TEFAC Chpt 7

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==Chapter 7 - Time Enough For A Cat - - Pump priming, forge stoking, and other ironmongery preparations -==
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====Working logistics of the next Mission====
Dropship Argo in high orbit
Panzyr, Aurigan Coalition
August 10th, 3024
Looking around the meeting room, I was vaguely impressed for once. We were actually approaching a decent number of officers, and it was starting to prove its worth. Supply was talking with Yang, discussing parts for Battlemechs; while our Dropper captains were chatting with Sumire and Murad about repairs, upgrades, and handling. I myself had been talking with Medusa off and on about integrating her company into operations, and Emma had even gotten the majors of the two infantry battalions in here to talk shop. We were making progress! 
Then Lady Arano walked in, and slammed a packet on the table hard enough to bounce off and scatter. "Word just came in from a JumpShip. Four battalions fighting in my name have been raised on Smithton. We need to get there as soon as possible to provide relief and additional combat arms, or they're going to get hunted down and killed." 
 
The room immediately burst into an uproar, and I slowly facepalmed. You know what, the kid was learning. Slowly. Unfortunately, Mersies was elbowing me in the side with a very pointed glare. As Arano firebrand'd the room into a furor, I looked over the sheets, before wincing hard enough to pull my feet off the floor and leave me spinning slowly in zero-g. It was shocking enough to stop the speech, and for Arano to look at me.
 
"Is something the matter, Major Nyan?" Arano asked. 
 
"Yeah," I said, grabbing Mersies' shoulder and pulling myself down to the floor. "I'm in a bit of a pickle." 
 
"Talk me through it?"
 
"Alright, so short version? We got shellacked," I explained, tabbing through the folder and pulling out damage diagrams. "My lance didn't take much internal damage, but all of my armor elements have been beat to shit and I might need to re-gun my Po. Worse, though, is the fact our only assault-weight lance got savaged. I've got severe internal damage on a Crusader and Banshee to fix, plus most of the armor getting blasted off a Stalker and Shadow Hawk. That, plus suit losses in the battle armor? I need downtime." 
 
"People are fighting in my name, right now," Arano said, hissing. "Do you want me to abandon them?" 
 
"Not only no, but hell no. That said, there needs to be a plan," I said stiffly. "The first part of that plan is called 'The Borozoi is not available for this mission' and the second part is called 'neither are most of your heavy assets', so let's start from there and work our way out." 
 
"So what are you bringing to the table, then?" 
 
"You've still got the Irukandji," I said, ticking off my hands. "That's recon. You have two battalions of infantry, who to be honest at this point are getting pretty good and are at full strength. You've got the Argo, all hail the great space whale of a mothership, which means you can probably move more than two battalions if you're willing to carry some of them in spectacular discomfort. You've got the Marauders, who are honestly turning into a decent light spec ops team."
 
"I'm working on fixing the 'light' part, relax!" Wyrm yelled at me.
 
Sighing, Arano took the hint. "Alright. If I have to go without you, I can do that. It'll mean more ferry-work for the Leopard since that's the only mech dropper we'll have, but I can work with that. How long until you're ready to catch up with us?" 
 
"It'll probably be about a month," I admitted. "We put the order in late June, after Weldry, and it should be… call it eighty days of transit?"
 
"Fine, but I want to see you come November first." 
 
"Fine by me."
-----
====More Supplies and New Equipment====
'Fort Snowball, Officer's Quarters
Panzyr
September 18th, 3024
Waking up groggily, I tried to remember what was on today's schedule. It was probably important, but as it was the weekend and yesterday had once again involved me getting entangled in a menage a trois with Mersies and Howler I was a little shaky until that first cup of coffee. Extracting myself from the bed and finding my pants and my coffee cup, I went over to the little kitchenette in my suite. 
 
