In-Fight Upgrade

crafted 10/1/2006
17:26

Straight as a stone, the first reactor fell out from the machine’s back, no longer glowing with power, and boomed against a dusty ground of evacuated cityscape torn then swept sideways by successive concussive bombings. Imagining his in-flight enemies future position helped per a cockpit-wrapping screen is Hetinra Boudswid. Coppery silk-like hair is held back beneath his shoulder blades by a flower-stem loop. The screen’s projection is clear, absent of any hud or overlayed information feeds unless prompted to bring them up, a sliver brighter than what a bare eye would see.
Stratiated tough ground and object-debris follow after a billowing shimmer that curves towards the AEWP* Hetinra’s piloting. It’s a friend’s. In dense, disconnected, round-edged letters it says Ammo Hoard. So fast that it’s a sand-dune brown, yellow, plastic weapons case grey, and senior citizen hair gray flurry of streaks, Ammo Hoard jumps sideways, dives, and rolls on it’s shoulder. Three explosions spread out in spherical patterns. Chips of buildings “tink” against Ammo Hoard’s shell. Hetinra keeps it in a crouch behind one of the spacescrapers that hasn’t entirely submerged in geological tides. Out of a missing corner-space he spies Burrower (Altom Idrethuanox‘s AEWP). In a roar so loud the building Hetinra’s shielding himself with shakes, shells, too big for a pair of Mac trucks to drag, spew violently out of auto-loading twin barrels. Chunks of Burrower’s armored breastplate, over a kilometer distant from twin fires of guns, are knocked aside by lower parts of Burrower they hit into before falling for miles to the ground where Ipeburg was. Altom activates an electromagnetic field installed in Burrower. It disables a lot of systems and warps the image in his glasses of the battlefield. But he doesn’t hear impacts against his craft anymore.
Hetinra stays in hiding, in case he hasn’t been spotted yet. For when Ammo Hoard is found he diverts fuel to its’ pretarsus-installed jets. A part of Ammo Hoard’s torso opens up and shuffles off. This drone will fire mortars to kill Burrower in the air. Hetinra keeps up a flow of armor piercing rounds. He knows they’re not hitting anymore but he can spare ammunition to keep Altom blind while his drone sets up. A round connects between plates of Burrower’s armor, jamming a joint. Trying to move in a way that bends the surrounding joints only scrunches the slag between them in tighter. Another AEWP size bullet-tip takes a trip past stomach-guarding plastic to disconnect a pressure-keeping line. Steam sprays out in a small white airstream. Warnings about pressure being lost are ignored by Altom (who has switched off the electromagnetic repellent) as he busily tries to find the drone’s command channel and jam it. Too late, the drone’s in place and fires its’ first mortar. Burrower leans away from a blow in the air that brushes its’ front black with soot and scars its’ outermost layer with shrapnel. “This was meant for you Hetinra” is transmitted over shared lines while a rounded shape catches sunlight. When it hit’s the ground there’s a ripple of shredded-building, dirt forced into the air, and parts of what was once the drone.
What looks like a fist-sized fireball is growing in Hetinra’s sight. By this he knows Altom has found him. Ammo Hoard slides a remote-activated mine in a decrepit level of the building before him. When Burrower is clearly distinguishable from its’ travel exhaust and matching Ammo Hoard in size its’ enemy makes some weak shots at it. Two heads taller than the somewhat insect-looking Ammo Hoard, Burrower crashes through the building while the other AEWP gets away on an emergency burn. Hetinra’s thumb clicks in a button. The whole building is taken up in a charcoal cloud and Burrower rises into the air on a parabolic route as if given an uppercut. A block away he crunches a stack of building-parts.
Burrower rears up from the war zone-angel its’ made -in a panic. From the right corner of his glasses Altom reads the computer is still counting and tracking rockets. (14 were showing when he first glanced). Now a hornet’s cloud of smoky backwash sends threatening tips across the distance in more arcs than his computer can count in time. Burrower throws out a box that’s triggered by forward-sensing proximity. More metal balls then’re’n a shotgun shell stop the rockets’ along their courses. More sparks shower out than are in a 4th of July grand finale. Burrower charges forward on foot. Altom has it swipe smoke to clear his optical view. In comes a laser shot to its’ side. Containers inside Burrower break; watery liquids spill out, flowing down its’ legs. It looks like a bite was taken out of Burrower’s left side, up to its’ abdomen. Groups of legs braced against