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Abandoned Neodymium Mine
Eunsan Mountain Range
250 Kilometers Southwest of Balya Gora
March 23rd, 3030
The cavernous expanse of the mine's main chamber had bustled with activity for the past seven days, the few dozen remaining members of Gawain's Green Knights in constant motion as they converted the place into their makeshift headquarters and hideout. The technicians and their teams of AsTechs had been hard at work making repairs, stripping down parts from one machine to make use of them on another, performing what maintenance they could with the tools they had on them to keep the 'Mechs and vehicles up and running. Now, for the first time in days, there was nothing to do but wait until the Knights returned from their mission.
In those hours of stillness, the men had come to realize just how thin their morale was stretched. Rations were running low, water was getting more scarce, and the techs were expected to work miracles with equipment that wasn't much better than what could be found in a civilian's garage. Many of them had worked out their frustrations in the Scrap Yard the previous night- and had the bruises and fat lips to prove it- but their weariness gave way to a general malaise that sunk over the crews as they lazed in the largely empty motor pool and 'Mech bays.
While things were still, it would be wrong to say it was quiet. Echoing off the cave walls, the sound of a crude guitar made from an ammunition box and a few used strands of myomer twanged out the strains of an ancient Terran folk song. Picking away at the string-box was a wiry old man with a scraggly white beard, his skin chestnut brown from years under the suns of various worlds, his eyes obscured by a tarnished old pair of mirrored shades. The cigar tucked into the corner of his mouth was burned down to a bare stub, but despite never seeming to take a puff, he kept the cherry lit and glowing.
The old man, whom everyone just called "Pops," had only joined up with the Green Knights three years ago as Wrathchild's Mechtech, but it felt like he'd been there all along. Everybody knew Pops, and yet nobody seemed to know anything about him. According to some stories, he was a Taurian salvager on the run since the infamous Tripitz Affair. Other accounts had him as one of the original Waco Rangers. Depending on who you asked, Pops had served in the court of the First Prince of House Davion, lost two fingers in a duel with a DEST ninja, and been a former lover of "Lady Death" Paula Trevaline. Of course, most suspected that a good many of these stories had been spread around by Pops himself. He was always good for a tall tale, a strong drink from his still, a few dirty jokes, and a song.
"I'm so boooooored!" the high, somewhat nasally voice of a young girl cut into the old man's playing. "Play a happy song, Pops, this one's too slow!"
Pops raised an eyebrow and glanced at Sunshine "Sunny" von Kemp, the ten-year-old sister of Lena "Wrathchild" von Kemp, whose Wolverine had gone up in smoke and flames on the day of the coup. Hundreds of klicks away, her younger brother Diego was being held with the other civilians in some prison camp by the NPDRE. And yet to Sunny, this whole disaster was like a long camping trip.
"Happy songs are for happy times, young'un," Pops said, not missing a note as his fingers worked the frets from muscle memory. "Once the Colonel and the Knights are back with the food an' the water an' everything else, there'll be plenty to celebrate. If we celebrate before that, it'll jinx it."
"Does it have to be all this old stuff, though?" she complained. "Can't you play some Ded Mek or something?"
Pops chuckled. Ded Mek was an electronic punk band out of the new St. Ives Compact, which had been mostly cranking out vitriolic anti-Capellan protest songs. Lena had bought Sunny one of their albums as a souvenir during their last deployment, and Sunny listened to it non-stop for nearly a month before Pops 'accidentally' lost the batteries to her stereo. The girl didn't get any of the political messages; she'd thought that their big hit "Dear Romano" was a happy love song to a nice girl they liked, rather than an ironic hatchet-job against the Liao Chancellor and her crimes against humanity. Sunny just liked the energetic beats.
"Afraid I only know the old stuff," Pops grinned.
"That's because you are old stuff," Sunny joked, and the two shared a laugh.
Pops played another verse while Sunny listened, and after a while, she piped up again.
"Hey, Pops?"
"What is it, hon?"
"...I'm hungry."
While his hands continued to play, the expression on Pops' face struggled to keep its composure.
"We're all hungry, hun'," he said. "Just gotta hold out a little longer, 'til the Colonel gets back."
"...okay," the young girl said, pouting a bit.
To lighten the mood a bit, Pops asked, "So what's the first thing you wanna eat when the food gets here?"
"Oooooh," Sunny's eyes grew wide. "I want some lo mein noodles! Or some strawberry ice cream! Or--ooh! A Triple-F Burger, with all the toppings! But no pickles. I don't like pickles. And then some of Lena's hot chili and--"
At the mention of her sister, Pops' fingers slipped on the frets and he hit a sour note. The old man looked away.
"Whatever, she's coming back," Sunny said, arms crossed. "Anyway, what are you gonna eat when the food is here?"
Pops sighed. "I'd fight my way through the entire DCMS right now for a good juicy steak. Real beef, I mean, not one o' them "Meat Tree" fruits they ship outta Marlowe's Rift. A big thick ribeye, cooked juuust right, not a shade over medium-rare, with a side of Corridani tubers and greens...that'd do just fine. Right now, though, I'd be happy with just a can of hash and some coffee."
Sunny rolled her eyes. Grown-ups always wanted the most boring things to eat.
From farther up the mines came the rumbling of engines and the thundering steps of titanic feet, and the techs in the cavern began to spring to life.
"Look alive, folks!" Deck Chief Solomon Aadil called out. "Green Knights inbound!"
"Well, looks like the break is over," Pops said, putting the guitar away and reaching into his pockets for a pair of earplugs. "Get your earmuffs on, kiddo."
Sunny nodded and pulled the too-big pair of noise-canceling earmuffs from around her neck to over her ears. The noise from a Lance of Battlemechs and a fleet of trucks in an enclosed area was going to be a hell of a racket, and Pops wanted to make sure the girl wasn't going to go deaf from it.
Sure enough, over the next few minutes, the cavern echoed with a riotous din. The convoy of trucks were the first to enter the chamber, and they had barely rolled to a stop before Sol's crew had begun to unload their precious cargo. Pops couldn't help but notice that there were two fewer than there should have been.
The Mobile HQ was next, parking itself in a corner out of the way.
Finally, the five Battlemechs, the three APCs, and the heavy Von Luckner tank thundered into the mine, each bearing the scars of combat across their armor. Pops took a look at the Raven and Ostroc, and let out a low whistle.
"Looks like the boys an' me are gonna have a loooong couple o' nights gettin' those fixed back up," he muttered, more to himself than to Sunny, who followed him about for want of anything to do.
