So, TLDR version; not dead, just painfully slow coming.
This chapter is complete, but REALLY is part 1/2 because it leads directly into the next one. Hopefully it will be available before Christmas if we have a bit of luck...
Chapter 16: The Battle of New Avalon. Part 2Even as the explosion from the Kamikaze LAMs slowly dissipated, the Combine formation was moving. The lances in the screening force that had been bird-dogging the defenders took full advantage of the cessation of defensive fire to stop their evasive maneuvering and charge for the breach. Several lances equipped with jump jets went first, simply leaping over the wall and pouring firepower into the beleaguered defenders nearest the wrecked gate. A half dozen blue transponders ringed with yellow or red on my board turned black as the Combine Mechs ruthlessly picked off cripples to clear the gate breach, a move the pragmatic soldier in me honestly couldn’t find fault in ... even as fury spiked as people I knew and even dared to call friends
were gunned down without mercy.Several of those DCMS Mechs were in turn all but flayed open in mid-air by Team Banzai Mechwarriors still on their feet. A bit over half of their Battalion had been outside the blast zone and they were already
regrouping to concentrate towards the new threat and cover their damaged lancemates as they brought fire and fury to bear on the Combines Forlorn Hope.But it was taking time.Too much
time in fact as the rest of the Combine vanguard now dared the flaming wreckage, pushing through the breach fearlessly - a Cicada
even tripping over in the rush to get through. The remaining jumpers took the opportunity to return to the sky, bypassing Team Banzai to start tangling with the reserve cadet line that was trying to move up, throwing them
into chaos, a confused brawl rapidly unfolding as one side attempted to hold the door open and the other tried to slam it shut. The defenders had the numbers and tonnage advantage, but the Combine Mechwarriors were both fanatics and didn’t need to actually win
. All they needed to do was tie up the defenders - even at the cost of their own lives, because a lot more DCMS Mechs were inbound. And rolling in hot to see what could be done about all of this…*
***
*****
***
*
“Ten and eleven, over the wall and wait for the call. Twelve, stick to my lance - Nine, come over and take over second lance. We’re advancing to phase line India” Hanse shot rapid orders and just like that, my lance ceased to exist as I shifted to form up with the
Battlemasters, Jackson Davion’s
Archer pounded its way East to take charge of the
Centurians on our right and both Jonny and Jimmy's
Enforcers looped away from us to do … whatever it was Hanse wanted them to do I suppose, as they leaped over the wall. Leaving me alone on the left flank.
“Twelve little Battlemechs, head to war again” I muttered to myself as our formation shifted around. “Two ran off
that way and then there were ten…”
I blinked as I realized what I just muttered and resisted the urge to facepalm only because it would force me to give up my death grip on my two control sticks.
Great, now I’m rhyming like a Jade Falcon most famous for a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds...
keep away from those damn negative waves John!Hanse Davions voice remaining calm and cool however drove such thoughts back, keeping me assured he had a Cunning Plan to deal with the unfolding chaos - although if he
did, there was little time to put it into play. Kuritas main formation seemed to already be collapsing in on itself from their original battle lines drawn up facing the wall, the better to start ‘squirting’ lances through the gap I suppose. And as they pulled in together, they made themselves an increasingly hard target to try and take on with a handful of Battlemechs.
If, on the other hand, the damn planet
had more than one lousy battalion
of field guns to go around that we could focus onto this ****** choke point...I allowed myself
exactly two seconds (as we smashed our way through a line of perfectly inoffensive pine trees) to indulge my frustration before suppressing it, knowing we had to win this battle with the tools we had.
Including the terrain, it would seem as I started to guess at what Hanse was planning.
NAIS was split, by terrain, into the North and South (colloquially called ‘uptown’ and ‘downtown’) zones by a mild elevation difference from a granite ridge the bisected the campus. It had apparently been pure murder to dig into, but the location had been chosen specifically because the ground provided exceptionaly good armour for super-secret-underground-labs, being highly resistant to even strategic ground-burst nukes. That ridge extended well outside the facility more prominently thanks to geo-engineering, expressed here as ‘Phase Line India’. A rocky embankment with a very wide access road running straight into a secondary access gate into NAIS.
