Author Topic: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic  (Read 171864 times)

ThePW

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #420 on: 11 December 2019, 17:32:48 »
We missed you but... I have to sorta, kinda, curse you: I tried to explain this story (and how awesome it's turned out to be) when she tells me to stop. She picks up her phone, calls some Gamer Place... and asks "how much for a PS2? *pause* The cheapest"... it seems that the backstory from Heavy Arms ("Wild Arms")(Whatever..) resonated with her upon hearing my description of this story. I blame you for that ;)
« Last Edit: 11 December 2019, 18:13:30 by ThePW »
Even my Page posting rate is better than my KPD rate IG...

2Feb2023: The day my main toon on DDO/Cannith, an Artificer typically in the back, TANKED in a LH VoD.

Kujo

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #421 on: 11 December 2019, 20:41:15 »
Remember stumbling accross this story on Space Battle Forums, Glad it is being updated.

Smith has issues with leaders, leading from the front, or should I say commanders leading from the front :o

I am working on a fanfic cross over in which his son makes General Hal Moore's statement from we were "Soldiers once and young" look 'timid' "that I will be the first on the battlefield and last to leave" in which Victor is always first on the surface and last to leave the fight.  I know Smith would not consider that a 'wise' use of time and command talent, but Paul, Andrew, Ian, Hanse and even Victor, they are all DAVIONs, they to quote Melissa Steiner-Davion"believe their name means Messiah" so they will lead from the front and command from there as well.  If I was a common Soldier, Guard or other commander on the emotional level my morale from having those that need not fight fight alongside me and fight well would be boosted to the stratosphere.  Of course it limits the information and direction of the battle, but being in a TOC, or even Mount Davion you could be jammed or bomb(nuked) and taken out of the battle as well.  Additionally by knowing where you are and how your are fight well trained and intelligent subordinate Commanders can pick up the ques from your fighting without you issuing orders.

Great story keep it up!
For the FEDCOM For the Archon-Prince

Zureal

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #422 on: 13 December 2019, 02:13:45 »
Well that was a great update :)

Chaeronea

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #423 on: 14 December 2019, 07:50:05 »
Well, as usual with updates of this story, that update rocked.


PsihoKekec

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #425 on: 26 February 2020, 13:24:35 »
Shoot first, laugh later.

wolfcannon

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #426 on: 26 February 2020, 15:24:17 »
that was epic.
Daniels Avenger                Clan Coyote
General Jennifer Daniels    Galaxy Commander Jim Skyes
                                        Omicron Galaxy
Clan Wolf in Exile
328th Assault Cluster(the Lion Hearted)
Star Captain James Sword

Shadow_Wraith

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #427 on: 26 February 2020, 22:11:53 »
 :) Yes the latest update in SB was awesome and epic!!!   :thumbsup:

snakespinner

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #428 on: 26 February 2020, 23:33:02 »
Chris has done it again. Epic battle :beer:
I wish I could get a good grip on reality, then I would choke it.
Growing old is inevitable,
Growing up is optional.
Watching TrueToaster create evil genius, priceless...everything else is just sub-par.

ThePW

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #429 on: 26 February 2020, 23:51:17 »
that was epic.
THAT's the understatement of the week. What I find humorous is that Yorinaga Kurita seems to share DNA with Vandervahn Chistu, at least in terms of using cheap methods to win at all costs...
Even my Page posting rate is better than my KPD rate IG...

2Feb2023: The day my main toon on DDO/Cannith, an Artificer typically in the back, TANKED in a LH VoD.

Giovanni Blasini

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #430 on: 27 February 2020, 02:11:29 »
"THE POWER OF CRAY COMPELS YOU!"

LOL
"Does anyone know where the love of God goes / When the waves turn the minutes to hours?"
-- Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

cawest

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #431 on: 27 February 2020, 02:37:58 »
I just wonder what Smith's kill board will look like. 

Chris OFarrell

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #432 on: 27 February 2020, 03:55:02 »
Alright people, BIG chapter here.

This will wrap up the New Avalon Battle, we'll have an aftermath chapter which will also advance things after this.
So you might want to get some snacks :)

Chapter Seventeen: E=MC^2


Something between two-thirds and three quarters of Kuritas main body managed to get through the gap in the NAIS perimeter by the time Morgan was ready to bring them directly under fire.

Morgan’s original battle plan (throw
that on the planet sized mass of military plans that had not survived contact with the enemy) had been to deploy his force right on top of Kurita. Of course, a Hover-Drop maneuver with an entire Regiment was rare to see executed in the 3025 time frame - especially by the defenders. Partially because it was quite high risk both in execution and if the enemy realized what was happening, partially because only the most elite units generally had both the training and equipment on hand to do it. Few commanders would also have the stones to drop onto another elite unit as opposed to grounding further away and advancing to contact.
Morgan however had mercilessly drilled his Swordsworn for
months in the technique. Putting them through both simulated and real drop maneuvers until the poor troops were probably dreaming about falling through the skies. And with the enemy out of position and divided, it would have been a textbook perfect drop that Indrick Boreale himself may have given an approving nod to … if not for the minor fact that he had needed to divert his Battalion North to pull his uncle out of the fire (literally and figuratively) at the last second.

In Battletech however, Morgan Hasek-Davion had been said to be uncannily good at adapting on the fly to changing situations on the battlefield and turning them to his advantage. I saw the first hints of that today as Morgan deployed, crisp orders streaming out as he read the battlefield and anticipated the flow of combat. While he dropped directly to stop his uncle (and me for that matter) getting char-grilled, he sent 3rd Battalion down to the East - to enter the NAIS in a more conservative drop that would let them get into NAIS without enemy interference, keeping a piece on the board in reserve. 2nd Battalion however he had kept more-or-less on target, if not right on top of the enemy anymore, dropping close to the gate where the DCMS were trying to push through.

Of course, this also meant Morgan had divided his force in the face of the enemy.


That was one of the biggest ‘no-no’s in warfare according to every military textbook - and one that all soldiers were conditioned to jump on faster than your average Lyran on a lose 100 Kronor bill they saw on the footpath. Taking advantage of the Davion ‘mistake’, a Battalion of Genyosha who would never make it inside had assembled and charged off right at 2nd Battalions LZ as they came down, clearly wanting to engage them in isolation before they could link up with 1st Bat and press on the wall. Intending to buy enough time for the last of their comrades to get to ‘safety’ inside and slow the Davion counterattack.
Of course, even at near numerical parity this ‘omega battalion’ had to know the odds were not exactly on their side. 2nd was Morgan’s ‘big stick’, made up of a Company each from the Davion Assault and Heavy Guards plus a Company of the Lyran Royal Guards handpicked by Katrina, while the DC unit was made up of mediums with a couple of heavies and a lance or two of lights.
Even so, the odds of survival (or at least dragging out their deaths and inflicting as much damage as they could for as long as possible) would be much higher if they could engage 2nd in the kind of mobile freewheeling battle the DCMS preferred rather than a slugging match pinned against a wall. Indeed, they might even have felt a brief moment of genuine
hope as they came into the visual range of the center company they were aiming at … and they saw it was made up of Banshees.
Honest to God
Banshee-3E’s!
Assault Mechs with the firepower of a Medium Mech, they were a bit of a joke only seen in third tier units where
any Battlemech was better than no Battlemech. To the DCMS MechWarrior’s, they must have looked deliciously for all the world like a ceremonial Lyran unit on the Federated Suns capital pressed into service for the emergency, what given their immaculately perfect Royal Guards dress paint contrasting against the Davion Guards far more utilitarian thermal suppressing field camo. And indeed, on paper, if the DCMS could smash through them first and fast, they might just have a chance to split the Heavy and Assault Guard companies from each other, then wheel and engage those units with superior numbers in the kind of mobile running fight Yorinaga’s people excelled in.

It wasn’t a crazy Banzai charge though - or perhaps it was,
but, executed with undeniable skill, professionalism and purpose. Executing a formation change with parade ground precision as they oriented on the Lyran Battlemechs and accelerated, shaking out into a tight wedge that made it hard to miss hitting them but conversely let the Combine troops concentrate a massive amount of firepower forward making their intentions clear. A logical tactic; ‘wrecking-ball’ through the Banshees with massed fire tactics, then wheel either left or right to engage one of the flanking Davion companies in isolation. Sort of double divide-and-conquer, continually reducing the overwhelming might of the Swordsworn down into manageable chunks where you could bring local superiority to bear in an outstanding display of taking an enemy’s mistake and exploiting it ruthlessly.

Really, the only problem with the tactics … was that they were exactly what Morgan had
hoped they would do.

Explosive bolts fired as the
Banshees came to a halt and the trap was sprung; vis-Mod coverings painstakingly attached with thousands of man-hours of tech work at NAIS flung away like Neo flinging open his long coat to reveal … guns.

LOTS of guns.

A barrage of particle bolts and gauss rifles had slammed into the tightly packed DCMS force at range with crushing force, knocking out a half dozen Battlemechs and causing the entire Combine formation to
shudder as it tried to avoid crashing into itself like an upset house of cards. To their credit, again the Combine MechWarrior’s reacted near instantly with the Mechs on the edge of the formation spreading out and returning fire as they tried to cover for the rest of the unit, but it really wasn’t any use. Shrugging off the scattered return fire, the Lyran’s fired as soon as their weapons cycled without any concern for heat, carving into the beleaguered center of the enemy formation as swarms of LRMs started to rain in from the flanks into the Combine Mechs trying to engage. The Davion Guardsmen now pressed in at a full FOMO sprint, clearly affronted at the idea that the Royal Guardsmen would steal all the kills, expertly collapsing the kill box collapsed around the enemy...
By the time Morgan arrived with both his Battalion and Hanse’s people in tow, the slaughter was all over. Third lesson for the day; massed formations of Assault and Heavy Mechs were ******
terrifying in how rapidly they could dismember lighter units stupid enough to put their head on the block in front of them.

Wasting no time, Hanse had reformed and wheeled around. Sprinting back to the NAIS as fast as he could. And that was when it happened.

A transmission had been broadcast from inside the NAIS over a general channel. A transmission in the unmistakable voice of Yorinaga Kurita … giving voice to a Haiku in English.

The circle is closed.
Return to the beginning.
To find the ending.

Was it a death poem? I had no idea. Was it ominous? Just a tad! Pretentious? Oh God yes.

Did it piss Hanse Davion the ****** off? You betcha.

The Prince took up the implied challenge and smashed his battalions through and over the breach in the perimeter like the mother of all battering rams … only to find Kurita wasn’t even
bothering to try and hold the other side of the wall against pursuit. No, the bastard had marched straight into the heart of the NAIS and unleashed his people with clear orders to spread out and go full 1st Succession War on Hanse Davion’s pride and joy - presumably as much to gain a reaction out of the First Prince as to destroy the critical strategic facilities. Starting with the massive campus of the College of Engineering and flinging infernos around like fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

Well, if he
wanted to get a reaction out of Hanse, he had succeeded.

Once again, a First Prince of the Federated Suns and Yorinaga Kurita had squared off - although ironically with Kurita in Ian’s place as the Combine Troops kept working to slip away and buy time in a hopeless battle. The Genyosha were
not standing their ground like many of their idiotic ‘not one step back!’ peers may have but were performing a fluid defense with immense skill. Smashing their way in and out of buildings to surprise the advancing Guards, hitting the spearheads before falling back as they played out space for time using tactics that also happened to smash and burn the NAIS at the same time - ****** Japanese efficiency hard at work. Making the tactics devilishly effective was surprisingly effective radio and sensor jamming that had started up as the Combine troops had come into contact with the Honour Guard, making a hash of tactical radios and sensors inside the urban jungle as the snakes weaved their way through it. While initially countered by the NAIS communications network being tied into the battlenet, that had only lasted until a burning twenty story building in the College of Finances had collapsed and done something to the underground conduits that routed in that area.

Yeah, idiotic design with single points of failure still happened even in the 31st century at the NAIS of all places and Murphy remained equal opportunity. Go figure.

The communications network had died along with the main power grid, not simply cutting the Mechs off from each other at any real distance but cutting everyone off from the Fox’s Den’s Star League era computers that had been mashing together a complete tactical picture together. In that moment, Command Mechs tactical displays had switched from a crisply rendered image of where everyone was into a ‘fog of war’ - and the enemy was making maximum use of it. The words ‘slippery ****** snakes!’ seemed to be in use an awful lot by company commanders right now as Hanse split off from Morgan, leaving him in charge of one flank while taking the lead on the other to compensate as they adapted to try and pincer the enemy.
The paradigm had shifted when 3nd Battalion had arrived and cut into the dance, checking the Combines vanguard as they pushed (literally) through the Materials Engineering laboratories, rocking them back on their heels in a sudden barrage of firepower. Having landed on the Eastern edge of the campus grounds, Major Green-Davion had expertly maneuvered the much more mobile Battlemechs of the 3rd, 5th and Light Guards through the NAIS. The lighter and faster medium mechs had hit with exquisite timing, many leaping from rooftop to rooftop to spot for fire support lances just as the Genyosha had been about to push out and into the College of Chemistry. Their sudden intervention throwing the Combine troops back on themselves in confusion...

For about fifteen seconds. Give or take.



*
**
******
**
*


While Hanse and Morgan had gone running to the sound of the guns, I … well, I was sent to the rear.

I mean, the orders were a bit more subtle than that, telling me and the rest of my lance to recover our dismounts with the help of a hover APC coming out then head to the CMS campus which was the designated rally point for all NAIS defenders. But translated from that, it was pretty clear we were being sent to the rear. And with Jackson dispo … err, dismounted as well as Jonny and Jimmy out of ammo? It made sense for them.

But why me? My Mech was more or less fine and I didn't have any ammo concerns - and surely they needed every gun on the line?

Most probably I guessed Hanse didn’t think I was up to the bar brawl that he knew was about to come when two elite units smashed into each other with quarter neither offered nor given at point blank range.

Hell of it was, he was probably right.

With my person removed from the immediate danger (even if I tried to keep watching in every direction simultaneously on my 360-degree display) my mind started wandering back over the battle. The adrenaline and training that had gotten me through the first engagements on autopilot was thinning out and leaving my mind going in increasingly small circles as, bit by bit, it sunk in just how close to dying I had come this morning. The crackle-hiss of the PPCs lightning clawing at the edge of my cockpit, the visual of the implacable Griffin stomping towards my immobilized Battlemech...

No video games save-scumming. No reset buttons. No tabletop do-overs. Just … dead.

In any event, I parked those thoughts as our little group approached CMS, following the Hover APC through the gate. Being the nucleus NAIS had been built from, CMS (or NAMA as the alumni still stubbornly insisted on calling it) retained an internal perimeter wall separating it from the rest of the campus (mostly because it would just be too much damn work to demolish it) complete with - limited - static defenses. It also had a fully functional command center with landline uplinks to the Den, an independent power grid, plenty of hard open parade ground reinforcing dropships could land on in a pinch and all the infrastructure to support the cadets military hardware, making it a logical fallback point and/or final redoubt. Indeed, the last known orders BB had given as the DCMS had stormed into the NAIS were for Team Banzai and the Cadets to fall back and regroup here … meaning they should have beaten us here.

They were nowhere to be seen.

They might still be alive, but if so, they were somewhere in the middle of the massive cloud of jamming hanging over the NAIS like an electronic counterpoint to the thick black clouds of smoke, ****** over communications and what datalinks the 3025 era AFFS used. Listening in on the command net, several of the more technically inclined members of Team Banzai’s support staff in the local command center here had positively identified the interference as coming from multiple Capellan EW systems - the prototypes of which they had already seen on a couple of salvaged Ravens brought back to the NAIS late last year.

How in the hell Kurita had gotten his MAGIC BUSHIDO HANDS on that technology?

No-one knew. And as far as I could remember, nothing on that level of technology transfer had happened in the original timeline between the Kapteyn powers, making it another butterfly I had caused. The NAIS communications grid was still down despite frantic attempts ongoing to get it back up again and the steel jungle that made radio unreliable even in normal times was increasingly covered and filled with thick smoke that obscured overheads too; the end result being that outside of close range high-frequency radio links, we were playing double blind rules.

I ****** hated double-blind rules.

