It resembled a spider web stretched across the entire town and made it look like hundreds of different threads spread between them as arcs of electricity jumped from one wire to the other.
She wasn't sure what was happening, but it seemed like the power that was gathered by the towers somehow spread outward and fed into the rest of the wiring.
Her brain insisted it was impossible and yet, there it was, right in front of her. The whole town was illuminated by the power collected by what was supposed to attack them.
Either way, it seemed as though what was stored in the wiring directed itself back to the towers, which made them less viable to draw the lightning to them. A couple of bolts struck the ground as Hammerhand took advantage of a moment clear of fighting and looked at the balloons above him. They weren’t as high as they had been earlier, and she wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad thing. Lower meant they might be within range, but it also meant they could have moved to be within range to attack.
The one in the lead was heavily armored, which accounted for the slow pace, but those that brought up the rear were less protected. She narrowed her eyes and focused, and was finally able to see a couple of weak places in the armor and even where the chambers themselves were exposed.
Hammerhand stared into the sky as a couple of bolts struck the Excalibur and made it shudder, but it looked like most of the energy was quickly transferred into the ground. Startled, she looked more closely and realized that he had pulled up a couple of grapplers on his right arm and aimed them skyward.
She realized that Tinker stood beside him and had worked to attach the weapons to his arm while the Knights’ leader had defended them both. She doubted that raising his shield would have done much to suppress the high-energy attacks of the lightning and even though it looked like the suit was designed to transfer the energy into the ground as quickly as it struck, it was only a matter of time until a bolt burned something out and caused a short that impacted the rest of the mech.
The Knight continued to aim above his head while the mechanic worked frantically. It appeared as though he attempted to ground the Excalibur further to protect it from additional strikes as the first of the grapplers was launched. There was no cable attached to the dart, but the weapon fired quickly, soared above them, and pounded into the balloon that trailed far to the left.
The impact of the dart seemed to have no effect at first, but as the chamber ruptured, it began to lose altitude—slowly, at first, but it gained speed, drifting toward the ground, and dragged a couple of the others it was tethered to with it.
Hammerhand lowered his arm to let Tinker reload the darts since his mech appeared to have no reloading mechanism of its own. The two men seemed to work well together, and it was easy to discern that they had been forced to do so more than once in the past.
Jessica13 turned away suddenly as another flash seared into the ground, close enough to her that it made her sensors panic and throw red lights up as a warning before they settled. She blinked to ease a blind spot in her vision and focused on the area where the lightning had struck. Her heart sank and a sick feeling settled into her gut.
Tinker stumbled and finally fell on his back. Various sections of his mech were on fire. He was quick to eject once it was down and used an emergency booster to remove the cockpit from the chassis. It splattered through the mud and he climbed out, looking a little the worse for wear.
The most significant damage appeared to have been dealt to Hammerhand, however. The mech was frozen in place and she could only imagine that hundreds of malfunctions skittered through the mech's hardware and software as the man inside tried to cope with the damage the bolt had caused him.
After a few seconds of stillness, she noticed some movement. Not the kind that would come from the hydraulics of the massive mech but rather the result when gravity acted on it and tugged it almost in slow motion. In the next moment, it simply plummeted to land hard enough to make the earth shake beneath her feet.
Hammerhand, the invincible leader of the Knights Mechanica, was down.
For what seemed like forever, her brain seemed to freeze in a place where no thought was possible. The sight of the felled Excalibur made her feel numb somehow. It was impossible and yet she couldn't deny the evidence of her own eyes.
Jessica13 snapped out of her shocked immobility when one of the lightened Predators climbed onto the chest plate of the Excalibur and one of the Balthazars drifted down to land beside it. Together, they began to pry the armor open to gain access to the cockpit.
"Oh…fuck no." She growled an incoherent sound of quiet fury and raised her rifle.
"Jessica13, what are you doing?" Mini asked.
She didn't answer and simply strode over to where Hammerhand lay with the Predator already in her sights. With unnatural calm, she pulled the trigger and the shot hurled it clear of its perch.
The Balthazar turned, trained its twin assault rifles on her, and fired a few rounds before two of her shots drilled into the mech and ended its efforts. She took their place on top of the Excalibur, stood her ground, and glowered at their enemies that began to converge on them.
"Jessie," Hammerhand called over the comms, clearly strained, “what the fuck are you doing? Get the hell out of here!"
"You work on getting this fucking mech on its
