FuH Chapter 14

=Fighting Uphill - Chapter 14=
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==* Intermission *==
===Discovery===
29th July, 3013
Helm System
Free Worlds League
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The artillery shell went off right in front of Candace's Cyclops. The concussion from the blast and the sub-munitions impacting her mech rattled Candace again and drove her mech back a couple steps. Her mech's ballistic reinforced armor resisted the damage far better than most other armor types would have, but there wasn't much of it left after the beating it had taken so far.
A damage riddled Atlas charged through the stem of the rising small mushroom cloud the shell had created, running far faster than it should have been able to. It's torso was tucked down, not in a position to fire its weapons, and its pilot was clearly going to try to ram Candace. Candace fired everything she had at the Atlas: Gauss Rifle, Medium Lasers, even the LRMs which were loaded with the better variety of ammo that had shorter arming times and thus shorter minimum ranges. Almost everything hit the Atlas and it stumbled, falling flat on its face into the dirt and skidding to a stop at the feet of Candace's Cyclops.
A glance at her battle map told Candace that her side was winning. Her mercenaries were just about done with their counterparts and would be hitting the Lyran flank shortly. Duncan's forces were all still in the green damage wise and were moving to hit the Lyrans' other flank while Janos' forces seemed to be letting them; Candace didn't know why that was, but she hoped Duncan wasn't letting himself get flanked in turn. And the Lyrans appeared to be running out of mechs faster than Candace's Capellans were.
The Lyrans seemed to know it too because instead of continuing to fight a holding action, they were driving an offensive straight at Candace, apparently determined to take out the Capellan leader before they went down.
Two Behemoths appeared out of a wall of smoke created by burning trees and mechs. Both were clearly damaged. Both seemed to have their Gauss Rifles hanging limp at odd angles or were clearly outright broken. Both were fired upon by CCAF mechs defending Candace. Both didn't care as the one on the left blasted a Capellan Cataphract out of its way with eight medium lasers while the one on the right simply swatted aside a Capellan Wolverine with one arm. Candace alpha striked the left one, and it simply shrugged off everything she threw at it.
As Candace took a step back to give her weapons time to cycle, she heard Duncan's voice over the common open frequency.
"Lyran forces, this is General Duncan Marik." Duncan declared melodramatically. "Janos Marik is dead! You have no cause here to support any more. Stand down and surrender!"
The Behemoths ignored Duncan and continued to stalk towards Candace. Candace threw another alpha strike at the left one, and this time it stumbled and fell as its right leg came off at the hip. The other Behemoth seemed less than impressed and fired three of its medium lasers at Candace. The range was long and only one stuck, but it burned through what little remained of the armor on her Cyclops' right arm. An alert sounded, and the internal structure diagram of the arm turned yellow, but nothing vital seemed to be hit. Yet.
"Buzz off, kid." a gravely voice replied on the open frequency. "We're under orders from the Archon himself to secure this cache, Janos or no Janos."
"Then you leave me no choice." Duncan replied as if he had hoped the Lyran commander would say that. "Soldiers of the Free Worlds League Military, CHARGE!"
A veritable storm of LRM fire rained down on the Behemoth stalking Candace, followed moments later by autocannon shells and lasers coming from Candace's left. The Behemoth collapsed, unable to take the assault.
"What the hell? What are you Marik Militia doing???" the Lyran Commander demanded.
Candace glanced at her tactical display again. Duncan's forces were hitting the Lyrans front flank. Janos Marik's Marik Militia were flooding into the Lyran rear left flank.
"We never liked you snobby Lyrans anyway." said someone whose voice Candace didn't recognize.
"Candace, darling," Duncan said in the snobbiest tone Candace had ever heard from him, "please inform everyone than Uncle Janos' Marik Militia have joined my cause. We wouldn't want any friendly fire accidents now."
"Knock, knock." Candace said over the open frequency. "Open the door and let us in."