Several minutes passed as the trucks were unloaded and the Mechwarriors climbed out of their machines. After a quick word with the Colonel, Doc Yuri and one of her assistant MedTechs hurried to the Raven, climbing up the gantry to tend to the pilot inside.
"Keep the Raven online until I say so!" Colonel Wayne shouted over the noise. "I want the ECM field up while Sol's crew checks every square centimeter of these trucks to make sure they're not bugged!"
Pops raised an eyebrow at that. That sort of thing was usually reserved for either the most elite of special forces, or the bad guys in a cheap holo-vid. If the Colonel was being this cautious, something must've really gotten under his skin.
"You heard the man!" Chief Aadil backed the Colonel up. "Check for anything, I mean any-damn-thing- out of the ordinary. You find so much as a screw out of place, I wanna know about it! Now get it done, people!"
There were a few groans mixed in with the yes-sirs, which were quickly met with a harsh glare and an unspoken promise that the Chief was going to call out a few names in the Scrap Yard that night.
After a while, the initial chaos settled into routine, and the Colonel gave out another general address.
"Mechwarriors, transmit your BattleROM footage to the HQ. I want to go over the data and determine how things went down. Debriefing in sixty minutes.
"Chief Aadil, I want a full inventory of what we've got from this mission on my desk before debrief. I know we're all hungry, and we're all thirsty, and we're all ready to enjoy the spoils of victory. But first, we need to know how much we have and how long we can make it last. Now that the Espian Guard and the Crimson Fists have been hit once, they're not going to make it easy for us to hit them again.
"Lastly, if anyone has or knows where to find the personal effects of the following people, bring them to me. AsTech Kyla Moore. MedTech Jimmy Okada. MechTech Eduardo Garcia. Engineer Mustafa Rasheed."
There were a few sad mutterings at the mention of the four volunteers who were killed in the fight.
"We'll mourn the ones we lost when we have the luxury of time to do so," the Colonel stated. "Until then, the mission remains. Vivere est mori."
"Vivere est mori!" Sergeant Dalton roared, the rest of the Buckshot Boys joining in unison.
"Vivere est mori," Chief Aadil said solemnly, a handful of techs echoing his voice.
"Shit," Pops cursed as he worked. "I liked those kids. Garcia was probably the worst hand I've ever seen with an arc-welder, but damned if he didn't know how to work with myomer. And Rasheed still owed me fifty C-Bills from the last card night."
"What was that thing everyone just said?" Sunny asked, carrying a clipboard and making a tally-mark for every drum of water Pops helped unload from the truck. This simple bit of inventory was the most useful thing the ten-year-old could do, and she was happy to finally be helping.
"It's some old Terran saying," Pops answered. "Means 'to live is to die.'"
"That doesn't make any sense," the girl said with a frown.
"It'll make sense when you're older," the old man said.
"And why does the Colonel want their personal effects?" Sunny asked.
"For the Memorial Hall," Pops explained. "Back on the Clover, on deck twelve. Not everybody comes back from a job, hon'. So we keep their memories alive by keeping something that was special to them. A lucky watch, a favorite wrench, a picture from back home. In Garcia's case, I'm gonna turn in that Hachiman camcorder he kept making vids on."
"I've got Lena's bear," Sunny mentioned, "But we're going to hold onto that for when she gets back."
"....yeah," Pops said, not looking the girl in the eye as he agreed. "For when she gets back."
The OOC section has been updated to include a blurb about the dice mechanics. TL;DR, we're using dice, but don't freak out, it's chill. The GMs are doing all of the rolling and math stuff under the hood; the players themselves can continue to play as normal.
KRA-KOOOMM!
Thunder cracked overhead as the sullen gray skies of early morning gave way to a wall of thick black storm clouds. The weather system rolling in from the eastern coast of the continent had been even more severe than the forecasts had predicted, and an enormous cell of brutal thunderstorms blanketed the land for dozens of kilometers. Thick, blinding sheets of hard salt rain pulverized the ground, and gale-force winds of over 90 kph threw debris along. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught out in this dreadful mess risked being knocked off his feet by the wind, beaten into the ground by the stinging rain, or electrocuted by the arcs of blue-white lightning that danced through the clouds and struck the ground.
"How's it looking?" Colonel Wayne asked as the Mobile HQ plowed into the storm, its massive oversized wheels digging deep ruts into the mud. With Alley Cat's ECM field countered by the enemy Raven, the Colonel could at least monitor the Knights' status as the battle continued.
"Not much damage on Family Man, Desperado, or Giggles," Lieutenant Lyons reported as the Mechs' diagnostic computers fed information wirelessly back to the Mobile HQ. "Alley Cat isn't going to survive another salvo like that, though, and Ramrod's lost an awful lot of armor."
"And Family Man sounds like he's losing it," Cadet Higgins added. "Are we sure we want someone like that piloting a 'Mech?"
The Colonel didn't answer. Rivers was one of the first people Gaius had hired when he founded the Green Knights. He'd always handled himself as a professional in the past, not the type for that kind of outburst. Then again, he'd never had his wife and kid in enemy hands before. Under normal circumstances, after seeing something like that, he'd pull Rivers off the line, and not let him anywhere near the cockpit of a Battlemech until Dr. Nakajima had given him a full psych evaluation. But these weren't normal circumstances; he had to work with what he had left.
He just needed Rivers and the rest of the Green Knights to hold it together long enough to make it home. Then he and the doc would have a long talk with him.
"How's the storm?"
"Getting worse, sir,", Cadet Windham answered, his monitor showing a bright red splotch over the map of the region. "Visibility is going to be near zero before much longer."
The Colonel nodded. Targeting with the naked eye was difficult enough in heavy rain, but even advanced technology would be of little use. Water droplets in the air absorbed infrared radiation, reducing the range of thermal imagery. The hard impacts of the rain kicked up a thick fog as well, reducing the range even further. Under normal conditions, the thermal radiation from a Battlemech reactor shined like a beacon to IR scanners, but if they kept their speed low and didn't fire off their weapons, the enemy would struggle finding them without being right on top of them.
"Almost time to give them the slip," he said. "On my order, one last burst transmission, then we go into silent running."
"Yes, sir."
Meanwhile, the melee between Gawain's Green Knights and the Crimson Fists had become a cacophony of explosions and twisting metal. After nearly losing Alley Cat to the Longbow's opening fusillade, the Knights had turned the battle to their favor by concentrating fire first on the enemy Raven.