Fort Snowball, or Firebase Snowball, or Fucking Scrap n Snow, was the project of a lot of bored Mechwarriors, leg infantry, and BA infantry who'd been told in no uncertain terms we could not just borrow houses in town. To that end, we'd been slowly and painfully cleaning out the starport, building our fortification-cum-housing projects in the dead zones around the aerodyne transport runways so we had nice clean fields of fire. Most of it had been built out of reconditioned scrap metal, also known as "flattened by expediently tap-dancing mechs across it" before getting pumped full of cement and then lifted into position. Dedicated armored concrete it was not, but for the bits that were actually important to be shell resistant we had dirt and lots of leg infantry to dig with. 
 
My mobile repair stations- all two of them- had been set up in some concrete barns, and we were slowly and steadily plugging away at building them up into proper full mech bays. Unfortunately, that was still time we weren't fixing mechs- and there were a lot of mechs to fix. If I had the Argo, I'd have had all my units repaired by now, but I didn't. Hell, if I had a spare Union I could be done by now- but the primitive facilities meant more tech hours, more tech errors, and more pain in the ass time spent working on retrofits. This was especially bad for the Royal Guard's mechs, whom all needed some serious overhauls due to eating structure damage and losing guns. It was multiple days of work to replace the shot-out class ten autocannon in Gazer's ride, and a blown ammo feed kept Tokomak's Crusader down for a week. 
 
This all said though? We had techs, we had time, and most importantly I had brought a shitload of spare parts before we went to the Federated Suns. Spare parts would just keep, and keep, and keep until we needed them. Now that we did need them, they got used, and then we finished up with the mechs and it was suddenly straight into boredom.
 
So: beautiful Saturday morning, two wonderful women in my bed, three people's morning meds on the counter (my thyroid, Howler's progesterone, Mersies' birth control boosters) and nothing to do. So why did I feel like I was forgetting something? As I grabbed my coffee cup- still empty- as it tried to rattle off the counter, I frowned. It was big. We'd gotten a call about it Thursday. Keeping the carafe in the coffee maker centered with my free hand, I scratched the side of my chin with the coffee mug and thought idly about shaving. Yeah, should probably do that today too. 
 
Then Mersies woke up, looked at me, and slapped her face. "Tam you gobsmacked idiot get your brain working!"
 
"But coffee," I elegantly replied. 
 
"Gallowglass that's our fucking supply dropship coming in!" 
 
Ah yeah, that'd explain the window rattling, and the table rattling, and the coffee cup trying to fall off the counter. "Mmmm." 
 
"You weren't kidding," Howler muttered from her spot in the bed. "He really is about as useful as my old cock before he gets a few cups of coffee in him." 
 
"I love the lunk to bits, but yeah," Mersies muttered. "Can you please make sure he remembers to put on a coat before he comes out to sign for the shipments?"
 
"Eh, sure."
 
I will decline to notarize what the next half-hour contained, except for the fact I had abandoned the coffee cup in favor of taking the whole carafe out when I went to meet the dropship captains. I was surprised I got two, but as it turned out, there was a reason. The first, a fairly good-condition Buccaneer, was the cargo carrier bringing us our goods: spare parts, Artemis IV ammunition, more guns, and the real goodies- a shitload of parts kits. We had a whole-ass factory refit setup for the Banshee and Stalker we'd just fucking fixed, plus three refit crates for our Shadow Hawks. 
 
The second, though, was a fairly new Union- and it was ours. Refit into another mixed company carrier, this one brought eight squads of battle armor, eight APCs, and two heavy bays that were supposed to be 'support assets.' The catch was, however, was that this was one of the latest graduating classes from the Magistracy Military Academy system. The generally quite corrupt Magistry Military Academy system, that had more bribery and sexual abuse scandals than it had students. 
 
Which only intensified the problem in that it was delivered bereft of mechs and heavy vehicles, but loaded with a full complement of pilots! Sure, the battle armor squads were distinctly average, but now I had nearly a dozen Dispossessed mechwarriors begging for rides and full pilot pay, instead of the one-third cut of standard I had set aside for this sort of thing. 
 
Still, I could deal- and more importantly, I did deal by immediately bunking them in with the infantry. Nothing washed out bad Mechwarriors faster than dealing with peasant footsloggers, especially peasant footsloggers from a godforsaken iceball that kept using 'chuka?' as a terminal suffix. Sure enough, I'd been rid of half of them before the week was up. 
 
