Catches

A limb lashed out and raked across her breastplate. Groaning from the impact, she retaliated with one of the pairing blades and sheathed it in one of the white-fur's knee joints. Surprising that it had made it through the killing field without the electrics melting its internal organs or the sonics and cylinders delivering so much concussive trauma it went slack with shell shock.

At least her blades were sharp enough that she didn't have to aim for the eyes like she did with those of higher fur tiers. The rare white-fur was something of a treat--she recognized that as the most twisted her circumstantial irony could get--where she didn't have to take her time and guard herself against the lightest of potential scratches.

Her WAV was resilient enough to last, and no part of the white-fur except the sagittal crest of its skull was hard enough that her melee outfittings glanced off instead of their intended mark.

Her eyes flicked to the side feeds, where she'd last seen the snared pilot vanish. Her breath came in short gasps, and her teeth throbbed when she ground them together. After they'd disappeared beneath the roiling wall of fur, the detached cables flicked against the outer face of the walls as they rappelled back up.

There would be no waste. A second later, the first replacement of what would no doubt be many was falling like she had. The replacement took a second to orient themselves, attach to the walls, and pick up her slack by firing their emplacement shoulder mounts. The other continued to dive at the Aud, though after seeing what befell his comrade, it was understandable when he became cautious in choosing his targets.

That wasn't the extent of the aid sent down. Other assets were leaning toward the outer edge of the walls, though they were not servicemen. There were four major weapons systems incorporated into the walls' construction, and the defensive crews had only employed three of them so far.

The electrics had been the first to punish the Aud, and the sonics pummeled those that came from the air. The cylinders ruptured and tore into those that survived a fair distance into the killing field, but now that the Aud were halfway up the walls, it was the perfect time for the final of the four to make its debut.

Operating on a vertical shifting system resembling a clinometer, the base of the netting cannons could angle downward so the emplacements themselves would point down, parallel with the face of the walls. The flared barrels maintained a tight hold on their loads to prevent them from slipping out before firing occurred.

And no one was more impatient than the officers overseeing the repositioning procedure to see them in action. If Hu-5 had been up there with them, she would've recognized the 'I won't result to anger if you take longer, but I'll favor you less' tone they hollered orders in.

The netting cannons created a third row wrapping along the circumference of the walls, like the hanging defaults and lights. The barrel of each aimed between a gap left open by the remaining lower layers of deterrence; it wouldn't do the defenders any favors should the netting catch and snare their own. Leaning back from the propulsion generated within the recesses of the barrels, each cannon loosed a jumbled ball of scutumsteel cables.

As they sped on a downward descent toward the rising army, air resistance unfurled the netting until they stretched wide with the weights on each endpoint visible. They dropped past the lights, then the defaults. Hu-5 flinched as a dark blur fell past her WAV and the side feeds captured it. The combination of their fast-approaching terminal velocity and the existing weight of the heavy cables and heavier weights worked well with the spread of the nets.

They pressed entire clusters of Aud down, with the effect compounding as more Aud \dislodged against their best efforts and fell on those below them or tumbled off the edge of the Aud wall. Aside from the rare pocket of movement spared from the netting cannons, the Aud had lost dozens of meters of progress. Hu-5 allowed herself a wild grin and attacked the remaining stragglers with renewed fervor.

The reason the nets were so large wasn't to catch as many as possible with each deployed net, though that was a pretty bonus. It was to cast a wide enough net to ensure the intended targets didn't escape with their superior mobility. Back on the top of the walls, Pa-5 stepped forward with a cart laden with fresh bundles of netting.

Netting cannons, she thought, were the odd weapon system out. They lacked the range of the electrics, the kinetic transferring capabilities of the sonics, or the raw combustive power and versatility of the cylinders. They didn't even deliver meaningful wounds to the Aud!

But what they did do, especially when woven from specially-tempered scutumsteel, was slow and debilitate. And that was a valuable weapon all in itself, especially when targeting green and blue-furs that displayed greater resilience against the classic three.

With the temporary break from high-intensity combat, Hu-5 dispatched the rest with the aid of the two light WAVs. And the moment the last one fell, yellow fur rustling in the cavern air and screeching up at her with venomous eyes, her HUD startled her out of her fighting spell. "Notice: Pilot extraction occurring. Advisory: Avoid unnecessary movement."

"What?" As the inquiry escaped, she gasped from a jolt. With the air wrenched from her lungs, she watched as the ascending Aud were growing further and further. After passing half the remaining distance, her helmet tilted to catch a fresh default WAV descending at as fast a speed as her harness moved her. When the harness slowed and a stiff corner jutted against her spine, she made an awkward turn, using the flooring of the walls to support herself.

A trio of engineers were already there, one attaching more anti-grav nodes to her suit's shoulder pauldrons while the others manipulated magnetic clamps over. They closed around the shoulders and lifted her over.

They suspended her in air and brought her back onto familiar--horizontal--ground. She looked at the other lines of cable winding up over the edge. Her breath caught when she failed to find most of the defaults return. Of those that did, the conditions of their suits were worse than her own.

And there were already discarded spools of neat, rolled cable near them, one of the collective ends always ripped or severed. Sometimes it would be one, a couple, and the dropping point right next to her own had four.

Four pilots had died somewhere to her right and she'd never known, too preoccupied with staying ahead of the next incoming strike. The torn and tidied cabling would be all that remained of her too, if one of the original lights flanking her hadn't attracted an Aud's ire in her stead.

Her feet worked without her input, leading her to wherever one of the engineers was taking her. She couldn't hear what they were saying…it sounded murky and distant. But another injection of something she couldn't identify brought back the clarity.