The world outside was a blistering ocean of sand, with a laser beam sun that somehow found a way to blind him regardless of his heading or position. His cockpit was so hot Paul thought he might be able to cook an egg on the dash. He just wasn't used to this.
He'd never really know what it was like to feel too hot. Summer in Denver just meant, being able to go outside the arcology without a survival suit. Most of his life had been spent hiding from the cold, but here he was, strapped into the cockpit of a WLF-1B Wolfhound, drenched in sweat, and wondering what would happen if he started using his weapons.
The WLF-1B was a simple machine with a simple weapons load. His primary ranged weapon system was a large laser with good damage potential out to around half a click. On the defensive side, he also had four medium class lasers. Individually they weren't much to write home about, but together they did considerable damage. The real advantage of the B model was that all four of the mech's medium lasers were mounted facing front, while the more conventional WLF-1 model had one laser positioned to the rear for back up defense. That might be an advantage in urban warfare, but Paul didn't intend to let anyone get behind him out here in the desert, he knew he'd be able to see most targets well before they came into range.
Paul's objectives were as simple as his battlemech. He was on picket duty, so all he had to do was wait out here in the sun. If some kind of enemy showed up, all he had to do was stay alive long enough to let everyone else know that the shit was hitting the fan. A secondary objective was to disengage and regroup with the quick reaction force, but he knew that part was a lot easier said than done. Contact with any kind of enemy force meant being engaged by at least four enemy mechs, and very potentially, scout mechs too fast to outrun. He didn't think he'd have to wait long, then he hoped he wouldn't have to wait long, then he realized he'd been waiting for a long time.
He tried to pass the time by making a game of checking and rechecking his sensors. When the timer on his wrist went off he forced himself to drink from the bite-valve draped over his shoulder. The water was cool and refreshing, kept cold in an insulated reservoir somewhere deep inside the thirty-five-ton war machine. When he got hungry he ate a small energy bar from the rations pouch attached to the side of his command couch. He checked his sensors again, and again. He took the small machine two steps back, then two steps forward to where he'd been before.
War was boring. At least that was the lesson they seemed to want him to learn out here. Paul had heard it said, that war was months of indomitable boredom, interspersed with instantaneous moments of sheer unparalleled terror. Well, he hadn't known that terror yet, but he was getting to know the boredom pretty damn well. He switched over to thermals and scanned the horizon for the twenty millionth time. He thumbed a control switch to increase the magnification and watched for even the smallest heat signature, or sign of movement. Nothing. He saw absolutely nothing.
An eternity later the radio crackled to life.
“This is Blue Lead. All units report in.”
One by one the other members of the training cadre reported in from their posts.
“This is Blue Two, grid position eighty-eight, twenty-two is clear. No sign of hostiles.”
“This is Blue Three, grid position eighty-eight, seventy-three. Area clear, no hostiles.”
There was a long pause, then the voice of Blue Lead came over the radio again.
“Blue four, report in.”
There was only silence as Blue Lead repeated herself over and over again.
“Blue Four, report in... Blue Four? Mira, do you copy?”
Eventually, she gave up.
“All units, we've lost Blue Four. Blue Five do you copy?”
It was Paul's turn.
“Blue Five here, all clear, no sign of hostiles.”
“Blue Five, I want to you leave your position and make your way towards grid location twenty-three, seventy-three. Blues Two and Three fall back to nav point beta. Red Lance, I want you to make your best speed to nav point beta as well.”
One by one they all called in responses to their new orders and began moving out.
Suddenly Paul had a job to do. He punched in the new navigational data and headed for Blue Four's last known position. The Wolfhound trundled up to its maximum speed of ninety-seven kilometers an hour, and Paul ran through his targeting and tracking checks before engaging his weapon systems with the master arm switch.
The Wolfhound wasn't a hard mech to pilot, but it was a pain to control the small machines heat curve and Paul was running headlong into a fight. He'd been warned to keep his distance, relying on the heavy laser alone would help him avoid counter fire and give him a head start in a retreat.
Paul checked his sensors again. He was still a long way out. He kept up the pace. It was about a minute later when saw the barrage of missiles streaking up above the horizon, a cloudy ark of cool white contrails. They weren't meant for him, but Paul could tell the real fight had already started.
