“Warlord! We have mechs behind that line of warehouses.”, Knackers, the bear looking leader of my honor guard pointed to the left of the building we had taken shelter in when the hole opened up in the enemy lines.

It made me momentarily nauseous to claim so many lives so quickly. Additionally, my Race Traitor title went from a little over two hundred, to over a thousand with the slaying of the two suicide bombers. It seemed every life their bombs took was placed on my head. I wasn’t particularly squeamish about taking lives, human or not, but having it quantified so starkly left me doubting my own humanity in general. Not to mention the huge chunk of experience for pushing the title over a thousand. Five hundred thousand experience for the feat left a sour taste in my mouth. The Reaper in the back of my mind stirred lightly at my internal struggles, a grim reminder that we still had work to do here.

In the ensuing chaos we had pushed forward to slip inside a building that looked to be a former office for some kind of construction company. Other than that detail I didn’t take much time to look around as our focus was on Litchfields presumably main force. Seems they pulled out all the stops and decided to purchase themselves some mechs. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t even a bit jealous. Some of my favorite games and movies before the system involved giant mech or robot fighting of some flavor. The fact someone else had beaten me to it irked me quite a bit.

The metal monstrosities were not much to look at; squat and wide with a trio of cannons for arms, a quad tube missile launcher over each shoulder, and an open cockpit where a single pilot stood, strapped into the nearly twenty foot tall walking weapons platform. The armor seemed to be rather light for such a large and expensive machine, probably designed more as an infantry support vehicle.

As I studied the mechs, several men and women began climbing into the cockpits by way of rope ladders that dangled between the legs of the metal behemoth. When they reached their respective seating areas, they pulled the ladders up and began strapping themselves into a series of control mechanisms that all looked fairly analogue while also proving effective in commanding the war machines. Though, it was clear that some of the pilots had yet to acclimate to their new rides as they fumbled their way into the myriad of straps and latches set in the varying recesses of the cockpits.

“Hmm, they’ve upgraded. The one I fought before was much… less… than these.” Shubin and his own squad of Faceless, Volpari, and Imps crowded into the building, dispersing into the shadows to wait for the command to attack. My own Honor Guard had filtered throughout the offices and warehouses, with Shubin’s people we had a decently sized combined arms force at our disposal. I felt much more confident about fending off this sudden attack with the giant demon at my side.

“Might have a chance to take out one of the King’s leadership here. I’m going to check in with Eli, make sure we aren’t getting surrounded and trapped behind enemy lines.”

“That would be wise, my scouts suggested this was one of their weaker fronts, considering the mechs, it may have been a ruse.”

I gave him a quick nod, then directed Veep to give Eli a call, he answered with the din of battle filtering in from the background, though his voice resonated loud and clear in my mind.

“Sir, we took some light casualties during the initial engagement, the QRF is moving in place now. I see you and Shubin have pushed over the line, what’s your situation?”

I smiled as he launched directly into his status report that was both succinct and detailed enough for me to know he was gaining control of the sudden battle. We had hoped to scout the situation in Chandler-Gilbert, while also moving other forces into position before pressing our own attack on Litchfield. This may be unexpected, but we knew this fight would be starting sooner or later, so most of the pieces were already in place.

“Heh, well, we got a slight snag. They have mechs, lots of them. I’m a few hundred meters from one of their staging areas, I have scouts reporting that there are several more groups further up the Line in your direction. Warn Freya that her people might want to stay on the ground, or at least keep their distance. The types I see here have lots of heavy machine guns in place of arms, as well as a pair of nasty looking missile launchers.”

There was a slight pause in the conversation where I imagined Eli was consulting his VPA and a map, when he came to a decision he spoke again, “Copy that, Freya’s been notified and is moving her people into holding positions while we assess capabilities. I’ll have Centuries one through four begin pressing the positions we discussed previously from the northeast. Let’s see if they respond, if they don’t we’ll hold them at the Line so they can push in from the top, as it were. If they do take the bait, I’ll commit a larger force to counter-attack down the middle. If you and the good Lord Shubin can press them from the South, we should be able to take a good chunk of the city from them.”

“Oh yeah, we’ll do that. Though we don’t want to get too close to those fortifications just yet.” Litchfield had almost a half a dozen fortifications set up in a tight perimeter around a large mansion on the West side of the city. Those fortifications had nasty looking cannons with large diameter barrels that fired heavy explosive rounds. Just one of those cannons had cost Captain Devers a scout team and up-armored humvee. Fortunately, those cannons fired such heavy rounds that even the System decided they should only have a very limited range, which we determined to be about five miles. They were set up roughly twenty miles from the Line which meant we could push in for fifteen and be relatively safe from their bombardment.

“Of course, Gregor is working on that issue as we speak, in light of the recent shift in combat posture, he’s urging his engineers to speed up their projects. He says they still need at least another day before he’s complete.”

The solution to the fortification problem was currently being worked by Gregor’s engineers who were digging their way underneath the city to open up an assault path for us that would allow our troops to take the forts without facing those guns. That was the main reason we hadn’t just steamrolled our way in. That and we didn’t want to risk killing any of the slaves in the city. With that ship having set sail, it was probably time to steamroll away.

“Copy, let’s take as much from them as we can in the next twenty-four hours then. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the King will surrender so I don’t have to run him down.”

Eli chuckled mirthlessly in my head, “Not likely, sir. Alright, seems we’ve got solid adjustments to our plans, by the way, Alyssa is on her way back, seems they sort of made contact with someone from Chandler-Gilbert who may be able to link them up with whomever is in charge there. She said she and Choox’il are coming to your position now, Stephen and Carly are continuing with the local contact.”

