SmoMir Chpt 7

==Mirrorsmoke Company - Chapter 7 -==
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Vesterby
New Oslo, Draconis Combine
September, 3018Local Time: 20:12 
"Ladies and gentlemen, imagine if you will, being a small and unknown mercenary company under the employ of the Draconis Combine."
 
An auditorium had been constructed just for this occasion. Logan, now suited in his officer uniform, stood hands behind his back beside the holographic war table as he spoke. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like a general about to lead us to war.
 
With a quick wave, the table shaped the image of the northern continent of Nordmarka, before zooming straight in on the spaceport on its southern edges. All of my kids were here, the mood in the air a brooding anticipation as the briefing preamble had begun in full swing. Batch-2, our ten cadets and the youngest kids aside from Kristin, sat at the very back. All of them desperate to prove themselves. Even the Washouts were here, whispering among themselves. My twelve remaining kids who'd taken the brave decision to say no to fighting. No to becoming soldiers. They were technically civilians now; our future doctors and engineers. Whatever they wanted to be, they had that freedom now.
 
But even that wouldn't stop them from watching the first ever live-fire combat mission being briefed by Logan.
 
The spaceport was huge. From above, the facility looked like a fallen star, its landing pads spreading outwards from all the expansions made over the recent years. In the middle of it all was the control tower, almost as tall as a city skyscraper, it was dotted by an array of swerving antennas that could interlink with the satellite systems from space.
 
"You're contracted for easy escort duty, and in the fine print you're even paid handsomely practically just standing there. But for whatever ungodly reason, the C-bills just aren't flowing all that well. Your pockets are still empty despite the contract saying otherwise."
 
Gone was the unrepentant prankster who I called my brother, replaced by someone cold and steely eyed, his voice still cracking and the pitch just beginning to deepen, but nevertheless had everyone in rapt attention as the tale unfolded.
 
"Then the bills come. Maintenance, ammunition, transport. Food? All the little things start to seem like heavier and heavier weights on your back each passing month. And the expenses just keep on coming. It never settles. Eventually you find yourself face up in shit creek as you start to pay your men in promissory notes. You can't even pay for a damn drink in the bar anymore."
 
He leaned on the edge of the table, his hands plucking a small stylus, and twirled it around between his fingers as he spoke. A cheap parlor trick, I recognized. He needed your eyes on him. He needed your ears. Needed you to hang on to his every word.
 
"So in desperation you turn to selling bodies. You're a mercenary MechWarrior; a cut above the masses beneath the giant mechanical feet of your steed! You're in this for the cut of profits. Who cares how many innocent lives you've had to ruin along the way. Anything goes–dead or alive, male or female, the young or old. Plenty of joyhouses or labs in Drac space that pay handsomely for fresh bodies. Who cares about the people, right?"
 
It did the job. I looked at my fellow team leads, their faces of stone but their bodies pressed down like coiled suspension springs. The compressor was about to break. Behind me were our teams, equally as furious. Equally as murderous.
 
"These are the people you are up against. Scum." Logan slammed a fist on the table, the blow momentarily flickering the holographics. "It doesn't matter if this is under or over the board. Whether or not the snakes know what these mercs are doing, or if this is just a little side hustle. It doesn't matter. They did this because they could, and because they could, they had to."
 
As easily as a switch being flipped, Logan had just brought years of equal trauma and rage back into the forefront of our minds. All in an effort to turn us front toward the enemy.
 
I couldn't help but be impressed. I didn't even notice how hard I had been clenching my fists until the nails had started digging into my skin.
 
"What was the first lesson imparted to all of us orphans?" he finally asked us, his eyes scanning the room.
 
"Hesitation is death," I said. Everyone said. All of us spoke in unison, a line so simple, so prevalent, it might as well have been hard coded into our brains, tasting like bitter blood as the words left my mouth.
 
"Then this will be the last test for all of you who want to call themselves Lancers or MechWarriors. You are putting your life on the line now. No more simulations. No more war games. This is the real deal. If you're getting cold feet, if you've lost your nerve–"
 
He pointed to the exit.
 