A salvo of long-range missiles from Giggles' Archer obliterated armor off of the smaller 'Mech's limbs, the incoming warheads smashing its left arm into useless scrap. As the Raven staggered from the impact, it caught two shoulder-fired Inferno rockets from Sgt. Dalton's infantry, the superheated gel bathing the avian 'Mech's torso in fire even in the pouring rain. Myomer muscles seized up and servos groaned in protest from the sudden buildup of heat, slowing the Raven down considerably. This gave Alley Cat an opening to return fire, with her own medium lasers and short-range missiles punching into the Raven's torso. A sickly green cloud of smoke signified the 'Mech's gyroscopic stabilizer had been hit, and the Raven's legs seemed to turn to rubber, the pilot desperately fighting against the machine's mass in a futile attempt to keep it upright.
The Raven lurched forward, and suddenly the 'Mech's head section blew open. Blasting out from a hatch on top, the Raven's Mechwarrior shot skyward on a streak of white flame and smoke, the ejection pod ostensibly protecting the pilot from the elements, at least for a while. Once the pod's parachute opened, however, it caught the buffeting winds, which swept the pod and the unfortunate pilot off to gods-know-where.
The smoking, mangled remains of the Raven splashed down into the mud, its internal components still intact enough to salvage. Assuming, that is, that the survivors would be able to claim it.
Meanwhile, Family Man's Shadow Hawk attempted to bring its fists down onto the smaller Wolfhound. The enemy pilot bobbed and weaved enough to keep the 55-tonner's fists from connecting with its head, but the Wolfhound still caught a pair of crushing blows to the torso before it managed to wrest itself free. Given that it wasn't capable of keeping up with the Shadow Hawk in a brawl, the Wolfhound pilot put some distance between itself and the bigger 'Mech, then opened fire with its medium lasers. While one went wide and set a tree alight like a torch, the other two caught the Shadow Hawk in the legs, carving off rents of armor as the Wolfhound hoped to hamstring Family Man's machine.
It would not get a chance to continue this assault, however, as a massive shell from the Von Luckner's autocannon slammed into the Wolfhound's left leg, the single shot shattering the armor and mangling the limb into a twisted mess. Barely enough of the leg's structure remained to keep the Wolfhound standing, and as the two larger opponents bore down on it, the Wolfhound began to withdraw.
Merry-Go-Round then turned its attention to the enemy Jenner, who continued to harass Ramrod with another laser slashing into her Ostroc's left arm. The heavy battle tank let fly with its trio of short-range missile launchers, covering the Jenner in a maelstrom of high explosives. Over a dozen of the missiles hit home, ripping the entire left side of the light 'Mech away and leaving only a few pockmarked scraps of armor on its center. As the Jenner reeled from the sudden burst of intense violence, it was struck again, this time by the lasers of Desperado's Phoenix Hawk. The 45-tonner's large laser scorched the Jenner's right leg, while the medium punched through the last of its center armor, frying one of its Jump Jets in the process.
Crippled by the immense damage, the pilot of the Jenner also broke away, joining the Wolfhound in retreat.
"Impressive, Green Knights," the Longbow pilot who called herself the Fire Witch bellowed over open comms. "You have managed to draw first blood today, but that small victory is the only one you will find on this field. And even this small victory you will find to be tainted."
Raising the huge, cylindrical launcher tubes to an upward trajectory, the Longbow once again let fly with a massive salvo of long-range missiles. And again, the swarms of missiles split in the air and came down on multiple targets.
The first flight smashed into the Von Luckner, warheads crushing into its front and side. While the tank's armor held, two of the warheads had smashed into Merry-Go-Round's treads, snapping off one of the return rollers and dislocating the front drive wheel. This would make the tank significantly harder to control, especially in miserable terrain like this. If the Green Knights and Crimson Fists continued the fight, Merry-Go-Round would be a sitting duck.
The second flight bore down on Alley Cat's Raven, but as he had intended to protect Ziska from further damage, Desperado lunged his Phoenix Hawk into the way, taking damage across the arm and torso.
The third flight of missiles was intended for more precious cargo: one of the water trucks. However, without the Raven to guide the missiles, splitting fire between multiple targets became that much harder for the Longbow, and the flight of LRMs sailed overhead, blasting apart a thicket of trees a hundred meters away.
The fourth flight, however, found its mark on one of the ammunition trucks. The resulting explosion was forceful enough that it titled the closest truck by it onto two wheels, nearly knocking it onto its side. For a few seconds, the secondary crackles and pops of munitions filled the sky with noise and light like fireworks. It would be almost festive, if not for the fact that the two people inside the truck had died, and the Knights had just lost several tons of warheads and autocannon shells they would need for future battles.
"Green Knights, this Gawain Actual," Colonel Wayne's voice crackled over the Knights' secure comms channel. "Cover the convoy and withdraw into the storm, lose them in the rain. You're not here to win the fight, you're here to complete the job. Going dark-- see you back at HQ."
The Raven piloted by the Crimson Fists staggered under the withering hail of fire from three of the Green Knights. Alley Cat's short-range missiles had opened up the internal structure across the small bird-like 'Mech's back, and while the TAG Laser and one of the Medium Lasers had missed the mark, the Narc Missile Beacon remained, which would help guide more missiles from the Green Knights to their target. After that, Family Man's attempt to fire into the 'Mech's head went low, but still gouged molten armor from the Mech's beak-like torso. Half of Giggles's barrage of laser fire connected, gouging into the armor on the right side of the torso and digging into the right arm. Finally, Desperado's Medium Laser was off by centimeters from tagging the enemy Raven's right arm, but the Large Laser struck home, melting away the armor on the 'Mech's arm and slicing into bundles of myomer fibers before the limb snapped off completely. Only through sheer concentrated effort did the Raven manage to stay upright, though it was highly unlikely it would survive another salvo like that.
With its heat buildup still relatively low, the enemy Raven pilot wheeled around, kicking up dirt and dust as its feet dug into the ground to push off into a sprint. Not bothering to acquire a target lock, it dumb-fired its Short-Range Missiles and Missile Beacon at Ziska's pursuing Raven as it attempted to flee.
The flight of SRMs went wild, blasting the ground around Alley Cat's Raven or streaking off into the morning mist, but none of the warheads hit their target. However, the second of the Light Mech's Narc Missile Beacons found its mark, lodging itself into the Green Knight's right arm, which could prove disastrous if the Longbow's Long-Range Missiles connected.