It didn’t seem there was terribly much I could do about things as they stood, however. Jonny and Jimmy had run straight to the nearby cadet bays to have their ammo-bins topped back up, an evolution that the crack support staff of Team Banzai could get done in a matter of minutes with the facilities there. Jackson Davion had also gone with them instead of heading for the command post as I anticipated, looking to grab one of the training Mechs that had been left in place as a backup specifically for ‘dismounted’ MechWarrior’s to get back into the battle with.
My Mech didn’t need ammo of course (and I had enough hydrogen in my reactor tank to keep going for months) and while I would have loved to re-armor my Battlemech; this wasn’t Mechwarrior III or IV with field bases to quickly duck into and be back to 100% health in ten seconds or less. Reskinning my Mechs damaged armor would take hours even if they had Ferro-Fibrous armor just laying around (which was something I rather doubted). So when I went back into the battle, I’d have to keep a close eye on where the shots were hitting me...

If I went back into the battle.

I fidgeted a little then as I stood with my Mech on the outer perimeter wall, next to an Autocannon turret diligently scanning for any hostiles, feeling a little disquieted (or possibly disgusted) with myself at how appealing the idea of not going back into battle sounded. When so many people, including the balance of friends I had in this universe, were fighting and risking their lives out there…
So, in an attempt to refocus and with no sign of hostiles anywhere near here, I turned to my command board and brought up the feed from the Fox’s Den relayed via my own SATCOM uplink - and almost instantly stumbled onto a chagrined Morgan reporting into Yvonne Davion, personally via his SATCOM uplink.

She was not happy.

And that was a scary thought.

I mean, I had indirectly seen Yvonne Davion drop her ‘Grandmother of the AFFS who makes epic cookies’ persona once or twice in ‘The Den’. Seeing very senior combat veterans walk out of her office looking considerably paler then when they had walked in and all that. But it was rare, and I had never thought she’d need to put Morgan of all people under the blowtorch.

It was understandable why she was though, given that Morgan was admitting he had lost track of the First Prince of the Federated Suns!

If I was hearing this right, it seemed that having pinned the Combine force (more or less) into the Southern third of the NAIS, Hanse had switched gears and unleashed the infantry NAIS had been keeping in reserve. Using the extensive secure underground tunnel networks, the vast campus had, the infantry had already shifted into place unseen and, when the signal was given, they had popped up all over the place to make a very loud and obnoxious nuisance of themselves.
The actual damage inflicted was limited, but it was rather distracting to have people shooting into your back while you were busy playing tit-for-tat with enemy Battlemechs. And with strict orders to ‘shoot and scoot’, the ‘rat-pack’ had vanished right back down the tunnels and mostly escaped the furious but clumsy retribution cleanly … at which point other platoons had engaged from different directions.
It was kind of like those old ‘whack a mole’ arcade games - except the moles had SRM launchers, LAW launchers and the occasional Manpack PPC or support laser, all chipping away at your armor or even occasionally placing shots neatly into armor breaches they could pick out to wreck things on the inside.

And without their own infantry units to screen then, the Combines possible counters were limited.

The sudden and violent attack that was launched in response was tactically sensible given the situation, very much the best option out of several bad ones. Breaking out of the burning and collapsing Engineering campus that was all but reduced to rubble, two- and a-bit battalions of Combine Battlemechs had still moved as one well-oiled machine, working to collapse whatever was still standing on the way out. Fire support units laid down suppressive fire with the last of their ammo while assault units ripped a breach open in the Davion lines, allowing the rest of the unit to pour through in an attempt to unfold and rip the AFFS lines open from the inside out, all under the cover of their ECM bubbles, often detouring through buildings to try and get around defensive strongpoints. Many of the enemy Mechs out of ammo even carried griders and other improvised clubs from the building wreckage in their hands, clearly planning to use them with TSM enhanced force on the Davion Guards.

Morgan and Hanse, however, had anticipated the move.

With micro-skills a Korean Starcraft Champion would have approved of and banking heavily on Guardsmen subunit commanders doing a lot with very few orders to a big picture, the Swordsworn had smoothly flowed back from the charge, sweeping their units around to suddenly englobe them as their charge became drawn out - before forcing the leading assault elements crash into the stop line at a place of Morgan’s choosing.
Again, the twelve Banshee’s held in reserve stepped forward and again they proved utterly terrifying in the sheer firepower they brought to the 3025 battlefields. Even at close range, for all the undisputed skill of the Combine MechWarrior’s they simply didn’t have an answer to Katrina's fanatic handpicked soldiers in their retrofitted Assault Mechs and the firepower they poured down the narrow choke points as fast as their triggers could cycle. Sure, more than a few fell as their XL reactors were torn open and several others were shot full of so many holes it was a wonder they could stand, but not one of them paused as they kept throwing PPC, laser and gauss fire into the teeth of any Mech stupid enough to challenge the Lyran Wall of Steel. The unstoppable force met the immovable object head on … and this time, the unstoppable force blinked first.

They did not give up mind you. Even as their push ground to a halt, they reformed quickly into defensive clusters of lances and company lines, trying to hold a perimeter around and inside buildings as they probed for an escape route to stay mobile, only to find every direction firmly locked down by tight, interlocking arms of the Honor Guard. They didn’t fight any less fiercely, but the N^2 law and intensity of the combat was now finally catching up to them and everyone knew it. They were running out of ammo, leaving more armor on the ground than on their Mechs and overheating without any break to flush their heat sinks and take a breather. The much fresher Honor Guard were in their element now and they ramped up the pressure steadily as the advantage steadily tilted their way and they pushed the enemy into Combat Loss Grouping.

God knows if there would be much left of the Southern third of the NAIS by the time this ended though.

Then, things went … wrong.

Our glorious Prince had been maneuvering to try and come in on the flank of the enemy main body with his high-technology Lance in the lead. To punch into and cut off an enemy company from the main body and help liquidate it - especially the EW unit hiding there, working to break up the enemies mutually supporting formations. But as he did, a new enemy formation had suddenly broken out of the ruins of the engineering campus, sneaking out unnoticed from the eastern side of the fiercely burning buildings. According to the infantry spotters who had managed to (eventually) get a line in to report to Morgan, it was reported to be a company sized force led by a Warhammer.
A Warhammer that headshotted the two Valkyries on the flank picket with a single PPC apiece, impossibly fast on the draw while seeming to casually walk through the return fire that just flowed around it, refusing to connect to it.
Yeah, no possible confusion over who that was.
Still, even Yorinaga Kurita on the loose with a small force was something that could be dealt with, in time. Nothing to panic about, right?
Well it wouldn’t have been … if not for Hanse Davion chasing after him with his depleted command company!

The man who had killed Hanse Davion’s brother - and tried to drag his body back to Luthien to triumphantly march down Dragon Unity Road and dump it before the Coordinator.

The man who had tried to kidnap his future wife for Gods knows what fate as a prisoner of the Kurita’s.

The man who had led an invasion of his capital to burn down his greatest hope for the future of mankind…

So, yeah, Hanse was off like a bull chasing a red flag according to the infantry who reported his reinforced lance pounding past their position two minutes later, in hot pursuit of the enemy. And as it seemed Kurita had at least one of his units equipped with Capellan EW equipment, because the jamming was disrupting every attempt to reach him or locate him by radio - and with each and every one of the Battlemasters SATCOM antennas destroyed by the earlier inferno rounds...we had a problem.

A big ****** problem!

Worse, even if the Genyosha were being slowly squeezed to death into Combat Loss Grouping, they were fighting like the Elite Combine soldiers they were. Soldiers who also knew they were dead men walking. And so they fought with desperation, commitment, brutality and resolve, furiously thrashing and maneuvering with vicious local counter attacks the instant the Guardsmen gave them a gap, forcing every Davion Mech to hold their ground -often by their fingernails- as the two sides slugged it out at point blank range with Mechs falling on both sides steadily, leaving Morgan nothing spare to go after Hanse with.
The next wave of reinforcements made up of the rest of Team Banzai were still 35 minutes out according to the chatter  -and I set one of the timers on my command board to that number- on their suborbital hop and unless he wanted to give the main body a window to break out themselves - and possibly reinforce their master - Morgan needed to keep every single gun on the line.

The fact that I could hear his own weapons firing as he briefed the Princes Champion on the situation rather spoke to that.

THAT, of course was when Jackson Davion had chosen to join the conversation as he jogged his new Mech back out to join me, the two Enforcers behind him matching his pace. And as my stomach started to clench, the man almost happily noted to his Mother that there was now an unengaged mobile unit back on the field, ready to go find Hanse. To back him up.
« Last Edit: 27 February 2020, 04:04:44 by Chris OFarrell »
"I, the Baron of Strang, care not for your new names. Clans? Jade Falcons? I call you by your true name: Scum of the Star League, traitors of free will, persecutors of the Periphery come back to lord it over freedom-loving people. Come ahead, you steel-eyed robots! Come ahead and taste what a million like-minded people think of you and your damn Clans!"

-Baron Stepan Von Strang

Chris OFarrell

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #433 on: 27 February 2020, 03:56:24 »
You know, standing in the middle of a street in a war zone, perfectly still, with no cover in a damaged Battlemech was not the way I had anticipated my life unfolding after I had decided to tell Kym Sorenson the truth.
Indeed, I had thought that in all probability I’d be locked into a gilded cage once Hanse understood my true value to him. Living in perfect luxury - but very quietly as I was pumped for information. Something I had accepted at the time because of my decision to do the right thing; a consequence that would be well worth it in the end knowing the cage would eventually unlock (and that it was really a pretty damn nice cage…)
And then? Then I could live out the rest of my life in both freedom and ridiculous neo-feudal luxury in the happy knowledge I had made a difference.

And things had played out exactly along those lines … for about a month.

Then Ardan had insisted that I go to Helm with him - and from there to Tharkad with the overwhelming physical proof that I was the real deal ... at which point things had gone way off track. Specifically; the power duo of Katrina and Hanse had decided to put me into the AFFS ... rather than locked in a room filled with female Canopian stereotypes as I had sort of been looking forward to.
Because they wanted to see what I was really made of.
I mean sure, I had sworn my loyalty and service to Hanse on the grounds of believing in the Federated Commonwealth and what I had given him was unequivocally beyond price towards that end ... but that was me just sitting in an office somewhere throwing information at him.
And perhaps Hanse knew me better than I knew myself - or my attempts to ‘suggest’ and ‘highlight’ things had made it clear I wanted to do more? That I wanted a seat at the table to watch the story unfold?

Or perhaps he just wanted to see how far I was willing to go.

Hanse and Katrina were both very well known in Battletech and here in ‘reality’ as people who had zero tolerance for people refusing to take risks or make sacrifices for the good of the nation in favor of protecting themselves. Of dismissing people who talked a big game, then quietly walked away when the going got tough, be it on the battlefield, in the political arena or even in civilian life.

Or to put it more bluntly; ‘talk is cheap’ - even talk that gets them Star League memory cores. And in my case, it was true; talking had cost me little and gained me, nominally, much.
But putting on the uniform, starting at the bottom and working my way up and standing with everyone else in defense of New Avalon?
That was putting my money where my mouth was … and the thought of losing that hard-earned credibility? And indeed, the respect and friendship of the power players (who in a sad way included my only actual friends in this damn reality?) That meant something.
So as genuinely terrified as I was of being pulped or vaporized, peer pressure was oddly enough a stronger force.

Or perhaps, perhaps, I was standing my ground because deep down I knew that this ****** on New Avalon was my fault.

I was the one who had provided both the Helm cache and knowledge of Kurita’s reemergence onto the stage of the Inner Sphere. Setting up Morgan and Patrick to ambush him on Styx, an event that had both humiliated Kurita and left him in search of a new direction in life. Followed by Morgan pointedly eviscerating him on Terra with a scathing denouncing of his character (fully deserved mind you) and making it clear he considered their ‘thing’ done.

I was the one who had provided all the information that dictated the actions of Takashi (as hilarious as hearing about Hanse casually dropping the existence of his grandchildren on him had been) which in turn had caused his cousin to wash his hands of the Coordinator, sending him on this one-way suicide trip to find Hanse.

I was the one who had snorted and rolled my eyes at the threat of Yorinaga Kurita back on Tharkad all those years ago, openly mocking him as being ‘any kind of existential threat to the Federated Commonwealth’. I think those were the exact words I used. Words that had seemingly caused a pissed off Nemesis to say ‘Hold my ambrosia!’ to Zeus to prove that yes, Yorinaga Kurita could in fact become an existential threat to the Federated Commonwealth!

I was responsible
for this mess - or at least a large part of it (although I flat out refused ownership of Hanse Davion ****** playing at Inigo Montoya!). And that wasn’t ego or self-pity, but simple fact. None of this would have happened without my presence and interference - I had the books to prove it! For all the good I had done for the ‘good guys’ - I had to take the bad with it.

Or, as Mordin Solus may have put it; my intervention. My knowledge. My actions.

My responsibility

And if I truly, honestly believed in the Federated Commonwealth… Hanse Davion had to live and I had to find a way to clean up this mess. No matter how terrifying the idea of running towards either the #1 or #2 Warhammer driver in the Inner Sphere was to me, without Hanse Davion this whole house of cards would collapse, and God only knows what would happen then.

No reset button, no do-overs, just a humpty dumpty sized mess.

Hence, why I was standing in the middle of a smoke filled four-way intersection, glaring at my secondary screen and mentally telling it to hurry the ****** up! Because Hanse ****** Davion had taken the whole ‘my responsibility’ thing WWWAAAYYYYY too far in the other direction as he charged after the enemy leader. Not accepting that sometimes responsibility meant sitting in a command bunker out of the battle because you were the ultimate key man risk and if he died, it was all over and thus he had no ****** right to be risking his life like this!

And not just because it meant that we had to now risk our lives to find him!

My Battlemech was equipped with a bleeding edge communications system even by 28th century standards. Lostech in comparison to what was built today, at least outside of the Kerensky Cluster. It had been designed by the Hegemony engineers to try and counter the increasing proliferation of things like the Guardian ECM suite on the late Star League battlefield, which had made it increasingly hard for Command Mechs like mine to maintain open and active data and communications links across the battlespace from ground to orbit, serving as a mobile communications node. Standing still like this served a purpose; providing the maximum stability as a number of small antennas wiggled this way and that way, tasting the electronic screaming in the air around us and with just a little luck-

PING!

Bingo
I thought silently as my tactical board updated and a yellow circle appeared on it, shrinking steadily as my system crunched the location of one of Kuritan EW units. Trying to localize a jamming unit like this was supposed to be impossible of course. But fortunately, Terran engineers from the bad old days were bullshit hax in the way they kept all these little optional extras and party tricks for Royal Command units under the hood. I might not have a clue what a ‘phased multi-band H5-type blanket jamming pattern’ was, but luckily my communications systems did and .... there!

“Contact! Looks like the closest Kuritan jammer is in NAIS grid India Four” I declared over the direct lasercom link. As genuinely impressive as the EW Gear was for something the Capellans had built from first principles during the 3rd Succession War, my Battlemech had been designed to deal with far more advanced and powerful technology from the Star League era. Bonus; it seemed the DCMS were running with their IFFs active, configured to work through the jamming. And with my system filtering out the jamming … bingo!
I couldn’t read the encrypted data, but I could localize the signals.
“Looks like it's part of a lance of four Mechs.”

“Good work Smith” Jackson Davion came back at once via the lasercom links my Mech was mediating. “We’ll move in and clear the jammer and see what we can find once it's down. Lets move up on twentieth street until Crucis drive, then we cut across and engage. Everyone stays passive until either they react, or we get line of sight, how copy?”

“Ten” Jimmy conformed.

“Eleven” Johnny was only a second behind.

“Twelve” I signaled my readiness. Before I could find a way to talk myself out of it. Here we go again...

“Execute” Jackson ordered and with that we were on the move, running down the smoke filled yet otherwise perfectly intact streets, the smoke holding a somewhat sinister orange glow from the massive fires raging to the South. Running passive with the smoke chopping down on both visuals and thermals with MAGRES all but useless and seismics swamped with hundreds of feet stomping around and the Kuritan Jamming now working both ways …
Well, we were definitely playing Double Blind rules ... and I was cheating like mad - also in the best traditions of Double-Blind rules. The enemy transponders were not moving more than a few meters here or there meaning they were holding position right in the middle of NAIS’s modest commercial district. They certainly didn’t look like they were adjusting to meet us as we closed in on the final turn...had we gotten the drop on them?
“Alright here we go. Keep it tight. Smith, nail their jammer first if you can localize it, I don’t want it slipping away. Weapons free!”

