"A battery bomb," Mini said when he realized what she was working on and watched her wire the battery up to a handful of power cells nearby.
"Yes," Jessica13 said with a small grin. "It's why they never let us have these in Sanctuary. We didn't even collect those from the mechs that were destroyed. Not only is the explosion powerful enough to be dangerous in and of itself, when the acid eats through basically anything, it could fill a room with toxic gas in seconds. We…uh, probably don't want to be around this when it goes off."
"Remote detonation does seem to be the best idea. Which begs the question of how we'll use it."
"Probably more like a booby trap in case the pirates try to follow us," she replied, picked up the cells and the battery they were connected to, and loaded them on the mag clamp on Mini's back. "We could probably find a couple of cables…here!"
She moved over another mech that had a grappler and, with some effort, carried it quickly to the Minato as well.
"And now we have two grapplers," he said. "How are we supposed to run if we carry all of this weight? I still need to manage the weight distribution with the new power cells to work the Bulletfoot mode."
"Don't worry. We'll drop all of this when we need to run," Jessica13 said. "With that said, we should probably move away now."
She froze when the radio behind her crackled to life. "Connecting to Hammerhand of the Knights Mechanica. Repeat, connecting to Hammerhand of the Knights Mechanica. Your help is desperately requested."
Never before had the sound of her own voice been so horrifying as it was in that moment. She spun to see the pirate mechs turn to face them.
"Run now?" Mini suggested.
"Yes please," Jessica13 said, her mouth suddenly dry. "And maybe next time I tell you to stop the loop, you do it!"
"Registered, now climb aboard!" The AI sounded annoyed for the first time since she'd known him.
Chapter Thirteen
The pirates had their location and were almost able to visually confirm where they were so they could attack. The sick feeling seemed to spread from Jessica13’s stomach to her legs and arms and made her feel like she had no possible avenue of escape.
There were a dozen of them by her count from this distance. At least she knew for a fact why no one else had taken the time to scavenge in this junkyard. It also explained where the pirates who had attacked the bunkers had taken their firepower from. She only wished she hadn't found out while they were this close.
"We need to move now!" Mini stated.
She nodded, scrambled into the mech, and yanked the doors shut behind her.
The AI turned and they began to move away from the pirates who had advance slowly toward them.
As they moved, however, the added weight settled on the mag clamp with a loud clatter. It wouldn’t dislodge, of course, but the noise it made could be heard for kilometers. If any other hostiles were in the vicinity, it would very clearly betray their position and they might find even more pirates hot for blood.
"You know, Mini, if we ever get out of this," Jessica13 said," I think we need to work on being a little more discreet. Not only you, of course, but me as well. We should both learn from this."
"Lessons are already being pasted to my core programming and should be useful in the future," Mini asserted.
"Assuming we have a future," she muttered despairingly.
The AI didn't pause to wallow and merely continued to move them out of the bottleneck they'd found themselves in. Jessica13 could see the numbers more clearly now. There were actually thirteen of them. Twelve were the regular Lancer designs full of the implanted modifications made by people who didn't know what they were doing. The rough and ready patchwork gave the mechs a decidedly scavenged look with pieces that protruded untidily.
One of them stood out from the others, an Ominium B4 in almost perfect condition. The model was nicknamed Balthazar, although she had no idea why. It had been designed to integrate bits and pieces from practically any other mech and was highly sought-after for that reason. Some of the older ones could be described as having almost no original parts and were called walking corpses.
This one looked like it had escaped that fate thus far. A couple of jet-engines were mounted on the back but aside from that, it looked fairly intact, something unique among those models.
"Shit, shit, shit," Jessica13 said and shook her head as the pirates accelerated their advance, obviously determined to pursue their prey.
Something weighed her arms down. She wasn't sure why but she suddenly couldn't move. All she felt able to do was stare as the pirates advanced on them with every intention of killing her and stripping Mini for parts to fit onto their own mechs.
The AI realized what was happening and immediately took control of the mech away from her. He moved them into what could pass for an attack position, retrieved the battery bomb she had built for them, and attached it to the air gun usually used to launch the grappler dart.
In this case, it was powerful enough to launch the bomb well above their heads. It hurtled toward the mechs, who either didn't realize they were under attack or didn't care.
Her eyes widened as she watched the lethal arc of her improvised weapon before Mini delivered a targeted burst from the radio to activate the power cells.
She wasn’t at all sure that it would work and could only hope fervently that the reality would match her intention. It landed heavily in the middle
