Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

ShadowArxxy - OMFG - Part 2

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Omake: OMFG, Part II

“I can’t believe they brought us all the way out here to dig latrines.” whined Alex disgustedly.

Callie rolled her eyes. “Weren’t you just saying yesterday that anything would be better than continuing to sit around on that DropShip?”

“Okay, but….dammit, they didn’t even give us time to unpack!” Alex flailed his spade theatrically. “And I reiterate, what are we even here for?”

“Holy shit.”

“Oh ha ha, very clever.”

“No. I mean holy fucking shit.” Callie grabbed Alex’s shoulder and levered him around.

“Hey, ow, what’s with the. . . holy fucking shit!”

Having been scattered around the perimeter of the encampment to “dig latrines”, the students turned in twos and threes and fell into awed silence, staring poleaxed at the herd of massive sauropods wandering placidly through the area.

------

“Now that you’ve seen the local fauna, you understand the importance of following safety procedures.” declared Scary Agent Lady, whose suit was somehow perfectly immaculate despite the semi-tropical conditions. “First and foremost, no one is to be alone or unaccounted for at any time.

We are currently expanding the encampment with an outer ring of observation towers, which you will be assigned to in groups of nine, three rotating watches of three. You are to maintain line of sight with each other at all times and to immediately report any unusual behaviors to base.

You are to be suited and carry an issued sidearm any time you are outside the main palisade, which also means that you are required to pass personal armor and small-arms qualifications before you are permitted in the field.”

The students collectively gulped -- they couldn’t imagine her being anything but unyieldingly stringent, and somehow that instantly took all the fun out of carrying a gun.

To my satisfaction.

-----

“Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. This is Tower Five. Alex stepped outside to, ah, relieve himself five minutes ago and he has not come back, nor is he responding to radio calls.”

“Base to Tower Five, we have his suit beacon. Rapid reaction force is moving out. Remain calm and stand by.”

Whereas the students and other civilian scientists were fitted with the power armor equivalent of WorkMechs, the site’s protection consisted of actual Griffon Army ‘Mechs augmented by private security guards in light battle armor. The rapid-reaction squad arrived in less than five minutes, their jump-jet equipped armor providing a very literal take on “bounding overwatch”.

They found the unfortunate Alex flat on his back in the mud with an adorably aggrieved-looking four-foot raptor standing on his back. The little predator hopped off and chirped inquisitively at the incoming battle armor troopers, apparently willing to surrender not-a-meal-anyway without a fight.

Needless to say, Callie never let Alex hear the end of that.

After that initial encounter, raptors were often spotted around the outer perimeter towers and stalking -- but never actually attacking -- the transport groups rotating to and from the main encampment, which was quite fascinating because they hadn’t ever been seen in the area at all.

----

“Mayday, mayday, mayday! There’s a T-REX APPROACHING THE TOWER!”

“Base to Tower Three. Calm down. We have your camera feeds and the T-Rex does not appear to be hostile.”

“It’s a motherfucking T-Rex and these motherfucking towers are at eat-me height! GET US OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!”

Somehow, inch-thick endo-steel armored shutters over the tower’s panoramic windows did not feel so comforting with one of the most iconic superpredators in human history making an appearance right at window level.

Still, the massive dinosaur wasn’t roaring or charging the tower; it simply ambled out of the surrounding forest with the relaxed ease of something that knew full well it could eat anything that bothered it, regarded the tower with evident curiosity, sniffed intently, and then decided that the external balcony/catwalk around the perimeter of the tower was an ideal backscratcher.

The camp’s automated aerial surveillance drones were generally able to track the tyrannosaur once they they had been programmed with appropriate recognition profiles. It was soon determined that the encampment happened to lie in a border zone between the territorial ranges of a single large male tyrannosaur and a younger mated pair. All three displayed the same “scratch-themselves-on-the-towers” behavior whenever they happened to wander through.

No one would admit who first started calling the observation towers “scratching posts”, but it quickly caught on with everyone. Even Scary Agent Lady used it in her reports.

