The short-burst message crackled across Alroy's battle comp, and he swore under his breath. Anything packing twin gauss rifles wasn't a fight even he wanted to stick his nose into - but Erich was his friend in addition to being their lance leader, and this was the situation Tanya had been built for. Sure, it was back in the days of the Star League, but things hadn't changed that much.<br/><br/>Jerking the throttles around sharply, he peeled away from the impromptu formation of Varyag and Kismet, bursting off a message to them both as he piled on speed. "Kismet, you're alone on babysitting duty. Get our ugly duckling out of here intact, I'm going to pull Brick's irons out of the fire." A King Crab could maintain 50+ km/hr in a full-out run, and Alroy got close to that as he ducked and weaved through the tangled maze of warehouses and research laboratories. Only his decades of experience handling his Crab's chassis kept him on his feet, and even then there were a few close calls. At one point, he came across a Cataphract separated from its lance and wandering around alone...100 tons at full speed met 70 tons at a walk, leaving the Heavy 'mech and half a dozen tons of Assault armor on the ground without even slowing down. By the time the Capellan pilot had recovered from the impact, Alroy was already gone, zeroing in on Erich's transmission coordinates even as his sensors fogged over in an ECM-induced haze.<br/><br/>Employing an old trick, he muted the battle comp and boosted external speaker gain to maximum, listening for pounding footsteps that weren't his own and veering to meet them. Skidding around another warehouse corner, he found the Pillager menacing Erich's savaged Awesome, both of them exhibiting severe leg damage.<br/><br/>"Hey, ugly! Get picked on by someone your own size for a change!" His paired autocannons howled again, unloading fury at the Pillager. One burst went entirely wide as he struggled to keep from overbalancing, and the second clipped Godot's left arm. A lucky hit with his large laser fried one of the enemy mech's medium lasers, even as heat alarms shrieked warnings at him.