CnC Chpt 12

==Cat and Crescent - Chapter 12 -==
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===Catching up while on Patrol===
Bingham Prefecture
Moab, Lyreton, Rimward Periphery
Wednesday, October 6th, 3024 
"There's not enough time," Josie said, trying to choke out the words through the lump in her throat.
 
"I know, Teacup." Stephen Wallace agreed. He gently detached her from his shoulder. "I can see yer here with th' mercs." He looked up at the Griffin, and spotted the art painted on the mech's left shoulder pauldron. A girl in a tartan skirt, armed with a frilly red umbrella, rode a rearing white carousel horse in a pose reminiscent of some ancient Terran generals. "And I see ye commissioned a new Carousel Cavalier. She's a braw mech, lassie… did ye do th' art yerself?"
 
Josie laughed. "Aksu - one of our mechtechs - painted that for me. I described it as best I could remember it. I don't have any photographs of the original. Sorry."
 
"Nay, lassie, tis better this way. Ye made yer own thing while payin' tribute to me. I wouldnae have it any other way."
 
He hugged her again, and Josie keenly noted his lost left hand, and impossibly-mangled right. She tried not to think too much about it yet. Looking about, she noted that Remihel disappeared sometime in the last few minutes, leaving her blessed time alone with her father. "There's a fold-down rumble seat in my cockpit. And I think we've got a spare cooling vest."
 
Stephen considered that. "Aye, if ye can stan' the howlin' stank o' me locked up in th' cockpit, and if yer Taurian boss don't mind."
 
"I… no, he surely won't mind." Josie said.
 
He looked up at the rope ladder hanging down from the Griffin's cockpit. "I didn't expect t' ever be doin' this again, Teacup. But if ye have the vest, I'll take th' seat."
 
"With your… hands, can you climb?" she asked.
 
"I can make it," he vowed, gritting his teeth.
 
Josie held the rope ladder for him and tried not to worry as he climbed - but her fears for his safety proved unnecessary. He might've lost his hand, but he's learned to adjust. She followed him up. "Take my vest," she said. "We can run back to the Hondo and I'll grab a spare."
 
"Will it fit me?" Stephen asked.
 
"I'm taller than you now, Da," she pointed out. "And you've lost a lot of weight."
 
He grunted, and allowed her to wrap the cooling vest around his torso. Then, moving gingerly in the Griffin's cockpit, he turned himself around and sat down heavily on the folding seat directly behind the pilot's station. 
 
"Hope ye dinnae need the lavvy ye've got back here," he joked. He struggled with his right hand to plug in the feed line for the cooling vest, unable to reach a spot that would be easily-accessible to someone with a working left hand. Wincing, Josie reached back and did it for him.
 
"Thanks, wee yin," he said.
 
 "Aye," she said, and took her own seat. Wee yin. How she'd hated getting called that as a teenager, though now it seemed incredible that she'd hear it again from her father's own mouth. "Let's jog back to the Hondo, eh? And there should be a headset you can plug in, so we can talk more easily."
 
"Found it."
 
As soon as Josie plugged in her neurohelmet, she picked up chatter on the comms. She muted her external channel so only her father could hear. "We've got four mechs and a tank, Da," she declared. "Luke Skinner's got a -3R Stinger, just like the original Cavalier. Wes Reno's got the Phoenix Hawk. And Remi Greenbrier has a Marauder… hold up, I got a comm ping."
 
"Two, this is One." The comm chatter broke as Remihel's voice came across the line. "I see you're back in the saddle?"
 
"This is Two," Josie said. "Da's with me in the rumble seat. And… thank you."
 
"Any time, Two. What's your status?"
 
"I need to grab a spare cooling vest from the Hondo," she said. "After that, I'm ready for action again."
 
"All right. Go ahead and grab a spare vest from the ship - watch the traffic on the ramp. Report back once you're done."
 
"Yes, sir." she said, and muted the microphone again.
 
"Seems tae be a better band o' lads and lassies than the Lambs," Stephen said approvingly. "They treatin' ye right?"
 
"Yes, Da," Josie said. I'm going to wait to tell him about being a gladiator on Herotitus… and everything else. We need a long time to talk. "Yes, the Rangers treat me right. Remi's a good commander. Really knows how to handle a lance, though so far I've only seen it in the simulators. This is my first combat drop with the Rangers."
 
"Good." He hesitated. "An' have ye found yerself a laddie?"
 
"Daaa," Josie protested. "Can we save it for later?"
 
"Does that mean 'aye' or 'nay,' Teacup?"
 
"Nay!" she said. "...Mostly nay. It's complicated." She halted the Griffin at the foot of Hondo's ramp, where Chief Lottie and her crew of techs worked to unload one of the H-7 Warrior VTOLs. "Look, I'm going to go get a spare cooling suit."
 