Now, though, came the more pressing issue- the, ah, "friendly staff request" I'd put in. This came in the form of forty children, ages ranged fifteen to seventeen, of both genders… who all came tapped for DNI mech hookups. Literally all of them. Apparently, Mom had decided "I want to teach some classes on this," had taken her class of apprentice nightmares over to Luxen, and grabbed literally everyone halfway through puberty who wanted to be a 'mech pilot to get them socket-fitted. I was naturally appalled, and wasn't sure what was worse- the fact she'd sent forty DNI pilots, or eighty DNI cockpit wiring kits. 
 
Still, a quick investigation (while dodging the inevitable "Poor Mersies, having to deliver that many litters of kids" jokes) proved that the older kids were competent at least, and had jack-to-Neurohelmet setups already, so I could just drop them in the surplus of light and medium mechs I had and be done with it. The ex-MAF pilots who came with were quite disappointed by this, but considering those that didn't desert immediately were getting kitted out to serve as short-term staff officers, I didn't care. 
 
Then, of course, there was the Highlander. I couldn't ignore the elephant in the room, mostly because nobody would stop bugging me about the damn thing. Seriously, it's a Royal 'mech, they're not that great. A cut above the modern trash, sure, but that wasn't saying much! Fortunately, with the Union here, I could get it refit to a DNI cockpit without too much issue- even if there was much salt about downgrading its SRM pack from six missiles to four. Sure, I could have pulled out the gyro, but frankly I didn't see a reason to at this time- that would involve cracking the CT open, and that meant a lot of time and effort I could not be assed for investing until I had a pilot selected for the mech. 
 
This all took about two days, and then it was time to foist Fort Snowball off on the locals, and make best speed for the jump point.
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====Why buy many so Valkyries??====
Smithton Orbitals
Aurigan Coalition
October 8th, 3024
"Well, Arano," I said with a spright of cheer. "How'd your first independent planetary liberation go?"
 
Arano, who'd somehow pulled the whole damn thing off without needing me or my mechs there, just remained flopped over in her chair under the AC duct, staring at me with the kind of unabridged hostility an infantryman who sees their EAS date coming down the pike would to a recruiter whom dearly wanted them to re-up for another tour. 
 
"Fuck off," she muttered. 
 
"That well, then?"
 
"I want to ban trench warfare forever."
 
"Absolutely understandable."
 
"How many fucking landmines can one province have?!" she wailed, putting her head in her hands. "It was like we were tap-dancing through one every twenty minutes, and the infantry kept telling us it 'wasn't as bad as Weldry' and then there was that one motherfucker in a Cicada-" 
 
"It was the model with a PPC wasn't it." 
 
"It was." 
I winced. "At least it wasn't a Valkyrie?" I said, trying to take the sting out of my words. That just earned more groaning. 
 
"There was a Valkyrie too. God, why did Grandpa buy so many fucking Valkyries?" 
 
Behind me, the door clanked open, as Emma walked in with a pair of beers. Tossing one to Arano, she popped the other one with a universal key, falling down on the other chair. Blinking at the gravity, I remembered we were in the Argo's grav deck: there was in fact gravity, albeit kinda sputtery and liable to hitch a little when transferring back to the main hull. Sighing, Arano just took her beer and opened it, glaring up at the ceiling. 
 
"And how was your little campaign, Emma?" I asked my nominal charge.
 
"Urgh. I was leading our Valkyrie and Assassin around by the nose, those idiots couldn't walk in a straight line to save their lives. Can we please not do separated operations like this again?" 
 
"Unfortunately, no," I said, grimacing. "News came in before we jumped- Karosas Junior led an uprising on Itrom from where he was serving with House Gallas. We need to wrap this up, and quick."
 
"Well, the north half of the Reach is falling into line with a minimum of fuss," Emma said, "so we've got a secure flank at least. Turns out when your tax collectors go around with autorifles to kick in doors, people don't like you."
 