The battle was over for the moment. For the Dragoons, it had almost been a stroll in the park compared to some of the other battles that they've fought in the Inner Sphere. Part of it was because most of the Lyran's mercenaries weren't very good, and the few that were had started the fight low on ammo and with lots of battle damage already. Duncan Marik's force had gotten off the lightest, what with not only not actually fighting their counterparts on Janos' side, but them deciding to join Duncan's. The Capellan main body had taken the worst of it and would need a lot of time repairing and rearming before they were ready to fight again.
Unfortunately, the Donegal Guards would be landing first.
So with Duncan's relatively fresh Oriente Fusilliers and Hussars pushing the remaining Combine forces out of the area and the surviving Steiners all surrendered and captured, Candace's entire expedition was busy doing what repairs and rearming they could. Meanwhile, Candace herself was going after the cache while Jaime and the other senior expedition commanders listened in.
"Uh, sorry, no one is home." replied a voice that Jaime hadn't heard in years. "Please leave a message and your contact information at the sound of the beep and one of our operators will call you back as soon as possible. BEEP."
"Listen, mercenary." Candace growled. Although coming from her, it sounded more like a cat purring than a growl. "If you make my forces shoot our way in there, things will go very badly for you."
"Really? Because this is a Star League fortress." the mercenary replied. "It's totally invulnerable."
"Really." Candace replied irritably. "First, there is no such thing as totally invulnerable. Secondly, it looks like someone already did most of the work trying to blast their way in through the very door I'm looking at. My engineers that all it will take is fifteen minutes of shooting at most for us to get inside."
"I dunno." the mercenary said slowly. "Your engineers could be wrong. Maybe your time would be better spent on the welcoming party for the Donnegal Guards that are coming? You know, the guys whose boss is signing my paycheck?"
"Very well then, Mercenary." Candace replied. "You leave me no other..."
"Senior Colonel, this is Colonel Jaime Wolf." Jaime interrupted. "Would you allow me to negotiate?"
There was a slight pause on the line.
"Very well, Colonel." Candace finally replied. "Have at it."
"Cranston." Jaime said.
"Oh, hey boss!" Cranston Snord replied cheerfully. "Oh, wait, you are not my boss anymore. Which means I cannot open any doors for you. Sorry!"
Even though Candace wasn't physically present with Jaime, he could just feel her staring hard at him.
"Cranston." Jaime said again. "What do you bid in defense of this facility?" Now he could feel the eyes of the other Dragoons were physically present staring hard at him.
He shouldn't do this, Jaime knew, but Cranston had already let slip that they were connected. Of course, that wasn't exactly secret. Any investigation by the Inner Sphere would reveal that Cranston had been "kicked out" of the Dragoons for abandoning his post back in 3006. Although at this point, Jaime wondered how many people would actually believe it.
"Bid?" Cranston said, startled. "Um, why, uh..."
"What do you bid in defense of this facility?" Jaime said again firmly.
"Uh, one lance of mechs, two lances of vehicles, a platoon of infantry." Cranston listed off, his Clan upbringing and training coming to the force.
"Now, am I going to have to come in shooting and personally kick you out?" Jaime asked.
"Is Natasha with you?" Cranston asked.
"Does it matter?" Jaime asked back. As a matter of fact, the answer was no. Candace true to her word had allowed the mercenary commands to only bring to Helm what they wanted to bring, and leave behind any forces they felt were necessary to safeguard their dependents back at Oriente. Jaime had decided to leave among other things, Natasha and her Black Widows because they had just hired a new batch of recruits right before the news about Helm had broken.
"No, I guess not." Cranston replied, sounding defeated. "Fine, I'll open the door, but only if I get safe passage out system. Oh, and I want to keep a few artifacts that I found here."
"What artifacts?" Candace asked suspiciously.
"There a complete collection of twenty second century vintage reprints of late twentieth century comic books in here." Cranston said enthusiastically. "Whoever stuffed this place must have been a collector!"
