Battletech fic thread, non-TF Options

[Fortress Ironhol...]

[20] - Shifting Alliances, pt. 2

Well, we had secured the Toyama. Now to get it off the planet. I had a plan for how that might happen, but we were going to have to grease some palms first.

About sixty kilometers north of Solaris City is a farming and ranching community known as St. Elmo's, the name deriving from the fact that the phenomenon known as "St. Elmo’s Fire" can frequently be seen on the rocky spires and outcroppings east of town whenever a sufficiently heavy storm moves through. Aside from this little light show, the town also boasts a surprisingly large air field – large enough for a Leopard-class or another small dropship of the type to land. In fact, the city usually had two or three dropships land a week, each one representing a trader or someone else opting to land in town rather than hassle with the main starport in Solaris City itself; the starport might allow for larger ships, but whoever it is would then be required to procure trucks to get back and forth, something a lot of smaller ventures would rather avoid. Of course, customs still had a presence there, but it was, to put it bluntly, rather lax by way of comparison.

Thing is, it was lax on purpose.

About a year or so before I arrived on-planet, the minor noble who had been in charge of the region had been deposed after a scandal involving kickbacks and nepotism in regards to a number of city appointments. The Lyran government had opted to replace him with a war hero that had recently been knighted, both as a way of rewarding him (re: bribing him) and as a way of having his halo try to sweep things away. However, they obviously had no idea what they had just done.

Said war hero was Conrad Oliver Woodstock, a veteran aerospace pilot and fairly high-ranking officer who had fought against the Falcons in their drive for Coventry. With him came his lover, a former military psychiatrist named Dr. Kaourra Laramie; officially she was looking to establish a private practice somewhere, but in reality she was just as burned out as he was. When the two married a few months ago, the Lyran politicos here on the planet just assumed that the pair were looking to settle down. As it was, the locals had embraced him warmly, especially when he announced plans to use what little authority he had to establish a civil air corps of his own. The corps was on the small side – his custom Rapier and a handful of Simmons R137 turboprop fighters supplementing a pair of Karnovs refitted for search-and-rescue work – but the local reservists who he got to fill the cockpits sure looked spiffy in their uniforms and so quickly became a source of local pride.

In reality, though, the two were slowly turning the town into Heimdall's little smuggling port. Conrad had briefly been reassigned as a flight instructor, only to wind up keeping company with a fellow instructor / Loki agent so corrupt that when his sins were exposed (courtesy of Conrad) Loki itself flinched. Kauorra, meanwhile, had signed on to help treat the soldiers… only for the government to use her as a walking recruitment poster. No surprise, then, that the pair not only signed on with Heimdall but made it a point to hand-select people for the air corps and customs office that were at least sympathetic to the cause. As long as the paperwork sounded at least vaguely plausible, they knew to turn their heads. In that sense, a flatbed full of "scrap metal" would likely not be given a second thought.

The glitch, however, came in the fact that the Lyran government was slowly getting wise to what was happening. They couldn't actually challenge Conrad without direct proof of malfeasance, but they could designate a spot west of town as a bivouac and rotate units in and out to keep an eye on the town. The bivouac itself generally consisted of infantry and support units (medics, communications troopers, et cetra) led by either an intelligence officer or a Loki officer presenting themselves as if they were an infantry officer. There was almost always either a lance of mechs or a company of armor stationed there, ostensibly camping out while on maneuvers. In reality, the bivouac staff was keeping an eye on the town, while the big boys were there in case word came down to invade. Comstar had provided us with a dropship via one of their front companies, but if we were ever going to get that Toyama on board we needed to distract the soldiers at the bivouac, if not drive them out. This was where I came in.

On the first Saturday of each month, the portion of the airfield set aside for the civil air corps was cordoned off so that fair could take place. As part of it, a different arena jock was called up – mech and all – to appear in front of the crowds. Between this and the inevitable air show, there was usually a fairly large turnout; not only did a lot of the citizens of the region attend, it was common for people from other towns and even Solaris City itself to arrive. Some were merely fans who wanted to see either the air show or the pilot, while others were vendors who came to sell their goods and services. Inevitably, since the rest of the airfield was allowed to operate normally, two or three extra dropships always landed during this time to disgorge everyone. All Conrad had to do was declare it to be my month, and I was there. After all, no pilot in their right mind would refuse such a command performance.

