Eke surveilled the battlefield beneath them. Three of the mechs were advancing on another two, which were taking up a defensive position around a building, attempting to protect the group of people and other mechs still inside. Shockwaves of large cannon fire and the high winds caused the line Eke was hanging on to ripple in the air.
Sie watched, optics zoomed in as far as they would go, to get a good look at the battle. The attackers, clearly better maintained, moved with precision and skill to intimidate and distract the three weaker mechs, showing their battle-weary state, both of the machines and the pilots. Eke suspected the battle would be over in a matter of minutes, just like a lot of the others sie's seen since getting here.
A gust of wind kicked up again, and the synthetic wolf shook away the radiological warning alerts that popped up on hir hud. Just staying here was probably going to be deadly for those hidden down in the few buildings that remained of the former city, let alone the mechs that their enemy had sent across to hunt them down.
Two more worn defender mechs snuck out of a side deployment hangar and worked on flanking the intruders. The main group were keeping the attackers distracted, it seemed. They still had good coordination for this late in the war, at least, Eke thought. In the meantime, the wolf was monitoring and decrypting the local radio traffic, though the ship's systems were still working on translating it. Tone analysis confirmed that the defenders were much more panicked, and traffic between the attackers was extremely quiet, and minimal. Professionals, if nothing else.
The clouds moved, and sie felt the line shift and drop as the ship moved up higher to keep within cloud cover, and hir below it. Exposing the ship would be detrimental to their mission, so it stayed tucked away while sie watched, secured to the stickrope hanging down now about fifty meters below the ship. The ship was feeding hir what it could see with nEDAR%% (non-emitting detection and ranging)%%, but the heavy radiation in the air was causing interference. Besides, Ekeirsei had wanted see it for hirself.
Another couple minutes and the battle was slowly but surely going poorly for the defenders. Sie had been watching combat encounters for weeks now, and while they had never gone super well for the defenders, one of the new attackers sie hadn't seen before was outperforming all of the other encounters sie had seen by far. It wasn't until one of the attacker's units was downed and three of the defenders were beelining it for this newer mech did Eke get to see something new.
First, a white glow from the radiator fins behind the back of the mech. Power and heat graphs showed a sharp spike. Then, a loud piercing screech, intense even from a little over half a klick up. Hir internal systems damped out the noise. Then, the line on the graph suddenly spiked, and
< < < M / AM REACTION DETECTED > > >
Hir nE overlay traced the line before sie could see the damage with hir eyes, but a lance of cursed light in the form of packed antimatter caressed one of the defender mechs, boiling its metal plating and cutting a clean shear through where it entered and left, curving up and to the left. The beam toned down with a glitter in the distance, and the once-operating defender mech fell flat forward, curved inwards as the heat shrunk its frame to the gaping hole in its side.
In response, the other two defender units rushed the first. Expectedly, the trickle of white caught hir eye as the reactor spun up again. Just as the charge was reaching its zenith, but before sie could hear the screeching in the air, the ship alerted at hir.
< < < FUTURE PREDICTIVES : 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 || M / AM REGISTRATION > > >
Eke was confused for a moment by this alert - "future predictives"? Of course they were spooling up for another antimatter shot, why was that.. but before sie could finish hir line of thought, the tension in hir line to the ship buckled, and sie could feel it dropping suddenly. Looking up, the sleek space-black shell of hir ship had dropped down below the clouds, blowing their cover. "What the fuck? You're not supposed to move!" sie spat out before that bright line appeared in hir vision again, as, it dawned on hir, sie was still looking up at the ship.
If it hadn't moved on its own, giant hole in the cloud left behind by the antimatter shot having aimed through another defender mech and then errantly up towards the sky would have obliterated hir, not to say what might have happened to the ship itself. The wolf grasped the line tighter while the ship attempted to correct its swaying, adjusting the tension of the inner wires to stabilize it and keep hir from being thrown back off. "Okay, okay, ship, bring me back up-"
Sie started to demand to come back up just before sie saw the second new thing sie would rather have not learned about of the day: hir unarmed ship, winglets flared out, holding the zspace drives out away from the body. Both of which had a shimmering of intense blackbody radiation growing from within - a pit would have sunk in hir stomach if it weren't artificial.
Eke got hirself turned around enough to look back down at the battlefield, which appeared to not have noticed anything up above yet, but the ship was pointing itself down at them... and all the wolf saw was a brief flash, practically three frames of high speed capture. Black, then white, then black. No, not black.. sie saw two beams a meter thick, converge on the reactor of the attacker mech down on the ground. Targeted from half a kilometer away with micrometer precision, Eke watched as for just a flash, at the speed of light, spacetime was warped out of the way, light bending and curling at the edges, reality itself forced aside to create a railgun effect of vacuum energy that was ejected straight at its target.
The event was over in the blink of an eye. The mech had a clean hole through it, and promptly exploded in a mechanical fire as its entire central reactor core ceased to exist, as did the next several hundred meters of ground and bedrock straight behind it. The other mechs in combat started to back off, but Eke's attention was drawn back upwards.
Sie could see the drives steaming in the air, but worse, the wolf found, was the fact that the ship was getting closer to hir. Eke realized the ship must have inverted modes on the GT drive, pushing gravity outwards instead of holding it in to move. Hir line became slack, and as the ship lost its ability to hold itself up under the weight of the planet's gravity, both sie and it were plummeting straight down towards the ground.
As a last ditch effort sie grasped and tensed hirself to the line, pushing as hard as sie could and activating hir own µGT, flung hirself away from the ship. It fell to the earth like a rock, and sie threw hir internal systems into overdrive to apply as much energy as sie could into slowing down hir own descent. Frames like hirs could just barely negate their own weight under gravity at full power, and sie was quickly reaching terminal velocity...