Mortar Team

**Key Features** | »Mark 15 "Barrack Buster" mortar»Combine-supplied SMG (x2)»Fraternal-yet-identical twins»"Kosangas" logo»Designs for handheld launcher

## Tactical Analysis

* **Barracks busters:** Bringing down enemy structures and blowing down enemy infantry, the mortar teams of the Front are capable of laying down a painful barrage of homemade high explosives against their enemies.

* **Show us a Target:** The teams have two primary flaws: They cannot fire into fog of war, and they cannot fire on the move, relying on personal SMGs to be their safeguards.

* **BOOM goes the dynamite:** Experimenting with the propellants, the teams can become much more effective against enemy vehicles that they face.

## Background

*"MORTAR COMBAT!"*

-  A common shout by Mortar Teams in the battlefield.
The Front does not approve of civilian casualties in their war. If someone is an informant, they're fair game. But a small schoolboy on his way to work after classes isn't their intended type of victim. Still, the Front are honest and forthright enough to admit that their enemies will come after them with heavier equipment than even their specials can handle. The Soviets offered a plethora of means to destroy enemy vehicles, but the Front declined on the grounds that the equipment could cause too much damage to the surrounding area. The Continentals small, hand-held mortar systems has inspired the Front to look into the concept on their own, and fast. Fighting in densely packed streets and alleys, some buildings just need to be brought down. Experimenting out in the countryside, the Front decided that a small, one man mortar wouldn't be enough. Instead a team was needed to carry the mortars about the field. Hard lessons learned trying to bomb Straylight and Allied facilities had taught the Front that their typical satchels and pipe bombs weren't doing the job. Heavier payloads delivered by mortar however, that would make the world sit up and listen.

These mortar teams make their own weapons, learning the systems they create inside-out in the small workshops the Front uses. Typically a small, large-diameter mortar, the teams that create them typically utilize heavy, high explosive charges to assault enemy structures. By targeting the barracks of the peacekeepers and (if it needs to be done) reservists in Northern Ireland, the Front can hopefully force the Allies to the bargaining table by stretching valuable resources away from the rest of the world in what should be a nation perfectly willing to support the Allies. They could frankly care less about Legion casualties, just that they happen.

In one of the first actions involving a Front mortar team, the target was Apollo Fowl's personal penthouse in Belfast. The attack not only damaged the penthouse by crashing straight through a skylight, but also by destroying several pieces of priceless art, three "personal" dryad battlesuits, and a goat. No one wanted to ask about the goat, but there was a goat.

This spurred on further mortar attacks, but also marked the mortar teams as targets by Legion Security. Realizing that they had no means to effectively defend themselves, the Front found a surprising ally; the Technocratic Combine, via Irish descendants in Mexico, supplied them with SMGs capable of giving teams on the move a means to defend themselves. While horribly inaccurate, even the most Smilex'ed-out junkie knows that when a hail of bullets comes their way, they duck.