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Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

At some point, the thin hint of wind coming through the blanket of snow wasn't all that she heard. A Battlemech is a loud thing, a weighty block of metal and hissing actuators and clanking feet. One might've ran by her unnoticed, but a lance?

Ingrid's head snapped to attention the moment she heard something that could've possibly sounded out of the normal soundscape, and her hand went into position immediately, hovering over the Ostroc's ignition. With comms blacked out and people waiting for her signal to fire, the only other hint she'd get is if the Fists caught them first. A false start would've ruined the point of this gambit entirely. She waited, and waited a painful amount of time - that noise earlier was the crunch of ice, and with ears trained entirely to it, she recognized it being repeated, and by more than one pair of feet! The enemy had finally arrived, and their engagement was about to begin!

...and Ingrid held.

The sound repeated more, and she could hear the clatter of their feet beyond the crunch. She had to hold.

This surprise's efficacy was predicated entirely on how well Daschke knew her opponent, how they would act, and their machines. They had a Hunchback, flank speed of 64 kmh, and they presented slow targets, possibly only slower with the caution needed to cross a narrow bridge. They wouldn't let a Crusader take point, that'd be a terrible idea if they weren't expecting air support, and the weather in the mountains made that unlikely. The Fists were barbarians, but she had seen the footage they had released enough times to at least understand them as skilled thugs. They were going to move close together to present as little opportunity to cut into their formation as possible. That was textbook 'mech warfare. She's even seen pirates from Circinus understand this, and those people didn't even count as real 'mech jockeys.

Through the muffling cover and through the noise of her thoughts, she heard a second pair. One more and she'd have her guess validated, as much as it could be.

It'd be like this. Firestarter and Hunchback in front, that was no surprise. They required as much ground as possible to keep in range. The Crusader would be behind them...around 60 meters she imagined, the center point to their formation and the anchor which they'd meter their speed on.

She heard the third pair of feet, faintly. Her thumb tensed, but remained arched.

Then it'd have to be the Panther holding the rear as fire support. She wanted to imagine it being the least likely to engage directly, being the slightest bit harder to repair with their distance from the Combine, and deathly weak in melee. That'd be it. FS9, HBK, CRD, PNT. That exact order.

This didn't matter, beyond her choice of immediate target. The question lay solely in their speed...which, imagining the humanoid gait of the Firestarter and her memories of it in pirate hands, she could put that first pair of feet to it with near certainty...and how fast her own 'mech, the venerable Susser Todd, would be able to move from a complete cold start. Four seconds. She just needed to end up within a close enough distance with her second or so of surprise.

Ingrid's world froze for a moment, beyond the growing rumble of the approaching lance. Her hand remained steady.

All of it came down to a rhythm. She'd just enter at the same tempo...

...exactly then.

The engine kicking on pushed a dozen actuators into test-firing and made her mech shudder, a byproduct of safety mechanisms detecting her off-balance pose, and the inside of the cockpit flashed with light as everything came to life in quick succession. Ingrid floored the gas, willing her 'mech through her connection to push itself back into a standing gait as fast as it could, and it all paid with a perfect timing!

From the outsiders' perspective, a bank of freshly avalanched snow shook with unnatural vibrations before falling away entirely, an olive green heavy battlemech appearing from its white hold and heading right onto them!

At about this time, as per the request of someone back at base, the Ostroc's speakers roared with a violent riff as an ancient Terran musical piece blared out at maximum volume. It wasn't Ingrid's taste but she figured it'd help with being distracting.

Her guess of marching order was incorrect in more than one way, the second of sighting she had initially landing on the Panther, but she found her real prize was about where she figured. She lined up everything she had onto the Firestarter, and let loose in a flare of light and heat!

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Ingrid looked through her cockpit's glass - it seemed as if a blueish cloud had settled directly onto her, tinted in strange ways by the visor on her neurohelm. A layer of thick snow, maybe ten feet deep, lay on top of her Ostroc and held it entirely within its cover. She remembered seeing this view from her window before, though that was an accidental fall and not a thrown-together plan. Not like she'd ever admit to falling on accident in this machine. Every few seconds there'd be some faint thump as another part of the mountain's snowpack, or its unearthed stone fell down on top of her - her heart had stopped skipping a beat when this happened a minute or so ago. If a second avalance were to occur on top of her, well, it'd have to do it fast.

Things were going to get considerably less tranquil in a few moments' time, either way.

