**Week 1**
Howdy. Eastwood Actual here—no that aint my name nor is it a real call sign I use for ops, it just sounds cool. Bossman gave me a platform to express myself, since I dont interact much. Said to treat it like a holovid interview. That mans always looking for an angle, so I assume this'll be chopped and edited and uploaded over some epic cam footage for a future tri-vid series. So im imagining you listening to this as you watch epic action scenes of me an my unit as we kick ass, or as some stock eulogy footage from my funeral plays followed with a PSA about the dangers of mercenary life. Honestly he will sell anything to anyone if they got c-bills.
Figured Id start by describing the members of the unit I fight with. Cant start by describing myself, thats too vain, and I prefer to be humble. Dont go thinkin I have some deep insight into these people either, I just call it like I see it and I see no need to probe into petty details like 'why they are working here' or 'what they did before this'. Hell, in battle Bossman insists on encrypted comms and untraceable call signs so half the time I dont know if its the same person in the mech next to me each mission.
First one that caught my eye is the Shadowhawk pilot. Out of the cockpit most of Shadowhawk's features are obscured by a helmet... not the cool kind or the hidden identity kind. The kind you have to wear when you have holes in your skull, and a bump will KILL you. See it a lot on a certain kind of person. Before we get to that, if you dont know many mechwarriors will shave their hair on the main contact points in the neuro helmet. Now I dont ascribe to this, but hell if I have hair after the accident, so you cant trust me to provide an example. But how the hell can hair interfere with a magnetic brain scanner, unless you wash your hair with iron sand? Hogwash. Still, mechwarriors besides myself are a superstitious lot, so if one person says shaving your hair gives you an edge in battle, then you can bet a donkey on tuesday that the new trendy haircut is gonna be a patched shaved mess on all the contact points with the left over hair styled in some flashy way; I think it looks like you lost a fight with sheep shears. Anyway, the contact points on the heavy helmet DO rub a bit since these standard issue neurohelmets need direct scalp contact on account of the field strength being so low, to the point ive been known to treat myself to a spa scalp massage instead of the comfort of a lady after a long battle. It rubs enough that you get people like this Shadowhawk pilot. If you are the obsessive type, and pilot a mech A LOT, I mean constantly training, especially as a kid, well you can wear your skull down. The constant pressure can dent a skull, and any bumps or falls knock right into the same spot each time to the point it can right kill you with all the pressure that swells up. So these pilots tend to wear crap over their head out of the cockpit, to protect their sore spots and ease the swelling. I hear the SLDF helmets didnt need direct contact, thus no rubbing and constant bumps directly to the brain, but I dont ascribe to that. Aint no way you run a big army and give everyone some fancy high tech brain scanner... they was getting bumped up just as bad as us id wager, and half the stories of magic star league tech is just that, stories.
Bringing this back, well I reckon this shadowhawk pilot, whose elite as hell they say, must be middle aged and suffering from multiple concussions from a life lived more in a cockpit then outside. This fool is downright PRECISION with a medium laser, and I aint seen him ever shoot nothing else. All he does is practice his laser drills. Middle aged also makes sense where he got all his buy in money. I heard we all put in the same stake in this little venture, and I know I had to cash out 7 generations of pension from under my old man the day he named me successor to his Eridani Legacy for the buy in money. Aint no way Shadowhawk made his money if he is my sweet young age, what with his rattled brain. Well, unless the helmet is just cause he drives a motorcycle, and im wrong bout something, but dollars to donuts I bet I got him pegged. Someone with that much practice with a medium laser, im guessing some Kurita family where I hear they beat ya for not mastering your craft, or he is a Kali Death Cult fanatic. Heck, them death cult wouldnt stop at shaving for better neurohelmet contact, they'd put holes in their skulls by choice to get even closer to their machine. Now I could easily confirm my suspicions by just asking the dude, but if im right and he IS Kali Death Cult? Aint no way im talking one of them up and winding up better for it. Plus, I know he aint Steiner, he is too competent, and he aint Davion cause he is riding a Davion custom Shadowhawk, no way he makes it that obvious. And im Marik born, and he aint like me. That leaves Drac or Liao, and one of them has a deathwish and the other has a death cult... so ill keep my distance either way thank ye kindly.