There was a surge of nervous energy through my body as I double checked my long-range weapons were armed and ready to fire as we approached the corner and I took a deep breath. With our current spacing Jimmy would go out first, then me, then Jackson with Jonny bringing up the rear, the main road having just enough room for us to fit side-by-side across it. And as I burst from the side street hot on Jimmy's heels, I brought my targeting systems up to full active status as I swung my guns downrange...

I swallowed heavily.

Four hundred meters away, just barely visible in the smog to my active sensors, a Kuritan Lance was holding the next intersection, their computer-generated images materializing onto my HUD. They were all stationary - actually a Centurion was really stationary, seeming to have lost most of its leg and being propped up against the corner of a building. A Marauder stood next to it, facing west and firing at unseen targets through the smoke, looking like it was running hot as all hell on the thermal scope. A Dragon was behind them also facing that way and pumping autocannon rounds downrange and my HUD immediately tagged it with a crimson ‘THIS IS THE ****** WITH THE ECM GEAR!’ alert.
Rather more importantly though, a Hunchback much closer at only two hundred meters in a rear-guard position was already spinning to bring its guns - including that great ****** and die’ bazooka on its shoulder- towards us as we stormed out of the side street.

My instincts screamed at me to hammer it before it finished turning while I had a clean shot.
But I didn’t. I had my orders and so I brought my crosshairs past it into line with the unmoving Dragon projection and squeezed the trigger the second they turned gold.

Both my ERPPCs discharged cleanly and two whips of purple light snapped downrange with their distinctive hiss. The Kuritan Mechwarrior was, thankfully, a fraction of a second too slow to switch his ECM modes back from broadband area jamming to the self-defensive ‘Ghost’ mode that might have screwed my fire control and the two shots arced through the smoke to smack into the stationary units rear/side torso clean. Purple fingers of lightning clawed around and through the armor plates and in a sudden white flash, something inside did go ‘boom’.
I was hoping for a reactor hit - but while the Mech staggered, it certainly didn’t die. What did die however, as if a switch had been thrown, was the ECM bubble as all the warning indicators on my HUD vanished, indicating that I had nailed the bulky Capellan EW gear.
I didn’t have much time to gloat because even as I blasted the Dragon, the Hunchback had been spinning around to face us - harmlessly dispersing the laser beams raking over him from Jimmy across multiple armor sections as it did so - before, to my complete lack of surprise, taking aim at the biggest target on the battlefield.

AKA, me.

Of course it’s aiming at me I thought angrily as I violently yanked my Battlemech to the side in an evasive sidestep as Jimmy pushed forward, the frantic high-pitched beeping alarm of a hostile fire-control lock leaving me only the hope that just maybe the Combine Mechwarrior might have gone through all ten shots in the-

New alarms went off as a 180mm autocannon shell crashed into my torso and detonated proving that no, it hadn’t used up its ammo.

My instinct to sidestep had probably just saved my life though as the shell crashed into my right torso rather than my cockpit - but hit at the exact same height making it abundantly clear the DCMS Mechwarrior had just tried to go full ‘BOOM, HEADSHOT’ at me.
The force of the impact still took me off guard, catching me between steps and spinning me with just enough force for me to think ‘oh here we ****** go again’ before with an impressive jolt, the back of my Mech slammed into the building on this side of the road, arresting my fall and not quite knocking the wind out of me. Surprisingly, the building’s facade didn’t collapse, and I shoved back off the building, taking a split second as I did so to look at the damage indicators on the corner of my HUD.

Good news, no penetration, the armor belt had absorbed the massive blast.

Bad news, my right torso was now glowing a very bright red. That one hit hadn’t penetrated, but it had shattered the primary armor glacis leaving that side of my Mech wide open to any further attacks with anything heavier than an automatic rifle. My left torso -which had taken damage earlier from the Griffin and the Kintaro- was also glowing, albeit a lighter orange - it could probably take one medium laser hit if I was lucky, with only my central torso still showing green.
Simply put, any real hits to either my left or certainly my right torso would probably punch straight through. And while I didn’t have any ammo inside that would violently go boom-boom, this wasn’t the tabletop and if an enemy hit either of my side torsos with the right angle, they’d shoot right through the wrecked areas into my fusion reactor or gyro … and even a fluke ricochet could deflect into my cockpit from the side or behind...

All this took place over a matter of seconds and as I shoved off the building, wondering why the Hunchback hadn’t followed up the autocannon with its lasers...ah.

The fact that it had just crashed to the ground, its chest torn open and on fire, might have something to do with that.

Turned out two Enforcers and a Chameleon could put out quite a bit of firepower if they really wanted to, especially in this point-blank slugfest as they pounded past the wreck and up the street, the enforcers autocannon muzzles still smoking.

“Smith, status?” Jackson Davion’s clipped voice cracked into my ears, barely cutting through the noise and I blinked, then belatedly hit the MASTER ALARM RESET switch to kill all the warning sirens.

“I’m operational, no internal damage” I answered, reflecting in a twisted sort of way that at least my damn hands had stopped shaking.

Well, I’d take the small favors when I got them.

“Good. Tuck in behind us, target the Dragon and wait for the shot” he ordered before switching channels. Obediently I throttled up to follow, frowning at what I saw on my now much more clear sensor systems. The enemy Marauder had spun and shifted to put its back to the damaged Centurion in response to our presence, squaring off seemingly against us to protect it, but it wasn’t firing. Possibly because it was reading so damn hot on my thermal scope it didn’t want to risk firing and melting something? Or possibly because the final enemy Mech, the Dragon, had done an about face and was charging at flank speed right down the road towards us.

And Nine, Ten and Eleven were sprinting right back at it in turn.

Playing chicken with Battlemechs rarely ended well. This factoid had been hammered into me during Battlemech training, repeatedly. And with a combined closing speed of something around a hundred and seventy KPH thanks to everyone (except Jacksons training mech, but it was fast enough to keep up on its own) running Triple Strength muscles in their legs, it would be less than ten seconds until everyone smashed into each other here … and at 65 tons, that Dragon had a LOT of kinetic energy to go Kamikaze with!
But these were Elite Mechwarriors ... so even though the distance between the two was decreasing faster than Maximilian Liao’s sanity, I adjusted my aim ever so slightly with each step as they closed, merged - then at the last second Jackson barked an order-

Ah. Right.

In a blaze of fusion thrust all three Davion mechs took one last step and leapt even as the Dragon swung its torso and leaned into the mother of all shoulder charges aimed to slice right through Jonny. It hit nothing but air instead as the Davion mechs casually hurdled over it with a light touch of their jump jets and then, for shits and giggles, opened fire on the the startled Marauder, laser fire ripping into it in midair followed by auto cannon fire as they landed, all without missing a step as they charged right at it. The move clearly took it off guard as it fired its PPCs on reflex but missed everyone as the weapons impacts spoiled its aim, setting a nice coffee shop I had come to like on fire - to my considerable annoyance.
The Dragon meanwhile should have by all rights and the laws of physics fallen flat onto its face.

It didn’t.

Somehow, in a massive spray of asphalt chunks and its left arm catching the front of the buildings down the side of the road and ripping a great gash along them (****** I liked that book store!) the thing managed to skid and slide to a halt, on its feet. Genuinely impressive piloting … that left it stationary precisely one hundred and seventy seven meters from my Battlemech as I too came to a complete stop, my crosshairs having tracked it all the way through its not-quite-fall and glowing the pulsing gold of a solid weapons lock as it came to a halt.

I decided that this was probably what Jackson had meant by ‘wait for the shot’ and squeezed my close-range trigger group.

All five of my lasers discharged cleanly. My chosen target point was center mass; the enormous ‘chest’ of the Dragon that jutted rather prominently thanks to the oversized fusion reactor that gave the design its trademark speed and agility. It was also technically the most well armored point on the mech, but I could see plenty of burn marks and impact craters suggesting it had already taken more than a few hits and all my lasers together should have enough energy to penetrate. And with just a little luck, rip into this fusion reactor or the gyro and knock it out of the fight-

Except right as I pulled the trigger the Combine Mechwarrior ducked.

He must have thought that I was going for a headshot. If so, the irony was sickening because as I squeezed the trigger, the tiny enemy cockpit dropped into my crosshairs, dragging the claws of coherent light upwards as they sliced into the torso, carving straight into his cockpit - and it was all over before I realized what I had done.
The auto-ejection system on the Dragon activated in the milliseconds between the armored cockpit canopy failing and the cockpit being subjected to megajoules worth of thermal energy as my pulse laser punched through, but as fast as the electronics gave the order, the explosive bolts and chemical thrusters took their own sweet time - and by the time it launched into the sky…
I tried very hard to convince myself that I had not seen a person desperately and uselessly trying to slap out the raging fire all over them as the human torch rocketed out of sight behind the buildings.
No matter how many times I had told myself over and over that this was not the tabletop or a video game and these Mechs were not giant robots … it was just so very easy to fall into the trap of thinking you were shooting machines. Not people...

“-Smith, status?” Jackson's voice cracked into my head and I seized the voice like a lifeline, snapping out of it and realizing with a glance at the clock that I had been standing still in a combat zone for over ten seconds...

Jesus Christ Smith, focus! You can Shinji Ikari later! Other people need you!

Dragon is down, moving to rejoin” I replied, my voice sounding a bit strained to my ears as I pushed my Mech into a brisk jog and tried to refocus downrange, making a notation on my tactical map for a downed enemy mech with an ejected pilot. The enemy Marauder was also down and not moving but the Centurion that had been hiding behind it was dragging itself forward on a gimpy leg along the building it was leaning against, clearly wanting to try and take the fight to us. Its autocannon arm was hanging limply, and it looked like its armor was mostly on the ground ... yet rather than do the sensible thing of punching out, the Mechwarrior was edging forward. The three Mechs facing it were holding in moderate cover to let their sinks flush giving it a poor angle but it fired anyway, sending LRMs and a pair of laser bolts scattering around Jimmy to minimal effect as I drifted across the road and focused in on the near stationary enemy from optimal PPC range, aimed, fired-
Both my PPCs hit dead center - and Jimmy took the chance to lean just far enough from cover to add his right-arm autocannon into the mix; the combined salvo ripping into the exposed core of the Centurion. It’s thermal signature spiked sharply before the Battlemech sort of folded over on itself and crashed to the ground as structural members were severed and I throttled up quickly to rejoin, moving without saying to the right most position as the Lance broke cover and approached the downed Battlemechs in a skirmish line.

As we came together, the cockpit on the medium mech popped open and the enemy Mechwarrior emerged brandishing … were those satchel charges? And a sword?!
Then to my sheer disbelief, the ****** dropped to the ground and sprinted straight at Jimmy, the closest mech to him and although I couldn’t hear him, I could see him screaming ‘Banzai!’ as he ran brandishing his sword-
A burst of 12.7mm machine gun fire from Jacksons two Gatling guns stopped him before he made it three meters. And by ‘stopped him’, I mean turned him into a bloody smear across the road leaving me gawking at the mess.

The complete futility, the waste, the ‘death before surrender!’ attitude …
A whole Star Empire cosplaying the worst parts of WW2 ‘bushido’ Japan all over again (which had about as much in common with real feudal bushido as Mechwarrior 2 had in common with Battlemech piloting) had been sort of darkly amusing in a fictional universe because every story needed a designated villain faction.
But seeing the consequences to humans in real life of Urizen Kurita being a ****** hyper-****** nutter who ensured generation after generation was raised from birth chugging the kool aid...

A priority alert from my command board thankfully tore my attention away from the sickening chunks on the street and I glanced across at said board to see it had recalibrated again with the local ECM unit down and-

I swore in shock before slapping the control to switch the feed into my HUD, confirming … yes! Just as Jackson had hoped, the removal of this EW unit had opened a hole in the enemy net. “Knight Nine - I now have Knight Leaders transponder on my scope!”

The Chameleon out my window jerked around to face me at that news.

“Thank God, where the hell is he?” Jackson demanded.

Good question I thought as I squinted at the readings. The transponders headers included LAT/LONG coordinates that my computer was trying to match to its tactical maps and he was moving, so … there!

“Uh, grid Oscar Seven - looks like he’s moving towards Mallory Park with Knights two, three, four seven and eight” I declared as my display refreshed - this time in a bad way. “And it looks like he's pursuing a bunch of DCMS transponders.”

That was a problem. And from the profanity Jonny just threw out on the lance frequency, everyone else probably agreed as suddenly that damn Haiku Kurita had thrown out a little while ago became clear in its meaning … a meaning Hanse had clearly figured out well before I did.

The circle is closed. Return to the beginning. To find the ending.

Mallory Park was less a park than a forest, a carefully preserved section of the private reserves of the Davion Family that NAIS had been built upon, with the main student dormitories and accommodation buildings at NAIS high around it. It was … almost a private little slice of nature… and it just so happened to be named for the world one First Prince of the Federated Suns had died on, in battle against Yorinaga, to say nothing of being the world Yorinaga had lost his first revenge duel against Morgan Kell with a few years later!

Much as I hated this guy, I had to admit that unlike almost every other member of House Kurita he sure as hell had a sense of panache to have found a way to bring everything full circle here like this.

Not that I had the slightest intention of giving the ****** his do-over.

Slight problem though; between us and the park was a concrete jungle of buildings, mostly residential and too big to easily bash through, with very few paths a Battlemech could take - another factor in the choice as it isolated it and controlled access.

“Smith, I’m still getting nothing on my systems and he’s not answering my radio, can you patch an uplink?” Jackson cut into my thoughts urgently.

“I can try - stand by” I replied, hitting the button that would tell my Command Mech to be a Command Mech and attempt to reconnect to all allied units in range for communications mediation. There was still plenty of jamming in the air that would have made it hard to establish two-way communications with Hanse … except for the fact that he and his bodyguards were running Royal Brigade Mechs like mine with similar boosted communications and if they got a handshake from my systems-
And even as I thought it, Knights One, Two, Three and Four went from grey to green as the link established, bouncing between each of them in a peer-to-peer network. I couldn’t maintain a solid link with any of them, but enough data packets were getting to each I could establish something of an uplink as they pieced it together. Jackson clearly saw the same indicator on his board via my link because a split second later-

“Knight Leader, this is Knight Nine, come in!”

There was nothing for a few seconds but static and I could feel everyone holding their breath to see if the relay would work. Then-

“-ine, we’re **** ily pursuit, Yorinaga is ***** regroup-” he said, the static washing out his message and the connection dropping again for a moment before coming back slightly clearer. “-eat, proceed to Mallory-” then it cut out again and I glared at my board as it declared the signal lost. But it was Hanse, the carrier security encryption confirmed it and from his words, he was engaged with Kurita and he needed backup. Now.

No, what we need to do is grab him and drag his ****** ass out of there!
I wanted to scream over everyone, but I didn’t bother to waste my energy. If I could have reached Hanse reliably I might have given it a try, but everyone around me saw absolutely nothing wrong with Hanse running off after his brothers killer, they had made that abundantly clear as we left CMS. Even Jonny and Jimmy whose entire purpose here was to keep Hanse alive were fully on board, simply wanting to join up for the big fight and protect him that way!
Oh I was totally telling on them to Ardan-
Hmm. Ardan. In hindsight, I wonder if that was why Hanse had shuffled me off to the side? Because he knew I’d have no problems citing Galen Cox and Ardan Sortek and blowing his Battlemechs knee joint out the second he started to chase off after Kurita-

“Boss, we can skip over the top and go straight in” Jonny cut into my growing frustration at Hanse even as I reminded myself in the original timeline, he had also done a full LEERROOOY JEEENNNNKINS over to NAIS and taken on the ‘Death Commandos’ single handed in a rage at the affront of them attacking his capital. “We’ve got hard roofs here and if we go up and over, we can be at the park edge in four minutes flat, ready to jump Kurita even before the boss reaches it-”

“Agreed” Jackson cut in sharply. “Right. Smith, you’re going to have to try to follow us on the ground. Ten and Eleven? Up and over! Go! Jackson urged and with that all three Battlemechs leapt straight up in defiance of gravity like ****** Superman to vanish over the roof of the building above, leaving me standing in bewilderment with a mouth hanging open that was trying to find the words to object to the sheer ****** things had become as Jackson Davion abandoned me.
The only solace that I could find being that if Hanse did survive this stupidity, Melissa was going to make him pay for a very long time for breaking his promise to not ‘run off. And I had great confidence in her ability to make him suffer.
"I, the Baron of Strang, care not for your new names. Clans? Jade Falcons? I call you by your true name: Scum of the Star League, traitors of free will, persecutors of the Periphery come back to lord it over freedom-loving people. Come ahead, you steel-eyed robots! Come ahead and taste what a million like-minded people think of you and your damn Clans!"

