PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
You should really read This Was Easier On The Tabletop then
Battletech Welcome to the Jungle
- Thread starter Speaker4thesilent
- Start date
paulobrito
Well-known member
Yep, waiting for long months between new chapters...
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
I would like to like that story. It started strong, but after the last chapter, I'm just done. Peak SI cringe. The other characters exist only to make the SI look good. I'm doing my damnedest to avoid any such thing here.You should really read This Was Easier On The Tabletop then
Tryglaw
Well-known member
That's generally the "problem" with quality writing, it leaves you desperate for moar!
gral
Well-known member
Worst thing about it it's not that, it even isn't what Speaker termed 'peak SI cringe'. It's the fact that the hangers on Don't. Shut. The Fuck. UP. Seriously, the fact the guy takes at least 4 months to update is no reason for people keeping the story thread alive, especially given there's no discussion matter to accomplish that, and so the thread keeps recycling the same shit on and on.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
And the thread had to be locked three or four times due to discussion going into utterly bizarre directions.
You should see the AH though, where hangers on kept a story on the first page of fandom section for half a year of absolutely no OP sightings, until OP told them that he is quitting the story due to health problems.
You should see the AH though, where hangers on kept a story on the first page of fandom section for half a year of absolutely no OP sightings, until OP told them that he is quitting the story due to health problems.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
So, I got some comments on SB that the fights in the last chapter ended up feeling like an RP of a tabletop battle report. So, I went back and rewrote them. I’ll see about getting the amended version posted here later today or tomorrow.
Edit: Finally actually got around to it. I should know better than to set a date for when I'll do something.
Edit: Finally actually got around to it. I should know better than to set a date for when I'll do something.
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Chapter 21
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
A/N: Got some feedback on the last chapter and decided after due consideration that I agreed. It did read a lot like a badly RP’ed tabletop battle report. As such, the fight scenes have been tweaked to make them more a narrative and less a recitation of the dice rolls. Thanks to Yellowhammer and Decim for helping roll out this battle too, and here’s to hoping I’ve been more successful with the writing this time.
Outside Silver’s Rest, Sevren, Sevren System,
Radstadt Prefecture, Rasalhague Military District, Draconis Combine
January 6th, 3016
For a moment, Julia could not remember where she was. With the shrill tones of her alarm ringing in her ears, it took her tired brain several seconds to recognize the foldaway bunk in the new Gungnir’s cockpit. When she did, her breath caught and her heartbeat accelerated. In a few short hours, she would be entering combat again. Her first time in her new ‘Mech and the first time since the ammo explosion that could so easily have cost her her life on Suk II.
Her hand had already made its way to the Mech Charm, as always in its place around her neck. She was excited: ready to prove herself worthy of the trust Aunt Katrina had placed in her. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t help the feeling of apprehension that clung to her. She’d had less than a week to familiarize herself with her new ‘Mech, and good as the -6S was, she’d managed to suss out one problem already.
Who knew if combat would reveal more? For that matter, she was working alongside a new unit with new doctrine and new responsibilities. No, she had reasons for her apprehension.
That just made it more important to push that apprehension aside. Mech Charm still in hand, she took a deep breath, feeling the scars on the metal against her fingers. She breathed in air and over the course of the next several minutes, exhaled inadequacy, tension, and apprehension.
She was tired; the enemy would be tired as well.
She did not know the Thunderbolt, her new spear, the way that she had known her first Gungnir; the enemy did not know the capabilities of many of the ‘Mechs they would be facing.
She had new responsibilities; that was the way of the ‘Sphere. Higher rank came with burdens to match the privileges. She was a Steiner, and more was demanded of her. She would not shrink from her burdens.
She bowed her head and, as she crossed herself from the habit of her Roman Catholic upbringing, whispered a prayer made famous in the wars of Terra long before humanity had reached the stars.
“O Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.”
Once she was feeling calm and focused, Julia moved quickly through her abbreviated morning ablutions, slipped her cooling vest and neurohelmet on, then grabbed an iced coffee from the mini-fridge beside her and an MRE from the web bag beside it.
Then she cranked the reactor to life as the battalion started to come alive around her.
I snapped awake and once again thanked God that I was back in my early 20s. I was still close enough to a teenager to be able to sleep at the drop of a hat, but didn’t feel like I’d been kept up for a week if I got shortchanged on a night’s sleep.
The cockpit in a Banshee felt more like a New York apartment than the cockpit of a war machine. It was certainly roomier than the cab and bunk of the Long Haul truck my grandfather back in the 20th century had driven. I should know, I’d accompanied him several times when I was a teen.
The relative roominess made an early morning shit, shower, and shave much less painstaking than it would have been in the Commando I’d started out driving.
That thought caused me to stop dead, toothbrush nearly falling out of my mouth as I started to chuckle at the absurdity of what I was doing.
Here I was in the future of an alternate universe, Princeps of a 95-ton Titan-alike and commanding more than sixty other such machines. Battalion command: a Major’s slot on the Org Chart when I’d never so much as seen the inside of a military college in either of my lives. What the hell was I doing?
I managed to set my toothbrush down in its holder before I dropped it, and leaned up against the cool metal of the bathroom nook’s wall. Hell, the closest I’d been to formal military training in the 21st century was getting told by a recruiter that flat feet were still as much a disqualification for service in the ‘00’s as they had been when my dad volunteered to go to Vietnam.
In the life I’d had in the here-and-now, I’d been a young fool, and almost as good a Mechwarrior as I thought I was. That didn’t make the me-that-had-been any sort of leader, though.
So here I was, relying half on lessons from fiction and half on books about World War Two and the American Civil War to lead an unit that was half PMC and half Feudal Knights into battle with a bunch of ethnic Scandanavians cosplaying Samurai at the behest of a dynasty of the biggest fucking Weaboos ever born.
It took me five minutes to get the giggles under control.
But control them I did, and thanked my lucky stars that I’d had Comet to lean on, and then Meidlin Levy to browbeat all of us into learning how to manage more than a Lance or two at a time.
I grabbed a can of pop from my mini-fridge as I sat down and got situated. It was the closest thing I’d been able to find to Dr. Pepper: a little bit too much cherry flavor, but it had the right level of burn, and that was the most important part. I didn’t crack it open right away because I’d just brushed my damn teeth; an MRE tasting vaguely of fluoride was acceptable, but I wasn’t willing to ruin perfectly good pop. I’d wait until I reset my taste buds.
With the twist of a knob, Shiroyama’s massive 380XL Fusion Engine sparked to life.
“We've painted The Islands vermilion,
We've pearled on half-shares in the Bay,
We've shouted on seven-ounce nuggets,
We've starved on a Seedeeboy's pay;” the computer prompted.
“We've laughed at the world as we found it, --
Its women and cities and men --
From Sayyid Burgash in a tantrum
To the smoke-reddened eyes of Loben,” I responded, and after a moment’s consideration the locks disengaged.