-----

The surprisingly non-aggressive behavior of the raptors and rexes stood in dramatic contrast with the next major dinosaur the teams encountered, which was essentially an allosaurus. The appearance of a Jurassic-era theropod on the same world as Cretaceous-era ones cemented the paleontologists’ belief that these were clearly dinosaur analogs and not actual dinosaurs; nonetheless, the name persisted.

Analog or not, the allosauruses were roughly three-quarters the size of a T-Rex, roamed nomadically in irregular packs of up to a dozen, and were observed to attack everything that wasn’t either a T-Rex or one of the biggest sauropods. . . which they would still attack if they had sufficient numbers massed. They even went after the Battlemech patrols, completely undeterred by the standard measure of lasers set to barely-less-than-lethal. The 'Mechs were forced to actually engage them with flamers and battlefists, and even then the allosauruses only retreated when their numbers were severely depleted.

While the presence of these aggressive predators was incredibly inconvenient in terms of requiring all movement outside the perimeter to be closely escorted by ‘Mechs, it did provide a major data point in the ongoing observations of the ‘regular’ dinosaurs of the region. It had previously been observed that the raptor pack territories throughout the region roughly corresponded to T-Rex territories, which was highly unusual since smaller predators should normally run in much smaller territories. When the allosaurus threat surfaced, it became evident that the raptor territories matched the T-Rex territories because the packs were actively following the T-Rexes, with closer observation revealing not only co-hunting tactics but also outright mutual defense.

-----

As weeks turned into months, the students’ responsibilities expanded from manning the scratching posts to ‘low risk’ field studies. Counting raptor eggs qualified as low risk because the raptors were willing to let suited humans come relatively close to their nests as long as they stopped at warning chirps, and couldn’t easily breach a suit even if they did attack.

But as it turned out, there was a reason the raptors zealously guarded their nests. . .

“Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Count One-Six, a giant snake just grabbed me!” Callie was trying very hard not to panic. She had managed to get her pistol out of its holster before the snake got a coil around her midsection, but she could barely hang on to the weapon with her prosthetic hand as it dragged her through the dense underbrush. Despite being big enough to neatly snatch her battlesuit, it had moved so fast that she hadn’t seen much more than a glimpse of terrifyingly thick loops of snake body tripping and yanking.

Her reflexive snap shot went uselessly high as four raptors blurred at -- past! -- her with warbling shrieks.

------

“Miss Morgan, what part of no contact with the dinosaurs under any circumstances was too difficult to understand?” demanded Secret Agent Lady icily.

“The part where I didn’t contact them, they contacted me.” Callie was very tempted to add that a titanoboa was not a dinosaur anyway, except Secret Agent Lady already sounded like she wanted to invent a prison just to throw her in. She probably didn’t look like anything, though. They’d never seen Secret Agent Lady have the slightest hint of an expression under her dark glasses.

“That is not what I am referring to. You used your antivenin auto-injector on one of the raptors after the snake attack, in direct contravention of policy.” Somehow, ‘direct contravention of policy’ was pronounced as clearly synonymous with ‘high treason’.

For all that Secret Agent Lady was terrifying-in-calmness, the sheer unfairness of the accusation filled Callie with indignant fervor. “If the raptors hadn’t intervened, that snake would have eaten me! My suit diagnostics says I’ve got multiple cracked ribs right through my midsection armor, and that’s with the raptors forcing the snake to stop clamping down so it could fight! They went after the snake for me, helping the one that got bit bad just made it even!”

“Be that as it may, Miss Morgan, you do notice that you’re still outside the camp without medical care because there are eight raptors in close proximity to you, they are too close for us to operate the entry locks, they won’t let anyone else get near you without an aggression response, and they show no signs of leaving.

“Uh, ooops?”
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
That's what jump jets are for

The civilian grade suits don't have those, the 'science kids' are not trained in their operation, and the poor raptors would start trying to invent flight.

(Also, the palisade walls are not electrified-and-razor-wired, so the raptors actually could climb them quite easily if inclined. No one's thought of trying to seriously 'raptor proof' the encampment when the raptors have never even approached it, there's clear terrain all around it and the raptors do not like being in wide spaces without cover.)
 