At the base of the central peak, Ingrid's mech lay in wait for the trap she had devised. The core of their forces had been assigned their positions back at safer ground - the northernmost ice bridge had been decided to be something that's only traversed when absolutely required, with Daschke urging caution here the most. ("What's more expensive, all the shells you'll miss at range, or having to tow a 'mech out from a hundred-meter-deep canyon in the mountains?") Their plan hinged on keeping the enemy as close as they could, and that meant blowing the southernmost bridge.

Would it be nice if, by a miracle, they were able to shoot it out from underneath the enemy? Let them fall to their deaths?

Well, by Ingrid's standards, that would be a very ignoble death. No, it wouldn't be nice. However, it was still her plan. The rest of the Green Knights had heard it all from her as they arrived, the distinct sound of Ingrid's saber rattling as it hung from her cockpit in the background of the transmission. Lie in wait, blow the southern bridge, take shots at range.

The rest of the crew waited, hugging the mountain while shut down or kept hull-down with intent to give them as much lead time as possible. If the Crimson Fists could cross the bridge before spotting them, everything would be going as smoothly, but she wasn't going to try and bank on the notion of keeping a lance of green-colored armor hidden in the white and black of the mountainside for long. Family Man was given his go-ahead to try scaling the mountain, but to be ready to descend when need be - his long range weaponry wasn't bad, but he would be under-utilized from all the way up there.

She was going to have to be the ambushing force and the bait all in one. They'd get close, cross in front of them, and with God willing, they wouldn't question the snow drift that lay right alongside their path. Getting directly up in close quarters against the enemy wasn't at all safe, but who else would take this spot? The rest of the Green Knights just weren't as sturdy. Additionally, perhaps Ingrid was simply the most suicidal of the group.

A short burst of static preceded an update. One more person would be joining them, not the Warhammer - potentially good if it was something more effective at close range...for the rest of the Knights. Truth be told, there might not be much that's good to look forward to on her end of things. Even the best possible outcome would mean a narrow win on her own right.

Something like fear was with her in the cockpit as she waited. She couldn't do much more than keep staring at the snow in front of her, or uselessly click her saber in and out of its scabbard, or feel the odd way her weight was held in her seat as her Ostroc was frozen in an awkard pose...

...though, her thought did drift to something. She remembered something from long ago, in her days at the LCAF, that an elder statesman of a trainer said to her. The man was in his sixties and he was still riding out in his Griffin near-daily for exercises...

...anyway, what he said was that there was some degree of superstition needed to be a Mechwarrior. Ingrid brushed off that kind of folklore, naturally, but they were already dealing with a miraculous bonding of man and machine. Yhe pilot's mental state was its own influence on how well this connection worked. Little anchors of hope would give them just a little more of an edge, and sometimes that's what you needed. However, for all of those that he brought up as examples throughout the centuries, there was one he insisted was very real.

"Whatever you do, don't look at family photographs right before fighting commences. You're just asking for it at that point, you hear me?"

Maybe Ingrid had forgotten those words or maybe she was intentionally telling narrative-induced fate to piss off, but she looked at a photo held in a crevasse of her cockpit. It was a family photograph, yes, but her attention was focused on one face that remained held in a prison many kilometers from here...

She lingered on that face, but her ears remained alert. All she'd have to wait on was the sound of approaching armor, getting as close to her position as possible...

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Vagabonds, crows picking at the carrion on the site of war. Ingrid barely held her contempt for the scrappers as the ran out, hooting and hollering. Their services to the Green Knights earned them a stay of indignation, but really - couldn't you show a little circumstance given to the inevitable? Seeing fine machines butchered like, as Ingrid would imagine in her most offensive imitation of that certain low-class drawl, "A right dun-hawm bar'buh'cuh wit' all de fixens, bier's fuh free, yee-haw!" did not endear anyone to you.

This was a minor distraction from the real meat of the matter. Her question was almost redundant, anyway. She understood what was about to happen, and really, there was some small part of her that understood this as necessary. They didn't have the facilities to keep prisoners, their enemies weren't the sort to offer ransom, and they wouldn't have been offered the same clemency. More likely, they'd be tortured until more incriminating soundbites could be pulled out of them.

It still pained her, though. Logically it made sense, but the core principles of her being had yet to come to terms with it.

"I see," she replied to the Colonel, her tone less adamant or icy than one might expect. She didn't seem wholly on-board, but acquiescence would be have to be good enough. "Understood. I won't be particularly kind with them."