"Which means we need to start pushing south," I said, tapping my chin. "How's the administration here going?"
 
"Terribly!" Emma said with a cheer. "But less terribly than last time!"
 
"What she means is that Lord Karosas is here, and so's most of his government," Arano sighed. "He's raising regiments, and we have his dropship fleet to call on, but it's taking time. Time to do things 'right' and it's going to mean we're late to Itrom to back his son up." 
 
"Which means your infantry regiments are doing fine, right?"
 
Silence.
 
"Which means," I said slowly and a bit more deliberately this time, "your infantry regiments are doing fine. Right?" 
 
"There may have been some tunnel warfare," Emma said carefully, covering her older friend defensively. "A little trench warfare. Infantry casualties were a lot lower this time." 
 
This was setting off every vaguely almost senior leadership position alarm in my head like an Atlas ringing a church bell as an Overlord came down on a colony. "What do you mean, a little lower?"
 
"So only about twelve percent of the troops died," Arano said, which I then immediately tripled to get a casualty rating of thirty-six percent, total losses… about half. They'd taken their infantry formations and sawn them in half.
 
Putting my head in my hands, I looked at the pair of them. "You are, without a doubt, in need of someone to hold your hands still." 
 
"Listen, we tried getting them out of the tunnels, but they were killing civilians!" Emma snapped. "It was a frontal assault or nothing!" 
 
"Wait hold on hold on," I backpedaled. "Frontal assault?"
 
"Pretty much," Kamea said with a shrug. "I loaded up on infernos, and in we went."
 
"Okay," I admitted honestly. "I was gonna chew you out, but if you only racked up fifty percent casualties in a frontal assault then that's fine."
 
"It was closer to sixty," Emma muttered.
 
"Still, the fact you didn't lose literal battalions in that situation meant it went well. There's fights where you can avoid casualties, and frontal assaults in constricting terrain isn't one of them." 
 
Arano just sighed. "Great. Either way, Smithton is liberated. The fuck do we do now?" 
 
"Honestly, my short list of ideas? Support extant assets in secondary theaters, prepare for extended operations, or just cycle troops for rest and refit cycles."
 
"Well the third one's right out for you, since you just had yours," Kamea joked, before her eyes lit up. "What about heading to Itrom? Karosa's son is kicking up hell there, and it'll be a good move to keep them off-balance." 
 
"I'll see it done, then," I said, grinning. "Do y'all want to come with, or stay here?" 
 
"I'm staying," Emma groused. "I've got to oversee the dropship fleet and get jump collars lined up." 
 
"Same," Arano echoed. "My fault the Liberation Army got beat up, so I need to fix it." 
 
I just smiled. "One Itrom, served up on a plate, aye."
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====Problems to Solve====
Itrom, Nadir Jump Point
Aurigan Coalition
November 2nd, 3024
Aside from it having taken an embarrassingly long time to get everyone where they needed to go, we were going for Itrom. Now, I was down in the hold of the Borozoi, looking over the eleven kids who'd be piloting for me. They were all legal adults, for the purposes of the Magistry of Canopus, but they'd still be kids to me for a while yet- or at least, until the boys needed to shave regularly. 
 
"Alright, everyone, let's go over the drill again," I said pacing in front of the meeting board. Behind me, ears flicked and expressions danced- the children were eager for bloodshed. 
 
"As you all were told before you volunteered to come out here, you're mechwarrior apprentices with the new Canopian Direct Neural Interface System- thus the cat ears. Due to the operational realities of the system, once you pick a mech, that mech is yours forever. Because I am a kind-hearted soul who is not sure about your level of training, however, you may graciously use your Neurohelm Adaptors to handle some of our supply of shitbucket mechs until such point as we find you some decent metal."
 
More pacing, and looking over the cards for everyone. "Remember, we're going to be going over BattleRom footage once this is over, to see who does best. The better you fight, the sooner we get you in real metal. That said, the greatest virtue in a Mechwarrior is survival. Try not to need to punch out. Work very hard not to die. If things are dire, though, I won't hold bailing out against you." 
 