"Then step away now and let no one judge you."
 
No one dared to stand. Not even a head turned towards the door.
 
All eyes were on Logan, who simply smiled and clasped his hands together. "Let's begin.
 
"Our objective is twofold, the rescue of those women…"
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HOURS LATER...
LOCAL TIME: 02:34
 
The taiga forests of Nordmarka were as impenetrable as they were unconquerable by even the first Nordic colonists. They called the trees Rødjern, Red Iron, from the deep rust-red coloring of the planks they produced. The trees could shoot up as high as 80 meters in length, and could be as wide as a BattleMech was tall, the tree canopies painting the continent an everlasting green above orbit. They were an ever present source of headaches for the expansionists stubborn and stupid enough to try and dig up the sometimes kilometers wide root system.
 
Expanding in Nordmarka was the work of years, not months. That meant that what few spaces there were for viable city settlement, would almost always be surrounded by the gigantic trees.
 
The perfect cover for infiltrating BattleMechs.
 
I pulled on my throttle stick, allowing my 'Mech to slow down to a stop as we reached just the edges of a clearing. The mossy shroud that covered my 'Mech from head to toe billowed in the wind like the sails of an ancient seaship. The clearing grew until we were met by two massive walls of ferrocrete almost reaching twenty or so meters high, cutting off the sloping road down into the three kilometer-long stretch of land surrounded by the sea. Lindorm Spaceport was this entire peninsula itself.
 
I raised my arm, and my 'Mech mimicked the movement seamlessly, signaling my team to stop. The motion was slow, and I was careful not to tear the flimsy tarp wrapping around me. Just beneath my feet were combat subalterns in their equally covered six-wheel APCs, turrets swiveling around as they scanned the area overhead. Speartip's task was to be the gatecrashers; all eyes needed to be on the shiny hammer outside their front door while the other teams did their dirty work in the shadows.
 
Or, if any of the more fragile cogs in this barebones plan would fail, the big guns covering the retreat.
 
"Watcher, Spear-Actual. Fireteam is in position. Waiting on you now," I said over the command channel. Logan had rolled out a new piece of equipment for all of us, some kind of advanced communications package that rendered our radios obsolete, but hard habits on comm etiquette still stuck to our tongues like an unwanted language.
 
"Roger. Hold your position for now, Spear-Actual. Trident is in the process of cutting the tower's eyes and ears, but Arrowhead is still setting up," Logan replied almost instantly. I didn't know the exact mechanics, but the difference between radio communications and an omninet system was like night and day. His voice had come out more clearly and defined than most expensive home speakers could do. "Seismics give you any trouble?"
"Negative. Was a walk in the park dodging Saracen patrols if you just stand still." Alongside the Omnihook was an experimental stealth cloak that helped shield us from conventional sniffers and scanners that any 'Mech or missile came with. We were almost invisible.
 
Almost.
 
"Copy. Just being thorough. We'll need the surprise." The human eye could still see us as towering 'Mechs being covered in tarp like a shitty swamp monster from a holoflick, and it was also hilariously fragile. One wrong torso twist and it would tear, the damage completely deactivating the stealth tech. It was useless in a direct fight; even small arms fire could nullify its effects.
 
Tactically, I thought it was redundant, but then Logan did have a habit of over complicating his plans.
 
Like how he bolted a set of fins and small shields on our Everests to make them seem more like Centurions in the dark.
 
"Has Arrowhead ID'd the dropship yet?" I asked. Arrowhead was the scalpel, tasked with hijacking the mercenary dropship using modified grounding mines from an Iskander.
 
"Affirmative, a Leopard. Heartbeat sensors are detecting multiple lifesigns, far more than there should be even at capacity. All of them huddled around one of the ship's bay doors."
 
"So what's the hold up?"
 
"They're going around the mercs out and about; a Panther, two Jenners." He paused. "Arrowhead's also reporting they have a platoon of Saracens working as support."
 
There was worry in my voice. "That's practically a skeleton crew, Watcher. No Kuritan metal?"
 
