In an unspoken agreent, the reinforcents that ca with the Caesar Augustus busied themselves with fending off linda’s allies.
"That’s a nice ch you got there. Sha about the armor though."
"It’s the Marc Antony, designed by soone I know. It’s supposed to be a more affordable alternative to what you’re riding."
The Caesar Augustus pilot let out a contemptuous snort. "The re thought of cheapening any of this fra’s components is abhorrent. It goes against everything this august ch stands for. You and your friend have no idea how much you sullied its grandeur."
Like an unstoppable tide, the Caesar Augustus kept closing the distance as it exchanged laser blasts. linda’s laser cannons were running hot, but the only thing she managed to achieve was to heat up the top layers of her opponent’s shield, causing only a fraction of its mass to lt. Its defensive power was a testant to National Aeromotives’ heat-absorption research.
"It’s useless! Face the inevitability!"
"You talk too much!" linda yelled as she abandoned her laser fire for a close-in approach. Like a nimble gorilla she threw her ch forward while juking as much shots as she could. The Marc Antony strained against the sudden turns even as the incoming fire heated up a lot of portions of her ch. It made the Marc Antony seem like a demon from hell, with its dark armor, glowing red spots and the ever-present water vapor leaking from the crest of its head.
"That’s a funny gimmick, the Roman helt design. But I’m afraid you’re going to lose it when I HACK OFF YOUR HEAD!"
The Caesar Augustus ca into lee range, but despite the pilot’s words the Augustus continued to charge forward like a train. linda only belatedly dodged to the side, suffering a glancing blow from the Augustus’ quick slash.
The two ca together again and engaged in a furious exchange of blows interspersed with opportunistic laser blasts. The Augustus’ shield was virtually indestructible as linda’s dual weapons lacked sufficient weight or sharpness. The white sword struck with asured, disciplined strikes that followed a mysterious pattern. It successfully held linda at bay.
The pilot of the Caesar Augustus must be an elite. His formal piloting skill overwheld her own as he moved the Augustus fluently like it was his own body. From his sword style to his movent pattern, everything the pilot did only put linda in a tougher position.
"Give up. I’ve seen what your ch is made of. You’re an inferior copy."
"Shut up." linda replied as sweat poured down her face. She tried her best to hang on, but the opponent kept chipping away at the HRF plating that kept her ch protected.
"I can understand why you pilot such garbage. After all, if you don’t have the money, you’ll never pilot a ch as magnificent as the Caesar Augustus in your lifeti."
"Not everything can be asured with money!" She hissed as she surged forward, risking a deadly stab which she parried with her borrowed sword. Her weapon cracked and broke in half, but it succeeded in taking the wind out of the strike.
Her mace already pounced from above, the heavy rounded end travelling in a straight arc towards the Augustus’ head. The enemy pilot hastily raised his shield, bouncing the mace back with a heavy vibration.
"Hah, what will you do now without a sword?"
"This!" linda dropped the broken sword and used her wrist to fire a couple of point-blank laser blasts right in the eyes. While most of the head was able to endure the heat, the main sensors and the delicate components buried deeper in the head were not so lucky.
The enemy pilot scread as he lost his primary vision. He perford a reflexive bash with his shield that pushed the Marc Antony back. She stepped backwards along with the push, and started to slink sideways in order to take advantage of the fact the Augustus now relied on its secondary sensors.
"You think you’ve blinded ? You’re wrong!"
Surprisingly, the Augustus shifted adeptly in linda’s direction. Perhaps wary of another point blank surprise, the Augustus with its lted head kept its distance while firing its wrist laser. The Marc Antony spent its energy at a fast rate trying to dodge the shots.
"I’ve been lenient to you so far. I didn’t expect you to scorn my face. Very well, let show you the real power of the first emperor!"
The Augustus dropped its shield, relinquishing much of its defensive advantage over the Marc Antony. Nevertheless, the Augustus moved forward with renewed grace. The enhanced speed alard linda, and it took all she had to dodge the Augustus’ masterful sword stroke. The follow up strikes chipped away at the Marc Antony’s exterior, shaving off several portions of its arm and torso armor.
linda pushed down her panic and kept composed as she danced around with her ch. As each second passed, she felt her conscious mind grow more intense. The Marc Antony’s dark form echoed her every thought, allowing her to avoid the Augustus’ swords repeatedly. Even in the instances where she couldn’t avoid damage, she exerted her utmost to let the sword strike her ch’s best armored sections.
"All you can do is run like a cockroach and jump like a monkey!" The pilot bellowed, frustrated at the continual chase. "That’s all a cheap whore riding a cheap imitation like you can do. You’ll never be able to match and my ch’s brilliance!"