If nothing else, the embankment would provide something akin to a Battlemech sized trench for us to fight from. So with more haste than I felt comfortable with -it was stepper than it looked and chicken walkers were
not the best for hills- we hit the ten meter incline and clambered up to the top-
“Incoming!”A series of distinct beeps sounded in my ear as my toso cleared the rise, overlapping the urgent call from Knight Eight. That sound had amused me greatly when I first heard them in training, because it was pretty much identical to the ‘incoming missile’ alarm that went off in Mechwarrior IV.
It wasn’t amusing now, hearing a
dozen overlapping each other in rapid succession before I muted them with a flick of my pinkie. Enemy Battlemechs materalized onto my HUD as they stepped out from behind trees and other cover ahead of us like ****** CREEEED! was in charge over there - and I swallowed heavily as they started to be named as big boys, serious platforms with considerable firepower.
Clearly, Kurita had either seen us coming, or, had anticipated someone might be coming and wanted to protect his flank.
Beyond the closest hostiles, I could actually see the massed thermal blobs of the Combine Battlemechs consolidating towards the breach in the NAIS perimeter wall. And from this position, we were ideally placed to start showering said blob with massed volleys of LRMs as while we were still outside effective LRM range against point targets, we were
well within LRM strike range if you wanted to just lob masses of missiles at a grid square. Like the one the enemy regiment was crowding into...
Unfortunately, the same rules applied for the enemy LRM units and there were a ****** of missiles in the air heading right for our position - although thankfully only from the closest units, not from the mass behind who seemed to be busily firing over the NAIS wall. Nethertheless our options for dealing with the incoming barrage were limited. Either we charged forward and ducked under them before they got here (which would force us to abandon the only cover we had, surrender our range advantage
and risked more Combine Mechs breaking from the main body to pile in),
or, we dropped back down the slope to take cover in our wannabe trenchline to engage these units. Which would neatly keep us from interfering while the DCMS charged into the NAIS. Which was also a win for the bad guys.
Either choice seemed poor, but as the only
other option would seem to be staying put and soaking up a shower of LRMs-
“Stand fast!” Hanse Davion boomed and my training kicked in automatically as I halted and squatted my Mech into place, my upper torso just visible behind the rise.
Then I realized what I had done (damn you Pavlov).
Committed thus, I could only watch the incoming fire with increasingly clenched teeth as hundreds of bright dots on my thermal scope hung briefly motionless in the pre-dawn sky; an illusion I knew meant they were heading
straight for us - and me!
And just to top it off, a new buzzing from my sensor board showed a second group of hostile contacts breaking off from the big happy family, reinforcing the others to make it … 16-10 odds. Great.
I cut my angst off as the missiles tipped and
dove at us as their rockets burned out, locking my legs and switching my lower actuators to automatic compensation as I braced for impact, taking a somewhat useless deep breath-
Then the sky …
Well,
it blew up.The LRM barrage and the
eternal hatred Kallon Industries held for anything that moved through the air came together in an explosion of fire and my jaw dropped as the LRM barrage was all but shredded before my eyes. Belatedly, I realized that the defensive turrets in the Northern quadrant of NAIS were still very much intact and, against unguided ballistic LRMs...
Always remember I reminded myself firmly as the smoke cleared and my displays reset to show the incoming Combine Battlemechs hesitating and slowing to regroup at the casually contemptuous no-sell of their massive LRM barrage;
if the tactics look crazy under this
CO, they probably are
crazy.Crazy as a Fox.
“First Lance, lock my target - second lance, overwatch. Smith, with us” Hanse ordered crisply, his
Battlemaster stepping up off the slope to get clear lines of sight as I unlocked my legs to pop up from my squatting position - chicken walkers rocked, yo!- swinging my crosshairs onto the designated target. I pauses as my fire control system confirmed the target was in ERPPC range and chewed down its firing solution before flashing gold-
“Shoot!”Given the lack of evasive bobbing and weaving I would have expected from a veteran Mechwarrior, I suspected the one in this
Awesome was either a complete idiot (highly unlikely in
this unit),
or, more likely, he was unaware that we were playing L2 while he was stuck with intro-tech.
