/50." Joe guestimated. "Thats a lot of techies down there but i'd say they'd get more in each others ways than ours. Too many footmobiles and smaller vics for those deathcrawlers to be able to deploy against us. No, what you gotta look out for is their mecha, their lighter Vics that might have heavy weapons on them, the sheer amount of troops down there that might have ordinance on them, and of course the Warfort itself.

We'de have the mobility advantage and more room to maneuver but the closer we get the less room we'll have as we get funneled in and the more time those techies will have to spread out and encircle us or drive us out of cover and into the guns of that big bastard."
The little mutant offered with surprising insight before, sensing a pause gave off a "What?! Some of us survive this long for a reason you know!" defensively.

To prove a point there was movement further down the lip where no onlookers were currently parked as a building shifted and collapsed into the pit. It slid and fell, the last portions of some old structure as metal girders gave way, but not by age or stress but instead as a large machine wandered and blundered through it. The size of the tech scum barge they had burned earlier it looked like an oddly-shaped primates torso with no head other than a massive lense jutting from between its shoulds and if only in the sense that it dragged itself forwards on two massive limbs that ended in large tool recipticals while dragging its lower body that seemed comically smaller than the rest of it. It fell into the pit with a comical dip forwards as its massive arms reached out as though for a distant ledge before gravity took over and it toppled into the pit in a jumble of metal plates and flailing wires as its missing lower half followed shortly after where it was connected loosely by long fiberous cable like tendons where it had broken and continued to drag its dead half.

The automata hit the incline of the pit and began to tumble end over end as it kicked up dust and debris as it rolled, metal plates and pieces of metal flying off of it before it finally came to a stop at the bottom of the pit. Closer to the tech scum besiegers than the Strays would have been if they chose to descend the large semi-sentient machine went completely unnoticed from the moment it fell up to and including where it now lay motionless and blocked from their view by a collapsed section of structure by the occupied army as they watched on and waited their turn to join in on the boarding attempt. It was clear if they chose to take this option they would have the element of surprise if nothing else...
 
Vega blinked, her crimson-on-black eyes narrowing as she scanned the immediate area, realizing mid-sentence that Lisa, the person she had been speaking to, was nowhere to be seen. The sudden absence made her pause for a beat before a quiet chuckle escaped her. Typical. In the chaos of their operations, people tended to come and go without much ceremony. Shaking her head, she refocused her attention on those who remained nearby, her sharp gaze flicking between them before turning back to the task at hand.

“So... we attack from the outside,” she said aloud, her tone tinged with hesitation as she voiced the thought lingering in her mind. Her hands moved over the controls instinctively as she checked her mech’s weapon systems. The familiar hum of diagnostics rolled through the cockpit as her HUD lit up with details on each weapon. Vega’s mind worked through the options quickly, filtering for those that could function effectively at long range if necessary.

Her eyes lingered on the display for her Hyper Laser and long-range missile pods, her lips curling into a faint smile. Yeah, those would do. But the plan wasn’t set yet. She muttered to herself as her thoughts drifted, her voice barely audible over the hum of her mech’s systems. “Or bait...” she said absentmindedly, the idea forming as she spoke. “One draws the attention, the rest bring in the boom.”

The words felt heavier as she said them aloud, the weight of her own suggestion sinking in. It was a strategy as old as combat itself, but it wasn’t without risk. Who would be the bait? she wondered briefly, her stomach twisting at the thought. Yet even as the question hung unanswered, her mech took a step forward, its massive frame groaning slightly as it shifted toward the edge of the pit.

