IWTTD Chpt 3

==If We Turn To Dust - Chapter 3 -==
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===Lyran's Assault on Vega===
ROHRS DESERT, SOUTH NANTURO
VEGA, DIERON MILITARY DISTRICT, DRACONIS COMBINE
AUGUST 11TH, 3027
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The target came in sight about sundown.
 
Analyzing movements and orbital photos at the time, and confirming records after the fact, showed that Theodore Kurita had dealt with the risk of exactly the kind of landing we'd gone for by spinning each of his jet battalions out to new subsidiary bases, rather than operating them out of the buried fortresses, the 'Seishiro', that housed the rest of his troops.
 
Each battalion had its own base, forming a broad arc inland of the forts, at just the distance and intervals that let all five locations support each other, while being spread enough to need real travel to take out in turns. Our aerospace fighters, just as fast as the Combine's Kaiten air-breathers, much better armed, and vastly better armored, had reaped a terrible toll of the strike they'd sent out - of the hundred and forty-ish fighters that had attacked the landing op, maybe thirty had survived to break contact again, leaving the defense of those air bases to whatever ground assets were present.
 
Of my own forces, the 2nd Winfield were equipped with full Star League kit - from the Helm Cache, in fact - and the 11th Lyran Guards and 5th Rift Regulars both had only the freezer rollout, so I'd tasked the 2nd as a reserve force and ordered the other two brigades to swing wide to hit the two bases at the end of the line, then turn towards each other to level the 'inner' two.
 
This would take time. Each base was hundreds of kilometers from the nearest of its fellows, and we had to hit the first pair as early in the day as we could to have time to reach the others before dark. Fifty or so kilometers per hour, the speed our heavy assault elements were limited to, wasn't all that much at those distances. It was local summer as well as Terran, so we'd have the advantage of a good long stretch of daylight and had expected to probably be able to hit both sets of targets before full dark.
 
There were things that could go wrong, of course. If Theodore and Natasha Kerensky had gotten her unit moved across the great sound separating their positions, and moved them to meet us, the combination could handle any single one of my divided forces quite roughly before one of the others could reinforce them… But that would have required either the dropship support that we could be pretty sure the despised Legion of Vega wouldn't have on hand, or, it would have needed a lot of ocean traffic, transport ships and the like, shuffling back and forth in an almighty hurry.
 
Our orbital assets would have picked that up, and hadn't. Or rather, the movements we had picked up were all overland, towards the narrowest part of the Neucason Sea, where there were ferries gathering - but not yet at the point of moving large numbers of units. So we could be fairly confident that we weren't going to trip over more than one of the Combine divisions. The risk wasn't absent, but it was a manageable one, and one that we could take steps to minimize.
 
One of the ways we'd minimized the risks involved had been how we'd handled the first targets of the day. Rather than trying to occupy the bases, or raze them in person, we'd swept the bulk of each brigade by miles to the south of the base perimeters - just inside Arrow IV range. Even after trying to look it up, I was still none the wiser about how the cement-thick explosive filler shared between their warheads and the filler of the longer-ranged 24cm Long Tom howitzers was made, but the little chemistry i knew was enough that the substring 'decanitro' had made my eyebrows go up. Especially given how I'd seen the stuff treated; I could only conclude that the stabilizing agent was even more bullshit.
 
Anyway. With that to work with, and plenty of ammunition for the big guns, the artillery's scout companies had been able to sweep out and get eyes onto the repair hangers and shops, and the fuel and ammo depots, that made the Combine bases valid locations to operate Kaiten out of. The local desert was a salt flat rather than an erg or rocky desert - the birds could land anywhere - but without fuel and maintenance they'd never take off again, and for our purposes that was as good as destroying them. There was no need to push troops inside their perimeters to tangle with whatever they'd been assigned in guards and security, with sightlines long enough that our scout VTOLs could zoom in and evaluate the damage from a thousand meters up and far outside effective defense range.
 
The base the 5th Rift was about to hit could have been handled the same way. We had the ammunition to do so. We weren't, mostly because one of the other things that the Combine had needed to provide to the men stationed at those bases was drinking water.
 
We'd brought a supply of our own, which would… probably be enough for the immediate campaign, even with everybody in three brigades burning through it like mechwarriors in the desert heat. But access to the wells and purifiers at those two bases to refill would be a very useful security blanket, increasing flexibility and decreasing time pressure. The backup option, dropping loaded tanks from the Havhingsten, in orbit, would absolutely work, but targeting where the things landed could be iffy to the tune of dozens of kilometers. If we did that we'd be spending all day in one place chasing after them and it'd be a pain in the ass that surrendered initiative.
 