There was a fury of radio chatter, and the general picture of what was happening started coming into focus. Paul and the rest of his unit were equipped with a mix of light, and medium mechs spread out over a very large area. The enemy force was a concentrated mass of heavy and even assault class machines. They'd smashed through the picket line by downing Mira in Blue Four faster than she'd been able to call for help. Now they were rapidly closing in on the small desert outpost that Paul and the rest of his people were supposed to be defending and things looked pretty bad.
Paul rolled into his new navigational point to find the smoking ruin of Mira's wolfhound, only it wasn't really recognizable as a wolfhound anymore. The head was gone, blown free from the shoulders by an automatic safety mechanism designed to save the lives of rookie mech jocks. The rest was a charred mass of perforated steel, and myomer bundles spread out over a thirty-meter radius. Paul checked his sensors as he scanned the horizon for visual contacts. A few hundred meters away he spotted the wolfhound's head half buried in sand, a massive red and white parachute waving above it in the desert wind. Continuing his turn he spotted something. A tiny black spec on the horizon. Bright white contrails rising high above it. An enemy fire support mech. He radioed in his position and the observation receiving nothing in response but static. They were being jammed. Paul was on his own. He quickly checked the briefing notes scribbled across a notepad on his knee. In the event of hostile action without access to communications, Paul was to consider himself weapons free. There was nowhere to retreat to so he'd have to fight it out on this own.
He thumbed through his long-range sensors, but the distant target was out of range. He flipped on this magnetic anomaly detector and scanned the horizon. Feedback from the direction of his new target was heavy. There were a lot of fusion engines over there. Paul punched in the new nav-data, and slowly started in on the distant target while doing his best to keep his eyes peeled for additional threats.
He closed the distance quickly and the silhouette of an ARC-2R Archer began to form where before there had been only a small black spec. His sensors caught it and the small machines battlefield intelligence computer properly identified it using internal image recognition algorithms. Continuing his advance Paul noticed that the Archer was flanked by two companions. His targeting system pulled them up as an AWS-8R Awesome, and a CPLT-A1 Catapult. They were all looking the wrong way, but Paul knew that as soon as he used his weapons there'd be nothing between him and the three much larger machines.
He thumbed through controls, deactivating all of the sensor systems that might give away his position. One of the most important things Paul had learned while attending the Black Jack school was that sensors worked both ways, and electronic warfare was a subject that every mechwarrior needed to be well versed in. His radar, lidar, and fusion reactor were all easy to detect, and in a medium to close range fight he wouldn't need radar or lidar anyway. He left his radar warning receiver, and magnetic anomaly detector on for now. Finally, he disengaged his communications system. As he continued to close on the enemy mechs, he slowly decreased speed to reduce his auditory signature as well. The targets continued to grow in front of him.
Without lidar, he wasn't one-hundred percent sure of their range, but his hud had a built-in ranging reticule that put them at about four hundred meters. The distance didn't seem to matter. They were still distracted, and missiles continued to jump from their shoulder and arm mounted launchers. He was getting really close now. At approximately two hundred fifty meters he flipped a toggle switch to activate his broad spectrum radio frequency jammer. The jammer filled channel after channel with interference, blocking communications, and some targeting systems. They'd have trouble talking to each other without switching to external mics, and speakers, but they'd also know something was up, and if they were smart they'd check rear-view cameras right away.
Paul didn't have time to delay, he aimed carefully and fired a full salvo of weapons directly into the back of the ARC-2R Archer. The temperature in his cockpit exploded as beams of light burst from his machine and filled the short space between him and his target. The light converted into kilojoules of heat energy as his weapons connected with the thin armor covering the support mech's ammunition bins. Armor melted and flowed from the impact area, as a secondary explosion ripped the machine apart from the inside out. The Archer was violently vivisected as it's left side torso split from the center all the way down to the pelvic support that held the legs. The machine toppled over in two different directions.
It was a small victory, but Paul had a lot of work to do very quickly. Checking left then right he saw the Archer's lance mates turning in reaction to his intrusion. The Catapult had wheeled around to face him but was back peddling away to clear the minimum arming distance on long-range missiles. The Cat didn't have any backup weapons so it was helpless inside of missile arming range. On his opposite side the much larger Awesome had also turned to face him, but instead of backing off, the larger machine was taking aim with its large class laser. The beam lite the sky between them, blinding Paul as it seared away armor on his mech's chest and left shoulder. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He needed to start moving right away.