Vega’s gaze followed, her eyes locking on the chaotic scene below. Dust and smoke churned in the bowl-shaped battlefield, obscuring details but not the overarching conflict. The towering landship loomed in the background, an ever-present monolith that seemed to mock their smallness. Down below, the fighting continued, frenetic and brutal. The thought of being needed down there sent a surge of adrenaline through her veins. This wasn’t just a battle; it was a puzzle, and Vega loved puzzles.
Her mech’s sensors flickered, feeding her updated readings of the area. She leaned forward in her cockpit, gripping the controls tightly, her second set of hands resting on auxiliary inputs. If they were going to do this, it had to be calculated, precise. A wrong move could mean disaster—not just for her, but for the entire team.
Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself. Her mech’s footfall sent a minor vibration through the ground as it inched closer to the pit’s edge, the drop below looking both intimidating and inviting. Her thoughts were racing, her mind toggling between potential outcomes, strategies, and the ever-present question of whether they were ready to take on what lay ahead. She might have hesitated, but hesitation wasn’t a luxury they could afford for long.

“Bell,” she said quietly, addressing her Fairy AI, “run another check on my weapon systems. Prioritize long-range efficiency and adjust targeting algorithms for high mobility.”

As Bell chirped an acknowledgment, Vega allowed herself a moment to breathe. She wasn’t the type to rush into things without a plan, but sometimes plans had to be formed mid-action. As her mech’s sensors pinged and Bell’s adjustments came through, Vega’s determination solidified. If this was the moment they made their move—whether as bait, boom, or something else entirely—she’d be ready. “alright people, I am ready to move on nearest order.”
 
Freehold - The Great Cerg
Surface, Rim of the Pit


Huthang considered what Titania had told him and waited for someone to make a decision, his irritation at their collective inaction slowly rising. It didn't take much longer before his irritation began to exceed his patience. The last straw was watching the automata tumble to the floor of the pit with nary any notice taken of its plight. With a snarl, the eldritch mutant took a firm control on his sun scorpion's controls and swung his mech around so it was pointing in the direction of the obstructing tower.

"Enough wasting time." he growled out across the Strays comm channels as he started shifting his mech sideways like a giant metallic crab. "Follow that automata down into the pit. Then move towards the landship in formation, use the nanite cloud to disguise you as rubble or something. I'm guessing with all the activity down there that no-one will think to check if the terrain is moving. I'm going to use the glassmaker to cut the cables and drop the tower into the pit. It should provide a nice distraction. Now, get!" Huthang dropped the targeting crosshairs over the biggest bundle of cables fouling the tower that he could see and triggered the glassmaker to fire, sending a solid beam of golden energy downrange.

"Titania, see if you can figure out where I need to cut to cause the tower to come down as violently as possible..." The stray kept the firing trigger pressed down, trying to snipe as much of the cabling as he could until his faerie could provide him more exact co-ordinates to focus his fire upon. After every shot, he triggered the sun scorpions jump jets for several seconds to shift laterally around the rim, just in case someone tried to counter-snipe him.
 
Luk immediately gunned the throttle at Huthang's shout, using, or more accurately Wayfinder using the jump jets with guns blazing as his entire missile payload streaked outwards towards the tech-scum-laser and plasma shotgun blasting and sending lethal bursts of photons and super-heated energy into their ranks.

Wayfinder realized that this was likely a bad idea, but might buy the others enough time to get to the automata-that and the big lizard might actually try to eat them...or do another boarding action and provide an even bigger distraction.
 
Somewhere around the rim of the pit

Joanna's ears jerk up upon hearing Huthang's proclamation. After sighing and shrugging to herself as no one but her Fairy could see her in the cockpit, she fires off her unit's custom jump jets to move to a position that would make for a better starting point for her blitz towards the spire. Once in position, Ilayd sends a message to the Strays that Joanna will be the one to make a break to the landship while taking out cables along the way.

"Huthang's barrage might not take out all of the critical cables, the areas you need to move to are already marked" Ilayd told to Joanna with a tone of urgency, to which Joanna nods while looking at the Fairy's avatar.

Hoping that Luk would provide a long enough distraction, her mech's boosters light up once more as it makes a jump to the closest section of the spire, zipping through while projectiles from the others are making their way to the cables visible to the ground. Once on top and in position, she selects the Plasma Breaker and fires it off into the gap where the exposed cables are, before making another jump to the next set of cables.
 