Everybody in town was busy looking at me as I sat on the left foot of my Shad, meeting and greeting everyone who came by. Nobody but me thought to look at the trio going from booth to booth. On the surface, there was no reason to. Their matched uniforms suggested high school or college students, and their youthful appearance emphasized this. The young man in the middle wore a "letter" jacket over his school uniform, the kind that an athlete might earn; indeed, he appeared athletic enough. Each of his arms was gripped tightly by a different young woman (a petite but equally athletic girl of potential Japanese descent and a decidedly energetic and athletic redhead, respectively), most likely fans eager to be seen in the company of a local sports hero.

But in this business, looks are almost always deceiving. Each of the three was actually a member of the AFNN military, and all three were in their mid-twenties. The young man was Sgt. Wolf Sterling, a battle armor pilot. The two young women represented his support team. The redhead, Private Bedlam Rose, was the technician tasked with keeping his armor in good repair. The other girl, Private Spirit Arcana, was a medic tasked with keeping Sterling himself in good repair. It was possible that the three actually did have something going on given how comfortable they were in each others' presence, but that was neither here nor there. They were convincing, and it was all that mattered.

I caught a glance of one of the large digital clocks that were spaced throughout the whole of the airfield. We had arranged for everything to happen at a certain moment, and now was the hour. Pretending to shift my position, I used my bionic arm to palm a small device that I had hidden in one of my pockets. Once in my hand, I flipped the switch. As if by coincidence, Sterling's cell phone rang. The girls let go long enough for him to retrieve it from his pocket, at which point he took a few seconds to check the caller ID before letting go a scowl, at which point he jogged off, the whole while pretending to take a call. The two girls feigned frustration at being ditched in favor of an electronic device, and made their way through the crowd. Bedlam eventually made it over to where the planes were on display, and began chatting up the pilots as if she was interested in going out with them. Spirit found her way to Kaourra, and made like a college student seeking the advice of someone already established in their field. A quick scan of the crowd told me that no one suspected a thing. I crushed the device in a single, barely noticeable gesture, and then slid it back into my pocket for later disposal.

To anyone who looked at her, Maxwell Remington's wife Meos was nothing more than an old-fashioned housewife who split her time between home-schooling their children and doing her share of the administrative work needed to keep a stable going. In reality, she was a fairly well-educated engineer and veteran Lostech prospector. While she had made a few finds in her time, the biggest score of her career was a functional suit of Star League-era Nighthawk battle armor. The AFNN succeeded in reverse-engineering it, and were able to put it in limited production. But rather than leave it at that, some of their engineers decided to take things a step further. A reworked version - the Helaman battle armor – was soon under development. Although functionally the same as the Nighthawk, the Helaman had one crucial difference: it could mount one of two styles of jet pack. The first style, the default model, was an advanced flight pack that allowed the operator of the suit performance akin to an aerospace fighter and boasted four LRMs mounted to the wings and chassis; this was an air assault version, pure and simple. The second style was designed more with power in mind than performance, and with good reason: it was supporting a pair of infantry-portable SRM 2s, one for each shoulder; the operator could either have them over each shoulder for ground combat, or flip them back to go air-to-air.

Sterling was one of the test pilots. As soon as he could, he disappeared into the crowd and made his way towards the truck with the Toyama. I had one of Taizu's guys behind the wheel, and so it was decided to have the Helaman stashed away in the cab itself. It took seconds for Sterling to suit up and run the start-up diagnostics, at which point he grabbed his weapons and got underway. Conrad had taken the liberty of installing a number of hidden corridors beneath the field, ostensibly so that he and his pilots could safely transit to and from his castle or other key facilities within the town. But a handful of tunnels actually led outside the city limits in case an evacuation was called for; this included a tunnel that went out behind the current bivouac site. All Sterling had to do was fire up a utility cart that had been stashed for his personal use, and he was in position in less than twenty minutes.