-Baron Stepan Von Strang

Chris OFarrell

  • Warrant Officer
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  • Posts: 605
Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #434 on: 27 February 2020, 04:02:01 »
Pushing past such pleasant thoughts, I ran a quick tactical query and had my computer estimating Hanse would reach the Southern edge of the park in about … nine minutes. And if I moved around the most direct route North, West and then South … I could make it in about six?
No time to waste then I thought as I spun on a foot and throttled up. The ‘J-Crew’ were rapidly bounding along the roofs on a straight line for the park, the buildings getting steadily taller the closer you got to the park until they hit about fifteen stories. There were a lot of residential and even some commercial buildings that served the students and staff in this part of NAIS, but they were still built to MILSPEC levels with construction allowing Mechs to run over the roof. Assuming they didn’t get seen, they’d have an elevated position to shoot down at Kurita when Hanse engaged … but it’d still be twelve Mechs to nine. Four of them Royal, one of them invisible, everyone probably damaged…
And one that had to be kept alive at any cost.
****** if I could pick who would have the advantage. Frankly, the fight sounded far too even for my liking.
So. If I headed down this street to the West it … ended in a cul de sac two blocks along. Right, but I could take a left just before that, head North two blocks, then West again and then I’d have a straight shot south to the Northern side of the park … and with a little luck, I might be able to find a nice position on a roof I could access to shoot the Snakes in the back a few times.

Well, it was as good a plan as any I supposed as I again dismissed running away as an option or ‘getting lost on the way to the battlefield’; damn this navigation system. Instead, I stomped down the road, killing my transponder and active sensors to try and stay as inconspicuous as a 75-Ton war machine at a dead run could in my attempt to sneak around the back side - man this TSM made things shake a lot when pushing the throttle - but my Gyro readout showed things were still in tolerance. I kept shifting my my eyes over my HUD and passive sensor readouts, knowing that no-one was watching my back this time but it was easy to get distracted and so I had no idea how long that thermal bloom dead ahead had been there before I finally noticed it, focusing on-

BEEPBEEPBEEP! My Battlemech screamed at me as a red warning indicator flashed on top of said contact moments later indicating targeting sensors locking me up.

Morgan's training kicked in without me thinking about it and I swung my torso, my right shoulder just barely interposing itself between a burst of autocannon fire and the giant holes in my chest.

Thankfully it was light autocannon fire as anything heavier probably would have knocked me down for the third time today.

Having deflected that shot with my heart pounding a million beats a minute, I pulled my throttle back as I swung my torso back and brought my crosshairs onto the blob, thumbing the button to scan and designate the target with my FCS.

My targeting sensors went active and in a moment the HUD shifted to project a computer-generated outline of a Blackjack squatting behind some wrecked ground cars and twisted structures, aiming its autocannon arms at me as my own guns shifted slightly to focus their fire on the happily stationary enemy. But as I started to squeeze the trigger from my ERPPCS it suddenly shifted to a blue outline with a bright pink X on top of it. The ‘this is a friendly target and please don’t shoot it!’ sign as my communications systems also automatically interrogated the target and just so happened to trigger a friendly transponder.

This was ‘Rumble-14’, one of the Cadet MechWarrior’s.

“Jesus Christ, you ****** Avalon ******!” I shouted in my cockpit, tension perhaps raising my reaction somewhat beyond professional levels as I yelled the name given to people from NAMA and Albion on Sakhara. “Can’t you read a ******-”

Oh. Right.


“Hold your fire Cadet!” I didn’t quite yell over the general tactical frequency instead as I hit the button to open a channel with the Mech in my crosshairs, pissed now at myself for making such a rookie mistake as I turned my transponder back to fully active status that broadcasted my identity rather than needing to be triggered by a direct friendly data burst. “I'm friendly!”
Well, that would have topped off this wonderful morning wouldn’t it? Being blown out of my Battlemech by friendly fire that though I was the Marauder that had been shooting at them earlier?

“Identify” a somewhat flat voice came back down the line - although I would at least give grudging credit that she A) didn’t fire again B) was challenging me as she should as I continued to close and C) my transponder system pinged as she interrogated it in turn even as she challenged me.

“This is Knight Twelve, First Princes Company” I informed her, figuring that throwing Hanse Davion’s authority by extension around was more likely than not to have her stop shooting at me long enough to read my transponder. Lo and behold it even seemed to work as the Blackjack snapped its arms and the autocannons therein down as it raised itself up from the crouch it was in to more fully expose itself.
Damnit, I knew that DCMS lance had been shooting down this road at someone. Why the hell hadn’t I been more careful?
Easy answer; because until now I had had a whole company working with me who looked after such things. My instructors at Sark would have yelled at me for half an hour for such a rookie mistake and I could not afford to make that mistake again if I wanted to live.
On the other hand they probably would have spent at least a full hour yelling at this cadet for firing on a target without even an attempt to electronically challenge it...

“Oh. Apologies Sir. There was an enemy Marauder down there and -”

“We killed it and the Lance it was with” I cut off the other as I closed, eager to not have anyone else take a shot at me. She - and a Shadow Hawk I could now also see -who had not shot at me- were holding on the other side of the road inside the cul de sac this street ended in, on the other side of an intersection … which was covered in the wreckage of a couple of more Mechs, with impact craters and damage all over the place. The buildings flanking the cul de sac were also looking pretty bloody trashed from this angle with most of the front facade ripped off - these cadets had clearly been on the bad side of a lot of firepower.
I couldn’t dawdle here ... but the possibility of picking up some reinforcements was too good to walk away from as my systems flagged another three … no, four friendly mechs deeper in the dead-end street now cautiously poking their heads out of cover. “I need a SITREP. Who is in charge here?

“...no-one Sir. We - our Six mechs - are the only ones who made it this far to my knowledge out of Rumble and we have no officers left Sir” she replied in a tone so ... steady yet emotionless.
Well, it was rather creepy.
But then, six Mechs total … out of Thirty Six?!
Little ****** wonder she sounded like she had the ‘thousand yard stare’ right now...Jesus Christ!

I knew Hanse had been against sending the cadets into battle specifically because putting cadets, no matter how talented, against Elites was just asking for a nightmare. And that losing a huge number of cadets who otherwise would be scattered across the AFFS to bulk up units and steadily learn to become useful combat veterans and eventually the next generation of key leadership in the AFFS Officer Corps, would just be giving Kurita another victory. He had been convinced only to go so far as to allow a very small handpicked force of final year cadets led by reserve AFFS officers to stand up a force, with the vast bulk of the cadet corps otherwise evacuated to military bases on New Scotland. No matter how high the cadets were on patriotism and outrage, they were officially a third-tier reserve force on the same level as the various Lances and Companies of nobles and their household guards, retired MechWarrior’s and the like who had been reformed into provisional units around the planet.
The truth was that cadets were just easy kills for Elites. Sakhara had proven that and in my training with the Guards I had seen just how outclassed I was. Not simply on a Mechwarrior vs Mechwarrior level, but in how terrifyingly greater than the sum of their parts true Elite units were when they got going. The experience and skill that shone through in the chaos of major engagements as down to the smallest subunit the force moved and acted as a single monster with incredible speed and decisiveness.
Then, add in the chaos Kurita had caused with his jamming units and off the wall tactics today and these cadets had honestly been ****** as soon as the enemy had gotten inside their OODA loop. Experience and leadership at that point told over everything - even hardware. It was as true today as it had been in France 1940.

And Hanse had clearly been proven right given the state of these poor bastards...

“Very well” I exhaled, “how did you all end up here?”

“Sir, everything … it went to hell when the gate fell” a new voice cut in, this one flagged as Rumble-18 and coming from the Shadow Hawk after an uncomfortable bit of dead air from Rumble-14. “Doctor Banzi issued a general order for us to withdraw while Team Banzai -what was left of them anyway- screened us. First company was tangled up, but a lot of us in second got clear as we moved further West, then North. I have no idea what happened to Third. But that Combine lance chased us all the way here - but we were keeping ahead of them until the missile boats opened fire from the North and took out Cadet Lieutenant Hall and Cadet Harris. We took cover here from the missiles - then that lance caught up and, well, we were trapped. I … I thought we were finished. I know we should have tried to counterattack Sir, but-”

“No. Holding in cover was absolutely the right call Cadet - you people did good” I assured them all with a glance around the shattered area, not wanting any of them to think I thought them cowards for doing something smart like finding cover when outnumbered by superior numbers of enemy units throwing massive firepower downrange.
Especially given that except for the Blackjack and Shadow Hawk, all of them were running lights. “If nothing else, your staying alive pinned a full enemy unit in place keeping you contained and out of the battle…” my voice trailed off as something they said finally clicked.

Missile boats? Hang on, there weren't any missile boats in the lance we just nailed...

“Cadets, you said that Lieutenant Hall was destroyed by missile fire ... from the North?” I asked, glancing at my tactical board which was not showing anything but the cadets in close proximity, with a bad rash of red ‘CONTACT LOST markers now across Knight Company’s transponders. Of course, the lack of contacts might simply mean that the DCMS Mechs were hiding passably in the trash returns from the EW units that were still making life completely impossible for any passive sensors inside this urban jungle...
But even so, there was no reason for Kuritan Mechs to be this far North unless they had broken off from the main body and headed that way shortly after entering the NAIS … and why the hell would they do that?
Missile boats were really not terribly good in a close range urban fight on their own (unless you used ****** Clan tech) so why had they run all the way out here? Picking off units retreating to the CMS made some sense ... but there was no way they could have known that was our rally point, could they?

“Affirmative Sir” another Cadet - Rumble-22 -confirmed in a painfully young voice. “From about a Block North of here. They were shooting high-low with indirect LRM fire - damn accurate fire too. We never saw the Mechs, but the volume was incredible, it blew Lieutenant Hall to pieces but a minute after we got in cover, the missiles stopped coming. We couldn’t really tell what was going on through that jamming and the fire coming in from the East keeping us pinned, but I saw seismic shifts that might have been them moving off to the West?”

...And then it all clicked as the last pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

The Kell brothers had defeated Yorinaga last year by pouring LRM fire into him from ambush. Using a NARC beacon from Helm to bypass the Phantom Mech threat, pounding his Warhammer into scrap in a storm of fire he had been genuinely lucky to escape from. And that after all but inviting him to walk through the battlefield, unchallenged and stand before Morgan as if he was indeed offering him the formal duel to the death as he had dreamed and hoped for all these years before dropping the hammer on him.
Of course, that brutal put down had been about the Kell brothers (more Patrick than Morgan) demonstrating contempt over his obsession for a rematch and an ‘honorable’ duel against Morgan. Because he was (as I had pointed to both Patrick and Katrina years ago) entirely unworthy of one. What with taking whatever dishonorable steps he saw as necessary to force Morgan to stand against him. Be it trying to kidnap Melissa Steiner, cheering on plans to assassinate most of the Kell Hounds in their sleep to goad Morgan into action or just outright cheerfully threatening to blow up a dropship filled with civilians if Melissa wasn’t turned over to him post haste.

Let alone the fact that ultimately this all came down to the fact that he was just butthurt about not being allowed to drag Ian Davion’s body behind his Mech down a parade on Luthien to present to the Coordinator and only had to settle for killing him in a fair fight.

Minobu Tetsuhara, this guy was not.

So, having been burned, twice now by the Kells using the Kuritan fetish for honor duels against him and humiliating him twice, it suddenly became clear to me that it was incredibly sloppy of us to presume he still wanted that. To assume he had learned nothing from our tactics to knock him out and that he had come all this way just hoping for ‘third time lucky they won’t rules lawyer or cheat their way out of this’!

In fact, I could only think of one reason he’d have placed the missile boats up here in secret.

Malloy Park, I realized in dawning understanding, wasn’t exactly symbolic of his desire to redo the duel (this time with Hanse for Ian) … but we were supposed to think it was. To think that Kurita was going for a redo of his confrontation with Ian - or Morgan for that matter- but this time with Hanse. All his actions to pull Hanse up here for a little rematch, playing to his own stereotype … then when he had Hanse in place, he was going to pull a ****** Vandervahn Chistu on him! Win the Mallory’s World battle using our rules against us…
Part of me knew I was throwing guesswork on top of guesswork here … but something in my gut was screaming at me in the same way it had when I had seen Kurita apparently blithefully flying to his death in orbit earlier this morning.

And if I was wrong, well, I was wrong. But if I was right...
"I, the Baron of Strang, care not for your new names. Clans? Jade Falcons? I call you by your true name: Scum of the Star League, traitors of free will, persecutors of the Periphery come back to lord it over freedom-loving people. Come ahead, you steel-eyed robots! Come ahead and taste what a million like-minded people think of you and your damn Clans!"

-Baron Stepan Von Strang

Chris OFarrell

  • Warrant Officer
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  • Posts: 605
Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #435 on: 27 February 2020, 04:02:51 »
I looked at my clock - only perhaps five seconds had passed even if it felt like I had been sitting in horror for eternity and I almost ripped the switch on the console off as I switched my radio back to Knight Companies assigned frequency.
“Any Knight Elements, urgent, do you copy?”
Static blasted back at me and I glared at my communications board.
Of course, there was always the chance they could hear me even if I couldn’t hear them.
“All Knight Elements, Knight Twelve. Be advised, Kurita has multiple LRM heavy units in the vicinity of Mallory park in ambush positions. I think Knight Leader is walking into a trap, get him the hell out of there!”
Static remained was my only answer and helpless frustration spiked into my head as I looked frantically over my bleeding edge communications board. A trained communications technician could have done a lot to manually work it and try and break through the jamming - but that wasn’t me. I could run the automatic sequence again, but that would take time and that was the one thing I did not have - wait, the SATCOM link! I toggled it up and - Gods DAMNIT!
Apparently, my SATCOM antenna had been trashed from that Hunchbacks attempted headshot and I hadn’t even noticed. That meant I was cut off from both Morgan and Yvonne Davion so I couldn’t yell at them for help. Running to the Swordsworn directly would take what, ten minutes? Presuming I didn’t run into any trouble of course, then ten back with any backup I could find in a hurry. And it would be about that long to run back to CMS...

Far too long. I ran my gaze left and right across my tactical boards, desperately looking for anything. I was alone, I had no backup no...

I paused and then looked back out my window beyond the HUD. At the the cadet Mechs patiently waiting for someone they thought was a trusted officer of the First Princes command company to lead them to safety.

...

“Sir? We’re ready to move out for the CMS rally” a voice broke into my thoughts - Rumble-16 according to the tag on my HUD, clearly wondering why I had gone so silent.

“Cadets” I said finally, slowly. “Lowest to highest, give me your combat states” I asked as the recovered Battle ROM footage I had watched over and over of the ‘Battle of Sakhara’ as it was being called played before my eyes yet again...

“Rumble-14” the Blackjack called in first, her voice as flat and distant as ever. “Armor state six, fifty percent ammo remaining.”

-My cadet friends, grossly outclassed and outnumbered being torn to pieces by the ash-grey Battlemechs advancing rapidly, expertly taking full advantage of their superior numbers and firepower with breathtaking coordination as they pounded the defensive positions at the wall-

“Rumble-15” the Shadow Hawk was next. “Armor state seven, uh, AC is down to eight shots, LRMs and SRMs good.”

-The chaos on the communications lines as cadets started to panic and talk all over each other as the enemy surged through the campus, seemingly breaching from all directions at the same time-

“Rumble-16” a Firestarter called in. “Right arm is gone, otherwise armor state eight.”

-Cadet Battlemechs falling one after the other as officers tried to hold things together and the attempt to execute the planned fighting retreat started to dissolve into a rout as the Kuritans suddenly increased the pressure to a whole new level-

“Rumble-18” a Valkyrie was up next, the MechWarrior’s voice sounding rather muted. “Eight salvos left, armor state four.”