An irrational spike of fury invaded linda’s thoughts. All her formal Guard training warned her not to lose her composure. Having spent a lot of ti diating between hotheads piloting multi-ton war machines, she was well aware of the dangers of letting your anger get the better of your decision making.
"The Marc Antony huh? I suppose you’re not familiar with Ancient Terran history. You see, way back then, Augustus defeated Marc Antony repeatedly. And now, history will repeat itself. Your cheap joke of a ch will never be as worthy as mine!"
None of her reservations remained.
Indignant at being looked down at, she willingly embraced her anger and howled. The ferocious call stuttered the young pilot’s attack, causing him to present an unforgivable gap in his assault. linda struck out with her mace with the limits of her ch’s capacity, channeling the kinetic energy of her ch’s legs, its rotating torso and its entire arm in a single devastating swipe that landed accurately against the Augustus’ sword grip.
The fingers crunched as the impact of an entire ch’s montum couldn’t be stopped by such delicate limbs. The middle and ring fingers even separated entirely. Despite the critical damage, the Augustus was nimble enough to throw its sword to its other hand. Once the Augustus regained its weapon, the Marc Antony would suffer as it overextended itself severely in its last attack.
linda’s eyes sharpened as she used the brief mont to do sothing unorthodox. She engaged the ergency release catches that kept the Marc Antony’s shoulder launchers attached to its armor. Using the remnants of her ch’s forward montum, she caused her ch to bodily fling the launchers at the gobsmacked Augustus.
"No matter how much money you have, you can’t spend your way to victory." linda grinned as she waved goodbye with her ch’s free hand.
She activated the overrides that caused all the missiles to explode their payloads at once. Twin suns appeared in their midst, blasting the Marc Antony backwards. The explosion further cracked her ch’s armor, but she was able to get it to stay on its feet.
As the smoke and fire cleared, the Caesar Augustus looked much sorrier than before. Its armor surprisingly only sported a few cracks and craters despite suffering two concentrated magazine detonations.
Unfortunately, even if its armor retained much of its effectiveness, the more delicate components underneath suffered worse. The amalgamated explosions radiated the combined shock waves of a full salvo of missiles. Worse, the propellants of the missiles hadn’t been expended at all, so they blew up all at once as well, adding an incinerating quality to the explosions that left the bedraggled Augustus half-burning in chanical agony.
"What, what is this.. I can’t move my ch.." The distressed young man said as he kept trying to take control over his ch’s twitching limbs. "The Augustus... is..."
"The Augustus is only mortal." linda interjected as she guided her ch’s foot to crunch the other hand of her opponent’s ch into scrap. The Marc Antony ominously leaned over, bringing its nacing and battle-scarred face close to the Augustus’ half-smashed and half-burned face. "You’re not invincible inside that expensive toy of yours."
"At least I’m able to afford one in the real universe."
"You’ll get your ass whipped just the sa." linda noted, then bashed her mace against the Augustus’ torso. The cracks expanded but the armor surprisingly held up against the blunt force trauma she frenziedly inflicted. By the ti her mace broke off from the abuse, the enemy pilot’s body had long since fallen apart from the excessive shock impacts.
Tossing the useless handle away, linda walked over and picked up the fallen ch’s virtually pristine sword and shield. "Thanks for letting borrow this, buddy."
She swept her gaze at the confused lee around her. Though her duel with the Caesar Augustus expended much out of her ch, it lasted only around two minutes. Victory and defeat hadn’t been decided yet, but linda already pounced at the nearest enemy ch from the flanks. The opponent wasn’t able to keep its attention in two directions at once, and lost its lower leg to a cruel slice of linda’s new sword.
"This weapon’s much better than I thought." She pleasingly muttered, though she missed the crunchy feel of her mace.
With linda’s help, she freed up her preoccupied teammates, leaving them free to help out the others in turn. This caused the scales of battle to tip in their favor rapidly, leading the enemy to a solid rout as their remnants retreated up to the surface.
The Marc Antony raised its appropriated sword, causing the survivors to cheer in victory. Despite not having any advantage in the quality of her ch or her league ranking, she still managed to exude the quality of a leader. Most of the chs who fought alongside of her were willing to follow her directions.
Please at the deference she enjoyed, linda lowered the sword until it pointed towards the exit. "We have a base to wreck. Let’s go!"
The group of chs squeezed out of the exit and finally reached the surface. Most of the defenders were still stuck guarding against outside attackers, but so of them had already been alerted to the intrusion.
"Show where their control center is located!"
"Six o’clock, the do by the tower-like structure."
"Alright boys and girls, we’ve got only one thing left before we can call it a day. To the control center!"