More silence, ears flicking and the background radiating tension at the youthful pilots. Then I got the fishbowl out. 
 
"We're doing a draft pick to see who gets to pilot this mission. Everyone, please write your name and position in the training company down on paper, and put them in the bowl."
 
Eleven drawings later, and I had my lances of kids ready to do or die. Christ, I hoped they didn't die. 
 
Touchdown, about a week later, was mostly unopposed. By landing down on the border of an abandoned northern continent, we avoided most of the risk of getting intercepted- it seemed it was a dead zone. Then we started running into problems. 
 
Problem one: Karosas Junior was AWOL. He'd kickstarted this shitshow, and disappeared after a particularly nasty loss. 
 
Problem two: the local infantry units were going full guerrilla warfare, which meant there was no centralized authority for us to link up to. 
 
Problem three: there was actually a battalion of Espinosa armor, backed up by Parata infantry, on-planet. 
 
Problem four, and the most serious: this mudball had literally zero replacement parts on it for anything. Not even an autocannon ammunition factory! To say that our opposition would be 'logistically challenged' would be an understatement; I expected spares to be at a premium and a lot of those vehicles to be performing under-spec. Which was pretty important, considering we'd be fighting them two to one! Really had to get with Madeira about that, this 'not knowing shit' was getting frustrating. 
 
The first two weeks of campaigning were, well, boring. I'd raid them, they'd try to raid me and get bombed by my Stukas, wash rinse repeat. While I played LRM slap-and-tickle with the 3rd Espinosa Armored and the 12th Parata Fusiliers, though, the battle armor teams were hard at work finding and reconstituting the foot infantry battalions that had gone to ground here. Even if my little herd of child soldiers wasn't exactly covering themselves in glory, we'd had exactly zero cases of dipshit yet, so I was in a pretty good mood. 
 
Then we found Junior.
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====Taking in the Intel and Ready to Go====
Camp Ice-Cream, Great Wheat Plains
Itrom, Aurigan Coalition
November 22nd, 3024
Looking over the recon pictures of a bunker complex, I sighed. "You have to be kidding me." 
 
"Nope," Mersies said, leaning up on my cubicle wall. "Guy's blitzed out of his mind on high grade medical cocaine. Doing it off the backs of strippers." 
 
"So you're telling me his 'resistance operation' was entirely to get a stranglehold of the illegal drug trade and set up a criminal empire," I grumbled. "I'm in physical pain, Mersies."
 
"If it were not for the laws of this land I would have told Mitchel to firebomb this dump already." 
 
"I hate the nobility." 
 
Radio crackling, one of the kids called in. "Major, this is Kasparov. We've got contact on the Espinosa troops, looks like two companies jacketing another two companies of the Grenadiers. They're en route to Camp Ice-Cream, about a hundred klicks out and moving at thirty-five kph or so."
 
"Good work, Kasparov," I said, getting my noteputer out to mark the axis of advance down on. "Do you think they've detected you yet?" 
 
"Negative, Major. They don't have any recon, but they're going really loud on the radios. A lot of unencrypted comms too, and I don't recognize some of their transports. Those look like superheavy transports? We don't know."
 
"Sounds fishy. Command Lance is moving up to support, while the rest of the battalion is going to prepare an L-ambush about three klicks out of base," I said, while composing the text notification to all hands for the same. Armor to serve as the roadblock, BA in the fields hiding in the flood control trenches (perfectly safe, it was a clear day and had good forecasts for two weeks out of it staying clear) and infantry manning our newly-kitbashed field guns hiding in the hemp forests that made up a lot of the local agriculture. Turning salvaged class two and class five autocannons into carriage guns made the local infantry very happy to help us, and while it wasn't a lot of firepower in the grand scheme of things, it did give them a tool to contribute to the mech fight. 
 