“Reactor: online. Sensors: online. Weapons: online. All systems nominal. Armor condition: ten,” my computers reported.
As I finished assembling the preserved meal, I couldn’t help but smile thinking of the rest of the poem: ‘the Lost Legion,’ indeed, and in more ways than one.
I was only halfway done with my breakfast when the first call came in. Julia seemed to be living up to Katrina’s reputation.
“This is Bloodhound,” I answered. Reading my mood, she skipped any formalities.
“The Jägers’ Wayfarer Company reports no contacts last night,” she passed on.
That was good news, to the extent that nothing bad had happened. We’d made the call to let the Dracs think they’d bloodied their pursuers badly enough that mere Lucrewarriors wouldn’t have the intestinal fortitude to keep after them. That their remaining scouts hadn’t doubled back seemed to indicate that we’d guessed their response about right.
The downside was that it meant we’d spent all night with no eyes on them. The good news was that it meant our faster forces were going to be decently well rested, and the Jägers Mechs and J Edgar Hovertanks were going to be almost totally fresh. Additionally-
“We also got a report from Juniper Springs. A LIC asset says the Combine column moved through the town without stopping,” she continued.
“Yesh!” I exclaimed through a mouthful of rehydrated hashbrowns, then swallowed, finally opening my pop to wash the mouthful down. “Sorry. They able to pass on anything about the Regulars Mech composition?” I inquired.
“The asset didn’t have much to say. Probably didn’t have an excuse to get a good look on short notice. All we got was that they saw several Dragons, a couple Thunderbolts, and what they thought was a Lancelot.”
That was fair. We were lucky that the Dracs hadn’t decided to hold the town for a last stand. That could have been seriously messy.
“The Thuds could be a problem, but even if we end up mixing it up, our computers should be able to sort theirs from ours easily enough. And those Lancelots,” I shook my head.
The original had reportedly been formidable: a fast Heavy with a nasty long-range all-energy armament. The loss of technology during the Succession Wars hadn’t been kind to the design, though, and the currently produced models were overgunned, undersinked, and slow. Thin-skinned for a Heavy, and with crappy Combine-built electronics, the Mech was referred to as ‘the Coffin’ in common parlance.
“I’ll make sure to pass around that they’re priority targets. Hammering them down fast removes a lot of long-ranged firepower from the table,” I said, thinking out loud as much as making meaningful conversation.
Most importantly, however, the news that the Combine had moved through Juniper Springs meant that they were at least two hundred kilometers away if they’d followed their doctrine about not stopping to bivouac within range of the town to prevent it being used as visual concealment for an approach.
More than that, it meant that the Drac commander had probably pushed his men for a full sixteen hours before letting them rest. That meant he was probably depending primarily on the infantrymen who’d been in the Maxims and the Goblins for his camp defense.
Those men wouldn’t have been able to rest well in moving APCs. They were going to be tired, and they were going to miss things. Especially if they were resentful of the rest of the defenders.
And the highway was a straight east-west run. That meant if we could time it right the enemy would be staring into the sunrise to see an attack coming. And Mechs were much easier to spot than light hovertanks at extreme range in the dark. Especially if most of their eyes were dismounted infantry at ground level.
“Julia, get ahold of the Jägers hovertanks. If they’re careful and just a little bit lucky, I think we can arrange to take these people by surprise with a dawn or predawn attack, but for that I need to know for sure where the hell they are.”
“On it, Bloodhound, but while we’re on the field, feel free to call me Stick,” she said with a sigh. “Habits save lives and take lives and we are in Dragon Country. No sense letting them have an easy time identifying who‘s who.”
I literally had to bite my lip to keep from asking, but I apparently took too long to respond, because after a moment she continued.
“Yes, I lobbied too hard for a matching callsign,” she admitted, resigned.
Looking over at her ‘Mech where a spearhead emblem would be visible in good light, I dissolved in giggles for the second time since I woke up. The Mud Wrestlers were indeed Officers, but definitely not Gentlemen.
Outside Juniper Springs, Sevren, Sevren System,
Radstadt Prefecture, Rasalhague Military District, Draconis Combine
January 6th, 3016
My Lance caught the first confirmed glimpse of metal reflecting the rising sun at about twenty-seven kilometers. That pretty well confirmed that the enemy had at least some Assault ‘Mechs, or, given the flat ground we were traversing, they wouldn’t have been visible yet.
With our attack force very deliberately not marching in time to avoid waving a red flag to any active seismic sensor in the zip code, and the rising sun at our backs to defeat thermals and normal vision alike, the biggest risk of being seen was somebody getting lucky with Magscan. Unless the Combine had somebody’s hangar queen from the First Succession War over there with intact Star League electronics, there was no way they were getting a useful return outside fifteen kilometers, and piss poor odds outside thirteen or so.
That was what we were gambling on, anyway. Moving at the flank speed of our heavies, we were covering a bit more than a kilometer a minute, and if we made it inside thirteen kilometers before being detected, we would be in effective weapons range of our ERPPCs just about five minutes from the time the alarm was sounded.
It wouldn’t keep them from scrambling to fight us, but it would hopefully be one more force multiplier on the pile keeping them from fighting effectively. As the range closed, more and more of our shorter Battlemechs made sighting reports, even as the SLDF target tracking systems I’d cheekily named Augur Arrays collated information and started nailing down the enemy’s force composition. We weren’t getting ideal looks at them, but that was fine, what we could see was damn informative.
My computer was giving me high confidence on two complete lances of Dragons, as expected of a Kuritan unit, but those were the only fast Heavyweight designs we were seeing. The Ninth Rasalhague was a force intended for urban combat, and it showed. As the range dropped and more angles into the enemy formation started to be available our systems identified Crusaders, Riflemen, Archers, Orions, and even a Guillotine alongside the Thunderbolts and Lancelots we were expecting.
Four Lances of predominantly slow, well armed and armored machines, the formation was definitely well-suited for a slugging match, especially where they could use buildings as cover and snipe at approaching foes before falling back and repeating the same tactic until an enemy was worn down. This was why they hadn’t abandoned their conventional forces to make best speed for New Cartris: they couldn’t. In fact, with the Assault-weight presumed Command Lance including the Awesome I was looking at, those tanks were actually capable of going faster than the ‘Mechs so long as they were in good terrain.
They really should have ignored their orders and stayed in Landing to make trouble, occurred to me. This made unforced error number two that whoever was in command on the Combine side had committed. If we rattled him with this little stunt, he might well be convinced to commit another.
I put that thought aside as we closed past fourteen kilometers. If I was right, the Combine would have only kept a Lance of Mechwarriors on ready-five at any one time. That meant one man covering each ninety degree sector. Now, though, my force would be entering the visual range of the PBI on the ground, and that would open us up to a whole lot of Mark One eyeballs, and even an exhausted ground pounder or tanker could get lucky.
I found myself holding my breath, and had to remind myself to breathe. Good thing too, it was more than a minute before the Combine camp erupted in activity like a kicked anthill.