"Because it is a skeleton crew, Spear-Actual. There's not a single Kuritan dropship in the AO."
 
My heart sank. "They've built a new spaceport."
"One exclusively for the Dracs to use." Logan agreed.
 
I rested my chin against my hands, wracking my mind over that fact. More eyes on Nordmarka was never a good sign. But why? The lumber might have been a good product off-world, in fact, even furniture made from the Red Iron trees fetched a luxurious price, but that had been for the more civilian side of the market. The Kuritans' sole focus in New Oslo I had always been the production of more Panthers, with most of their forces stationed mainly in Asker and Akershus to better protect their strategic assets. What exactly had changed?
 
I shook my head. A thought for another day, after we've rescued the people.
 
"Does Arrow-1 need us to kick in the door early, Watcher?"
 
"Negative, Spear-Actual. We cannot risk that dropship taking off." Logan warned. "The both of you need to strike at once."
 
And so we waited, having been forced to watch the sparse activity moving around the wall. A couple of guards in their graveyard shifts sipping on coffee, never realizing that in just a few moments that this entire peninsula was about to turn into a free-fire zone.
 
I basked in this silence for a moment, this calm before the storm, before being interrupted by a ping in the comms channel.
 
"How are you and Logan so sure it was mercs and not pirates anyways?" Lisbeth asked over the comms. The novelty of fiddling around in her now real Chomolungma must have finally worn out. "It doesn't make sense."
 
I took a pause, trying to gather my thoughts. "Because it was too quiet, Spear-3. Too clean of a getaway. That close to civilization? ASFs would have spotted them easily."
 
Logan and I had been monitoring ASF screens for weeks trying to find the holes in their patrols, and it was getting harder and harder to squeeze through. Now we knew why. It was only ever due to incredibly short and cautious flights that we were able to travel at all. Even flying low and slow under radar scrutiny would not have lasted long, they would have eventually picked us out sooner or later.
 
No pirate would do all that work without causing havoc along the way.
 
"So what you're saying is that the Dracs are just letting these mercs do whatever they want? I'm not buying it. I know the Combine are evil fucks, but it just seems like a reach to me. Even they wouldn't do that to their own people, right?" Mack joined in.
 
"What it means is that the mercenaries are at least a known element to the snakes. Enough that they can go anywhere they please without too many eyes on them," Ed retorted.
 
I left them to their discussion, pinging my fifth Spear who preferred to be quiet, her 'Mech scale anti-materiel rifle minutely flagging movement after movement over the horizon.
 
"Nervous?" I asked Kristin.
 
"A little bit," came the meek reply, "Just looking for vantage points."
 
Her willingness to fight had been an unwelcome surprise for both Logan and I. During the selection process of Batch-1, she was the only one we had outright rejected taking part due to her young age. Even now I still believed she should be in Batch-2, quietly honing her skills as team sniper and fire support until the time came for her to join our ranks as an older pilot.
 
Cold, brutal pragmatism won out in the end, when she was the first–out of all of us–to acclimate to the neural-bridging process between man and machine. She took to it like a duck to water, at a rate that frankly scared me. I remembered her sprinting while we were still just hobbling our first steps forward, moving her 'Mech as naturally as she breathed.
 
Then there was her accuracy rating.
 
"No need for that. Stay far in the back, don't let them spot you. Let us handle the 'Mechs from the front. Shoot for center mass. Nothing fancy, clear?" I said, more stern than I should be.
 
"Crystal, Spear-Leader," she said.
 
When she joined Batch-1, she joined under my responsibility. If there was any mercy that existed in this universe, she wouldn't ever have to pull that trigger tonight.
 
A tinny beep rang out, our HUDs highlighting the wall into a deep red as Logan spoke over the team channel."This is Watcher to Speartip, you are cleared to go hot! Kick the front door open, pilots!"
 
I snuffed out that delusion as quickly as it sprouted in my mind, my missile racks locking on to the walls with a shrieking tone. With a lone thumb, I stabbed a button, letting loose a volley of long range missiles alongside my team. Far too late for any of that notion.
 
Hesitation was death, after all.
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Chapter 7