Lionel was nearly brought to tears looking at the metallic deities. Each one was pristine. The paint was unchipped and the metal showed no signs of rusting. Their weaponry consisted of enormous cannons, house sized rocket batteries, and handheld guns that looked a good decade ahead of what Lionel had been forced to work with. Each one had its own color: bronze, silver, and gold.

            The bronze monster had intricate carvings worked into it. Bulls and bears and griffons and beasts Lionel couldn’t put a name to adorned each and every inch. Every one of them was in endless battle with the other. The armor flowed like a never-ending tapestry of animalistic warfare. It was a slim and agile-looking machine. Reverse jointed legs matched the images of Satyrs that pranced around the scenes of combat, painting an image of merriment in all the death and destruction. It had a long rack of missiles from shoulder to shoulder. The arms came down normally until the elbow joint. Instead of a normal forearm and hand the machine had a large gear with a small arsenal of shortened weapons it could switch between. The waist had a box hanging off the back. Wires sprouted from the box and connected into the core at six points: three on each side. All the machines shared this last feature.

            The silver MAC had no special designs. A heavily armored upper body sat on top of a comically large tank hull. The treaded machine looked more like a mobile fortress. Lionel was curious about the efficacy of such a design. Mobility was one of the main selling points for these new beasts of the battlefield. However, the double-stacked gun emplacements that protruded off both sides of the core looked threatening enough to warrant the machine’s existence. Three barrels per emplacement, each longer than the machine itself. Strings of flags, the kinds you would usually see a ship flying, were strung between each barrel and whipped around in the wind. The head looked more like a radio tower than anything else. Although the cannons were more than impressive, far more than a normal MAC could carry, the real attention getters for Lionel were the towering thrusters that were housed on the sides of the tank-like bottom. They were bigger than any he’d ever seen and made him question his previous idea that the monster might be slow. Lionel desperately wanted to see the stats of this thing.

            The final MAC was brilliantly golden and almost blinding in the desert landscape. This MAC had a far more familiar design. It was mostly humanoid and seemed to be the standard size. It had a large sword hinged onto one arm, but the main armament was a sort of sniper cannon that it held in both hands. This was a weapon Lionel wanted to get his hands on. It had no magazine. Instead, a series of pipes and wires ran from the weapon to that box on the waist that appeared on each machine. It was likely a sort of laser weapon, but it looked far superior to the prototypes Lionel and Guinevere had been working with. The armor was mostly rounded and smooth. It had a futuristic feel that meshed easily with the slightly medieval aesthetic. The head was topped with a statue of some winged beast, though Lionel couldn’t see it that well considering how high up it was. Two large, finned boosters were attached to the back and had a blue glow while they were active. A ridiculously sized tabard with a strange insignia was draped over the shoulders and reached down to the knees of the machine.

            The insignia, Lionel quickly realized, was not The Alley’s.

            A loud voice boomed from the bronze unit and announced the frequency they would be tuned to. Lionel quickly adjusted his settings and put on the headset.

            “Welcome venerable warriors. We applaud your ability to survive through our onslaught. Indeed, such prowess should be rewarded with-”

            “You…” Callista decided to interrupt the monologue, immediately making Lionel’s heart drop. Surely she knows better than to interrupt the people that are possibly deciding whether or not to spare them?

            “Ah, yes, I believe you were the individual who responded to our call of-”

            “Please, someone else talk.” The amount of pure disdain Callisata packed into that simple sentence was quite impressive. Lionel knew it made sense. A person like Callista and a person who talked like that would have a very hard time getting along. If this was a casual get-together Lionel wouldn’t care, but when they were essentially here to beg for their lives…

            Lionel was very very worried that he was about to be turned into some sort of puddle or pile of human remains. Callista said she would be bad at this sort of thing, but this was beyond what Lionel expected. It is in no way smart to antagonize the people that could flatten their city in an instant.

            Lionel was about to force his own way into the conversation. He wasn’t exactly a fan of public speaking, but he was surely better than Callista.

            Before he could get a word in, a new voice came through his radio, “Ah, sorry about him. He’s a bit… uh, particular about how he talks. Very… professional. Don’t worry Alexi, this is just a little meet and greet. You’ll be in charge of the real negotiations. You know, when there’s a bunch of cameras and fancy tables and what not.”

            “Please don’t placate me Ukko, it only insults my intelligence.”

            “Of course, but the real negotiations will need someone of your caliber, so let me handle this little parley, alright?” Ukko’s voice was clearly old and haggard. Lionel suspected this man might be even older than him. Older MAC pilots were a rarity among rarities. Usually older brains have a harder time being toyed with, so younger pilots have the upper hand of stuffing themselves with more augments. Lionel tried his best to think up ways he might be able to use this information to, hopefully, save his life.

            The man, Alexi, obviously wasn’t very happy about being interrupted, insulted, and then patronized, but he respected Ukko’s request.

            Lionel coughed a few times, hoping to get that incessant old-man flem out.

