Star Force: Penance (SF49) Read Online Free PDF

before circling back at a different point
and hitting a strategically placed tank that further opened up the infantry to
slaughter by some of the heavier armed Type 1s in her cluster.
    The Scionate didn’t blink, pressing their losses by
diverting more troops Morgan’s way, so many in fact that the armored kitties
started jumping at and on her mechs, knocking over several before others came
in to help shoot the cats off. Small as they were, the quadrupeds were heavy
enough in numbers to make it difficult for the mechs to get up and move around,
with her seeing a pair hanging onto the leg of a starbright whose shields had
already gone down. They were latched on and firing their tiny plasma cannons
into the mech at pointblank range before Morgan got to it and latched her
mechanical hands around both and pried them off…then pitched them each baseball
style back into the hoard.
    After she threw the second one a few more infantry
tried to jump on her mech…only to get a rude awakening as she maneuvered it
around more like a giant suit of armor than a walking machine, punching and
kicking the Scionate into mangled pulp inside of what felt like tin cans from
the neo’s perspective.
    They were not back down though. It was as if the more troops they lost the more committed to
winning the Scionate became, with Morgan’s cluster eventually having to retreat
back to the hoths to avoid being overwhelmed. They all made it out, but a few had
taken significant hull damage and had to be rotated to the rear of their ever
changing formation that she kept modifying with the flow of battle. Her own neo
was showing light damage in places but mostly for her it’d been shield damage
that she’d suffered, though she had taken a square hit from one of the tanks
that left a melty patch on her chest.
    She’d berated herself for walking into that for some
thirty seconds afterwards before letting it go and adjusting. The Scionate
where now coming after the mechs in tank groups of no less than three, making
assaulting them more difficult because at least one of them would usually land
a direct strike when a neo approached, and multiple ones for the less agile
mechs. Morgan began hunting those personally, with the others supporting her
when she busted up their formation.
    With the retreat they’d stretched out the Scionate
lines…but their infantry was actually surging ahead of the tanks and running
suicidally right into the mechs around the hoths’ feet. Morgan knew this was
their chosen tactic, no matter how many they lost they were going to swarm the
mechs, meaning they had to make a stand here or abandon the hoths, which no
matter how heavily armed and armored they were, the hundreds of tanks coming
their way would eat them alive given enough time.
    Morgan ran the numbers through her head, sizing them
up visually rather than trying to count as she considered having to do just
that and evacuating the pilots by some means, perhaps right now before they
were swarmed, but that would mean taking the hoths out of the fight and they
badly needed their firepower…not just the cleansing beam, but the auxiliary
weapons that were only now coming into play and firing own on the infantry with
numerous plasma cannons designed for just this purpose, along with a quartet of
maulers to deal with larger, close-in targets.
    It was going to be a tough one, but the more they
killed out here the less there would be for the infantry within the city to
deal with, so Morgan decided to make their stand, sort of.
    “Alright, we’re digging in here. Don’t get sloppy and
keep cycling out as needed to recharge shields, but we’re holding position on
the hoths, and the big boys aren’t going to be standing still. You’re going to
position 400 meters apart, side by side, and casually advance. We’re going to
work around you, but we are not going to get stuck in one spot and become
turrets. That’s what the Scionate want, and we’re not
going to give it to them.