**Week 7**
Eastwood Actual logging in. Damn boss man and this rural ass planet. We've been here for weeks and this is only the first fight we have had. He tricked me with this garrison contract, sayin it gets raided all the time. I thought 'raided all the time' meant week after week of kickin ass and takin names. Apparently its once every few months before the export shipments head out. That aint all the time! Still, it was fun putting steel to steel again. The raiders were light on mechs, mostly just mechanized infantry good at looting warehouses in their SRM equipped pickup trucks. A hatchetman and commando were the mech support, but the meat was the heavy armor... a real treat on this backwater. The princess of the ball was a pair of Behemoth tanks, real beauties. Sad for them, this is a water planet, and what isnt water is wetland jungle. So converting the vehicles for amphibious assaults cut some of the teeth outta everything. The Behemoths were stuck on the road, the only area they could really maneuver, and the locals know it. They cleared all the jungle cover leading up to the city, and built an 18 meter tall wall that doubles as a water break for storm flooding in the rainy season. Up on the wall we had our trainees in urbanmech blasting away. Yeah, another thing im sore with Bossman over is these snot nosed local brats. Apparently we get a big bonus for training up the local Steiner boys while on garrison duty, and these blue billys are all the rich local kids whose parents bought mechs for, so the parents get to act as lords and ladies and knights of the great Lyran Realm while their brats play soldier. God I hate Steiner blue bloods, you cant even duel them cause when any of them die its apparently a contract breach! Whats the point of garrison duty if you cant even pick fights with the locals? Anyway, walls with snot nosed nobles firing autocannons is better then walls with no auto cannons, so I did them the courtesy of checkin in on them and telling them when to get down or drop out of the fight. I let others direct their firepower, dont want to mess with my hunt. So besides these Behemoths stuck on a long featureless road that made them sitting ducks, they also had the usual striker and hetzer support to back up the infantry with missile and anti-tank firepower. Not as exciting, but still fun to explode.
Battle started out a bit sketch, as the gate funneled the enemy into one spot but its not like we have heavy artillery. Shame that, but it does take some of the fun outta killin. The supped up Shadowhawk was the first to strike out past the wall, raiding the enemy. LT in his Archer was kind enough to lay down smoke to cover our probing attacks, but the enemy made a right believer in the divine outta that Shadowhawk pilot of ours... He was fine mind you, and he took out a Behemoth up close and personal, but he ate a fist full of bees and a few cannon sucker punches in the process, and he swore that wouldnt happen again. The Griffin pilot of ours, still didnt catch his name as im the quiet type, stepped up next, blocking the gate and kicking fools who dared push past. The wolverine pilot made use of his infernos, and took out probably a third of the 6 infantry platoons himself. Meanwhile LT's archer didnt stop firing from behind the wall till the last vee was dead. He musta hit override on his reactor at least 3 times—bet he wishes he was standing on the other side of the wall in that wetlands water to cool off by the end of it—enemy fire is preferable to the heat sometimes. Im speaking from experience here, boy if you could see the burned up right side of my face you'd know I can attest to all but the devils heat. The enemy had a few AA guns mounted on bulldog tanks, and while they retreated once we immobilized the main tank force, Old Clint took a few hits. Im not a superstitious man—the only higher power I believe in dont play dice with the universe—but the damned enemy put a small round through my torso ring and hit my girls engine. It was hotter then the inner thighs of a Steiner lady in jeans running a mile in heels. I did my own fair share of reactor over rides, as I couldnt bring myself to stop shooting. In the end, the tanks were brought down by flanking fire as they closed in on the defended gate, which offered multiple lanes of cross fire, and the only tricky bit was making sure the infantry didnt push into the city past the gate. Rooting out infantry once they get inside a building is easy, cept Steiner wanted to keep the city intact, so instead it's hard. Thus we had to step up and intercept. My Gal loads flak shot just for that reason, the rounds may not be great versus heavy armor but itll birdshot anything lighter straight to hell with the horse they rode in on. Even Mr Shadowhawk, loaded with more lasers then udders on a cow, was blasting away, getting the enemy one soldier at a time if need be. We made it out ok in the end, even salvaged both mechs thanks to well placed headshots, which is more then half the newly formed merc crews do im told. Also, pirate mechanized trucks go for a pretty penny on the Steiner market, as they love driving demilitarized vees as their civvie daily driver, so boss man says we done good that day.