Meanwhile, the Crimson Fists' Jenner had found itself on the wrong end of a much heavier 'Mech, the Ramrod's Ostroc. Significantly outmassed and outgunned by the hulking machine, the pilot of the lighter 'Mech instead decided to make use of its superior speed and agility. With a roar, the Jenner triggered its Jump Jets, jets of superheated plasma venting directly from the 'Mech's fusion reactor as the 35-ton machine lifted into the air, before wheeling around and landing behind the already damaged Ostroc. Given the significant heat buildup, the Jenner pilot opted only to fire one of its four lasers, as well as its four-shot rack of SRMs. Even so, the heat would cause a drop in the 'Mech's speed as its myomer muscles cramped up, so it would instead attempt to use its agility advantage to keep it out of the Ostroc's line of fire.
The Jenner's Medium Laser went wide, but all four of its Short-Range Missiles dug into the Ostroc's back. Even though the Heavy 'Mech severely outgunned and out-armored the Jenner, it suffered the same weakness as many Battlemechs of its generation: paper-thin back armor. On its left side, two warheads blasted away the armored paneling, exposing the internal structure. The other two warheads hit across the center and right side. Another hit to the rear along any location threatened catastrophic internal damage.
Not far away, the enemy Wolfhound was thrown off-balance by the sudden loss of its right arm, and it began to list over to one side. The pilot, however, was skilled enough to turn the fall into a roll, the crimson-painted 'Mech coated in brown and green as the machine tore up the ground before coming up to its feet. With its primary weapon gone, the Wolfhound could no longer deal significant damage from a distance, and decided to close in to a target that lacked major close-range firepower, opting to go after Family Man in his Shadow Hawk.
Bobbing and weaving, the Wolfhound closed the distance with the heavier 'Mech. While the Shadow Hawk outweighed it by twenty tons, the Wolfhound had the speed advantage, and could stay well within the minimum effective range of the Hawk's Long-Range Missiles and Autocannon, while staying just out of range of the 'Mechs fists. At this range, the Shadow Hawk had a two-shot rack of SRMs and a single Medium Laser, while the Wolfhound could open up with all three.
Unfortunately for the Light 'Mech pilot, he hadn't compensated for how the loss of his arm would throw off the Wolfhound's gait, so two of the torso-mounted lasers went wide. The third did manage to strike the Shadow Hawk, but did little more than scour some armor off of its left arm.
"You must realize this is not a fight you can win," the pilot of the Longbow said over the open comms channel. "Even if you do manage to elude us here, a longer, slower death awaits you, wasting away in whatever hole you've been hiding in all this time. It would be a far nobler fate to die here and now, to accept the judgment that awaits you. My judgment, Green Knights, will be swift...and final."
With that, the hulking Assault 'Mech opened fire with its racks of Long-Range missiles, splitting its fire between the already-targeted Raven of Alley Cat, Giggles's Archer, and Desperado's Phoenix Hawk.
As the Longbow's missiles came down, the damage done to Marit's Archer and Tarak's Phoenix Hawk was minimal, with only a few plates taken off the Black Phoenix's chest, and little more than a few scratches of paint taken off of Archie's chest and legs. For a moment, the Green Knights might have been convinced the Fire Witch's boasts were little more than empty threats, a lot of posturing and blustering that would amount to nothing.
That is, until they saw what the Longbow had done to Ziska's Raven.
Homing in on the Narc missile beacon that had connected with the Raven's right arm, four flights of LRMs shredded the Light 'Mech's right side. Five of the warheads crushed into the light 'Mech's leg, bending the limb inward at an unnatural angle as they pulverized armor. Another Five took chunks of armor from the right arm, mercifully destroying the beacon pod in the process. The worst of it, however, came when ten missiles obliterated nearly all of the armor on the right torso; what remained was tatters so thin that even a hit from the smallest weapons would breach it and expose the Raven's irreplaceable internal components. The immense combined impact sent the Raven tumbling to the ground, the impact slamming Ziska hard against the restraints of her command couch.
"You have eluded us thanks to the advantage of your Scout 'Mech's stealth technology," the Fire Witch gloated. "We'll see how long you last once we clip this little bird's wings..."
Grasslands, Sector E-10
Thirty Minutes After Convoy Departure from Outpost F-10
"Eeeeeuuughhh," Cadet Windham groaned, his face all but turning green from nausea as the Mobile HQ bumped and bucked off-road. "The sooner we get back to base, the better."
"Got a paper bag under the seat if you need it," Cadet Higgins smirked. Windham shot him an angry glare, which just made his smirk grow that much wider.
"Any sign of being trailed?" Colonel Wayne asked again, as he'd done every few minutes since they rolled out.
"Still nothing, sir," Lieutenant Lyons responded, managing to keep her monitors and notes in order even as the rough ride knocked everyone in the cabin around. "If the enemy's using one of their Ravens, though, I doubt we'll see them coming."
The Raven was the pride and joy of the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces, a technological breakthrough after centuries of stagnation and degradation. While the ECM field deployed by Ziska's own Raven kept the Green Knights and the convoy safe from detection, the Crimson Fists having one of their own meant they could pull the same trick.
And much to Colonel Wayne's trepidation, it wasn't the only trick that an advanced ECM Suite could perform.
"Hang on, Colonel," Lyons said as the tell-tale BEEP-BEEP-BEEP of enemy contacts appeared on the Mobile HQ's monitors. "I'm picking up all four contacts again, about two klicks to the north of us."
"Heading our way?"
"Negative," the Lieutenant answered. "At their current heading, it's likely that they're going to stumble into the Knights."
"But why drop the ECM field?" Windham asked. "Why make their presence known when they know we're in the area?"
"Because they're using the ECM offensively," the Colonel answered. "An ECM Suite can be configured to work as a counter to an active field. If that Raven has a counter-ECM going and it happens across Ziska's ECM bubble..."
"...then it'll leave the Green Knights and the convoy open to enemy fire," Higgins concluded.
"Any eyes on the enemy Mechs yet?"
"Negative, Colonel," came the response from Windham. "Seismic sensors are still picking up three 35-tonners and one 85-tonner. One Raven for sure, and probably the Battlemaster. No word on the others."
"Get ready to send another microwave-burst transmission," Colonel Wayne ordered. "That assault 'Mech won't be able to keep up with the lights, so we might be able to convince it to go for some slower prey. The Battlemaster only has one PPC for range; if we keep enough distance from it, we can keep out of the brunt of its firepower. Then we can make a break for the storm cell coming in and lose them in the rain."
"Understood, sir," Lyons nodded, obedient but unconvinced. Regardless of whether it was the Battlemaster's only long-range weapon, a Particle Projector Cannon could still chew through the HQ's armor with two well-placed hits. "The enemy is getting danger-close to the convoy. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll move right past us...."
"Don't hold your breath," the Colonel scoffed. "Chances are this is about to get real ugly."