“Wayfarer Company, Medium Company, you are go for independent action,” I announced, and both of the formations flanking our central Heavy Company accelerated at best speed. It would take Heavy Company and my Command Lance five minutes to make it into range; the mediums could get there much more quickly.
The range dropped precipitously as giant strides ate up the kilometers and the Combine forces struggled to form up and get organized.
Fresh troops, veterans for the most part, could have undoubtedly managed it in five minutes. These, however, were not fresh troops and they didn’t have five minutes.
Levy’s Medium company had the speed to cross the distance into long range for their ERPPCs in less than four minutes.
From beyond even LRM range, man-made lightning flashed for the Combine lines, but not for the targets that most would expect.
Maxim hover-APCs had a pair of LRM-5 racks, but only five and a half tons of armor protecting them. Speed was one of their best defenses … and they were grounded, crews struggling to wake up and get their hovercraft into action.
Judging by the immediate fireball as one brewed up, many of them weren’t going to manage it.
Bedraggled return fire, conventional PPCs at the extreme edge of their range and a few LRMs, fell short, LRMs running out of propellant and PPCs losing containment and dispersing in the atmosphere.
As soon as the weapons cycled, ERPPC fire, this time joined by AC-2s from Wayfarer company’s Vulcans, bore in, and more Maxims began to burn.
My computers picked up a burst of autocannon fire actually making contact with one Phoenix, but couldn’t backtrace where it had come from. Unless someone over there was an artist with an AC-5, that probably meant one or more of the Dragons was a -1C with a Light autocannon and reinforced armor instead of the -1N’s Medium autocannon.
I set my targeting systems to searching for the probable culprit. While a -1N would be a priority target in this engagement due to being lightly armored for a heavy but with decent long-range weaponry. The -1C would be very low priority due to being better armored but less well-armed.
The Combine was finally starting to get organized, and somebody over there had a functioning brain. Fire lancing out from the Combine’s Battlemechs was increasing, but the big clue was that a coherent battle line was taking form.
Wayfarer company was now close enough to the Combine tanks for extreme-range PPC fire, and began to take the slow-moving Goblins under fire as they tried to crawl into range of their 8cm lasers.
I frowned as Levy’s mediums retargeted as well. That was fast even for them. Three salvos to demolish a company of Maxims?
Then I noticed that out of the Combine’s two companies of Scorpions, only one was moving. I took a closer look at the Maxims. It was hard to see through the smoke from burning hovercraft, but it didn’t look like any of them had been moved either.
LIC sabotage? Or were they up to something. They didn’t read like decoys …
I pushed the thought aside; I didn’t have time for it. It didn’t matter if those were mechanical casualties or if the crews had all gotten drunk or had food poisoning. They seemed to be out of action, and that was enough. If the situation changed, I could count on Levy to let me know about it.
Facing unfamiliar war machines with significant ranged firepower, whoever was in charge on the other side had done the only thing he could under the circumstances. He’d ordered an advance.
Unfortunately for him, it was exactly what I’d hoped he’d do. Once the Combine started moving forward, they tended to get aggressive about it. If he’d thrown everything but his Dragons at us and ordered them to run for the hills at flank, he might have gotten one or two away.
As it was, he was only closing the range on my Heavies. About the time the first Goblin was succumbing to the combined firepower of Wayfarer and Medium Companies long-ranged weapons, the enemy Heavies opened up on them with their first accurate shots. I could see at least a couple of PPC bolts hit, but I didn’t have the focus to spare for a closer examination.
After all, if the enemy was in range, then so were we.
“Enemy Warhammer,” I called out my Command Lance’s target. The Combine formation was still a bit unclear, but it seemed to be in the same lance as a Lancelot, so we’d have good odds of taking out the Lance leader if we brought both down. It also had a pair of PPCs, but the second-weakest armor on the field. Taking care to wait until one massive foot hit the earth, I squeezed both my left and right triggers as well as hitting the left thumb button. Both ERPPCs and my Banshee’s LB-10X fired. I’d been aiming for center mass, but it would take even my computers some time to sort out where exactly eight lightning bolts had gone home.
I got the impression of armor shattering all over the front of the Battlemech. My HUD updated with probable hit locations for my fire just as the Heavy autocannon rounds arrived, and the Warhammer’s squat head peeled open like a watermelon hit with a sledgehammer.
“Damn good shooting!” I called.
Meanwhile, Julia, who hadn’t fired with the rest of my Command Lance yet, shifted targets to add her LB-10X to the fire staggering the nearby Lancelot.
Its high-set bulbous head didn’t handle the punishment any better than the Warhammer’s had, and it was already dropping before its former Lancemate hit the ground behind it.
Hell, two golden BBs to start? I’d take it even if I was going to watch for Murphy’s inevitable revenge.
The enemy commander finally seemed to realize that he had bigger problems than a couple companies of Mediums. Instead of the scattered fire we’d seen until this point, the Combine started focusing their fire by Lance. Something my number four found out the hard way as PPC bolts and Autocannon rounds blasted armor from his ‘Mech and blew holes in the grass beside it.
This time I’d already been keeping an eye in the right direction, and caught the action. Both Beemers in the enemy Command Lance had missed short, but the Awesome had put all three of its guns on target, and my number four, Trigger, had taken two of them directly to the left torso, right over the magazine for the LB-10X.
I was disinclined to let that continue. An -8Q had a lot of armor, but my Lance had a lot of gun. If nothing else, we’d be denying the enemy a chance to pick his moment again.
“New target: Awesome,” I called out and started working out the angle for my autocannon rounds while capacitors charged and a new trio of shells were fed into the gun.
I reviewed where my computers thought I’d hit the Warhammer, a bit low and wide on each of the PPCs, and it would take a detailed analysis for who had hit where with the autocannon rounds. I nudged my aim up and in a touch and fired again, then stepped into an evasion to try and throw off incoming fire. At this range, I could tell that the Combine’s Assault Lance was targeting my own, but not which member, and it wouldn’t do to give them easy shots.
For all that it was only the second time firing Shiroyama’s guns in anger, the whole process was as easy and reflexive as changing lanes in traffic. The power of hundreds of hours of practice in action.
I only barely managed not to broadcast the whoop of success as our shots absolutely hammered into the Combine Battlemech. Tons of armor shattered as beams and slugs tore into the big machine, including one PPC hitting it nearly full in its forward-positioned cockpit. The blows left the hardy ‘Mech reeling as the gyro struggled to compensate for the sudden loss of armor mass. Then Julia added Gungnir’s LB-10X in a deliberately aimed shot, and this time she was firing cluster rounds.
Even without the head hit, it would have been a smart decision. The Awesome was well-known as a ZombieMech, but even as durable as it was, internal hits could sever control runs, wreck heat sinks, or rupture coolant lines, and even a casual glance showed that we’d flayed the left side of this one’s torso open like a gutted fish.