So, rather than just leveling the area from a safe distance, we'd set the gun companies and command post up at a comfortable reach and marched the heavy battalions in as the tip of the spear to draw fire, with jump infantry riding mechanized to actually take control.
 
There was a distinct hierarchy in the targets we were going after on the Combine base, primary and secondary objectives to manage. We were most interested in the water tower and its associated pumping and processing equipment, and after that the records and intelligence resources they could give us. Everything else, we could deal with, use, or replace.
The command post had a mobile headquarters vehicle, basically an armored truck stuffed full of comms gear, parked on the south side of a staked-out square. Two K-configuration Pattons, eighty ton omnitanks fitted with short and long-range missiles and the blister-and-whip-antennae external bulge of their supplementary comm gear pod, filled and overfilled two more sides of the square. Poles stuck in mounting points on their hulls, and anchor points along the MHQ's roof, held a large tarp over the whole square. Smaller panels hung down to the ground, making it into a tent - which was needed, since the extra C&C gear the techs had unpacked from the various cargo bays was all holo-display for compactness, and those worked better the less light they had to compete with. This late in the day, the setting sun would have slanted beams right through the holos and made them impossible to see.
It was a little harder to call new information up than it was when I was aboard No. 2 - which was parked, inactive, only a handful of meters from the tent - since I couldn't just will it up on a screen without the neurohelmet link, but it was a lot easier to ask one of the techs to monitor something for me than to set a data reminder. Or rather, they were a lot better at filtering out real signal from random noise, and since they were people in my presence, it was easier to remember to do so when I had most of my attention on something else.
 
The big central holo was showing a topographic map of the base, along with dustings of blue sparks where our unit positions were overlaid - and sparks of red, where we had confirmed Combine units. I was standing at one end of the table it was projected on, with my hands tucked under my arms and my Willful Self Control dialed up to 10; this was an operation that belonged to the regimental and battalion COs. Picking the 'mech regiment for the reserve formation was about as much micromanaging as I should be doing, no matter how tempting it was. It wasn't the full VR tank Frederick Steiner was supposed to have used - to be using? - on Tukkayid, but it was still a pretty heady setup.
 
The first warning of the inevitable Going Wrong was when one of the mechs in the 5th's assault company - which was to say, the one full of 55kph smashers, rather than 65kph line 'mechs that happened to technically fall in the assault weight bracket - fell in a hole.
 
"Ma'am," one of my map techs reported, "We've got a report of what seems to be an underground tunnel network. A Highlander from the mech command company landed and went straight through one of the roofs."
 
The only Highlander in the 5th, come to that, a family 'mech brought by a transfer - since it was one of the lower-tech Succession Wars models with an AC20 rather than the all-up gauss rifle models like the 2nd Winfield had three of. A certain amount of that new discovery was luck, and a certain amount wasn't. It took luck to have a mech heavy enough to smash through a tunnel roof land from a jump in just the right place. But if the thing was going to be possible, it was going to be done by a ninety-ton Highlander.
 
"Get me a seismic-scan update from everyone who isn't engaged right now," I said, sparing a moment to swear mentally at the failure of our attempts to beat the active-memory problem that kept our most 'advanced' sensor systems from integrating multiple detection modes into one readout. Of all the ridiculous problems to have in the thirty-first century…
 
The display updated in scattered sections, but in less than a minute there was enough coverage to show that the entire area around the base we were after was riddled with a spider-web network that, if it were deeper and harder to breach, would have counted as a small fortress in its own right.
 
I was mid-swear when the implications of one of those tunnels in particular caught up with me, and I cut it off and turned to run out of the tent, tossing over my shoulder, "Attack alert! And procedure note! Have somebody in each company monitor each sensor mode when not in contact until we can fix the fucking integration!"
 
I should, I suppose, take a bit of comfort that it took a couple of seconds for the rest of the guard detachment around the command post to figure out what I'd noticed and start going from 'watching' to 'braced', but at the time I was too busy kicking myself for taking so long to notice it.
 
The hatchway to the nearest arm of the tunnel network was less than half a kilometer from the command post, and even in the midst of sprinting for No. 2's ladder, I could see the cloud of sand and dust kicked up as hidden hydraulics slammed to open. The first of the tanks that had been on the ramp under it lunged out into view, missiles already roaring off of their racks. At that range there wasn't much chance of a targeted hit, but the command post covered a fair amount of space - it was as likely that they'd hit something as it was unlikely that they'd hit any particular thing they chose.
 
