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Western Heights, Gershtad Continent
Kessel, Kessel Prefecture, Draconis Combine
0611 hours local time, 9 August 3039
The barren, dusty hills here were terraced, the result of centuries of strip mining. Titanic bucket excavators once crawled across the landscape on massive treads, ripping away at the mountains layer by layer, allowing smaller excavators and MiningMechs access to the rich veins of ore hidden within. The ore was long gone now, as were the excavators....but once again the ground trembled under the weight of 'Mechs.
The light of the rising sun, turned a deep orange by Kessel's severely polluted sky, gleamed off the broad shoulders of the pair of Kuritan Dabokus cresting the ridge, their lasers and quad autocannons blazing away at the next hill, where the Fifth Sun Zhang Academy Cadre had finally caught up with the rearguard of the Fourth Skye Rangers. Evoking the image of the ancient Terran samurai, complete with the banner of the Cadre flying from their backs, the long-range assault 'Mechs looked intimidating, provided one had never faced one before. To a Mechwarrior who knew the design's flaws--poor armor, insufficient cooling, and an overzealous auto-eject system, among many others--they were a joke.
Still, in the hands of skilled pilots they could be a threat, and so Boggart Lance, the recon element of the Fourth Skye's Lightning Company, had broken away from the main engagement to neutralize them. For a pair of Wolfhounds backed by a Firestarter and a Commando, downing a pair of assault 'Mechs--even poorly-designed ones--before they could do serious damage would be a tall order.
Fortunately, they had some help.
As three of the light 'Mechs closed in on the nearest Daboku, a swarm of long-range missiles streaked in from the dawn sky and savaged its partner, armor plates shattering under the detonation of multiple high explosive dual-purpose warheads. Reeling from the hits, the busosenshi piloting it somehow kept the machine upright, but the distraction allowed the Firestarter to jump behind it, its machine guns and flamers salting the wounds the missiles created.
“--hit, I say again: direct hit!” The Firestarter's pilot shouted over the noise of the battle, his breathing labored thanks to the soaring heat within his cockpit, as he darted away before the Daboku could turn and fire on him. “Boggart Two to Screamers, repeat target! Updating telemetry, over!”
“Copy that, Boggart Two.” First Leutnant Lina Thoren fed the incoming data to her targeting comp, fingers deftly navigating the touchscreen to the left of her command couch. Although the three 'Mechs of her Screamer Lance couldn't see their target on the far side of the hill, she had faith in the Boggarts: they'd been feeding her lance (currently on loan to the Lightning Company) good numbers since the battle started.
Incorrigible--the name Lina had given her Dervish--leaned backwards slightly as the indirect fire app took aim, the twin doors on the fifty-five ton BattleMech's chest opening outward. She squeezed the right thumb button, and twenty LRMs soft-launched in staggered pairs, their sustainer rockets kicking in a split-second after they left the tubes, streaking up and over the ridge to help finish the battered Daboku.
“Screamer Six to Boggart Two,” Lina called, the “Six” identifying her as lance leader. “Birds away.”
“Screamer Two, birds away.” Leutnant Danielle Vogel's voice filled the lance channel as Lina's missiles were joined by thirty more from her Trebuchet. She was fairly new, called up from the planetary militia on Ryde just before the war broke out, but she was a decent shot and showed a willingness to learn. “Be advised, I am bingo on ammo,” she added, switching to the lance's channel.
“Screamer Three, launched.” Leutnant Bernard Shawnessey sounded bored as he popped off another ten missiles from his salvaged Dragon, before he, too, switched to the lance frequency. “Still good on ammo, unlike certain glorified missile trucks. Permission to go on the other side of the ridge, I hear they're actually fighting--”
“Last warning, Three: Can it.” He'd only been in their lance three days, and Lina was already tired of the man. The rest of Bernard's previous lance had gone down in an ambush earlier that week, and too late she realized why no one else wanted him. He was old-school nobility from the planet Summer, the son of a Shipil Corporation senior vice-president, and was convinced beyond all doubt that his **** didn't stink. He griped constantly about how the Zeus he inherited got replaced by “this under-gunned, under-armored pile of Snake ****” (never mind that with the losses the Fourth had taken, he'd been lucky to get a replacement 'Mech at all), about being “demoted” to a fire-support lance, about serving under “a Tamar carpetbagger” when he thought Lina was out of earshot, etc. She'd have been rid of him already, except for the fact that if she did, her lance would be short two 'Mechs instead of one.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She had been excited back in April, when their invasion force (consisting of her Rangers, the Second Donegal Guard, and the Eleventh Lyran Regulars) first moved to retake Kessel, a world conquered by the Combine centuries ago. It was her first time leading a lance in combat, and compared to the living Hell of the Fourth Succession War it was a cakewalk...at first. Her fire-support lance had been issued the deadly new “Listen-Kill” LRMs, designed to home in on the unique electronic “noise” a Battlemech created, and used them to help cut down the planet's garrison unit, the Twelfth Sun Zhang Academy Cadre. Severely battered, the Cadre apparently retreated off-world, and the Lyrans settled in to secure the planet and await new orders.
