A moment of breathless silence passed during which she attempted to refocus her brain on finding an alternative. A loud pop curtailed her efforts and a couple of the Lancers toppled clumsily and immediately writhed and flailed as clouds of green smoke rose dramatically when the acid began to eat through their armor and into the men inside.
Or women. She really had no idea.
"Let's move!" she said. The knowledge that at least two of them had been eliminated was gratifying and gave her a little hope.
Mini responded to her prompting and set them in motion without hesitation, but a loud crack drew her attention. She twisted and gaped as the Balthazar glided smoothly in flight. The jets on its back propelled it easily to an elevation of almost twenty meters and drove it forward much faster than the Minato could ever hope to move.
As it advanced, the pilot drew the two assault rifles it carried and opened fire.
Mini jumped back and evaded the gunfire smoothly but a few pings here and there indicated that a couple of rounds had impacted the armor.
The Balthazar cut off their escape and the gunfire drove them toward the Lancers that continued to advance on them.
It wouldn’t be quite as simple as that, of course, although they were in a real predicament. Mini now moved diagonally. The airborne mech continued to hover above and maintained a steady barrage of bullets while the Lancers moved quickly to cut them off again.
"Hold on," the AI warned her, and Jessica13 braced her neck hastily with her hands again. Calculations scrolled across the HUD and indicated that Mini attempted to recalibrate the weight. After a few seconds of running, the joints jerked downward and the mech settled on all fours.
The Lancers hesitated and even the Balthazar paused its assault. Maybe they were surprised to see a support mech that could do something they had never seen before.
Or maybe they merely needed time to readjust to catch up with them again.
Mini turned the Minato with surprising speed, skidded across the scattered junk in their path, and tried to gain purchase to leap toward one of the crates nearby. The mech used it for leverage and launched them over one of the lower stacks nearby.
The lancers hadn't been fooled and moved immediately to intercept. The Balthazar certainly wasn’t deterred and merely jetted on a new trajectory to enable it to fire at them again.
"We need that monster to run out of fuel sooner rather than later," Jessica13 snapped and scowled at it. "Or…overheat or something."
"The chances are increasing of a shot that will break through the armor," Mini alerted her. Not that either of them really needed to be reminded of the fact. The Lancers now circled rapidly and would soon be in a position to attack again. They clearly realized this too, as indicated by the distinctive sound of their chain-swords activating.
"I have an idea but I'll need to be able to operate the grappler we picked up," she said. "Do you think you can keep the Minato running while I'm out there?"
Mini paused, but the calculations she ran didn’t show on the HUD's screen. "I believe so. But your chances of surviving out there are remote at best."
"What are my chances while I'm in here?"
Another pause followed. "Point taken. I urge you to be careful, though."
That particular request was essentially pointless given what she would try to do. "I'll try."
It was something she had always imagined herself doing but she'd never actually considered doing it. Exigent circumstances were a bitch, however, and Jessica13 pushed herself farther into the pilot's compartment and pulled the containment padding away until she was able to reach past it into the back compartments and finally, to the trapdoor.
This was usually only accessed when she needed to do repairs, and she was used to being outside when she needed to open it, but she would have to work around the challenges.
Dealing with the Minato moving in Bulletfoot mode was difficult enough when she was inside the compartment and could hold on for dear life. It was so much more difficult to move now that the entire mech contorted and moved. The g-forces dragged her back and forward as Mini navigated them around dangers and obstacles.
The hatch pushed open and the stench of gunfire and smoke immediately swamped her. It was all she could do not to pull it shut again and trust Mini to get them out of this.
"Come on, you can do this," Jessica13 whispered fiercely, pushed out of the hatch, and tried to establish some idea of where they were.
Mini had navigated the two of them out of the trap the pirates had tried to close around them, but they remained in close pursuit. The Lancers were slower than her mech, but the Balthazar in the sky still prevented a final break for freedom.
It took barely a second to scan and assess the situation. Her heart beat hard enough that she could feel it tick in her fingertips and it seemed like the world had slowed to enable her to take everything in. She wouldn’t be able to shoot the Balthazar down. While she was a fairly good shot, even with a grappler, she wasn't that good.
And she would have only one attempt.
"Well, I’d better make it count," she grumbled and stretched her hand to the mag clamp on the back of the Minato. It was a struggle to avoid being bucked off her position still halfway inside the mech while she pulled the scavenged grappler up to where she could operate it.
Maybe it was because everything around her was in chaos or her body somehow knew they were dead if she didn't get this right, but a calm filled her. Even though she was jostled with every move Mini made, Jessica13 found her focus was suddenly razor-sharp and she could easily splice a couple of wires and connect