-My old platoon (who had to my painful pride held it together) buying Dean-Davion the precious seconds he needed with a sudden push at Kurita that forced the Snakes to react, leaving their principal uncovered for precious seconds as DD leaped in from the other flank in his new Hatchetman, roaring over the enemy lines on a perfect angle to plant the massive Hatchet into Yorinagas face with the courage and boldness demanded by House Davion of all its members ... only to be blown off course and crash to the ground as Yorinaga snapped around faster than a striking cobra to blast him in mid-air, nailing his autocannon ammo bin-

“Rumble-19” a deep voice called in from a Javelin, sounding bizarrely like Keith David. “My rear torso is stripped, otherwise I’m good, sixty percent ammo.”

-The security footage from the hanger that Kurita had missed - or deliberately left- showing the ISF commandos ruthlessly lining the surviving cadets up against the wall, including Julia, then starting to shoot them one at a time until Akira’s Orion had stomped into frame and leveled its medium lasers at the ISF officer -

“Rumble-22” was last, a Jenner of all Mechs, surely salvaged from House Kurita in some skirmish. Probably a family Mech. “Armor state nine, four salvos of SRMs left.”

The short answer was yes. I could do this to these kids. Put them through this.

Because I needed them.

“Cadets, I know your last orders were to get to the rally point, but we have a situation” I started, fighting to find the right words even as I knew every second counted. “Prince Davion is heading for Mallory Park in pursuit of the enemy CO, Yorinaga Kurita. Odds are about even, but those LRM boats that blasted you? I’m pretty sure he is sneaking them into the Northern side of the park to make sure this fight ends with the First Prince blown to pieces as soon as he’s in position.”

There was dead silence from the cadets. Which I suppose meant they were listening - wait, did I have my radio set correctly? Yup. Just silence.
Then again, having been a cadet rather recently I did understand that ‘Officers talk, Cadets listen!’ was heavily pounded into one's head.

“The Swordsworn are tied up finishing off the rest of the enemy force, they won’t be in a position to help until this is over, one way or the other” I continued laying out the bad news in as matter of fact way as possible and as quickly as possible. “Our heavy reinforcements won’t get here in time either which makes us the only force that might be able to find and flush this ambush before its sprung.”

Again dead silence. And I didn’t know how to take that but something in me snapped at the silence and I couldn’t help myself as I clenched my jaw and decided to stop dancing around it. To drop the ‘formal briefing’ approach and just give it to them straight up. God knows they deserved to know the hard truth.

“People; this is the turning point. This the focus of this entire campaign. Right here, right now. Yorinaga Kurita has fought his way across the Federated Suns sacrificing everything for this singular moment in history. Perhaps the most singularly deadly Mechwarrior in the entire Inner Sphere and one of the Combines greatest regimental leaders in command of a fanatical bodyguard who will do whatever it takes to help him complete his mission is waiting for our Prince to walk into his trap right now I shit you not!”

Again, silence - although several of the Mechs shifted very slightly in a way that suggested the Cadets were gripping their controls a little too tightly.

Part of me said I really should tone it down a notch … but I couldn’t lie to them. Wouldn’t lie to them. Not after what happened on Sakhara.
If I was going to drag these cadets into this, I was going to play it straight.

“None of you are Guardsmen. Hell, I don’t even technically have the command authority to order you to do a damn thing” I continued to undermine my position grandly. “But … I’m asking anyway” I said, swinging an arm out to point vaguely towards where Hanse was. “The liege we swore our oaths to is in mortal danger and the future of the entire Inner Sphere is going to pivot entirely based upon what we do in the next ten minutes. I’m going in - but that's my job. It’s not a job for cadets - and no-one from Hanse on down would deny you have all done your duty. So … well, I’m just going to leave it at that. You can head for the CMS now - the path should be clear if you just head East for a bit - and follow your orders. Or, you can come with me” I paused for a second as I wondered if I could really push this button before pressing ahead.
“But understand if you come with me, you’re no longer cadets. Come with me and you’re coming because you’ve made a choice … as MechWarrior’s.

AFFS Cadets, I knew full well, did not formally earn the right to the title of ‘Mechwarrior’ until they graduated and were issued the ‘spurs’ that they wore on dress uniforms with enormous pride (and to make it clear they weren't no damn grunt or crunchie). Cadet mechwarrior’s (small ‘m’) dreamed of the day they would be handed their rank tab and spurs - God knows I had put up with incredible amounts of it on Sakhara. In the entire AFFS, as I had been reminded many times, there were less than fifteen thousand MechWarrior’s in total spread out across the realm of hundreds of billions of people, about half of whom didn’t even have a Mech right now. Some were dispossessed, some promoted to drive a desk; but even without even a Mech, the title meant things. It had a power entirely out of whack with anything I knew from back on Earth.
Unsurprising really, for a universe built off a game whose core was about Battlemechs.

Right now, I was coldly targeting those preconceptions … and mashing the Mech-Cult button so hard it was stuck. I was knowingly manipulating a bunch of kids in the hope that they would follow me right back into the grinder when they had sure as hell done enough this morning …

And as it turned out, it was less than two seconds before the first kid was speaking up.

“Rumble-15, good to go Sir!” the Shadow Hawk pilot was first in proudly and that seemed to trigger the rest of them all at once, with a rapid fire series of confirmation calls, all but overlapping in their haste ending with the quiet but suddenly determined and human conformation of “Rumble-12, ready” from the Blackjack pilot, all of which left me closing my eyes for a second as a new weight crashed onto me.

God forgive me, they sounded eager. In a matter of minutes, I had gone from Shinji ‘I mustn't run away!’ Ikari to Gendo ‘The need is the justification, there are no other factors to consider!’ Ikari as I dragged these kids back back into the fire and threw them at the enemy in the hope of keeping Hanse alive … because he needed to stay alive.

If the Federated Commonwealth was going to have even a ghost of a chance of working and dealing with the shitstorms coming down the line … I needed Hanse Davion alive.

It was that simple.

I allowed myself the luxury of a full two seconds to stew in my self-loathing after the final check in … then I gathered it up and threw it all to the side with all the absolute ruthlessness I could muster. I could hate myself later. Right now, if I wanted to keep both these kids -and Hanse- alive, I needed my A-Game.

“Link in on my handshake” I ordered briskly. “Stay passive on sensors; we’re moving out” and with that I throttled up quickly to a brisk 60KPH jog and obediently the six Mechs fell in neatly behind me as I pushed North. I already had the NAV points to the park and if the LRM boats were hanging around in ambush, they would probably be somewhere along this course. And if we missed them, or if they were in the park itself, we’d be in position to drive right into Kuritas back and see what damage and disruption we could do...so I guess that worked?

Set on my course I hit the autopilot, killed my transponder and turned to my Command Mech systems, activating a pre-built Macro Hegemony programmers had included specifically for this situation - or at least those the SLDF often found itself in during the Star League Civil War. Piecing together company or Battalion sized forces from scattered elements, even from multiple regiments or divisions with the touch of a button. It was a situation the SLDF had found itself in depressingly often as their divisions ground their way through occupied Castles Brian with losses that -by today's standards- were obscene. And while the task here was far smaller, my systems were just as effective. Obediently, the machine interrogated the cadets around me and at my conformation, sent them all the Battlemech equivalent of a friend request. The cadets obediently accepted the handshakes and in moments my computers had a complete diagnostic readout for each mech, had updated their communications systems with a new private frequency and a proposed new callsign and transponder package for out unit from a list that had been preloaded by the techs before the battle for this contingency.

Now we were apparently ‘Pappa Company’ - and I couldn’t help but smile wryly at that.

“Pappa Two and Three” I said meaning the Blackjack and the Valkyrie. “You’re with me in First Lance. Pappa Four, Five, Six and Seven, you’re Second Lance and Four has the lead” I said, grouping the closer range Firestarter, Jenner and Javelin with the Shadow Hawk in the Lance leader position because the Jack of All Trades Battlemech could support them ideally at all ranges. Everyone but me also had jump jets which could be useful, as I tried to frantically come up with some kind of plan - any kind of plan - rather than go ‘seat of my pants’ … but right now all I had was ‘seek and destroy’.

Well, there was something to be said for the KISS principle I hoped.

There was a chorus of acknowledgements back via lasercom and I turned back, disengaging the autopilot as we moved quickly. I switched modes on my passive sensors regularly between visual, night vision, MAGRES/UV and thermal, looking in vain for any sign of friendlies or enemies but there was nothing. No man’s land. And if the enemy were out here, they were rigged for silent running because I wasn’t getting a peep from my communications board’s ELINT systems as we rounded the first turn carefully to start moving West and found … nothing.

One turn down.

The long road looked clear out to where my passive sensors couldn’t penetrate the bloody smoke. Not wasting time (and personally thankful that Thunder-LRMs hadn’t been invented yet as I remembered one brutally long urban tabletop game against an ****** Capellan player who delighted in dropping them on every Gods damned intersection) we throttled up and glanced at my tactical map, zooming the scale closer and rotating it. We were now heading straight West and in about two minutes would be directly North of Mallory Park at the only Mech-sized access road into it from this direction. The logical place for the missile boats to wait in ambush was somewhere between that point and the park because they’d be close enough to cover the entire ground with their missiles, far enough away to be hidden in ambush yet still able to advance directly into the battle pretty quickly if called.

That seemed to leave a lot of possible ground … but ...

Inner Sphere LRM launchers indeed had a ‘minimum range’ like in the tabletop game, a consequence of the way the launchers were built and the missiles were kicked out to prevent fratricide, with a pre-set minimum arming distance to allow the missiles to stabilize as they rippled, often ‘bumping’ as they launched and no-one wanted them blowing up in your face. There was thus a defined minimum ‘bubble’ needed if you wanted to launch your LRMs, especially indirectly ... and the streets around here with their tall buildings were poorly situated for it.
In fact the only real place outside of the park itself from this direction you could put a missile boat and give it an effective field of fire while still keeping it out of sight and not skylined...

Here I thought as my battle computer ever so helpfully ran the problem (turns out positioning units and calculating optimal positions for a given field of fire of certain weapons was something command mechs were supposed to do) shading most of the area in red … with just a couple of green positions. By far the most promising was a block North from the park, screened by a final line of buildings from direct observation. It was really a number of buildings sort of linked together belonging to the Biomedical College, but on its rear the central building had a large loading dock area with a switchback ramp up multiple levels to a large rooftop car park or storage area that would give a perfect but hidden field of fire over the entire park.

And if I was calculating this right, Kurita would already be in the park and Knight Company were only a few minutes behind them. Team Banzai’s Second and Third Battalion were still well over fifteen minutes out – and I still couldn’t help but wonder where BB was, they couldn’t all have been trashed … could they?

“Alright Pappa, we’re going to check out this building” I dropped a NAV point on the building in question as we pounded down the road, the kids two-by-two behind me. “The enemy might be there. If so, we engage and hold their attention on us so they can’t ****** with the Prince. If not, we press forward to the park and see what we might be able to do there.”
I was really hoping the later would not be the case; we’d surely get torn to pieces in short order if we hit Kuritas main force with a half dozen light Mechs.

But as the legendary Commander Adama had said; sometimes you just had to roll the hard six.

“Stay close and pace me until I give the word” I finished and with a flash of ‘SIGNAL ACKNOWLEDGED’ lights, we were off.
Two minutes passed in a blur of buildings in my green night vision mode as the counter continued to tick steadily down, the tension rising in me with each step as I kept working through my logic and found flaw after flaw after flaw with it ... but found I had no better ideas because if I was right...
Finally reaching the designated NAV point, I eased to a stop with the cadets stacked up behind me like a SWAT team without needing to be told before shifting my Battlemech out a little from the building that was blocking a line of sight on the Biomed building. Extending my right arm just far enough out of cover so the forward looking sensors on it could take a peek...

I didn’t know to be terrified or elated at the fact that my gut (well, my SLDF issue battle computer anyway) was dead on the money. Standing atop the building were four thermal contacts that, from the neutrinos being sniffed out by the MAGRES sensor, were four active Battlemech fusion reactor sources.

“Four active fusion contacts confirmed atop the roof, stand by...'' I passed back by LASERCOM, switching modes to raw visual and trying to get an eyeball on them ... but I just couldn’t make out anything through the damn smoke unless I went active - which would instantly let them know I was down here … but it seemed that Murphy took some tiny amount of pity on me then because a gust of wind happened to whirl it away the smoke from there as I was watching ….

Well ****** a duck.
Catapult.
Trebuchet. Whitworth and an Archer?! That was enough LRM tubes between them to make anyone’s life miserable. No wonder the cadets had thought the sky was falling I thought as I pulled my arm back.

“Alright. I mark four Mechs on the target building. One Catapult, a Whitworth a Trebuchet and one Archer'' I relayed as my Battlemech automatically updated the contact markers and passed them back through the company links to the friendly fire control systems.
The Catapult was, in my opinion, arguably the most dangerous ‘Mech here. Two 15-rack missile launchers and four Medium lasers for a secondary battery. Solid armor and a lot of Jump Jets too. It was a killer of light Mechs as much as a long-range missile platform and we needed it dead fast before it maneuvered clear and started engaging on its terms.
“First Lance, you’re with me. We’ll step out of cover and hit the Catapult first, Time on Target. Second Lance, the instant we move I want you up and over. Do whatever it takes but get in their faces under LRM range and make it count. I’d recommend you knock out the Trebuchet first if we manage to nail the Cat. Above all, keep mobile, razzle dazzle but don’t take stupid risks. The objective is to keep them contained and out of the big fight and for ****** sakes watch that Archers fists if you get close. With TSM he’ll punch right through you. Everyone ready?”

There was a chorus of painfully eager acknowledgements and I glanced at my timers. Hanse would reach the park in as little as thirty seconds. I didn’t have time to overthink this or worry about the flaws I could already see in the plan; it was the best I could do because we had to go now.
"I, the Baron of Strang, care not for your new names. Clans? Jade Falcons? I call you by your true name: Scum of the Star League, traitors of free will, persecutors of the Periphery come back to lord it over freedom-loving people. Come ahead, you steel-eyed robots! Come ahead and taste what a million like-minded people think of you and your damn Clans!"

-Baron Stepan Von Strang

Chris OFarrell

  • Warrant Officer
  • *
  • Posts: 605
Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #436 on: 27 February 2020, 04:03:28 »
“Alright Mechwarriors, in three … two … one … mark!” I ordered and with that I took several long steps out onto the other side of the road and swung my guns up, Pappa Two and Three pacing me. 360 degree HUDs actually made it hard to sneak up behind a Mech if you were at the same height. But as these guys were quite high up and we were behind them, there was a good chance we’d be missed this low for at least a few seconds as we stepped out and took careful aim.

Of course, going active on our targeting scanners kinda made the point moot anyway.

Pappa Three fired first, her ten-shot LRM launcher thanks to the height difference just barely in effective range, throwing a salvo of missiles out that snaked over and zipped almost straight up before tipping over and down in a tight arc that would terminate in the back of the Catapult - and to my mild surprise Pappa Four added his own five-tube launcher to the salvo without asking a split second before he started his leap into the sky with the rest of Second Lance. Pappa Two joined in a few carefully calculated seconds later as the missiles curved through the night, her light autocannons each spitting a five-shell burst of 40mm cannon fire with great precision as I last of all squeezed the trigger for my arm mounted weapons. I was well within range of all my guns, but wanted the minor but real added accuracy benefit from my arms to make this count.

Time on Target was a tactic that had originated with artillery units in WW2, to try and ensure as many shells from artillery units arrived as possible in the shortest window of time like a hammer rather than a steady rain. It had been adapted with the evolution of the Battletech paradigm of large numbers of differing weapons with different propagation speeds - the Stalkers we had picked up from Helm even had an automated fire control system that would synchronize missiles with lasers for maximum heat efficient impact. And if you pulled the tactic off, it could be quite devastating...if you hit of course.

The Catapult had spun around faster than I would have ever believed possible from the lock on warnings (the sudden bright flash and smoke from under it suggested it had actually used its Jump Jets to spin around on the spot!) but that just meant it took the full salvo ‘to the face’ without having fully gotten its feet under it. First the missiles blasting craters across its torsos, then the autocannon shells sending sparks flying everywhere after them - then my PPCs and arm mounted Medium lasers slashing into the mess last of all, centre mass (God I loved this things advanced fire control system!) all inside a second.
It snapped back from the uppercut … and proving that occasionally Murphey would hand out a bone just so you couldn’t accuse him of being one sided, the DCMS Mechs left foot tangled in something on the roof as it stumbled, acting like a pivot and jerking it spinning around and forward before it suddenly tore loose-

It was the second Catapult that I had seen crash to the ground on this very special day.

