**Ah, shit, drive system [a complicated technical image, now smouldering and sparking] so I'm going to have to set down or bug out.**
I nod distractedly. The anti-gravity and drive systems are separate, but hanging motionless in the sky isn't a good idea around anti-aircraft weapons that can detect invisible targets.
And setting down would just make it a big,
sitting target for the 'bots, so there's only one option.
**Cease fire, go directly upwards. If they've got pre-War AA programming-.**
**Already doing it.**
Since I doubt inertialess drives were in common use at
any point in wartime history.
I get a.. slight impression of her vector, as well as the mild frustration that I thought she'd need to be told to do that. Our saucers can use their inertial dampeners to change direction on a dime, and that's fooled sentry guns programmed to shoot down Chinese jets and rockets before. These robots… They keep running towards us while firing along the saucer's predicted vector, spread out their fire when they fail to hit it, and then-
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Good to see they can't
perfectly predict things. That may prove useful in this fight.
-they lower their guns and go back to suppressing our convoy. Their guns don't appear to be able to easily penetrate the armour of our trucks but I-
"AAgh!"
I doubt penetration is all
that needed, given the heat transfer. Speaking of heat, anyone smell
bacon?
-start hearing cries and yelps as our people are hit by energy beams they can't see. The Enclave personnel aren't wearing armour due to technically being prisoners until we hand them over to Governor Autumn and my people are only wearing light armour. I think the main plates could take the sort of hits the robots' weapons are doing but they don't cover the whole of the body.
"The fuck are those things?"
And without total cover and very good heat shielding, you're gonna end up with a very nasty (and
very oddly-patterned) sunburn.
At this range, machinegun fire from the trucks is hitting their shields in a constant barrage. It's not getting through or visibly weakening them, but the kinetic force appears to be forcing the robots to slow or risk losing their footing. One actually does, right leg sliding away as some scree shifts and causing the robot to roll-
CRACK! CRACK! FOSHUUM!
Can't predict
bad luck, 'bot-boy. Especially if someone down there has the right
Perk.
Screw Gameplay and Story Segregation.
-on its back as it tries to recover, only to take two gauss shots to the back, followed a moment later by an anti-armour rocket. It slides back along the ground, carapace blackened and breached.
Without slowing, two of the others turn their guns on it and fire, frying its torso and shield generator.
Destroying a wrecked 'bot to deny enemies useful intelligence from the remains? Someone's
clever.
"Lieutenant, you should probably join your men."
"Naw. The Sergeant can organise 'em as well as I can. I need to coordinate with you, 'cause I get on with muties so well."
...And the fact that the 'bots are damn good at hitting moving human targets has
nothing to do with it, I'm sure.
Surviving records show that he was a dedicated Anderson-supporter while Dornan was on the fence until the election.
"Fine." I draw my plasma pistol and offer it to him as the robots charge up the shallow slope to the road. "Take this and try to not die."
And don't lose it, he'll be wanting that back after.
He takes it and checks the power cell. "I'll repossess this government property."
**Psychics, hold-** Lieutenant Orwich starts as he hears my voice in his head for the first time. **-and tank, infantry, flank and shoot. Trucks, reverse off the road away from them. Signal readiness.**
Yeah, easy enough to ignore their fairy tales of psychic powers, until they're talking straight into your
brain, huh?
**[A waves of affirmations from my people, and a confused acknowledgement from the Enclave soldiers.]**
**Ghosts.**
At least they adapt to changing circumstances quickly.
Pulse grenades appear from nowhere, sailing towards the oncoming robots and detonating with a surge of electromagnetic radiation. A few robots stumble, but only those whose casings had been damaged with gauss fire. Good insulation, then.
Ten metres away, the trucks aiming downwards to have their bullets bounce off the yellow shields.
If nothing else, they can chew up the road surface, make the terrain a little less stable for the 'bots.
**Trucks reverse, psychics forwards.**
There's a roar of engines as the trucks hit reverse and then I'm focusing on the three robots closest to me. Lightning gathers around my hands as I rip electrons from any available atom and contain it for a moment before directing it to arc at the closest! It raises its shield but that's not conductive and the lightning leaps around and earths itself-
Not an inconceivable application of telekinetic forces, especially from someone who actually has
some knowledge of physics...
