Hartford Gardens
The Reaches
Solaris VII
Lyran Commonwealth
10 January, 3053




     Faith had gone over the systems in the Phoenix Hawk twice. Everything seemed in perfect order. She even deviated from her normal tendency to abbreviate the startup sequence, and went through things totally by the book. Everything looked solid. She couldn't help but shake the sense of uneasiness in the back of her mind, however.

     She had no particular reason to trust Paige Townsend, the reporter who had brought her the warning that something was up. Then again, she had no reason to doubt her either. Paige was a small time reporter for a small time print news outlet on Solaris. For whatever reason, she had taken a dogged interest in Faith's story upon her return to the gaming world, but Faith supposed that Solaris must be littered with thousands of reporters looking for the break of a lifetime to jump start their career to bigger and better things in the highly competitive news market.

     Faith flipped on her comms in time to hear the tail end of the stadium announcer's introduction of the two combatants. Her opponent for the night was one Malcolm Strader. She had studied his recent fights, and he was small time. She knew that she could handle him, in spite of the fact that her 3S-Phoenix Hawk gave up five tons to Strader's 4R-Enforcer.

     Her board lit up green, and the gamemaster's green light followed a second later. She strode her mech out confidently into the lush green of Hartford Gardens. The Reaches arena was fairly small, and so combat would be joined relatively quickly. The terrain alternated between light trees and stretches of green open terrain. The only real cover came from a series of walls high enough to hide a mech, but generally not long enough to provide lasting cover.

     Strader was a cautious fighter. Combined with the lower top speed of his Enforcer, she was confident he would not push things too aggressively. That would be her edge. She had a significant speed edge over him, even without engaging the mechs MASC system, and her jump jets could launch her 45 ton mech 60 meters further in a jump than Strader's own.

     She pushed her mech into a run, quickly pushing past the shallow lake in the center of the arena, and bringing her mech to a halt behind one of the massive concrete walls. She flipped her sensors over to passive mode, and flicked the switch to activate the sensitive seismic sensors located in her mech's feet. Then she waited.

     She did not have long to wait. In under a minute, the telltale sign of mech footfalls pinged her sensors. Strader was approaching cautiously, moving through the light woods on the other side of the wall. With her sensors on passive, and her mech motionless, she could get the slip on him.

     As he reached the edge of the woods, he increased his speed slightly, taking him along the wall on the opposite side from her waiting mech. Just a few steps further..... When the pings of his mech's steps mad him right where she wanted him, she hit her jump jets and vaulted over the wall.

     She landed in a perfect position, raising her mech from it's crouch 50 meters from Strader's Enforcer, flipped her sensors to active, and dropped her crosshairs onto the tempting target of his weak rear armor. The cross-hairs pulsed gold with a lock, and she hit her main trigger to fire an alpha strike into the hapless enemy mech.

     Nothing happened. She glanced at her readouts again, everything showing green still. She hit the trigger again, then her secondary trigger. Nothing. By now, Strader had spun himself around, rather clumsily, and fired a burst from his class 10 autocannon. The shells found their mark, rocking Faith's Phoenix Hawk. He swung his large laser into line and carved a line of damage into the torso of her mech.

     Whatever had happened, her weapons weren't working. At this rate, she was not going to last long against Strader. Hurriedly, she slammed the throttle forward and closed the gap between the two mechs before Strader could think to trigger his jets. She slammed her mech's shoulder squarely into the larger machine, sending it toppling towards the ground. As soon as she had cleared the falling enemy, she hit her jump jets, sending her mech sailing over the wall and coming down in the meager cover of a stand of trees.

     Shit is going south fast. I hate to dump the ammo, but it's only a liability to me now. She hit the release on the ammo bins for her machine guns and anti-missile system, and the ammo jettisoned with a clunk. If I'm going to win this fight, it's going to have to be the old fashioned way.

     She spent the next to minutes dodging fire from Strader. He was keeping his autocannon fire to a minimum, husbanding his precious ammo for a better shot. The large laser struck home several times, but mostly be was keeping her at bay. If she could not get close to his mech, she had no chance.

     If lady luck had been laughing at her until now, she suddenly changed her mind and began to smile on Faith. As Strader moved slowly to reposition himself for a better shot, smoke and flame engulfed his mech's right leg. He had struck a mine, several of which were randomly seeded around the arena grounds by the arena staff. It caught him off guard, sending his mech falling to the ground once more.

     Faith pounced at her chance, hit the MASC activation circuit, and sprinted her mech full speed toward the prone mech. It's pilot struggled to get the 50 ton machine to it's feet, and had almost succeeded in doing so when Faith's mech smashed full speed into it, sending both mechs falling to thr ground and tossing Faith hard against her harness. The Enforcer landed on it's back, with Faith's Phoenix Hawk on top of it.

     Acting quickly, she managed to bring her mech to it's knees and proceeded to club the enforcer repeatedly with her now useless arm mounted large pulse laser. It took several blows, but finally one struck home on the mech's head, splitting the cockpit like an egg and smashing Strader into unconsciousness.