MODEL: WESTHAVEN GUARDIAN
Production Date: 3373 – Port Halis Foundry
Rennick paused, his brows knitting as he stared at the scorched ID plate.
"Westhaven Guardian…?" he muttered. "Heavy name for what's essentially a medium-light chassis." He ran a hand over the edge of the cockpit, smudging grease across his knuckles. "I don't remember any mention of a place called Westhaven—either in the Arboreal Protectorate or the novel. But then again, the Protectorate itself wasn't even in the damn book. Guess I can't trust memory from twenty years ago… or incomplete galactic maps."
He sighed and set his scanner aside, tapping at the interface panel below the pilot seat. The mission computer was still present, though barely responsive. After tinkering with the wiring—rerouting burned connections and replacing a few melted caps—he coaxed it into booting up. The interface flickered to life with a low hum and a dim status light.
"Alright… let's see if you've got anything worth keeping."
He navigated to the data logs. Most were corrupted beyond recovery or had been manually wiped—maybe to hide something, or maybe just a casualty of the power core meltdown. Still, a handful of partial files remained.
"Better than nothing," he muttered, opening a video log.
The feed began in a hangar bay, the kind built into prefab military bunkers—barebones, functional, battered. The camera shifted to combat footage, the Westhaven Guardian moving through a skirmish on a dusty, barren world. Its allies—mechs of similar generation—were patched-up, jury-rigged machines barely holding together. In contrast, their enemies looked sleeker, newer. Better tech, better coordination.
Rennick leaned closer, his eyes scanning both the battle footage and the real-time telemetry overlaid beside it. Despite the mech's age and clear design limitations, it handled well—power draw, temperature regulation, actuator stress—all within acceptable combat thresholds.
So, it wasn't trash… not originally, Rennick thought. Whoever maintained it before this fight knew what they were doing, even if the frame's outdated now.
The footage ended with a static flicker.
Right then, the workshop door creaked open.
"Boss, food's here!" Jean called, holding a large paper bag in one hand and a drink in the other.
He handed over a warm tray and flopped down next to Rennick, already shovelling rice and grilled fish into his mouth.
"Mm, damn, that hits the spot," Jean said between mouthfuls. His eyes drifted to the glowing screen. "Whoa. Did you recover something?"
Before Rennick could respond, Jean was halfway inside the cockpit, craning his neck to see the feed.
Hey, there's only room for one in here—and don't talk with your mouth full," Rennick grunted, pushing Jean back out of the cockpit.
"But I wanna watch too!" Jean protested, gulping down his food as he staggered backward.
"I'm not stopping you," Rennick said with an exasperated sigh, reaching under the console. "Just let me pull the hard drive and plug it into the terminal first."
He extracted the data core from the mech's mission computer and carried it to the workshop's central terminal, slotting it into place. A few lines of old code scrolled across the screen as the system decrypted what little data remained.
The next video file loaded.
The footage played similarly to the first—same battlefield, same desperate defense. But this time, the allied mechs were in worse shape. Armor plating was missing, exposed internals sparked, and movement was slower, more erratic.
Rennick dropped onto the couch beside Jean, both of them watching silently as the Westhaven Guardian moved through the chaos. It wasn't the fastest or strongest unit on the field, but its shield placement was precise—intercepting enemy fire aimed at more vulnerable allies. The mech from position to position, blocking beams, kinetic slugs, even rocket salvos.
And then—
A brilliant lance of white-hot energy cut through the battlefield.
The Guardian raised its shield, but the laser punched straight through it, melting a ragged hole before hitting the mech squarely in the chest. The camera feed fuzzed with static for a moment as the impact overloaded nearby systems, but the recording continued.
"Woah!" Jean sat upright, mouth half-open with a bite still hovering on his fork. "Did you see that? That mech melted the shield like it was paper! What the hell is that thing?"