As the Green Knights shepherded the supply convoy along, trying to slip away to the rendezvous point, a nearby copse of trees began to rattle with movement. With a sudden cacophony of snapping branches and splintering tree trunks, three massive shapes erupted from the tree line with alarming speed.
The first was a familiar sight to the Green Knights: the back-canted legs and beak-like fuselage gave away the form of a Raven. Identical to the one piloted by Ziska, save for a paint job of bloody crimson trimmed with yellow in flame patterns, it sported a pair of Ceres Arms Medium Lasers and a six-rack of Harpoon Short-Range Missiles. This firepower was not particularly fearsome, but what truly made it frightening was its electronic warfare equipment. Along with the ever-useful ECM Suite, the Raven carried a Bloodhound Active Sensor Probe to seek out hidden enemy units, a Target Acquisition Gear targeting laser to direct long-range fire, and a Narc Missile Beacon to guide more warheads to their targets. The Raven was hardly a stand-up fighter, but made for a brilliant support 'Mech, one that now sprinted towards the convoy with its targeting laser glimmering in the morning mist.
Flanking the Raven were two other light 'Mechs, both substantially more potent in terms of firepower. On its left side was a Jenner,, the preferred light striker of the Draconis Combine. Like the Raven, its profile was almost completely inhuman, a dome-like cockpit thrust ahead of the main torso, stumpy weapon pods where arms might be, and a pair of vaguely humanoid legs that took long, bounding strides, quickly overtaking the Raven in a full sprint. It carried a quartet of Argra 3L Lasers, backed up by a Thunderstroke-4 Short-Range Missile Launcher, giving the light mech the ability to punch well above its weight, and sported enough Jump Jets to grant it excellent agility on top of its speed.
The third was an extremely rare sight, one almost never seen outside of Steiner or Davion forces, and even then only in the past five years. Unlike the bird-like Raven and strangely insectoid Jenner, this 'Mech was near completely humanoid, barring the massive gun muzzle ending its right arm, and the canine-shaped head that identified the new 'Mech as a Wolfhound. Like the Jenner, the Wolfhound was a hard-hitting harasser 'Mech, sporting four Defiance B3M Medium Lasers, though one of them was mounted in the 'Mech's rear to discourage enemies from getting behind it. Instead of short-range missiles, however, the Wolfhound punctuated its salvos with a Setanta Arms Large Laser. Firing its entire compliment of energy weapons turned the 'Mech's cockpit into an oven for the pilot, but it could dish out a tremendous amount of damage for a 'Mech its size.
Acting together, the Jenner and the Wolfhound had the potential to shred much larger 'Mechs in short order, and that is precisely what the 'Mechs of the Crimson Fists set about doing. Picking what they believed to be the biggest possible threat, the two Light 'Mechs sprinted toward the Ostroc, zig-zagging in a serpentine pattern to avoid fire from the Green Knights as they approached. The Jenner suddenly broke to the left, and the Wolfhound to the right, before filling the dull gray morning with blinding laser light. Between the two light 'Mechs, five of their seven Medium Lasers hit their marks, melting gouts of armor off of the heavy 'Mech's torso, mostly between the left side and center. While the Wolfhound's Large Laser went wide, carving a trench in the earth by the Ostroc, all four of the Jenner's SRMs connected, blasting more armored fragments off of the Ostroc's chest and right arm. Together, while the damage wasn't enough to pierce the Heavy 'Mech's armor and risk catastrophic internal damage, the sudden loss of so much mass combined with the concussive blasts from the missiles threatened to knock Daschke's 'Mech to the ground.
Meanwhile, the Raven split away from the other two, bearing down on one of the convoy trucks instead. With a flash of its TAG laser and a jet of propellant as the Narc Missile Beacon crunched into the side of the truck, the light support 'Mech suddenly changed course to disengage, attempting to disengage before the Green Knights could focus fire on it.
As the Raven broke away, the sky filled with streaks of fire and smoke, before a hellish rain of Long-Range Missiles screamed down onto the unfortunate supply truck, blasting the defenseless vehicle and its occupants to pieces in a single salvo. The truck, carrying mostly MREs and spare uniforms, was mercifully the least valuable in the convoy, but the next in line was one of the all-too-vital water trucks.
While bits of debris from the supply truck rained down on the battlefield, an electronically-modulated voice boomed over an open comms channel.
"To the gutless, sell-sword mercenary scum who call themselves Gawain's Green Knights," the voice declared, "You have chosen a poor day to crawl out from whatever hole in which you have hidden since our rise to power. Today, you face the Fire Witches, the burning wrath of the Crimson Fists. It will be my distinct pleasure to send you all to the hell that awaits you."
Nearly a full kilometer back, a figure crested a hill. While it was indeed an 85-tonner, it was not the Battlemaster the Colonel had suspected. While the Battlemaster was roughly humanoid in shape from top to bottom, any resemblance to the human form this 'Mech might have had ended at the waist. Its torso was blocky, with its head built into the main fuselage rather than above it. The wide, square chest boasted gleaming laser lenses and racks of missiles, but those were paltry compared to the huge, barrel-like drums where its arms should be. These massive cylinders carried enough LRMs to destroy or cripple nearly any enemy unit on the field in a single salvo-- just as it had done during the coup, when it had killed Wrathchild.
Standing at the top of the hill was the absolute last word in long-range firepower: a Longbow.
"Come and face the Fire Witch, Green Knights. Come and burn, like your friends before you."
The pilot of the Warrior attack helicopter had already begun to suspect something was wrong when his sensors started going fuzzy on approach to Outpost F-10, then cut out. His suspicions were confirmed when he attempted to check in with his wingmen, only to be greeted with harsh electronic static. His instincts told him to pull out, but with no way to relay that message to the other members of the squadron, he'd be sending them to their deaths. Best to stick to the plan: assess the situation, confirm enemy action, then bug out.
The plan, however, quickly fell apart when a burst of autocannon shells ripped through the cockpit of Miaodao Two, followed by a flight of long-range missiles mangling the rotors of Miaodao Three.
On paper, the Warrior H-7's SarLon-2 Autocannon outranged the enemy's weapons, but all the range advantage in the world meant nothing if they couldn't see the enemy coming and coordinate their fire. As it was, they were easy targets in a shooting gallery.
As a second flight of missiles streaked through the sky towards him, Miaodao One spent his last moments of life pulling his helicopter into full reverse, hoping to pull back from the enemy's jamming field, while screaming onto open comms "ENEMY CONTACT! REPEAT, ENE--"
He would never know if his calls for help would be answered.