The problem being that this one did so twenty two meters above it.

Got to say, a 65 ton Battlemech pitching head over heels off a roof to land head-first on the front made an awful lot of noise and could shake the ground hard enough that my Mech had to actually shift its actuators slightly to compensate.

Even if that pilot was still alive, that Mech was not moving anytime soon. Damn.

Catapult down” I called out, wincing at the thought of what it would have been like to crash into the ground like that … especially as it seemed that the infamously big cockpit of the Catapult had partially collapsed inward...

My heat sinks had been overtaxed by tying in my medium lasers with the PPCs - more than they should have been and I frowned, suspecting one of my torso Freezers might not be working quite right despite the green status indicators, but I could still move and did so at a stiff walk, keeping the fallen DCMS Mech covered as waste heat flooded into my cockpit. High pitched squeals come roars of fusion torches passed up and over me as Pappa Two and Three exploded through the night sky trailing Second Lance, who were already above us with weapons fire lancing out at - crap, I had forgotten about that rear facing twin Medium Laser turret on the Archer!
Pappa Seven paid the price for my lapse with his Mechs right arm torn off at the shoulder in a blinding shower of sparks and molten metal. That was actually less of a problem than it could have been (what with the fact said arm carried no weapons) but it did unbalance the Mech in mid-air and caused it to tilt and sort of fall and slide away from the rest. It was close enough to the building though that it simply crashed into the side of it right on the switchback ramp which surprisingly held up under the impact, even as the back wall partially collapsed as the Mech half punched through it.
A far from perfect landing, but better than the alternatives - and the kid was up in moments, shaking it off ala Taylor Swift and starting to move up the ramp to the roof in a hurry.

Crimson laser beams back slashed across the sky in reply, a massive barrage from the remaining five jumping Mechs that focused on the Trebuchet, trying to knock out the enemy Mechs with their opening salvo. Only about six or seven of the medium lasers impacted and carved into its rear torso - but it was enough and its left side erupted in fire and shrapnel as the LRM magazine therein exploded, the missiles ripping into the heart of the missile boat and spinning it to the roof an unmoving corpse.

Trebby down!” Pappa Five reported in a somewhat gleeful, breathless voice as the lighter Mechs landed around the Archer and remaining Whitworth like a pack of raptors from Jurassic Park. I had no line of sight - I had walked too close to the building for that, but my systems tracking things pinged an alarm on top of the projected image of the Archer through the building as my people landed - a missile launch alarm. I wondered what the hell it was doing - firing at this range would have its missiles spray uselessly everywhere-

Which was exactly what it wanted to do, as it so happened.

A massive cloud of grey smoke from more of those damn smoke-LRMs erupted as the missiles indeed scattered everywhere into thick clouds of grey crap that flooded out and rolled over the edges of the building in a rapid wave. Changing the rooftop car park in an instant from a shooting gallery with the two Combine mechs at its heart into a knife fight in a telephone box with blindfolds on.

“Jump out people - don’t play his game!” I didn’t quite yell down the line and waited anxiously for long long moments as there were a rapid series of explosions and weapons discharges through the smoke - then was thankful to see one - three - five Mechs leap backwards out of the smoke, pulling back to the roofs of nearby buildings - then clenched my teeth as Pappa Five, the Firestarter, came staggering backwards out of the smoke, its torso a twisted sparking mess from what I suspected was a hell of a right hook, pitching the side of the roof even as its pilot yelled out something about burning-
Fire exploded around the Firestarters head as the Mechwarrior did the smart thing and punched out and my breathing stopped for a second as the ejection seat almost smacked into a building thanks to the off-vertical launch but it cleared it by a nanometer, rising up and away to where the MechWarrior’s chute could safely deploy even as the Firestarter itself smashed to the ground and shattered.

Turns out playing Mech games on the tops of buildings was dangerous.

“Five just burned the Whitworth; switch to thermals and let him have it!” Pappa-Four snarled over the company channel and the Shadow Hawk matched words to action as it unleashed everything other than its LRMs, joined by Pappas Six and Seven firing their own SRMs into the smoke, with the distinctive crackle of missile warheads going off above me.
Ah, so before being punched off the roof by the Archer it seemed the Firestarter had blasted the Whitworth with its flamethrowers. Heating its skin up enough to be seen clearly on thermals, even though the obscuring smoke...

That … was actually pretty ****** ninja. Perhaps the Avalon ****** weren't quite as useless as rumor would have it on Sark?

Focusing my attention back, I grit my teeth as Pappas Two and Three abandoned their rooftop positions as a barrage of LRMs came pouring down to plaster the places they had moved to. The indirect fire from the two DCMS Mechs had gone near straight up and down. And while that got past the range issues, it did telegraph the unguided attacks and give my people plenty of time to evade - back down to the ground as the only easy escape they could make on depleted jets until they could regenerate. That shifted the odds upstairs now to two against three - and in that window, the Whitworth made its move. Leaping out of the smoke and jumping South East across the gap to where Pappa-Four still squatted on a roof awkwardly, even as lasers lashed out at the Jenner and Javelin from the cloaked Archer in both directions, making them flinch behind air conditioning plants and communications towers. It looked like the Whitworth had taken more than a few SRM hits ... but at point blank range, the damn DCMS Mech could trade blows pretty evenly with the ‘Hawk and I was willing to bet that the Genyosha pilot was more than up to the task of nailing my second lance Leader in single combat.

However he had seemingly forgotten about (or perhaps not even seen) me down here on the street and as he leapt Southbound, he passed in a long arc that gave me about as good a shot as I was going to get.

My pulse laser lashed out with its trademark accuracy and tore into its rear torso, sending armor plates everywhere but it failed to penetrate the surprisingly heavy protection there. My chin lasers vexingly missed clearly, scathing harmlessly under it into the night sky but my arm lasers thankfully nailed its somewhat mangled right leg dead on, slicing into one of its blazing jump jets and popping it dead on.
To the full credit of the DCMS Mechwarrior he cut his thrusters at once, instantly abandoning his attempt to land on the roof on asymmetric thrust … to instead slam straight into the face of the building two stories under the roof.

Then he dropped.

To my astonishment, he simply slid down the face of the building, his arms slicing deep into it and ripping a seam open as he did, slowing his drop a little, but not enough-

Then, seemingly at the last second, he re-ignited his jets at full thrust and I realized in amazement that he was using his unorthodox grip on the building to adjust for the asymmetric thrust and make a hard -but entirely safe- landing.

Okay, that was incredible. Too bad this guy was fighting for the wrong team … and that he had landed right in front of me like that.

A split second later my two reinforced forearms smashed into him like a 75-Ton battering ram as I, having broken into an all out sprint forward as the Mech fell from the sky and identified his landing point, slammed my two heavily reinforced weapons pods into its back. The enemy Mech was promptly flung forward like I had hit it with a Goa’uld hand device into the lobby of the building in a shower of metal glass and concrete as my reinforced cowls crunched into the Battlemech and did bad things to whatever was inside - almost knocking me off my feet too and slamming my head against my seat painfully … but my claw like feet stabilized as they dug in and held me in place as the lobby got a new statue.

“You okay up there Four?” I called up as I kept my eye on the enemy, my guns cycling back up to ready as my heat normalized, just in case I needed them.

“Just a couple more scratches lead” he assured me cheerfully as sparks and smoke poured out of the rear torso of the enemy Mech in front of me, the MAGRES indicator attached to its HUD spiking then flatlining as its fusion reactor died, followed by an impressive puff of smoke pouring out.
That was good enough to call it a kill. And not gonna lie, there was something really satisfying about me thumping the shit out of one of these guys for once...

Whitworth is down - keep on that Archer!” I ordered back on the command channel as I started to try and back out of the building, cursing under my breath as I realized I had sort of gotten tangled in the frame of the windows but with a little applied power I managed to rip my arm free (and winced as I tore out a good chunk of the front wall with it), partially collapsing the lobby of this building over the enemy Mech and half burying it as I hastily backed out. Whoops.
Ahead of me the Valkyrie of Pappa Three was coming around the Biomedical building back onto this main road as the sound of explosions and weapons fire grew more intense above. I checked my board then looked up on my ‘OVERHEAD’ wide FOV monitor on instinct as a hostile HUD indicator pointed to it-

“PAPPA THREE MOVE!” I yelled as my gaze snapped back to her-

The idiot hesitated.

It was the difference again between a cadet and a combat veteran I suppose. That split second of hesitation as you questioned an unexpected order rather than obeying it. Boot camps primary purpose was to hammer that attitude out of course, so simply act rather than think when an order was shouted like a civilian, you moved. So when someone shouted ‘TAKE COVER!’ you’d dive for the trench rather than stand up and look around for the threat and end up with your head blown off!
Morgan had done a great deal of work bashing that out of me because if you so much as blinked when working with him, you were hopelessly behind the eight ball.
Pappa Three clearly hadn’t been paying enough in boot then (or, as I suspected, boot on this planet was a far cry from the hell on Sark) because she stood there for at least two seconds, clearly looking around on her screens for the threat that was directly above her and only at the last second spotted it, all but leaping forward and even kicking in her jump jets at the same time in a desperate flying leap-

Too late.

The Archer didn’t hit her dead on, but 70 tons dropping near straight down into a DFA was a lot of mass and a lot of momentum that tore her legs open and pinned her in place - just in time for the falling Heavy Mech to blow up.
I reeled back from the shockwave as windows blew out up down left and right around me, thousands upon thousands of chunks of glass swirling like snow in the wind around me as I wrestled with my Gyro and, not for the first time this morning, praised the advanced Star League era neurohelmet that kept me upright even as I wondered if I had just lost the first person under my command. “Three, report status!”
There was some static then a slightly groggy voice came over the channel and I couldn’t help but close my eyes for a second and let a shuddering breath out in relief as her voice came through my headphones. Proving I hadn’t gotten anyone killed … yet. I think.

I’m …” a cough or two “I’m okay. But my Mech is toast” she reported in I walked forward, carefully, into the smoke from the explosion and picked my way through the wreckage on the ground until I found what was left of her. The Valkyrie was at least nominally intact but looked to have been blasted forward a dozen meters with its feet torn off and its armored ‘skin’ flayed from it like House Bolton had dropped by. Beyond it in the middle of a pretty impressive crater, what was left of the Archer was a tangled wreck only barely recognizable as a Battlemech at all with spot fires all over the place and the buildings left and right of it bowled in modestly from the force of the detonation.

“Good to hear Three. If you can make it on foot, the nearest downstairs access point is-”

“-in the underground loop station three streets North of here, I can make it Sir” she cut in showing she was paying attention to her tactical map and standing orders. While most of the NAIS infantry were to the south helping grind down the main enemy force, there were patrols all through the underground campus with electronic surveillance active and any door being opened would have a fire team there quick smart to either pickup dismounted Mechwarriors and take them to safety or skin any snakes trying to slither their way underground.

“Correct. Get under cover as soon as you can'' I ordered before pushing past the wreck as her cockpit popped open, seeing all my timers were now at zero. “Everyone else, good work but we’re advancing to the park and going passive again.”

Lights flashed in acknowledgement and the indicators on the four other Battlemechs switched back to EMCON mode as I powered down my own active sensors once again. There was surely a chance that the Combine Mechs here had gotten off a signal that they were under attack, but with the blanket jamming and speed of our attack, perhaps, just perhaps...
Well I’d take all the hope I could get as we crossed the last few hundred meters now to the edge of the park at a brisk walk, feeling I was marching right into the eye of the storm.

And speaking of that, I reached over and flicked a very specific switch on my secondary systems board to the ON position. Just in case.

“Laser Mount One, offline. Laser Mount Two, offline. Reconfiguration in process, stand by…” Betty said as status and diagnostic data flowed along a secondary screen as I tried to fight my fear over what it would mean if I had to use this mode. Salome Ward had validated the technique in quiet testing with Dan Allard against Morgan and Patrick Kell on Summer over the last few weeks along with some other suggestions, so I wasn’t going in blind, but...

My EW board snapped me out of it as we approached the end of the road where it terminated in a wall of tall pine trees marking the edge of the park ... and as I shifted my attention to the board my tactical systems went crazy as they picked up contacts in every direction, weapons fire in every other direction and target locks all over the place as explosions and fireballs ascended into the sky up above the treeline along with the flashes of weapons fire and staccato crashing of explosions.
I’m not sure what I had been expecting really. I suppose in my head I had sort of expected to arrive at about the same time as everyone else and witness a final ham-to-ham combat exchange between Hanse and Yorinaga. A battle of words and a statement of intentions and all of that crap one normally expected in major Battletech events, followed by a cunning game of speed chess verbal sparring and a final showdown where the good guys of course, carry the day? Possibly including a gunship rescue...

Well either I was late, or, perhaps more realistically if my tactical boards were right, we had an all out brawl underway as Knight Company and Yorinaga’s Command Company had run into each other and let loose without bothering with any pleasantries.
Until today, this park had been a carefully preserved pocket of the woodlands NAIS had been built on which I had often enjoyed taking walks in on the days I had been at NAIS and between classes or meetings.
Now?
Now it was a war zone filled with contacts exchanging point blank broadsides while all but jousting as they spiraled around each other on my tactical map, shouldering smaller trees out of the way and ducking behind bigger ones as they raced around in a masterclass of confusion under the tall trees ducking in and out of clearings...

“****** me!” Pappa Four I think spoke for all of us as we took in the mess relayed to him via my communications system as we sort of halted at the end of the road, behind the wall of trees.
Although he sounded more impressed than fearful really and I didn’t know what to make of that.

“Form up” I ordered as crisply as I could through the sudden spike of terror that this was the pro league and I was strictly bush league but charging in anyway. “Two by two on my flanks, fifty meter spacing. We’re going straight in. Stick to me like glue and pivot on my moves. There’s smoke and ECM all over the place, so pick up your visual scanning and shoot what I shoot as much as possible - and for ****** sake if you get a visual on a Warhammer your targeting systems insist isn’t there, call it out! If I go down, Four has the command and don’t hesitate to use your speed if we mix it up. Everyone ready?”
Everyone said they were with crisp professionalism that made me wonder if the poor fools thought I actually had a damn clue what the ****** I was doing here. A couple of senior NCOs at Sark had given me the advice of ‘fake it till you make it’ for us soon-to-be Junior Officers when the time came to lead our first group of people and we realized we didn’t have the first clue. Because it was critical that everyone on the battlefield knew the Officer both had a plan and knew what they were doing.

Even when they didn’t.

Especially when they didn’t.

“Stay passive until I give the word, lets move out!” I called and lowered my centre of gravity slightly as I punched through the treeline with enormous cracks of ancient pines splintering, no doubt moving my name even further up the hit list the Botany Department was drawing up, forcing my way through into the more or less clear space on the far side I knew was there-
-and saw an Atlas blazing the red of a hostile unit in my HUD dead ahead, already at the close range that the AS7-D was rightly feared at. It was however also facing the wrong way and firing its LRMs into the air at someone downrange-
“Pop the Atlas!” I didn’t quite yell as I pulled my Alpha-Strike trigger the instant my crosshairs came into line with the enemy, without even waiting for a formal lock.
Both my PPCs, my chin lasers and the pulse laser discharged and heat poured into my cockpit as I pushed my cooling loop well past its limits, a warning siren howling in my ears that my Battlemech was recommending an immediate shutdown as green smoke - vaporized coolant I realized as my eyes watered, meaning I must have popped a heat sink that wasn’t showing on my damage board- hissed around my ‘Mech from breaches in my torso and blocked my visuals with the superheated mist for a few precious seconds...

I slapped the override, clenching my teeth against the scalding heat despite my coolant vests best efforts. Annoyingly, this damn Battlemech had come with an SLDF Mechwarrior Suit, but it had been several sizes too small for me so and some lucky shrimp in the Heavy Guards had called dibs. So I just tried to breathe through my nose like the training said to as my Mech shuddered to a halt and directed my attention at the enemy … and despite the incredible heat in my cockpit, I still felt ice pour into my veins as my visuals were restored.

The Atlas, like most Mechs and Tanks, had a heavy armor bias with the balance of protective metal focused on the frontal aspect. It let this thing shrug off insane amounts of firepower on the attack, but at the cost of its rear torso being far more lightly protected.

Of course, that was far more lightly protected by Assault Mech standards.