Paul jammed the throttle to its stop and the small machine took a long stride forward. He turned towards the Cat, lashing out with two of his medium lasers and charging directly into the threat as the Awesome, now behind him, fired its small backup laser into his exposed rear. Paul fired again, the paired medium lasers shed armor around the helpless mech's cockpit but didn't penetrate, at the last possible moment he jerked the control stick hard to the right, then back to the left, bringing himself around and behind the Cat.
Now he had a shield. The Cat was turning, trying to expose Paul to his friend in the Awesome, but Paul matched his movement, keeping the slower moving missile boat between him and the iron giant a few hundred meters away. He took the opportunity to fire a salvo of medium lasers into the frustrated Cat's weak rear armor, before stepping out from behind it just enough to fire his large laser at the enemy Awesome, who'd now turned to come at him on his left flank. With both enemy mechs trying to shake him Paul wasn't sure how long he could keep this up. The cockpit was a searing inferno already when he fired another carefully aimed laser burst into the Cat's now damaged rear. Armor melted away, and Paul could see through to internal structures. He took a quick pull from his hydration tube. One more shot and the Cat would drop, but when it did he'd be without a shield and the Awesome had back peddled just far enough to use its missiles. Paul maneuvered out from behind the Cat yet again, this time firing his large laser at the other machines arm mounted laser. If he could keep this up maybe he could knock out the Awesome's main close range weapon, then close in for the kill. The shot made its mark, but it wasn't enough, and this time the Awesome returned fire before Paul could get himself back behind the Cat. The laser etched a deep furrow across his mech's chest and his diagnostic computer told him that he'd lost a good amount of armor. He quickly maneuvered back behind the Cat as a full volley of missiles exploded from the Awesome's chest, bright while contrails streaking out to meet him. Ducking behind the Cat, Paul was spared the onslaught, and in an interesting twist, a small number of missiles actually impacted the Cat's right side.
Frustrated the Catapult took off in a straight shot to clear the distance between him, and his lace mate. This was it, Paul wasn't going to be able to keep hiding behind him. As the Cat moved away, he carefully lined up his shot and fired all of his weapons into the Cat's damaged, and exposed rear. The enemy machine took another step and dropped to the desert sand. Heat spiked and alarms blared both because his mech was about to shut down and because the Awesome had locked him up for another volley of steel rain.
Paul jammed down on the emergency override control, while simultaneously engaging the throttle to its hard stop. The small machine sprang forward charging directly into the jaws of his foe. Time slowed, as his machine took one long stride after another. He saw the burst of contrails from the Awesome's torso mounted launchers, the thirty individual missiles freed from their launch tubes to rain destruction upon him. He saw the flash as the Awesome fired both of his lasers. More alarms blared, the Wolfhound took one more stride and there was a cacophony of loud metallic bangs as all thirty missiles found a place to impact his machine. Paul watched as one collided with his cockpit glass crumpling into a tangled, flaming mess as it bounced off harmlessly. He'd done it, he'd cleared the gap.
The Awesome's missiles hadn't had time to arm themselves. His mech registered damage from the laser strike, but the missile salvo hadn't really done anything at all. He jerked the control stick hard to the left and passed just meters from the huge machine which took a slow deliberate swing at him with its left arm mounted battle fist. Luckily it didn't connect. Paul was behind him now, and turning to get a shot, but the Awesome pilot wasn't stupid, he immediately put on speed and went into a turn. Paul was going to have to keep moving to get a good shot.
As they circled it became clear that Paul wasn't going to get the shot he wanted. Instead, he began firing his weapons individually at the larger machine's legs. He started with his large laser, and followed with his mediums, one at a time, trying to keep them aimed at the same spot each time. The Awesome was an assault class battlemech with lots of armor to protect itself during slow lumbering pushes into enemy-held territory. Paul knew this was going to take some time, and he wasn't sure how much he had.
He was able to outmaneuver his opponent but it was only a matter of time before some of his friends realized they weren't receiving fire support. When they did, they'd pull back to see what had happened, and at that point, Paul's luck would almost certainly run out.
He kept up his attack bleeding armor from the Awesome's legs as he danced his smaller machine around just out of arms reach. After what seemed like an eternity the enemy mech's left leg buckled and it started to fall. Reaching out with its left arm the machine managed to catch itself and pivot in such a way that it was left in a sitting position. As Paul came around yet again, he found himself inside the striking arc of the Awesome's laser weapons.
He's already taken a lot of damage and this time as the larger mech fired, he watched all of the remaining armor on his torso bleed off as alarms sounded in the cockpit. Again his heat spiked, but this time it wouldn't go back down, a display showed that he'd lost a number of internal heatsinks around the reactor, and Bitching Betty was now politely informing him that he'd receiver critical damage.
