The Outback War

Having been the target of arms smuggling for years, the LIC manages to learn the location of SAFE's black ops. Waiting until the main force was on an operation to attack a decoy target, the LIC sends Loki's Fist and mercenaries to retaliate. The War begins with Loki's Fist taking Dos Gringos while mercenaries assault Rancho Malario and Truck Stop.

**Dos Gringos Massacre**

On the morning of XXX, XXX an unknown force entered the Dos Gringos system. The FWLS XXXXX detected the incoming fighters and dropships but was unable to stop them from advancing on the planet, their fighters being quickly overwhelmed. The crew managed to get a short distress signal out before being jammed, but no help would arrive in time. Enemy forces boarded the ship and in a break with the traditions of jumpship protocol, execute the entire crew. They then left the ship to drift and continued to the planet.

SAFE had felt confident in the secrecy of the system that, while the main force was off assaulting a target, they left only a single company behind to defend the space port. The LIC backed force landed unopposed. Once at their rallying point, they proceeded to burn a path towards the space port. Anything they encountered was destroyed with no exception.

Once outside the city, the FWL forces engaged the LIC invaders. However, the LIC battalion of foces quickly forced them to attempt to retreat. The surviving battlemechs attempted to leave the planet on their Union dropship but with no air support, it was shot down in short order.

With all of the defenders destroyed, the LIC force proceeded to punish the planet for allowing SAFE to use it as a base of operations. The rampage was planet wide and went on for days before they moved on to attack Rancho Malario and Truck Stop.

**Attack on Rancho Malario**

Having crushed all resistence on Dos Gringos, LIC used that system as a jumping off point to attack two other systems. The first was Rancho Malario, a system that was used by SAFE for food and fuel production.

Using mercenaries from Astrokazsy and Dark Caste clanners, Loki led an assault on Rancho Malario. Upon landing, the met only token resistance from the locals. Once they got within 50 km of the refinery known as OK City, the FWL battlemechs engaged.

It was a week of sporadic fire fights with Loki trying to lure the FWL out into the open. When it became apparent that the FWL commander was not about to leave the cover of the city, the Loki force moved in. The battle lasted 10 minutes with the speed of Loki's mech allowing them to trap the slower FWL heavy mechs and seperate them from each other. The buildings they had been using for cover became traps as each unit was destroyed. Once again, Loki took no prisoners and ruined the facility on the way out.

**Truck Stop Brawl**

The Local goverment on Truck Stop had received the last minute signal the XXX sent out before being jammed. They had two things working to their advantage. The first was the "Mayor" was a former officer in the LCAF who had defected when his unit was abandoned during a skirmish. The second was that warning allowed them to set up evacution plans and a strategy for defense. The only problem was that the only battlemech force on the planet was a company of surplus Urbanmechs.

Knowing that an enemy force was on it's way, Truck Stop emptied the facility closest to what would be the most likely landing point. Once the enemy was on there way to loot the nearby facility, the Urbanmech security force powered up, and moved from hiding to engage.

Thinking they could out manuever the slower mechs, the raiders tried to move behind the defenders. However the defenders kept in formation and denied the raiders any advantage. After losing a mech and having many others severly damaged while having barely dented the heavy armor of the Urbanmechs, the raiders retreated after 5 minutes of fighting.

Having caused enough damage, LIC forces retreat considering mission a success. FWL abandons those worlds.

RM2