"Are you serious?" Candace said disbelievingly.
"Senior Colonel." Jaime said with an honest, exasperated sigh, "Cranston Snord is a collector of 'antiquities'. It is why we kicked him out of the Dragoons in the first place."
"We don't have time for this." Candace said impatiently. "Fine. Whatever. Take your comics and go. But be warned; if we find this place looted and empty, I am going to consider it a violation of your agreed upon parole and have your Dropship blown out of the sky as it takes off."
"Uh, no ma'am, this place is still stuffed full." Cranston said quickly. "Good luck moving it all."
Under the eyes of Candace Liao, Duncan Marik and a battalion of Saint Ives Lancers and another battalion of Oriente Fusilliers, the front door to the Star League facility ground open. Emerging from the portal came Cranston's Irregulars, four mechs and eight vehicles as Snord said he had. Two of those vehicles were flat bed trucks of the kind used to transport battlemechs; they had suspiciously fresh coats of paint and were loaded with crates big enough to hide entire mechs inside them. Those were presumably Snord's "comic books".
Candace let them pass. If there was any significant amount of inventory missing from the cache, Snord's dropship was going to eat naval grade PPC fire before it could even leave atmosphere.
With but a hand gesture from Candace and nod from Duncan after the last Irregular vehicle had passed, one Liao mech and one Marik mech went inside. They'd barely been inside for thirty seconds before cursing came over the radio.
"What is it?" Duncan asked the scouts, alarmed. "What's wrong?"
"Sir." the Marik mechwarrior replied laughing. "We've hit the bloody jackot!"
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1st August, 3013
Donnegal Guard LZ, Helm
Free Worlds League
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Subcommander Luke McHenry of the First St Ives Lancers watched as the Dropships of the Lyran Donnegal Guard landed on Helm. Overhead, there were flashes in the sky and the Donegal Guard's Dropships and Monitors clashed with their Liao and Free Worlds League counterparts.
With their void signature systems, McHenry's recon company was uniquely capable of keeping a close eye on the Lyrans as they landed and count their forces as they deployed from their dropships. And "close" meant that McHenry and his company were standing practically inside the Lyrans' security perimeter, unseen on hill slopes that no one in their right mind would land a Dropship on. McHenry had already counted far too many heavy, assault, and superheavy mechs for his liking. There were some medium and light mechs, but they were a tiny, tiny minority. Hard lines running from the mechs of McHenry's lance to camouflaged laser transmitters relayed everything his mech was seeing to the Senior Colonel and her command.
Luckily, none of the Lyrans seemed to have active probes or McHenry's company would have been screwed by now. Then again, Lyrans didn't typically fight Capellans who were the most profligate users of stealth technology in the Inner Sphere.
Near McHenry's position, four hemispherical Dropships landed. They were on the small side for Dropships, hemispheres only a little larger than a Leopard. They were covered in weapon turrets, but lacked any large doors for mechs or vehicles that McHenry could see. McHenry didn't recognize their models. Targeting one of them, McHenry's warbook identified it as a Great Tortoise class assault Dropship. There was a note from the Ministry of the Military that the Great Tortoise was a new Lyran assault Dropship, one the Maskirovka said was likely designed to support Lyran ground forces.
Which was patently ridiculous, McHenry thought. A proper ground support Dropship would be an aerodyne so that it could properly maneuver in atmosphere and do bombing and strafing runs like oversized aerospace fighters. The Great Tortoise was clearly a spheroid Dropship, and all it could do was move up an down while in atmosphere as moving sideways was difficult for them; any moment of imbalance on their fusion drives – caused by say... people shooting at them – would cause a spheroid Dropship to crash. Were these Great Tortoises intended to defend Dropship landing zones? If so, why hadn't they landed first.
McHenry got his answer when the Great Tortoise closest to him lifted itself up slightly on its four heavily armored landing legs, and then lifted one leg off the ground to take a step forward.
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