The arena was supposed to mimic a real battlefield, with hills and valleys, small groves of trees, and artificial structures pretending to be buildings.
The rules were simple: everyone meets in the center for the greeting phase for ten minutes; the dispersion phase lasts fifteen minutes while contestants scout the arena and pick their starting position; and the engagement phase lasts until at most one battle-worthy mech is left. Otherwise, everything goes.
Oort was the last to reach the center, and three other mechs were already waiting. They were all bigger than Oort. Thicker armor, larger reactors, more ordnance, and probably most importantly: more surface for sponsor markings.
Incoming EM noise told Oort that they had begun to scan as soon as he was in sensor range.
"Did you cobble that shit together in a fucking shed?" callsign Starcrusher sent over the public channel, the question dripping with disdain. "Your reactor is overheating, and your spec database is unsecured. This ain't the scrapyard leagues; you're making us look cheap."
"Eh, a little warmup won't hurt." callsign Blackwing responded. "With all the radiation, I can lob a shell at that thing over the whole arena."
"A couple missiles, 120 bore gun. You probably can't even get through my armour; you sure you wanna play?" callsign Jahat added.
"I'll manage." Oort answered.
The rest of the ten minutes was filled with banter and, while technically not allowed, hacking attempts.
Dispersion began, and Oort headed towards the structures. All hypercaps were charged, and an AP needle was primed in the railgun. The reactor went offline as well as the noise generators. A drone cloud ejected from Oort's back, quickly zipping towards strategic points, setting up a mesh and feeding back sensor data. Oort hunkered down and waited.
Explosions went off somewhere in the distance. The arena channel announced that Jahat had been eliminated.
Two drones winked out of existence, but another closed the gap and sent a feed of Blackwing sweeping the buidings. Oort relayed a payload activation sequence over the mesh. Blackwing froze and toppled to the ground.
"Don't inspect foreign payloads on the battlefield." Oort sent on a private channel, then extracted the pilot. The explosion of the ejection seat echoed off the buildings.
A couple of minutes later, a projectile arced over the buildings. The EMP shell wiped out a considerable amount of drones. Oort sent a script to the remains of Blackwing and checked the sensors. Reactor and EM signatures were clearly recognizable; the bait was set.
Two missiles rained out of the sky, devastating what was left of Blackwing. With a thump that shook the walls of nearby buildings, Starcrusher landed among the burning wreckage, crushing the remains of the cockpit under his foot. For a fraction of a second, Starcrusher hesitated, scanning the wreckage.
Oort had braced against a sturdy concrete backstop and now dumped all of the remaining hypercaps into the rails. The AP needle shed its sabot and punched a tiny hole through Starcrusher's armor, exactly where the reactor feed should be. Starcrusher slumped into a heap.
"Starcrusher is down, and the winner of the 432th skirmish is... OORT!!" the arena channel proclaimed.
Oort rebooted the reactor, then sighed and switched to the broadcast channel.
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#writing #tootfic #smallstories #mesofiction #cobble #wss366