Compressing the formation to avoid flailing Aud, the vanguard hurried its retreat. Without targets smashing into the WAVs every second, they could afford to sacrifice some of the structure in return for making it more convenient for every pilot to run. Firing blind, the front layers pummeled the closest Aud with their remaining munitions. Most were dry on cylinders and sonic munitions, and their storage capacity was more limited than the heavies.
Every second became another passed meter, and every passed meter turned into a greater possibility of escape. None dared to assume, but all considered. And though it might poison their perspective, some began to hope.
Ui-4 found himself in an awkward position as he retreated with the heavies, despite not wearing a heavy WAV. He had the reason for that in his arms. The suicide runner had pale skin, yet it'd be hard to tell under all the early bruising and blood staining her skin. The wounds she carried were deceiving. Her legs disappeared halfway down her thighs, ending in gnawed stumps. Her left hand was missing a finger--he wondered what stole it from her.
He was carrying a priority, yet questioned if he should make his way up the ramp and break the list established by a dozen techs and their assistive programs. His communicator linked with one of those techs, and he'd asked. The tech was unsure herself and she'd told him to wait until all heavies had finished loading; his WAV wouldn't fit in a heavy WAV's slot anyway. He would be the first after.
His HUD screamed a warning, startling him: "Notice: Acting sitesman authorized use of blanket-bombing. Addendum: Chosen ordnance, flash cylinders. Estimation: Nine seconds to launch, thirteen to detonation. Advisory: Due to priority's vulnerability outside a WAV, shield eyes and ears as best as possible. Addendum: Loss of hearing inevitable, loss of sight preventable."
He wanted to run to the Nyx Breaker and kick one of its plates, but that would waste time. Was that their plan? Weren't they accounting for the runner, who was out of a suit and already injured?
He quieted his discordant thoughts and focused on the immediate concern. He turned away from the vanguard, shifted the suicide runner to one arm, and used the other to wrap around the back of her head, muffling her ears. He had no delusions that this would do anything for her ears. He only wanted to block the rush of blood sure to fire from her ears. His body should be enough to spare her eyes, though he wasn't sure if she would suffer temporary blindness from the immediate detonations.
When the HUD marked the twelfth second, his vision went black, and his audio feed went silent. It was unnerving, seeing and hearing one second and cut off from two of his most prominent senses the next. On the thirteenth second, he felt through the suit an impact rolling off his frame. That must've been the soundwaves.
Thanks to light haptic feedback, he didn't need to see to adjust his hold on the suicide runner. He waited, expecting his vision and hearing to return with time. Before that anointed time, he needed to reposition himself away from the path to the garage ramp. He wasn't privy to the immediate happenings within the Nyx Breaker's command compartment. Like most of the light WAV pilots, he could guess the vanguard would use the sudden intervention brought on by the carpet bombing to retreat.
As if hearing his thoughts, his HUD came to the rescue. A navigation path lit up on his projection, neon yellow against the black background. He blinked, unaccustomed without a proper background environment to mix into. Careful not to turn his body and expose the suicide runner to the residual flashes from the cylinders, he stepped sideways. Checking again with the tech, he learned only a fourth of the heavies needed loading. Then his turn would come.
The black screen vanished, and the audio sensors fed into his ears again. The tunnel had changed. So many Titan-sized flash cylinders detonating at once left a still-blinding radiance floating above the skirmish. He could bear the burn in his eyes so long as he looked at the edges of the brightness or avoided it. But the tunnel's luminosity increased enough that the pilots no longer needed their HUDs feeding visuals to them in night vision. The vanguard up front was grateful for that, eager to reserve more power for their electrics and servos.
He thought his HUD returned sight and hearing because the carpet bombing's most immediate and dangerous effects had passed. He looked down to check the suicide runner, wincing. Red coated the sides of her neck, and the fingers of his suit gummed together. But he could only watch her for a moment before needing to dodge.
Where did that come from? He rolled, hugging the suicide runner close as a mass of fur crashed where he'd been a second ago. He retreated, placing his back to the light to force the Aud to squint to see him. His lips curled downward, peeling back in disgust. This one had been through the ringer.
The Aud's third and fourth legs were missing, torn off at the joints by heavy impacts. One eye was cloudy, one of many casualties from the flash cylinders. But even if this Aud were white and he wasn't carrying a dying serviceman needing protection, he would view it as an uninjured, fresh threat. And it wasn't white, much to his chagrin.
He didn't need to square off alone with the Aud for long. The second it registered through his visual feeds, a tech notified three groups of light WAVs repositioning behind the vanguard. They turned and sprinted the distance, arriving by his side and surrounding the green mass of fur before it rose, stones breaking under its weight.
The arrangements went unspoken; as he retreated from the newest engagement, the three groups pounced on the Aud with a viciousness rivaling its own. Two heavy WAVs left the garage ramp and traversed the distance, directed by the same tech. Light WAVs were only suitable for kiting and killing yellow and below. For a green, they needed more. More shield core capacity, more force, more scutumsteel plating.
Once the two engaged it, only one group of light WAVs stayed to support it. One heavy grabbed its attention with slow, powerful impacts to its face. The pilot aimed for vulnerable points like the eyes, maw, and nostrils. Grappling an Aud from the front was dangerous, but there was no choice. They needed to wrap this one up fast. The last lane for the heavies was almost full, but one for the light WAVs wouldn't come until they were on it.
The other heavy attacked the Aud from behind, smashing its fists and pairing blades against its hind legs. Since time was of the essence, neither bothered to power their electrics. The light WAVs contributed too. Darting in and out, they took jabs at getting in a lethal or debilitating wound, as rare as such a thing would be. One got lucky, launching a blade into the Aud's last functioning eye.
Once its sight went, it became an easy foe to topple. Its hind legs went next, crushed beneath the relentless assault. The other heavy came around to help with the head, and they pounded it so many times its eye filled up with blood, turning from murky gray to watery crimson. They kept at it until all movement ceased, and the skull deformed under the skin. Without pausing to kick it, the two abandoned its corpse and returned to the ramp. Two minutes passed, and then it was the light WAVs' turn.
Ui-4 gave the corpse a look of contempt from afar, still struggling to bring his heart back in line after that scare. The bastard must have been one of the smarter ones they worried about sneaking around. He could imagine it waiting for the skirmish to go through its stages and even weather the carpet bombing before making a move. It hadn't made a poor choice. If his HUD had waited two seconds longer to lift the black screen…
He pushed the thought away and made his way to the ramp. Looking over his shoulder revealed the vanguard was closing fast, but so was the horde. They had recovered from the insane bombardment of light and sound, disregarding cloudy vision or ringing like an Aud would. With their eyes working again and the sight of the lines of WAVs further away, they crashed over each other in a living tsunami. The vanguard met it, losing a few members but remaining unbroken.
He understood that the last stages of the retreat would be the worst. To remain strong, the vanguard needed every member it had. But that wasn't an option. The lines had to disassemble themselves and sacrifice strength to let on some of the defaults. The frontmost lines were a death sentence. There wasn't any way the pilots fighting at the forefront could retreat; they covered the backs of those behind them, but no one would be covering theirs. Their only hope would be a mad rush at the garage before the ramp retracted and the jaws closed.
The terrain under his boots shifted from jagged and uneven to smooth and uniform. He traversed the length of the ramp, meeting a group of unarmored servicemen at the top. They had a gurney ready. Unwilling to ask questions, both sides concluded the brief exchange without a word. He placed the suicide runner on the gurney. It dipped from the excess weight on her arms, but its antigrav fields pushed back. He touched her forehead, marveling at the effort placed into conserving one serviceman.