Three waves of submunitions scattered themselves over the torso of the Assault ’Mech, but midway through the second it dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Whether the armored cockpit glass had given up the ghost, or spalling from the explosions had done the deed, I was glad I wasn’t going to be responsible for hosing out that cockpit.
We hadn’t had it all our own way, though my Lancemate had managed to torso twist and take the worst of it on his right arm. And we’d just cut down the number of incoming PPC bolts by half, and in the process …
“New target: Victor!” I called. The close-range specialist had been behind their front line, shielded by the Awesome to protect it from precisely what we were about to do to it. The Victor was a lethal threat inside 3km, but utterly unthreatening before then. Rather than leaving it unmolested to maybe mulch a Medium as the range closed, I decided to remove the problem early. Then I called up hit locations from my last barrage to adjust my fire only to see one marked impact dead center on the Awesome’s forehead.
Deciding not to mess with what was working, I left my crosshairs more or less where they were. With the Victor’s more humanoid layout, that should focus my fire directly into the core of the BattleMech where the engine and Gyro were. Still, this sort of behavior couldn’t go unremarked upon.
“Stick, I take exception to this! Here I went and did all the work of removing that Drac’s canopy, and you’re the one that’s gonna get the credit! That’s kill stealing!” I bitched lightheartedly as my guns finished cycling.
“I think you meant ‘kill securing,’ Bloodhound. I didn’t see your name on him,” Julia snarked right back, then we were all dancing through firing and evasion.
Several things happened in rapid succession. The Victor dodged a hair too late, clearly thinking one of the Battlemasters, nearly as lethal in close and better equipped for a fight at range, would be targeted instead of him. The ‘Mech staggered under the hammer of eight PPCs, but seemed like it would pull through right up until the autocannon slugs arrived a heartbeat later. It was hard to tell live, but it certainly looked like a half-dozen rounds had gone off inside the torso. Either way, the Fusion Engine went into emergency shutdown and the lightly-armored Assault Mech dropped onto its face.
Julia, who had again held her fire looking to exploit armor breaches, turned and unloaded into a distant target. Since she was rewarded with the telltale sound of an ammo explosion, I was inclined to let her keep playing with the cluster rounds.
Unfortunately, return fire had gotten thicker, too. One of the Beemers had managed to score with its PPC, and a cloud of LRMs marked a Crusader and a Dragon firing on my number four as well. I cautiously marked it as the -1C and mentally ignored it. The plinking from it was much less important than other targets.
“Armor breach, right arm,” my number four reported as the rain of missiles trailed off. “Red light on an ML, and that torso’s gettin’ pretty thin too.”
At much the same time, DJ, my number two’s voice came across the radio swearing a blue streak as his torso-twist only barely took him out of the path of several incoming streams of Autocannon rounds. The company of Scorpions that was actually maneuvering had decided not to worry about getting all the way into range before firing. Their accuracy left something to be desired, but they were a distraction we didn’t need. Normally our light company would have handled them, but they were busy at the moment.
Levy had either forgotten that, or just made a poor judgement call to focus entirely on the Goblins.
I shook it off. That sort of thought was for the AAR.
“New target: Beemer on the right,” I announced. “Trigger, step back and break contact. Stick, I need you on the line.”
A quick glance at the rest of Heavy Company showed that our range advantage was paying off. A Kyudo was rotating back as well, its right arm looking pretty shot up, but it would still be able to fire indirectly with its big LRM rack. The Combine’s formation had gone from firming up to looking pretty ragged; about half of their Dragons were down, but that was all I could tell with a glance.
Our heavies were drawing nearly even with Levy’s Medium Lance, who’d slowed to a walking pace and had strafed well out toward the flank. I wondered if the Combine were even paying attention to that maneuver, but focused on taking my shot, then cursed as the Battlemaster juked to his left just as I fired. My left PPC missed wide and the right only winged him, but the rest of the Command Lance managed to track his movement and hammered him, even if most of the barrage was low. Just as he was undoubtedly thinking he’d come through okay, Julia’s LRMs arrowed out of the sky in a tight stream, and at least two thirds of them hammered into the Mech’s right leg as it was lifting off the ground.
When the Combine Mechwarrior finished his stride, the massive weight of the machine broke the weakened leg off about mid-thigh and sent the big machine forward onto its face.
Now that Trigger was off the line, more fire came in at my number two, but it was largely ineffectual. A burst of medium Autocannon rounds from the Scorpions cratered armor on his left leg, and a Crusader and Archer -2K, orphans from the Warhammer’s Lance, added missiles to the barrage; few were able to maintain lock through his last minute evasion. Barely a tithe of the sixty missiles fired at him managed to strike home.
Julia, meanwhile, had been the target of the remaining pair of Assault Mechs, and the two Heavies in the other Lance that had shot up Trigger. Maybe it was because she was a smaller target, or maybe she just had their measure, but she practically danced through their fire, accepting blows from the Light autocannon and a handful of LRMs in order to avoid the rest of the incoming salvo.
“New Target: the other Beemer,” I called out, then glanced at the wider battlefield.
Foehammer’s Heavy company had executed the plan to near-perfection. More than half the Dragons were down now, and Rowdy’s paired Thunderbolts and Ostwars had been whittling away at the Lance that was furthest away. The Lancelot and Guillotine were both crippled messes and a Rifleman wasn’t much better.
This looked to be a good time. They were committed and we didn’t have to close the range any further to keep hammering them.
“All stop,” I ordered on the Company frequency, putting action to my words. “Full reverse and hold them at range.”
I refocused back on the lone Battlemaster, the only survivor of the Combine’s Assault Lance and counted down the seconds until my guns were ready to fire. Then I waited an extra half-second to follow his evasion as he tried to sidestep my Lance’s fire.
Only then did I pull the triggers. His evasion had successfully scattered the damage from most of my Lance, but I’d taken advantage of coming to a brief halt, and aimed high. The risk paid off, and both of my ERPPCs punched into the armored cockpit glass. For just a moment, the Battlemech stood, suddenly a head shorter than it had been moments before, then gravity took its toll, and the Assault ’Mech pitched forward.
“Hah! Good shot!” Doug Jasper called out from beside me as he dodged another stream of autocannon shells. I glanced over with a grin as his right arm, raised to protect his cockpit from the Battlemaster’s PPC shot me a thumbs up.
So I had a front-row seat as a trio of LRMs slammed into his cockpit’s armored glass.
A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts.
Chapter 21
Outside Silver’s Rest, Sevren, Sevren System,
Radstadt Prefecture, Rasalhague Military District, Draconis Combine
January 6th, 3016
For a moment, Julia could not remember where she was. With the shrill tones of her alarm ringing in her ears, it took her tired brain several seconds to recognize the foldaway bunk in the new Gungnir’s cockpit. When she did, her breath caught and her heartbeat accelerated. In a few short hours, she would be entering combat again. Her first time in her new ‘Mech and the first time since the ammo explosion that could so easily have cost her her life on Suk II.
