Iron Empire

Forty-One: Rocket Science

Report: Quinn
The Annamite Mountain Range
Vietnam.
Abandoned Axion facility.
Former designation: "The Crater"

Our Sentinels were a few hundred yards from the bottom of the crater, mechanical legs pounding into the sheer cliff face. I had mentioned seeing signs of a dropship to the others, but we had decided to pretend like nothing was wrong.

We had to act as though we hadn't seen the dropship hovering above us like an axe ready to fall.

"You ready?" I asked. There was such a pause that I assumed he hadn't heard the question, but Martin responded with a sigh.

"I guess we have to be. There goes our chance for a stealthy mission."

We were not far from the bottom now, and I could see every building in clear detail. Despite the new building we'd seen, The Crater was still abandoned.

Vines thatched every open surface, covering the walls in green veins. The buildings looked to be mostly stone and large chunks had broken off from many, falling to the mossy crater floor. A massive, hexagonal pyramid of a structure dominated the middle of the compound, surrounded by smaller, rectangular buildings. At the far end of the crater, a large steel tower rose up the side of the crater wall, supporting a massive cone of steel.

A nuclear warhead.

Rust caked its once-shiny surface, a by-product of exposure to the elements, but it remained untouched by vegetation. It was clear that Axion hadn't touched it since occupying and abandoning the base, too financially oriented to consider it worthwhile to dismantle. It was left to rust, a relic from a terrible time.

Telbus' Sentinel slid to a stop next to me, gleaming black heavy shotguns catching the sunlight and reflecting it.

"No sign of enemy activity," he announced, voice sounding muffled over the comms. "If Jax was correct about seeing a dropship above us they haven't noticed us yet."

"Or they're waiting," Alyx responded pointedly.

"Let's think positive," Kedrick replied.

I took another step down the side of the crater, staring at the buildings below. At that moment, glowing sparks lit up my HUD with a metallic roar.

"Blast!" I snapped. "That startled me!"

Bullets from multiple sources traced across the outside of my Sentinel, ricocheting off the heavy armour with a sound like thunder. My first instinct was to lower my heavy shield and bring my Sentinel into its armoured turret mode, but I quickly noticed that I was taking no damage from the attack.

The bullets weren't made to pierce mechs, instead fired by automatic anti-aircraft guns that dotted the rooftops of the facility. They made a lot of noise but were antiquated by the Sentinel's thick shell. The guns were designed to shoot down lightweight drones of the bygone war, not mechanical monstrosities.

"We triggered the defence systems you mentioned, Dan," Telbus grunted.

His Sentinel edged forward, sparks flying off it like a live wire. I imagined that I looked the same, bullets flying every which way as we moved closer to our target.

"I've marked the command centre for those turrets on your HUD," Dan responded."I'm surprised they're all working so well after all this time."

A flash of green light lit up the screen in front of me, highlighting a squat rectangular building at the edge of the cluster. The structure was still intact but looked easy to smash.

"That's it," I declared, "I can take the express route from here."

Without a second thought, I lifted my Sentinel's legs off the crater wall and into empty space, feeling a rush of elation as the quadrupedal mech fell towards the crafter's bottom. The mech's heavy joints easily absorbed the impact, kicking up a layer of dirt.