Stuttgart, May 1947

Brutal deceleration, eight gees of it, blacked him out for a moment. The smack and whine of incoming rounds hammering off his Linebacker’s torso plating brought him back around.

Two o’clock low. High calibre. Rapid-fire.

That meant an autocannon, and that meant he’d landed right in the thick of it, right in the shit. That meant he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Second Lieutenant John Carroll grunted, twisted in his restraint straps, and yanked the canopy cover release lever. With a bang, explosive charges blew the armoured shield over his windscreen clear, and light flooded into the cockpit. Harsh searchlight beams, shot through with tracers and the crackling fulguration of Tesla guns in the distance, made him blink, and he dropped his gaze into the familiar scan of the instrument panel.

Gyros – steady. Hydro and lube-oil pressure – green. Canopy latched and secure, engine temps good, limb power showing all four lights green and holding. Weapons powered up and feeding clear. Time to go to work.

Thirty yards away, in the next street over, his wingman – Sergeant Eric ‘Swede’ Arvidsson – was already calling out over the radio.

“Two spiders, two o’clock, one hundred yards! My A/Cs are up, another ten seconds on the Tesla.”

“Heard, Swede!” Carroll called back, hands and feet dancing over the controls.

His Linebacker, all thirty tons of it, took a half-step out of the shallow impact crater its arrival had dug. Nearby, a machine gun team opened up from the cover of a burned-out tenement, stitching a line of fire up the walker’s leg. Carroll grunted in annoyance, and swung his mech’s left arm towards the source of the incoming rounds.

“Nice try” he snarled, unleashing a pair of rockets from his arm-mounted bazookas. The projectiles screamed across the ruined town square, twin columns of smoke connecting the Linebacker with the building, and explosions flared, bringing the shattered structure down in a blinding cloud of dust. That shut the machine gun up.

Still taking incoming. Where’s that damn cannon?

“Talk to me, Swede!” he bellowed into the radio, swivelling the Linebacker’s torso in a wide arc and thumbing the chin-gun trigger. Thirty-cal rounds sparked off the brickwork as he worked his defensive fire in a clearing sweep. Axis soldiers, anonymous in their greatcoats and gas-masks, dived for cover or twitched and died under the barrage. “Gimme word on those spiders – I think I’ve dropped in on a flak nest.”

There was a long pause. Carroll swore into his mask. “Arvidsson! I need your eyes here!” More autocannon rounds banged and bounced around him. The Linebacker’s reinforced torso armour took the worst of it, but Carroll knew it would only take one lucky shot to bring him down. His canopy’s armoured glass was rated against fifty-cal fire, but the heavier Axis shells could punch right through like it wasn’t there. One hit square to the front pane would see him hosed out of his cockpit. He’d seen it happen before, back in France, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Arvidsson’s voice betrayed the strain the mech pilot was under. “Shit, boss, I think there’s three of them! Make that THREE spiders, in close!”

“You don’t say,” muttered Carroll, switching his attention to his instruments and powering the Linebacker out of the crater. Servos screamed as the walker took three heavy steps forwards, shrapnel pinging off its armour plating. He knew the Axis walker was close, hiding in the smoke and dust. He’d killed enough of them back west to recognise their tactics – ambush, flank, strike-and-fade. Silently, he gave thanks that he hadn’t seen the soundless flash of one of their new gravity weapons.

Carroll’s sensors were unhelpful at best. The violence of his landing and opening salvo had clouded the air with dust and heat-bloom. He loosed a hopeful burst of machine gun fire into the murk, and was rewarded with a shower of sparks as the rounds hit something metallic. Autocannon fire screamed back at him, going high and wide to his left. He grinned – target acquired. This was what he had trained for, back in Montana. Close quarters, mech on mech, swinging away. The Tesla cannon that formed the Linebacker’s right fist came up, throbbing with energy. Carroll’s eyes hunted for the enemy walker.

Show me where you are, you sonofabitch. Give me something to zap.

Arvidsson’s scream interrupted his thoughts, rendered tinny over the radio despite his proximity.

“FOUR! Four of ‘em! They’re all ‘round me! Jesus Christ this is bad, where are the goddamn Fireflies? I need – ”

The transmission cut out with an electronic squeal. Carroll knew what that meant. If Swede was lucky, he’d caught a quick one through the canopy. If not… he’d heard enough stories about what the Axis did to captured ‘jumpers’. He swore again under his breath. Nothing he could do for Arvidsson now. Four-on-one was bad odds, even for a Linebacker, and he knew he needed to jump clear, get back to the infantry and warn them what they were walking into. First, though, there was a mech to his front that needed dealing with. Tesla cannon forwards, he pushed his Linebacker into a loping run.

Come on then, you bastard. I outweigh you two-to-one. Your friends are thirty seconds away.  Let’s dance.

Konflikt '47 Starter Set Cover Art, by Stef Kopinski

Will Lieutenant Carroll survive, or will he meet the same fate as Swede? It’s a mystery, for now… What’s not a mystery is that Konflikt ’47 pre-orders are now live! Get ready to enter the maelstrom of this horrifying new war, where the only victory lies in total destruction.

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