Concept of Jubey and his dearmed Mecha
Jubey left the breakroom with its color-coordinated vending machines. His mech was in repairs. Sparking welding torches were wielded by bots, and the scientists were frantically coming up with enhancements to yesterday’s mods. Easy to have a loyal support team when you can give them a roller coaster ride from hell, and the first was too much for them.
He ran into engineers going up to help Emma. They showed him a piece of red metal. “You fought it, right? Maybe even broke this off? How do you fit it? What do you fit it to?” They were talking about Rare. He was in the enormous canvas sack in the center of construction, in constant connection with Emma and Jordan, while they conducted recovery protocols for the mock battle.
“Maybe ask the robot?” The kid’s eyes went wide and went on behind him. Jubey had a selection of vehicles while his Mech(a) was down. He picked the speeder car. He swept around the hangar - some of the big floor tiles pulled up for full repair. He swung out and across the dusty ground towards the exit fence, guarded by lasers and faint beeping. The thin grass outside thickened, then thinned again as he entered the Orange Perimeter. Support requests popped up on his dashboard: “Troop Carrier just left! Need recovery!” “Gunfire from nearest Red building! Need scout!”
He scouted first, blazing to 200 MPH with temporary boost. The building at the edge had glinting scopes, and he parked behind rubble. He had an efficient solution: playing audio from his own battle. “Bastard! You and your fancy suit… we’ve caught up with walking tanks, … Approaching enemy mech, Perimeter Guardian. More nimble than expected… we’re going to keep our distance. Sorry.” As expected, the riflemen rushed down the exposed staircase as he cast the recordings into hidden areas of the Red Zone. He fired up his speeder, and swung around the staircase, the blaze of Boost resembling a plasma weapon. They ran, and the area should be secure.
Plunging into the Red Zone and approaching a bomber crater, the distressed 1st-soldier appeared on his screen. “Are we stretched so thin they’re sending techies? This isn’t a nerd’s game.” “I just may make the game mine, and you’ll have to deal with it.” The second and third soldiers were keeping watch, scoped in. He screech-parked behind them and deployed an Energy Wall, which had extreme luminescence to blow out robot sensors and scopes. On their side, it was a bright see-through wall.
“Thanks for the support, but we’re sure they’ll be coming back any time. And our six seems to be a likely pathway for Green mercs…” Green mercs were a normal hire for the Blue army, as their land equipment and skills were on a higher level, on average. This speeder car lost its primary strength while parked, but Jubey had a few moves. He fired Ricochet Lasers that guided where the next laser module would stick, but his aim was so good he didn’t need it much. 3 and 4 bounces were common, so he loaded them up in a four stack to shoot. The lasers hit with only a few misses at the end, he shot 5 quads. Resembling a fence cutting and weaving throughout the burnt neighborhood, they had a damage mode but it burnt energy quick. Better to trip up their movements with a couple other options to activate.
Jubey waited. He didn’t even have a pistol - just a tech gun. He switched to heat rounds as the 1st reported signs of enemy movement. He had all the training - but Jubey had all the moves they would never expect.
Heat rounds were often used for emergency welds - pop one at a vehicle, and it’ll melt a hole shut by the time it burns out. He lobbed one over its short arc into the nearby building’s basement. There was a bunch of old trash there - dry branches, torn bags ripped by shockwaves. It’d keep going through all the toughest stuff until a real fire started. A jeep rolled through a laser - electrocute. It parked itself and the driver kept trying and failing to start it.
The 1st made a few potshots at soldiers moving from cover to cover far in the distance. The Energy Wall merited long curling motions across the field to avoid its front. He changed his tech round again to a net, and draped nets on the farthest edges of the area. They were hard to spot before you walked - or drove - into them. Avoiding them meant creating a corridor for Jubey’s group to handle, as well.
The real threat had already gotten past, though: a group of Green mercs slowly walking beside a light tank. They approached the same road Jubey used.
It would be easy to simply dodge the tank with the speeder, but for Jubey it was easier to puzzle out how to save the allied soldiers without getting his car shelled. He used the tech gun’s 2X scope to spot a power box, and estimated where the underground power line would go to service the buildings. He removed the barrel attachment and let an electrical arc hit the power box, bursting the dry grass and burning the legs of several mercs as they got just beside the road.
Now they would be going into assault mode. The Energy Wall has one side, the lasers covered their 3 and 9. 2 of the soldiers focused on the mercs, getting a clean shot on one who stumbled with blackened legs. The tank was coming quick with slight diversions to the path. The fire started with thin smoke, and gradually started spreading across the grass. Jubey was getting scared, but that was only one part of his mind: the nerd who excelled at solutions and logistics was still fully functional, and the full scope of his consciousness. He replaced the barrel and switched to the Magnet deployer. A blue soldier at 3’o’clock walked into a laser: the magnet round followed the pathway through the lasers towards the very-attractive metallic alloy of the laser nodes. The magnet energizing the power cells, it produced a powerful stun burst, knocking the soldier unconscious and electrocuting a nearby ally.
