Fury of Sekhmet Pt. 1

	It was getting late in the day, and things were going south. Nestled in a humid ravine, three of the four Lancers were huddled around their fourth, performing medical aid. They had been sent on the mission to shut down an insurrectionist cell on Amazon IV,  'Hippolyta,' who were intent on destabilizing the local government in their plans to overthrow the Union and regress to an isolationist society. THe rebels' communications base had been taken over earlier in the mission, but that's where things went south.

	The four pilots were Richard Spielban, Astro Andros, Go-Bogus, and Lucas Laertes.  Lucas and Go-Bogus were sent as the vanguard for the mission, charging towards the comm-dish so that Lucas could take down the enemy with his Blackbeard, a close-quarters mauler machine, and then Go-Bogus could wire her Goblin hacker mech into it directly so she could shut down the rebel's long-range communication capabilities. Richard would provide long-range support in his Sherman, firing off his long-range Heavy Laser to take down any enemy pilots that were coming out from patrol, while Astros performed mid-range support and hacked into the enemies, freezing them in place with paralyzed systems while Richard melted them down from a distance. What Richard wasn't expecting was the Ronin-pattern mech that sneakily emerged from the woods, surprising him and taking out his heavy laser.

	Richard was armed with a charge blade, and was able to do combat in short-range, but wasn't any match for the Ronin. Astro moved in, firing his rifle to take out the enemy, trying to hack in to shut down the Ronin when he was  also ambushed. Astro was caught in an awkward melee fight, armed with the bayonet at the end of his rifle, while Richard had gone down, all but destroyed while the Ronin charged in towards the comm-dish. Lucas was moving up to support Astro, and while he was ready to cut down the Ronin in what he expected to be a duel, the bastard slipped right past him and went straight for the comm-dish and Go-Bogus.  Lucas chased after the first Ronin, while Astro was holding up surprisingly well in his own fight with the second Ronin. The first one managed to catch up to the pilot of the exoskeletal Goblin, who had just finished her invasion on the comm-dish when she turned to be greeted with a jumbo-sized odachi swinging right into her midsection. Her suit absorbed most of the damage, and Lucas had leapt up behind the Ronin to finish it off, but the damage was done. Even as Lucas was running back to help Astro, the pilot of the quadrupedal Minotaur had managed to finish off his own foe, though the damage had been done and his rifle was destroyed, leaving him with just his knife.

	They would have done their repairs and medical aid right away, had the area not been hit by bombardment from the rebel's base a few miles away. The whistling noises of falling mortars signalled that they leave, and leave they did.  Astro had equipped his Minotaur with a MULE Harness, so he was able to carry Richard's Sherman out of the bombing zone, while Lucas carried Go-BOgus and her Goblin frame out in one of his hands, shouldering his massive Nanocarbon Sword while his chain axe had its teeth spinning to, ready to take down either tree or enemy if they got in his way. They had found the crevasse, one of many in this jungle, and moved down to  hide their thermal signatures in the steam of the crevasse. Richard and Lucas got to repairing the Sherman, while Astro started the first aid on Go-BOgus by bringing her into his extra spacial cockpit, using the stasis field inside to keep the wounds from getting any worse.

	After an hour, the Sherman was up to operational minimum, while Go-Bogus was lying unconscious in the palm of the Minotaur. "She's got spinal damage," Astro said, "She'll be able to recover once we get back to base, but she can't pilot for sure until then. Her onboard AI won't be of much help, but it'll be the best that we've got. My cockpit will be able to hold her safely, so we won't have to worry about leaving her here or anywhere else, but we're pretty crippled right now." Astro left the statement hanging for a while, just to leave it open in case anyone wanted to say something along the line of 'her moreso than the rest of us.' He sighed, accepting that his sense of dark humor wasn't always as apparent to others as it was to him, but glad that he had managed to find the sense in not saying it outright. For now.

TBC