The Ironstorm had fallen back into a snaking valley sitting between two massive sable mountains. The few prefab buildings that survived the initial drop were set up and more and more damaged soldiers trickled in every day. Alan limped out of the medical wing and into the tight corridors of their sorry excuse for a base. The base was cramped, with low ceilings and dim lights, it was just like home. He made his way to the company garage, while he’d been recovering from his injuries he’d taken up working a few shifts with the engineers, they had more busted rigs than they could handle and every extra scrap of help they could get was appreciated. 

The reinforced door to the garage ground open and Alan stepped into the whirlwind inside. The garage was filled with the cacophonous shriek of a dozen power tools all running at once, the banging of hammers on hot steel and the crackle of welders. The stink of grease and burnt metal filled the air and a pall of smoke and steam clung to the ceiling, too thick for the fans to clear. He found his usual station and got to work cobbling together the leg servo he’d been working on. They were short on parts and half their suits were being cannibalized for spares. The war was a disaster, every operation they’d run had failed, and they’d been pushed back again and again, despite inflicting heavy losses on the enemy they were getting ready for a last stand. 

His train of thought was broken by the heavy stomp of power armour coming up behind him. Turning he saw Mike’s friendly face looking down on him from inside a helmetless suit of bright yellow engineering armour. “You got your bets placed on the last dust up here or what?” 

Alan raised a questioning eyebrow. “Bets? No, I’m not a gambler.”

“Smart way to make some extra cash, I got a great big ol’ lump of cash on the Hammers to win.” 

“You’re kidding right?” 

“Serious as a heart attack. We’re not going to win ‘ere.” 

“Battle’s not over yet Mike. The Hammer’s still have to push us out of this valley.” 

“It might as well be over though, look at us” He spread his arms and gestured around the room. “There’s no hope left here. Might as well cash in while we can, it’s just business.” 

“That’s all this is to you? Business! You don’t care about the people we’ve lost? The things that will happen if we lose?” 

“I’m not paid enough to care Lt, be honest we’re all just in this for the cash.”

“Maybe you are but not me. If the Hammer’s win this a block of arcologies on Earth changes hands─”

“And what? Some already rich people get richer? The rich people who owned it before stage another hostile takeover of some other company so they can stay rich? And who fights that takeover? Us. And we get paid, that’s how the world works.” 

“Then maybe it shouldn’t work that way.” 

“Still haven’t had that idealism beaten out of you, eh? It’s not a healthy thing to keep Lt, I think you should start seeing dollar signs instead of ideals, put your head down, survive, get paid. It’s what the rest of us do. Any way I didn’t come over to argue, I need a hand with a suit.” 

Alan shrugged and followed the sniper to a steel frame holding up a ruined suit of armour. The suit’s leg was mangled beyond repair and it had fresh scrapes on the shin and thigh plating. Mike had clearly been trying to force the leg apart with the engineering armour. Alan knelt, wincing as he bent his stiff, injured leg. The Ironstorm had some top notch medical equipment but he was still suffering from a myriad of aches and pains. The suit’s leg was ruined, but it had a good knee servo, Mike had missed the release switch for the servo, without that engaged any attempt to pry the leg apart would surely wreck the delicate motor. He flipped the release switch and gave the ruined leg a small grin as the lower half fell to the ground. Carefully removing the servo he stood and laid it on the workbench next to the suit. 

“There,” said Alan. “Need anything else?” 

Mike shook his head and Alan stepped back to his workstation, dragging the severed leg behind him, there were still a few good wires hiding under the plating, and he knew that the engineers needed all the parts they could get their hands on. The daily routine of scrapping armour, and piling the salvageable parts was broken by the long dronin of a raid siren. The base was being attacked. Alan set down his tools and opened up the battle net on his comm bracelet. There were several squads of infantry and a pair of walkers closing on the base, he’d been trying to keep score on the Hammer’s forces and if his guesses were right this was the last of their army, saly it would be more than enough to finish them off. Official orders for the engineering team were to sit and wait. He’d always hated sitting and waiting. A nest of butterflies hatched in his stomach and after a few minutes of fiddling with the damaged leg he resorted to pacing back and forth. 

“To hell with this,” he said to no one in particular, and walked to a section in the back of the garage that was hidden behind a series of heavy tarps strung from the rafters. Pushing through the tarps he came face to face with the pet project he’d been picking at in his off hours. It was a bastard combination of combat and engineering rigs. It lacked the hunched shoulders and hulking stature of the combat suits, instead having a slimmer profile and an angular helmet with a pointed beak. The suit was painted construction yellow and was equipped with an equally odd mix of weapons, the right arm carried a pair of machine guns taken from the point defense arrays on combat walkers, the left arm had a double barrel grenade tube, a third tube sat on the right shoulder, and a single shot laser sat atop the left shoulder. What the armour lacked in defense in more than made up for in offense. Alan pulled his under suit out of a locker next to the armour and pulled on the ballistic plates as fast as he could, leaving the helmet behind. The engineering armour was never meant to see combat and it lacked the double seals possessed by the bigger rigs, if the suits head got damaged he’d be left sucking down lungfuls of poison air and radiation. 

