Atlas Hunters Recruiting

The chase was reaching the end game. Ten clicks of heavy forest, riverbeds and ravines shadowing the scout had led it into this gorge. ECM Jamming was at maximum and enhanced by her plugin kit. The Scout was alone, lost and electronically blind and mute. Amazing the amount of enhancement capabilities the innocuous looking PDA strapped to her thigh gave to these primitive machines!

Takeo Kanade, Chu-i of the DCMS Sword Of Light was confused, scared and on the run. He'd also seen what appeared to be a mercenary Atlas Hunter Raven pilot meeting with a large sensor heavy black and grey unknown aerodyne dropship surrounded by a handful of equally mysterious mechs and what appeared to be power armoured troops that looked like giant toads in the same colours. He'd seen too much. All this she gathered from listening in on his communications, of which she was the sole audience.

Takeo was on edge. He was seeing shadows outside his viewports and on his scopes. Sweat ran down his brow, stinging his eyes. Flipping up his bulky neurohelmet's visor he did his best to wipe his eyes. Comms were down, Radar was glitching, his shoulders were aching from the tension and the weight of the helmet. He was alone and cut off from the rest of his Combine drop team. And he was being pursued, the jamming was proof of that. The chill in his spine said this wasn't a pursuit. It felt more like being hunted. That same chill had coursed through him when she had looked up and straight at him. Atleast that's how it seemed.

He'd been concealed one and a half clicks away, his Jenner partially powered down perched on a ridge in heavy cover, ECM suite active, sensors zoomed in on the covert meeting taking place in the back end of nowhere on this nothing Periphery world. His mission went from shadowing the Atlas Hunter Mercs to recording everything he could on these unknown targets meeting with the merc. The level of sensor jamming in the area eminating from the ship was incredible! He was a ten year veteran of the DCMS and a Forward Recon expert. He was known in the recon community, one of the reasons he was selected for the Sword Of Light and the reason he was trusted to operate beyond close support range. Yet he was rattled.

The mission was considered low threat. Land undetected, find the mercs and observe. Tensions on the Periphery border had escalated of late. Both the Mercenary Review Board and the Outreach Hiring halls had been receiving more requests for merc units to perform garrison duties on the border worlds than usual. Wolf's Dragoons pulled its units out of all contracts with a call to return home to Outreach. Then came reports of worlds gone dark, ship patrols leaving for trade routes and never being seen again. Refugees arriving from outlaying systems talking of Warships, unknown invaders, overwhelming force and demands of trials. Nothing had been heard from the Oberon Confederation at all. None of it was making much sense and the Coordinators office was demanding answers. Most were expecting a new pirate king was trying to make a name for him or herself. But what about the equipment. What about the Warships. not jumpships but Warships! Mysteries weren't welcome in the Draconis Combine.

Then a UAV, no bigger than a dinner plate, dropped down in front of his viewport and panned a green laser scanner over his machine. The feed from the surveillance camera was zoomed in on the parties in discussion under the dropship's nose. She looked at him. A mile away, within seconds of his discovery by the drone, the Raven pilot's cold brown eyes were looking right into the camera lens. And ice coursed down his spine.

A loud clang and something alot bigger than a dinner plate eclipsed the view outside his cockpit. The lens of a mech class laser was pointing at him, resting on the main window. The laser was attached to the arm of one of the toad-like suits. The toad was attached to the frame of his mechs head by a claw that had the power to crumple armour to get a grip. Takeo looked from the weapon barrel to the suits view port and into the eyes of a demon as he slapped the power up. Then the weapon fired.

He'd been running ever since. They'd been shadowing and herding him ever since. The more he tried to push for his RV point, the more the unknown mechs had shown up to force him away. When he tried to double back he ran into weapons fire from the trees all around him with fleeting glimpses of the armoured troops. It had taken slamming though the branches of a massive conifer on a full burn jump to dislodge the toad from his mechs head. It had taken a sizable chunk of his armour with it in that insane powerclaw. There was no way in hell he was letting any more land on him. He did the most logical thing. He ran again.

Down rivers, over ridges, crashing through scrub, bush and even trees, he ran his Jenner hard. His world view now had a crater burned into the centre of the armourglass.

She had a problem. The Jenner had seen her with her own. The Watch demanded this assignment carry the utmost discretion. Therefore the Jenner had to be stopped, the pilot had to be erased and the mechs systems sifted to ensure no communications were received by other parties and no records remained. Simply destroying the machine wasn't an option. They had to gain access to its onboard systems first. That meant keeping it largely intact, especially the cockpit. If the report from Cain was correct he had put quite a hole into the Jenner's glass. The parts to a solution to her problem was sitting behind her command couch.