            It didn’t work and his voice came across a bit grotesque, “Ah, Ukko then? I’m Lionel. I’m actually a lead researcher on our MACs here and-” Lionel coughed quite violently, whether it was because he was lying or because of the wad of viscous fluid in his throat, he wasn’t sure, “Sorry, must be the smoke. At any rate, I would be glad to handle the negotiations for Atlantis.”

            “Great, I imagine you’ll do as well as anyone. Between you and me, we don’t usually involve ourselves in the whole ‘negotiation’ bit. See, our employers, The Alley, they want us to raze this patch of ground. Can’t quite remember why, but they were pretty specific about what they wanted done to, well, to all of the living folks here. They were looking to recolonize or build something or make a new weapon test site. It doesn’t matter.”

            A new voice broke in, sounding like it belonged to a cheerful little girl happy to be home from school. Lionel felt an odd sense of horror as he looked at the three magnificent machines and realized one of his executioners may well be a child. He also felt an odd sense of admiration. Using children in MACs was against a plethora of treaties, but it was rumored to be very effective with the right augmentations. The little girl, with a voice that was all cheer and smiles, said “Heya Admiral, that thing you said you didn’t want to happen is happening. Should I go get things ready?”

            There was a bit of a pause. Lionel was starting to wonder if they were about to be vaporized when he realized they were probably talking through their own private channels.

            The sun was steadily falling behind them, turning the burning and smoke-consumed city an even gorier shade of red. Callista was standing far above him on the hinged-open cockpit. She stood facing the three machines, not sparing a single glance for the smoldering city behind her.

            Lionel wondered how attached she might have been to that city. He always knew she was more emotional than she let on. After all, he was one of the few individuals that had seen her credentials. He’d seen the things she’d done. The things she was a part of. Guinevere and Jace may have always seen her as the strong and silent type, but in reality she was an emotional cripple. It’s why she couldn’t pilot the new MAC. It’s why she can’t get more augmentations. It’s why Lionel was worried about having her here.

            Lionel was more than happy to let that city die as long as he could live. That was how normal people should think. Self-preservation, that’s what’s important.  

            If her machine wasn’t trashed, he would have ordered her back to the city. As much as he hated seeing a MAC used to dig up dirt and corpses, he much preferred that to risking her saying something that gets them both turned to paste.

            Lionel didn’t like the idea of dying in a desert.

            Not at all.

            The voice, Ukko’s, started to speak again, “Sorry about that, just some logistics. Picking up where I left off probably doesn’t matter. Hell, I can’t be expected to remember anyway.” He laughed in the sort of way superiors laugh in front of people whose jobs may well depend on laughing along. Well, considering he’s a mercenary, it may actually be a death sentence not to laugh along with this guy, “So here’s the deal. We were thinking of using this opportunity as a bit of a strike. The Alley hasn’t agreed to any of our contract fees lately. Cheapskates always low ball us. So, since you killed all their regulars in our assault force, we were going to use that and the city as leverage. So what do you say? Let us in until the negotiations are over?”

            “What about me?”

            “What about the city?”

            Lionel and Callista’s voices nearly overlapped. One of utter desperation and the other a bit too cold and empty.

            The voice that responded was just as jovial as he’d been this whole time, which made the words sting all the deeper, “Well, who knows right? Hate to say it, but this is really more of a formality. If The Alley’s scouts report us talking it’ll be good for our negotiations. Honestly, all this trouble for a pay bump. Almost makes me miss the union days.” That same laugh barked through Lionel and Callista’s radios.

            Lionel started to speak again. There had to be a way to convince them he was worthwhile. What did mercenaries need? What could he give them? God, Lionel didn’t want to die in a desert.

            The three MACs started to vent off gases and get their engines back to an operating level. The dust storm they kicked up nearly blinded Lionel in his car. He slammed on the gas and backed away as quickly as possible from the machine-made sandstorm and the possibility of being burnt to a crisp by their thrusters.

            Maybe… maybe if he could get to Jace. If Lionel could show them the system then maybe-

            A lime-green beam of light burrowed a hole through the dust cloud. There was a white flash followed by an orange and red glow. The bronze MAC. The beautifully worked metal full of intricate scenes out of a storybook suddenly had a smoking hole in the middle. It lumbered forward a few steps, the reverse jointed legs managing to keep it upright, but its fate was already sealed. The molten glow was too close to the missile racks on its back and the pilot was more than likely dead. There was no stopping it now.

            The explosion was large and then larger. The wave of heat and the following shockwave had Lionel screaming in pain. But the next explosion was bigger still. Whatever was left of the core had gone critical.

            Lionel’s jeep was thrown back a hundred meters. Only by dumb luck did the roll cage save him, and luck more stupid than that saved him from the ensuing blaze. The reinforced bottom of the jeep was facing the explosion, shielding Lionel from the worst of the disaster.

            Callista’s voice came piece meal through Lionel’s sparking radio, “My city… you all… die.”

            Lionel didn’t need to see the battle. He huddled behind his jeep and waited. Callista’s machine was nearly unusable when she showed up. After that shot, she was probably completely out of power.

            Another explosive wave washed over Lionel’s jeep.

            That woman really wasn’t suited to negotiations.