CnC Chpt 0

==Cat and Crescent - Prelude -==
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===Planetary Assault===
Moab (moon), Lyreton System
Sunday, October 13th, 3022 
"I signed the contract and transferred the down payment to your account," Mandrinn Jairo Crivoi reported. "The rest depends on your destruction of my enemies."
 
Inside his neurohelmet, Denis de Souza grinned. "Excellent," he replied. While he waited for his executive officer to confirm the money transfer, he tried to press his luck with a bit of small talk. "I'm looking forward to our collaboration, milord."
 
The nobleman refused to be decoyed. "Are you ready to drop?"
 
"Very soon, Sir," de Souza promised. "In fact, I'm already sitting in my Hunchback."
 
"Yes, and the rebels are pounding at my gates." Crivoi pointed out. He sounded desperate, and Denis de Souza liked that. Desperate customers paid well.
Unfortunately, de Souza reminded himself, I'm also rather desperate. His stolen Leopard-class dropship ran low on fuel. Once they landed, the ship wouldn't take off very soon. His five mechs desperately needed ammunition and spare parts after their recent escape from the collapsing Aurigan Coalition. De Souza planned to raid one of Lyreton's three moons to satisfy his needs. Instead, he received an offer of employment from a desperate local noble.
 
A whisper from his executive officer came through de Souza's in-ear comms. "Payment confirmed, boss."
 
De Souza smiled. This contract wouldn't make him rich, but it gave him a new home after the destruction of House Arano. In the scheme of things, he appreciated that tradeoff. He activated his microphone again. "Don't worry, milord," he assured his new boss. "We'll be on the ground in twenty minutes."
 
"Where are you landing?"
 
"Oh, quite close," de Souza assured him. "There are several football pitches in a nice little park about a kilometer south of your palace. We'll set the ship down there, and deploy at once."
 
"I... suppose... that will work," Mandrinn Crivoi reluctantly allowed. For a few moments de Souza expected him to point out that civilian neighborhoods ringed that park. The dropship would likely flatten or set ablaze a lot of homes. The Mandarin apparently dismissed the moral quandaries. His personal survival outweighed that of his rebellious subjects. "We can hold out until you arrive."
 
"Good!" de Souza grinned. "We'll deal with your batch of rebels pretty quickly."
 
As the dropship descended, de Souza kept a close eye on the data-feed sent up by the mandrinn's loyalists. The rebels - led by one of Crivoi's own House mechwarriors - laid siege to the Mandrinn's palace, an old Capellan fortress constructed several centuries prior. Another hour, de Souza estimated, and they'd raise Crivoi's head on a pike. Or whatever way they finished off political opponents here on Moab. The rebels mostly fielded infantry and ad-hoc vehicles, though they possessed two Battlemechs. The scariest was a thirty-ton UrbanMech.
 
Minutes ticked down. The rebels continued their push on the Mandarin's palace. Small infiltration teams breached the walls. Crivoi committed his last reserves, and the rebel battlemechs approached the front gates.
 
<<"ETA two minutes.">> the dropship's captain informed de Souza.
 
He grinned. "All right, Reavers," he said, turning his comm to speak with the other battlemechs in his command. "These guys should be seeing us soon. Remember, we're not here to take prisoners or make friends. Whoever kills the rebel battlemechs gets a fat bonus. Don't worry too much about the local architecture. Mandrinn Crivoi hired us to be the boot. I intend to deliver a stomping these people will remember."
 
The dropship touched down. De Souza led from the front, first to disembark from the dropship's ramp. The fifty-ton Hunchback resembled de Souza himself - a stocky juggernaut designed to brawl in close quarters. Most people wouldn't call it pretty. It wasn't designed to be pretty. It was a linebreaker, an assault mech repackaged as a medium, with a terrifying shoulder-mounted autocannon. De Souza counted on the morale effect of that awesome firepower even as he reminded himself he only had three rounds in the magazine.
 
Grass burned underneath the dropship. De Souza disembarked into rising billows of smoke. Several nearby homes, only very slightly better than shacks, blazed as the fires spread. De Souza saw civilians abandon their houses to escape. He spared them no thought, and pushed forward, trusting that they'd get out of the way before getting stepped on. If not, the techs can hose off anything that gets on our machines.
 
Behind him, Mehmed Oguzcan disembarked from the dropship with his four-legged Scorpion. The former pirate showed incredible talent for the poorly-regarded quad mech, and it scampered after the Hunchback with a speed and movement profile that de Souza found vaguely disturbing. The stolen Shadow Hawk came third, followed by Victor Murguia's laughable Cicada.
 
As the Hunchback strode through the narrow streets, de Souza spotted the Mandrinn's palace a kilometer ahead. The rebels, in the very moments of achieving victory, found themselves overmatched and outflanked. Panic ripped through their lines as the Hunchback pushed forward into their midst.
The rebel UrbanMech challenged his advance. From ambush, the pilot fired a quick salvo of autocannon rounds into the Hunchback's left side, then retreated into more dense cover. Turning to face this threat, de Souza fired a round from his own autocannon, but the oversize shell from the stubby, short-ranged gun went wide and hit a four-story apartment block. Cursing his waste of his limited ammunition, de Souza continued pushing forward. Save the client first. Collect scalps later.
 
Rebel soldiers began to surrender, throwing their small arms down as de Souza's Reavers smashed through their lines. With only a few momentary pangs of conscience, de Souza used his medium lasers to cut them down. After the Reavers made a few examples, the rebels broke entirely, fleeing as best they could for the countryside.
 
When Mandrinn Crivoi called him again, the nobleman's voice carried a mixture of glee and relief. "You've done it!" he crowed jubilantly. "They're in full retreat."
 
"We still need to finish them," de Souza pointed out. "Both of the rebel mechs are still on the loose."
 
"Of course, of course," Crivoi agreed. "Hunt them down, Commander."
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Chapter 0