Between Sterling's report and a series of incident reports intercepted from Lyran communications, we later pieced together what had taken place. As was normal during one of the monthly fairs, the bivouac site had a number of soldiers on-hand. This number included two Cobras, two Griffins, and a mix of Scorpion tanks and APCs in addition to the usual support vehicles. One would think that such a unit would be ready to roll at a moment's notice, but instead the Loki officer in charge had allowed a horrible lapse of discipline. In particular, when he found out that one of the Cobra pilots was female he ordered her to join the cooks – all of whom were also female – in helping to make lunch. Everyone else treated their being stationed there as a paid vacation. In other words, Sterling could not have asked for a more perfect opportunity.

The pack he was using had the four SRMs, and each one was an armor-piercing warhead. He locked his crosshairs on the empty Cobra and fired off a single SRM. The missile hit the Cobra in the back of the head, blowing apart the cockpit and rendering the brand new machine completely useless. The other mech pilots scrambled to their machines in a desperate effort to fire them up and get them mobile before anything else happened. Instead, Sterling hit the jets and cut loose. The second SRM found home in the left hip of one of the Griffins, causing the mech to topple over on its side and the pilot (who was still climbing the rope ladder) to dislocate his shoulder on impact (cue the female Cobra pilot rushing towards his mech so that she could pilot something into the fray). The second Cobra was likewise felled by virtue of a blown hip, its pilot breaking a leg upon landing. The pilot of the second Griffin had managed to get his machine upright, but all that did was give Sterling a clear shot of the mech's knee; the final SRM amputated the leg cleanly, causing the mech to topple backwards on top of a presently-unmanned field radio rig and helping to cut the soldiers off from reinforcements. As if to hammer the point home that he was in charge, Sterling put the jet pack at full throttle, shot towards the bivouac, and strafed it with a hand-held machine gun. The armor-piercing rounds punched holes in the sides of the support vans and tents, but did little against the APCs and Scorpions. Still, however, it was more than enough to send the Lyran soldiers scurrying for cover. He dropped a few smoke grenades in order to hide his exit, and then was off back down the tunnel (which, of course, no one ever found).

This right here would have allowed for a successful mission, but some days karma actually pays off. One of the field rights might have been crushed and the communications van might have been shot up, but everyone who could was calling for help from the surviving vehicles and mechs. The tower at the air field picked up the call, and relayed it to Conrad. An emergency alert was sounded, and in short order Conrad and the rest of the civil air patrol took off for what could well be their first combat mission, leaving me and Kaourra back at the field to try and maintain some sort of order. By sheer coincidence, the Word of Blake had teams out sweeping the area for the missing Toyama and the others in the group. One such team had just driven directly in the flight path between the air field and the bivouac. The team was light: two Vedettes and four tracked APCs supported by battle armor troopers moving alongside on foot (the APCs were there to carry the troopers to the area, and would have been used to evacuate the Toyama group). The bivouac had been attacked by someone in a suit of battle armor, there was a military unit in the area that was not supposed to be there, and oh by the way they had battle armor too. An R137 might only boast a pair of machine guns and an SRM 2 launcher, but against Inner Sphere battle armor and APCs this is generally all one needs. And while the Vedettes could have scoffed at such a meager display, a Rapier was still far more than they could manage.

The whole day wound up being a success beyond what anyone could imagine. Everyone was so distracted by the confusion that virtually no one noticed either the Toyama being loaded or Spirit and Kourra exchanging USB keys. Blame for the incident was placed squarely on the shoulders of the Loki officer, who was promptly reassigned to the backwater planet wherein he would spend the rest of his career. No Lyran soldiers were killed, but so much equipment was damaged or even outright destroyed that the matter became a major embarrassment for the planetary garrison; desperate to save face, the Blakist forces were fingered as the culprits despite being a full one hundred and eighty degrees off from where Sterling had come from. Conrad, meanwhile, was once more hailed as a hero, as were his pilots. As a reward for stopping the "criminals" behind the attack, he was allowed to keep whatever he could salvage, thereby causing the town garrison to grow by two APCs and several suits of battle armor. And with the Helaman now tested under live-fire conditions, the AFNN was able to begin production… something that the Word of Blake would later come to regret. All in all, not bad for a single morning.