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He remembered a school project: magnets on metal poles, moving flying cars and a hovering city for his recreation of a planned city design for the future amongst other displays of the national school fair, the city module sent to tech-affinity schools by Central Command. They knew that actually creating the city would be a big military target… but felt it could be done anyway, as a part of the changing spirit of the times. His grademates were awed by the melee prowess and careful aim of the military trainee kids, but he knew there was many other kid techies near his level and the competition was fierce. Hard to stand out. And yet… he felt that old spirit stir in him: the desire to be a star. Star… of something.
The shocked soldier stumbled, and another Blue trooper rushed in, not sure what it was. Both of their guns were pulled by the magnet. Stacked on the front of the magnet-laser 4 node, Jubey activated damage mode and the laser burnt a hole through both rifles, then all the metal fell to the ground, fully spent in several seconds.
The tank fired towards them, but it was designed to handle non-armored vehicles and so did not pose much of a threat at range. There was a squad of blue soldiers bracing the light hazard of the Energy Wall to nest in the closest building, and that’s when Jubey’s first plan kicked into gear. They spent several minutes keeping the enemies down with rifle fire, then when they were fully nested Jubey called for grenade launches into the first floor. The building went Bwooom, began to cave in, and the planks of the cave-in were caught in the raging fire below. Conflagration was quick, and the panicking soldiers got reckless with their gunning: the allies picked off two.
They couldn’t see the warm glow of the fire with the Energy Wall right behind it. 3 more blue troops were at 3 and 6, they traded fire, the 2nd soldier was severely wounded in a leg and the Blues were downed. Able to get back in the fight or not - escape was possible now.
However, the squad lieutenant approached beyond the blaze, wielding an autogrenade launcher with adjustable arcs. He had little reason to hold back with so many losses. Jubey picked up 2nd’s rifle and used 4X magnification, searching around the origin of the grenades through windows and burning walls. He detonated several grenades, caving in the ceiling that had begun to burn, but couldn’t see him. He fired at a flash of dim blue, then the next grenade hit his energy wall, twisting its separated ends into the bushes. The soldiers were depending on him to keep bursting the grenades at the top of their arcs, but the tank was getting better aim on them. The next shell whistled over their heads. Jubey fell on his back, switched to his tech gun, adjusted it, and lobbed a heat round on the nearing tank.
The last Green foot merc kept 1st down, and he encouraged all 3 of them to prepare to launch their own grenades on the tank. The heat round burnt down, sunk, melted into what it melted. The tank very close and the heat round achieving its work, the soldiers bombarded it with grenades. They burst 5 times, causing the tank’s front to bounce and breaches to progressively shatter down into an ammo compartment. Shells went up in a rectangular flame, but the tank was still driving - just cooking worse than when Jubey was piloting.
The autogrenades came down on the edge of the crater, just beyond the rim, bringing heat to the deep cold ground. Jubey realized they were coming from the side - quick peeks with his tech scope showed he was commandeering the tank. Looked like the proper tank pilot was scorched and severely overheated, hard to tell in the dark. The squad lieutenant descended into the hole licking with flames. Oh no - was he going to show the Greens how it’s done? Was he artillery lobbing the last store of tank shells?
Jubey got them all in the speeder, 2nd having been pressing his wound into the pit of the crater. He peeled away. The new tank commander loaded shells - HEAT rounds were kept in the most secure compartment as they could easily detonate the tank by themselves. As Jubey accelerated the orange domes of HEAT drops came around his path. Reloading inhumanly fast… he went down the Main Street of the lost town, the tank anticipating his path but he knew no alternative… the last few soldiers were holding their fire, following and waiting for him to slip up. Boosting would create a blaze of teal light that made for an easy target before he got out of there… he dodged ruined cars and explosions. He accelerated naturally at the perimeter of the town, and the explosions got extremely close. He tried to anticipate the lieutenant’s pattern, aiming style. He braked as shells came down in front of him, spinning, turning, pulling out the tech gun and hitting the rear-position Blue trooper with a net. He sped directly by him to try to enter the tank’s proximity far faster than the barrel could lower from artillery mode and turn. But he was well past the Blue dude when 2 shells came down right before him, throwing his speeder into a slight ditch.
The area was wide open, and a direct hit would come easy. But there was a blaze in the air… a LongArc missile came down vertically on the tank, exploding and igniting the last few HEAT shells, the chassis flying into the air and the treads abruptly draping what remained of the new tank commander’s skeleton. Jubey got out and checked his car, and aside from a torn-off side skirt on the left it was fine.
But…. How? What was loaded with LongArc missiles? Even if there was a hidden vehicle with them, his Mecha was surely the only machine with reason to fire it. But… who fired it?
He dropped off the soldiers in a spacious medical tent within the Orange Perimeter. He had a mechanic double-check his car, and with minor adjustments returned to his job site. It was a cold night, and the dark hangar was mostly open. … his Mecha was standing in the middle of the entryway, deactivated but fully repaired to its state before yesterday’s battle, with enhancements.
He went inside. He bought a blue bag of chips from the blue vending machine, and he wondered.
Aura of firing of the LongArc missile?
