Trying to dodge

The readouts weren’t looking good.

He punched up the damage on the display and winced. The last volley had not done him any good.

You’d be surprised what you can hide 73.8 tons of mobile tank behind, and currently Wren was hiding behind a building he himself had turned into rubble not fifteen minutes ago.

“Where the hell did they come from, Jim?”

“How the fuck should I know? These stupid villagers must’ve had an old assault model hidden in the hills.”

“What!? You mean one of the X65-G’s? They haven’t used those in, like, 30 years!”

“Exactly. After the last war, those damn hulls are just rotting all over the place. Wouldn’t take a lot to fix one up to the point where you could plaster a hillside with cover fire. As you can see.”

Wren poked a small camera out of his hiding spot. He tried to spot where the mech was covering their position from. Unfortunately, whoever was trying to kill them knew more than just how to pull a trigger. They were alternating smoke bomb rounds and the countryside air was thick as soup.

Five separate alarms told Wren it was time to move again and he set his mech in motion just as the latest volley landed on his previous position.

“How the hell is he finding me?!”

“Someone’s got an IRR beam on you, or I’m a Kanaxan”

“God dammit”

It was supposed to have been a pretty easy mission. Stroll into a little rebel town, blow away the military support buildings, read the riot act to the citizens about harboring terrorists, call it a day. Now he was trying to maneuver a monolithic metal brick like a ballerina.

“Did you at least get a position off that last volley? You’re supposed to be my eyes!”

“I think I’ve got something, but there’s so much smoke out here it’s like trying to find a cigarette in a fire…”

“Man, what’s the resume look like for a professional excuse maker? I can’t imagine it’s an easy one to put together!”

“Shut the fuck up, I’ve almost got ‘im. Why don’t you take down whoever is painting you so you can stop trying to find the next gear on your poor transmission”

Wren had to admit that was a good idea. Popping every external camera he had onto his HUD he scanned his surroundings, trying to find the characteristic infra-red beam. The surrounding rubble seemed to be pretty clear of people. Suspiciously clear, actually. Normally there would have been serious casualties from a random barrage of this nature, yet he saw hardly any corpses. There was no announcement when they came, it was supposed to be a surprise. This town had been prepared for them.

‘Looks like not everyone got the evacuation warning though…’ Wren bit his lip at the sight of a small child half buried under a chunk of building. He zoomed the camera in close enough to determine it had been a little girl. He hated when the innocents got caught in the cross fire. Even now the little one’s eyes were fixed on his mech as though… as though she weren’t dead.

Acting on a hunch, Wren sent a round about 15 feet from the kid while watching closely. In the brief cloud of debris he saw exactly what he thought he would, a tiny red beam glowing quietly from the girl’s eye.

Wren cursed at both the girl and the alarms that had just blared back to life.