Her hand had already made its way to the Mech Charm, as always in its place around her neck. She was excited: ready to prove herself worthy of the trust Aunt Katrina had placed in her. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t help the feeling of apprehension that clung to her. She’d had less than a week to familiarize herself with her new ‘Mech, and good as the -6S was, she’d managed to suss out one problem already.
Who knew if combat would reveal more? For that matter, she was working alongside a new unit with new doctrine and new responsibilities. No, she had reasons for her apprehension.
That just made it more important to push that apprehension aside. Mech Charm still in hand, she took a deep breath, feeling the scars on the metal against her fingers. She breathed in air and over the course of the next several minutes, exhaled inadequacy, tension, and apprehension.
She was tired; the enemy would be tired as well.
She did not know the Thunderbolt, her new spear, the way that she had known her first Gungnir; the enemy did not know the capabilities of many of the ‘Mechs they would be facing.
She had new responsibilities; that was the way of the ‘Sphere. Higher rank came with burdens to match the privileges. She was a Steiner, and more was demanded of her. She would not shrink from her burdens.
She bowed her head and, as she crossed herself from the habit of her Roman Catholic upbringing, whispered a prayer made famous in the wars of Terra long before humanity had reached the stars.
“O Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.”
Once she was feeling calm and focused, Julia moved quickly through her abbreviated morning ablutions, slipped her cooling vest and neurohelmet on, then grabbed an iced coffee from the mini-fridge beside her and an MRE from the web bag beside it.
Then she cranked the reactor to life as the battalion started to come alive around her.
XXXXX
I snapped awake and once again thanked God that I was back in my early 20s. I was still close enough to a teenager to be able to sleep at the drop of a hat, but didn’t feel like I’d been kept up for a week if I got shortchanged on a night’s sleep.
The cockpit in a Banshee felt more like a New York apartment than the cockpit of a war machine. It was certainly roomier than the cab and bunk of the Long Haul truck my grandfather back in the 20th century had driven. I should know, I’d accompanied him several times when I was a teen.
The relative roominess made an early morning shit, shower, and shave much less painstaking than it would have been in the Commando I’d started out driving.
That thought caused me to stop dead, toothbrush nearly falling out of my mouth as I started to chuckle at the absurdity of what I was doing.
Here I was in the future of an alternate universe, Princeps of a 95-ton Titan-alike and commanding more than sixty other such machines. Battalion command: a Major’s slot on the Org Chart when I’d never so much as seen the inside of a military college in either of my lives. What the hell was I doing?
I managed to set my toothbrush down in its holder before I dropped it, and leaned up against the cool metal of the bathroom nook’s wall. Hell, the closest I’d been to formal military training in the 21st century was getting told by a recruiter that flat feet were still as much a disqualification for service in the ‘00’s as they had been when my dad volunteered to go to Vietnam.
In the life I’d had in the here-and-now, I’d been a young fool, and almost as good a Mechwarrior as I thought I was. That didn’t make the me-that-had-been any sort of leader, though.
So here I was, relying half on lessons from fiction and half on books about World War Two and the American Civil War to lead an unit that was half PMC and half Feudal Knights into battle with a bunch of ethnic Scandanavians cosplaying Samurai at the behest of a dynasty of the biggest fucking Weaboos ever born.
It took me five minutes to get the giggles under control.
But control them I did, and thanked my lucky stars that I’d had Comet to lean on, and then Meidlin Levy to browbeat all of us into learning how to manage more than a Lance or two at a time.
I grabbed a can of pop from my mini-fridge as I sat down and got situated. It was the closest thing I’d been able to find to Dr. Pepper: a little bit too much cherry flavor, but it had the right level of burn, and that was the most important part. I didn’t crack it open right away because I’d just brushed my damn teeth; an MRE tasting vaguely of fluoride was acceptable, but I wasn’t willing to ruin perfectly good pop. I’d wait until I reset my taste buds.
With the twist of a knob, Shiroyama’s massive 380XL Fusion Engine sparked to life.
“We've painted The Islands vermilion,
We've pearled on half-shares in the Bay,
We've shouted on seven-ounce nuggets,
We've starved on a Seedeeboy's pay;” the computer prompted.
“We've laughed at the world as we found it, --
Its women and cities and men --
From Sayyid Burgash in a tantrum
To the smoke-reddened eyes of Loben,” I responded, and after a moment’s consideration the locks disengaged.
“Reactor: online. Sensors: online. Weapons: online. All systems nominal. Armor condition: ten,” my computers reported.
As I finished assembling the preserved meal, I couldn’t help but smile thinking of the rest of the poem: ‘the Lost Legion,’ indeed, and in more ways than one.
I was only halfway done with my breakfast when the first call came in. Julia seemed to be living up to Katrina’s reputation.
“This is Bloodhound,” I answered. Reading my mood, she skipped any formalities.
“The Jägers’ Wayfarer Company reports no contacts last night,” she passed on.
That was good news, to the extent that nothing bad had happened. We’d made the call to let the Dracs think they’d bloodied their pursuers badly enough that mere Lucrewarriors wouldn’t have the intestinal fortitude to keep after them. That their remaining scouts hadn’t doubled back seemed to indicate that we’d guessed their response about right.
The downside was that it meant we’d spent all night with no eyes on them. The good news was that it meant our faster forces were going to be decently well rested, and the Jägers Mechs and J Edgar Hovertanks were going to be almost totally fresh. Additionally-
“We also got a report from Juniper Springs. A LIC asset says the Combine column moved through the town without stopping,” she continued.
“Yesh!” I exclaimed through a mouthful of rehydrated hashbrowns, then swallowed, finally opening my pop to wash the mouthful down. “Sorry. They able to pass on anything about the Regulars Mech composition?” I inquired.
“The asset didn’t have much to say. Probably didn’t have an excuse to get a good look on short notice. All we got was that they saw several Dragons, a couple Thunderbolts, and what they thought was a Lancelot.”
That was fair. We were lucky that the Dracs hadn’t decided to hold the town for a last stand. That could have been seriously messy.
“The Thuds could be a problem, but even if we end up mixing it up, our computers should be able to sort theirs from ours easily enough. And those Lancelots,” I shook my head.
The original had reportedly been formidable: a fast Heavy with a nasty long-range all-energy armament. The loss of technology during the Succession Wars hadn’t been kind to the design, though, and the currently produced models were overgunned, undersinked, and slow. Thin-skinned for a Heavy, and with crappy Combine-built electronics, the Mech was referred to as ‘the Coffin’ in common parlance.
“I’ll make sure to pass around that they’re priority targets. Hammering them down fast removes a lot of long-ranged firepower from the table,” I said, thinking out loud as much as making meaningful conversation.
Most importantly, however, the news that the Combine had moved through Juniper Springs meant that they were at least two hundred kilometers away if they’d followed their doctrine about not stopping to bivouac within range of the town to prevent it being used as visual concealment for an approach.
More than that, it meant that the Drac commander had probably pushed his men for a full sixteen hours before letting them rest. That meant he was probably depending primarily on the infantrymen who’d been in the Maxims and the Goblins for his camp defense.
