Both of them obliged and she reminded herself it was a good thing. That was the aim, after all.
As they circled into the dead-end street where they'd started, Jessica13 clutched the controls of the mech a little tighter—not to take control but to keep herself from being thrown around the cockpit when Mini punched up and forced them into a vertical leap.
The two mechs rushed in and opened fire as soon as they were around the corner. They stopped shooting immediately, however, and seemed confused by the lack of a target in the street that supposedly had no exit.
"Well played." She chuckled and felt a little breathless.
"Your compliment is noted and appreciated."
As the assault mechs moved deeper into the alley and tried to determine where the Minato had disappeared to, another two assault mechs clambered down the sides of the building using the cord she had sacrificed from her grappler. They moved fast so stealth wasn't an option, and the two assault mechs turned quickly but were unalarmed by mechs wearing their colors.
More descended from all sides, and it wasn't long before the two guard mechs were captured and forced slowly to the ground. Their weapons were removed and handed to some of the other mechs.
Hammerhand stood over them and aimed his assault rifle into their cockpits.
"You have two choices," he told them briskly. "Climb out yourselves or be carried out as corpses."
It wasn't much of a choice, and both pilots were quick to follow the man's instructions. They scrambled through the open hatches and slipped out and were quickly overpowered by a group of convicts. A couple of the prisoners climbed into the recently vacated mechs and added to their numbers of effective fighters, and Jessica13 moved out from the alley toward the control facility. She doubted they only had a couple of mechs in place to defend it but getting inside was a vital first step.
"Hammerhand," she called over their newly created comm channel. "Head back to the Knights. I have the feeling the Prophet will need your help."
"Do you think his attack is going well?"
"I'll take the fact that the alarms are still blaring as a good sign."
"Fair enough. Good luck, Jessie."
"Right back at you."
Chapter Eighty-One
More than anything, Jessica13 wanted to join the Knights. She felt like she had been apart from them for far too long, and when Hammerhand headed away to liberate his people and lead them into combat again, it didn't feel right. Everything in her said she should be with them but instead, she had to continue to sneak around the damn place.
She hesitated for a moment and watched from a distance as he broke through the fences that kept the prisoners contained. The captives themselves either expected something like this or were simply quick to take advantage and the few guards that remained were quickly overwhelmed.
They did call in for help and a group of mechs began to advance, but those mechs led by Hammerhand overwhelmed them efficiently and easily. He clearly had capturing the mechs in mind, and those under his command grappled the newcomers to the floor, disarmed them, and once again offered them the chance to exit their mechs peacefully or in pieces.
"What are you waiting for?" Robert7 asked when he noticed her hesitation.
"It’s only—nothing. It's nothing. Let's get this over with."
The conical building looked like it had been one of the first set up in the city, given the Cities-That-Were type of architecture, not unlike how things had been in the tunnels. There was a uniformity to it, however, and it was certainly better maintained than the subterranean passages had been. Sculptures of angels were carved into pale white marble and circled toward what appeared to be the only way up—a flight of stairs.
The walls were painted with a variety of angelic beings, from tall ones with swords and large wings to smaller ones that looked like babies with tiny wings and bows with arrows tipped with heart-shaped heads. All were illuminated by the light that streamed through stained-glass windows that added extra color to the whole structure.
They were all artistically decorated and for some reason, they were all naked too. She didn't quite understand that part, but who was she to question the artistic preferences of the people who had built it?
They moved rapidly up the steps, although it was almost instantly apparent that this was the only route to the top and there was a long, long way to go.
"Why don't you hop on the back?" she suggested and her companion complied with no small sense of relief.
The paintings and sculptures were less prolific the higher they went, although they didn’t vanish completely. It seemed like it somehow depicted an ascent that not all these angelic beings were capable of making. Whether it was intended to be a metaphor about the difficulty of reaching the top of the spire or not, it seemed fairly relevant.
"I detect more mechs ahead," Mini said and brought up a highlighted section of the steps where she identified two of the same kind of assault mechs standing guard at the top of the staircase.
Jessica13 scowled deeply. "Let me guess—you have a plan for this one too?"
"I think I have the same kind of plan you would have had," Mini replied. "We could use the windows."
"It seems a shame to break them. They're beautiful."
He had no response to that. Either he had no concept of what made art beautiful or he was focused on how they could use the windows to their benefit in the fight.
Either way, they needed to get the job done. The defenders most likely already knew someone was coming up the steps and would already have trained their weapons in anticipation of their entering range.
"You might want to dismount," Mini suggested to Robert7 and once again, he did as
