The Second Contract
Task Force Emerald's performance during the brief raid on Asta caught the attention of an unlikely patron: the Dragon, which had been on the receiving end of the unit's military-grade shenanigans. Still, Captain Sciama's force had behaved with professionalism and restraint, and their willingness to ransom prisoners (including the contracting officer's nephew) no doubt helped. As TF Emerald prepared to lift from Asta, a DCMS delegation approached under a white flag and offered a contract to supplement an imminent raid into Lyran space. Suspicious of the Combine's motives but fearful of the consequences if he refused, Nick signed the contract - with the rest of the company in their cockpits with their reactors hot.
Thankfully, the unit's fears proved largely unfounded. Linking up with the assault convoy en route, Task Force Emerald made planetfall on Freedom in September 3026, dropping alongside several other mercenary units and two companies of DCMS regulars. DCMS liaisons were tight-lipped about the reasons for assaulting an agricultural world with little military industry. They cut the mercenaries out of strategic planning entirely. Thankfully, the assembled units were still allowed to manage their own tactics.
The unit's initial assignment was to spearhead the capture of a mining complex a few hundred kilometers north of the planetary capital of Jefferson City. The initial clash was brutal, with the Lyran defenders focusing fire first on Sciama's Orion, then on Owor's Warhammer. Within the engagement's first minute, both Mechs suffered gyro hits, leaving the pilots frantically backpedaling to get out of the fire-sack the LCAF had prepared. Dyczkowski stepped into the gap, laying down withering LRM fire that gutted two Lyran heavy tanks and likely forestalled a counter-offensive.
While the accompanying DCMS armor plunged into the complex and adjacent residential blocks, Task Force Emerald hooked around to the north, trying to keep the range open. This drew several LCAF tanks and Mechs into the open - exposing their flanks to Tung and Thaqi's well-timed appearance on the battlefield. The rapid loss of an enemy Griffin and Blackjack turned the battle's tide, though not before White Tiger went down with its right arm and leg melted to slag. Worse yet, during the close-in mopping-up, an elusive laser carrier burned through Collateral Damage's rear armor, igniting a cataclysmic ammunition explosion that Thaqi barely escaped. In a Pyrrhic victory, only two of the unit's six deployed Mechs were in immediately-repairable condition at the battle's end, with only a couple of scrapped enemy Mechs and a single captive pilot to show a return.
Throughout October and November, Task Force Emerald licked its wounds and prayed for the beleagured DCMS supply chain to deliver the parts needed to get at least a lance's worth of Mechs back into fighting trim. Captain Sciama even considered rotating the training detachment into the line, though few of the pilots were yet ready for combat duty. A lucky break came only a few days after Midnight Requistion and its pilot returned to operational status, when the Lyran officer who'd commanded the defenses at (and escaped from) the mining complex demanded satisfaction from Sciama. In the end, the man found none - the opening volley of autocannon fire smashed his Zeus' sensors and a follow-up barrage shot decapitated the assault Mech. The acquisitive hands of Dyczkowski and Clarke's machines dragged the headless Zeus clear of the field, and Sciama claimed it as salvage and awarded it to Thaqi as a replacement for his Stalker.
Skirmishes across Freedom over the following months bloodied the Lyrans further and allowed Task Force Emerald to regain its strength and confidence. The unit salvaged two Griffins - a GRF-1N whose pilot abandoned it after losing his gyro, and a GRF-1S whose cockpit Ramos shattered at the end of a 250-meter charge from her Panzerschwein. The former was awarded to long-suffering Dispossessed Monty Subajga, who promptly christened it Escape Route. The latter was held in reserve against future losses.
In December, Kaja Ahmed announced a surprise pregnancy. Under scrutiny from the command staff, the ex-LCAF pilot admitted she'd been carrying on a relationship with Kevin MacCorkill, the pilot captured in October's battle at the mining complex. The couple married in February, immediately following Recruit Pilot MacCorkill's induction into Task Force Emerald. While Corporal Ahmed-MacCorkill went off of combat status until her child's birth, her new husband was kept out of the fight so as not to pit him against his fellow Lyrans.
The rest of the contract saw no engagements of note. As the assault force prepared to withdraw from Freedom, having accomplished whatever objectives their Kurita masters had intended, Captain Sciama turned his hand to recruiting. In addition to several techs, he hired on a platoon of mercenary riflemen under Lieutenant Eddie Kemble and a platoon of disaffected Kurita jump infantry led by Lieutenant Edna Chikafuji. Kemble's troops were assigned to base security, a duty that previously had fallen to whatever techs could identify the dangerous end of a rifle. Meanwhile, Chikafuji's personnel began re-training for covert operations and CSAR duties. They were joined in this by air cavalry Sergeant Rory Thornbury, the once-and-future other half of a tempestuous relationship with Maoi Nickols.
Freedom had one final gift for Task Force Emerald, though. With Lyran opposition effectively crushed, Frederica Ramos and a stir-crazy Kaja Ahmed-MacCorkill began exploring the countryside surrounding the unit's cantonment. Two days after the end of the Kurita contract, as the unit prepared to lift, the unit's history buffs uncovered a Star League supply bunker and breached the doors to uncover a still-functional Royal Wolverine! Quickly organizing a salvage operation, they returned to the site with a crew of company techs and local laborers. The hasty preparations must have leaked, though, for as technician Joy Giammarttini powered up the WVR-7H for the first time in three centuries, a trio of Lyran holdouts swept down on the site. Using the bunker as cover, Ramos and Giammarttini surgically destroyed an enemy Griffin and Crab and sent a Blackjack limping away.
Although DCMS logistics officers tried to demand the Wolverine be handed over to them, Captain Sciama stood firm, citing the fact that the unit's contract with the Dragon had ended. Ramos elected to stay in the cockpit of her family's Crab, leaving the Wolverine to Giammarttini, who herself came from a Dispossessed MechWarrior family.