***Week 10***
Eastwood Actual here. Today we are going to go over the formation of our not-so-motley crew. Ive been on this jungle world for 2 months now, so I gotta talk about something to someone, even if its just a vid recording, as im getting mighty bored. Sure as hell aint training no training cadre, that for others to worry about—dont care what the contract states I know where my talents lie. Anywho, no better place to begin then Home Base, a recently acquired union drop ship. The ink on the new owner's contract is so wet we haven't even renamed the ship yet, just took it over and sailed right out here to La Blon to enjoy our island vacation amidst all the killing. How we ended up with a union is a story thats been told a thousand times in the merc business... a crew comes together, pools their resources and strikes out on their own. Then, maybe on the first contract, maybe at the end of the year, well it turns out running a business or managing a company or leading troops in battle are totally different from the grunt work most mercs came from. Bills pile up or a job goes south, and before you know it the groups insolvent and someone with more money then sense buys them up wholesale. Course, our story is different—we are the ones with more money then sense and wont be the group that goes insolvent after a year. And yeah we might be the 1001st merc group to say that, but true is true. Anyway, I dont care much for small talk believe it or not, so I didnt speak to the dropper crew to hear what really went down. But the signs are there... lotta empty mech bays but few empty bunks, many picked over but not fully cleared out when we bought the left overs and hanger ons that came with this big bird. Honestly, I couldnt tell you who in our crew is from the old group we bought out, and who is new like me. I do know boss man picked this failed merc group to acquire mostly for their elite tech, and that elite tech was mostly for me. See, old Clint's got a bit of a reputation, and keeping a fine gal like her operating at star league spec's ain't something easy, or cheap. The Eridani managed her maintenance fine, but big outfit like that aint got the freedom I want. My pa and grandpa are still sore at me, what for taking that 7 generations of pension from them when I cashed out to join here. Their true family was always the light horse, so I dont get how they say I broke up the family... their still at home at the light horse and the troublemaker son is gone—they should thank me really. If they didnt want me to cash out the pensions then they shouldnt have made a kid like me the new head of the mechwarrior family as an academy graduation present. Anyway, besides buying into the current company I dont handle the money, Bossman's accountant does the figures, just know I had a lot of it and now I got a lot less, but you do right by a girl like Clint and she'll do right by you.
Speakin of Bossman, I honestly dont know how he pulled such an elite crew together. Dont even know if he fights, seeing as thats why he has us. He handles the money, he handles the contracts, he handles the talent... why if I were a suspicious man id be downright wary of what he could do. I do suspect that a certain level of talent, people like myself, lose interest in more money in favor of their hobbies... and our hobby is playing war. People like us need people like him to keep us entertained, before we brew up our own trouble. Heck few of the crew already came with hits on them from the pirate groups in the area, swearing to 'send troops after us this' and 'we cant escape' that... dont threaten me with a good time! Still, Bossman figures Steiner pays well, and Kurita's border is worth the fight, so one way or another all us battle junkies are here.
We still got a cool 30 million in the warchest, and thats after buying the leftovers of a merc group dropship and all. Still dont know where the others found their portion of the hundreds of millions of cbills this outfit took to bring together. Maybe its best I dont ask them kind of questions to potential Kali Death Cult Assassins—which I still havent ruled out as a possibility.
***Week 14***
Eastwood Actual coming live after the rumble in the jungle finished up. Finally some action comes are way, and wouldnt ya know it was just a miserable slog in the ****** jungle. I dont care what anyone says, the enemy that day wasn't the pirates, it was the damn trees and muck and slime and water just determined to crawl up our asses. Did I, with my certified elite skills trip and fall. Yes. I aint too proud to admit it. However, I maintain that the second time I ended up on the ground was not a fall, but a dive for cover. I saw that autocannon wizz past my head right where I would have been, were I standing, thus me falling prone made that shot miss. AKA it counts as a dodge, and intentional or not I that fall was a dodge maneuver. Thus I only fell one time that counts. The shadowhawk pilot fell twice for real in that personal hell of trees and vines, and by rights with all the scrambled brains that kid has it was only by Gods Providence that he aint in a coma with all beating he took. And I said kid, not middle aged man like I initially predicted. Finally got a good look at him when the medics pulled him out of his helmet and started treating his wounds for all the fall damage he took, checking for yet another concussion. Damn kids my age, and I aint but 2 decades round the sun. How the hell'd he practice so much with a medium laser to get that good? I can read a name tag at half a kilometer, and hit a badger in a honey hole with Clint's trusty 57mm at the same, but eye sights a god givin talent I had the grace to be born with. What he has is learned, which is why I pegged him at 40 easy, but damn dude pulling off stunts like that at 20 aint natural. Still leaning Kali Death Cult, or some fanatic Kurita family that dont let you eat before taking 2000 practice shots with a medium laser each day.
