"Is that catapult position?! He's gone mad! He'll tear himself apart before reaching the enemy, especially if he uses his energy spike!"
The commanders overlooking the battle were all horrified by what Loyd was about to attempt.
"Call him off, Zeindal, or it's you on the chopping block." The general was not pleased by the recklessness Loyd was exhibiting, but not even he could guess what was about to happen.
"Gentlemen, I would not have gambled as much as I did on him if he were just going to do a suicide attack on one of the enemy commanders. Now just watch."
The smile on Zeindal's face showed he was enjoying himself.
xX Back on the battlefield Xx
Loyd had built up almost ten times the standard amount of power a CTAS could normally handle by the time he had gotten to where he was now, and the enemies could tell who his target was, although none of them could stop him now.
"Activate cannon maneuver." His CTAS's entire frame groaned under the stress, but he only spent half his excess energy on the launch while the other half was used to throw his knife through the enemy commander and the generator that was their bases power supply effectively destroying it and tearing the arm off his CTAS in the process.
"OPEN FIRE WHILE THEY'RE DISTRACTED!"
The cavalry had finally arrived, and they rained hellfire down on the remaining enemies around Loyd.
"Took you long enough, I took out their commander and primary base structure while you were entering the atmosphere."
Loyd turned to face them, revealing that he had taken quite a bit more off than just his arm as his cockpit was now fully opened. The silence from the area was only broken when artillery rounds landed close enough to cripple several of Sara's group.
"Damnit, get to cover, everyone, and find where those shells are coming from!"
Everyone scattered and hid behind anything that looked solid, whether that was a pile of enemy CTAS, or a small outcropping of rock. More shells landed all around them, creating smoke screens.
"Don't touch the smoke it's probably acid or something!"
"Does anyone here have a repair module?!" Loyd was darting between cover, looking for his dropped siege cannon.
"Yeah, you just gotta get over to me. I ain't moving with those shells coming down." The medic was hunkered down with two others and his gun.
"Alright, then I need you to decouple from it." Loyd dashed toward them zig-zagging as he went.
"The hell I will! I can fix you up but I ain't giving you any-"
"Just give it to him, Roy!" Sara sounded angry
"Fine, decoupling from repair module."
The giant backpack fell off his back as Loyd slid behind the cover with them. He grabbed the pack with his remaining arm and attached it to himself. The swarm of microbots that came out of the module quickly coated the nearby enemies and started breaking them down. They then swarmed Loyd and rebuilt his arm and heavy armor before returning to the module.
"Alright, I think I found where the mortar team is at, but you're not going to like my plan."
"NO, we are going to fall back. You already took out the enemies here, and putting two bases on the same planet is something the general would never allow. So, we're getting out of here!" Sara's voice trembled slightly showing how scared she was.
"Understood." Loyd's timer sounded as more shells hit the mountain behind them causing a massive explosion and landslide. Loyd saved his group using the microbot swarm to make a dome that held up the rocks.
"Is everyone else alright?!" The comms remained silent while he dug his group out. Upon reaching the surface it was obvious why no one had answered him, the rockslide was over a hundred feet deep. No short-range radio could get through that much less receive anything except white noise. "Which of you has the highest rank? Cause you're the new sub-commander." He turned around to see the rest of them just look at each other. "Do you all have the same rank?"
"Pretty much."
The disappointment Loyd felt from those two words was only compounded by a long-range communication from the enemy mortar team.
"All survivors surrender peacefully and we won't finish you off with another barrage."
After only a brief pause Loyd said, "Hand me my gun." Loyd held his hand out for his siege cannon and scanned for the enemy's position.
"Here you are."
He attached his gun to his power supply and started to charge the enemy position. "You guys can either follow me; or surrender I don't care."
When he looked back, he could see the other three pulling out any guns they might still have and following his lead.
"And let you have all the fun? No way!"
More mortar shells rained down around them but none came close enough to damage any of them.
"Almost looks like they picked up their artillery and moved, wouldn't you say?"
"They also probably didn't expect any survivors and don't have time to readjust their range."
Loyd smiled. He'd never been in command of actual people before and felt a sense of elation as they charged an enemy whose numbers they couldn't determine, through a mortar field. The hopeless feeling most people might have had at this point was completely covered up by the adrenaline that was flooding their systems.
As they closed the gap, another three volleys thundered down around them, only one close enough to cause damage. Even then, it only took off some paint.
"Fire at will."
The group raised their weapons and jumped over the barrier the mortar team had raised, firing at everything they could see. The return fire took out Roy and another one named Jerard, but Loyd and the guy who wanted to join the fun, Jim, were left standing over the wrecks of their enemies.
"You know how to fight! And here I was thinking I might be able to take you!" Another enemy stepped out from behind a stealth field emission and fired his gun straight at Loyd.
"NOT TODAY YO-" The entire world seemed to freeze as Jim jumped in front of Loyd and took the shot before his comms went dead.
"You punk! That was supposed to be for the other guy!" he growled at the remains of Jim as he reactivated his stealth.
Loyd bent down, shed his heavy armor, and used his swarm to build an even larger swarm from his heavy armor before it had even hit the ground.
"And that's a war crime, you know. Grey goo is classified under The New Martian Code of Illegal Weapons as a triple-S offense, don't you know that?"
Loyd just stayed there crouched while his swarm turned more of the surrounding CTAS into parts of his swarm.
xX Several seconds passed Xx
"Hmph. I've seen enough of this, and you let me charge another shot, so HAVE THIS!"
He decloaked just as Loyd finished his retrofit and fired at empty space.
"The hell?"
Loyd had jumped with his newly remade core boosting his speed and strength to even greater heights than the technicians watching had previously ever dreamed of. He had made a five-stage single rotating core, rather than using multiple cores, as well as reinforcing all of his joints and structural components.
xX Back in the command booth Xx
"The hell is that?! Why would you expose your power supply like that?!" The head technician broke his pen in his fit of anger, "and why would you ever need the set up to spin like that?! Does he know how much time goes into designing those power supplies?!"
"Cool it! He has achieved a higher power output level than any of your units could ever produce! Watch and wait!" The general had changed his mind about this boy. Maybe there was something to him that could be redeemed.
"Yes, general." The head technician was fuming, but he just sat back down at his view station and started checking everything over. "General! That light being emitted from his back is laser emissions! He's testing fate by using the laser emissions to increase his power output!"
"Are you certain about this?"
"Yes, I'll pull it up on your screen now!" The front screen changed to that of the technicians, and showed the entire room Loyd's monster, something they would begin referring to as a new-type. "That light being emitted from the spinning power supply is a laser emission that superheats the crystals, increasing their output, but requiring him to spin them at those high speeds in order to give them enough time to cool without shutting his monstrosity down."
The room was silent while Loyd just stood there on the screen. His enemy's cockpit ripped wide open from behind and its occupant, or at least the simulated one, splattered across the ground from where he had been crushed under Loyd's foot.
"What is this boy?! A demon?!"
"No, but he's not entirely human either." Zeindal was smiling from ear to ear. His gambling had netted him a nice amount of cash, but he knew Loyd wasn't fighting fair to begin with, so it all felt like stolen money. "He's actually part swarm."