Step one in the plan was “don’t get shot in the face.” With the armour sealed around him he moved on to step two and ran into the garage airlock before anyone could stop him, sealed off the garage and ran as fast as his stiff legs could carry him. That wasn’t fast enough for the suit and an automated medical protocol dosed him with a cocktail of mild painkillers and stimulants. He winced as the automated needles pricked his flesh but picked up his pace all the same. There would be hell to pay later, but that didn’t matter now, he needed to move, regardless of his injuries. 

The courtyard outside the garage was chaos. Armoured men and women ran helter skelter, coming to defensive positions in ones and twos. It simply wouldn’t do for a defensive strategy. Alan opened a comm channel and a holo map of the base, the base was protected by a high wall, topped with automated turrets, a pair of small bunkers sat inside the wall facing the gate and a lone tower stood clinging to the cliffside. It was no fortress but it was a start.The first order of business was double checking what he ad to work with, the sensor returns from the armour around him listed four snipers, five support gunners and two close combat suits. 

“Everyone listen up!” he shouted. “We’re going to get hit hard, I need anyone with sniper cannons in that tower, support gunners on the wall and CC units in those bunkers!” He gave a satisfied nod as the troops rushed to their assigned positions. 

A new voice cut into the comm net. “Sir, we have five guys in engineering armour ready to go, orders?” That was Rhodes, the platoon’s chief engineer. 

“Word from command is to sit tight Rhodes, those guys are no good in a shooting war.” 

“With all due respect sir, that’s bullshit. Where do you need us?” 

Why is it that anytime someone said with all due respect what they really meant was screw you? “Okay, Rhodes, we need these turrets loaded, program combat walkers as priority targets and then set up a barricade behind these bunkers, we might need a fallback position.” 

Rhodes didn’t reply but a few moment later engineers streamed out the airlock bearing heavy ammunition crates and whatever junk from the shop that could be piled into a low wall. 

Thunder rolled from the sniper tower. Men shouted out targets. Alan drove up the stairs leading to the ramparts. To keep logistics simple the engineering armour used the same motors as the combat rigs, but it weighed half as much, it was fast, faster than any other suit on the field at the moment. Slewing to a stop he crouched behind the crenels atop the wall and fired his first shot from the shoulder mounted grenade tube sending a small sensor drone screaming into the air where it deployed a set of rotors and hovered over the field. Small red triangles blinked into life across is heads up display, floating over the heads of the enemy soldiers. Taking control of the drone he flew it closer to the column of enemy mechs and ordered it to keep a targeting beam painted on the lead walker. The Hammer’s weren’t kidding around, the walkers were armed with heavy EM lasers, weapons that would fry power armour in a single shot. 

“Lead walker: priority one.” he said. The four turrets spaced across the wall came to life one by one, adding their rumbling report to the thunder crash from the snipers, the rest of the weapons were out of range. The Hammer’s picked up speed, sprinting towards the base in staggered zig zag patterns. A lance of man made lightning split the air, arcing from the guns on the combat mechs and crashing into the sniper tower. Arcs of electricity snapped down the skin of the tower, armour ran in molten rivlets, the thunder rolled. “Snipers: Sitrep!”

Mike answered, the electromagnetic interference filling his voice with static. “Tower damaged but we’re still up. No wounded.” 

Alan turned his attention back to the drone, watching the lead walker succumb to the fusilade of cannon fire. He turned the targeting laser to the next walker and repeated the process. The infantry closed into range, peppering the ramparts with explosive shells. The world broke down into a series of series of fragmented images all set to the soundtrack of gunfire and explosions. Armoured goliaths stalked forward, hunched behind shields. Cannons roared, sending strings of explosive shells hammering into the soldiers. Blackened shards of metal flew from the crenels, raining down onto the walls. Another pair of lightning strikes shattered the sky, screaming into the tower and shaking its foundation. The turrets hammered the next walker, pounding it into the ground. The third machine stopped, angling its guns towards the gates. Alan scrambled to bring the drones laser onto the mech, the turrets swung slowly towards the mech, too slowly. The walker spat a quartet of grenades from a set of tubes under its chin, rattling the gates and shaking the walls. 

Alan leaned up over the wall, firing a long burst from his machine guns. The guns screamed, filing the air with a sound less like gunfire and more like canvas ripping. They didn’t have the stopping power of the standard guns but they made up for it in volume. Bullets pounded off armour, shredding outer shells and bouncing through delicate internal systems. One the Hammer’s went down in flames as he ammunition cooked off, his suit vomiting the exploding ammunition out of its bins and into the air. 

“Holy hell, Lt!” Mike shouted. “You finally hit something!” 

Alan ducked behind cover, grinning at his new guns. He took a look at the tower, it was blackened, scarred and threatening to fall over at any minute. “I’m worried about that tower, I need you to pull out and back to the garage.” 

“Aye, aye sir!” 

The snipers pulled back, shuffling one y one out of the tower. The turrets clicked empty, failing to down the last walker. “Everyone down!” Alan shouted. A blinding beam slashed over the walls, burning the turrets to sparking heaps and catching at least one soldier before he could drop. The beam danced over his armour, melting the outer skin and frying the delicate electronics inside, he fell off the wall, landing in a tangled heap, armour destroyed but hopefully still alive. “Everyone back! Off the wall!” There was no hope of standing up against that walker, not without a dedicated anti-tank squad. Alan sat on the wall alone, watching his soldiers take up positions inside the bunkers and barricades. He eyed the tower. “Rhodes? What do you have on hand for explosives?”