[Fortress Ironhol...]

Pt. 21 - Spleen Acres

I gently eased the mech hauler back into the bay, already frustrated after a long morning. A few days back, a Liao pilot fired off a challenge at me. It was his big brother's Orion that I had trashed in my first match, and he was in the mood for a little bit of payback. He claimed that he had been watching me for some time, and as such alleged that I was a one-trick pony whose tactics were nothing more than "use my Shad to run away until I can get a lucky shot off". He claimed that he wanted to duel me in a battle, and that he wanted the battle to take place in The Jungle. Why he waited so long to get back at me was anyone's guess, but a challenge was a challenge.

Just to prove the point to him, I brought the Archer… the mech that he implied I had never fought an arena battle in. Not only did it publicly challenge his claims to have extensively studied me, its lack of jump jets meant that I was ground-bound for the entire battle. If the guy wanted a stand-up fight, there I was.

Instead, he just wanted to use my own tactics against me, or at least a variation thereof. He had himself low-tech Sentinel, the kind that was mass-produced during the Succession Wars when a lot of the Star League tech the original used was too advanced to continue to produce at the time. It lacked jump jets as well, but it had raw speed and was reasonably available on the secondary market. Obviously, the guy intended to close the distance between himself and me as soon as possible and then cut loose, apparently not expecting me to be able to hold my ground against my own tactics.

By virtue of not having been aware of the Archer, he was also unaware of the modifications that I had made to it. The minute he was at point-blank range, I cut loose with all of my lasers. The large laser and the head-mounted medium burned a hole straight through the Sentinel's right torso, just narrowly avoiding the unprotected ammo storage bay. The left arm medium laser scored the Sentinel's right arm, while the right arm medium laser scored the center torso. I then followed it up with a devastating kick that took most of the armor off of the machine's left leg. The pilot was unable to compensate for all of the damage to the machine, and so the Sentinel keeled over on its back. I gave him the option to surrender, but instead he rolled the mech onto its right arm and stood it back up.

He snapped off a quick shot of the mech's autocannon, but it missed wide. This would be the only shot that I would allow him to make, as I targeted the already damaged left leg. Another kick caused the knee to bend inward, holding the mech in place so that the large laser could saw through the hip. The three medium lasers followed up by going into the left torso, breaching the armor on that as well. The Sentinel keeled over again, this time for good.

It should have been the end of it, but in the aftermath of everything the pilot tracked me down and lunged at me while I was in the process of speaking to the media. I might have been a good decade his senior, but that also meant a decade of real-world military experience. A couple of choice blows with my elbow and stadium security were hauling him off towards the on-site infirmary.

As you can imagine, all I wanted when I got back was a nice, quiet afternoon.

Instead, I was greeted by the sounds of something quite obviously bovine in nature.

Eisensturm quickly filled me in on the situation. Supposedly, one of the nature and science magazines that his boy Sheldon had been subscribing to was offering a contest in which kids could win certain farmyard animals. Both he and Sheldon had (along with most everyone else who had entered, I would later learn) interpreted the contest to mean that the prizes would be in the form of stuffed animals. However, due to the way the advertisement was crafted, they all missed the fact that the drawing was for *live* animals, with the stuffed animals as consolation prizes. (Suffice to say that said magazine was forced out of print when the animal protection authorities got wind of it; while it would re-appear a whole year later, virtually the entire editorial staff had been replaced.)

For those who I hadn't explained things to earlier, the reason why the stable is known as "Team Olympus Mons" is because our facility was carved out of Olympus Mons, a rather large mountain named for the one on Mars. As a result, the quarters here can be drab and dreary even for some of the humans operating out of here. But livestock? My father tried to turn an unused portion of bay space into a barn in the belief that he could make some extra money off of breeding cattle, a venture that – shall we say – ended badly. Fortunately, I had never quite gotten around to dismantling the bay or selling off any of the equipment; all Eisensturm and Wizard had to do was take everything out of mothball and send an order to a feed & seed shop in St. Elmo for straw and feed (suffice to say that Templar and Paladin were quite astounded when told why their truck was needed, and on such short order at that).

