“Dominic, no!”

Connor Sinclair mashed down his triggers, probing out at range with his autocannon and large laser. He heard the remembered voice of his academy instructor, “BattleMechs^®, they take a whole great deal of killin’,” and figured the odds were better than fair that Dominic Paine had survived the fall and collapse of the building. A bit banged up and needing help to dig his way out, but alive. He wouldn’t stand a chance, though, if the Orion blasted through the rubble after him. Star Captain Hasaan Furey had to be distracted -- stopped.

Despite the desperation, the lieutenant pessimistically predicted that his autocannon would fail or shoot wide -- no need to ruin a perfectly bad history now. The Mydron-manufactured weapon did not disappoint, the stream of depleted uranium slugs passing off the left arm of the massive Orion. They chewed the corner away from the main factory building and undercut one of the three main smokestacks enough that it started a slow topple. The ruby lance of his laser, however, struck dead-on, sloughing away half-melted armor plates from over the Orion’s blocky chest.

As if a bystander suddenly tapped on the shoulder, the titan’s head first swung around in search of the annoyance and then up came the left arm. The monstrous machine might have been simply pointing directions out to someone, except for the flight of 20 LRMs that suddenly speared out from the cylindrical launcher replacing the left hand. Except for a quartet of missiles that arced too wide, the swarm flew unerringly into the oncoming Bushwacker and robbed it of forward momentum as explosions blossomed in a staggered line leading from right leg up over the body and then down along the left arm. A single missile slammed in near the cockpit, rattling Sinclair but not enough to throw off his own aim. Two small missile flights from his own launchers answered the Orion’s challenge, peppering left leg and arm. The extended-range laser speared directly into the heavy ‘Mech’s undamaged right side, splashing molten armor against its hip and over the short grass that grew over the island. The autocannon misfired but did not jam -- a small favor only considering its lack of performance.

A wave of heat slammed into Sinclair as the fusion reactor spiked, its heat scale reading heavy into the yellow band but dropping fast. Given a few seconds, the young lieutenant could hope to keep up his optimum curve and not suffer the sluggish reaction by overheated myomer muscles or interference in his targeting system. Time was a luxury he did not own, however. He rushed in close on the Orion’s left side, preferring to face off against the heavy LRM system and arm-mounted medium laser than weather the brunt of Hasaan Furey’s full attack, which could include another laser and an autocannon -- his presumably working. Of course, Sinclair had to assume Furey to be an elite warrior, which meant he might be able to coax the Orion around fast enough to bring all weapons to bear regardless.

It turned the fight into a gamble, but against a 20-ton deficit the lieutenant risked his life regardless.

The Orion did try to pivot hard around. Connor Sinclair read it in the exaggerated swing of the angular shoulders and cross-step of right foot in front of left. Then the heavy-class ‘Mech stumbled and nearly fell. From Furey’s narrow recovery and the Orion’s awkward stance, the BattleMech’s hip joint had apparently frozen in a half-extended position -- some combination of Sinclair’s last missile attack and the molten armor splattered by his large laser. It cut into the machine’s movement considerably, able to keep up with the Bushwacker but just barely so. It evened the field, pitting Connor Sinclair against a larger but critically damaged BattleMech piloted by a certainly more experienced MechWarrior^®.

At point-blank ranges, an LRM system could rarely achieve a targeting lock, and even then the missiles would have trouble arming in the short flight. As demonstrated before, Furey did not seem to suffer for those drawbacks. The cylindrical arm swung around, flashing out with the sapphire light of a medium laser and a new flight of 20 missiles hammered mercilessly into the Bushwacker’s upper body. Red warning lights strobed on the control panel as one group of missiles breached Sinclair’s left side, tearing into the Bushwacker’s supporting titanium skeleton and blasting away feeding mechanisms for the shoulder-mounted missile rack.

Not that Connor would have tried to fire his own LRMs regardless, but with a failing autocannon the damage continued to rob him of any reliable firepower. “Last time pays for all,” he whispered, voice strangely loud in the tight confines of his neurohelmet. His targeting reticle already burning golden, he drifted it down the side of the Orion to settle over the left leg. Opening up with machine guns, the MechWarrior^® hammered away armor from the left side and left leg as he watched his heat scale fall down into the shallow end of the yellow band before toggling for his centerline large laser.