If so, the cat probably got irrecovably out of the bag when nine PPC blasts from at least a third again past maximum even remotely effective PPC range reached out to rather casually
****** him up.
Nine, because my left PPC just
barely missed as I misjudged the way the
Awesome was rolling in its stride,
damnit! Not that it actually mattered much in the end…
For all it’s (well deserved) reputation as a zombie that just kept on going no matter
what you did to it, the
Awesome had never been designed to stand up to
that many simultaneous particle beams. Only the fact that the beams were spread out along its torso probably saved it from simply dying then and there really. As it was, the war machine staggered to a halt in a cloud of vaporized metal and dropped to a knee, steaming coolant pouring from breached heat sinks like blood pouring from mortal wounds.
One of the most feared Battlemechs in 3025 …
crippled in a single salvo.
God I felt like such a Clanner right now. Two Stars of us - a Binary!- shooting the crap out of Inner Sphere Mechs with impunity from long range…I was sure Hanse had been hoping to nail the company commander with that salvo - but if we did I didn’t see any impact on the enemy response as they charged forward, clearly determined to stop us just parking under the anti-missile cover and raking them with extended-range weapons for as long as our heat sinks held out. The pair of
Dragons and the
Lancelot that had been pacing the
Awesome moved together, breaking to gain space for maneuvering but staying close enough to each other for mutual support as they charged. Following them in, the other Mechs on that flank were spreading out to split our firepower while on my side of the battlefield the rest of the force was rushing ‘along the wall’ in two lances and so I focused on them.
My sensors marked the slower designs in the rear as a pair each of
Thunderbolts and
Crusaders while the vanguard was a lighter lance made of a
Trebuchet, Kintaro, a
Dervish and a
Griffin. All LRM toting designs temporarily stymied of their primary weapon by the defensive firepower covering us. But I knew once they were close enough, they’d switch to direct trajectory shots that the distant AAA turrets wouldn’t be able to engage...and they carried a LOT of ****** missiles-
“First lance, engage at will. Jackson, nail the Dragons!” Hanse issued new orders sharply and fire erupted from our line as dozens upon dozens of rockets launched from Jackson’s unit, the purple whips of particle beams lancing out of Hanse and his group at the same time, scattering explosions downrange.
And with no specific orders - and personally considering it unwise to let the eight Battlemechs running down the wall charge in without taking
any fire- I directed my attention (and ERPPCs) at the
Griffin that had accelerated ahead of all the other Mechs in the best overconfident Banzai Charge traditions, fired-
And … I missed.
Okay, either this ****** was some kind of newtype Anime physics
bullshit Mechwarrior or he was lucky as ******. Because even as I pulled the trigger, the
Griffin sidestepped
- while spinning his torso - to let the blasts just sail right past him by mere meters.
Hax! I call SUPERHAX!Then, without missing a step, the enemy Mech spun its torso back and-
My Mech jolted, restraints digging into my shoulders as an electrical discharge
crackled along my cockpit window, several of my secondary sensor feeds cutting out for a few seconds as their systems automatically reset from the electrical overload.
Okay … I had just come within a matter of
meters of taking a headshot.
Probably only the fact that the shot was at extreme range meant he had ‘missed’ the head
and the beam did much less damage than expected...
This
did
not feel like a game anymore.
Ah; so there’s
the balls-clenching terror of impending mortality that had been missing from my life until now-“Last salvos and back it up!” Hanse ordered briskly, snapping me out of my brief freeze as he discharged his own PPCs one last time, slagging the knee joint of the
Lancelot despite its best attempts to evade, causing it to crash spectacularly to the ground as it lost access to bipedal locomotion while at TSM enhanced high speeds. The
Centurians on his flank were also smoothly disengaging under modest long-range fire as they fired off a last missile salvo, Jackson dropping back with them onto the slope as he sprayed LRMs downrange - paced by the four
Battlemasters - as I forced my attention back to the
Griffin ahead of me. I was sure I could get one last shot in as my PPCs cycled to ready and I aimed, fired -
The DCMS Mechwarrior evaded the beam once more with his bullshit Jedi-level precognition, but
this time I had accounted for that and he ran smack into the
second beam as I staggered my fire a half second apart. I had
hoped for a torso shot, but to my surprise (and glee) the beam nailed the front-face of the bazooka-like LRM launcher on the Mechs shoulder. Hopefully, it slagged the launch tubes enough to foul them and put the weapon out of service.