Yet we were still left with the issue of a live cow on the premises… a cow that, if I might add, just would not be quiet. Sheldon did well to take the cow out to the "pasture", and also took his turn milking it and mucking the barn. Making matters worse, we had to be careful every time we had the main bay doors open lest the cow attempt to wander on out and/or wander in front of one of the mech transporters; given that we had challenges back-to-back that week, this was a real issue. And as if that wasn't bad enough, "repetitive loud noises" is generally one of the last things a mechwarrior wants to hear after returning from a fight, something evidenced by the entire pallet of aspirin and case of ear plugs that someone put in a requisition for.

Granted, we did try to look on the bright side. For example, Starlight had been looking to start a garden, and the cow made for free fertilizer. Similarly, the cow also answered Amelia's request for "organic" milk whenever it was her turn to cook. However, for some reason neither of the two seemed to appreciate the suggestions.

And so the next few days went, the lot of us trying to figure out what to do with the thing. I mean, at this point we all should have been experts in regards to making the most of whatever die wind up being cast, but the situation still left us somewhat confused. All we could do was just let it be a cow and pray for the best.

Things came to a head that Friday afternoon. Hazard and I had just done a double-bill at the newly-reopened Boreal Reaches, and so all we wanted to do was to go home and unwind. I recall that we were both in a particular hurry to get home that day, as while we were loading our mechs up on their carriers we heard a report that a sudden shift in the weather meant that we could well be in for a storm. The trip home was uneventful enough, but it was obviously starting to get darker and the wind was definitely beginning to pick up.

When we pulled into the bay we were struck by the comparative silence. One of the technicians told us that Eisensturm had taken out his Thunderbolt with a pallet of supplies, and since he was going out he took Sheldon and the cow with him. For Eisensturm to go out in his mech was not an issue; we frequently used our mechs for utilitarian purposes when not training or battling, as it saved us the cost of getting dedicated equipment. In this case, by using his Thunderbolt's hands to help him erect a watering trough that would tie into the water system, Eisensturm was able to avoid having to hire both a forklift and a backhoe. But while he could take care of himself, we had Sheldon and the cow to worry about. Sheldon was a smart boy and would know to go for either shelter or his father if a storm did arise, but there was no way he could deal with the cow by himself if the weather spooked it.

I told the technician to give Eisensturm a call and warn him just in case a storm did move through (it turned out that he had seen it coming and had been in the process of erecting tarps over everything when we pulled up). Not wanting to take any chances, Hazard and I got in our mechs and went to look; in addition to being still relatively warm, his Stealth and my Shad were both fairly quick and had both hands available, allowing for a capture and/or rescue on the fly if the situation called for it. I also sent a series of remote commands to the Archer, getting it warmed up as well in case we needed it, too. With that, we headed off in the direction indicated by the technician.

I wound up having to piece together the rest of it from a mix of personal observations, legal briefs, and what Heimdall managed to uncover.

Although the Blakist unit had officially gotten the blame for the attack on the bivouac, one of the garrison officers was still suspicious about the whole matter. But without any actual evidence, he could not begin a formal investigation. Rather, he tracked down a reporter from a conspiracy theory tabloid in the intent of having the fellow do his dirty work for him. He donned civilian clothing, followed the reporter to a local bar, waited until the man already had a few drinks in him, and then slid on up. A couple more cans of Soul Crusher later, and the reporter was absolutely convinced that we were hiding something (which, admittedly, was true, but not what he thought we were hiding…). Unfortunately for the reporter, it had taken until sometime around noon for the hangover to wear off enough to where he could rent an ATV and actually make his way up here, meaning that he crossed our property line just as the rain started falling.