Right, all hands memo sent (which made the entirety of Camp Ice-Cream turn out like a kicked anthill), time to get mounted up. Rolling my shoulders, I just shut the door to my command tent and dropped trousers then and there. At her desk, Mersies was doing the same, as we grabbed bits of our cooling suits and started buttoning up. First came the flame-retardant pants, then the antifreeze harness that actually did temperature control. On top of that was our chicken plates, and then combat rigging. Torsos went much the same way, with the added fun of buttoning and sealing our shirts into our pants, then torso temp jackets, and yet more chicken plates. Some people mocked the concept of combat armor in the cockpit, but those people would probably die the first time their mech overheated and shut down in the field. Mech falls, cockpit damage, random snipers when you were getting into and out of mechs, random shrapnel: a set of good chicken plates were your insurance against this and many other issues. Pistol in one side of the plate, combat knife in the other, helmet on head, headset on helmet- yeah. Now I'm ready to roll. Opening the flap to the tent and running for the revet where my Catapult was, I smiled as a half-dozen other kids mirrored my actions, yelling to their techs to clear the revets. 
 
Then I was climbing the chain link ladder to my cockpit. Once inside, all I had to do was start pre-fight and jack in. Ammo bays were full, heat sink coolant was full, external power was lighting off the reactor, and I was good! 
 
"Alright everyone," I said. "All formations, check in." 
 
"Armor lance, reporting operational."
 
"Locust lance, ready and waiting!"
 
"Battle armor Alpha company, mounted." 
 
"Battle armor Bravo company, mounting up, ready in 5." 
 
"Royal Guard, ready to go." 
 
"Battle armor company Charlie, down two APC for repairs."
 
Shaking my head, I sighed. New guys. "Company charlie, have your troopers fall in with the leg infantry. We've talked about this shit." 
 
"Wilco." 
 
A moment of silence, and I sighed. "Leg infantry, sound off."
 
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Christ the Buddha give me patience, I hated working with these irregular fuckwits. "Locust lance, peel off a buddy pair and put the fear of God into these horsefuckers. They have thirty minutes to clear the base." 
 
"Wilco, Major." 
 
"Everyone else who is more competent than the grease I scraped off my boots, verbal mission brief time," I said, slowly sauntering out. "We're going to be conducting a battalion-scale L-shaped ambush on Route 241. Armor lance of the command company, you and Locust Lance will be the backstop force. Locust Lance, you have machine guns and you know how to use them, keep the infantry from getting close to the tanks. Tanks, you have long range anti-armor weapons, keep the Locusts from getting chewed up too bad. If shit happens, fall back to Gelato Village and hide there."
 
Nobody laughed at the silly names, because as stupid as the food names were the fact was that the kids doing recon and assigning them were deadly serious. 
 
"Royal Guard lance, you're going to be the middle anchor of our forces. There's a copse of trees about halfway through the planned ambush zone to hide in, see previous memo for the map," I said. "When shit goes hot, you're the reserve. Alpha company, you're the far end of the ambush with your Nue suits. You have infantry-based LRMs, save them for anything that thinks it can run. Bravo company, you're the near end of the ambush. Beat the shit out of them, our armor can't hold forever. Charlie company, for your sins, you are the middle of the ambush zone. Do not fuck this up. Air wing, are you up to providing support?" 
 
"We're going to be about thirty until we can go wheels-up, but there's no enemy aero assets in-theater," Mitchel said, voice choppy from the sounds of a turbine near him spinning up. "Do you want standard loads?"
 
"Have a flight bring FASCAM bombs and nail the likely escape vectors, otherwise yes."
 
"Wilco, good hunting." 
 
"Command Lance, you'll be with me as part of the reserve to escort our recon lance back. Alright people, let's do this." 
-----
====How do you think it went====
It was an hour and a half later that we were properly set up, and two that our recon lance had to break contact and fade away to re-link with us in the command lance. After that we were posted up north of the copse where the Royal Guard were, to go help backstop things when enemy units tried to do a runner. 
 
To my eternal embarrassment, what kickstarted the ambush were the local infantry. Some jackass had a great shot on the back of a Stinger with a class ten field gun, took the shot, and missed like a chump. Fortunately, we were spread out enough to still have almost all the column in our net. Unfortunately, I couldn't just shoot the reprobate who started the party early. 
 