Then about a month ago, the Shiroi Tora--the local yakuza syndicate--got involved, and everything went straight to hell. It started with a rash of terrorist bombings, ambushes and sabotage that killed and wounded hundreds of LCAF troops. Two of Lina's lancemates died of asphyxiation after the environmental controls of their barracks were tampered with, concentrating instead of filtering the toxins from Kessel's atmosphere. Only pure luck had spared Lina and Danielle the same fate, and so far, Bernie was the only replacement they'd gotten. Worse, they soon learned that the Twelfth hadn't left the planet after all; they'd merely gone to ground, waiting for reinforcements. And soon they came: the elite Second Sword of Light (or “the Babykiller Brigade” as Lina called them, for their part in the Kentares Massacre), accompanied by their current adversaries, the Fifth Sun Zhang. Unable to hold their original position against those odds, they'd pulled back from Sverdlovsk to Gershtad to tighten their defense lines. The Kruitans gave chase, and they'd been in non-stop battle for a week since.
To top it all off, the Kuritans not only brought countermeasures for the Listen-Kill missiles, they even had L-K's of their own. As a result, Lina, and the rest of the Rangers' Mechwarriors who piloted LRM boats, had been directed to stay out of line-of-sight as much as possible, and engage via indirect fire. Which probably grated on an assault 'Mech driver like Bernie, who was used to getting into the enemy's grille.
Lina took a deep breath, then opened a private, tight-beam channel to his Dragon, so that no one else would hear what was said. “Leutnant Shawnessey,” she began, subtly emphasizing their difference in rank. “I know you don't like me very much.” And I suspect I know why, she added silently. Damn Lestrade anyway. Dead ten years and he's still ******* up my life. “And I don't have time to care. We've a mission to complete, and you have your orders. If you can't or won't shut your hole and carry them out, climb out of that Dragon and I'll give it to someone who will. Am I clear?”
She hated threatening a Mechwarrior with Dispossession--even an *** like Bernie--but if that's what it took, so be it. Lina had too much to worry about without a prima donna lancemate on top of it, no matter who his mommy was. General Caesar Steiner, overall commander of the Kessel invasion force, had directed the Rangers to fake a withdrawal, to lure the Kuritans into chasing them. The cadets of the Fifth Sun Zhang had taken the bait, the unit getting stretched out as they tried to turn the “retreat” into a rout. Now the Lightning Company, backed by several lances from Third Battalion, was executing what was meant to look like a delaying action, a desperate attempt to slow the Kuritans down while the rest of the unit pulled back. In fact, they were there to hold the cadets in place long enough for the Second Donegal and the rest of the Fourth to shut the trap behind them. Earlier that morning they'd thrown back the Fifth's leading elements with heavy losses, but now the rest of the Cadre was catching up. The Rangers' small rearguard force was outnumbered and out-gunned. One mistake, and their sham retreat could become all too real.
“I--” Bernie began, only to be cut off by Boggart Two's jubilant cry. “Daboku is down! Nice shooting, Screamers.”
“You're very welcome, Two,” Lina replied, before cutting back to the private channel. “That's a 'Yes' or 'No' answer, Bernie.”
“...Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am.” To his credit, Bernie did sound contrite. “I...shouldn't have said that the other day, I was just frustrated. My Zeus was in our family for generations, and--”
“You can't worry about that.” Lina cut him off, but let some of the edge bleed from her voice. She, too, feared Dispossession; while she'd grown to love Incorrigible, Dervishes had a bad habit of exploding. “It'll just distract you. Handle your business, and if you're still breathing when it's over, eventually you'll get another one. Maybe not the one you wanted, but it's more than others in your place have gotten.” Actually it was more Shawnessey's family connections than his skill as a Mechwarrior that got him the Dragon, but no point bringing that up again. They didn't have to like each other, and she could get him transferred once the fight was over. But right now she needed him able and willing to follow orders; baiting him would only cause problems.
“Ma'am.” Bernie didn't sound terribly enthusiastic, but it'd do for now.
“Very well.” Lina cut back to the lance channel, tying Danielle in. “All right, time to displace. Let's take it”--she thought for a moment--”six hundred meters east.” She was concerned about the Fifth calling artillery on them. Counter-battery radar could trace LRMs back to their firing point, given enough time, and she'd seen first-hand what a battery of howitzers could do when a Mechwarrior forgot that Speed Was Life. “Let's move.”
Easier said than done. The Dervish had jump jets and could negotiate the terraced slope without much trouble, but the Trebuchet and Dragon had to pick their way down an narrow, long-abandoned mining road, with the very real danger of sliding down the side of the mountain. As a result, Lina took point, jumping along slightly higher up the slope than her lancemates, with Bernie's Dragon providing a traveling overwatch (when he wasn't busy minding his footing). Dani, short on missiles, brought up the rear. Not that Lina expected they'd run into anything this far behind the line, but better safe than sorry.
One thing bothered her about General Steiner's plan: they'd already tried it once. Early during the invasion, the Fourth staged a fake retreat, to lure the inexperienced cadets of the Twelfth Sun Zhang out of their defensive positions at Sverdlovsk, much as they were doing now. It worked to perfection, but...
...Even accounting for youthful inexperience, and the fact that they're Snakes, is the Fifth really stupid enough to do the same thing that got the Twelfth mauled?--
Just then, Lina's infrared chimed a warning, as it detected the heat plumes of a pair of reactors coming on-line, less than half a kilometer ahead.
“Ambush!” Lina slammed the pedals, firing her jump jets even as she spotted the bright blue-white flashes of PPCs opening fire...
TO BE CONTINUED
Edited by Lina Thoren, 11 December 2011 - 05:41 PM.