It was a complete fluke of course, but I’d take it as I kicked into reverse, gripping my joysticks tightly as the sickening feeling of a Mech in freefall hit me, if only for a split second before I
slammed into the slope and skidded down to the ground, my seat vibrating like mad from the rapid oscillations of the gyro as I leaned forward, my torso scraping the rock as I sort of slid down it. Even the advanced Star-League gear and high-fidelity neurohelmet link was
barely able to keep me upright as loud warning sirens ripped into my eardrums.
An idiotic move? Perhaps. Reckless? Certainly.
But, I felt vindicated in my choices as a salvo of autocannon and PPC fire ripped through where my head had
just been a second ago.
Steadying on my feet, I spun around as fast as I dared and slammed my throttle forward, hurrying to reform with the rest of the Company who were already in motion, carefully pointing our backs to the enemy as Hanse ordered us to sprint on course 000, best speed ... away from the only useful cover in the area.
Saying it like that makes it sound like a bad
idea I thought dryly as I brought my Mech up to its maximum stable offroad speed, leaving the hard ferrocrete behind as we smashed back through the treeline in a way that would probably earn us the eternal hatred of the NAIS School of Botany as I slowly closed the small gap with the others. And as we thundered through the dark, I tried to grasp my way through Hanse Davions plan. Conventional logic says we
should have stayed at the phase line and slugged it out; it was the only useful cover in range and even if the enemy were closing, we had tonnage and heat sinks to trade that fire - and plenty of close range fire too - especially if we could get under the minimal LRM range inside which the missiles couldn’t really track at. Instead, we were being pushed away from the main enemy force - and being pushed away onto the open field where the LRM boats chasing us would have a field day - bad pun intended. Glancing around my tactical boards I tried to see if there were friendlies nearby but the only friendlies on the scope out here were Gold Company’s assault tanks, who were already a long way off trundling west under orders to go and provide some hefty firepower in the battle still raging through the light industrial parks of downtown Avalon City.
Thus, as best as I could tell we were going to be caught dead to rights, in the open, by a large number of Missile Boats-
“Alright, that’s enough. Knights; come about, speed sixty, engage on my command. And Twelve, get back in line!” Hanse snapped out a rapid fire series of orders and I almost fell over as I cut my throttle back harshly (while the nine other Mechs ahead flawlessly slowed and spun on their left foot in perfect, parade unison).
I killed the somewhat petulant urge to bite back at my CO and Liege that I
wasn’t a frigen elite Mechwarrior able to make my Mech tapdance like him through. Even beside the gross unprofessionalism inherent in doing so, I knew this was
not the time to jostle Hanse Davions elbow.
So I swung my Battlemech around as best I could (amusingly my tardiness worked out well as I fell into formation entirely correctly as a result) then I swallowed hard as I saw what we were heading into. The enemy vanguard - eight Mechs total - were just about to hit Phase Line India. We’d be about 500 meters out, without any effective cover then. They could rain LRMs on us from the high ground, out of line of sight, with the lighter units popping up and down to spit for them.
Hanse Davion had, in effect, given the Combine a ‘free hit’ against us. That made no sense at all and, bizarrely,
that thought gave me hope. Because if Hanse Davion was doing something that looked to my eyes to be
incredibly stupid, it meant he probably had a reaso-
And in an impressive blast of noise and light, my hope was proven well placed.
Rocket packs were one of those ‘duh!’ things I had fast forwarded the reintroduction to. Incredibly simple really - especially as the New Dallas core in fact had a number of technical schematics for such weapons. It had been the work of merely weeks for NAIS to update the designs for the modern era, using infantry one-shot LAW rockets as the base and with that, a new weapon had been born that seemed to be of dubious value at face value.
I mean, rocket launcher pods were, in almost every way, inferior to LRM launchers. The rockets were unguided fin-stabilized projectiles with far less effective range compared to an LRM - let alone an LRMs
absolute range against static targets - and each ‘pod’ was a one-shot weapon.
With all that said, there was one attribute which, in their own niche, made up for these shortcomings in spades.
They were
ridiculously light and compact compared to almost
every other weapon out there against the raw
damage they could do.