The one-two combination of the rain falling and the perimeter alarm going off caused Hazard and I to double-time it over to where we believed everyone to be. Eisensturm, having gotten back in his mech, also heard the alarm and took off running as well. Sheldon and the cow were both still out there, and we needed to get to them before either the storm or the intruder did.

Sheldon had been smart enough to not only recognize the oncoming storm but to also take precautions. He made it a point to carry a kit with him just in case something happened while he was out with the cow, and now it was time to use it. He took a length of rope and tied the cow to a tree. Once he was satisfied that the cow was secured, he donned a poncho and then slid a modified one atop the cow. He then gave his father a call on the communicator that he had with him, and then sat down to await a pick-up.

Unfortunately, the plan changed with the first crack of thunder. I will be honest enough to admit that it was absurdly loud, such that Hazard, Eisensturm, and I initially thought that an ammunition hut had exploded somewhere. It wasn't until we saw the lightning that we realized what we had just heard, but by that time a series of profanities had already been exchanged, both among us and on our channel with the base.

But as loud and shocking as the thunder was to us combat veterans, the effect was devastating on a hung over reporter and an already skittish cow. The reporter was left dazed and confused by the sound, such that he initially curled up into a ball, letting off of the throttle at that point. The cow, meanwhile, went into an utter panic, in the process gaining the frenzied strength that so often comes with a sudden surge of adrenaline and breaking the rope. Sheldon tried to grab on to the trailing line, but was unable to do so; he could only run behind at his own pace as the cow went straight-line distance out of there, mooing for all it was worth.

The reporter recovered from the sound-induced shock just long enough to look up and around in an effort to regain his bearings when he and the ATV became the subjects of an unscheduled bovine merger.

He had been completely thrown from the ATV, which was now upside down. From his prone position, he could make out both the stunned, hooded cow and the small hooded figure that was running towards him. He tried to crawl away, unable to stand on his injured ankle (he banged it on a rock when he landed), but soon found that his purposed avenue of escape was about to be cut off by three charging battlemechs. Suffice to say that his day was pretty well shot at this point. All we could hope to do was call the paramedics, who sent out a hover ambulance to pick him up.

Somewhere between the alcohol, the physical trauma, and the shock of the experience, the reporter put together his side of events. Somehow, he believed, we had used our "spy network" to learn of his intentions, at which point we set our "attack cow" and "midget assassin" to get him. When they failed, he followed, we set out to crush him with our mechs. The article moved quite a few copies of the tabloid, but while the article legitimized the various allegations already floating around against us in the eyes of the conspiracy theory crowd, it had the opposite effect among the general citizenry once the full details came out. You see, the reporter tried to sue us in court, apparently believing that he had an open-and-shut case. Instead, the judge ultimately threw the case out on its merits, especially after the whole bit about "trespassing" and "a full case of Soul Crusher having been consumed by the reporter and his source prior to the incident." Instead, the reporter found himself being sued by the rental company for damages to the ATV and the lost income from the machine being in the shop for three days.

While the conspiracy theory types were still seeing conspiracies, the incident caused the "man on the street" to write off much of the rumors against us as being so much fluff. The physical description provided by the reporter at the trial caused the garrison to begin an investigation that fingered the officer after the security camera footage of the meeting was subpoenaed; while the garrison was not able to find any actual charges they could bring against the officer, the whole affair was enough to warn him to keep his head down. The net result was that from this day forward, we were slightly freer in our ability to operate.

And thus, things began to return to some semblance of normal.

…at least, until Tommy came home one day with that goat in his side car…

[Fortress Ironhol...]

[22] That's A Rap

Back during Bulldog there was a rather famous (now somewhat infamous) group of mech pilots that operated within the Lyran ranks. The leader, whose trademarks consisted of his perpetual smoking and his wearing a beret no matter what his uniform, piloted one of the rare Avatar units that had been given to the LAAF. His henchmen consisted of a thug type that piloted a captured Thor and a mad scientist type that piloted a captured Loki.