The enemy mech that fired the shot came into view—sleek, elegant lines wrapped around a high-performance frame. Twin thruster arrays pulsed on its back, keeping it aloft in short hops. Its primary weapon was a long-barrelled laser rifle glowing faintly from recent discharge.
Unlike the patched-together mechs around it, this one looked like it rolled straight off a military showroom.
"That's a current-generation machine," Rennick said, leaning forward. His eyes scanned the mech's profile, noting the aerodynamics, weapon ports, and manoeuvring patterns. "And from the looks of it... top-shelf military spec. Not something you'd find in the Protectorate. Not unless someone paid through the nose."
"Damn," Jean muttered. "If that thing was what tore through the Guardian, it's a miracle this wreck still had parts left."
The video ended with the allied mechs hastily retreating under heavy fire, several collapsing mid-withdrawal as beams and slugs tore through their battered frames. Just as the screen dimmed, the next recording auto-started—and this time, something was off from the very beginning.
Telemetry data appeared in new columns. Alongside the usual subsystem readings, it was now displaying heat levels and charge status for a laser rifle. Both Rennick and Jean leaned forward, frowning at the unexpected data.
"Wait… a laser rifle?" Jean muttered. "Why the hell would they mount a long-range laser on a defensive mech like the Guardian? That's just asking for overload."
Rennick said nothing, but his thoughts mirrored Jean's. A knight-class chassis like the Westhaven wasn't built for precision sniping or energy-intensive long-range combat. It was designed to absorb hits, hold lines, and protect allies—not to trade shots from afar.
Then the video panned wide, revealing the brutal context.
The allied mechs were nearly all crippled—patched together with scrap, missing limbs, scorched plating. Some barely moved. Among them, the Westhaven Guardian stood tall… and crucially, it was the only one big enough to hold the heavy long rifle. Its arms had been hastily reinforced, the rifle mounted along its shoulder and spine, complete with a makeshift coolant line rigged into the torso.
"Looks like a last stand," Rennick said quietly, pausing to chew and swallow a mouthful of grilled fish and rice. "And that rifle—it's not standard-issue. They must've salvaged or jerry-rigged something close to enemy tech."
The footage confirmed it.
The Westhaven opened fire. The recoil pushed its stance back slightly with each shot, and the laser beam lanced across the battlefield—clean, focused, deadly. Stray shots from its beam swept into enemy units, doing almost as much damage as the shots from that earlier enemy rifleman mech.
Jean whistled low. "They somehow matched the enemy's firepower with this thing? That's insane."
Rennick nodded, eyes glued to the telemetry. He could see the reactor pushing well past recommended thresholds, coolant systems working overtime. Subsystems began redlining one by one.
But the tide turned. Allied forces surged forward, emboldened by the Guardian's suppressive fire. Pilots' cheers echoed faintly through the comms. For a moment, it seemed the line might hold.
Then everything fell apart.
The enemy rifleman mech—dark blue and black, hovering smoothly across the field—re-entered the scene. In seconds, it targeted and disabled three allied mechs with clinical efficiency. Laser beams carved through armor like it was paper, melting cockpits and severing limbs in precise bursts.
The Westhaven Guardian, now overheating, braced itself and overcharged its own rifle. The energy buildup was massive—the telemetry went wild with warning codes. It fired.
The beam ripped across the sky, bright as a solar flare. But the enemy mech dodged effortlessly.
Its response was immediate. One clean shot.
The Guardian's rifle exploded. A second shot vaporized its left leg. The heat spike overloaded the mech's remaining systems. Reactor containment breached. The last frames of the video showed coolant vents spewing steam as the cockpit lights flickered and the screen fizzled to black.
Silence lingered in the workshop, broken only by the faint hum of the terminal fans.
Jean finally spoke, voice lower than usual. "I gotta hand it to that pilot. Turning a shield-focused knight into a sniper platform without aiming assistance? That takes real guts… and insane skill."
Rennick gave a small nod, eyes still on the screen. "That's the best piloting I've seen in the Arboreal Protectorate. Bar none. At least until now."