Pit Surface - Huthang, Chips, Yamog

As three mechs; Joe, Vega, and Luk all went over the ledge Huthangs sun-scorpions tail rose and then extended before going rigid as for a short second the lense on the tail behan to glow before with a burst of incandescent energy he sent out a concentrated beam of energy at the fowling of a section of cabling over a kilometers away between two sections where it was particularly exposed.

Immediately facing the challenges of keeping the beam on target it became increasing hard and then nearly impossible as his mech thrust and the beam went wild cutting up and down innafectually before passing completely over the cabling and then past it to cut a zig-zagging path into the shell of a skyscraper as it left an orange afterglow in the buildings outer shell before the combination of the weapons force and his semi-airborn state he began to turn as his fairy went from firing solution to course-correction as his mech was pushed into a 90-degree clockwise spin before Huthangs finger slipped off the trigger as he fought the joystick right on time to keep his mech from toppling sideways off the ledge.

But not on time to stop his Glass maker from cutting a diagonal line through a small barge the size of a large camper as Voidfolk dove out of the way or waved frantically at him before it was too late.

If they didn't want to get their fancy mobile-home cut in half they probably should have moved it the moment a half-dozen mechs parked next to it or; Or some logic of the sort must have been going through their heads as they gestured half in anger and half in denial at the torso-thick slice that had nearly bisected their home.

Hopefully there was nobody in it...

Straightening his mech to look through his axis optics package Huthang could roughly locate where he had begun to burn only to see no real noticeable damage beyond some scorching. His Glass Maker, while nearly powerful enough to be mounted on a starship for some reason still had a mighty vibration to it that he would have to identify and fix sooner rather than later that had effectively cut its operational range despite a kilometer normally being well within said range. The shaking and whatever was causing it be it a worn bearing or broken gyroscope was causing the mecha equivalent of 'spray' as compared to a tighter beam as it jostled about. The weapon was still functional but its accuracy was unreliable for pinpoint or precision fire.

"What in the-" Chips shouted at Huthang, scrambling up his mech and into the cockpit before looking around frantically for their attacker before clearly doing the headcount and coming up short. Following the path of what Huthang was looking at and a HUD marker getting ever closer to the spire Chips put together two and seven and let out a "Ohhhh." Before powering up his mech.

"Let the hare take this one. Shes quick enough she might be able to get off the cable before it drags her down with it. You n' me can cover the rest from up here. Even if you cant hit the broad side of a barn with that thing there's enough of them down there it wont matter!" Chips shouted as his Highwayman powered up and stomped over to the lip of the pit as he began to look about between those bellow and the various Tech Scum.

Pit - Vega, Luk, Joe

Going over the ledge was exhilarating and frightening as, even despite freehold light gravity their stomachs sank from the upwards pull as they jumped into the pit. Only a thirty or so foot drop until they landed on a downwards slope of detritus and what was once the top level it was short lived though continued on as with such a steep slope they instantly began to slide downwards slowly as jumpjets flared to arrest their speed and keep them from tripping.

The first thing the three of them noticed was how dark it became. Their fairys cycling between a quick change of thermal to low-light optics and withholding their spotlights unless their pilots wanted them it cut down their vision as green on black outlines of the slope took shape and eventually the ground as they slid down into the twilight-darkness of the pit. Comming to a stop relatively close to one another and within view their surroundings were rather sparse as only the closest jutting structures of pieces of collapsed skyscraper could be made out in the nightvision adding some complication to the plan while switching to thermals added a slightly better picture but mostly only turning the black and green into shades of black, blue, purple, and a bit of orange where the red-sun was directly hitting some parts of the debris.