The robot I'm targetting and one of its fellows shoots me, psychokinetic barrier and inertial nullifier taking the hit and… Ow, but I'll live.
-in the robot's chassis. Part of its gun arm explodes immediately, making the robot stagger sideways and block its neighbour. Shield's still up and that axe looks a bit glowy-.
Thermal conduction, eh? Reminds me of a
Heat 'Hawk from Gundam. Of course, it'd have to be made of some fancy metal to avoid melting
itself...
I wince as I lift the damaged robot off its feet and force it back, trying to-. The robot behind it leaps over its flying comrade, machinegun bullets from two of the retreating trucks bypassing its shield and pinging across its chassis. Lieutenant Orwich takes a shot with my pistol, narrowing missing the shield emitter housing and hitting nothing but air.
The robot repositions its shield to block the machinegun shots, plants its feet and lunges! Compressed pneumatic rams send it flying at me, and I-! Drop and roll while pushing at it with a psychokinetic thrust!
Even without its gun or axe, it's still got to be a couple of tons of machinery. That'll leave a mark if it crashes into you...
The axe comes down next to me, concrete clicking and cracking as heats up around where the axe head has bitten in.
Roll and pull myself up, robot swinging lean and shove, robot stumbling past me lightning! The robot spasms, swinging its axe clumsily at me as it shudders-.
So, something like
this?
Lieutenant Orwich darts in, stepping around its gaser and shooting it in the upper torso at point blank range! The plasma eats through the armour and penetrates into the internal mechanisms, the robot collapsing-.
Dodge!
Last thing you need is it pinning you down in the middle of a firefight, after all.
The robot with the destroyed gaser swings its axe, narrowly missing me and forcing me to stumble into the line of fire of one of the truck machineguns. I wince as some of the force gets through my protections, knocked forward in time to need to-
Dodge!
Man, Krono is really
not built for combat, is he? Joy of having focused on being a Diplomancer and being forced into a combat quest.
-another axe swing, this robot crouching behind its shield as it takes quick but caution swings at me. Ah, back up back up, lightn-.
OOF! Bah! It shoulder charged me! I'm on my back and-. It's swinging at Lieutenant Orwich and lightning takes a few sec-.
Oh, sure, go for the
squishier combatant!
A flash to blue-white energy and the robot stumbles-
CRACK! CRACK!
-as one of the Ghosts hits it with a pulse grenade and the other shoots it. I haul myself upright and blasts it with lightning, making it spasm and collapse as Lieutenant Orwich steps up to give it the coup de grâce with my pistol.
And while I doubt he'd have thought of it at the time, he'll no doubt tell tales of the one-liners he gave when he did so.
Feel free to
invent some for him.
I look down the line-. The three intact robots turn and bound away, shields covering their backs and blocking shots from the newly armed Enclave soldiers. Other robots are on the ground, broken and battered and surrounded by soldiers who aren't taking chances. I see a.. dozen dead and another dozen injured-.
"Ah, fuck."
Cutting their losses, I see. No doubt they'll be back with upgrades to resist everything they got tossed at them next time...
And Lieutenant Orwich has seen it too. One of my psykers is clearly dead and two of my soldiers are injured, not counting the driver shredded by the cooked off ammunition. The rest are Enclave soldiers, caught in the open or punished for their impetuousness.
**Sergeant, guard both sides of the road.**
Perfect time for a secondary ambush, when they're cleaning up the mess.
Dornan glares at me suspiciously for a moment before gesturing to the soldiers around him, a gauss gun firmly in his grip. I jog to the closest still-living casualty, right arm baked black by the gamma beams and breath irregular. I draw a stim-pack from my-. I draw an intact stim-pack from my robes and stab it into the unharmed flesh near his shoulder as I gather psychic energy to meld the flesh back into functionality.
Sure, it
sounds like some sort of magical healing technique, but I figure he's simply telekinetically grabbing torn chunks and holding them in place while the stim-pack nanotech does its thing...
Lieutenant Orwich has followed me, glaring at the back of my head.
"Mutie chief… The fuck was that?"
That was one heck of a random encounter. Let's hope that's
all it was.