"I ain't gonna run off," her dad chuckled. "Go on, haste ye back."
 
Josie dropped down the rope ladder once again and sprinted up the ramp. The Rangers had a dozen spare cooling vests in storage, and she found one suitably-sized for her height and build. As she headed back for the ramp, a spare thought gave her pause, and she quickly detoured to snag a thermos full of coffee and a handful of field rations. 
 
When she returned to the Griffin, her father regarded her gifts with an adoring look. "Oh, bless ye, lassie," he sighed. He cracked open the thermos as she donned the spare cooling vest, and his contented sigh for the coffee nearly drove Josie back to tears. My daddy's here again, and things are going to be okay.
 
She pushed through the emotion and activated her comm. "One, this is Two. I'm ready."
 
"Just in time, Two," Remihel replied. "We finished disarming the prison guards. It's catch-and-release season - we'll load them up in some of the civilian cars, and tell them to keep driving until they hit civilization."
 
"That's not right," Josie protested. "We should throw them back in the cells at Boca Grande."
 
"No," Remihel said, decisively. "We don't have the men to guard them. And the prisoners we're releasing… most of them aren't suitable wardens. Most of them are just civilians."
 
"He's raight," Stephen said. "Ye need tae move fast and hit those clatty dobbers afore th' alarm is raised."
 
There was a pause on the channel. "Two, can you translate it to English?"
 
"Wha' d'ye think I'm speakin' here, ye numpty?" Stephen shot back, cutting off Josie's reply. "It ain't fecking Capellan!"
 
"Da! Comm discipline, please!" Josie said. "One - he advised us to follow the same plan we… um, already planned to do."
 
"Great, glad he approves. In the meantime, I've set a nav waypoint for you. Orders: sentry. Once Three and Four finish scaring off the prison guards, we'll all join you."
 
"Affirmative. Proceeding to the waypoint," Josie replied.
 
Full night fell over Moab, but the darkness was short-lived. As Josie reached her assigned waypoint and looked down onto one of the narrow mining roads, the eastern horizon brightened again and the gas giant Lyreton surged into view. Its vast size made it larger in the sky than any sun or moon, and the light it reflected could - when moons, planet, and sun aligned - illuminate Moab's surface with a baleful red half-day. Josie halted the Griffin and turned to look at the beautiful sight.
 
"I forgot about that," she admitted to her father.
 
"I didn't think I'd see it again," Stephen replied. "They dinnae give me a window for two years."
 
Josie bit her lip and pinched her eyes shut to stop the rising tears. "I'm so sorry, Daddy," she said. "Everyone believed you were dead. They said that Denis de Souza's Hunchback stepped on the head of your Stinger."
 
"Aye, that big minger did make a go o' it. But my ejection seat fired first, and they took me prisoner." He paused. "Mandrinn Crivoi came by t' visit a few times. Tried t' tell me a puckle o' lies about wae happened tae ye. He said… he said ye escaped off Moab, but got sold tae a brothel on Herotitus."
 
Josie closed her eyes. "He lied," she hissed. "Aye, I went to Herotitus - as far as my cash could take me. But I got lucky, and I didn't get sent there." She swallowed down her anger. "It came close a few times. I've done some stuff I'm not proud of to stay clear of it."
 
"Teacup," Stephen said. "Whatever ye've done, ye've done me proud and I still love ye. I'm here for ye now, and it doesn't matter."
 
"Oh," Josie said. "Stop it, Da. It sucks to cry in a neurohelmet. It's getting everywhere."
 
He laughed. "I know it, wee yin," he said. "I know it."
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===Rendezvousing with allies===
 
As the Rangers gathered at their waypoint, Remihel made a quick call to Mandrinn Yosef. His erstwhile ally took the call in the cockpit of his Javelin, clad in the gear of a mechwarrior. "Captain Greenbrier, I'm glad to hear your voice."
"Your Excellency," Remihel said. "Apologies for the delay. I landed at Boca Grande and discovered the place wasn't abandoned. Crivoi had a secret prison here. The garrison reported my mechs before we overwhelmed them."
 
Yosef growled. "So they've seen you coming, then. They broke sensor contact with my forces about fifteen minutes ago."
 
"Where were they last?"
 
"Preparing to cross the Rio Verde, at the Forges Bridge. Do you have an accurate map?"
 
"A fairly accurate one," Remihel agreed. He moved it to the big display screen on the right side of his cockpit, and took a few moments to orient himself.
 
