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"Here they come again! Fire! Fire! FIRE!" The battered line of Inner Sphere defenders opened up on the advancing Jade Falcons, a hellish torrent of laser fire and auto cannon shells bursting into the Clan's forward units. The Jade Falcon advance stumbled then pressed on. Bill watched as one by one the defending Mechs were blasted to scrap, and a small part of him realized that he did not care. Too many friends and comrades were already dead and gone. Too many times he had mourned the losses. Now in this, his 10th battle against the Clans, he did not know these men he was fighting alongside. He did not know their names, their stories, or their lives. The force of 48 Mechs that had been set to defend this sector was a hodge-podge mix of different Inner Sphere units that had all been shattered in earlier attacks. Bill's "unit" consisted of men and Mechs from the Federated Commonwealth, the Combine, the Capellan Confederation, and even the Free Worlds League. Bill was pretty sure his second-in-command was a man he had fought against years before in a raid long since forgotten.
The defenders lack of unity was telling, for communication between the lances there was only the method of typing out frantic messages on the command console, an outdated and painfully slow process that cost invaluable seconds during a firefight. Lances couldn't coordinate fire on weakened targets, scouts couldn't give detailed descriptions of enemy movement, warnings of impending doom transmitted too late, always too late. The Jade Falcons operated under no such hindrance. They moved as one, attacked as one, and killed as one overwhelming force.
"We never really had a chance..." Bill thought as the frantic operators of the Orbital Gun began radioing for help, a flanking force of Clan light Mechs having gotten behind Bill's lines. Turning his battered machine towards the newest threat, Bill never even saw the TimberWolf that gutted his machine from behind.
Days later, Bill and several other MechWarriors would be ransomed back from Clan Jade Falcon by ambassadors from the Inner Sphere. The Clanners gleefully claimed the captured MechWarriors were unworthy to be taken as bondsmen and gladly handed over the prisoners in exchange for horrendous concessions from the IS. In the DropShip that would bring him home, Bill, like so many other Inner Sphere pilots would swear revenge on the Clans. "All I need is a new Mech and a new unit. I'll run those monsters out of the Inner Sphere if it's the last thing I do!"
[[ So OoC, I've finally decided it's time for me to leave the PUG life and try to find a unit to join. I got my butt kicked 10 times out of 10 during this event and it was always in PUG v Team matches, and I have had enough of that thank-you-very-much! So if any readers know of hiring units or are looking for pilots to fill out their own, let me know!]]
Edited by Bill Bullet, 18 May 2015 - 12:42 AM.
