The building started to shake and a few more cracks started growing in the walls and ceiling. Ukko simply kept walking toward the front door.

            The shaking stopped before he got outside. Once he made his way through the doors, he saw the little Vice Admiral swinging around from the ropes that she hung flags on. She managed to get herself out to the tip of the lowest gun barrel on the side of the machine facing Ukko. She screamed in a stereotypically childish and high-pitched tone, “Ahoy mister Admiral! Looks like you were right again. This guy’s a big one too. Too bad Alexi’s dead, huh?”

            The little girl had more than a few screws loose. Ukko didn’t even want to think about Alexi’s death. It was an expensive machine, and the man was a damn good pilot. It’ll be a pain to find a replacement. And with this news…

            Ah well, Ukko thought, no point in worrying now. Just have to fight and hope for the best.

            The reason the Vice Admiral was screaming at him instead of using the radio was simple: the main boss had arrived. The Alley actually had a home-grown MAC program. They used plenty of fodder units and loaned them out to groups like Ukko’s, but their actual MAC development team had made quite the batch of models. But this home-grown program wasn’t for fighting these wars of theirs. They were for keeping the mercenaries from getting too out of control.

            The short of it is this: The Alley has a special kill squad specializing in putting an end to people like Ukko. They call themselves House Keepers. There’s only a handful of them though, and only one close enough to respond to Ukko’s little protest. Still… it’ll be tough.

            “How is everyone faring so far? How many got into the city?”

            “Only half. Those big guns they haul around make them all slowpokes.”

            “Shit, we’ll have to go with plan D then.”

            “Shit,” she was clearly mocking Ukko, the man who constantly told her not to cuss, “which one is D again? Shit.”

            Ukko chose to ignore it for now. If they both lived through this he’d make her stand watch for the next three nights, “We go meet him. How about the sappers, they were right behind us.”

            “Shit, yeah they got in just fine. Their bombs weren’t nearly as heavy as those big cannons. Shit.”

            Ukko couldn’t quite see, but he was pretty sure she just spat like some kind of rancher complaining about the weather. Maybe he should say no dinner for three nights too. He got to the elevator chain for his MAC and zipped up into the cockpit. A single wave to the Vice Admiral was all the communication they would have until this was all over.

            Hopefully those sappers keep working. If they live through all this and if Ukko can get The Alley to agree to that pay bump, he’d like to have a quick and easy way of showing The Alley just how efficient he can be.

                                                                                   ~~~

            The Vice Admiral took her position behind a fallen skyscraper. Her machine was mostly hidden, and the silver blended in well with the smoke. Those battleship cannons of hers were angled at the sky like some sort of twelve-gun salute.  

            Ukko, in his golden MAC, went out to meet the enemy in the desert. He saw his soldiers that were still repositioning as he flew past. He zoomed in his cameras and saw the looks on their faces. It was mostly a mix of anxiety and exhaustion. They were supposed to be in the city and setting up defenses by now, but they could only move so fast.  

            It wasn’t the ideal scenario. If things had gone great, they would already be set up with defensive positions in the city to make the enemy attempt a single-man siege. If things had gone decent, Ukko, Alexi, and the Vice Admiral would have been working together to overwhelm the incoming House Keeper.

            This, however, was the worst-case scenario. His soldiers weren’t ready and he’d lost one of his best pilots. 

            Well, Ukko thought, maybe the real worst-case scenario would be him fighting all by himself.

            He shook his head. The Vice Admiral is more than enough. Yes. That’s how Ukko decided to think about this issue. The little girl had plenty of talent and skill, and he wasn’t so bad himself.

            His golden MAC, now thoroughly dulled by dust and smoke stains, actually made for pretty good camouflage. The dulled gold paint didn’t glimmer and shine and instead blended in neatly with the endless sand and dirt.

