Escape

*I am Commodore Samuel Ostergaard of the Concord Navy. You are surrounded by a battalion of the Taurian Concordat's most decorated MechWarriors. On behalf of our allies in the Aurigan Directorate, I demand your immediate and unconditional surrender.*
*But I know you won't stand down, Lady Arano. You're The Sword of Restoration - you have a reputation to uphold. And that's good. I wouldn't have it any other way.*
*I'm going to enjoy painting the ice red with your blood.*

**Escape** is a storyline mission in *Battletech*.

## Synopsis

Well, things go sideways as the Taurian battalion lands on Artru and surrounds Castle Nautilus with battlemechs. However, Yang and Lady Arano managed to reactivate a lance of ancient, SLDF-grade Battlemechs and plan to use them to punch through the Taurian lines and reach the Delfinas, with Taurians under commander Ostergaard in pursuit.

## Walkthrough

* This is a pre-defined battle where you don't bring any of your mechs into battle, but get four vintage mechs to use against the enemy, including an *Atlas*. You start off surrounded by four light mechs (Jenner JR7-D, Firestarter FS9-H, Commando COM-1B, and a Shadow Hawk SHD-2D. They all start before your heavies and assault mechs and get a few pot-shots in. Your own lance consists of:
	+ Atlas AS7-D-HT piloted by Kamea Arano (8/5/7/5) and armed with a pair of ER L Lasers, two M Pulse lasers, an AC/20, an SRM6 and an LRM20 rack.
	+ Highlander HGN-732B piloted by Charybdis (8/4/5/4) with a Gauss Rifle, three M Lasers, an SRM6++ and an LRM20++.
	+ Black Knight BL-6B-KNT piloted by Kanaloa (5/4/8/4) with an ER PPC, four M Lasers, two L Pulse lasers, and an S Laser. The pulse lasers are very inefficient, so just turn them off and forget.
	+ Griffin GRF-4N piloted by Reynard (8/5/4/4) and an ER PPC with two SRM6 racks.
* Generally try to tank and spank, given all the pilots except Reynard has Bulwark, you want to take advantage of this as much as possible. Assault Mechs has terrible evasions anyway even after long distance sprinting so it is best to just stand your ground and take advantage of the Bulwark ability, except for the Griffin which you probably want to keep far back. Let enemies come to you rather than going charging into enemy fire.
	+ Note that in addition to Multi-Target, Breaching Shot, and Sensor Lock, Kamea has a hidden Bulwark ability, making her a highly versatile asset.
* Wiping out the first wave is easy, though its best to focus on the Firestarter, as it can wreck your mechs' internals. The Taurians will send more light mechs your way: Another Jenner, a Panther PNT-9R and an Enforcer ENF-4R supported by a Striker and a Scorpion.
* Once you get far enough away from Castle Nautilus, Yang will detonate the demolition charges he planted in the ammunition dump at the Castle, wiping out the entire armory with a thousand tons of high explosives.
* Your primary goal is reaching the *Delifnas*. Since you aren't working on a timer yet, take your time to reach it, wrecking the mechs and vehicles in your way. However, nothing is easy in this world and reaching the dropship results in Ostergaard calling down an artillery strike on it. You need to get to the secondary LZ now, which is on the other side of the valley, while the Taurians send another kill team after you blocking the way. The blocking mechs are a Griffin GRF-1N and a Vindicator VND-1R, with a Zeus ZEU-6S, Awesome AWS-8Q, and Battlemaster BLR-1G Assault mechs as backup. They certainly don't lack for effort in trying to kill Kamea.
* Recommendations: Pick one of the 3 Assault Mechs to get a complete salvage, or try to get lucky and knock out the pilots of all 3 which is not very difficult to do given the Gauss Rifle makes it easier to deal significant stability damage. The Battlemaster appears to be the best choice of the 3, but keep in mind that you will find a Battlemaster in the next story mission which is also quite easy to salvage, so the Awesome might be a better choice. If you are lucky, you might be able to pick one of the assaults and bring it down, if you have sufficient armor left when you get to that point. There are a lot of PPCs used by the enemy in this mission so lots of pin-point damage, especially to Kamea, who must survive. She doesn't have Bulwark, so it makes that task more difficult.

## Outcome

* Although Lady Kamea manages to get away with her life and four SLDF mechs (if you didn't mess up too badly), Castle Nautilus is lost, the Directorate and the Concordat are at war with the Restoration, and she has a decorated Taurian commander gunning for you. Farah isolated the virus that wrecked the Argo on the secondary drive - calling it Locura, after the mythical Artru wind - and the entire thing is off-limits. Murad speculates it's related to a research project code-named SDS M-2, used to protect SLDF worlds from ancient WarShips, and an incident that caused the drones to malfunction. SLDF scientists tried debugging the code, only to seal up the hundreds of variants in the archive before the Star League went the way of the dodo.
* The next stop is a war council at Weldry, with the Magistracy and the founding houses. You get a Highlander HGN-732B mech for your trouble, and Lady Arano keeps the rest for herself.