Alt:Lock

The remnants of Central Park were desolate as she pushed through them, trees bereft of leaves, even the grass devoid of colour, as if someone had painted over the area with tar.

Ahead, a thin line of NYPD officers were holding position behind overturned transports, and she pushed the strider to take position beside them, trying to draw the fire from the advancing Union troopers. She hadn't seen any transports, so she couldn't help but wonder where they'd all come from. Remembering talking to Roberta what seemed like a few moments ago, she swore as one of the officers fell, taken down by the hap-hazardly firing troops.

"Come on, you Union bastards." She muttered, firing a few rounds of the autocannon, blasting some asphalt and troopers. Their armour might be proof against the low-calibre pistols that the NYPD was using, but it sure as hell couldn't take a round from a 30mm cannon, and she smiled with grim satisfaction as the cannon shells punched through the red and black carapaces, scattering skull-helmeted corpses.

Behind though, besides the already burning wrecks of buildings, she saw the real threat: scorpion walkers, their guns firing shells that burst overhead, scuttling forward on their insect-like legs. She fired her cannon, and found her shells bouncing harmlessly off the thick armour of the drone's carapace.

"Ok, let's switch it up then."

She switched to her missile pod, firing a single missile that arced slightly into the drone's side, detonating and forcing it off it's perch on the side of the building, legs splayed and clawing at the air as it tried to right itself. Another round screamed past her, exploding on the drone's less protected underside, sending robotic limbs scattering. Her other section striders were finally catching up with her.

"Sorry for the wait, Tempest. Looks like a hell of a fight."

"It's the big one. Stay close, boys. Let's keep the NYPD alive long enough for them to pull back to the hornbill."

"Roger that. Engaging."

The platoon spread out, doing their best to put themselves between the scattered NYPD, their civilian charges and the advancing trio of Scorpions.

———

It was all going to shit.

While the ESDs had stopped most of the nano from the bay, more now approached from the West, and Miranda couldn't see any way out from her strider's perch atop the fallen scorpion. Several members of the Vanguard strider team had already been destroyed, and she was running out of ammunition, fast.

"Tempest to Chaser."

"Go for Tempest." She grimaced, firing another few rounds into the approaching scorpion to little effect.

"How you holding up?"

"I don't know how we're gonna get out of this one."

"You better head to the transports while there's still time, there's more coming." Chase sounded worried.

She fired a final salvo of missiles at the approaching walker, and watching as it exploded, ignoring the ammunition counter which told her that she was out. She looked down and saw the Strider's left leg had been destroyed by the last exchange of fire.

"I'm going deck-side…"

"Julian, don't. We've been fighting to secure these civilians, keep them safe."

A stray shot from another Scorpion caught her Strider full in the side, sending it sprawling against a nearby deli. Lights screamed at her from her dashboard, and she felt heat on her cheek, turning to see a smouldering fire from one of the severed electrical connections in the cockpit. She strained at her seatbelt, and found that it was stuck.

"But Miranda…"

She sprayed the fire with her extinguisher, but as she did, she saw more sparks across the rear of the cockpit. The flames were slowly engulfing the whole strider.

She felt tears in her eyes as she saw the cloud of nano rolling towards her, a thick layer of black that enveloped everything. She'd seen the soldiers on the ground exposed to it, heard their screams.

Her cockpit was sealed.

She preferred to burn alive than face whatever they had.

"Get OUT, Chase! I'll come back as soon as I can!"

"Miranda…"
"I love you, Chase." She ended the call, feeling her skin blister.

She didn't want Chase to hear her scream.

———

The pain was intense, but she had managed to put out the last electrical fire, the extinguisher covering the exposed wiring in a haze of clogging foam. Groggily looking down at her hands, she drew her knife and sawed away at the seatbelt that had kept her trapped inside the Strider, stretching a little as she felt the blood return to her weary arms and legs.

She reached for the first aid kit, and quickly applied some burn cream to the side of her face where the pain was fiercest, and almost yelped at the sensation of her nerves screaming. Whimpering lightly from the pain, she then held a cooling pad to her cheek and looked out of her cockpit at the ruins of the buildings around her. A few Union troopers stood on the intersection, searching the alleys and doorways for any stragglers that they hadn't initially spotted. The Nano had moved on, leaving dead vegetation in its' wake.

"I can't believe I survived a cockpit fire just to get shot by some Union nobodies", she muttered, looking around the cockpit for her sidearm. Inside one of the hidden compartments, she saw the emergency pistol, and racked back the slide, before peering out again.

The patrol was slowly moving on, heading further East from her twisted Strider, and she thanked her foresight to have put up the privacy windows, so she hadn't been spotted. Unluckily for her, the strider was out of power, and so she knew that opening the cockpit would mean kicking open the front hatch, something liable to draw attention. Unless...

She breathed, slowly, letting herself calm down a little, and wincing from the pain in her cheek.

"Ok, Miranda. Just a steady push, nothing too hard." She said to no one, psyching herself up.

She leaned against her seat, and gingerly placed her boots on the front panel of the strider, and pushed back on the chair, applying an even pressure to the plate. It creaked a little, but didn't give, so she drew back and held her breath, before trying again. This time, the hatch groaned more, and she could see a crack of light through the gaps.

Progress.

With a last push, the hatch gave way, more quietly than she'd dared hope, leaving a short enough distance open that she could squeeze through. She slipped through the gap to the ground, landing as lightly as she could, and removed her battered helmet, letting her hair out. Around, the acrid stench of burnt cables and the waft of ash stung her eyes, and she blinked hard to keep them from watering. Tempest was collapsed through the second floor of the deli, one leg keeping the wreck anchored in the asphalt, while the other was still extended, wires dangling where the scorpion had destroyed the remainder of the mechanical limb.

The sight saddened her. She'd piloted this strider since training, and she knew all the little nooks and markings almost as well as Migas did, from the lightning sigil referencing her call-sign, to her personal choice of armament of dual autocannon on the arm mounts. She gently patted Tempest's leg with sorrow.

"Thank you, old friend."

She looked around the wreck, but found nothing of use other than the Strider's identity chip, which she put in her hip pouch. For sentiment, she took the magnetic lightning marking and stored it too, for whenever she returned to the Vanguard.

She crouched out of sight as a Union airship hovered low overhead, searchlights sweeping the street for any stragglers.

IF ever she returned to the Vanguard.