They weren't in the dark forever. At least figuratively, as outside of their line of sight little red box icons at a distance began to add to their HUDs as above them, Chips began marking targets to their HUDs and sharing them to the lance while a tactical map began to take shape as the closest enemies to them;

Deathcrawler-1 300m
Buggy Light-1 350m
Buggy Light-2 344m
Mech-1 300m

Were the first to appear ahead of them, each getting a HUD icon on their displays though they could not yet see them through the buildings and cover ahead of them, and a a little triangular icon on their tactical maps directing the general direction they were facing; away, continuing their advantage that most if not all the Tech Scum were posted watching and shooting at the Landship which loomed menacingly in the distance looking much larger from this angle while the smaller but still sizeable War Fortress loomed attached to its side and very much to all of their concern within their line of sight which they would have to keep in mind the moment they chose to make their presence known.

"You've got about four bogies at your nine o'clock!" Chips Radioed to them, clear enough despite the pit. "They ain't seen you drop in and you got at least some cover between you and them. Me N' Huthang got eyes on em up here, say the word and we can hit em from above too or support you the moment you kick the hornet's nest!"

Spire - Joanna

Getting to the spire was not as straight forwards as Joanna thought. Following a highway going in that direction she found on several occasions sets of roadblocks in the form of collapsed structures too tall to get over even with her jets, or routes taking alternate paths not towards her objective that caused her to need to backtrack from precious time.

It took several minutes and many such detours before she found what was either an old-style parking garage or just the stripped shell of a building with a flat roof that bordered onto the base of the spire allowing her to jump and then with a lot more force than she intended collide with the spire hard enough to jostle her in her cockpit though she luckily didn't pop any hoses in her hydraulics.

Beginning to slide due to the angle she was lucky enough to find that the maglocks in her mechs feet that they all shared worked on the exterior of the spire allowing her to stomp up its length until it began to level out enough that she was not at risk of falling off if she unlocked them.

Now standing upright, Joanna was hit with a sense of a sudden concern for heights as she was able to look off the side to the three hundred meter drop from her new bridge that was only at best twice as wide as her mech could traverse, and the bottom of the pit. Luckily with rather weak solar winds and no signs of any ion or glass storms anywhere in sight she could start forwards, meter by meter across the spire and onto the collapsed section where the outer plating of the tower began to occasionally be missing pannels, though the cables inside them were bound too tightly and not enough of them were exposed for her to work with them causing her to go further and further across the spire until it began to narrow slightly and would continue to do so the closer she got to the landship in which the spire was lodged like wire stuck in a bikes spokes both pinning the landship with its weight and stuck in the mid-most massive turrets ring which could not traverse with it jammed and stuck in the ring disallowing it to simply turn and eradicate the warfortress practically off to its side.

Finding a section with more exposed cabling than plate she got to work hitting it with her breaker finding it challenging to break through the cabling and time consuming as finally a massive bundle snapped and vibrated the spire but not doing much else as she moved on further and further looking for the next bundle.

Finding one such exposed bundle she got to work again and with some effort and a concerning percentage of her weapons battery she wore down the cable until it began to fray and then snap but this time with more noticeable results. The spire vibrated harshly and shook causing Joanna to have to hold onto her joysticks tight as her Fairy maglocked the feet to the plating as the section of plating she was on shifted and turned; The cable unwinding slightly causing the spire to rotate slightly on the loose pannel.

Her harness on her cockpit keeping her from slamming headfirst into the transparent durrandium of her cockpit Joanna suddenly found herself upsides down on the bottom of the spires outer surface and looking straight down into the pit. Secured only to the spire by her mechs magnetic maglocks she was able to take a very cautions experimental step and find she could still move on the spire but was perched precariously under it and any wrong moves or clearly breaking the wrong cables might shake or jostle her loose once it became clear she couldn't just break them haphazardly but had to break off at least an entire section of the spire or close enough to cause the cables themselves to fray and pull apart...
 