Despite the many chs that turned around to take care of the threat that popped up in their midst, the invaders had initiative on their side and they only needed a short ti to reach the control center. The hard-shelled do protected it against all kinds of ordnance, but when linda crashed the lower edge of her kite shield against the surface, it cracked and started to cave in. So of the other chs with lee weapons joined in the fun while the rest fended off the approaching defenders.
"We can’t hold out much longer!"
"Keep it up! We just need a little more ti!"
The Marc Antony’s last three shield attacks succeeded in prying open a hole. A light ch with a flathrower imdiately went to her side and fired off a lethally hot stream of fla that incinerated all of the control center’s personnel and computers. linda ntally bathed in their screams, feeling gratified that they accomplished their objective.
"Uh, linda. You might not celebrate so soon yet. There’s a problem."
She snapped out of her funk. "What’s up, Janet?"
"Well, you guys managed to destroy the control center, but not before they called in the first wave of their reinforcents. You better look up in the sky."
Her sensors readjusted. She could see a small speck in the sky growing larger. It was an entry pod, allowing chs to arrive on the surface of a planet with the speed of free fall. The pod grew larger, and larger, and larger, and larger...
"That’s not a normal pod."
The pod was way too big to fit a single ch. From the size of it, linda estimated the pod could fit in at least eight to twelve dium chs, which was difficult to fend off.
Only until the pod engaged its boosters to slow down its downward crash did linda feel that sothing was off. Those boosters released so much force that it rattled the entire comm center. It was as if the boosters were working their assess off arresting the fall of sothing much larger than a bunch of regular chs.
An earthquake-like impact rattled everyone in the vicinity as the pod finally half-crashed in the middle of the base. The ramp of the pod lowered slowly, taking its ti until it fully extended.
That was until a foot the size of a heavy ch kicked the tal ramp away. The rectangular piece of tal screeched as it bounced off the ground only to crash against the base of an antenna.
An apocalyptic ch the size of the Guard Headquarter’s main building stepped out of the oversized pod. Each footstep seed to rumble the footing of the other chs, leading to a growing unease among the blue team. With its sturdy legs, barreled torso and a pair of weapon-encrusted arms, the tal monstrosity stretched the definition of ch.
"It’s a juggernaut." Janet whispered.
In the history of ch developnt, there was no hard rule that set the size and weight of the chs to a specific limit. The current modern adoption of the light, dium and heavy classification was more out of convenience than out of any calculated considerations. The doctrines that followed were what really cented the classifications in place.
A light ch is fast and stays alive by remaining unseen or dodging enemy attacks. They usually act as scouts, saboteurs or flankers. They also make excellent flyers.
A dium ch is nimble on its feet and can withstand a limited amount of damage. They are the jack-of-all-trades in the ch world, able to fulfill any role with their unparalleled flexibility.
A heavy ch doesn’t bother dodging, instead choosing to tank all the attacks coming its way. It is regarded as a tank due to the ease it is able to defend a position or break through enemy lines.
An entire industry has sprung up around these three archetypes. The system of developing and licensing interchangeable and modular components ca about when different custors demanded they wanted to mount their favorite toys on their favorite chs. Many advanced components invented these days restricted their use to a single weight class in order to maintain compatibility.
But regardless of this thriving ecosystem of chs and ch parts, there were always so parties that wanted to take a step forwards for themselves. One such mont happened at the New Rubarth Empire’s introduction of the juggernaut to the battlefield.
The juggernaut was a ch that had the ability to contend against a low-flying space ship. Its fra and its countless components weighed as much as a dozen heavy chs, but was about a hundred to a thousand tis more expensive to build. The many technologies that kept such a gargantuan in once piece and prevented it from collapsing under its own weight were very expensive to reproduce. Such a large and heavy ch simply didn’t appear to be economical.
That never stopped the New Rubarthans, though. They painstakingly invested in its developnt and kept the project under wraps for at least an entire ch generation. Only until they refined the design well enough to be able to operate in hostile planetary environnts did they release the first juggernaut on the battlefield.
It left behind a massacre back then. The city it fought in suffered so much damage, the New Rubarthans considered the battle could have resulted in less damage if they fired off a couple of illegal tactical nukes.
Right now, the juggernauts were weapons with dubious legal status in human space. Many states hostile to the New Rubarth Empire sought to draft a treaty banning such ultralarge chs. The devastating they could unleashed rivaled weapons of mass destruction. In actuality, it would be justified if they were categorized as the newest WMD humans have invented.
All of that was of little use to linda now, as the juggernaut finally moved. It raised one of its arms that bristled with gun cannons and pointed in the vague direction of blue team’s military base.
"Oh shit. Get out Janet!"
"I’m already on it!"
The juggernaut fired, and the entire world turned white.
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