The next blinding flash took him by surprise, more because he was now behind the sitting awesome than anything else. His displays had distracted him, and he'd lost his situational awareness long enough for someone to catch him off guard. Paul jammed forward on the throttle, and got his head back in the game, he quickly flipped his sensors back on and turned to face his new threat.
As he turned, he was confronted with a column of black smoke from the Archer he'd killed, and beyond that not one but seven enemy battlemechs in various states of disrepair. The closest, a Warhammer, its damaged left arm hanging at its side fired another particle cannon just as he noticed it. The impact threw Paul into his harness, and his battle damage indicator told him he'd lost his left arm. Paul returned fire with his large laser as his already blistering cockpit went up a few more degrees.
Paul couldn't take much more of this. He turned towards his new target as white contrails jumped from enemy mechs in the distance. He was already at a full run. He knew he didn't have much time, but the Warhammer wasn't very far away either. The little Wolfhound took one long step after another and the gap closed. Paul checked his heat levels. He had to time this one just right. The missiles above him filled the sky like a swarm of angry hornets. The space between him and the Warhammer narrowed. He fired everything he had just milliseconds before the impact. His smaller machine didn't have the weight, but at ninety-seven kph it had some good momentum. He smashed into the larger machine as the missiles fell on them both.
The world was gone, replaced with a silent darkness. Then the hatch cracked open and cool fresh air rushed in to meet him. Paul was drenched in sweat. He took a long pull from his hydration system and started to unbuckle his harness. Someone outside pulled his hatch all the way open. It was Dave.
"Dude, that was ****** insane!" he said as soon as Paul made eye contact.
"Thanks, man, but we all still bought it," Paul said as he pulled himself up out of the simulation pod.
"Yeah, but you killed like three of them and disabled another. No one else even came close, most of us never even got a shot off."
"I got lucky is all, I was ordered to investigate Mira's post, so when everything went down I was out behind them, if I'd been anywhere else I would have gotten crushed along with everyone else."
"Lucky or not, that run put you way up the ladder in terms of overall kill death, and total kill count."
The recruits of the Black Jack School kept a competitive training record which ranked them against their peers. Paul was above average for his level of training but he wasn't exactly at the top of the charts either.
"I'm not looking to win any awards, I just want to show that I'm worth putting in a real battlemech." As he said it a number of other recruits had wandered up to surround him. He noticed the other members of his training cadres, as well as the sim pit instructor Captain Merkel. As Merkel approached the chatter dyed and everyone snapped to attention, including Paul.
"Recruit Anderson, that was a good performance, but I can't abide this lazy show of post-mission etiquette. Recruits, hit the showers, then report to the debriefing room immediately!" she shouted, and the rest of the gathered recruits quickly moved towards to the locker rooms on the other side of the simulation lab.
After a quick shower to clean the sweat off, Paul found a seat in the briefing room. He watched as Merkel activated a large wall-mounted video screen, which began to display footage from the cadet's gun cameras as well as feeds from several overhead drone positions. It cycled through to the HUD of a Wolfhound marked Blue Four in the upper right hand corner.
“We're going to start with Cadet Yee. Mira, do you have anything to add before we start?”
Mira rose from her seat “no ma'am” she said.
