LWDD-4

==Chapter 4 Lest we drown in the darkness...==
by Cannonshop
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2769 - Kowloon, Rim Worlds Republic
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The Revolution WILL be televised.
It's shockingly rare for a Battlemech unit to be defeated by infantry.  It takes a lot of work and preparation to defeat the ultimate arbiters of ground warfare.
It probably wasn't going to happen.  Colonel Ibrahim "Minsky" Al-Hawat's massive Rampage class Assault 'Mech was leading the counter-charge.  They'd had their supplies and support destroyed in Nha Tranh with the first strike, along with most of their reinforcements and nearly all of their transport.
Tran Truk Ngo watched the 85 ton machine, leading a column of everything from Thunderbolts to Quasits into the Folly from the barren top of The Green Table-a mesa capped with copper ore that had fooled the first settlers-the mineral content had LOOKED like vegetation, only, the Green Table is BARREN-nothing grows here.
Instead, mining pits and tunnels over six hundred years have removed much of the 'green', leaving a network of caverns, tunnels and passages that served as a kind of natural fortification.
"Typically, forces are trained to center their tactics on fortified positions."  Tran commented. "and fortifications are great for defense, but there's always that nagging problem."
"Problem?" Marjorie Trinh was his executive officer because she had formal military training and an actual education.  
"The harder you make it to get in, the harder it is to get out.  Dinh Diep showed, if nothing else, that relying on a fortified position is a testimony to the stupidity of man.  Vanh's sappers finished?"
"Yeah, they're finished and heading for the rally."  she said, "I'm supposed to bring you.  Your mother insisted."
"Just give me a minute."  Tran said,  "I want to make sure this works, and learn something if it doesn't."
The assault column of mechs-a mix of RWR Battlemechs and the Security-mechs used for domestic suppression reached the point he wanted them to reach.
"Their sensors are messed up by the mineral content of the folly, see?  So they're following the 'intercepted' radio traffic.  This area's perfect for a command post under standard doctrine, it's rough country that most vehicles can't cross, with unpredictable winds that make VTOL travel difficult...and they believe it, that the Revolution would use this kind of country to stash our leaders."
"Let's go, Tran."  Marjorie insisted.
"Wait for it..." He raised the clacker.
The first click fired off massive EMP generators-the SLDF's 'EMP mine' systems.  The pulse from those, set off the secondary charges, collapsing an undermined river bed.  a tank-trap big enough to swallow a column of battlemechs opened almost at the same moment that their electronics and systems went haywire.
The third charges sympathetically detonated on the slopes of the canyon. Burying the 'mechs the rest of the way, miring them in tens of thousands of tons of rock and dirt.
Tran studied the rising dust pall for a moment, before backing away from the precipice.  Marjorie handed him the reins of 'old shifter', a dappled quarter-horse-the kind of vehicle that DOESN'T have problems navigating the folly.
"Satisfied?" she asked
"Somewhat.  Open the floodgates on the dam,  I think the survivors need a bath." he pronounced.
She nodded, as they rode to their own exit point, charges on a series of dams constructed for irrigating the infertile and useless land of the John Valley opened, dumping accumulated the sum of more than a decade of water directly into the folly-the initial flood would tumble anything lighter than a couple hundred tons, crush anything on the floor of the canyons, and wash it all east, toward the big-damn-ocean.
"Think there will be survivors?" she asked.
"If anyone survives that, they deserve to." he commented. "How are we looking on the New Saigon front?"
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