I didn't have time to worry about whether or not one of those random unlucky spots would be full of me. There was nothing I could do about it, anyway. I just hurried up the ladder, quickly enough that memory after the fact records the event less as a climb and more as teleporting from ground to cockpit seat, buckling in and hooking up my cooling jacket as the canopy closed and the reactor warmed up.
 
<{"One, take control of me, you're messing with the enemy,"}> the robot prompted as I dropped the racked neurohelmet onto my head.
 
"I said it's two, it's another trick, messin' with my mind I wake up," I snapped back, and it thought for a moment.
 
<{"Neural partial match,"}> it replied, and I kicked the console in fury as it went on, <{"present secondary code."}> As sensitive as I had the security set to be to the neural patterns, if I tried to activate the machine with my mood and concentration significantly disrupted, it would throw an additional verification at me.
 
"NOT NOW!" I snarled in pure frustration, then gritted my teeth and fed it the first verse of a song Older-Me's father had written, back in the twentieth century… and which had, as far as I knew in either lifetime, never been recorded or really heard outside the family. Meaning that it could be set to rely mostly on the verbal code, without too much risk of running into one of the neuro-spoof modules the Star League had had access to.
 
<{"Secondary code accepted. Sensors, online. Reactor, online. Weapons systems, online. All functioning systems, nominal."}> Bitching Betty didn't care if I was mad at her or the universe; she just read her lines off and turned control over as No. 2 stood to its full height.
 
A flash of motion showed in one of the rear monitors - I lost more detail and intuition to the panoramic compression mode that was the traditional standard than I did to the inset frames - as Warrior Molton, who'd replace Zandanshatar as my command company's anti-aircraft specialist, hit the jump jets on his Sentinel and launched himself over and out of the inner ring of tanks. "Note," I muttered for the recorder, "check jump jet perimeters in after action."
 
If there had been anyone too close to him when he hit them, the jets would have cooked them alive. The consequences if the auto-safety mode built into No. 2's step-placing algorithms messed up would be just as permanent, but at least they admitted a chance of sparing somebody.
 
Even if all the attention I could spare for that as I opened the throttle was to hope that the robot was up to it. I could barely spare the focus to aim for the gap between a Patton and the Manticore behind it - and then to bobble the stride length around as the Manticore's driver hit the gas and pulled out of line to get his bow armor pointed at the incoming popcorn tanks.
My seat lurched under me as I stretched No. 2 from its normal running stride to what was half a leap, half an exaggerated 'tiptoe' step to clear the top of the Manticore's turret, and I waited for the motion to settle again as I averaged my jittering sights across what I judged as the most significant of the Combine units - the first of the LRM models.
 
The crosshairs went still. I fired all three guns in sequence, right, left, then the autocannon. With the limited targeting gear built into those things, they had to slow down to fire accurately, which made it easy for me to put all of the shots on target. That didn't kill it outright, Ohkas and their derivatives were a little tougher than that, but through the exploding shower of vaporized ablatives, I could see the blurred intricacy of the tracks and running gear. The little tank's driver, not being a fool, promptly stomped on the gas and tried to get his ride out of there, but the forward driving wheel on that side just fed the broken track into a ballooning, whiplashing loop, like an old VHS tape that had gotten caught in the gears.
 
Driving forward on the good side crabbed it around, hiding the damaged facing at the same time that it exposed the opposite flank. The turret swung at the same time the tank under it, trying to keep oriented on me, the uncovered launch tubes of its LRM rack hazing to gray with the distance rather than showing the shadowed, soot-charred black holes that should have stood out against the desert camo around them. The commander fired at almost the last instant before I could, but the maneuver threw him off and it was obvious within only a few moments that the flight of missiles was going to land a dozen meters to my right.
 
I fired again; one of my PPCs missed, but the other, and the cannon burst, landed squarely on the side of the turret and ripped it off entirely. A fountain of sparks and flame erupted from the center of the decapitated hull as the ammunition storage started to chain-fire.
I looked around for the next target. There were about twice as many active tanks as there were wrecked ones, and there were more of the latter than I could count in a glance. So, minimum of fifteen to thirty, and more still emerging from the bunker, which put the reasonable guess for the total at a battalion.
 
A double flight of LRMs arcing overhead told me that Reyes was on the ball. I spotted the double-box design of one turret and selected that as my target even before I could look closer and see the rising whip antenna - the command variant of the Combine's Ohka mounted two SRM6 launchers in addition to its extra radio and operator for same. I missed two of my shots at it, but one of the PPCs hit squarely on the forward glacis, and a flight of LRMs from one of the mechs behind me dusted across the machine afterwards.
 