Last edited:
Turn 56 - The Armies Fight

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
Turn 56 - The Armies Fight

Combat Report - Operation Golden Devil

Phase One - Engagement at Orbital Shipyard Complex
Friendly Losses - HMS Grom, 14 Aerospace Fighters
Enemy Losses - 176 total combat dropships, 864 Aerospace Fighters
Results - Destruction of Target

The engagement began with bearing-only launches of Barracuda capital missiles which had been equipped with nuclear warheads. These launches were deliberately timed to look like ‘panic’ launches from well beyond effective range, as the Dracs had never seen us use this weapon before. As a consequence, many of the Drac ASFs were still in their launch bays when the Barracuda’s reactivated, acquired targets, and slashed in to attack. Most Drac ASF losses occurred at this point, as less than a hundred enemy fighters managed to launch, massively outnumbered by the 10 wings we had deployed from the Royal Sovereigns.

Further capital fire caused enormous additional damage, nearly crippling the Drac forces even before they got in range to reply. A single enemy Avenger managed to kamikaze into HMS Grom, resulting in the destruction of the parasite destroyer with all hands.

The personnel of the shipyards were given an hour to evacuate prior to bombardment, unfortunately not a single shuttle or escape pod was launched in this period. Naval comm-scanners indicate that there were intense bursts of weapons fire inside the yards, evidently as security forces prevented the workers from fleeing. Six jumpship slips and associated dropship manufacturing facilities were confirmed completely destroyed.

Phase One - Engagement at Nowa Warszawa Orbitals
Friendly Losses - HMS Tufan, 67 Aerospace Fighters, slight damage to multiple vessels
Enemy Losses - 108 total combat dropships, 864 Aerospace Fighters
Results - Orbital victory and destruction of all orbital infrastructure

The enemy was better prepared for this engagement, but the initial barrage of Barracudas and sub-capital weapons still caused enormous damage, leaving the enemy at combat loss grouping before they had a chance to respond.

Unfortunately the enemy had very large numbers of aerospace fighters in the sky, and were able to shoot down a number of our own ASFs despite the enormous firepower disparity thanks to the fighting happening within the engagement envelopes for our dropships. HMS Tufan was lost to accumulated damage, her crew was successfully taken off and demolition charges utterly destroyed the wreck leaving nothing behind to salvage.

Phase One - Raid Nowa Warszawa (Ground engagement)
Friendly Losses - Loss of 14 vehicles, 28 dead, 192 injured
Enemy Losses - Damage to multiple enemy Mechs, ‘significant’ casualties amongst Friendly Persuader’ civil protection battalions.
Results - 1st RRF successfully withdrew to dropships, both SpecOps regiments are now active in support of Home Army.

Our first ‘combat drop’ on enemy soil went mostly smoothly, although several doctrinal changes are recommended (see appendix A). The 1st Rapid Response Force was able to dictate the battle, refusing to engage unless in a position to swarm isolated enemy formations and leading the enemy on a wild 600 kilometer chase around agricultural regions of the planet.

The Special Operations Regiments were able to completely break contact during this period, and at last report had joined forces with surviving Home Army groups that had been holding out against the Dracs' brutal rule. Over three hundred children were evacuated on board the Roadrunner when the Rapid Reaction Force was pulled off the planet.

Appendix A mostly consists of highly technical recommendations, mostly in regards to better methods of combat loading the dropships, distribution of ready supplies, and other things that are generally handled at much lower levels than the crown.

-----

In short, Operation Golden Devil was a triumph. You suspect that the relatively weak ‘thunder run’ operation may have lulled the Dracs into a false sense of security, allowing the heavy punch to land successfully. Sensors detected fewer than a hundred remaining Drac dropships in-system when your forces jumped out following the battle, although estimates are that the remaining two orbital shipyards can build 160 dropships a year, not counting ground factory production. Getting trained and reliable personnel to crew that many vessels, of course, is a different story.