            Unfortunately, camouflage on massive metal beasts rarely mattered, and it certainly didn’t matter with Ukko’s plan. He tuned into the normal frequency of The Alley’s troops, “This is Ukko, leader of The Stragglers. We’re currently contracted under The Alley. We demand you identify yourself immediately or we will be forced to engage.” Best to be proper when dealing with these kinds of people, Ukko thought.

            Ukko brought his machine to a stop on a large pile of sand that held a commanding view of the surrounding landscape. It should also mitigate the risk of friendly fire when the Little Admiral starts bringing her big guns to bear. He flipped a few switches that extended stakes from his feet. It wouldn’t do much good in the sand, but it still made aiming a bit easier. He brought his heavy beam rifle up and aimed it into the distance. He scanned the horizon for any sign of dust being kicked up. He would prefer to have this situation handled before getting into close quarters combat.

            “This is a House Keeper. You should have done your job.”

            Ukko started to scan the horizon more intensely now. The sun had set and the little light left made visual confirmation difficult. It was just something you had to deal with when fighting an opponent that was more than half-competent. He had plenty of sensors that he could try to rely on, but the scrambling effects of MACs made them unreliable. “Oh, a House Keeper? It’s quite an honor then. Nice to talk to you. We’re actually doing our job quite well. In fact, I believe we’re just about finished. The issue is that we haven’t been compensated.”

            “The Alley has paid you what they owe you.”

            “So what? You’re telling us to surrender?” A few clicks that came over the radio told Ukko the general direction. The Vice Admiral had good eyes and ears, so Ukko was willing to trust her. He swiveled the core of his unit to the south-west and rerouted his main rifle’s power consumption to one of the canisters on his back. The main generator could run the gun, but it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as it is with the cannisters. This wasn’t an enemy Ukko could go easy on, he had to either go all out or die. He preferred the former over the latter.  

            “Surrender?” The man laughed, though it was a laugh entirely devoid of joy, “They don’t call House Keepers in for negotiations. All you can do now is dig a grave.”

            “How could I dig a grave when I don’t even know your measurements?” Ukko was sweating intensely. The controls were slick in his hands and he kept trying to blink away the salty beads of liquid.

            “Very clever. Now make your peace with your god. It’s your last chance after all.”  

            Just before Ukko was going to give in and blink to revitalize his bone-dry eyes, he saw the telltale sign of a dust cloud that had been kicked up in the distance. He threw a lever with his left hand and used the retinal connection of his machine to guide the rifle on target with his eye.

            It all took less than a second and then Ukko fired. He was quite experienced with using long-range type MACs. He was good at it and, quite frankly, he enjoyed it. It was why he was more than willing to give up an eye for the kind of performance he was now able to pull off.

            Now for the main reason behind the stakes in his MACs feet. Although the beam itself had no recoil, the immediate and violent ejection of the rifle’s heavy barrel could throw off his aim if his machine wasn’t properly anchored. The barrel had to be shot out quickly, otherwise the melting steel cylinder could fuse to the weapon.

            His right arm, which was currently locked into the rifle, had an overly large forearm section that housed the replacement barrels. When connected like this, switching barrels could be done within moments. It had the added bonus of working like a makeshift shield, though that depended on how many barrels were still in the arm. A hollow container wouldn’t do him much good against the weapons caried by MACs.

            For now though, none of that entered Ukko’s mind. As soon as the new barrel was locked in place he flipped the lever that activated the next power canister. The spent one had been ejected and began to melt from the inside like it was supposed to. He only had four more of the canisters counting the one he just activated.

            But, at the risk of wasting the now active canister, Ukko hesitated before firing his follow up shot. His first shot caused an explosion, but it was unusually small almost as if-

            The ground shook and the tremors managed to screw up Ukko’s aiming. It hardly mattered, he now realized he was shooting at some sort of decoy. He refocused his vision toward the main cameras and saw the cause of the quaking. A full salvo of the Vice Admiral had just dug up twelve new craters due south of Ukko’s position.

            There was a clear heat signature in that dust storm.

            Unfortunately, it wasn’t slowing down.