“Sounds good, let’s get this show started.”

“Affirmative, sir. Let’s.”

I watched for a few moments as the mechs went through their start-up procedures, checking ammo feeds, twisting blocky torsos, taking tentative first steps even. It was clear these were brand new to the operators in them. Some may not even have the requisite skill sets, but they were being thrown into the machines all the same. Another of my Honor Guard came up to Knackers to report what our scouts had seen, which the bear man relayed to me directly.

“Warlord, our scouts report regular infantry with mostly chemical based rifles and handguns, similar to your own. Estimated number at about a hundred on our end, more groups are being reported up and down the Line.”

“Are your men in position?”

“Archers on the rooftops, the rest will cover your flanks.”

“And I, of course my love, have your backside.” Junipher said as she swatted me firmly on the butt. A round of smirks from those gathered lightened the mood ,then she began chanting a song that boosted our stamina and health regeneration. A sure sign we were going into a hard fight.

“Alright, let’s push these assholes off Phoenix’s doorstep!”

David Wayne Dillon, Stark Mad Murderer (A) Lvl 12

David Wayne Dillon was a murderer, nothing more, nothing less. He’d killed his first man when he was just fourteen. Got away with it too. Then he killed another a year later. That one he didn’t get away with, though he only spent three years in juvenile detention, where he killed two other kids who were part of another gang. There was no other reason for killing them kids beyond the fact they flashed the wrong sign.

He remembered those two kills clearly. He waited for one to go to the bathroom and followed him in. A quick swing of the lock in a sock he had tucked in a pocket knocked the fool unconscious, so when he bent down and crushed his windpipe, it was all the easier. Though, he found such an easy kill dissatisfying.

When the friend of the kid he’d just killed came in to investigate, he made sure that kill was violent and bloody. He was bigger than most kids, almost six and a half feet tall at the age of sixteen. The second kid who’d come in was barely five foot eight, and he was far skinnier than Dillon. He smiled to himself as he remembered smashing the second kid's head into the wall over and over again.

After the guards found the kids he remembered them complaining that they would have to clean bits of the second one’s skull and brain matter off the wall. From then on, if David killed a man, he made sure it was as blood as it could be. He didn’t like guns, or knives. Though blunt objects were acceptable depending on the circumstances. He just enjoyed the feeling of blood on his hands. It felt natural. Like it was just the way it was supposed to be.

The reason he was reminiscing about his past kills at such a time was because he was scared of someone for the first time in his life. And he couldn’t remember a time other than while his dad was alive that he was scared of anyone. But now, after Kameron’s failure to subdue Lake Pleasant, and the failed assault on New Phoenix, King was furious. The man, though younger than himself, had somehow become a father figure when they’d met in prison for the third murder the authorities had discovered he commited. Of course, this wasn’t the third murder he’d actually commited.

The only thing that had kept King from killing Shantel outright was the fact that her girls had managed to off the Governor. But he knew the man, and he knew his rage well. He knew that while that small feat had earned the creepy ninja woman a brief reprieve, the King was still likely to kill her for not ending the lives of everyone in the room, including that giant Warlord of Winslow. If not for that man and his army breathing down their necks, threatening to end the great time they’d been having, Shantel, and even Kameron would have already been dead.

He knew that man was the real catalyst that set off the King’s anger. Until he’d shown up, their slave operations were going quite well. Despite the people of Chandler-Gilbert going to ground, or turtling up in the Campus, they were still flushing out a couple dozen a day. He wasn’t a fan of the slave taking. It just felt a little on the nose for his liking, but as long as he had the opportunity to kill someone every now and again he really didn’t care.

The entire reason all of this mattered to Dillon was that he’d been tasked with breaking the stalemate across the Highway that they’d been pushed into with the Warlord’s forces. He knew if he didn’t succeed, the King was likely to kill him. He’s the only man he’d met that he believed in his heart could do it. Worse, in Dillon’s mind, is that he would disappoint the surrogate father figure that King had become. And that thought harried him into action, despite not being particularly vested in the current conflict.

He wasn’t even particularly a fan of the suicide slave tactic that Lazerus had come up with. That was a man he’d happily kill without hesitation. While Dillon enjoyed killing people in the most violent way possible, Lazerus liked hurting people while not allowing them to embrace death. It seemed that he was somehow managing to grow a cult in his name that worshipped him, his followers thanking him for the suffering he would put them through. To Dillon, it just wasn’t natural.

So it was with these grim thoughts clouding his mind that he climbed quickly into the cockpit of his own mech. His was much different than the ones the rest of the gang had been given. His mech was bigger, with thicker armor. It had reinforced arms and legs with actuators and motors designed for greater agility and fine movements. Dillon liked fighting with his hands, and the mech was designed with the same ethos in mind. It had no projectile weapons, only speed, durability and strength. Dillon would lead the charge while his squad of other mechs layed down suppressive fire.

At least that was the plan, his memory of the two kids he killed in juvie came to the front of his mind again, a reminder that not all things go as planned.

He went through the startup sequence, flicking switches, pressing buttons, and turning dials as his VPA directed. The hum of the machine’s generators was felt first, then heard a second later as the power rose to operational levels. He went through a quick systems check, ensuring that his mechanical limbs and legs were responding to his input as he intended, then keyed the unit-wide radio frequency.

“Alright mothafuckas, the King has decreed that we take New Phoenix now. So that’s what we’re going to do. That little surprise Lazerus came up with should have put their forces on the back foot, now it’s time to deliver the final blow. Move out, and don’t worry about taking slaves today. Today we kill everything we find in our way until we reach City Hall!”