Speaking of Shadowhawk Ninja Assassin, he sniped the gyro out a stalker with a rear shot, then passed by like he was bored of it. Who doesn't finish off a wounded stalker when given the chance? I had to mosey over and put a laser through Stalker's cockpit as Mr high and mighty Shadowhawk couldn't be bothered. Also, holey hell do them pirates hate the Shadowhawk and Griffin pilots. I found out where they got their hundreds of millions of cbills... they boosted it off the pirates, and used that as their buy in for the company. The pirates wouldnt shut up about it, blaring on open comms the whole fight. Them pirates were downright SPITEFUL about this... The enemy dragon mech, or the commander holding the command detonator button, literally detonated his own ammo bin when the Shadowhawk got near, just to deal some secondary damage to the Shadow pilot. I didnt see no eject either. You know how crazy you gotta be to blow yourself, or your subordinate, up like that? Im asking, I dont know cause im not that crazy. Then a mongoose tripped over itself in the jungle rushing all out to get to this guy, getting impossibly tangled up and ruining his mech just to get a little closer. Sure, like I said they did a number on this shadowhawk pilot, damn near got him if not for that grace o god I mentioned, and put a number on the griffin pilot too, who apparently they hate just as much. I even took a bunch of damage just being nearby to this fight with all the blowing crap up, as they insisted on danger close artillery that scattered onto me. You know they didnt even adujst fire? None of the infantry was talking to each other, no preplots, no walking fire, just pure panic fire whipped up as fast as they could manage. My baby is down a laser and jump jet thanks to their antics spraying artillery everywhere, all to do just a bit more damage to the Shadowhawk and Griffin. Hell some shells even landed on friendlies on their side.
As for the flow of the battle, you can tell the conventional force used to be lead by someone competent. They spent weeks infiltrating field gun infantry through the jungle, digging trenches and field works, to get into firing position of the space port with a full artillery company, plus a battalion of field guns infantry in support. It would have been brilliant, and a great win for them, if these other pirate who just hate the Griffin and Shadowhawk didnt show up in their mechs at the last minute to take over the operation from the local ground commander. Blaring challenges and insults to two of the garrison mercs aint a great way to launch a sneak attack on said garrison. So thanks crazy dead pirate mechwarrior people, you showing up really saved our bacon by usurping command from someone with a great plan and the ability to execute it.
LT sadly was busy baby sitting the training carde, but the Wolverine did fine work organizing things in LTs stead. Shame about missing LT in his Archer, he ordered up some spicy munitions that would have carved through those infantry. The wolverine picked up the slack in the spicy department, and did the majority of the infantry clean up, as his infernos popped field guns and field artillery with each hit that found home. He also took the least damage, as like me the Wolverine started at the back of the enemy formation and peeled them like and onion... unlike the Griffin and Shadowhawk that literally hot dropped onto the enemies center.
The Griffin brought a literal pair of knives to a gun fight, and made me quite sure he was an old retired gladiator. Then he immediately broke his first knife the first time he used it, and missed half the time he attacked. So now im questioning his background—I now know his money came from robbing pirates, so that dont fit the mold of a retired elite solaris gladiator. In the end, he was using that knife like a farmer uses an agro mech with a tiller, to scrape up the trenches and field works that the infantry were hiding in—he scraped up and replanted a lotta men this day, just a sea of arms sticking up outta fresh plowed dirt looking like 5 fingered daises. Dude is wicked fast with a blade, but I think that was his first time using a blade against armor. He is a quick learner though, towards the end of the fight I saw him stick his last remaining blade right in through the torso ring of an Ostscout, and twist into the engine and low mounted laser. He also stopped missing with half his attacks. They say third times the charm, so after 2 sets practice swings he got the hang of using blades on his mech... meaning he learned you dont snap your blade by going tip point to flat armor.
The butchers bill wasnt so bad at the end—well for us anyway. Not for all the dead other guys, who either died or were blown up by their own side trying to run away from us. The infantry were ordered to fire the mech scale guns and artillery constantly, instead of being sneaky and clever and doing right by infantry in a fighting retreat. Them pirate mechs in charge really cut the enemies effectiveness down. It was a huge slog in the jungle, but it would have been a lot worse if the infantry fought guerrilla style, abandoned their field guns, and fought tree to tree in cover like your supposed to when mechs get uppity on you. Asked Bossman about it, he said the pirates used slaves with command detonated explosives as the bulk of their ground forces, and all the infantry were bound in position unable to leave a certain radius to ensure they'd fight to the death. Not sure if I'm supposed to feel bad bout killing them all. Asked Shadowhawk about it, he said its good they wanted to kill their own ground troops if they disobeyed orders, as those crazy pirate mechs gave crazy orders and that made things easier for us. Definitely want to agree with him, as who wants to fight infantry falling back in the jungle where you gotta fight more and more just to find a place to stand, but that does sound like the answer a Kali Death Cult assassin would give, so I didnt press the matter further. I did ask about air support, as in where was it. Bossman said he's working on it, but the Pirates brought 5 AC carriers loaded with flak so even if Bossman wanted to order close air support, whoever was in charge of the pirates originally had thought of that and blocked off air support from bombing his artillery. Hence why we had to insert from orbit from Home Base and go in without air power at our back.