My hasty ‘from the hip’ firing without waiting for my fire control had connected, but my weapons had failed to concentrate with any effectiveness, scattering firepower across its broad back and arms. Oh half melted armor panels went flying in every direction leaving the back open … but I hadn’t damaged the combat capabilities of the Battlemech one bit.

And it then occurred to me that I was essentially immobilized and overheated at point blank range to an Assault Mech I had just tried - and failed! - to backstab. Just like that Raven in the ‘MechCommander’ intro who had been ordered to poke a Smoke Jaguar Timber Wolf in the back, had done so (under extreme protest) … and in the horrible silence afterwards, the Clan Omnimech had sort of twisted slightly on its torso to look at him … as if saying ‘Did you seriously just do that?’

So too now did the Atlas start to twist-

The ‘Oh crap’ moment passed a heartbeat later however as a barrage laser and autocannon fire and a veritable swarm of Short-Range missiles converged and tore through the weakened rear armor to detonate inside the bulk of the huge war machine.

I promised to never insult Avalon ****** again as the Atlas -heh- shrugged as its ammo bins started to chain - then yelped as a spiteful twin scarlet beam ripped out from the rear facing medium lasers I had forgotten about and slashed my center torso as the monster toppled to the ground, burning. ******!
Half of the armor plates in the only torso area of my Battlemech with any real armor protection were torn away in that moment, making the chances excellent that any serious hit to my front torso was going to punch right through what was left now.

Still, in exchange for taking down an AS7-D … I suppose it proved Elim Garak had been dead on about shooting people in the back as I had seen tonight several times; it really was the safest way!
You know, except for that Griffin, every kill I had made had been a team kill or what amounted to shooting an unsuspecting enemy in the back … and I really couldn’t be happier about that fact.

I wasn’t a Gods Damned Clanner after all.
"I, the Baron of Strang, care not for your new names. Clans? Jade Falcons? I call you by your true name: Scum of the Star League, traitors of free will, persecutors of the Periphery come back to lord it over freedom-loving people. Come ahead, you steel-eyed robots! Come ahead and taste what a million like-minded people think of you and your damn Clans!"

-Baron Stepan Von Strang

Chris OFarrell

  • Warrant Officer
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  • Posts: 605
Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #437 on: 27 February 2020, 04:03:44 »
I didn’t have time to gloat though as the rolling battle was pushing closer. In the night - combined with the smoke - visibility was pretty shit. But I could detect enough on passives and now was in range to pick up the broadcast tactical feed from Hanse that my Battle Computer was crunching things to suggest that the DCMS were pulling back and consolidating as the Knights pressed them. Both sides had lost several Mechs and firing was falling off now as the DCMS withdrew quickly through the trees and reformed while Hanse in turn reformed his own unit and pursued-

Then it happened.

A signal, in the clear without a clear point source from nearby activated almost on cue as all of the sudden the communications jamming stopped, and I swallowed through a dry mouth as I opened the channel being broadcasted and heard that voice.

“Lord Davion” Yorinaga's voice came clearly into my headphones as I tensed just a little as the limited exchanges of fire now stopped all together.

Ah, so NOW came the final ham-to-ham combat exchange between Hanse and Yorinaga.

****** this Mechwarrior cult bullshit-

“Lord Kurita” Hanse’s voice came back and I felt a strong urge to throttle the man for giving his position up as the last of the fire died off - no wait, okay, the smartass was actually routing his communications signal through his lancemates - and I was able to easily pick up the gun-camera feed from Hanse himself and flick it to my HUD; seeing the Battlemaster of Knight Three step forward. Still stupid of Hanse to confirm his presence here, but at least he wasn’t giving himself away directly by using a fanatically loyal Bodyguard as a stand in-

“Ah. You do not trust me enough to broadcast from your own Battlemech? Understandable I will admit, but I am afraid your skill - and especially the way you so casually yet perfectly brace your leg before firing your PPC without breaking stride, is both most impressive and quite distinctive” the Kuritan legend noted in an oddly apologetically amused tone as the Warhammer turned to face him. Directly.

God ****** damn it Hanse you ****** moron I silently cursed as I saw, after a moment, the Battlemaster of Knight Three fell back and Knight Leader stepped up, my hands clenching as I expected Kurita to give some signal and everyone to open up … but no-one fired.
Yet.
A glance at the secondary display still dedicated to Knight company showed Hanse had taken moderate to major armor damage, but his internals were all solid and from the wider TACMAP I could see it was … nine damaged DCMS Mechs against seven damaged AFFS Mechs - looked like two of the Battlemasters were down.

Well, ten enemy Mechs, this thing didn’t show Kuritas location after all.

Of course, in reality it was ten Snakes against twelve AFFS when you counted our Lance and on the whole if I was reading this right the enemy Mechs looked rather more beaten up and ours were generally heavier ...

Anyone’s game then, I supposed.

“And I, ironically, would be hard pressed to miss seeing an invisible Warhammer” Hanse replied easily. I swallowed now, clenching my controls as I felt the future standing on the edge of a knife, the cadets behind me silent as they too listened to the drama playing itself out.

On the plus side, I suppose this was buying more than ample time for my heat sinks to cycle and the heat in my cockpit to vent.

“You have come a very long way Yorinaga” Hanse continued, his voice level but hardly polite or friendly. “You have also killed a large number of my people and set back the recovery of the Inner Sphere from our forefathers insanity quite possibly by decades thanks to the damage you have done to the NAIS. Then all but goaded me out here on this little proxy for your two ‘great shames’. So, what exactly do you want?

“To finish the story of course, Lord Davion” the other said, sounding disturbingly serene. “The final scene in the final chapter. Where I, slayer of a First Prince and first Kurita to invade the Throne World of the Federated Suns faces and slays his brother in turn, throwing the Federated Suns into chaos. Or, perhaps instead I will face you and fall, finding an honorable death at the hands of the greatest enemy the Dragon has ever known. On my feet and with my guns blazing as the Fox defends his den? This story has played out for some time Prince Davion, but when one comes to the last page … it is time to close out the book.”

“Jesus Christ this guy is full of himself” I muttered to myself, glancing around my boards looking for anything and everything to decide my next move. Both sides forces had frozen in place glaring at each other with Davion - and I presume Kurita - having edged a little into the open to be visible to each other. Any move I made risked setting off one or the other side…
I did however take a second to reactivate my long-range communication system and set it for relay mode, my command systems relaying my battle computers tactical picture to anyone who wanted it. Hopefully it would be picked up and relayed to Yvonne Davion who would hopefully take one look and tell Team Banzai to burn out their drives if necessary, but get their asses over here...

“You’ve truly learned nothing from Styx, have you?” Hanse finally observed with sheer contempt lacing his tone, sounding like he was genuinely insulted by the offer being put to him. “Or, from your ten years hiding in that cave? Because here you are, again, twisting a battle - a war even!- to serve your own personal ends. This obsession of yours, all from being denied my brother's body as a trophy … Yorinaga; it’s cost you everything. Your rank. Your command. Your honor as you see it. Your freedom. Your own wife and son for God's sake! Even if Akira stands beside you today, he doesn’t even bare your name anymore after you abandoned he and his mother to slavery, forced her to sacrifice her own life to protect your son from the consequences of your insanity … tell me Kuirta; has any of this been worth it?”

The … blunt … accusation hung in the air for a good five seconds of dead air that sounded like five years. I half expected Kurita to just leap forward all guns blazing, but it seemed he had more control than that.

“A question I have asked myself many times as I approached New Avalon I can assure you” Yorinaga answered after a time, his tone still horribly … serene. “And one that can finally be answered now that we are here-”

“I am not here for you Yorinaga” Hanse told him flatly with just an edge of scorn in it. “I am not here to give you a chance to replay the fight with my brother and I am certainly not intending to fights of decades past or indulge your dreams of a duel to the death.”

“Yet you are here” Kurita pointed out, sounding amused.

“I am here doing nothing more or less than my duty. Standing with my troops and protecting my world from invaders. Whoever they are. I am just as happy with dropping the air strike I have ready on your head as shooting you myself.”

“The code of a soldier, not a Warrior” Kurita said - and I narrowed my eyes slightly as the Warhammer bowed towards Hanse briefly. “I do respect this. Your honor may not be of the Combine Lord Davion ... but it is honor nonetheless that you have always been true to and I will salute you for it. As one soldier, to another, showing that I had indeed learned from Styx...”

The line went silent - but not dead … and no-one moved or did anything. I glanced around my boards as the timer kept ticking over for five seconds … ten seconds …

Oh, right!

Kurita, in a perfectly ironic echo of the blasting he had received from Morgan Kell, was now waiting for the Missile Boats he had stashed away to deliver their massive salvo of LRM fire directly to Hanse Davion’s face … and nothing was happening.

It was probably my lack of sleep, but I kind of felt bad that I had ruined his great final gesture and no-one knew it…

Yeah, it had to be my lack of sleep because almost before I realized what I was doing, I had pressed several buttons on my communications console and-

“I am afraid, Kurita-San, if that was supposed to be a signal to that lance of Missile Boats you had stashed to the North to open fire” I explained quickly, “invoking an ironic climax to this whole thing with a bit if a nod to Morgan and Patrick Kell showering you with LRMs on Styx? Well, um, I already kinda destroyed those Battlemechs. Sorry!”

-Then I realized I had just jumped into a private communication between the First Prince and his arch nemesis …
I’m pretty sure that was a bit of a faux pas on my part … and a few seconds later, Kurita spoke up.

“Ah-So?” he sighed, sounding … I couldn’t even pick the emotion and that couldn’t be good. “Then defend your world, Lord Davion” he said - and with a flash the two PPCs on the Warhammer lashed out at the Battlemaster and the image went to static as everyone opened fire.

******, here we go I thought as I closed the window switched back to my company channel.

“Pappa; to the Prince!” I snapped over the lance channel and I shoved my pedals to the metal, the Heavy Battlemech under me rearing and charging forward into the thicker tree lines as I switched back to night vision, my heart starting to race as everyone facing everyone fired everything with scant regard for heat sinks knowing that this was it.
It looked like Kuritas people had flung themselves at the Knights at the same instant Kurita had opened up and some ****** had let loose another salvo of those ****** smoke rounds into the melee, turning the night under the trees into a close ranged and confused brawl- oh and whatever ECM unit was here had flicked back on and was broadcasting ghost targets all over the place. While no doubt feeding corrections to its lance mates with its active probe like systems - but sharp orders from Jackson Davion ensured the Knights were unphased and throwing back everything they took - and then some … but they were undeniably tied down as the snakes sacrificed their lives to give Kurita the single most precious thing any military commander could want.

Time.
Time for their boss to claim his final head and justify his rather pathetic life…

Problem was, Hanse didn’t seem to be at all inclined to give it up to him.

Yorinaga had opened fire but as best I could tell from my relayed feed, he had missed the headshot as Hanse had exploded forward, swinging his two ERPPCs up in front of his face. Kuritas salvo had slagged the guns into uselessness, but Hanse clearly had no care for that and simply flung them clear of his hands in that strange Battlemaster way as he kept accelerating, Kurita realizing his mistake probably about the same time Hanse had smashed into him like an enraged Gods damned freight train.
He had unleashed his fists of fury with zero ****** given for Phantom Mech bullshit, forcing Kurita to rapidly backpedal as he desperately tried to defend himself … but he certainly couldn’t move backwards faster than Hasne could move forwards and under the minimum effective PPC range of his primary weapons, the Warhammer was at a massive disadvantage. Kurita had, to my delight, finally seemed to have bitten off more than he could chew because I’m sure that despite all his speech making, he didn’t expect to lose to someone who wasn’t his mystical equal and opposite. But the fact was brawling didn’t care about fire control systems and for all his skill, Hanse was also an Elite pilot … and one that despite his words a minute ago, I know still had a lot of anger to let out about a lot of things this guy had done to his family, friends and realm.

Lasers and SRMs stabbed out from the Warhammer but mostly went wide as Hanse tore into him with TSM fury, driving him North towards me, ripping great chunks out of Kurita despite the man's best attempts to fight back to the point that now one hand got a grip on the man's distinctive shoulder-SRM mount and tore it loose as Kurita staggered-

Then Akira struck.

I don’t know if he just couldn’t stand seeing his Father being ripped to pieces like this by his nemesis (honestly the damn kid was far too loyal to a man who had let he and his mother be sold into slavery without lifting a finger, simply because Takashi was miffed!) or if Yorinaga’s admission of using missile boats to ambush Hanse had been code for ‘honorable duels are suspended’. In either case, the Orion’s Autocannon, missiles and lasers tore into Hanse’s side and it was the Battlemaster now reeled as I burst into sight, watching in horror as its right arm was torn loose and flung off to smash into a tree in the middle of a swing that should have put Hanse’s right fist right through Yorinaga’s cockpit.
Worse, now horribly unbalanced with the muscles pushing harder than they should thanks to the increased strength fibers, the Assault Mech spun off center and flopped to the ground - and Yorinaga fired, shooting his lasers to slice into Hanse’s right leg and slag the exposed knee joint, disabling the entire limb and leaving him trapped flat on his ‘face’ on the ground at his feet.

My heart stopped for a beat. Hanse himself was still green according to my boards, but utterly helplessly immobilized-

“KILL THAT ORION!” I bellowed the order to the Mechwarriors with me and with a roar over their loudspeakers for some reason that sounded like ‘Avalon!’ (but was hair raisingly fearless and furious) they charged past me straight for Akira as we smashed through the treeline into sight of the enemy. Firing somewhat recklessly to draw Akiras attention they did the job well; Akira spinning around and stepping back from the battle with the First Prince as the lasers slashed across his side. Maneuvering at once to protect his father and buy him the time to finish his little fight, Pappa Two going red as the Blackjacks legs were torn open by precise autocannon fire from the Orions hip, but even as it flopped to the ground, the Mechwarrior in it impressed me greatly as she spun her arms on their wide-field mounts and tore into Akira from a prone position! Sending armor chunks flying everywhere even as the rest of the group charged in on foot and jet, firing as they came…

That was as much as I saw before trees came between us and I focused on my target, pressing and holding a very specific button on each of my control sticks and praying that this would work as well as Daniel Allard insisted it had in his reports to BB…

The medium laser on my left and right arms, the original Phototech 9X’s that the SLDF had built into it, now activated in their reconfigured mode. A little SLDF Royal Brigade trick; the mode change dialed down the power on the laser and reconfigured it so that instead of a short high-wattage burst of devastating energy, it would ‘shoot’ a continuous modulated beam that served as a high-powered, long range communications laser. Capable even of pinging low orbit dropships if necessary, at a good ten to twelve Megabits. It gave a useful and almost un-jammable communications uplink capacity with far longer range than the short-range tactical lasers built into almost all Battlemechs and combat vehicles. Just another ‘Optional Extra’ the Terran Hegemony had kept to itself although, surprisingly, I had found out that was actually one SLDF trick that had filtered ou and was quite common even today.

What it meant, right now however, was that in my night vision mode the two beams showed up as brilliant lines. Mounted sidecar to my ERPPCs and perfectly in line with them as I directed my arms manually, using the beams as guides as I shifted them until they were terminating clearly on the broad shoulders of Kuritas mech. It looked like he had built up quite a bit of heat with the air around him in the night vision blazing, clearly waiting for his heat to drop before finishing Hanse … or was he just gloating over his loudspeakers?

Don’t know, don’t care. In either case, to my sudden shock, a beep indicated the opening of a communications channel as Kurita accepted my handshake, it dawning upon me that I hadn’t actually told my systems not to do that as I, you know, pointed communications lasers at him…

“Come to watch your Lord's end, Mister Smith?” Kurita asked me almost mockingly.

Okay, the fact that he knew who I was, didn’t exactly make me happy.
But this was too good an opening not to take.

“Not quite Lord Kurita, I am here to warn you that the Line Developers back in Two Thousand and Nine formally de-canonized any magical or supernatural events in the Battletech universe.

There was a moment of dead air.

“...I am sorry?” he replied, sounding understandably confused -

“THE POWER OF CRAY COMPELS YOU!” I yelled, praying for him to turn as I let go of the buttons-

Possibly for the first time tonight, deliberately aimed weapons fire smashed into the Warhammer of Yorinaga Kurita as both my ERPPCS impacted, one ripping into his rear right torso, another into his left shoulder.

Okay, that felt incredibly satisfying.