My target raced forwards, trying to get into the range of its own weapons to start shooting back properly, and drove square into a burst from one of the Pattons - a B or C config, from the way the Combine tank all but evaporated under the shells.
 
Every one of the Combine tanks was only twenty-five tons; that was a lot by the standards of day-to-day civilian life, but on a battlefield of the thirty-first century, they were pipsqueaks. Aside from Molton's forty-ton Sentinel, the lightest thing in the command element was sixty tons for the three Manticores; No. 2 was literally three times the weight of an Ohka, and while weight didn't directly equal combat power, it really helped.
 
Another Ohka blew up, then another.
 
This attack was a counsel of desperation; it was never going to work as a straight fight, the extra company of Combine tanks wasn't nearly enough to make up for the weight disparity. If they'd withdrawn before we got here, they'd been able to preserve their strength to combine with other Combine units later on, but now that they'd waited long enough for us to make contact and confirm their presence, that wasn't an option for them.
 
Most of the 5th Rift's armor strength was in Pattons, with a leavening of Merkavas and Manticores, but both tank regiments had a battalion of lighter units, hovercraft that were at their best and freest here in the open desert, and the mech regiment's scout companies would have nearly as easy a time running them down.
 
So, because this was the Combine and for one reason or another they'd decided that they couldn't do the sensible thing and withdraw everything they could before we got here, a death or glory ambush charge against the relatively valuable and vulnerable command post and artillery park was about the best option they had. But...
 
An Ohka disappeared as it took a hit from a Patton. That was definitely a C-config, with the Class Twenty in its turret. I picked out my next victim and fired again, and didn't have time to evaluate the results because a split second later a ma-hoos-ive explosion picked the entire tank up off its tracks and tossed it upside down to the side in a fountain of sand and dust. One of the Halberd artillery carriers had sighted its Long Tom in in direct fire mode and planted a 240mm high explosive load within a meter or two of the Combine tank. Good shooting, for a gun that really and truly wasn't designed to be used like that.
 
A pair of flicker-fast streaks racing past me and smashing another one told me that the Voulges were in action, too, painting their own targets with their Target Acquisition Gear - the Voulge was the only unit in LCAF inventory to carry the full-scale version of that system, but it let them sling Homing Arrows IV artillery missiles around for self-defense situations like this one, with consequences that even assault mechs would have found concerning.
 
Adding that firepower to what was already a crushingly uneven fight broke even the DCMS's fanaticism, and all of the surviving tanks did one of three things: Skidded to a halt as their crews bailed and ran for their lives, whipped around and floored it for the horizon, or reversed direction so sharply at least two lost tracks, left behind by the others as they dove back down the tunnel entrance they'd come out of.
 
For the record, what I did next was colossally stupid. Even at the time, with most of my attention on the rush of combat and the fact that they were targets I could destroy, I felt more than just a twinge. If I'd caught Byers or Rabenstrange doing it I'd relieved them on the spot, and might or might not have let myself be talked out of it after.
I followed the runners, letting No. 2 skid down the ramp into the tunnel in a shower of sparks and tortured, abraded metal, and cutting loose with both PPCs when I saw one of the running Ohkas turn the corner ahead of me, with the one behind it almost to the end of the straightaway leading from the entrance.
 
With that kind of hurried snapshot, both blasts of manmade lightning missed, but the tank's driver flinched at his controls. The vehicle hooked to the side and slammed into the stone wall of the tunnel, spinning wildly around the first corner to make contact in a wildly uncontrolled crash that sent splinters of stone and shattered metal flying in all directions.
 
I didn't bother to fire again; it wasn't going anywhere, and the impact had likely stunned both of the crewmen too badly for them to realize what had happened - assuming they hadn't hit their heads and been knocked literally senseless; the ergonomics and working spaces inside one of those things were terrible. Instead, as No. 2 thundered past the wreck, I adjusted gait to bring the Marauder's left foot down squarely on the rear engine deck of the light tank.
 
Metal screamed again, struck sparks catching flame on the splattering spray of diesel fuel as the fuel tank squashed like a stepped-on grape.
 
I left that behind and skidded around the corner, a clumsy unstable scramble, to look down another straightaway. Memory and dead reckoning made me think that that led directly to the center of the Combine base. Three surviving tanks were booking it at flank speed down the gallery, and I took a moment to raise my aim towards the one in front before I fired all three main guns again.
 