recoil, Ammo Hoard crouches with its’ laser rifle out. A lens is unloaded, flipping in the air before it shatters on the ground. Burrower fires its’ largest caliber cannon at Ammo Hoard. The latter keeps its’ hold on its’ weapon but loses its’ limb from the forearm down. The laser rifle clatters between them, breaking with the sound of something expensive. Instead of replacing the shell he just used (which would need reloaded manually), Altom has his AEWP take the final steps needed to be in close range. He then has it grab for a globe his AEWP’s vision shows him inside Ammo Hoard. Burrower punches through AH’s flexible metal torso to squeeze a central round casing. It crunches and folds, imprinted with Burrower’s right hand, squeezed, and screams open (as only metal can) in the spaces in-between. As it implodes, drops of oil mixed with red acid gurgle down AH’s innards. Burrower pulls back out a hand coated with stickiness. Hetinra gloats, “that only looked^ like a processing core”. A hydraulic drill comes out and grinds in Burrower’s side-wound until it’s too tangled in robo-organs to rotate. That’s one of a few surprises AH packs for such intimate engagements. Altom has his AEWP back up, fearful that another such drill will cut off important power lines. Altom doesn’t know that AH doesn’t have any more of those traps. Hetinra detaches the drill-clamp so Burrower won’t break it away and carry something off that’s important.
AH slides back a panel and projects a superheated flame. Burrower’s shell (where it wasn‘t coated black by those rockets) gets an orange glow even as it retreats out of range. The sound of pressure-restoring gas escaping from the line cut earlier is like an exhaled breath without changing volume. Burrower takes off vertically, leaving an unleashed cache of metal balls behind as a present. They split open and discharge acidic gas pellets. AH leaps as far as it can but is unable to land on its’ worn-away leg tips. Acid still drips from some of them. AH’s underside is cut open on impact against a pile of war-torn rubble. Hetinra pulls power from dysfunctional legs to overclock AH’s sensors in hopes of triangulating trajectories that’ll reach Burrower sooner.
Altom calls a sonic strike from the satellite he’s in. AH’s remaining arm starts to transform, curved plates of metal circling (powered by their own momentum and the arm’s magnetism), cylinders extend, lengthening the arm, locks open to let joints fit in relocated mechanisms, armor is dropped making circuit boards temporarily exposed, antennas extend out of the arm as its’ inside is filled with fodder that slides out of the shoulder then it’s rattled, destructively, with the rest of AH. An audible cascade shakes screws loose, separates rivets, cracks welding, shatters lenses, pops recording speakers, and jellies softer inorganic sections. Damaged during transformation, the heavy sniping gun that was AH’s last arm has a jammed reload-contraption. A message blinks on his wraparound screen, prompting him to patch the WPG Stealthkill’s interface, he ignores it; Hetinra takes the one shot he has. Simultaneously (according to a human eye’s response-time): a wispy line is drawn to Burrower’s sternum, a crater forms there as the plate implodes, a hole larger than the crater, on the opposite side of Burrower’s body, appears, unfurling torn edges then synthetic guts come out of the exit wound in a clump, are diluted in the sky, and smack the ground while Burrower strains to stay aloft. Altom concedes, “amazing shot!”. The persistent team of beep and flash have annoyed Hetinra enough that he finally presses a button to download the patch.
“Ag! Stop the fight, stop the fight! Hetinra, why‘d you download that?” Hetinra looks back at excited Palbrim with bewilderment. “What‘s the matter? I won with you’re A.E.W.P., didn‘t I?”.
Palbrim Joacs relaxes himself. “Nevermind I‘ll have to get used to a new interface when I overhaul Ammo Hoard anyway. Yeah, you did a good job. I got some ideas watching you. The lenses in a laser rifle are its‘ ammo, the focusing of light is so quick and intense that a permanent lens is out of my price range. But I think, since the glass shatters anyway, I‘ll add a container to store the shards. Then they can be used as a point blank attack. You did great with that last shot! You should be using a sniper-oriented A.E.W.P. based on performance. But what‘s going to stick with you most is you got to change cores. Is something you get to do once in your lifetime at most. The only time I ever did it was on my training A.E.W.P.: Crypt Sting. It was really old -barely working when I was a kid, probably recycled now. But I dropped out its’ last core. I saw it shut-off. ”



*All Enviorments Weapons Platform
^it was actually a lubricant exchanger