“All right then”. As she spoke she initiated playback. “This recording isn't very long. As you can see, Cadet Yee arrived at her designated navigational point at mission time plus fifteen minutes just like the rest of you. She began to meticulously scan the area as you had all been instructed to do “ Merkel fast forwarded through the part where we waited in the desert for over an hour “At mission time plus one hour, twenty minutes she was cycling through her sensors when she received a contact” Yee's HUD flashed a red indicator on the right side, and as she turned to face it, the threat indicator exploded from one contact into three, then eight, and finally twelve. “Here we see Yee coming into contact with a heavy company of unidentified battlemechs.” The HUD displayed a mass of small red triangles each one containing a tiny but rapidly growing spec. Contrails began to rise into the air above them, as Merkel paused the footage. “This is where Cadet Yee made her first and last mistake during this mission. While she may have had just enough time to radio in an alert, she instead tried to take evasive action before engaging the enemy force.” Merkel restarted the video, and they watched as Yee tried and failed to evade the incoming missiles. The first wave all but destroyed her tiny machine, leaving it a crippled mess of shattered armor and torn myomer fibers. A fraction of a second later a barrage of particle cannon fire cut the feed. “That's how quickly you will die if you try playing shoot em up cowgirl in the real world,” Merkel said “Yee had a choice. She could have followed orders, retreated to form up with the rest of her unit and fight it out that way, or she could take off on a suicidal assault right into the snapping jaws of her enemies. She made the wrong choice, she's lucky this was only a simulation. It is unlikely that she would have survived this engagement in the real world.” Merkel keyed something in her palm and the perspective on the screen changed. It now showed overhead drone footage of the opposition forces moving past Yee's position in the picket line, towards the small outpost at nav point beta. Then the audio playback of their radio check-in began to play, and Merkel changed perspectives again to show several cockpit views at once as the members of blue lance began to move out. Paul could see his own cockpit footage on the far right. Just as he'd arrived at Yee's position Merkel paused the playback again. “This is the point where the majority of the forces involved made contact. The opposing force out massed yours by several hundred tons. For this defense to be successful all members of your unit needed to combine your fire to quickly defeat the larger enemy battlemechs, but you found yourself unable to do so as enemy jamming made communication difficult” She paused to let them watch the firefight. Paul was still out in the desert by himself, but everyone else was engaged. Merkel changed the view again so that all surviving members of the company were displayed around the border of the screen with a top-down drone view in the middle. One by one the cockpit views began to go black as the cadets started dropping like flies, and then there was Paul. They were gone, every one of them, and Paul was still on his feet. The view changed again, now it showed the cockpit view of his wolfhound and nothing else. He was charging the Archer about to fire when Merkel paused playback again. “Cadet Anderson, do you have anything to say about your actions today?”
“Not really ma'am, I guess I'm sorry that I couldn't get to the fight sooner”
She smiled just a little “Cadet Anderson, what is the first lesson of the Black Jack school?”
“Live to get paid, ma'am”
“Very good, so why didn't you attempt to leave the battlefield when you lost communications with your unit”
“Ma'am, I want to live to get paid as much as the next guy, and had I known that everyone was already toasted I might have called it a day, but without coms I had no way of knowing if we were all dead, or if we were winning, I don't think I'd be much use as a mechwarrior if I ran from every fight I thought I might lose.”
Paul heard a mix of murmurs, and Dave reached over to offer him a fist bump. Paul took it.
“A good enough answer Cadet, and how might I ask were you able to sneak up on this fire support unit undetected,” she gesturing to the doomed Archer on screen.
“I turned off everything I didn't need ma'am, I knew that my active sensor systems might give away my position. I mean there's that, and luck I guess.”
“Explain your luck to me”
“Well I had no way of knowing this at the time but I arrived just as Blue lead was falling. These guys were distracted by the targets in front of them. If I'd gotten there just a few seconds later they might have been paying more attention to their surroundings.”
“Very good Cadet Anderson” she resumed the footage as a series of bright laser flashes cut the Archer apart.
The fight replayed and Paul noticed so many things he would never have noticed during the fight. By the end of it, he wasn't sure what had been skill and what had been blind luck.
“Cadet Anderson's gun cam footage shows us that with quick thinking and solid tactics a smaller machine like the wolfhound can take down larger opponents, but in the end without supporting elements or a path to retreat, his machine was also destroyed. When you arrive here on Monday I want fifteen hundred words from each of you on strategies for defeating a superior force, with emphasis on the use of electronic warfare tools, and stealth”. Some low grumbling filled the room, and Paul couldn't help but feel responsible.
As he made his way out of the simulation building and onto the parade grounds Dave caught up to him.
“Hey dude, are you coming with us to the club tonight?” he asked.
“I don't know man, I've got a ten-hour shift at the spaceport tomorrow morning, and I have to be there at sunrise”
“Dude, don't be a tool. We've got almost every cadet in our class meeting up at the Beach Club tonight. It's going to be a total rager! Also, when was the last time you got laid, bro? For real, you need to be there, I heard that tall blond star-fighter chick you like is going to be there. You wouldn't want to miss out on your chance to get some time in that hot seat would you?”
“Well,” Paul ran through all of the responsibilities living inside his head. The three papers that needed to be written before returning to class on Monday. The uniforms that needed to be washed. The boots that needed to be shinned, and polished. The part-time job that he needed to be alert and not hungover for. Then he pushed all of it to the very back of his brain and said “Yeah, I guess I can go”
“Great, we're all meeting up at the gate around nine.”
“Sounds good man, I'll see you there.”