You also receive intelligence summaries from discussions that your SpecOps forces had with the Home Guard. Native Nowa Warszawans are a distinct minority on their own planet now, between purges by the Dracs and the importation of over a billion sterilized slaves from Kilburrogh. You boggle at that number, as evidently Kilburrogh has such an enormous population that they are able to export over 45 million slaves a year, packed like sardines into modified Mammoth dropships. The vast majority male, and all medically sterilized as evidently the ruling caste on Kilburrogh is unwilling to permit others to ‘breed’ their cash cow product lines.

You spend several very satisfying hours shooting effigies of the Dragon on the firing range upon hearing that.

It’s only several days after the force returns that you receive one further piece of bad news, your granddaughter was injured in the fighting when her Chasseur was destroyed by an enemy Jenner. She successfully ejected and was picked up safely, but suffered a broken collar bone, broken arm, concussion and lacerations.

Your first instinct is to go immediately to the hospital where she is recovering. Your second instinct is to go there in the guise of visiting all of the wounded. Which you wind up doing.

Of course, Tien is your granddaughter, and Jeremy’s daughter, AND a member of 1st RRF. The moment you entered the front door she somehow convinced the orderlies to sneak her out the back door so that she could join the rest of her unit on a ‘proper’ bar crawl, injuries be damned. She had zero interest in dealing with an overprotective ba.

You, of course, had anticipated this, had all of the bars in the local area being watched by the Special Branch, and as soon as you knew where the revelers were you crashed the party along with other members of your old squad from back when you were young and invincible. These kids wanted to party and thought their elders would just slow them down?

You’d show them young whippersnappers that old age and treachery, plus a cast iron bladder and liver, beats youthful enthusiasm every time.

You were INFANTRY, no vehicle crewmen alive would beat you at a bar crawl, damnit. You may be the Empress now, but you haven’t forgotten your roots.

Of course your bodyguards do not approve of this, but screw em, there is a principle at stake, and you’ve got Sergeant Major Ngo at your back.

Kids these days.

You are quite glad that your guards have orders to take pictures of everything, because the expression on your granddaughter's face when you slide onto the barstool next to her and steal her whiskey is priceless. You think she was bracing for getting yelled at or mom’ed in public only to blink when all you do is throw back the shot in a single bracing gulp, slam the shot glass down on the bar, and order two more, one for you and one for her.

And in the end you and the old gang stand triumphant, with RRF troopers groaning in defeat as drunkenness claims the last of them, and you just know that all of them are going to wake up with killer hangovers in the morning. You, meanwhile, once you deal with a full bladder from wisely mixing water into your drinks and cheating like a cheating cheater who cheats, cheatingly, will sleep the sleep of the just and righteous after teaching these whippersnappers a thing or two.

You and the rest of your old unit spend the rest of the night reminiscing about old times, when things were simpler. You need to do this more often.

And you don’t even need to worry about the press or public image, because as far as you can tell the moment the news broke of the great victory the entire system decided to engage in mass revelry.

Yes, you took losses, and tomorrow you’d steel yourself and visit the families of the dead, but dammit, this was a win, and you are going to celebrate it.

Several days later you are back in the Palace, your granddaughter properly chastised and with a new perspective on her ba, and Admiral Benjamin is back in your office with another ops plan.

The navy is proposing a recon in force of the Kuroisora system. A straightforward recon run for your single Sentinel with a strong escort force. Only a single Monolith would be dedicated to this mission.
  • Sentinel Class Scout Cruiser - 1
    • HMS Sentinel
  • Shannon class Parasite Armored Cruiser - 6
    • HMS Shannon
    • HMS Northampton
    • HMS Imperieuse
    • HMS Orlando
    • HMS Australia
    • HMS Undaunted
  • Royal Sovereign Class Parasite Battleship - 1
    • HMS Ramilles
  • Newport-C class Attack Transport - 1
    • AKA-01
[]Approve Operation Llama
[]Deny Operation Llama
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
Well I didn't know we were rolling in with nukes, but if it works it works.
Eh.

Nukes are pretty easy to make. Even top tier ones are 1980's tech. Some of the raw mats are a little rare, but not that rare.

The main thing holding backs nukes is people being less shitty than many on the net expecting.
 

