A beauty. Doesn't even look like its reactor melted, just ended up immobilized and abandoned. I wonder why no one ever salvaged that thing. Maybe it was a hasty retreat and they couldn't bother sending anyone. And then noone remembered it was there. With no EM signature and in this location, I doubt you'd see much in an orbital scan, you'd have to get close to identify what it is.
Would make a nice pet project for some hermit in the desert: Get the mech going again ;)
A beauty. Doesn't even look like its reactor melted, just ended up immobilized and abandoned. I wond
Conner hit the "override" button on his center console for the roughly the twentieth times to prevent his reactor from shutting down. His LCT-1V was badly damaged and limping with barely 90 km/h across the rocky terrain.
Now he wished he had paid better attention to the training course about reactot technology. His reactor wasn't overheating, in fact it was slightly below optimal temperature, and the heat exchangers had little to do. His ejector system hadn't activated and he also wasn't dead yet, so obviously it wasn't the containment. Yet something was obviously wrong.
Conner had been on a scout mission far to the right flank of his small 3 lance deployment. They were sent to identify and destroy a supposed smuggler outpost, but something had gone wrong. Screams on the com had him race back to his group at full speed, only to be painted by at least 3 targetting lasers from 90 ton class artillery mechs of unknown origin. These weren't smugglers, this was some clan business, he realized. They had already made short work of his heavies, and judging by the screams on the com, they weren't making prisoners. Through the scope he could see the foot of one clan mech crash down on the cockpit structure of his commanders fallen warhammer. it's head collapsed in a small fireball as internal subsystems exploded, accompanied by a sickening scream of pain and bending metal on the com that then turned to chilling static.
There was nothing he could do, but turn his mech around and try to flee. A brief alarm sounded before the first two salvos of missiles from the enemy artillery mechs rained down on him. Explosions rocked the rocky ground and turned rock fragments into deadly projectiles. Shrapnell burst into his mech from all sides and tore at his armor. A direct missile hit ripped the right machine gun arm from his mech's torso. A fire warning flashed for the left one for a brief three seconds, then an internal explosion disintegrated his second arm. Cracks ran across his cockpit window, and a big flashy warning indicated a reactor malfunction. But the mech was still running, and somehow managed to take cover behind a rock just before the third missle salvo burst into it and hid him behind a wall of smoke and flying debris.
Conner hadn't stopped since. The mech had developed a limp and slowly lost speed. Designed for a breathtaking 170, it was only making half as much, and the on-board systems kept insisting that the reactor had to be shut down, but he knew he'd be dead if he let it. Somehow he had managed to avoid his pursuers. Only once he had a small clan scout mech briefly flashed up in his long range sensors, but they were searching the wrong way. He had kept hidden behind terrain and made more distance. A hidden valley opened up in front of him with a little creek running down the center. He activated his jump jets to lower his mech without slowing down, but in mid jump, they suddenly sputtered.
"Reactor malfunction. Insufficient power output. Shutting down..." the alert sounded. Then his mech impacted the ground hard. He stumbled, fell, slid down the sandy embankment on his side, then came to an abrupt halt at the bottom, then lay still.
What was left of his cockpit window shattered and the bright sun fell on his bloodstained uniform. No serious injuries, unlike his battered mech, the pilot had only sustained some scratches and minor flesh wounds. He didn't know how long he was out, but when he came to the sun was already low. He could see the silhouette of a clan drop ship rising into the afternoon sky on its way to orbit. Apparently the hunt for him had been abandoned.
He climbed out of his wrecked mech and took only the most necessary items with him. A survival knife, bandages and his water bottle. The mech staid behind, shutdown, broken and unwilling to power up, it was destined to lay dormant for a very long time...
Conner hit the "override" button on his center console for the roughly the twentieth times to preven