One of the PPCs missed entirely; the other hit one of the tanks behind it. The autocannon burst slammed into the side of a low spot in the ceiling, one that was approaching rapidly as I charged down the tunnel after them.
I threw No. 2 forward and down, like a runner diving for home plate, to get under that beam - I'd find out later that it marked the main roadbed leading into the base - and threw both arms out in front to catch the 75-ton weight.
 
General Motors had designed the Marauder with no hands, but they had surrounded the particle projection cannon that were the mech's main weapons with reinforced structural cages that were designed to take major impacts so that the delicate beam collimation magnets didn't have to. The secondary weapons, 5cm lasers on stock Marauders and 3cm pulse lasers for No. 2, were in their own smaller cages with duplicated reinforcement, including heavy-duty structural plates that made up pretty much the entire bottom surface of each forearm.
 
The leading edges of those plates smashed into the rough-rock bottom of the tunnel with a crash that I could easily hear through cockpit and neurohelmet alike. More splintered stone flew as they carved instant divots into the floor, driven by all of my mech's mass and the dead run I'd been moving at. I let the elbows flex to absorb as much of the impact as I could, and slid one leg as far forward as I could for the next stride, then had No. 2 shove down and back with both arms at once, at the same time I shifted weight onto that leading foot and had it push as well. The combined effect of both motions was that I dove under the obstruction and then bounced back up on the far side having barely slowed.
 
The sights steadied; the arms were still coming up to battery, aimed at the floor in front of me, so I fired the autocannon first this time, walking the burst up the rear of the rearmost tank and snarling as I just brushed through the salvo of rockets it sent back in reply.
 
Why am I so angry? I asked myself.
 
The PPCs were up again. I fired, left, beat, right, and the Ohka I'd been aiming at blew apart. It would have been funny, in another context, how the remaining pair managed to find another few kilometers per hour of redline as their drivers put the throttles up against the stops even harder.
 
The driver of the next tank in line was better than the one I'd stepped on; he managed to weave his ride back and forth even in the narrow confines of the tunnel, sliding out of my aim for all three of the shots I sent at him as the runner in front of him took a corner out of my view.
 
Fortunately, the need to wait for the PPCs' components to cool, and for the loading systems to pull another eight-round feeder clip from the magazine and slam it into the autocannon's breech, kept me from just firing again in a blind rage to smash the bastards that were keeping me from my kids.
 
Oh. Well, that would explain the red haze, wouldn't it? I didn't want to be here, I resented the need to be and the risks and unhappiness it imposed on my daughters. Which was something my own decisions contributed to, of course, and the guilt and well-practiced self-loathing from that only redoubled the anger I could take out on my enemies.
 
My next salvo was aimed rather than hasty, but badly timed. The Combine driver swerved wide to swing his ride around the corner, and both of the PPC shots splashed against the wall behind him, leaving glowing puddles of slag drooling down the wall below the melted divots. The autocannon burst ripped at the flank armor, but that didn't stop him from getting around the corner and out of sight.
 
I followed, and emerged out into a vast hanger space, large enough to hold an entire armor regiment below ground… and into a crossfire.
 
To my right, a Command Ohka, its tracks stripped and its chassis set up on jacks but with its turret active and tracking, flushed a dozen SRMs at twenty meters range. To my left, a turretless profile with a low, sloped casement built on top of the familiar Ohka treads, and a stubby barrel at the front.
 
I had no idea what it could be, until the gun's muzzle flashed three times and a train crashed into No. 2's torso. Ironically, the drumming of the SRMs impacting all across the opposite facing made it easier to keep my balance, because of the way they balanced the lost armor and made it easier for both me and the gyro systems.
 
I ignored the missile tanks, both the ones that I'd been chasing, which were swinging through bootlegger turns and scattering basically useless salvos across my general direction, and the one that had been set in ambush.
 
The thing with the Class 20 autocannon had to die first.
 
I was already inside my main guns' minimum effective range of it; I'd need to tilt the entire torso down to get the autocannon to bear and the PPCs' beam collimation would have shorted and gone berserk, but by positioning it so closely, the Combine CO had left it vulnerable to another solution.
 
I dug No. 2's clawed feet in, ripping gouges out of the soft rock underfoot, and hauled into the sharpest turn I could, changing course by about a hundred degrees in the space of two steps and rapidly bearing down on the assault gun. Give its crew credit for courage if not brains, they were reversing as they turned for another shot, but they didn't bail out.
 
They didn't make it in time. No. 2's left foot came down on their autocannon's barrel, bending it like a soda straw, and a moment later on the bow of the hull. Just like the other tank I'd stepped on, mangled components scattered as they were ripped free and ejected by the way the frame folded and collapsed under more than three times its intended load, and a moment later the weaker rear paneling of the casement blew apart dramatically as something touched off the propellant of the twelve 165mm rounds still aboard.
 