Those men wouldn’t have been able to rest well in moving APCs. They were going to be tired, and they were going to miss things. Especially if they were resentful of the rest of the defenders.
And the highway was a straight east-west run. That meant if we could time it right the enemy would be staring into the sunrise to see an attack coming. And Mechs were much easier to spot than light hovertanks at extreme range in the dark. Especially if most of their eyes were dismounted infantry at ground level.
“Julia, get ahold of the Jägers hovertanks. If they’re careful and just a little bit lucky, I think we can arrange to take these people by surprise with a dawn or predawn attack, but for that I need to know for sure where the hell they are.”
“On it, Bloodhound, but while we’re on the field, feel free to call me Stick,” she said with a sigh. “Habits save lives and take lives and we are in Dragon Country. No sense letting them have an easy time identifying who‘s who.”
I literally had to bite my lip to keep from asking, but I apparently took too long to respond, because after a moment she continued.
“Yes, I lobbied too hard for a matching callsign,” she admitted, resigned.
Looking over at her ‘Mech where a spearhead emblem would be visible in good light, I dissolved in giggles for the second time since I woke up. The Mud Wrestlers were indeed Officers, but definitely not Gentlemen.
XXXXX
Outside Juniper Springs, Sevren, Sevren System,
Radstadt Prefecture, Rasalhague Military District, Draconis Combine
January 6th, 3016
My Lance caught the first confirmed glimpse of metal reflecting the rising sun at about twenty-seven kilometers. That pretty well confirmed that the enemy had at least some Assault ‘Mechs, or, given the flat ground we were traversing, they wouldn’t have been visible yet.
With our attack force very deliberately not marching in time to avoid waving a red flag to any active seismic sensor in the zip code, and the rising sun at our backs to defeat thermals and normal vision alike, the biggest risk of being seen was somebody getting lucky with Magscan. Unless the Combine had somebody’s hangar queen from the First Succession War over there with intact Star League electronics, there was no way they were getting a useful return outside fifteen kilometers, and piss poor odds outside thirteen or so.
That was what we were gambling on, anyway. Moving at the flank speed of our heavies, we were covering a bit more than a kilometer a minute, and if we made it inside thirteen kilometers before being detected, we would be in effective weapons range of our ERPPCs just about five minutes from the time the alarm was sounded.
It wouldn’t keep them from scrambling to fight us, but it would hopefully be one more force multiplier on the pile keeping them from fighting effectively. As the range closed, more and more of our shorter Battlemechs made sighting reports, even as the SLDF target tracking systems I’d cheekily named Augur Arrays collated information and started nailing down the enemy’s force composition. We weren’t getting ideal looks at them, but that was fine, what we could see was damn informative.
My computer was giving me high confidence on two complete lances of Dragons, as expected of a Kuritan unit, but those were the only fast Heavyweight designs we were seeing. The Ninth Rasalhague was a force intended for urban combat, and it showed. As the range dropped and more angles into the enemy formation started to be available our systems identified Crusaders, Riflemen, Archers, Orions, and even a Guillotine alongside the Thunderbolts and Lancelots we were expecting.
Four Lances of predominantly slow, well armed and armored machines, the formation was definitely well-suited for a slugging match, especially where they could use buildings as cover and snipe at approaching foes before falling back and repeating the same tactic until an enemy was worn down. This was why they hadn’t abandoned their conventional forces to make best speed for New Cartris: they couldn’t. In fact, with the Assault-weight presumed Command Lance including the Awesome I was looking at, those tanks were actually capable of going faster than the ‘Mechs so long as they were in good terrain.
They really should have ignored their orders and stayed in Landing to make trouble, occurred to me. This made unforced error number two that whoever was in command on the Combine side had committed. If we rattled him with this little stunt, he might well be convinced to commit another.
I put that thought aside as we closed past fourteen kilometers. If I was right, the Combine would have only kept a Lance of Mechwarriors on ready-five at any one time. That meant one man covering each ninety degree sector. Now, though, my force would be entering the visual range of the PBI on the ground, and that would open us up to a whole lot of Mark One eyeballs, and even an exhausted ground pounder or tanker could get lucky.
I found myself holding my breath, and had to remind myself to breathe. Good thing too, it was more than a minute before the Combine camp erupted in activity like a kicked anthill.
“Wayfarer Company, Medium Company, you are go for independent action,” I announced, and both of the formations flanking our central Heavy Company accelerated at best speed. It would take Heavy Company and my Command Lance five minutes to make it into range; the mediums could get there much more quickly.
The range dropped precipitously as giant strides ate up the kilometers and the Combine forces struggled to form up and get organized.
Fresh troops, veterans for the most part, could have undoubtedly managed it in five minutes. These, however, were not fresh troops and they didn’t have five minutes.
Levy’s Medium company had the speed to cross the distance into long range for their ERPPCs in less than four minutes.
From beyond even LRM range, man-made lightning flashed for the Combine lines, but not for the targets that most would expect.
Maxim hover-APCs had a pair of LRM-5 racks, but only five and a half tons of armor protecting them. Speed was one of their best defenses … and they were grounded, crews struggling to wake up and get their hovercraft into action.
Judging by the immediate fireball as one brewed up, many of them weren’t going to manage it.
Bedraggled return fire, conventional PPCs at the extreme edge of their range and a few LRMs, fell short, LRMs running out of propellant and PPCs losing containment and dispersing in the atmosphere.
As soon as the weapons cycled, ERPPC fire, this time joined by AC-2s from Wayfarer company’s Vulcans, bore in, and more Maxims began to burn.
My computers picked up a burst of autocannon fire actually making contact with one Phoenix, but couldn’t backtrace where it had come from. Unless someone over there was an artist with an AC-5, that probably meant one or more of the Dragons was a -1C with a Light autocannon and reinforced armor instead of the -1N’s Medium autocannon.
I set my targeting systems to searching for the probable culprit. While a -1N would be a priority target in this engagement due to being lightly armored for a heavy but with decent long-range weaponry. The -1C would be very low priority due to being better armored but less well-armed.
The Combine was finally starting to get organized, and somebody over there had a functioning brain. Fire lancing out from the Combine’s Battlemechs was increasing, but the big clue was that a coherent battle line was taking form.
Wayfarer company was now close enough to the Combine tanks for extreme-range PPC fire, and began to take the slow-moving Goblins under fire as they tried to crawl into range of their 8cm lasers.
I frowned as Levy’s mediums retargeted as well. That was fast even for them. Three salvos to demolish a company of Maxims?
Then I noticed that out of the Combine’s two companies of Scorpions, only one was moving. I took a closer look at the Maxims. It was hard to see through the smoke from burning hovercraft, but it didn’t look like any of them had been moved either.
LIC sabotage? Or were they up to something. They didn’t read like decoys …
I pushed the thought aside; I didn’t have time for it. It didn’t matter if those were mechanical casualties or if the crews had all gotten drunk or had food poisoning. They seemed to be out of action, and that was enough. If the situation changed, I could count on Levy to let me know about it.