But … to my immense frustration, he did not turn at my wild yelling as I had hoped, letting me fire into the massive damage Hanse had did. And a split second later his torso twisted like a striking cobra so fast it seemed to change orientation between blinks to point both its PPCs right at me barely two hundred meters away as it dawned on me that he had let me shoot first just in case I did hit him, then had taken his kill shot-

The particle beams that should have ended my life didn’t converge into my cockpit however, they seem to have been fired at a standard spread instead, slicing into my right and left torsos instead of converging on my head.
But that still wasn’t exactly good.
This time, my armor well and truly failed and with an absolutely deafening scream and squeal of abused metal my right arm tore loose and was flung off into the night, leaving a stump squirting green steaming coolant like a Mechs blood. My left arm didn’t rip free, but it dropped dead at my side as the power conduits in my left shoulder were slagged from the reactor couplings.
I didn’t notice at first though as I was too busy screaming in pain. Blue sparks flying around my cockpit for a moment and causing my muscles to spasm painfully - which in turn with my hands on the controls and my neurohelmet understandably confused, caused me to swerve and crash straight into an ancient, dignified pine tree planted way back in the days of the Terran Alliance.

Amazingly, the tree didn’t simply snap but flexed … sort of as I crashed to a stop. I was thrown against my straps harshly and almost blacked out as blood rushed around before just as suddenly I had stopped and I pushed through the pain to look over my damage board which was a lot more red then before and showing-

Oh no. Oh ****** no, COME ON!!!
Every one of my lasers was offline and I was showing some level of reactor shielding damage!

Forcing my gaze back to the critical fight still going on, I saw Kurita wrench his right leg out of the grip of Hanse’s Battlemaster and I realized the man had saved my life by grabbing and yanking the leg as Kurita had aimed and fired his shot. That had staggered Kurita backwards and looked to have wrecked the ankle, not quite immobilizing him, but coming terrifyingly close. The use of his PPCs again had clearly pushed him right to the limit of his heat curve given the smoke pouring out of his joints, but this wasn’t Nusakan and his sinks were still steadily pulling him back as he now aimed and blazed away with his machine guns (his lasers looked wrecked), Hanse flinging his hands up over his large cockpit to try and deflect the fire as behind me Akira still fought with three - no, ****** two of my Lancemates, I’d lost the Javalin too! As soon as Kuritas heat went down, he had Hanse cold.

Which left me only one option.

Kurita was barely a hundred meters away though … and while I wouldn’t be able to get up to more than thirty or forty KPH in that distance … there was an option to make the bang as big as possible….

“Sover...” I said - or tried to, I had to clear my throat and cough before trying again, noting I was coughing up blood for some reason but pushing it to the side. “Sovereign” I tried again, and the computer beeped. “Verify identity by voiceprint and neuro-scan. Arm self-destruct sequence Alpha on primary triggers.”

There was a soft beep and Betty spoke.

“Warning; auto-destruction sequence armed” she warned me and I nodded distantly as I grunted to pull air in through slightly winded lungs and squared my shoulders. Battlemech self-destructs were not something programmed into contemporary machines. Officially because the lower quality of fusion reactors built in this era had far more safety systems and construction were optimized for ruggedness over power, making them much harder to be forced into an overload.
Which was actually true. It was also true that they could STILL do it with some creative settings and hardware removal - as Kai Allard-Liao had proven in his legendary ‘Ah no no no, ****** you!’ of the Jade Falcons on Twycross, but the real truth (according to Morgan Hasek-Davion anyway) was that in the halls of power, there was little to no interest in making it easy to blow up Mechs deliberately or lose incredibly hard to replace fusion reactors lightly.

Mechs were valuable, MechWarrior’s … less so.

There was an unwritten but real agreement on all sides of the Succession Wars that it was far better for everyone involved if Battlemechs did not blow up if at all possible and thus could either be salvaged back and forth, or, held for ransom back to the other side for cold hard cash in the case of family owned machines. And giving MechWarrior’s the option to blow them up casually was thus not in anyone's interest as, after all, you could always just pull your damn sidearm and blow your head out if you didn’t want to risk capture against a foe.

Luckily, the SLDF who had built my Battlemech had a rather more practical mindset about these things (and especially about keeping Royal Command technology out of the hands of the ‘lesser’ Houses) and as Kuritas heat was dropping steadily to where he would be able to risk one last strike that would probably cook him alive and blow his ammo, but take Davion with him, I knew I had to act.
With a sudden final shove far riskier than my previous attempts to get up that one last time had my gyro scream in protest, my Mech which had been playing disabled suddenly wrenched itself up drunkenly and started to pound its way straight in at the Warhammer.

Missiles ripped into my rear torso as Akira, who had clearly been keeping an eye in my direction despite having Pappa Four busily trying very hard to punch him to the ground, sprayed a salvo at me, but I trusted in my more or less untouched rear armor to take one hit - and even though I staggered and the last of my armor went red, it held as his LRMs scattered and I closed in and squeezed - and held very tightly!- all of my triggers.

Immediately, a booming, intimidating voice came out of my external speakers at full volume and my cockpit fell to a hellish red glare - oh yeah, I had forgotten about that code I had put in -

“YOU HAVE FAILED!” Sovereign thundered as with a screaming hissing my reactor pushed into a state of overload, more and more power building up in the inner torus as I thundered right for Kurita, the Mech turning its torso again sharply towards me without letting go of the machine gun triggers and spraying light shells into my torso … that smashed already smashed components and did absolutely nothing to slow me down.
Zombie Mech, bitch! I thought gleefully as, with his ankle mauled by Hanse Kurita found himself unable to move as heat started to build to unbearable levels and I engaged my autopilot, then let go of my triggers as I dead reckoned the timing-
“WE WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY. RELEASING CONTROL.”

Technically that was Harbinger of course, not Sovereign, but I don’t think either Reaper would have minded the shout out.

My cockpit canopy exploded and the ejection seat under me was blasted into the sky with a screaming roar. I’m pretty sure I had passed out for a second there though as seemingly between blinks I went from the explosive bolts flinging my cockpit away to looking down on the forest and buildings beyond it as I ascended into the smoke on a 12G rocket of ****** your spine-

And then for a split second all the buildings I could see ahead of me went white and dazzled me. It was like a giant camera flash had just been used and there was a loud crraackkkkk and roaring even as the ground under me got increasingly indistinct through the smoke.

Then the seat stopped trying to drive my ass into my spine and up into my skull and for a few seconds it was like a glorious weightlessness that let me take a deep breath as I was flung clear of it-

-then with a new jerk that forced my ass back out of my head, the air out of my lungs and all my blood into my feet, the ‘chute’ snapped open above me and I was swinging through the smoke filled air and really hoping that Akira wasn’t going to take a shot at me for that whole ‘crash tackling his father away from Hanse and detonating a fusion reactor on top of him' thing.

The wind was stronger than I thought and I was drifting away from the combat zone, but turning and getting a hell of a view of the parklands as I did. Then with a roar and painfully bright flash that made me wince and remember my eyes were no longer protected behind armored glass, a pair of Victors descended through the sky on blazing fusion thrusters, dropping right into the middle of the mess. Painted in the black with silver highlights of Team Banzai and with a whole gaggle of lighter Mechs in the same colour sceheme dropping behind them I was finally forced to look away as a Union smashed through the smoke, making a hard full thrust landing on the very Northern edge of the park-

What was going to be a textbook perfect touchdown instead became the mother of all wedgies as the urban canyon I was dropping into channeled the massive gust of hot air caused by three and a half thousand tons of fusion torch blasting air displacement right into my chute, yanking me forward before catching and snagging on a a convenient streetlight, my straps swinging me like a pendulum around to slap me full body straight into the face of a building before I could do anything about it.

Everything in my chest hurt now.

I recoiled from the impact and sort of stabilized hanging from the light pole rather stunned - then the ‘chute slipped clear off the light pole and I was dropped unceremoniously the three meters to the ground, feeling my right ankle give way in a way they shouldn’t before I fell face first to the ground ... and everything went blessedly dark.
« Last Edit: 28 February 2020, 05:49:50 by Chris OFarrell »
"I, the Baron of Strang, care not for your new names. Clans? Jade Falcons? I call you by your true name: Scum of the Star League, traitors of free will, persecutors of the Periphery come back to lord it over freedom-loving people. Come ahead, you steel-eyed robots! Come ahead and taste what a million like-minded people think of you and your damn Clans!"

-Baron Stepan Von Strang

PsihoKekec

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #438 on: 27 February 2020, 08:59:06 »
It was incredibly climatic, but Hanse will get a royal shoutdown from both Melissa and Yvonne for not ordering airstrike on Yorinaga once he was in the Mallory park, waltzing into the trap instead..

Quote
The Archer didn’t hit her dead on, but 70 tons dropping near straight down into a DFA was a lot of mass and a lot of momentum
Since I reckon this was either 2R or 2K it would mean that Kuritan MechWarior was doing this without the benefit of jj course correction. Probably desperation at seing lancemates wiped out in a matter of minutes for little to no return.

Quote
The Valkyrie was at least nominally intact but looked to have been blasted forward a dozen meters with its feet torn off and its armored ‘skin’ flayed from it like House Bolton had dropped by.
And thanks to him people now understand this reference.
Shoot first, laugh later.

J-H

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #439 on: 27 February 2020, 09:40:15 »
Another enjoyable chapter!
I am still wading through the sea of responses on SB.  I agree that Smith is generally due for a round of medals and a brand new BattleMech.  He may get to pick, or he may get assigned something.  I'm expecting something in the heavy-to-fast-assault range, possibly with jumpjets.  A new production Highlander might not be a bad choice, as someone pointed out.

Re: shipping, these close-to-graduating cadets are in the 18-to-20ish age bracket, and Smith is in his mid-30s.  As someone in that age range, a 20 year old would simply seem too young... plus I think he might prefer someone who isn't due to have 5 years of "deployed somewhere else" military service to marry and have kids with.  I'd look for someone who's completed her service, or is in a non-forward deployment role...maybe intel, logistics, med/sci, or a minor noble or something.  I know Riva Allard's name has been thrown around a few times.

Chris has stayed away from any romantic entanglements in this story, so it's also possible that he just doesn't want to get bogged down writing romance in his Big Stompy Mechs Stomping More story.

I expect some named characters (Banzai-related, mostly) to have died, simply based on the total # of casualties.  This battle will be one for the textbooks at the military academies.  Everything's going to get broken down into great detail.

A few days from now, there's going to be one heck of a party.  Smith should be mobile by that point (crutches or wheelchair depending).

Lots of rebuilding for NAIS, and Hanse now has an excuse to "For the good of mankind, and that the light of knowledge shall not be extinguished and plunge us into barbarism," open 2-3 off-world NAIS branches duplicating most of the major research tracks and educating still more students.  Security will be a bit more challenging, but the case has now been definitively made that a single research institution is a single point of failure.

One thing I do not recall having seen discussed in-story:  Has the F-C held discussions with the Wolf Dragoons about a trip to their periphery cache point?  If I recall correctly, there are a few warships there (what did the Dragoons do with those crews?), plus some jumpships and some mothballed BattleMechs that were too advanced to bring into the IS.  The WarShips should remain a secret, but can be used to hunt down Tortuga and other pirate havens with prejudice, while giving the FC a trump card against future threats.

wolfcannon

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #440 on: 27 February 2020, 11:48:05 »
and use to rebuild FC fleet.    but i like the part that the Fed Com would have access to Clan Tech through WD.
Daniels Avenger                Clan Coyote
General Jennifer Daniels    Galaxy Commander Jim Skyes
                                        Omicron Galaxy
Clan Wolf in Exile
328th Assault Cluster(the Lion Hearted)
Star Captain James Sword

PsihoKekec

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #441 on: 27 February 2020, 13:16:57 »
Quote
and a brand new BattleMech
You broke an irreplacable Royal Marauder, here is your replacement Stinger.

Jokes aside, I reckon all the Helm cache mechs are either asigned to units or research centers, so he will probably be issued factory new mech, with some upgrades from Helm cache material, as factory new Lvl.2 mechs are years away.
There is another option though. Kell Hounds came into possesion of Star League Orion recently, with most of the advanced tech present. Trollisa just might give a call to Kell brothers and try to convince them to part with this trophy, that Snord must be salivating for, due to mech's first owner, about whom Smith has such a high opinion.

« Last Edit: 28 February 2020, 10:58:00 by PsihoKekec »
Shoot first, laugh later.

Chris OFarrell

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #442 on: 27 February 2020, 16:10:17 »

Lots of rebuilding for NAIS, and Hanse now has an excuse to "For the good of mankind, and that the light of knowledge shall not be extinguished and plunge us into barbarism," open 2-3 off-world NAIS branches duplicating most of the major research tracks and educating still more students.  Security will be a bit more challenging, but the case has now been definitively made that a single research institution is a single point of failure.


There will definitly be some of this - Katrina and Hanse are both eager to replicate much of the NAIS into the Lyran Commonwealth (Smith suggested it be put on Tharkad and called the Tharkad Institute of Technology and Science just so he can use say use the words 'Katrina's tits' in a conversation but was shot down by Hanse who decided he had too much to live for) and *that* will be happening on Donegal. Although it'll be 3035-3040 before the campus is ready to open. There will also be a number of 'black sites' quietly opened inside the Federated Suns which will be dedicated to R&D work trying to reverse engineer samples of the Helm technology. With very real samples of Star League weapons and technology ... which of course are all diversions to make everyone think that the Federated Suns has the helm technology but nothing else and needs to R&D it the hard way, which gives ComStar a target to disrupt. And MIIO to welcome ROM strike teams into.

All the while at the NAIS the *real* work of building the Star League machine tools factories and setting up production lines quietly in the Suns and Commonwealth at carefully chosen places ramps up steadily as they follow the Helm cores guide on how to build the tools to build the factories to build the tools ... and come 3035 or so? Then, things start to get ... interesting.

Quote

One thing I do not recall having seen discussed in-story:  Has the F-C held discussions with the Wolf Dragoons about a trip to their periphery cache point?  If I recall correctly, there are a few warships there (what did the Dragoons do with those crews?), plus some jumpships and some mothballed BattleMechs that were too advanced to bring into the IS.  The WarShips should remain a secret, but can be used to hunt down Tortuga and other pirate havens with prejudice, while giving the FC a trump card against future threats.

Its on the list for post war by the Dragoons for sure and the Warships will be moved to an uninhabited system in the Crucis March. As for their crews? My presumption is that they were more or less absorbed into the Dragoons starship and dropship fleets. Allowing a rotation of personnel with excess capacity.
"I, the Baron of Strang, care not for your new names. Clans? Jade Falcons? I call you by your true name: Scum of the Star League, traitors of free will, persecutors of the Periphery come back to lord it over freedom-loving people. Come ahead, you steel-eyed robots! Come ahead and taste what a million like-minded people think of you and your damn Clans!"

-Baron Stepan Von Strang

cawest

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #443 on: 27 February 2020, 16:20:11 »
It would be funny is someone paints "student driver" on any new mech or tank that Smith might get. 

paulobrito

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #444 on: 27 February 2020, 16:21:58 »
Some serious studies on the use of ECM mechs and ways to defeat then is guaranteed - after all Yorinaga use then very well.

shadowdancer

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #445 on: 27 February 2020, 21:19:10 »
Great chapter. A wonderful read. Thanks!
Wishing the Worse on your Enemies
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Kwic

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #446 on: 27 February 2020, 22:04:25 »
Excellent work chris.  Thank you.
Great character work and action sequences. 
Can’t wait for more. 

Siden Pryde

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #447 on: 27 February 2020, 22:44:16 »
Nicely done.  :thumbsup:  Loving the battle scenes, and Smith's commentary on things.

Kujo

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #448 on: 27 February 2020, 23:11:36 »
Oh my God, just drop the quill, mike or whatever for this chapter Chris, your are done and we are blown away!!!!  AWESOME!!!!!!!
For the FEDCOM For the Archon-Prince

Intermittent_Coherence

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Re: This Was Easier on the Tabletop - a Battletech SI Fic
« Reply #449 on: 28 February 2020, 06:12:15 »
It would be funny is someone paints "student driver" on any new mech or tank that Smith might get.
I doubt it would be a tank though. Even if TPTB don't gift him with another top end mech there's at least that Dragon that headcapped itself on his pulse lasers.

 

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