Seriously, the 10-tube Mech and Vehicle mounted units that had been rushed into select Operational Test and Evaluation units weighed just under half a ton for the launcher and its ammo and was incredibly compact. You might only get one shot of it compared to a reloadable weapon ... but who said you only had to mount
one?Case in point; NAIS had taken a couple of
Phantom jet fighters (locally produced knockoffs of the classic
‘Defender’ jet fighter) and played with the designs in an Advanced Refit Lab - the dark place where mad scientists gave way to obsessive engineers and just downright insane test pilots. And after a couple of false starts, an entirely new paradigm had taken shape, with six squadrons of jets from the Crucis March Milita rebuilt over the last few months to give Hanse a new card to play. Each fighter, instead of a couple of LRM and SRM tubes, now carried six, 10-cell rocket packs internally -
plus up to another four on wing-mounted hard points that could be dumped after firing.
A
hundred rockets at full war load - rockets that could be fired a pod at a time …
or, could be flushed in
one salvo that would have made Maximillian Jenius toss off a salute in appreciation.
And in their combat debut, they choose the latter option as two flights ripped over our enemies at just over Mach-1 and unleashed everything they had.
I doubted that much damage was done to the units facing us. Four fighters making a pass spraying rockets at everything didn’t drop any Mechs, but it did a
spectacularly good job of throwing the enemy into confusion and distraction as hundreds upon hundreds of rockets rained down around and on them like an explosive hailstorm. So much so that by the time the Snakes had started to sort themselves out and looked to reacquire, they found us already crossing under minimum effective LRM range right at their feet-
“Shoot!” Hanse snapped and following word with deed he
obliterated his chosen target; one of the two
Dragons. It had already taken considerable damage from both earlier sniping and the rockets scattering across it. And even at full strength a
Dragon frankly had no damn business taking an Alpha Strike from a Lostech Royal Assault Mech. Between blinks, the machines torso was transformed into something that charitably could be called ‘abstract artwork’ before it crashed to the ground, brewing up quite nicely as unfired munitions cooked off.
The other three
Battlemasters followed their Lieges lead with considerable enthusiasm; carving up first a poor
Blackjack belatedly looking for more aerial threats instead of what was in front of it, then a second
Dragon which had its hips and upper torso separated from each other and finally, a Kilo variant
Wolverine. To its credit, the Mechwarrior in the
Wolverine managed a defiant snapshot with his large laser that lashed across Hanse Davions torso… a split second before it's cockpit became a crematorium as the PPCs and lasers converged with lethal accuracy.
Then came the price that had to be paid for pressing the Alpha Strike button as all four
Battlemasters slewed to a halt; glowing white on my thermal display from the waste heat saturating their cooling circuits radiators. The cockpits had to be
saunas right now, but I was sure Hanse and his people were well used to it - and probably happy enough with the results as four hostile contact indicators vanished from my TACMAP.
Even so, I held my fire as I came to a halt on their flank as the temporary fifth member of their lance, watching for any threat trying to take advantage of their temporary incapacity as weapons fire erupted everywhere else in every direction.
Jackson Davion might not have had the sheer power of the Assault Mechs to work with, but that didn’t seem to phase the veteran battalion commander. All five of his Mechs opened by focusing their direct firepower onto the
Phoenix Hawk anchoring the Combines flank
. A 1K model according to my warbook, the added protection over a stock version didn’t seem to help as withering laser and autocannon fire flayed its torso open and cracked the reactor - but perhaps it let it stay upright just long enough to unleash a vengeful Alpha strike of it own that amputated one of the
Centurions legs at the knee.
Even as both Mechs fell Jackson’s Lance shifted fire, sending LRMs in shallow arcs over the ridge to smash into the front of the
Trebuchet. Just barely outside minimum LRM tracking range, the lighter missile boat took a hell of a battering but somehow held its ground and returned fire, joined by the
Dervish. The return salvo looked quite pathetic in comparison ... but moments later they were joined by far more
LRMs that slashed down over the DCMS Mechs to splash on and around the AFFS Mechs in reply.
Clearly the lead mechs were spotting for their big brothers further back … and happily, both the spotters
were ignoring me down here.
So much the better I mentally shrugged, starting to bring my gun-arms up - at which point the
reason they were ignoring me became quite clear as a PPC blast ripped into my left arm and my good friend, the
Griffin, materialized out of the smoke of the missiles crisscrossing the sky, arcing gently towards me off the ridge in a blaze of jump jets.