"Command lance, we're going in," I said, bringing my mech up to full extension. "We need to close up the tail end of this mess." 
 
With that, we strode out of the woods, guns blazing. Every mech here had a way to open up at ludicrous ranges- whether with LRMs or PPCs, the minute we started shooting it was felt. Soon enough, the end of the column was either dead or in the net, so that's when our enemy pulled another trick on us. 
 
"Major! Firestarter lance in the center of the convoy, they're eating the crunchies alive!" 
 
Where had they come from? They didn't usually have mechs in with the armor companies-
 
-Thoom-
 
-and Firestarters didn't mount PPCs! Spinning around, I gasped. Those superheavy vehicles had been mech transporters- and now they were firing up those mechs! A lance of Firestarters, a lance of assorted Mediums I couldn't see from how many of the Nue's were putting LRMs into them, and then a kill team. 
 
"It's been a hot minute, Kamea," a voice said, an invisible smirk present there on the open comms. "But your dreams end here."
 
"Literally fucken who?" I asked, not looking at the heavyweight kill team as I slapped at a Firestarter with LRMs to get him off a group of panicking squishies that were ditching their field gun and trying to run. 
 
"What?" 
 
"Listen, you're obviously here for some dumbass revenge plot," I said, calmly pivoting and jumping away from a charging Vulcan in order for Howler to body it and start pelting it with her SRMs and ERPPC. "However, counterpoint, I don't do revenge plots, because they are stupid and pay poorly."
 
"You motherfucker-" 
My computers finally zeroed in on what was doing the talking- a K2 Catapult. As much as I wanted to say 'there can only be one' and kill her for spare parts, I had a battalion-scale fight to manage. 
 
"Sokoloy. Handle the Catapult," I said over open comms quite deliberately, before switching back to lance comms. "Mercies, Howler, buddy-pair on that kill team lance. Sokoloy, start eating Firestarters. Royal Guard, get your asses in here, we need more firepower right the fuck now on that lance of heavies."
 
With that, I snapped out another salvo of missiles, this time targeting an enemy Dragon. As the rounds pattered around him with several not having armed yet, I groaned as he tried to close on me. Dumbass- I could fly out of range faster than he could try and close it unless he was going into a sprint. 
Naturally the Dragon started sprinting. That was fine- I was baiting him towards the Nue teams, and they got the memo about the same time as I took a class-ten shell to the leg and a pair of medium lasers in the back. As I faked a stumble, I could hear the fucker smirking. "I have you now," he said over open comms, which earned a very distinct facepalm. This wasn't your garden variety stupid, this was advanced stupid. Gloating on open comms? Really? In the forty-fifth year of the Thirty-First Century- er, wait, wrong date. 
 
Time travel aside, though, the Dragon was quickly figuring out it had screwed the pooch when a squad of Nue cheerfully jumped on it and started crawling around. The scale of the error didn't really click, though, until one slapped a bit of Serious Putty on the cockpit- at which point, the realizations of the Dragon didn't matter because his head was suddenly a large mass of shrapnel going straight through the cockpit and pilot. I just pivoted about, and returned to beating the tar out of the enemy kill team. 
 
"Mersies, red on torso armor," Mersies called out, rolling herself out of the fight. 
 
"Howler, armor blown, falling back!" 
 
"Guard lance, status?" I snapped. 
 
"We're doing good, but y'all need to fall back," Gazer said, letting her brand-new class-twenty autocannon turn a tank into a fireball. "They're breaking and running, and we got chewed up badly enough by that surprise mech company I'm liable to let them go. Plenty of kills, and our metal is pretty banged up." 
 
"Fine," I snapped. "All ground formations, do not pursue. Air formation, come in." 
 
Silence- which was weird. Mitchel's pilots were all ex-Eighth Lancers, they were damn good about comms use. 
 
"Air element, come in," I repeated. "Captain Mitchel, how copy, over?" 
 