Facing unfamiliar war machines with significant ranged firepower, whoever was in charge on the other side had done the only thing he could under the circumstances. He’d ordered an advance.
Unfortunately for him, it was exactly what I’d hoped he’d do. Once the Combine started moving forward, they tended to get aggressive about it. If he’d thrown everything but his Dragons at us and ordered them to run for the hills at flank, he might have gotten one or two away.
As it was, he was only closing the range on my Heavies. About the time the first Goblin was succumbing to the combined firepower of Wayfarer and Medium Companies long-ranged weapons, the enemy Heavies opened up on them with their first accurate shots. I could see at least a couple of PPC bolts hit, but I didn’t have the focus to spare for a closer examination.
After all, if the enemy was in range, then so were we.
“Enemy Warhammer,” I called out my Command Lance’s target. The Combine formation was still a bit unclear, but it seemed to be in the same lance as a Lancelot, so we’d have good odds of taking out the Lance leader if we brought both down. It also had a pair of PPCs, but the second-weakest armor on the field. Taking care to wait until one massive foot hit the earth, I squeezed both my left and right triggers as well as hitting the left thumb button. Both ERPPCs and my Banshee’s LB-10X fired. I’d been aiming for center mass, but it would take even my computers some time to sort out where exactly eight lightning bolts had gone home.
I got the impression of armor shattering all over the front of the Battlemech. My HUD updated with probable hit locations for my fire just as the Heavy autocannon rounds arrived, and the Warhammer’s squat head peeled open like a watermelon hit with a sledgehammer.
“Damn good shooting!” I called.
Meanwhile, Julia, who hadn’t fired with the rest of my Command Lance yet, shifted targets to add her LB-10X to the fire staggering the nearby Lancelot.
Its high-set bulbous head didn’t handle the punishment any better than the Warhammer’s had, and it was already dropping before its former Lancemate hit the ground behind it.
Hell, two golden BBs to start? I’d take it even if I was going to watch for Murphy’s inevitable revenge.
The enemy commander finally seemed to realize that he had bigger problems than a couple companies of Mediums. Instead of the scattered fire we’d seen until this point, the Combine started focusing their fire by Lance. Something my number four found out the hard way as PPC bolts and Autocannon rounds blasted armor from his ‘Mech and blew holes in the grass beside it.
This time I’d already been keeping an eye in the right direction, and caught the action. Both Beemers in the enemy Command Lance had missed short, but the Awesome had put all three of its guns on target, and my number four, Trigger, had taken two of them directly to the left torso, right over the magazine for the LB-10X.
I was disinclined to let that continue. An -8Q had a lot of armor, but my Lance had a lot of gun. If nothing else, we’d be denying the enemy a chance to pick his moment again.
“New target: Awesome,” I called out and started working out the angle for my autocannon rounds while capacitors charged and a new trio of shells were fed into the gun.
I reviewed where my computers thought I’d hit the Warhammer, a bit low and wide on each of the PPCs, and it would take a detailed analysis for who had hit where with the autocannon rounds. I nudged my aim up and in a touch and fired again, then stepped into an evasion to try and throw off incoming fire. At this range, I could tell that the Combine’s Assault Lance was targeting my own, but not which member, and it wouldn’t do to give them easy shots.
For all that it was only the second time firing Shiroyama’s guns in anger, the whole process was as easy and reflexive as changing lanes in traffic. The power of hundreds of hours of practice in action.
I only barely managed not to broadcast the whoop of success as our shots absolutely hammered into the Combine Battlemech. Tons of armor shattered as beams and slugs tore into the big machine, including one PPC hitting it nearly full in its forward-positioned cockpit. The blows left the hardy ‘Mech reeling as the gyro struggled to compensate for the sudden loss of armor mass. Then Julia added Gungnir’s LB-10X in a deliberately aimed shot, and this time she was firing cluster rounds.
Even without the head hit, it would have been a smart decision. The Awesome was well-known as a ZombieMech, but even as durable as it was, internal hits could sever control runs, wreck heat sinks, or rupture coolant lines, and even a casual glance showed that we’d flayed the left side of this one’s torso open like a gutted fish.
Three waves of submunitions scattered themselves over the torso of the Assault ’Mech, but midway through the second it dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Whether the armored cockpit glass had given up the ghost, or spalling from the explosions had done the deed, I was glad I wasn’t going to be responsible for hosing out that cockpit.
We hadn’t had it all our own way, though my Lancemate had managed to torso twist and take the worst of it on his right arm. And we’d just cut down the number of incoming PPC bolts by half, and in the process …
“New target: Victor!” I called. The close-range specialist had been behind their front line, shielded by the Awesome to protect it from precisely what we were about to do to it. The Victor was a lethal threat inside 3km, but utterly unthreatening before then. Rather than leaving it unmolested to maybe mulch a Medium as the range closed, I decided to remove the problem early. Then I called up hit locations from my last barrage to adjust my fire only to see one marked impact dead center on the Awesome’s forehead.
Deciding not to mess with what was working, I left my crosshairs more or less where they were. With the Victor’s more humanoid layout, that should focus my fire directly into the core of the BattleMech where the engine and Gyro were. Still, this sort of behavior couldn’t go unremarked upon.
“Stick, I take exception to this! Here I went and did all the work of removing that Drac’s canopy, and you’re the one that’s gonna get the credit! That’s kill stealing!” I bitched lightheartedly as my guns finished cycling.
“I think you meant ‘kill securing,’ Bloodhound. I didn’t see your name on him,” Julia snarked right back, then we were all dancing through firing and evasion.
Several things happened in rapid succession. The Victor dodged a hair too late, clearly thinking one of the Battlemasters, nearly as lethal in close and better equipped for a fight at range, would be targeted instead of him. The ‘Mech staggered under the hammer of eight PPCs, but seemed like it would pull through right up until the autocannon slugs arrived a heartbeat later. It was hard to tell live, but it certainly looked like a half-dozen rounds had gone off inside the torso. Either way, the Fusion Engine went into emergency shutdown and the lightly-armored Assault Mech dropped onto its face.
Julia, who had again held her fire looking to exploit armor breaches, turned and unloaded into a distant target. Since she was rewarded with the telltale sound of an ammo explosion, I was inclined to let her keep playing with the cluster rounds.
Unfortunately, return fire had gotten thicker, too. One of the Beemers had managed to score with its PPC, and a cloud of LRMs marked a Crusader and a Dragon firing on my number four as well. I cautiously marked it as the -1C and mentally ignored it. The plinking from it was much less important than other targets.
“Armor breach, right arm,” my number four reported as the rain of missiles trailed off. “Red light on an ML, and that torso’s gettin’ pretty thin too.”
At much the same time, DJ, my number two’s voice came across the radio swearing a blue streak as his torso-twist only barely took him out of the path of several incoming streams of Autocannon rounds. The company of Scorpions that was actually maneuvering had decided not to worry about getting all the way into range before firing. Their accuracy left something to be desired, but they were a distraction we didn’t need. Normally our light company would have handled them, but they were busy at the moment.