Then, she turned her boot about face to look at the rest of the assembled Mechwarriors in the eye, and her shoulders-up back-straight posture suggested that, yes, she was going to speak to them in her position as the Holy Lord of All Honor from whom all martial wisdom flows. And yet, though she certainly tried to sound like she was giving an order, her words were a little less preachy than usual.

"When it comes time and you find it inevitable, give them a fine death. They're dogs, and the same couldn't be expected of them, but even miserable street-curs like these Mechwarriors have some unconscious aspiration to being staghounds. That is to say," her posture loosened up slightly, "do not be sloppy. Show that you're better than them in the killing blow, even more so than the rest of the engagement. You hear?"

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

The Colonel's subtle marker of tension was mirrored by the Duchess, who had gripped the haft of her sabre with enough power to leave her hand frozen in that grip for a while once she realized what had happened. It had been a tense time, between the nukes and the violence committed for no better reason than to dishonor them. The stress would even get to the greatest and most level-headed of them...let alone Ingrid.

She had barely slept the night over. The tension that built up just behind her forehead made her walk out and practice her sword technique against posts outside of the base for hours, both to relieve that stress and with knowledge that, as unlikely as it was, she could be called to stab someone in the coming days. Maybe 70 minutes of passing out was all that she was operating on, boosted by coffee, and several other things that she hadn't taken the time to inspect before downing.

Ingrid's eyebrow twitched. She'd have to pack some more of those stimulants along for the upcoming excursion - hopefully they won't react badly when stored in the sauna heat of a cockpit.

The assignment was...simple. Sometimes complexity meant new ways to make errors and botch it all, but this time it just meant that there was less to leverage. There was no gambit to distract them or have someone act as a harrier for reinforcements or even a retreat planned, just a few seconds of ambush and one way to potentially spite them if everything else goes poorly.

Ingrid relished the opportunity to fight as a Mechwarrior again. She did not look forward to the losses on their side.

When all was said and done, in lieu of questions, an ultimatum was given. A terse silence settled among them before Ingrid spoke to the Colonel.

"...we're to deny them the right to retreat and kill them in their cockpits. Right, Colonel?"

You could imagine Ingrid shouting and stamping her foot, her continued chivalric fantasies driving her to openly rebel against this directive. However, she simply asked with grave seriousness and a composed stare - not "How dare you", but "Do I understand you fully?"

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

That she got a "Your concerns are valid, Daschke" out of the Colonel at all was a small moral victory. This didn't amount to anything else, though. Her expresion carried with it a growing sense of disappointment in the Colonel's response that she did not hide as he continued, working out a plan of minimal engagement. Engagement, nonetheless.

"Very practical, sir," was her clipped response. Practicality in the face of...well, many things, but she personally imagined it as self-preservation.

She could feel eyes on the back of her strained neck after she spoke up. Some of the others did not find her concerns founded - not news at all. Did they think she was stupid, or simply deluded? She did turn around to face them, sharp eyes scanning theirs in turn, but she wasn't ready to confront anyone in specific.

"If anyone disagrees with me wholly, then you are welcome to take it up with me in private," she said before turning away from the group. This was something she wouldn't bend on, and something she hoped she could make others understand.

...some part of her imagined being a guard for this weapon. That she would eschew sleeping in the same cots as the others and lay next to a nuclear warhead every night, sword kept close to her chest, and she would inevitably cut down anyone who tried to infiltrate and steal the abominable weapon.

There was one concern. She knew otherwise, with her rich upbringing entailing a good education, that sitting next to a disarmed nuclear weapon wasn't seriously going to irradiate her. The danger existed but she probably was worse off sitting in a junkyard filled with the broken shells of fusion reactors anyway.

Nevertheless, fear doesn't have to be rational to be acted upon. And she feared that damn thing.

She instead resolved to run through anyone who worked Ziska up to trying to steal the bomb for a joke.

Yeah.

Ingrid retired soon after she worked through this. Her night would be spent training with the sword against anyone who would take her, her own shadow if need be, as she prepared for this seeming inevitability. All the while, she was keen to explain her view of Nui Awa to Marit after being approached.

To her, it was a city that had seen its best years well before any of them had arrived. Its populace in decline and paranoid, she advised that the sensible approach to espionage - blending in with confidence - would be better made with a touch of looking over your shoulder.

Also the alcohol they served was better than she expected.

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

A tactical nuclear warhead. An atomic weapon. The start and end point of wars.

