Eliška Medved clung tightly to the control yokes as her stomach churned. The landing craft was pulling a sharp decent to avoid the incoming fire, sending her insides for a loop. The squad was split up between two such transports; Shepard, Barreton and herself in this one, Zelko and Smith in the other. The pair of ships bled their speed, coming to a halt behind a rocky outcrop that denied the turrets line of sight. One after the other, they touched the ground, kicking up clouds of dust in their wake.

"Touchdown! The hatch's open, all units disembark!" the copilot's voice rang from the speakers. The doors on both shuttles swung open with a thump, and a green light flashed above the frame. Eliška pushed her throttle forward, and her Strigoi rolled into the dusty canyon.

It was a remote place, barren of much vegetation or fauna, but these coordinates were home to an illegal frame-fighting ring, under the management of one of Mars's notorious undergangs. The gangs controlled this sector with a tight grip, too tight, but at the same time, too globally insignificant for the local Earth forces to bother wasting the effort to reclaim. That's why the Martian-Jovian ambassador contracted Blayke's Revenants for the job. Although wealthy, the gang syndicate was a mess of loose morals and infighting; anybody would be happy to have the sector rid of it.

"Fall in!" Eliška called. "We're going to follow this canyon to the heart of the fighting station. Those turrets probably have a bead on our last location. Let's get this done and earn our keep. Nothing a few gangbangers can do to keep us down."

As she finished, Eliška pushed her headset to her ear. It sounded like the frame's audibles were picking up something nearby, a truck, maybe? She adjusted the volume, trying to pinpoint the sound and location. When it hit her, she threw her hand back on the stick, and leaned her Strigoi out of cover. It was the foot-wheel rotation of incoming frames.

"Coming in hot, Nine o'clock!" The machines entered radar range and six blips dotted the screen. She could see the dust clouds on her monitor. Eliška peered out from the rock the squad had nestled behind and let a burst of fire from her autocannon soar towards the gangers. "Six bots*; Let 'em have it!"

*Bots - akin to "tango" or "bandit," except when referring to mobile frames.

"Touchdown! The hatch's open, all units disembark!"

"Fall in! We're going to follow this canyon to the heart of the fighting station. Those turrets probably have a bead on our last location. Let's get this done and earn our keep. Nothing a few gangbangers can do to keep us down."

In the wake of Medved's APU-21 Strigoi drifted along the flat-headed S-C03 Aegis owned by Cormag Barreton. The anti-friction thrusters the Combat Mobile Frames all used were able to swiftly carry the machines to battle as if skating upon ice. Good for quick burst maneuvers, but more key precision movements, especially over any sort of hilling or steep terrain, were better offered by an MF's own legs. Barreton's frame in particular was one of the most potentially maneuverable if used properly, but training to attune one's body to these inhumanoid machines were as uncommon and unfavorable as the mechs themselves.

Blatantly disregarding that, Cormag's Aegis sped into battle, the wide base atop the CMF's legs offering a larger swivel over the hips than most other frames. Barreton wasted no time in scoping out the area from behind the pile of boulders used as cover. From the jutting, enclosed cockpit most akin of a helicopter, the intrepid pilot gripped the arm-mounted controllers with refreshed vigor, with a cracked smile spreading across the man's scruffy face. "Damn right, these punks won't down us. What's the best they got, a buncha hand-me-down hunks o' scrap?" Barreton asked rhetorically, the snarl malicious in intent.

A surge of gunfire that aimed to the powder the rock the Aegis stood behind attracted the mercenary's attention. With a rapid lean on the throttles, Barreton rocketed his own frame out of the cover and onwards, drawing the inaccurate fire of several lame autoguns. The Aegis's prompt response was a volley of hard fire from the right-mounted heavy autocannon, 40 35mm rounds-per-second pummeling at the light squad of 6 mechs. Cormag didn't stop until he reached another smaller outcrop of rocks, a scant few moments later. Surely a few of the enemy pilots would find a couple of nasty dents in their Mobile Frames from the firepower slung their way. "Oh, they're gonna get it!" Cormag cried, the adrenaline already pumping his heart faster with the exhilaration of controlling the flathead CMF.