The river ended. Abruptly. Takeo found himself standing before a waterfall. A Waterfall cascading down from over two hundred metres above. Looking up Kanabe felt a sinking feeling. The Jenner's Smithsons could lift him to a hundred and fifty on a good day. Watching the mist in the air starting to pool water in the laser hole burned halfway through his screen he realised today wasn't a good day. Not at all. With cliffs either side of him and the cascade falling down in front of him he had no option but to retrace his steps. A click back up the river was a fork. That was about his only option. He felt that at any second more Toads would start raining fire down from the cliff tops. Time to get out of this dead man's alley.

His sensors were still blind. Sweat was still stinging his eyes. Adrenalin had him twitching and jumpy. Taking the fork he slid his mech to a sudden stop from one hundred and eighteen kilometres an hour. Keeping it upright was pure luck. That would be about all the luck he had left. There before him was the Raven, only it appeared powered down and had its back to him in the middle of the river. The Chu-i was at wits end, physically and mental exhausted. He wasn't thinking rationally anymore. His finger caressed his triggers but he didn't fire. His sense of honour, his code of Bushido demanded he not shoot an enemy in the back. Something was off here... something... He paused. In the background of his thoughts the sound of the jamming alarm blended with the targeting computers protests over not holding a lock. That would only happen if the Raven wasn't powered down at all... however all that was forgotten as his fatigued mind focused on a flash of light from between the Ravens arm pods.

The Gyrojet round punched though the weakened cockpit glass, hitting it in the laser burn before its miniature rocket motor carried it on into the cockpits interior and through another pane of glass, skin, bone and finally brain tissue. Had it not detonated at this point it would likely have continued out the back of the pilots head and helmet and into the command couch headrest. But it didn't. It ceased to exist in an explosive burst along with all the hopes, dreams, fears and identifying facial features of Takeo Kanabe, Chu-i, Sword Of Light Regiment, DCMS.

Elementals were already jetting onto the now immobile Jenner as she slid out from behind the rifles sights. Collecting her weapon she began breaking it down and stowing it in its case as Cain landed heavily on the Ravens weapon arm next to her causing the mech to sway as the twin extended range laser assemble groaned ominously under his one thousand kilogram bulk. She scowled at the buckled top plate. Looking at the tree sap still coating his shoulder and visor, splinters of wood, twigs and pine needles jammed into all the joints and folds of his suits armour turned the frown to a smile she had to hide quickly. The Jenner really took him for a ride through the forest canopy. Good times.

"Target down Star Commander. Mission integrity has been maintained"

"Have the techs retrieve what information they are able and scrub the rest. The machine and the meat need to disappear"

She opened the roof hatch and dropped the rifle case down into the cockpit behind her seat, careful not to scratch her heavy Atlas Hunters coloured neurohelmet on the rack behind her seat. She paused as she remembered her Snow Ravens armour, full body cooling suit and especially the Clans lightweight helmet. Having to wear a weak Inner Sphere cooling vest, sports bra and bikini to pilot a mech was insult enough but she dearly missed being able to turn her head in a helmet. How these barbarians saw anything that wasn't right in front of them was a mystery to her.

She climbed down into the cockpit and stood on the seat to pull the hatch shut.

"Nice shot McKenna"

"I am Star Commander Keira McKenna, Blood Named warrior of the Corvus Keshik, Clan Snow Raven, and operative of the Ravens Watch, as you well know Point Commander Cain"

"Forgive me Star Commander"

With a sly smile she said "Now get off my machine, you are leaving scratches and dents that will be hard to explain to the Atlas Hunter techs, fat boy"

Edited by Keira RAVEN McKenna, 15 November 2014 - 06:38 PM.

Black Orchid X, on 17 November 2014 - 01:22 PM, said:

I would love to take some drops with your Merc group if you will let me. I am a newer Spider 5K pilot. I made a copy of the trial Spider with my cadet bonus since I liked it so much. I set it up with an AC/2 with med laser for a change and scored my first hat trick with it. (The only reason I got the trick is because I stayed with teammates and happened to get the money shot.)

I am open to constructive criticism and if you let me run with you I will contribute, follow orders and stick to a game plan.

Hi Black Orchid X,

Join us on evenings on our open TS server. Look for Smituga, Firebird (Rumpledmunky) or any of our crew to show you around. The address is atlashunters.enjinvoice.com. There is no password.

See you there.

IH

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