Levy had either forgotten that, or just made a poor judgement call to focus entirely on the Goblins.
I shook it off. That sort of thought was for the AAR.
“New target: Beemer on the right,” I announced. “Trigger, step back and break contact. Stick, I need you on the line.”
A quick glance at the rest of Heavy Company showed that our range advantage was paying off. A Kyudo was rotating back as well, its right arm looking pretty shot up, but it would still be able to fire indirectly with its big LRM rack. The Combine’s formation had gone from firming up to looking pretty ragged; about half of their Dragons were down, but that was all I could tell with a glance.
Our heavies were drawing nearly even with Levy’s Medium Lance, who’d slowed to a walking pace and had strafed well out toward the flank. I wondered if the Combine were even paying attention to that maneuver, but focused on taking my shot, then cursed as the Battlemaster juked to his left just as I fired. My left PPC missed wide and the right only winged him, but the rest of the Command Lance managed to track his movement and hammered him, even if most of the barrage was low. Just as he was undoubtedly thinking he’d come through okay, Julia’s LRMs arrowed out of the sky in a tight stream, and at least two thirds of them hammered into the Mech’s right leg as it was lifting off the ground.
When the Combine Mechwarrior finished his stride, the massive weight of the machine broke the weakened leg off about mid-thigh and sent the big machine forward onto its face.
Now that Trigger was off the line, more fire came in at my number two, but it was largely ineffectual. A burst of medium Autocannon rounds from the Scorpions cratered armor on his left leg, and a Crusader and Archer -2K, orphans from the Warhammer’s Lance, added missiles to the barrage; few were able to maintain lock through his last minute evasion. Barely a tithe of the sixty missiles fired at him managed to strike home.
Julia, meanwhile, had been the target of the remaining pair of Assault Mechs, and the two Heavies in the other Lance that had shot up Trigger. Maybe it was because she was a smaller target, or maybe she just had their measure, but she practically danced through their fire, accepting blows from the Light autocannon and a handful of LRMs in order to avoid the rest of the incoming salvo.
“New Target: the other Beemer,” I called out, then glanced at the wider battlefield.
Foehammer’s Heavy company had executed the plan to near-perfection. More than half the Dragons were down now, and Rowdy’s paired Thunderbolts and Ostwars had been whittling away at the Lance that was furthest away. The Lancelot and Guillotine were both crippled messes and a Rifleman wasn’t much better.
This looked to be a good time. They were committed and we didn’t have to close the range any further to keep hammering them.
“All stop,” I ordered on the Company frequency, putting action to my words. “Full reverse and hold them at range.”
I refocused back on the lone Battlemaster, the only survivor of the Combine’s Assault Lance and counted down the seconds until my guns were ready to fire. Then I waited an extra half-second to follow his evasion as he tried to sidestep my Lance’s fire.
Only then did I pull the triggers. His evasion had successfully scattered the damage from most of my Lance, but I’d taken advantage of coming to a brief halt, and aimed high. The risk paid off, and both of my ERPPCs punched into the armored cockpit glass. For just a moment, the Battlemech stood, suddenly a head shorter than it had been moments before, then gravity took its toll, and the Assault ’Mech pitched forward.
“Hah! Good shot!” Doug Jasper called out from beside me as he dodged another stream of autocannon shells. I glanced over with a grin as his right arm, raised to protect his cockpit from the Battlemaster’s PPC shot me a thumbs up.
So I had a front-row seat as a trio of LRMs slammed into his cockpit’s armored glass.
XXXXX
A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts.
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PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Three LRMs to head should be survivable, but I reckon seeing buddy get shot in the face is always a bad sight, even if he has armor to shrug it off. I wonder if those LRMs were perhaps by previously dormant Maxims.
PeaceMaker 03
Well-known member
Had a question about :
”Then I noticed that out of the Combine’s two companies of Scorpions, only one was moving. I took a closer look at the Maxims. It was hard to see through the smoke from burning hovercraft, but it didn’t look like any of them had been moved either.
LIC sabotage? Or were they up to something. They didn’t read like decoys …”
What was the cause of the Vics not fighting?
”Then I noticed that out of the Combine’s two companies of Scorpions, only one was moving. I took a closer look at the Maxims. It was hard to see through the smoke from burning hovercraft, but it didn’t look like any of them had been moved either.
LIC sabotage? Or were they up to something. They didn’t read like decoys …”
What was the cause of the Vics not fighting?
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Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
In LordsFire’s modified ruleset, a shooter can adjust hit location (rolled on 2d50) by any extra they happened to roll for the opposed hit/dodge check. Rolling a 90+ scores you a head hit, and if your hit margin is +10 because you’re a veteran pilot rolling like an elite because of an SLDF neurohelmet ...
Yellowhammer
Well-known member
Pretty much this.
The combination of heavy long-ranged weapons (ERPPCS, LB-10X), SLDF neurohelmets bumping up the skill of very very good pilots to top tier, and Urist liking to roll high made for some ugly and hilarious moments during the fight.
Lostech's seriously OP in level 1 fights, and this leveraged it massively.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
This sort of open-field battle really highlights what the limitations of introtech are. Even solid Heavy platforms rarely have more than one or two good ranged weapons. LRMs don't get an extreme range bracket because of their propellant also being their warhead, so it was up to the few PPCs and autocannon at first. With each Banshee effectively acting like a bigger, meaner Awesome, the Dracs were on the losing end of the exchange from the start. Even when LRMs got involved, the Ostwars, Thunderbolts, Crossbows, and Kyudos all have LRMs to contribute to the fight as well.
Taking that and adding the absurd Crit-seeking capacity of cluster rounds at range really made the fight unfair, and would have even without a couple of people in the high-Veteran skill tier shooting like Elites ... and a couple of Elites shooting like Natasha Kerensky.
ConfusedCanadian
Well-known member
This fight was far better then the last one! It felt like a real engagement with our Protagonist leading his men into battle.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
Good! I took longer to write it than the last one and deliberately sat on my autism. I have this need to be far too literal by times, and since I knew the dice rolls for everything that was happening, I felt the need to include all that in the last update. Really glad somebody pointed out that it made the update read like crap instead of a fight.
ConfusedCanadian
Well-known member
Well great job @Speaker4thesilent it was a clear improvement and I definitely enjoyed this battle and am now looking forward to more in the future and larger ones at that!
PeaceMaker 03
Well-known member
..... The last one read like a battle report, which does not bother me, it was a battle summary of Weber's first contact. Maybe integrate it into the story as Weber/ Julia reading the Battle summary of his subordinate commanders and putting in his comments from the battle as he reads the summaries.
Something along the lines of him feeling guilty for losing a pilot, and he is trying to find a mistake won't happen again. Edit then story so battle report has different margins as you read the story.
An interesting way to do a flashback post battle.