Ryan held onto the straps of his seat as the drop-vehicle plummeted through the thin atmosphere of Mars. Strapped securely into the hold, there was no view of the outside, and only the rattles, bangs and creaks of the vessel as it was pummeled by atmospheric friction to tell what was even going on. It was a very different experience from riding a civilian shuttle - and altogether more terrifying.
His stomach churned as the ship pulled some form of maneuver, and then the thrusters roared, braking the ship for landing. Ryan grabbed the controls, bringing the Gyrfalcon to life. There was a jolt as the ship settled to the ground, and then the hatches swung open. Clamps released, and the radio came to life with Medved's voice.
"Fall in! We're going to follow this canyon to the heart of the fighting station. Those turrets probably have a bead on our last location. Let's get this done and earn our keep. Nothing a few gangbangers can do to keep us down."
"Uh, yes M'am!" he replied hurriedly, and pushed the Frame into motion. Foot wheels sped him down the ramp and onto the dusty Martian regolith, away from the relative security of the drop-shuttle. To the side, the second ship had set down, and his comrades were moving out too, and taking up position.
Forcing his memory into action, he remembered the skills drilled into him; spread out, but not too far. Stay observant and ready, fire if fired upon, or if ordered.
Seeing the others move into cover, he somewhat awkwardly did the same, putting the Frame onto one knee behind an outcropping, and scanning the horizon. The Frames' visor scanned the area, sensors reaching out with electronic fingers to probe the landscape. Moments after Eliska picked up the vibrations, his sensors resolved the same thing: incoming. Then the shooting started.
"Six bots*; Let 'em have it!"
Forcing down the surge of fear in his gullet, he let the logical train of thought take over, and deployed the 50mm cannon from his frames back. Zeroing the sights in on the nearest hostile, he cleared his mind, and pulled the trigger, sending one of the rocket-assisted rounds down range.

Chris sent a quick prayer to Saint Michael, one hand on his chest harness, his other holding the pendant on his dog tags, while not exactly religious; it couldn’t hurt to give some attention to the patron saint of soldiers. Jostling inside the multi-ton monster he tried to ignore the fact that it was packed inside a burning drop ship that, if it failed, would offer all the protection of a baked potato. Finally a much larger jolt alerted him to their landing before the co-pilot jumped on the radio. Finally his CO, or whatever the mercs called them, he didn’t pay attention, called the group to fall in.

Taking a brief account of his gear Chris waited until the ramp was clear, and strode out onto the red dirt, taking a quick look around before lining up in front of eliska.

"Knight, reporting as ordered, Mam. He said, keeping an ear on her, and eyes behind her. Everything checked out, gang of rich assholes thought some back water pilots and mechs made them the law, didn’t bother him to help kick them back down.

"Six bots; Let 'em have it!"

"Engaging enemy frames" mike said as he swiveled right and dropped to one knee, putting a shoulder pauldron between him and the enemy, making the smallest, best armored target available. Betting they couldn’t hit a target while moving, he raised the auto cannon into position, firing one or two round bursts.

Richard took a swing of whiskey from his canteen before he stowed it away in one of the containers in in the cramped cockpit of his suit. He took his other hand of the stick as he used his another hand with a cloth to wipe the sweat off it and his forehead. Richard had been in this type of business for a long time, but every time he still got the shakes before the adrenaline kicked in. He never knew if this could be his last mission and with his wife and ten year old wife at home he couldn't afford to just go off and die, at the same time, these types of jobs paid well so he couldn't afford to quit anymore. Even if he did quit he didn't have any other skills other then pilot his frame.

The transport shuttle shook violently as it dove towards the surface avoiding enemy fire, and just when you thought the violent shaking with off. The shuttle just as violently flared its thrusters to slow the craft down as the doors opened to reveal a barren landscape.

"Fall in!" Eliška called. "We're going to follow this canyon to the heart of the fighting station. Those turrets probably have a bead on our last location. Let's get this done and earn our keep. Nothing a few gangbangers can do to keep us down."

It wasn't long before Eliska called out contacts and Richard quickly and quietly operated his frame to fall into line with the rest of the squad, his frames rear thrusters firing up to propel his machine forward the frame's left arm reaching over and retrieving the two strum faust's located on it's back and firing them off at the approaching frames. Their explosions lighting up the barren landscape.

The combined weight of arms from the mercenaries crashed into the bandit formation, sending one of the frames careening across the sand, now a charred, steaming lump. The dust made it difficult to tell, but it was likely Ryan's warhead was the culprit. The remaining machines split up, two on the right and three to the left. It was a classic pincer move, and Eliška knew they needed to get out of it.

"Scatter!" she blurted. "Don't let 'em box us in." She darted forwards, surging her frame in-between the gap created by the bandits. Without the unit locked in a solid formation, it would be impossible to make a typical flanking move on them.