Ingrid remained stonefaced throughout the rest of the debrief, even taking the indirect praise that came with her own successful mission with nothing more than a stoic nod. This one bit of information, though, broke through her character with the same amount of destructive power as the weapon that they had claimed. Her eyes bulged, her head turned fully to the Colonel to meet his eyes, and her stance loosened just a bit.

It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise to those who knew her. The Ares Conventions were a thoroughly dead piece of paper drafted centuries in the past, no longer held in serious regard by any of the Inner Sphere's polities...but they still held sway about the Mechwarrior, the kind with the capital M. The sort of person who has memorized some sort of manifesto drafted up by another Mechwarrior about what is 'just' in war and death. The sort who claims noble lineage and placement within their family based on piloting ability instead of anything important relating to governance. The sort who would sooner die than spit upon the family crest of some highborn clan that ruled over their particular slice of space...

...so, exactly the kind of person Ingrid Daschke was.

Ingrid took that bit of the Conventions very seriously, even if her religionesque appreciation wasn't perfect - she had engaged in urban warfare much earlier in her career, something also forbidden for worry over civilian lives - but she had to have some principles, it seemed!

She had many principles, to the point that it was outright constricting, but the point still stood.

In her initial horror over it's announcement and suggested use, she almost didn't catch wind of Ziska forgetting to worry and loving the bomb. Almost. Her head snapped back to her momentarily, but she turned back to the Colonel right after - the only one who had the authority to authorize its deployment.

"Gai--" she caught herself almost instantly, choking back her rare mispoken word and returning to her usual strict look. "Colonel. I will not speak too far out of turn, but...firing off a nuclear weapon? Even if it was for the most justified of reasons, there is a limit to...forgive me for speaking against you, Colonel, but to this sort of transgression. We are a mercenary unit; the best we could make due with a warhead of any size would be to dismantle it so that no one could use it."

Nomadic Odyssey: Find Your Heart

"I'm trying to..."

Yazhu didn't really get a good view of the guy who was shouting at her from all the way across the room - too many intervening tall people - so she stopped herself, walked upward in the air a few steps, and then continued. "I was TRYING to stop someone from exploding! Nobody exploded so no big issue! And, uhh, it wouldn't have killed you (probably) if it did hit you so don't worry okay?!"

She looked down to Florian, shrugging and jerking her thumb at the unexploded man with a real 'get-a-load-of-this-guy' kinda look.

Nomadic Odyssey: Find Your Heart

It sure appeared to be stone. Now, Florian may not be the most foremost expert of stones within this hall - that would be "Gentleman" Jim Cummings, Hero Geologist, who only really brought geology into the arena by beating people half to death with a basalt pillar. No, even beyond being outclassed like that, perhaps he had simply not walked outside, touched his feet to grass enough to identify the difference between a stone and a bomb.

That is, of course, unless it was a stone AND a bomb. But that's just stupid.

Yazhu was confused at first, thinking that she was being brusquely ignored in disbelief - she had a firm reason to believe that people should be familiar with explosives in the ring, as why wouldn't you bring them if you had the opportunity, but here Florian had just up and played it as a rock and an inconvenience. Does he take her as some kind of...sneaky knave?!

Then she was shown a cool robo-glove thing and she forgot her indignation.

"Ooooooh."

It was perfectly suited for making the average resident of Tang-era China gawk in awe. I mean, who among their number had ki-powering jewelry? At most it was 1% of the population, surely. Yazhu actually reacted to this sight with tacticle intrigue, rubbing her sleeves all over the polished golden surface of his hand.

"If I had this kinda thing back when I was a kid, I would've saved soooooo much time!" Think about how many hours of quiet contemplation and kneeling and not eating it could've skipped over! "Man, to think that you invented this kind of brand new, amazing...doohickey, it's--"

Something about the word 'doohickey' reminded her of a magical that she was quite fond of. She looked down to the ground, and then, finding nothing, turned her head about with a preeminate sense of complete panic. That Dao Bomb of hers was already rolling across the carpet, cursed with movement by the incompetent architects of this building who failed to correct the slight grade!

The end result was that it was mere seconds away from rolling into the heels of a well-dressed elderly gentleman...who was "Gentleman" Jim Cummings, Hero Geologist himself!

"Oh heck."

Yazhu sprinted away from Florian's side, diving to the carpet and sticking out her foot like a couched lance in a charge - it came into contact, did not explode, and she kicked it up with as much force as she had!

