The shield came up and blocked a handful of the shots, which immediately triggered alarms in the Excalibur and he was forced to take a step back for balance.
It had been fun while it lasted.
He opened a comm channel to the other Knights and rebels in his group. "Pull back! Fall back, you motherfuckers!"
They had all waited for the order, and although they seemed as reluctant to follow it as he was, they obeyed without delay. It was a wise decision with literal hell now unleashed on them in a lethal barrage.
Hammerhand was the last to drop from the step and gave the FEMA pilots something to shoot at. The armor took a beating in a handful of non-vital areas but he’d been lucky thus far. There was no telling when they would hit something critical, however, and he brought the shield up as soon as the heating vents stopped screaming bloody murder at him.
Overall, they had made it farther than he had thought they would but not as far in as he’d hoped. As futile as the entire assault was, he hadn’t held out much hope that they would manage to reach the top. Still, the closer they got, the more likely it would have been that those above would elect to abandon the high ground to attack.
The cost, of course, was almost too heavy. He counted two of his Knights being dragged out of the fight by support mechs and another whose mech was being opened to help the pilot get clear. Six of the Auburn pilots had gone down as well, and three had to be helped to the ravine.
"Cora, tell me you have some targets.”
“They’re still too high.”
Hammerhand turned and shifted his shield to deflect the continuous fusillade that followed their retreat. The mech continued to move backward and still at a good enough speed to keep pace with his men. The sensors would tell him if they would be tripped by anything.
The shadows had grown longer and the last traces of daylight had almost completely disappeared from the sky. The smoke had already begun to fill the area and made it even more difficult to see anything.
Tinker opened a commlink with him.
“Hammerhand, what’s the situation at the front?”
His gaze turned toward the mesa, where weapons continued to flare as they maintained their fire from their secure position at the top.
“I wish I could say there was good news.”
“Shit. If they don’t come down from the fucking top there, all this crap will have been for nothing.”
“And exactly what the fuck do you want me to do about it?”
“Something! Anything! We need them out of position.”
“Fuck!”
Hammerhand held his shield for as long as he could manage it but already felt the heat from the generator begin to tell on the rest of the Excalibur’s mechanisms.
They wouldn’t go back and attack the mesa because they simply didn’t have the numbers for it. But the initial attack hadn’t drawn anyone down and Tinker was right. It all had been for naught.
He stared balefully at the stronghold while he maintained his backward motion and still tried to give his men cover. The enemy showed no inclination to halt or even slow their ongoing barrage.
“Fuck!” he said again, turned the Excalibur, and allowed it to increase speed to keep up with the other Knights as they retreated.
Chapter Fifty-One
Hammerhand ran a quick scan of the area surrounding them. He ran across the open ground and without being able to use his shield, it left him feeling vulnerable. Still, he reminded himself, he needed to show that they were vulnerable in their rout, which would entice their enemies to abandon the high ground and give chase.
It didn’t look good. He needed to think of something quickly or accept that the whole feint had been run for nothing.
Tinker organized the troops and kept them together and in an organized fake retreat. Hammerhand connected to Cora. They had never really trained to look like a disorganized mess while still acting in a coordinated and disciplined fashion, but he didn’t know how they could do it any better.
“Cora, please tell me you have good news!” he shouted into the comms.
The pilot of their Raptor didn’t respond immediately, which was all the response he needed. When she did, her words were not what he wanted to hear.
“I could move closer and into range—”
“Negative! You’ll be in their range long before they’re in yours. Hold your position.”
And pray, he almost felt like adding. If there was ever a time to call on help from on high, this was it.
Suddenly, the scans displayed movement from behind them. Not on the steps, it seemed, but something that appeared to be airborne.
He turned, not sure what he was looking at in the growing darkness and smoke that now obscured most of the open area. His gaze drifted from the sky to the mesa itself and while he couldn’t reconcile what his scans had shown with what he now saw, there wasn’t much in the world that moved quite like the Quadruped mechs. They slowly descended the steps from where they had been positioned on the scaffold.
It was a start, at least. There were five of them and they were already difficult to coordinate, but they made good time given their size, range of movement, and what they had to negotiate. When they reached the third step from the ground, a handful of mechs that had been on the back of the Quadruped at the front caught his attention.
The design was more than familiar. Balthazars were hard to miss with those rockets on their backs, but they lacked the customizations that many of the raider mechs had. He wasn’t surprised by that, of course, but it was still odd to see.
The rockets flared, and after a