"Uhhh, Colonel?" Lieutenant Lyons spoke up. "The contacts on the seismic sensors? They're....they're gone, sir."
"Gone as in they've left the effective operational range?" Colonel Wayne asked, hopefully.
"Negative, Colonel," Lyons responded. "Gone as in they just...disappeared from the monitor. We're not picking up anything at all in that area."
"So either they came to a complete stop for no apparent reason," Higgins began thinking about the possible meaning.
"...or the enemy lance has one of their Ravens with them," Windham continued his thought.
"...and they've just activated their own ECM field," Lyons completed the train of logic.
"And now we've got no way to track them without giving away our own position," the Colonel added.
A long silence hung in the air for a moment.
"Gods of space," Lyons said breathlessly.
"Blake's Blood," Higgins muttered to himself.
"Frackencrack," Windham added, using an obscure expletive rarely heard outside certain regions of the Draconis Combine.
"Shit," Colonel Wayne summed up everyone's thoughts succinctly. "Higgins, prepare to send a high-power microwave-burst transmission to the Green Knights. We can't point-to-point them with the ECM field up, so we'll just need to shotgun the message in their general direction."
"Sir, that'll make us stick out like a sore thumb," Higgins protested. "If the Crimson Fists come after us, we're dead."
"My order stands, Cadet," Gaius stared him down. If putting himself in the line of fire meant keeping the Green Knights alive, then so be it.
"Yes sir," Higgins meekly nodded before flipping a few toggles on the comms suite. "Antenna is live, sir. We've got enough juice for a five second burst."
Colonel Wayne nodded, then raised the comms microphone to speak into it.
"Green Knights, this is Gawain Actual," he spoke with a quick but authoritative tone. "Hostile mechs inbound, rendezvous at nav-point Echo! Repeat, hostile mechs inbou--"
"Five seconds are up, sir," Higgins cut him off.
"Let's hope the Knights were listening," Lyons said, equal parts comment and prayer.
"And that the Crimson Fists weren't," Windham added.
"Agreed," Gaius nodded, before knocking on the hatch to the driver's cabin. "You heard my order, Private. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Yes sir," came the response, and the Mobile HQ's massive diesel engine roared to life.
"No way it's that easy, no way," Cadet Zack Windham muttered as he monitored the Mobile HQ's directional microphone.
"I don't see why not," Lieutenant Lyons responded, her tone carrying just a tone of self-satisfaction. "We had a good plan, and the Green Knights executed it well."
"Yeah, but you'd think they'd put up more of a fight, y'know?" Windham insisted. "Some kind of big boom, maybe the crash and bang of a suicide attack, I dunno. Just something."
While the Mobile HQ boasted an impressive sensor suite and comms equipment, the nature of the mission meant they were currently on 'silent running.' Using any of their active sensors could potentially give away their position to the enemy, leaving them defenseless. And while the robust TharHes HQ CommSet could send a transmission powerful enough to penetrate the Green Knights' ECM field if they needed to contact them, doing so would give away the Knights' position, potentially giving away the entire mission. For the moment, they had to rely on their passive sensors, such as the external directional microphones and seismic sensors, to vaguely piece together what was going on.
And right now, it appeared that the battle had reached a rather anti-climactic conclusion. For most, a quick and easy victory would be an enormous relief. The excitable Zack Windham, however, was hoping for something a bit more dramatic.
"Oh sure, Windy," Cadet Marcus Higgins rolled his eyes, "'cuz everyone knows combat happens exactly like it does in the holos. Any minute now, the Bounty Hunter is going to roll up in his Marauder and start blasting everyone."
"The Bounty Hunter wouldn't be working on a defensive contract," the young, slightly pudgy crewman scoffed. "Everyone knows he only does assassinations of high-ranking Mechwarriors."
Higgins started to chuckle, while Lyons gave Windham a scornful look.
"The Bounty Hunter isn't real, Windham," she said with a lecturing tone. "Any more than the Vandenberg White Wings or the Minnesota Tribe."
"He is so real!" Windham exclaimed. "How else do you explain the Black Widow Company nearly getting wiped out on LeBlanc?"
"Oh, I dunno, maybe because the Black Widow Company isn't nearly as good as everyone says they are, and everyone just puts Natasha Kerensky on a pedestal because they think she's hot?"
"Pfffft, I'd like to see you rack up her kill count," Windham said, glancing at the rather salacious pin-up poster of the infamous Mechwarrior taped to the wall over his station.
"She's never going to do you, bro," Higgins mocked him.
"Screw off," Windham scowled.
"Seismics are reading s--"
"You're seriously trying to white-knight for an overrated stripper that Jaime Wolf parades around as a recruitment piece?" Higgins talked over Lyons. "You know all those 'tales of the Black Widow Company' holos aren't anything like what they actually do, right?"
"Guys, there's some--"
"I'm not talking about the holos," Windham said indignantly. "Unlike you, I've actually read the reports from the Marik Civil War, and from the Battle of Misery. Yeah, I've got the holos, but I also do my homework on the real deal!"
"Because you're a fanboy."
"Guys--"
"I'm an enthusiast of the profession, and I like to follow whoever happens to be the best at it."
"Guys--"
"Sorry, I stand corrected. You're a stalker."
"Oh gods of space, will you SHUT THE HELL UP!" Lyons finally burst out at her cadets. "I've been trying to say, seismic sensors are picking up enemy movement in Sector G-10!"
Colonel Wayne, having tuned out the constant bickering from the crewmates the other Knights affectionately referred to as 'the GDK'-- or "those God-Damned Kids," as the Colonel had once been caught muttering-- sat up in his command couch.
"What kind of movement, Lieutenant?"
"It's hard to pick out exact signatures from this range," Lyons admitted, "But it's definitely Battlemech footsteps. There's a lot of fuzz in the readings, but given the size of the tremors, I'm estimating the total tonnage to be, ah.....in the ballpark of 200 tons, total."
"...shit," Windham said breathlessly. That was likely an entire lance of Crimson Fists. The Green Knights did have them out-massed, but with ammunition supplies running low and critical mission objectives to protect, this wasn't a fight they could afford right now.
"Hey, you wanted a big dramatic twist," Higgins chided him.
"Can you determine their movement?" Colonel Wayne asked. "Are they on an intercept route?"
"Determining that now, sir," Lyons answered, frantically writing down calculations based on the strength of the seismic signals over time. "Ahhh, looks like.....negative, sir. The Fists are heading north-by-northeast, likely just on patrol on their way back to Balya Gora. It's possible they'll just pass right by us."
"Assuming they don't get alerted that the comms from Outpost F-10 have gone down,"
"How long until the Fists are too far away to intercept?"