The damage display for my forward armor flashed as the shockwave hit, but didn't color itself like there was damage. Good enough.
 
My personal flavor of bullshit meant that missiles weren't, in general, a problem, since they either relied on electronic tracking or did a lousy job concentrating their damage. Heavy autocannons, on the other hand, could be aimed by iron sights. It might be difficult, but a good gunner, or one with a good angle to work with, could hit me, and with a Class Twenty, two bursts in the same body section would be bad news. That was why the assault gun had to die first.
 
Early model Marauders like No. 2 used a shoulder joint design that could rotate through nearly three hundred degrees of arc; with the elbow joint's own range of motion thrown in, it was completely possible to fire directly rearward. I'd seen it done with No. 2 itself, when I'd loaned it to Sophitia on Solaris. But, as much as I'd practiced and trained over the decade or so since I first became a mechwarrior, I wasn't that good. Perhaps I could have been, but I'd always focused on the basics rather than flashy situational tricks.
 
So, rather than just flipping the arms and blasting the immobile command hulk in my rear arc, I hauled my course around again, torso twisting at the same time, and brought the deadlined vehicle into my firing arcs that way. When I saw the human figure pop out of the commander's hatch and bolt for it, I waited a couple of seconds before I put the next salvo through the unmoving bow.
 
Probably a waste of mercy, but screw it. He hadn't chosen to make me leave my girls alone, he was just fighting Kurita's damned war.
 
By that point I'd come around to running almost straight towards the right side of my entrance, and I wasn't done - once again I turned hard, torso slewing hard on top of scrambling legs, and brought the two tanks that had led me into that little ambush into view again. They fired as one, clouds of missiles and smokey contrails engulfing their shapes. I didn't even need to think to switch to radar ranging - on the heads-up display projected over my cockpit windows, the clouds and all color vanished - and fire on the first of them to cross my sights. One of the PPC shots missed, the other two guns didn't. The wave of missile fire washed over No. 2 with only a couple of scattered bangs from the rockets that randomly happened to occupy the same space.
 
I fired again and my target blew apart, its turret launched upwards with enough force to literally bounce off the chamber's roof. A moment later, a scatter of flecks on the magscan fell down as a hole opened up in the ceiling, and through the half-transparent display I could see the blaze of sunlight in the comparative dimness of the chamber's indoor lighting.
 
A smaller flicker of motion - a flip to thermal showed a warm spot with a hint of human limbs, squirming out of the pilot's hatch and running for it - from the very last of the Combine tanks in the chamber. I waited a second, and it was too long. The Ohka's commander wasn't bailing out like his driver, and another wave of missiles came at me. The range was shorter and more of them hit, one finding a weakened spot in the left-torso armor and eroding the last layer of ablative paneling to leave nothing but the cagework of internal structure between him and my autocannon magazine.
 
Instantly, automatically, I twisted my torso to hide the damaged facing, letting the left arm swing under the extended 'nose' section of the main body so that I could keep it on target. One aspect of the Marauder's design was that the way the side torsos raked back from the nose-and-cockpit section made it possible to hide either of them from the front with relative ease, and while the side-to-side tracking of the autocannon mount was limited, it was enough to keep engaging while doing so.
 
All three shots hit, but they hit different parts of my target; it was still active, and the missiles roared out again. I stomped on the brakes, all but reversing direction inside the length of one stride, just as I judged he was ready to fire, and mostly it worked. Again, one or two missiles banged home against my exposed flank armor, but I had enough protection left on that side to take that.
 
I fired again, and, while this time the magazines didn't brew up, I could see the way one of the PPC blasts mangled the external tubes of the launcher. That Ohka was disabled, and from the popping topside hatch, its remaining crewman agreed.
 
I slowed No. 2 to a halt and took another, more careful look around. This was obviously a storage and maintenance area, the main 'base' for at least the battalion of tanks that had struck at my command post. But also…
 
I checked my communications. No signal. But there was that hole in the roof… I raised both PPCs and started to fire, slow-rate alternating as I walked towards the increasing gap. Pretty soon I hit a crossbeam, and as it failed, it pulled dozens of square meters of roof and 'ground' with it. When No. 2 was under the gap, I tried again. Signal.
 
"Joker Two, Joker Actual. Say how you read me?" I said.
 
(("Where the fuck did you go, Boss?!")) Malin Reyes' voice snarled back. (("What were you thinking?"))
 
