Chapter Sixty-Five – T-Rex Vs Giant Mecha Cat

Chapter Sixty-Five – T-Rex Vs Giant Mecha Cat

“SexyHawk: Ohhh! Go catmech!
TigerA: What’s the t-rex looking one?
SDC: Cant be a trex, no feathers
Storyteller: stfu, you know what they meant. It’s an m23
October: can we get an interior view?
Someone: Mess them up Stray Cat!”

–Witch commentary on the live drone footage of the Burlington Incursion, 2057

***

I ran, and the model twenty-three chased.

A few things became immediately obvious. While I had a lot more manoeuvrability and could turn and move in the air much faster than it could, the damned thing was fast.

The other thing that became obvious was my lack of rear-facing weaponry.

The Gatling guns mounted on the mech’s shoulders could turn all the way around to fire backwards, but that was about it, and while a constant stream of armour-piercing 10mm was doing something, it wasn’t doing something fast enough.

I came around a corner, claws throwing up sparks as I scrambled for purchase on an old school cobbled road.

The t-rex looking motherfucker behind me just rammed through the building on the street corner then opened its mouth wide to try and take a bite out of my ass while masonry crashed and skid across the road.

I kept moving, whipping my thagomizer-equipped tail into its face with its void terminus blades lit and extended. The crack of tail-meeting-face made the model twenty-three flinch aside, and it scored a long cut across its face.

Not nearly enough to kill the damned thing, but hopefully enough it hurt it.

I kept running, ducking into an alleyway between two smaller businesses, The model twenty-three paused at the entrance and glared at my back.

It couldn’t follow through the narrow gap, not without ripping through the entire thing and risking getting itself stuck.

So it went up instead, powerful legs bunching beneath it before it leapt, ripping apart the road beneath it before it crashed onto the roof of the building to my right.

It instantly collapsed under several tons of rampaging alien mass. I swore as I ducked down lower and pushed myself to move faster and slip out of the far end before I was the one to get stuck in the crashing building.

“You okay?” Gomorrah asked.

“Ask me once I’ve killed this fucker,” I snapped.

I needed to hit it with something better.

I dug one claw into the ground and used that as a pivot to turn around while the model twenty-three ripped its way out of the ruined building. I didn’t quite have time to fire my railgun, but that didn’t stop me from unfolding my 105mm cannons and firing both.

At the same time, the mortars on the cat’s back popped open and fired, all six of them tossing grenades forward with a nearly silent ‘thump,’ that I felt more than heard. “What were those?” I asked.

Resonators. I equipped you with those since you seem to enjoy them. Forgive me, they’re not quite as useful in this situation.

The grenades clanked around the alien, all six screeching but probably doing very little to the bastard. The 105mms reloaded and I fired another volley at it. The armour piercing sabots rammed into its armoured chest and detonated, sending some plant meat flying.

But not enough.

As the smoke cleared I discovered the alien was too damned close, jaw almost unhinged to reveal teeth nearly as long as I was tall.

I jumped forwards and to the side, narrowly avoiding getting bit as I slid past the alien while pulling my guns back in.

It wasn’t quite fast enough.

My world suddenly spun and I was thrown around inside the cockpit, even with the harnesses in there keeping me as snug as they could.

The mech had been spun around, so I immediately grabbed onto the controls and spun it back to its feet, found a cleared stretch of road, and ran while my attention wandered over three things. What the hell had just happened, where the hell the alien was, and what the hell had broken.

The first was easy to check. A quick recording from five seconds prior showed the model twenty-three basically horse kicking me as I went by.

The damned thing had stumbled forwards after the kick, but it had regained its footing and was coming around, salivating for a taste of some good Cat.

The damage was… not great, but not awful. One of my Gatling guns was ripped off, and stray shells were clinking out of their chain and onto the ground as I moved. The 105 on that side hadn’t finished sliding back into place when I got struck, and now some of its parts were reading orange on the damage readout. Otherwise, everything seemed more or less fine. A few yellow-greens, but nothing that would interfere too much.

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“Reload the mortars,” I said.

High explosives?