The Strigoi swivelled on its wheels to face the nearest bots, while it zoomed backwards. With their rears exposed to Eliška's sudden maneuver, a staccato of gunfire erupted from her autocannon, shattering the rear leg armor of the closest frame. The impact knocked the limb out of alignment, forcing the machine to wobble before hitting the sand with a thwump. With that one briefly out of commision , she turned her attention to its partner, who was already turning to exact revenge.

A round glanced her Strigioi's shoulder, leaving a metallic dent at the point of impact. Gritting her teeth, she sped backwards, creating some distance between her and her target. She cast a glance to the rest of the engagement, to see how her squad was faring.

"You holding up?" asked her voice over the comm.

"Scatter! Don't let 'em box us in."

"Got it!" Cormag snapped back in confirmation, thrusting his CMF yet further away from the rocks to outrun the 3-manned split in the enemy. It looked like the other 2 enemy MFs intended to use the rock outcropping as additional cover; a plan surely doomed to fail regardless of their strategy against Blayke's Revenants' far more advanced arms. Drawing attention back to the larger portion of bots on his hands, Cormag twisted the Aegis into a semi-spin to re-face his foes. Again he drummed at their CMFs with the 35 mm 'Shredder', serving to suppress their own fire and peck away at their armor whenever possible.

The pursuit of the bots took its toll, though, when several heavy shells blasted the immediate area. One blast in particular struck the top of the Aegis' flathead platform, a shot that might've decapitated most any other MF. Cormag's cockpit quaked with shellshock and alarms, and as the veteran pilot struggled to retain control of the platform his CMF continued to be pelted by the enemy's autoguns. The pair of machineguns upon the front of the Aegis' platform popped forward, as all of Cormag's rotary weaponry retaliated against the bots, eventually pushing them back.

While the Aegis skidded away again, the bots attempted to redouble their efforts against it and the other Revenants, only to find themselves intercepting heavy fire from behind. Having taken advantage of a brief blind spot the bots made behind them, Cormag attempted to hammer down the enemy's machines with his 40 mm gun, the so-called 'Snipe Cannon'. The extreme-velocity shots threatened to tear though the gang's lesser reinforced armor; one pilot in particular closest to the Aegis found his control system compromised by the heavy fire.

"You holding up?" The Strigoi's pilot asked, and Cormag grunted as he fell back away from the gang's fire, "More or less. Got a big dent that'll need buffing out later." He was, of course, referring to the hot black scar atop the flathead mech.

Chris continued his methodical assault, slightly adjusting his aim to continue hammering the incoming formation of mechs when the split, the head mech stumbling into a burning heap.

"Scatter! Don't let 'em box us in."

Chris' headset yelled causing him to wince a bit. Goading his mech to leap up and begin running he took a second to assess the situation, the majority were sweeping left, and that was good enough for him. Chris cut towards the enemy group, running for a low outcropping, it wasn’t much more than a pile of rubble to knight, but any cover is good cover.

Diving into the dust behind the rocks, Chris silently promising to have knight repainted as he crawled into position. peeping around a boulder, and pausing just long enough to sight in, he sent another barrage down range.

"You holding up?"

his CO asked as Chris switched to his shotgun as one of the enemies came closer, chipping his cover away as it advanced.
"Knight, yes, the rocks, not so much" he growled as he flung knight clear of the debris, and fired the heavy gauge cannon. Flaying the cheap mech ahead of him with tungsten flechettes the size of lag bolts and smiling before knight lurched violently forward.

the smile became a yelp as chris fought the controls, knights left leg was jammed at the hip, and the ground was racing towards his monitor. Chris coughed as he shook off the shock of his mech face-planting onto the martian soil and reflexively rolled knight back to cover with some difficulty, rounds churning the dirt behind him.

“Knight’s hit, still operational…I think.” Leaning to peak behind cover he quickly ducked back as the rock shattered from a slug. “I’ll check when things aren’t trying to kill us”

Richard's frame landed with a loud thump as the earth strained under it's sudden burden. His strum fausts missing their targets but they threw up smoke and dirt and that was enough of a distraction for Richard to land and let off a burst from his frame's autocannon. The three rounds Richard shot off impacted one of the enemy's frames, the rounds penetrating deep with the in the frame and then out the back, one of the rounds went right though the enemy's cockpit, the huge round ripping though the pilot's body.

Suddenly a rocket was fired from somewhere rear of Richard's frame, Richard deftly moved his frame's body and used the shield mounted on his frame's shoulder to block it. The explosive impact rocking Richard inside his cockpit, he swiftly fired up the thrusters and took off again aiming for some cover behind a couple of boulders. Swinging out to shoot another burst from his auto cannon.