The Dao Bomb flew across the room, narrowly missing the ceiling with its high arc (and travelling surprisingly far for a stone orb), but ultimately arcing towards...SOME GUY ON A COUCH?!

Yazhu gave him ample warning with a shout of "HEYMISTERTHATTHINGISABOMBTHATWILLEXPLODEIFITTOUCHESYOU!"

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Ingrid had no such need or desire to appear put together. She had stepped out of the APC with her head aflare, hair splayed all over and only given a cursory pat to keep it slightly more manageable. Whereas Reya had something on her mind to keep her up through the night and the next few as well, Ingrid's questions could only be answered by her partner - and she wasn't going to ask them in the company of all of these armored soldiers. The normally stern Mechwarrior had slept the entire way back.

It was quite a sight to see someone sleep through a cross-country road trip, going over hills and gravel roads on the worn, wartime-rough suspension of the APC, but Ingrid did so no matter the obstacles that got in her way. She laid back, put her hat over her face, and then was gone within 20 minutes. A life of posh beds didn't seem to hinder her much here. Once brought to their new base of operations, the effects of the Timbaqui Dark had disappeared in the span of her extended nap - maybe that was her reason for doing so?

Once outside of the vehicle, she was the last to get out - the rest of the soldiers and Reya would see her take a bit of time to wake up, for she was indeed a heavy sleeper. Less than a minute later, though, she was returned to her usual scowl and rigid bearing, as if nothing happened. The scowl was a bit worse than usual, even: she had imagined this place as more of an organized 'parts requisition center' than an actual junkyard. There was a great hesitation in her head to accept this...

...but she would have to deal with it. The place at least had the potential to be warmer than the cave, as long as the owners here weren't brutes who shirked off space heaters as 'high-falutin' city boy nonsense' or whatever the peasantry would say.

Before Raven's return - she didn't concern herself too much with the possibility of the rest of the crew never coming back, as some part of her silently accepted it as an eventuality - she looked over to Reya for a moment. She sized her up, and she sternly said "If you wish to discuss certain matters, I can provide an ear to listen. Later." A very magnanimous gesture.

The first of the convoy returned and Ingrid saluted them, contrasting her stance with her "fashionable" outfit, and stood at attention as Raven and others dismounted. "Were losses kept to a minimum?" she asked of him. She looked askew at a wrecked car and caught sight of herself in a mirror. Her hair was quickly beaten into submission.

Nomadic Odyssey: Find Your Heart

A pale finger was thrown at him, and Yazhu immediately parroted "The Tooth Thing!" It was legitimately right there, and she didn't see how he didn't see it. Wouldn't he be blinded by his own star-like sparkle? It was right below his eyes after all, and...and this time it wasn't even on his teeth, he just sort of glittered whenever it was convenient!

Now, this would be an incredible step forward for the science of Taoist magic everywhere if she could divine its origin and function, and to do that, she would need to articulate her need and her intent.

"The--it's not a tooth thing, it's more like a--pa-jiiin kind of...all over, and when you did the thing with your hand you, uhh."

Yazhu, master of dialects, rested her case. It would be up to Florian to catch what she was throwing him.

Though, the ascension of the arts could wait. When called upon to show mastery, Yazhu's eyes lit up, her hands stretched out...and her smile became way too smug for its own good. "Why, Master Florian, I couldn't possibly discuss the technique behind these incredible, unbelievable skills of mine. Do you see the crane reaching out to the poet and asking him what meter is? No, the crane tends to the ponds and the skies, and the poet to the mind and the brush. Their two worlds are separate, even if they live in the same one. They can wonder and imagine the other, but their frames of reference are so wholly disparate that they'd never truly be able to step foot into the other for even a moment. Like that, you would never understand the technique of a hermit's arts without being one yourself."

"...but I can sure as heck SHOW YA some cool stuff!" she shouted, immediately contrasting the slightly profound thing she just said with great energy. "Watch, from my sleeve will issue forth the great weapon of my own creation!"

She stepped foot on the ground and spread her stance, before leaning to one side and shooting one arm out. Her voluminous sleeve bulged outward, and suddenly a heavy stone hit the carpet with a loud thud - this stone was evidently painted to resemble that Taoist swirly symbol thingy, whatever that's called. Yin-Yang, right?

"A Dao Bomb!" She them held out both arms and wiggled them by the bomb to showcase the amazing magical incendiary device. "Our competition is bringing fists and boots to our fights - I will be bringing EXPLOSIVES! Magical explosives! I checked with the tournament organizers and they okayed it!"