On the surface, the three were legendary pilots who could just plow on through whatever enemy forces came their way, their only help being a fourth pilot that they would select to go with them each mission as a sort of "mission specialist". In reality, the three had put together a scam in which they would make the unfortunate fourth pilot do a good chunk of the dirty work while they swooped in at just the right moment to save the day. Given that the fourth generally had their mech shot out from underneath them, it took a while for anyone to actually catch on since the footage on the mech was frequently lost with the mech itself, or if it wasn't then it usually took a while to be recovered.

For example, while I was off escorting those Darts, they were given the mission to track down and locate a Jaguar dropship. They had picked a Wolfhound pilot noted for being a recon specialist, a pilot whose skill was such that he was able to make his Wolfhound function like a dedicated scout machine. The pilot had noted a rather large crater in his present sector that appeared to have individual Elementals walking patrol; his suspicions were confirmed when he noted a series of turrets guarding the one "entrance" into the bowl. A few minutes' scouting determined that a portion of the slope opposite the entrance had a gentle enough grade to where he could get the mech up and over, and so he called the others.

The plan was simple. The Wolfhound would go over the top first and cause a scene. Once the Clan warriors were confused and agitated, he would fall back and the trio of heavies would get involved. Well, the Wolfhound pilot did just that, going up over the top (much to the chagrin of several Elementals who got stung in the process) and dashing into the crater. He quickly spotted a series of trucks moving supplies between the dropship and a series of warehouses, picked what looked like a tanker truck, and let loose with his ER Large Laser. The vehicle must have been carrying fuel, as it exploded on contact, setting off a chain reaction that leveled one of the warehouses, destroyed one of the three APUs that were helping to recharge the dropship, and took out several points of Elementals along with a handful of conventional vehicles.

Those Clan mechs that were fast movers or had jump jets immediately charged after the Wolfhound, following it up and over. To the pilot's horror, however, he found that the trio were not by the side of the crater as they were supposed to be. Whereas the pilot was purportedly bait for a trap, he was actually an unwitting diversion; in reality, the trio were moving up the entrance, blasting the turrets and those Clan units that tried to venture out through that route before moving in to secure the landing site. In other words, they got all of the glory for actually capturing the site, while the Wolfhound pilot got shot out of his machine; the only reason why he did not get captured or killed was because the pursuers had received a broadcast from the dropship and so fell back to try and retake the facility. Granted, the Wolfhound pilot was rewarded with a captured Puma for his troubles, but as far as the Lyran command was concerned it was a minor matter compared to promoting their correspondent-approved heroes.

Fortunately, though, their little scam came to an end around about the time I got my promotion. They were tasked with sweeping Clan fighters from a major city, and so selected a pilot with a Firestarter Omni as their fourth. Once again, the scam was for them to make the fourth guy do most of the dirty work by moving ahead of them and spotting enemy units. The still-young pilot was so bowled over by the prospect of working alongside "heroes" that he forgot about the Loki's ELINT suite, something that would have made the Loki the better machine for the job. By the time everything was said and done, the trio had an extensive number of kills while the Firestarter Omni pilot had a shot-up mech. Thing was, the only reason why a pilot so green had such a mech like that in the first place was because his father was a rather prominent so-and-so. In exchange for their "heroism", the members of the trio were promoted and each given command of their own reserve unit, thus taking them off the front lines. Upon returning from Bulldog, they were each given one additional promotion and sent off to Klondike, an ice planet in the Periphery that had just declared allegiance to the Lyran Alliance, to help organize the fledgling garrison and establish some semblance of a military academy.

I was reminded of their false bravado when I heard the songs being sung that night.

