Strat-2 Chpt-12

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==Strategos (A Great Captain Roberts Tale!!) - Part 2Chapter 12 - Walk with me in==
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===Screams in the Greenhouses===
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The skies…
…screamed, weeping tears of fire. The greenhouses bore witness as thunder slammed into the Lord's castle. The port, and the Lords themselves failed time and again to stop them.
The Star League's enemies had come, bringing with them a demonic fury that was oddly selective.
S'aeir peered through the forbidden gap at the street, where the Rhino burned, and with it. The Star League soldiers of the Lord Inslee also burned, screaming.
She had never seen the Lord's men screaming, or in pain. Not even when Kally bit the one who took her to be his wife.
S'aeir knew she wasn't going to be honored like her big sister. Even at eight, she was not pretty enough for them. She was 'the ugly one'.
A man in helmet and breastplate, with a pulse-laser rifle. They tried to dash toward the drainage hole, and a line of greenish pulsing light dragged fire along the street behind his running feet. A lighting his backplate on fire before he ruptured in a steam explosion. His helmet landed near her hiding place, the dead remains of a face still staring into her eyes.
She stifled a scream.
The ground shook, as the Lord Major's 'mech came around the corner…
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===The Hunting Grounds===
Trina crept…
… through streets, stepping between prime movers and avoiding stampeding horses. Urban was the Roc's hunting ground, and her point was hunting.
Up ahead, the scouts were finding targets, and laying TAG on them.
Guided munitions struck fortified positions, forcing her prey into a mobile sort of warfare.
Five Roc class Protomechs are thirty five tons. Thirty five tons, five clan extended range medium lasers, moving at a walk of 50 kph and a run of 80, with a 150 meter jump.
Not quite on the level of the Lancelot class heavy 'mech that just stepped out of a fortified doorway sunk into the street between warehouses.
But then, Protomech Warriors are used to scrapping larger prey.
His PPC went past her shoulder, misjudging range, perhaps, while his large lasers passed helplessly by.
She hopped and danced, her star-mates/sibkin closing on multiple angles, a flying W with weapons nearly as powerful as his arm-mount lasers and a much smaller profile.
She fired, her sibkin fired.
Armor sloughed from his head, chest, one arm, and both legs.
The bigger 'mech stumbled at the unexpected damage.
She hopped with a burst from her jump jets, and laid another shot aimed at his head-mounted cockpit…
I live, I die, I live..you die. You die forever.
Her reward was the gaseous venting of superheated air from melted and sublimated, cracked ferroglass.
The Heavy fell, revealing a Bombardier behind him.
"Oh ******." She jumped as she landed, and pinprick missiles passed by.
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===Last Stand of Lord Innslee===
The first passes…
…did not seem inclined to end. Out of nearly eighteen 'mechs, there were only four left.
Four. 'Mechs. Elwood finally began to understand what it must be like having a Harvest Force strike a resource world, because the enemy was crushing his very best with relative ease.
He climbed into the cockpit of his Black Knight, a 'mech dating from the very days of Star League itself, lovingly maintained.
He waited as the doors opened on the 'mech bay.
He readied himself to step forward and salvage something from this debacle.
The screams of his men in his ears.
The doors opened.
There were shapes in the predawn darkness, and fires. 
And there were, in the smoke, lines of light illuminating him.
(("Attention Dickbag, you might live. If you power down now and get out of the 'mech.")) It was on loudspeaker, a woman's voice. (("We have you indexed with air-strikes in-coming or you can surrender."))
He raised his arm-mounted weapons,and suddenly, pulses of green and blue slammed him.
(("See, I tried."))
The detectors saw the bombs right before they entered the Mechbay…They had to have released them before their leader-
Flash, and the world was no more for Elwood Innslee.
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===Taking into count of day's activities===
In the light…
…of dawn, it was time to count bodies. Among the living were nearly four hundred Sons of Plunder who threw down arms after the strike on what appeared to be their commander's Mech bay, or out of despair, or shock.
From OWS Evanescent there were less than a dozen casualties. The Illusive added another twenty casualties, and Kappa Provisional Galaxy lost five ProtoMechs, but kept their warriors alive.
"We're going to need that garrison, Fleet Captain," Amanda said over the comm as she sat in the hatch of another track, this one with guns leveled on the collected live enemy personnel taken. "When's our relief due?"
<<"They're in system and en-route.">>
Operation: Cartagena was a success, but what to do about the fifteen thousand civilians with slave collars?
<De Opresso Liber,> Desmond whispered in her mind. <Liberate the Oppressed.>
She felt that rush again, and Desmond showed her his viewpoint when she manumitted Erinyes.
"We do seem to be doing a lot of that." she mumbled.
In the distance, a shuttle flared ahead of a grounding DropShip.
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