"At their current speed and heading? Looks like....approximately ten minutes, sir."
"And how long is our estimated window before the Espian Guard are tipped off to the outpost going down?"
"....about the same, sir."
Colonel Wayne carefully weighed his options. If they broke silence to warn the Green Knights, they'd give away their own position, and they'd almost certainly be killed. If they remained quiet, there was a chance the Crimson Fists would miss them completely, or that they'd turn to attack and the Knights would have no way of knowing.
"Keep monitoring their position," Gaius ordered. "I want to know exactly where the Fists are heading at all times. Windham, if they start heading towards F-10, I want you to send a microwave burst signal to warn the Knights of incoming contacts. The plan remains the same; we head for the box canyons in sector E-8 and try to lose them. Higgins, how's the weather?"
"The weather, sir?"
"You heard me, Cadet," the Colonel stated flatly.
"Err, still overcast, sir," Higgins answered, flipping tabs on his monitor until he found the weather radar. "There's a major storm cell heading through G-9 right now, looks like it'll be moving through F-9 within the next thirty minutes."
"Good," Colonel Wayne nodded. "The cloud cover will keep air assets from being able to spot us, unless they start flying low enough to be within range of the Knights' weapons. If we get spotted, we can head into the storm cell."
"Visibility will be near zero in that storm, sir," Windham pointed out.
"For us, and for the Fists," Wayne countered. "If we get lucky, we can slip away in the rain. If not, we can hammer them up close while the convoy makes for the canyons."
"Sir, that fuzz on the readings has cleared up," Lyons interrupted. "I'm getting more accurate readings now."
The Colonel turned towards her. "What are we looking at?"
Lyons' skin began to pale as she looked at her readings. "Four Battlemechs, three of them thirty-five-tonners.....and one eighty-five-tonner."
Silence hung in the cabin of the Mobile HQ for a moment. The light 'Mechs were bad news, but an Assault 'Mech on the field could be catastrophic. Gaius knew the Crimson Fists had at least one 'Mech in the 85-ton range: a Battlemaster like the one he used to pilot himself. That 'Mech was an absolute terror in close range, but if they could keep their distance, it wouldn't be able to bring the brunt of its weapons to bear. If it wasn't the Battlemaster, though, then he had some very serious questions about where the Crimson Fists were getting the kind of money to field that kind of firepower...
As he considered the next course of action, something else Lyons had mentioned stuck out in his mind.
"That 'fuzz' on the earlier seismic readings," he said, "What could have caused it?"
Lyons shrugged. "Any number of things, sir. It could have been a quirk of the terrain, maybe an aberrant fault line, or something else causing vibrations on the ground like...." her eyes widened, "...like the beating of helicopter blades."
"Outpost F-10, this is Miaodao One, checking in," the pilot of a Warrior H-7 Attack Helicopter droned into his radio to the nearby supply outpost, "Repeat, Outpost F-10, this is Miaodao One, checking in. We're not seeing your transponder on our network, is everything all right over there? Over."
After a few seconds without reply, the helicopter pilot repeated his message. Again, the outpost did not respond.
Inside the cockpit, the pilot frowned, then switched his comms to a different channel.
"Fire Witch One, this is Miaodao One," he stated, a bit of trepidation in his voice. "The supply outpost at F-10 has gone dark. Requesting a flyover to check on the situation? Over."
After a few moments of tense silence, a deep, low voice, clearly masked through an electronic voice modulator, responded.
"Miaodao One, this is Fire Witch One," the synthesized voice boomed in his headset. "You have permission to perform a flyover, but be quick about it. Our quarry is likely in the area, and I do not wish to waste more time hunting them than necessary. Make your pass, then return to me, and report anything out of the ordinary."
"Roger that, Fire Witch One," Miaodao One acknowledged, before switching to his squadron's channel. "Miaodao Two, Miaodao Three, we're breaking off for Sector F-10. Follow my mark. Anything looks suspicious, we radio it in to Fire Witch Lance, then we open fire, copy?"
"Copy that, Miaodao One," "Copy that, Miaodao One," came the answers from his wingmates.
"Transmitting new coordinates now," the squadron leader said. "Estimated time to Outpost F-10, five minutes...."
"Blake's Blood," Captain Yorgei Park swore under his breath at the chaos that surrounded him. At the first sound of enemy fire, the outpost had erupted into bedlam, with most of the laborers scrambling in every direction looking for some kind of cover. A few of his troops had manned the wall-mounted turrets after they saw that their automated sensors had been scrambled, and he had to shield his eyes from the blinding light of laser fire as two of the emplacements had been blasted away. "What a disaster."
"Captain! Captain Park!" Lieutenant Admir wailed at the top of his lungs as he ran towards him through the chaos, a terrified laborer nearly knocking the skinny man off his feet as he collided with him while fleeing in no particular direction. Captain Park scowled with contempt at his underling, disgusted by his loss of composure. "There are too many of them! They've cut off our retreat! We--"
"Quit your womanly shrieking, you sniveling coward!" he bellowed, cracking his whip for emphasis. Lieutenant Admir visibly flinched, only fueling Captain Park's disdain for the man. "Today you face your greatest destiny as a warrior, and you meet it by pissing your pants and crying?"
"B-but we can't fight them, sir!" The lieutenant continued.
"We have weapons in the armory, do we not? Assault Rifles? Shoulder-mounted SRMs? By my last count, no fewer than three Inferno launchers?"
Inferno rocket launchers were a nasty piece of weaponry, one of the only conceivable ways a lowly infantryman could stand the slightest chance against a Battlemech. A single-shot, shoulder-mounted launcher fired a projectile which, on contact, released a flammable jelly that burned horrifically hot and was near impossible to get off. Already the stuff of nightmares against infantry, against 'Mechs Inferno rockets caused their heat to spike to dangerous levels. A hit in the right spot could cause a 'Mech's actuators to seize up, or cause its ammunition stores to light off, or if it struck the cockpit, cook the pilot alive.
"Y-yes, sir, we have three Infernos, sir," Admir stammered. "But we count five Battlemechs and a Heavy tank! Even if we score a hit, the others will kill us all!"
"Then we'll take a few of them to hell with us!" the captain roared, once again bringing his whip around to slash across the air, the sharp crack an exclamation point to his sentence. A few soldiers cheered at Captain Park's words, his image the very picture of the proud Espian Guardsman the propaganda posters had envisioned.
Inside, Yorgei's blood was ice. While he was no master of military tactics, he knew how badly the odds were stacked against them.