"I wasn't, much," I said. "But that can wait. Look, I'm in what I think is their main ground force basing, an underground facility. I'm seeing signs of two battalions of Bakas and two of infantry."
 
(("Markings and first questions say these clowns are planetary militia, not Legion of Vega,")) Reyes said. (("But, Boss, we've got a problem. If you're right, we're missing half the infantry."))
 
Well, that was less than ideal. "Leone-" the commander of the infantry regiment that had been tasked with moving in to seize the base, "-hasn't reported them?"
 
(("No, he's got the admin complex and says he's got the water treatment facility surrFUCK,")) Reyes cut off with a shouted curse, a moment before a sharp shockwave and a dim rumble rolled over even my deeply sealed and literally buried cockpit.
 
Obviously, there'd been a bomb. "Reyes?" I prompted.
 
It was several seconds before he came back. (("Charges planted all around the water storage tank. It's all spilled out, just a giant puddle of mud left."))
 
What a delightful end to the day. "Understood. Have Leone's people just grab the records and pull out; no sense fighting for any of the rest of it." I checked the clock. "We'll move a couple more hours out and then set up for the night. If Byers didn't have any better luck than we did, we'll link up and do a water drop tomorrow."
 
(("Yes, Boss. Command Company's on its way to your location.")) Stay put and do nothing stupid was unsaid but both intended and understood.
 
"I'll be good, Mother," I replied. "Joker Actual, out."
 
I sighed and slumped back in my couch. We didn't have water, but we did have intel. I didn't have my wife or my kids to hug, but I at least knew what had been bothering me about things. It was a shit day, but not a day that promised tomorrow would be shit.
 