Conclusion; in about three seconds, those two very solid looking feet would be firmly planting themselves on my ribcage-
I didn’t remember
deliberately swinging my arms and flipping the lower arms up so I was holding both of them up in front of my cockpit (a move that had been hammered into me by Morgan over the last couple of months). But, I suppose that was exactly
why he had taken the time to force me to repeat the move again and again until I could do it in my sleep. Because my arms
were suddenly
up without me having to think as I braced my feet-
BANG!My seventy-five ton Battlemech took the attempted DFA directly to both arms, driving them back into my torso (and just
barely missing smashing into my cockpit). My Gyro promptly did its ‘I give up’ alarm that sounded suspiciously like the original NES ‘Mario died!’ chirp and all I could do was hold on for dear life as my Battlemech spun to the ground with an almighty
CRASH!, my head bouncing off the side of my ejection seat.
...
Ouch.I think I might have actually been out of it for at least four of five seconds because the cacophony of the crash suddenly ended between blinks as I shook my head to try and push through the sharp pain. The world seemed to spin wildly at ninety degrees, making me think I might have a concussion despite the padded neurohelmet … until I realized the Mech was on its side and I was strapped in, now lying parallel to the ground.
Funny thing; as a
much younger kid I fondly recalled the Virtual-World pods, for those few glorious years they had been around in Sydney. And how I and my friends were all of the unanimous agreement how much
cooler they would be if they were mounted on something that would spin and move them around, letting you feel the Mech stomp and get knocked over and so on.
With some new perspective on that matter, I was confident in saying kid-Smith
was full of shit.Pushing past the disorientation, I sought out the diagnostic board and felt some relief that there was no critical or major damage indicators, just more yellow spots on my armor board. The lower-arm components of the
Marauder line were heavily reinforced - hence my using them to shield myself - and it looked like they and their guns were intact. Say what you will about the Star League (and I tended to say a
lot even when I shouldn’t) but bloody hell their best toys were built to crazy levels of engineering excellence - something I was admittedly thankful for right now.
“Twelve is okay - I’m getting up” I called out over over lance channel in case someone was worried about me.
I hoped the lack of any answer was just because Hanse and Jackson were busy and confident I could get off the ground and not because they were
dead or something, but that was 20-seconds-in-the-future Smiths problem.
Focusing instead on
my situation, I carefully pushed on my Battlemechs right arm, applying steadily increasing pressure like I had been trained, forcing myself to do it right. A creaking and groaning chorus reverberated around me as weight shifted (and a worrying clang suggested
something had fallen off) before my Mech moved, rolling forward with a bit of a crash onto my front. Focusing, I pulled my legs into a crouch, flexed the ankle joints, then pushed back ‘briskly but not forcefully’ with my arms as my instructors had taught me.
My Mech hesitated as it tilted back … and then all of the sudden it rolled onto its feet, moving fast enough that I had to ‘lean’ forward at the torso to stop from crashing onto my back. Arms on the ground, I suddenly looked like a giant turtle that had pulled itself into its shell.
And as blood started flowing around my body in the
correct way relative to gravity, everything felt much, much better.
Stable, I slapped the big yellow button to my right and with a
clunk followed by a low screaming, the Battlemechs gyro unlocked and started its spin-up cycle - without any grinding or alarms going off, to my great relief. Veteran Mechwarriors may be skilled enough to spin up the Gyro
and stand in a single smooth motion, but I knew my limits - and that here and now was
not a good time to push them-
“Smith, on your Seven!” Hanse Davions voice sharply cut into my thoughts and I immediately cursed 20-seconds-in-the-past Smiths decision to take it slow, bringing my holographic HUD back online which showed me…
On the plus side, the
Griffin looked like it had landed brutally
. Unsurprising that; a ‘failed’ DFA attack tended to end up badly for the Mechwarrior attempting it - as my trainers back on Sark had needed to beat into the heads of some of the more ‘yahoo’ cadets after simulations.
This cocky bastards flying kick deal had ended worse, seemingly deflecting off me to smash into the ferrocrete face first with a
lot more momentum to deal with.
Yet even as I watched in growing alarm, the thing was just now getting back to its feet, like some kind of ****** final video game boss you thought you had killed that came back twice as pissed…
Heh. Peter ‘Griffin’ verses the Giant ‘Chicken’ - Walker. That was hilarious-
Then it actually struck me, for reals, that I was actually in
genuine mortal ****** danger, with a fanatic Kuritan was in my rear arc.
“Shit”.
