As the IFV bursts through the walls, Chandra takes a good look at the positions of everyone even as he dives through the smoke, evaluating the battlefield yet again while evading a swarm of corkscrewing rockets. Proximity fuses detonate them behind them, and he sees out of the corner of his eye someone lose an arm, probably one of Abhas's men. Ten soldiers, the IFV, and its crew complement.
Enemy armor is highest target priority. Enemy armor can be suborned.
Rooftop approach is viable.
His new calmness in combat scares even him. Before, he might have looked unflappable in a fight, but internally he was just as spooked as anyone. Only fools and Ravana... okay, maybe only fools felt no fear whenever they were facing potential horrible death. Now, whatever animal instincts that existed have been
rewritten, a cold machine logic ruthlessly optimizing for how to best achieve his goals. Fear and emotion are no part of it. Whatever passes for fight or flight has been reprogrammed, altered. Chandra suspects it might well be smarter than he is. The analysis makes some level of sense when his conscious mind catches up. He's probably strong enough and agile enough to get back up to the ceiling. The close range and limited traverse of the IFV's main guns will make an upwards approach work. Ilana can probably jump that far.
Probably. Hopefully she'll agree to the idea. He steels his conscious mind to carry out this damn fool plan, and the music that seems to follow him around
changes again.
"Ilana." He says over his earpiece, as the twin blasters of the Beecloud Enforcement and Local Logistics (a subsidiary of Beecloud Manufactories Interstellar) G-12 Urban Pacification Vehicle (
how is he remembering these random details in the middle of a fight? He asks himself and again, gets no answer) cough out two thin lines of angry plasma bolts and stitch a pillar of blue-white explosions across the walls, tracking to Ilana's position.
The crew is triangulating her location blindly. Conclusion: Skilled crew, high threat. Increase target priority. A burst of heavy repeating railgun fire flies at him, and he evades a few, deflecting the rest with the edge of his blade, as he moves behind a collapsed pillar while under fire. A few shots from the commandos' railguns wing him, but they fail to even draw blood.
"A little busy here, Chandra!" She cries out. She fires back, clearly distracted. The shot misses, causing a few of the power-armored commandos to dive for cover. It does, however, get her a pause in the firing as the IFV pops anti-beam smoke.
Good, Chandra thinks. That'll play into his hands. The thick colloidal fog is designed to disperse lasers, particle beams, and plasma weaponry. It will leave the IFV essentially blind for a few critical seconds.
"Look, you want to take that tank out faster?" Chandra asks. "I have an idea. Let's board it."
"Okay, I don't want to ask this, but are you crazy?" Ilana responds.
"Maybe. But it's the best way to take it out of business. BELL doesn't build low-quality crap. But you think its gunner and driver are going to be capable of standing up to us? Or its hatches? Get in from the roofs, hit it from the rear. Kill everyone inside, and hijack it. You're good enough to do it, right?" Hopefully by phrasing it as a challenge, she might be more willing. He doesn't have time to wait for her. He puts his hand to the ground, crouches, and
leaps. A fusillade of poorly aimed but concentrated fire from six of the remaining ten commandos hits where he stood a heartbeat ago. The other four fire on Abhas, concentrated suppressive fire keeping him down and cutting chunks out of the overhangs. Ceramic tile explodes into dust.
Chandra lands so hard it cracks the thin stone of the ceiling, revealing polished black armor underneath, but the moment his feet touch something solid, he is already running, high-velocity explosive-tipped flechettes detonating centimeters behind him as the G-12's AI-directed point defense railguns seek to tag him with their high-caliber ordinance. He is tempted to look behind him, but he knows that if he does so, he'll definitely be hit. Instead, he
runs. Like in his youth, when his marks realized that something of theirs had been stolen, running is life. Running is survival. Chandra had learned to run to live long before he had learned to fly. And with another powerful leap, he
flies again, blade flashing out in front of him to cut down incoming weapons-fire, arcing perfectly towards the IFV's top.
He just needs to weather the storm for a split-second, then he'll be on the machine, and another acrobatic maneuver will get him inside, where they can't use their unwieldy heavy weapons and he can take them all down with that blade of his. He puts everything he has into keeping himself alive as the IFV's bulk creeps ever closer.
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