Spire

Reorienting herself after that moment of bracing and feeling a little not-upright, Joanna looks at Ilayd's little avatar thats floating beside her, "already on it" Ilayd proclaimed. In the meantime, she maneuvers her mech gently and steadily until it reaches the edge of the dangling panel and then boosting herself to a section that is just level enough.

"I redid some of the calculations, I'm marking the cables that are under the highest stress on your HUD now. But be sure to disengage before the cables snap apart completely" Ilayd said to Joanna with a serious tone, which Joanna responds to with a nod before looking forward and out to the very spire that they are standing on, slowly falling apart the more she will destroy clusters of cables.

Her mech's boosters fire up once more as she makes her way to the next bundle of cables, selecting the Hyper Laser this time and aiming it at the densest congregation of wiring. She presses the trigger and a hot irradiation of blue light cuts its way through the cables, but she stops just before the remaining cords split apart. The boosters light up once more as she prepares to make another jump to the next section that was marked for her, but not before laying down the finishing blow on the remainder of the cables on that section.
 
Freehold - The Great Cerg
Surface, Rim of the Pit


No plan lasts beyond tearing the first hunk of flesh out of your prey's hide. This was a lesson a young Huthang had long ago learned in the underground tunnels of his home. It was why you had to make it the biggest, most effective bite that you could because you could never guarantee a second attack would hit home. It was only later in life that the mutant was introduced to the more well known, generalised version 'no plan survives contact with the enemy'. It was therefore of little surprise to Huthang that his impromptu plan almost immediately went 'tits up', although no-one he had ever asked to had been able to satisfactorily explain why breasts orienting along a gravitational anti-normal was synonymous with serendipitous misfortune. The mutant was slightly surprised at how quickly it all went sideways, although perhaps this explained why he had heard some of the bosses talk about how 'herding cats' was good practice for leading Strays into combat.

Still, being able to roll with the punches and make vodka when handed a fistful of rotten nuts were the hallmarks of a mutant who just might survive through to old age, or at least until terminal organ failure from excessive mutation. So, after the initial few seconds of action and Chips' resultant feedback, Huthang adapted. Turning his attention away from the spire and his aborted cable-shearing efforts, now offloaded to Joanna, the mutant began cycling through the enemies in the pit. "Titania, anything you spot down there that looks like a C3 or recon unit, mark it as a priority target. Let's see if we can confuse and blind 'em a little." That was another old lesson, albeit delivered in new terminology. Turns out most intelligent lifeforms panic when their leaders are cut down or their senses get muted or cut off and Huthang remembered being told that was just as true when you were inside a vehicle it was being done to as much as if it were your own self.

As he spoke, the mutant triggered the glassmaker and macrolasers at targets of opportunity. Like Chips had said, this was definitely a target-rich environment and almost impossible to not hit something although Huthang was also keeping an ear open just in case the pit group called in fire support. Every few seconds the mutant released his triggers and shifted his sun scorpion several meters further around the rim of the pit, just in case some enterprising cannon fodder wised up and targeted the origin of Huthang's weapon fire. He had already lost count of his kills, although it was hard to say if any of his hits were in fact hard kills. Except that one. "Ooh, that had to hurt..." He muttered, his crosshairs already moving on from the reactor explosion he had just triggered in one of the enemy mechs. The mutant chuckled darkly to himself as several nearby units were scragged by the act of fragtricide - which was totally a word, regardless of whatever online dictionary tried to say otherwise. 'Fragtricide, noun, a person who kills their brothers and sisters in arms when they explode.' should be right there between 'fragrentness' and 'fraid', but nope!
 
Spire

Yamog's small mecha-bird seemed to disappear during the resuming flare of carnage, a half-broken pocket colossus in a battlefield of true, loud, screaming titans. They used their jump jets sparingly, and the knock of the loose cabling with each plucking stride sounded painfully loud to their ears- But of course, in this silent void, it was really dust plumes and heat signatures that mattered most.