Water splintered Moab's surface. Though seas covered just shy of half Moab's surface, the moon's active tectonics raised dozens of landmasses in a spiderweb of archipelagos and interconnected chains of super-islands. No large oceans formed. A narrow equatorial sea jagged around half the moon's circumference, dividing the northern hemisphere from south. Lakes and enclosed seas divided much of the remaining landmass. One of those large enclosed seas - the Mar do Verde - served as a large chunk of the border between House Crivoi and House Yosef. It flowed northward into the equatorial sea via the Rio Verde river. The large Forges Bridge over the Rio Verde - designed for a railroad and strong enough for Battlemechs - made a natural bottleneck for House Yosef's defenders.
 
"All right, I've got you on the map," Remihel said. "Looks like I'm just shy of three hundred kilometers in their rear."
 
"If they fall back all the way to Deva, they can be there in nine hours," Mandrinn Yosef warned. "Assuming Crivoi keeps pace with his two UrbanMechs. You have that long to run amuck."
 
"Oh, I intend to use it all," Remihel said. "How did your force fair?"
 
"I won't discuss any details on this line, but I'm not unhappy about my situation." Mandrinn Yosef's face twisted into a feral grin. "Crivoi tried to rush some of his bug mechs across the bridge. My Gurkhas hit them with inferno SRMs. The leading Commando took three infernos and only survived by jumping into the river."
 
Remihel grimaced. "Lucky guy to have the river so close." He didn't want to take three infernos in any size of mech, let alone a lightweight 'bug' mech.
 
"Disappointing that he made it out of the river, but it sure made the rest of them hesitate." Mandrinn Yosef laughed gleefully, and Remihel decided he liked the Moabite noble. He's got a Taurian's sense of fighting fair.
 
"Are you going to pursue Crivoi now that he's broken contact, Your Excellency?" Remihel asked.
 
"Absolutely not," Yosef said. "My Gurkhas can hold a defensive line backed by the Hetzers and my two UrbanMechs. If I pursued, I'd take far too many risks. And then there's the weather to consider. Have you been watching the weather?"
 
"Ehm..." Remihel frowned. "I got a five-day forecast from the planetary data-network. Nothing looked unusual."
 
Mandrinn Yosef shook his head. "Your information must be outdated. There's a furaca located to my northwest, and it's changing directions. Bingham Prefecture could get it sometime tomorrow afternoon - local day, that is."
 
"Sorry… a foo-what?"
 
"Furaca."
 
Remihel felt a sense of unease grow in his stomach. "And what the heck is a furaca?"
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===Preparing for a ambush===
A furaca was a cyclonic storm common to Moab's large tropical zone. They could last for months, circling the moon several times and recharging their storm clouds with evaporated water from the dozens of lakes and seas. It brought torrential rains and wind over a hundred kilometers per hour.
 
And just like that, my second plan to face the Reavers gets wrecked. Remihel wanted to use his two Warrior VTOLs to harass the marching enemy, and his advantage in reconnaissance to manage when and where he fought de Souza's largest mechs. But the Warriors can't fly in the furaca's high winds. And worse, the storm will lower our effective engagement ranges. That favors the Reavers - particularly that nasty Hunchback and its monster autocannon.
 
That left Remihel with one idea - and he didn't know entirely if he could pull it off. I still have the equipment… but do I have the time?
 
He opened a private comm channel to the Griffin. "Two, is your dad on the line?"
 
"Aye," she replied. "He's listening on the headset."
 
Remihel considered his requirements for a few moments. "I need an ambush spot. I'd like to set up on the reverse slope of a ridge, and then feign retreat to drag the enemy into a kill box. I'm looking at the map - and I think this ridge west of the Linhares looks good."
 
"Aye, but ye know it's a wee bit obvious as a trap," the elder Wallace said. "Ye take my advice, ye should set up somethin' sloppy at Linhares, bu' then make yersel' a more serious box at the junction of Capelinha highway and the Angelandia road."
 
Remihel looked at the map, and found the second location. Two kilometers between them… that may be what I need. "All right, that looks good to me. Next thing - Crescent Three," Remihel said, turning toward Wes's Phoenix Hawk. "I remember the prison guards had an APC."
 
"That's right. It's a beat-up old Rock Rover. We pulled it out of that ditch, and it still runs."
 
"Good… that makes it easier. Crescent Three and Four, I'm sending you on a scouting run. Get to Linhares and scout the scene. Do not engage unless you're facing a bug. I'll reinforce you soon. Three is in overall command."
 
<<"Affirmative,">> Wes said. His Phoenix Hawk and Wes's Stinger quickly set off down the narrow road.
 
"Section Leader Narang?"
 
"Sir!" The commander of Alpha Squad responded quickly. "What can I do for you?"
 
"Collect our three Outriders and the Rock Rover we just liberated from the prison guards," Remihel said. "Then load them up with our mines and vibrabombs. We're going to set a trap."
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Chapter 12