Tel Janin Aman

Well-known member
Comrade
I hope the local kurita shit bricks at this attack. A nice bit of payback and hopefully we keep the momentum. Rolls must have been pretty good on our side.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Isn't the Combine's goal to takeover everything? Why would they be allied with Kilburrogh? Only reason I can think of is that it is a short term alliance of convenience and the Combine intend to go after Kilburrogh and conquer it as some point. Well, I guess this group of Combine are trying to build up to attack the FedSuns' flanks, but taking over a nearby slave empire seams like it'd be on their to-do list.

If Kilburrogh was able to export a billion slaves in 22 years... that suggests that Kilburrogh has an absolutely insane number of jumpships and dropships. No indication of their military capability yet, but the should have the power of sheer, overwhelming numbers on their side. We might be in a very bad situation. All it takes is for a Kilburrogh ship bringing slaves to the Dracs to jump in, notice that the Dracs just got hurt bad (bad for business!), and learn that we did it and are almost certainly coming back (wiping out the Dracs in that system means one less customer for Kilburrogh, which is bad for business!). The Kilburrogh jumpship asks the Dracs for the coordinates of our star system. We could be facing an invasion of thousands of incoming dropships very soon and there is no way we'll stop them all before they reach Griffon's Roost. Only question is how good their ground forces are.

Also, when we eventually liberate Kilburrogh decades from now... oh boy Kilburrogh's recover is going to be really, really bad. That society is screwed. I know we're good guys and all, but I'm not sure if we want to give the newly freed slaves a lot of voting power in our empire, if at all. And an occupation is going to be a nightmare and a massive drain on our resources and attention for several decades, if not centuries. Might be better to just leave them independent and trade with them, but let them deal with the migraine of sorting out all of their problems.

[X] Approve Operation Llama
 

SuperHeavy

Well-known member
Nukes are pretty easy to make. Even top tier ones are 1980's tech. Some of the raw mats are a little rare, but not that rare.
I am more surprised we are mass launching nuclear weapons because it invites the Combine to do the same with a side of bombardment. Their current modus operandi was to burn our cities with incendiaries, they could be pissed off enough now to change that to salted tactical munitions. I am not saying we needed to forgo the use of nuclear weapons but it does escalate things.
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
I am more surprised we are mass launching nuclear weapons because it invites the Combine to do the same with a side of bombardment. Their current modus operandi was to burn our cities with incendiaries, they could be pissed off enough now to change that to salted tactical munitions. I am not saying we needed to forgo the use of nuclear weapons but it does escalate things.

They were already throwing them at us, in an space sense. We're just matching their limits.
 

Jarow

Well-known member
[X] Approve Operation Llama

We need to know every planet's orbital setups to destroy all the shipyards the Dracs have. A quick scout sounds like a good idea.

If Kilburrogh was able to export a billion slaves in 22 years... that suggests that Kilburrogh has an absolutely insane number of jumpships and dropships.

Assuming an infantry bay's worth of space per person, and half a behemoth's load being spent on people and the other on supplies, a single monolith with a full load of behemoths could do it in slightly over 21 years. Given we know the dracs have (or at least had) more than one monolith, it's definitely doable with what we know the Dracs have.

It seems the local systems map isn't in the thread, but we have an image of it in the discord. Kilburrough is a Drac controlled planet one jump away from Nowa Warszawa (and I think two from us). So it's going to be conquered as part of defeating the Dracs, but definitely going to be... interesting... to deal with afterwards.
 
Local Region Map

LordSunhawk

Das BOOT (literally)
Owner
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
SPOILER_Griffon_System_Environs.jpg
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
It looks like they built wide and we built tall

A strategy that worked well for them up to the point where they lost a few precious JumpShips to us and we were no longer forced to be purely on the defensive.

Scary thought: the Draconis Combine has hands down the *best* aerospace forces of any of the Great Houses, due primarily to them being the *least* fanatical adherents of the "Cult of the Battlemech". The others are so Battlemech-centric that they don't even have a naval branch of service, ASFs and DropShips are treated purely as auxiliary craft with no flag-level admiralty at all.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top