The fact was, if they didn't at least pretend to have finesse during the first stages of a plan, that left a bad taste when it came to the massacres that tended to follow.

So, she kept her mouth shut, and problem solved- At first edging the pit and having a look for battle-scavengers that might ambush Huthang's charge, much as they were taking advantage of the climactic scuffle below- But after that, they changed their angle and skipped towards Joanna's direction, the brisk and baroque form of the Proboscis needing little extra effort to catch up.

Two side lasers and a chainsaw. That's all they had left. So of course the little mecha was feeling a trifle light...

When Joanna boosted back over to the largest thread of cables, they were met with the morbid form of Yamog's vehicle hunching there, like a inquisitive dog.

<"...You're making a lot of visual flare-ups, Bunny."> The bug waved their diminutive chainsaw like a hand fan...

And then 'melted' into a jumble of scrappy, not-quite-sense-making metal fragments on the spot.

<"...Keep your eyes out.">
 
Luk didn't even hesitate; charging the biggest, and arguably tastiest, opponent-the mech-Wayfinder doing everything she could to keep the dimwitted lizard from getting himself killed-she nudged his path slightly, so that with any luck he'd wind up stepping on that deathcrawler in the process of trying to take the mech down.

He triggered the jets, likely thinking it was the guns, even as highly inaccurate laser and plasma fire raked the ranks of the tech scum...
 
Spire - Joanna, Yamog

Metal sparks kicked and littered into the solar winds like fireflies. Bright in the moment they were, at least from any other angle, much easier to miss than Joannas weapons and could easily just be confused for sparks of starlight or the ever-present breaking up of something in the atmosphere from the last war.

Having no metric for the progress up to that point they had made there was little more than an unspoken plan to just continue on breaking them as Yamog cut and Joanna blasted. Bellow them, down a hundreds-meter drop was the slightest pinprick of light from Hutang followed by a small plucky pop of light from something cooking off that briefly exposed some of the surroundings as little shapes were engulfed or thrown from nearby.

After some time with still no progress, however, something changed.

Perhaps the loosening cables had more effect than they though? Perhaps a degree of notable slack had formed? There was no way to know why they did it; But behind Yamog who couldn't see it, both Joanna and Huthang from their angles not in the pit could as perceptibly the massive current that the spire was lodged in the ring of preventing it from traversing moved. It was not fast due to its size but with a shift of movement it traversed ever so slightly clockwise by a few degrees before the teeth of the turret were once again caught in the spire and the halted still nowhere close to divesting the warfortress.

But through their attempt of ridding their largest threat, the landship had all but likely killed Joanna and Yamog.

The spire pulled taught from what little slack it had accumulated, vibrating and thrashing up and down like a tightening wire as bundles of arm-thick durrandium coil tightened on Yamogs chainblade nose and with the casual force of physics warped and bent it like it was a kitchen spoon as it pulled her nose down and pinned it between cables as the teeth exploded and the chain was thrown. Her mech now forcefully hunched over and practically shoved nose-down all the pins in the connector to the weapon bent and refused to break away as intended leaving her mech trapped and pinned while hunched over the very thing trapping her and preventing Joanna from freeing her without blowing through Yamogs cockpit.

And with the mech in the way the bun would be unable to get around her on the narrowing spire and any further exposed sets of cabling. She couldn't go over or even on the underside of the spire as it, slightly less tight now, began to sway several meters in either direction making it nearly suicidal to release her maglocks lest her own mech be thrown off the spire.

The Ledge

Huthangs Glassmaker was still unreliable for its manufactured purpose as it burned a short-lived line from his vantage into the pit but made up for it in other ways. Unable to keep it on target the effect was short but quick as it made a wagging-line across a section of the pit right over a section of clustered vehicles right as his lasers followed suit and bathed an area in hazardous light-rain.