That's about when I found out why they weren't copying, as one of my Meteor's lawn-darted into the field from where it had apparently been lining up for a bombing run- there was a dogfight going on over our heads, and my people were fighting for their lives. As I saw a white parachute over the melee get lased by a Lightning, though, my eyes saw red. "Belay previous orders- all elements, prepare for anti-air fires!"
 
Dropping my knees down, I aimed my racks to the heavens. Six Lightnings versus two Stukas and four- now three- Meteors. Locking on to a Lightning that had been clipped by a LRM salvo, I grinned and pulled the stinger. As my own missiles shot up into the furball, the enemy pilot tried to pull up. Unfortunately for him, Artemis IV didn't care, and his plane turned into his coffin. 
 
Missiles, PPC fire, and even a few autocannons lanced up into the cloud. Soon enough, the furball emptied out, with remaining three of our Meteors limping back home smoking, and the Stukas barreling up for altitude in case there was another flight. 
 
"Sorry about that," Mitchel said, and I could hear the sweating in his voice. "We got cocky, and they bounced us." 
 
"What's our damage look like," I asked, trying to stay calm. 
 
"One downed Meteor conventional fighter, massive damage on two more, engine redlined on the last one. The last might have to ditch if the reactor goes critical. Our Stukas are fine, but we don't know where they are."
 
"Damnit," Mersies muttered. "They weren't here when we got here." 
 
"And neither was the better part of a company of good mechs," I said, looking for any sign of the enemy trying to form up. "That was a lance of Firestarters, a medium-weight lance with a Hunchie and a Centurion, and a heavyweight kill team lance with a K2 Catapult in it. They wanted someone dead, and badly- quite possibly our employer, and were willing to spring a lot of heavy and rare metal for the job." 
 
"Those weren't shitty pilots, either," Sokoloy muttered. "They weren't ready for us, but they were ready for a hell of a close-range fight. This was definitely a trap-" 
 
"-but this dump doesn't have an HPG, so why would they think Kamea was here?" Howler asked, slowly taking rear in our formation with my permission. 
 
"A question for later-" I started to say, before a burst came in from Kaparov. 
 
"Major! They strafed the bunker complex where the infantry commander was!" The whole compound is on fire, and something's exploding!" 
 
"Good scouting," I muttered. "Alpha company, Bravo company, Charlie company. Mount up, go perform damage control. Mechanized elements, head back to Ice-Cream. Leg, hold the battlefield. We're salvaging everything we can here."
 
"Are we calling this a win, or a loss then?" 
 
I snorted. "We're calling this a fission mailed due to politics. If the Karosa died, we're packing our toys up and leaving- no reason to be here if the brat is dead."
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====Diminishing Returns====
Dropship Borozoi, en route to Nadir Point
Itrom, Aurigan Coalition
November 25th, 3024
Needless to say, the Karosas was dead. Damn kid's place had been a deathtrap, and once the napalm rained it started cooking off so bad not even our battle armor troops could try and get in to rescue the dude. It made the salvage sitting in the hold a cold comfort- one headless Dragon, two cobbled-together Firestarters, another Centurion, a Dervish, and last but not least a Wyvern. In terms of cost, though, we'd burned the local battalions on Itrom to the ground after they were used as Firestarter fuel, as well as any chance at setting up a cell of the Restoration Army there after Karosas Junior kicked the bucket. More critically, though, we'd run into a not-insignificant practical cost: Howler's Vindicator had been damaged badly enough we had to replace the myomer since it got blown out with her armor getting stripped. Normally, not an issue. 
 
However, it was 3024, and Howler drove a -5L that dropped the sword and a small laser for a SRM-4 she normally kept loaded with Infernos as an 'in case of Elementals' option. That meant it had triple-strength myomer… which didn't exist yet. At least it hadn't blown out any of the DHS, since that would have been a nightmare to fix. Still, salvage on one hand; political disaster on the other. Arano was going to be pissed when she got wind of this, provided no other anthills had lit themselves on fire in the meantime. 
 
In retrospect, though? It was never a good idea to presume the anthills would stay extinguished.
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