Crusader
September 9th, 2002, 08:31 AM
-= Part 1 =-
Anderson leaned on the window frame, watching the rain drops plunk down in the puddle that had accumulated below. It was the third day of uninterrupted pouring rain and he had drawn the short straw for observation post duty. Just his luck.
Reaching inside the cockpit, he picked up a chocolate bar from his ration pack, it wasn’t like the real thing but it was the closest you could get on the front lines. This had to be the most boring sector to patrol on the entire planet. There hadn’t been a single contact in the last six months.
Oh well, maybe he shouldn’t complain. Having a break from the messy battle fields was a good think. Anderson took another sip from his thermal flask and bit into chocolate bar. The whaling of the proximity scanner warning caught him totally off guard and he spilt the industrial coffee all over his battle suit.
'Shit! What the hell now?!' Sliding into the command chair, he checked the scanners.
'What the...' Hundreds of blips showed on his screen, less then a K away. Zerglings! Those tunneling vermin got in everywhere.
'OP-1 to Outpost Command! I have multiple contacts all over sector 13!'
'Confirm, multiple bogeys in 13?'
'That’s what I said! Get some Wraiths and marine squads here ASAP! I’m falling back to grid 31!'
Anderson flipped the combat walkers standby switches and brought it out of ‘silent’ mode. Slamming onto the motion controls, he swung the Goliath around and opened the throttle, rotating the torso to face backwards. Systems were coming on-line and the twin anti-armor 20mm auto-cannons started warming up, feeding ammunition belts into the breech chambers.
Activating the autopilot to follow the set waypoints, Anders brought up the targeting system and swore under his breath. The hill side seemed to writhe as the masses of aliens appeared to ooze over the terrain in a churning wave.
His targeting systems were useless with so many possible targets so he shut it down and took hold of the trigger grips, hearing the multiple barrels whine as they started spinning. He let loose a hail of canon projectiles, spraying the front lines of the encroaching mass while de-activating the auto-tracking on the Hellfire missiles to fire them unguided into the swarms.
Time went by in slow motion and the distance to the next waypoint seemed to grow further. Sweet was running down Andersons face and the cockpit was starting to heat up. A quick scan to the side told him that his cannons were quickly starting to over heat, soon he would be defenseless.
One K from the outpost lines, his number two cannon cracked its casing when it overheated and he ejected the remaining ammunition to prevent it from igniting. Friendly air contacts showed on the fringes of the scanners but they were still a few minutes out.
Nine hundred meters away, the second ran out of cannon rounds. This was it, overriding the control protocols and safe guards, Anderson released the weapons pod attachment clamps. Both cannon mountings along with the missile launched fell to the ground, lightening the Goliath considerably.
At eight hundred meters, the separation between him and the monstrous creatures grew smaller by the second. Their was no way that he could outrun them, it was all a matter of time if no re-enforcements arrived soon. His scanner showed a wall of red right behind his own blue dot.
tbc...
Anderson leaned on the window frame, watching the rain drops plunk down in the puddle that had accumulated below. It was the third day of uninterrupted pouring rain and he had drawn the short straw for observation post duty. Just his luck.
Reaching inside the cockpit, he picked up a chocolate bar from his ration pack, it wasn’t like the real thing but it was the closest you could get on the front lines. This had to be the most boring sector to patrol on the entire planet. There hadn’t been a single contact in the last six months.
Oh well, maybe he shouldn’t complain. Having a break from the messy battle fields was a good think. Anderson took another sip from his thermal flask and bit into chocolate bar. The whaling of the proximity scanner warning caught him totally off guard and he spilt the industrial coffee all over his battle suit.
'Shit! What the hell now?!' Sliding into the command chair, he checked the scanners.
'What the...' Hundreds of blips showed on his screen, less then a K away. Zerglings! Those tunneling vermin got in everywhere.
'OP-1 to Outpost Command! I have multiple contacts all over sector 13!'
'Confirm, multiple bogeys in 13?'
'That’s what I said! Get some Wraiths and marine squads here ASAP! I’m falling back to grid 31!'
Anderson flipped the combat walkers standby switches and brought it out of ‘silent’ mode. Slamming onto the motion controls, he swung the Goliath around and opened the throttle, rotating the torso to face backwards. Systems were coming on-line and the twin anti-armor 20mm auto-cannons started warming up, feeding ammunition belts into the breech chambers.
Activating the autopilot to follow the set waypoints, Anders brought up the targeting system and swore under his breath. The hill side seemed to writhe as the masses of aliens appeared to ooze over the terrain in a churning wave.
His targeting systems were useless with so many possible targets so he shut it down and took hold of the trigger grips, hearing the multiple barrels whine as they started spinning. He let loose a hail of canon projectiles, spraying the front lines of the encroaching mass while de-activating the auto-tracking on the Hellfire missiles to fire them unguided into the swarms.
Time went by in slow motion and the distance to the next waypoint seemed to grow further. Sweet was running down Andersons face and the cockpit was starting to heat up. A quick scan to the side told him that his cannons were quickly starting to over heat, soon he would be defenseless.
One K from the outpost lines, his number two cannon cracked its casing when it overheated and he ejected the remaining ammunition to prevent it from igniting. Friendly air contacts showed on the fringes of the scanners but they were still a few minutes out.
Nine hundred meters away, the second ran out of cannon rounds. This was it, overriding the control protocols and safe guards, Anderson released the weapons pod attachment clamps. Both cannon mountings along with the missile launched fell to the ground, lightening the Goliath considerably.
At eight hundred meters, the separation between him and the monstrous creatures grew smaller by the second. Their was no way that he could outrun them, it was all a matter of time if no re-enforcements arrived soon. His scanner showed a wall of red right behind his own blue dot.
tbc...