Being a besieging force the tech scum had been set and ready for an extended engagement; Turned out of their vehicles, some not even idling, and some out of them altogether as they sat or walked about or just stood on their transports the glassmaker passed over close to a dozen tech-scum like the vengeful magnifying glass of a malicious child as men were bisected or just simple had entire torsos fall to the ground without their lower halves while his hyper laser impacted into the side of vehicles not even powered up or able to react as they penetrated inside or did critical damage.

And the best part was none of them even saw the attack.

Chips joined in at the same time. His heavy laser not as flashy as Huthangs Glassmaker but more accurate as he chose small rollers and buggies that it would be impossible not to punch through while his three rotary lasers danced back and forth as he swung his highwayman torso left and right bathing the entire pit in a bullet-hell of lasers causing pure chaos as, now very much identifying them as the cause of having kicked the proverbial hornets nest men and machine began scramble about only to scatter at the random impacts of three lasers each putting out 5,000 bolts a minute and hitting randomly.

The various contents of the pits occupants they might have had a better vantage on than those down bellow, but identifying key-targets would be difficult as many of the vehicles were powered down and gave little signature as they made the mistake of preserving their batteries or fuel while their infantry tried to storm the landship. But some were harder to miss even if they couldn't see them directly as Huthangs HUD began to scramble slightly and glitch as some form of EWAR was activated, breaking target locks and scrambling identifiers there was some form of command unit down there now with its ECM on but until it was located would make it a mostly analog turkey shoot as was evident when one of the vehicles his mech struck detonated and cooked off, the brief flash of orange and yellow illuminating as it engulfed dozens of foot-mobiles around it.

As well as revealed the silhouette of a gunship taking off fifty or so meters off the ground and cutting across the pit where the alabatros-shaped aircraft began a lazy turn towards his and Chips position.

Pit - Luk, Vega, Joe

Luk slammed into a deathcrawler with a series of sparks as he was jostled about in his cockpit from the sheer mass difference. Almost blinded by the explosion of sparks and plasma his mech was turned aside by the momentum, coincidentally unloading a burst of plasma straight into the quadrupedal form of a TS' mecha that had rose to meet him as the huchback-looking mess of scrap metal took a toroid straight into its center mass and then bulged slightly as it detonated within cause the mecha to fall forwards and collapse.

Things had gone insane fast. The darkness of the pit had lit up as hundreds and thousands of laser bolts fell within it, some near even Luk, causing pandemonium as men scrambled about in his HUD and several meters away a buggy; Little more than an exposed rollcage with scrap-armor hanging off the sides and a wicked looking turret reversed with enough force to slam into a smaller chopper-like vehicle of sorts and overturn them both, while a small tank that had managed to start up ran over what looked like a suit of ground powered armor, crushing it and its pilot underneath.

None had noticed Luk, Vega, or Joe yet. As was evident when Joe fired off one of his mega-lasers from the top of his Crookback, blowing a red glowing hole in the turret of a tank prompting random shooting to start as tech scum both on foot and in their vehicles began mostly firing at the landship in retaliation for a perceived attack, but some even point-blank into each other in the confusion as from above a heavy-laser impacted into a spacer-barge and caused something within to rupture and explode.

Breaking from cover there had to be close to ten or more tanks all trying to move or collide with each other, and twice as many buggies and rollers all zipping about in the mayhem. A gunship even flew over their heads at one point, too fast to target but clearly going the wrong way!

All of it was centered around a large barge of sorts just a bit larger than the one they had destroyed earlier. With a large set of pannels and satalite-style dishes and plates arraying its surface the clear command barge had at least four mecha of simular shape and size much like large thirty-foot tall humanoids in metal armor with three legs, bulky sections of scrap-armor in boxy-shapes, and lacking arms that were instead replaced with built in weapons much like their own mechs tended to be almost as if someone had taken four Yamatain-style mecha, removed the arms, and replaced them with guns and welded on plates and even sported glowing red eyeslits on boxy-like bassinet-like armored heads as the Pillar Men came to life and began scanning about not yet noticing them but alert.
 


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