On paper, a crack team of infantry with Inferno launchers might be able to bring down a Battlemech, or at least soften it up for friendly forces to finish it off. With proper emplacements and months of rigorous training, a dedicated anti-'Mech squad could potentially bring down two Light 'Mechs, maybe a medium one.
But his men were not a crack team of rigorously-trained anti-'Mech infantry. These men were mostly conscripts, mostly barely competent at best, and mostly scared out of their minds. They were facing five Battlemechs, most of which were in the medium to heavy weight classes. And friendly forces had no way of knowing they were even in distress.
If they continued to fight, they would be slaughtered to the last man.
If the Captain surrendered, he would be labeled a coward by his superiors, and spend the rest of his life in the bowels of Fort Tie Shan.
There was only one thing for it.
"Comrades, brothers in arms of the Glorious Espian Revolution!" Park shouted over the din. "The mercenary scum will show you no mercy, so we must be just as ruthless in kind! Fight to the last! Laborers, double pay-- no, triple pay-- if you pick up a rifle and shoot! Guaranteed promotions to anyone who manages to kill an enemy Mechwarrior! Fight on, brave comrades! I will be with you every step of the way!"
Most of the laborers stayed in hiding, but a few began to timidly make their way to the armory. Some of the soldiers began to rally, taking up defensive positions and digging in.
"Captain! Surely you can't suggest we keep fighting!"
"We cannot allow ourselves to be seen as cowards," he said, straightening his coat and turning away from the Lieutenant. "Congratulations on your promotion, Captain."
"...sir?"
Lieutenant Admir--no, Captain Admir?-- looked on in confusion as Captain Park strode away from him, towards his office. Oddly, he dropped his bullwhip and left it behind, and Admir found himself staring at it idly as he heard the hatch to the Captain's office shut.
A few seconds later, from inside the office, Admir heard the muffled sound of a single gunshot.
M I S S I O N S T A R T
Western Continent, Espia
NPDRE Outpost F-10
18 April, 3030
0500 Hours
"Come on, you lazy pieces of trash!" Captain Yorgei Park shouted through his megaphone, his electronically-amplified voice barely audible over the rumble of huge diesel engines, the rhythmic stomping of IndustrialMechs, and the bustle of dozens of soldiers and laborers hurrying through their duties. "Move your asses! We've got sixty minutes to get this shipment on the road, or each one of you will be getting ten lashes!"
A few of the unranked laborers cringed, particularly the ones who had been 'volunteered' in the wake of the coup. Park scowled as he watched them scuttle about, only the higher-ranking soldiers daring to meet his gaze as he surveyed the loading of the supply convoy.
On the southern end of the continent, the siege of Yuzhny Portveyn had stalled, much to the annoyance of Premier Federov. Governor Xiu and a bare handful of his old cabinet had fled the capital and rallied a small number of loyal soldiers to protect them. While the loyalists had no chance of ever expanding outside of the south, they were fighting fiercely, and the Espian Guard was already stretched precariously thing keeping Balya Gora, Geum Haebyon, and Nui Awa at bay. The Guard needed to crack Xiu's forces soon, before they could become too dug in to remove without a bloodbath.
This supply convoy, Park's superiors had told him, was crucial to the push that would break Yuzhny Portveyn. With it, the Guard forces in the south would have everything they needed to wipe Xiu's resistance out once and for all. Without it, they would have to abandon the city, at least until they could devote enough of the Guard from the other cities to attack again in force.
The new regime wanted results, and they were willing to pay handsomely to those who brought them. Park didn't know where Premier Federov and his cronies had gotten this new influx of C-Bills, and he didn't particularly care. If there was a fortune to be made by showing he could get the job done, he'd get the job done without thinking twice.
Off to Park's left, a laborer driving a forklift slammed on its brakes, lurching to a halt just before it would have careened into a Powerman IndustrialMech carrying a palette full of ammunition cases. As the IndustrialMech pilot and forklift driver began shouting at each other, Park strode toward them, unlooping the long black leather bullwhip from his left hip.
"Stupid oaf!" he shouted, lashing out at the forklift driver, the whip cutting a long, deep gash across the laborer's face with a crack like a rifle. With a scream and a spurt of blood, the driver toppled from the seat of the forklift, his hands trying to hold his ruined face together. "You nearly caused him to drop that ammunition and killed us all!"
As the bleeding man ran towards the first aid tent, Park shouted after him in disgust, "First aid is coming out of your weekly pay! Now, someone who can drive a forklift, get on and do this pig's job for him!"
Sheepishly, another laborer climbed onto the forklift, and Park cursed under his breath. How was he going to prove himself worthy to the new regime, when he was in command of such incompetent human garbage?
Outpost F-10 was one of a dozen or so temporary facilities quickly put together by the Espian Guard in the wake of the coup, meant to help coordinate the movement of forces between the four major cities. A row of pre-fabricated warehouses, a handful of quonset huts, and row upon row of blocky storage containers to be distributed between convoys.
At the heart of the base was a pre-fab headquarters, a combination of administrative offices, briefing rooms, armory, operations room, communications array, and sensor hub. At the top of the building was a large radar dish, which rotated in place searching for signals.
Surrounding the bulk of the base was a ten-meter wall, thick slabs of ferrocrete meant to withstand all but the heaviest of enemy fire. At the four corners of the wall, and on either side of the large front gate, were automated turrets, each sporting a pair of lasers to damage incoming vehicles, and a .50 caliber machine gun to rip apart human targets. These turrets were programmed to fire at anything and anyone that came within 300 meters of the outpost without the correct IFF codes, and were all powered by a single portable fusion generator, which hummed and thrummed at the southern end of the complex.
Around this wall were lines of razor wire, and a hundred meters of torn-up earth, all of which was riddled with mines. Most were small anti-personnel mines, but among them were a handful of anti-materiel mines that could rip through a vehicle or cripple the leg of a Battlemech.
Around this perimeter, a quartet of tanks rumbled two-by-two in a wide patrol circuit. Each pair consisted of a Scorpion and a Striker, both light tanks that individually had relatively anemic firepower, but acting together had a mix of ballistic and missile weaponry to ward off a light or medium Battlemech.
The outpost was a hornet's nest, and should those defenses fail, reinforcements were only a radio call away.
A few kilometers away, huge shapes lumbered through the morning mist towards the outpost, their intent to storm into that hornet's nest and break it wide open.
"We're approaching the edge of the enemy's sensor range," Colonel Gaius Wayne called to the Green Knights over his comms from the Mobile HQ. "Activate the ECM and begin your approach. Good hunting and godspeed, Green Knights. The operation is a go."
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