That'd have to be enough.
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===A letter from a lover from a different Battle Front===
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Ash, I'm writing this a hectic few days after landing on Dieron. Between security needs, even between the two of us with everything we already know, and the pace of things both after our landings, I've had far too little chance to put pen to paper. There was time on the flight in, of course, but between the uncertainty and its effects on my mood, and the intensity of simulation and maintenance we all went through during that last week, what I was able to write then is nothing I would wish to send or say. Which isn't to say that there is no news. I found myself pulled into a particularly interesting counseling case. One of the military attaches assigned by Prince Davion seems to have pinned for this operation in particular met… someone… at the no-decor officer's ball before we left Rigel Kentaurus, and with his having been assigned to ride with my company, I've become the leading candidate for helping him find and woo her again. Because of course the party was done in uniform without rank or decorations, and neither of them gave real names. I'm sorry for venting to you, but the entire affair is so ridiculous that I need to share it with someone, and all my pack of idiots can care about is the storybook fantasy of it all. Star-crossed lovers meeting anonymously, the quest to find one another, for the 'shining prince' to win the heart of the 'fair lady' and Be Together despite the vagaries of Fate... I can see you looking at me across the lightyears, dear, and I realize perfectly well how much I love those exact kinds of stories, but as much as I might sympathize they're not the ones who will have to answer to Katrina when this all goes terribly wrong.Adding to the farce is the fact that rather than attempt to go through records or post a general advertisement asking 'his mystery' to get in touch with him, he's led my idiots, pilots and tech crews alike, into a Quixotic quest to reach out with their personal contacts, so that he can find her and surprise her with some romantic indication of his regard. I've tried to point out how much that seems like stalking, but none of them have been dissuaded. Half the simulator runs we did on the flight in were really more like distractions to keep them from getting into more trouble with this.In other news, you'll be pleased to know that the Muninns were able to live up to everything you expected them to be when you were fighting to get them approved. The Combine launched a full aerospace fighter strike even before we were all the way into orbit, and Generalleutnant Wolf pushed the Muninn squadron forward by a few hours, with those of our fighters stationed aboard the Jormugandr and the mech transports as escorts. He was hoping that their similarity in size to the Titans would convince the Combine air commander that Wolf was trying to establish aerospace superiority before most of our forces arrived in orbit, giving him a chance to destroy his own strength in fighters still aboard their transports, and it worked.The Combine commander brought his ships out on a ballistic course, with their drives cold so that they couldn't be seen until they entered radar range, even the trio of Avengers stationed as part of the Dieron garrison, and if things had been what he expected them to be it might have gone the way he thought. Instead three of the Muninns each picked an Avenger and went after it in a straight head to head pass. Only one of the Avenger commanders tried to break off, and he was able to get his command away from the battle and head for the other jump point. As fast as those things are, there was never any chance we'd be able to intercept it directly, so as far as I know he's gotten away with only the damage he took in the initial clash.The other two Avengers didn't make it out of the first pass, which I have to think is a sign that they would have been badly underestimating us even if they were facing actual Titans. The other three Muninns, including the Leutnant Asima Brigham, were up against the Combine fighters, and they did a real number on them. The times that a Combine squadron didn't get out of their way usually ended with perhaps a single surviving fighter counting itself lucky to make a crippled escape, but more often it was like watching a shark or other marine predator plunge through a school of prey fish… And when they did, our own fighter squadrons were waiting for them. Even watching it as a mechwarrior it was obvious how big a difference the need to evade the Muninns made in the Combine wings' coordination and organization, their ability to reinforce and protect each other… and how much losing ground in those categories cost them against the escort fighters.The Brigham was the first to take real damage, three Slayers concentrating fire on her bow managed to break a localized hole in her armor and savage her bridge. Her gunnery officer survived and took command, and kept the ship in action until the Muninns that had gone against the Avengers could sweep through in what I've heard you call a lightning strike, which shattered two wings and turned things from an uneven fight to a rout. Combat Loss Grouping applies in aerospace actions as well as ground ones, even if the armor behavior is different. Examining gun cameras and other sensor records after the fact, we were told that nearly three quarters of the Combine fighters at Dieron were confirmed kills, as well as of course the two Avengers. I won't say here what our own losses were, but suffice to say that they weren't as bad as that even among the force sent.The Combine CO decided not to throw his air-breathers away against the landing, so we were able to bring our dropships down in the Aldinga Valley-Dieron's geography was dominated by immense fault-and-fold complexes, lines of strain like overstressed fabric visible from orbit. On the continents, the slack between those ridges - mountain ranges in their own right, really - formed valleys, lakes, and in the largest cases modest seas, while the oceans were filled with linear chains of islands or just linear islands. Mateo, the largest continent, held the planet's capital regions and central industrial zones. Aldinga was one of those zones, and it lay between the spaceport in the Tahlwynn Valley to the south, and the planetary capital and military complexes of Fortress Dieron in the San Martin Valley to the north. Significantly, the last intelligence I'd seen had the 2nd Sword of Light stationed at Fortress Dieron, and the 9th Sun Zhang Academy Cadre at the spaceport. Landing squarely between them like that was a signed invitation to hit the landing force from both sides.-with only the Proud Void aboard. Both Combine brigades moved out immediately, then once we had confirmation that the Cadre were all the way into the mountains, the Legion dropped from where they'd been waiting aboard the Jormugandr. Wolf aimed the infantry and armor's landing zone for the flatlands and foothills behind the Cadre, and brought his mechs down right into the hills around them. With penetrator bombs and artillery rounds aimed for the slopes above them to cause avalanches, and the Legion pressing them from all sides, the Cadre's mech forces were almost completely wiped out. The armored elements they had with them turned back and tried to break through the Legion's armored cordon around the foothills of the pass, and things really didn't go any better for them.Meanwhile the Void was having a hard day; the Cadre took longer to get moving than the Sword did, so by the time they were in position to close the trap the Sword was already getting its leading elements into the lowlands. With the way the DCMS feeds the Sword of Light anything they could possibly want or need, their armor elements don't have a single Ohka to be found, just plenty of hovercraft and heavier vehicles, with crews that are nearly as good as the Sword's mechwarriors. The aircraft we hadn't seen earlier showed up then on bombing and strike runs, and the fighting got pretty heavy for a half hour or so.I've never lost anyone under my command before. I remember, during those years before we were married, losing comrades, but while I loved you for your dedication then I never really understood why you took it so much harder then. I wish I still didn't.My company was one of the ones sent to cover our own flanks, and harass the Sword's. We were able to do some good against a battalion of hovers, catching them before they could break out into open ground and pinning them for long enough to work through the artillery's queue. The hard parts were that the Sword's armor elements are trained to the same standard as the rest of their force, and that we ended up staying in place long enough for a light mech company to catch up. My idiots had to actually ask for orders before I remembered that I was supposed to be in charge, and by the time that happened, we'd lost two mechs and had two more roughly handled… Loverboy and I took rearguard and were able to pull back a kill of our own, but it wasn't a good day.One of our losses was to a cockpit hit.Since I know you can't ask directly, with the light years between us, I'll say that I'm doing fine. I'd be lying if I said I was happy or comfortable, but running days of maneuvers after the fact means that I was able to process the idea without having to think about it too directly. I'm not as good at that art as you are, but I think I've been a good enough student to use the technique to good advantage.I love you, Ash.
Until we can meet again,
Sophitia
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