Although the open field I had purchased had become known as the "Field of Honor" due to the sheer number of honor duels that had taken place on it, the other arenas still got enough in the way of battles that the field was idle more often than not. The answer came when Bread Basket (they had, by this time, slightly altered their logo) approached me about the prospect of holding an open-air concert there amidst what wreckage hadn't yet been removed; to sweeten matters, their label agreed to handle any liability issues from people getting injured. I was quickly able to negotiate a three-way deal between them, myself, and a fledgling broadcaster (a small-time holovid station that was trying to operate out of St. Elmo; it had just enough in the way of broadcast strength to reach the northern half of Solaris City, but everyone else on the planet – including everyone who was still at Mt. Olympus - had to either have a satellite feed or subscribe to a paid holovid package to get it). "Live at the Field of Honor" would broadcast for two hours every Friday night. Each night's headline act would get a solid half hour, while the three lead-in acts would get fifteen to twenty minutes depending upon the length of the pre-approved set list they provided. Advertisements could be broadcast to the holovid audiences during this time, and the concert-goers would have the option of hitting the concession trucks that would be brought in. The ticket sales and advertising revenues for each night would be split four ways: I would get a cut, the label would get a cut, the network would get a cut, and the rest would be set aside to pay the performers (of which forty percent would go to the headliner and twenty percent each would go to the opening acts).

Well, for tonight's show the label had booked three rap acts for the evening: the headliner and two opening acts. For the third opening act, Tommy got the nod. That goat of his? He taught it how to "perform" a series of beats by walking back and forth on a mat that had been rigged with sensors and electronics, with the music being played determined by what part of the mat was being stepped on. With the goat tapping out beats, he and his drum set were free to go through a five-song set list of numbers that combined rap and country stylings; yes, it was as awful as it sounded, but it was a success with the audience and wound up leading to a successful EP release, thereby turning him into a one-hit wonder.

But as much as I couldn't fathom what he was going for (as eccentric as he was, the man was an outright genius who had several degrees and trade certifications to his name despite his age; he did not need to do this), the first two acts made me somewhat depressed. Each one devoted songs to boasting about how great they were because of various events that they had been involved in, events that were obviously so exaggerated in the retelling that it was doubtful anything went down like the rappers described. (Heimdall would later confirm this for me after running background checks; for the most part, what criminal records the individual rappers had consisted of minor incidents and traffic violations.) In other words, just like the trio of mech pilots from before, they were all trying to claim real glory for themselves based on so much fluff.

Given that every last one of them was a Baron Munchausen, I found myself wondering what might happen if they actually found themselves in the middle of a real-life firefight. After all, the only action they had seen was what had been scripted to take place in their music videos. They probably couldn’t even pass muster in an arena battle if it came to it.

Well, I didn't have to wonder about that for too much longer, as fate decided to intervene yet again. It turned out that a few of the audience members tonight were members of an actual Solaris street gang… a gang that the headlining rappers had boasted about being able to take in a fight. The song that featured the boast was part of tonight's set, and so the minute the rappers went off about it the gang-bangers rushed the stage.

In the time it took me to go from where I was sitting to the middle of the brawl, it was already beginning to play out. The rappers had immediately dropped their microphones and instruments in order to retreat behind the on-the stage security. The security braced for the assault, but Tommy (who was still just off-stage packing up his drum set) disrupted the charge by sprinting out and sucker-punching the closest gang-banger in the side of the head. The blow was enough to drop the gang-banger, causing the ones next to him to become confused just long enough for the security on that side to blind-side them.

The gang-bangers closest to me were still on their feet, but the security guards had checked their progress. That gave me all the opening I needed to send a well-placed rabbit punch to the back of each of the first three using my bionic hand, at which point I followed up by pivoting around and tagging the fourth and final one in the back of the head with the knuckles on my other hand. Number four went down like a mech with a blown gyro, while the first three had been stunned to the point that the security personnel were able to grapple them into submission. It was over in less than twenty seconds, but that was all it took for the gang-bangers to go down like chumps… and the rappers to lose any and all credibility.

Apparently, it all happened so fast that the camera crews didn't realize what had taken place and so continued recording. Thus, the entire viewing audience got to see the rappers act like cowards when confronted by an actual enemy of the type they claimed they could take with ease. They also saw two said rappers have to be rescued from said engagement. Within a week of everything that had happened, the rappers had announced their "retirement" from performing after album sales had all but ceased and the label was forced to let them out of their contract; sales would remain meager for a few more months, at which point they would be temporarily juiced by clearance sales as physical recording outlets tried to get rid of the band's albums.

And the show? So much excitement was generated by the incident being broadcast live that even with the difficulties in getting it broadcast we still spent the next month at the top of the ratings, even beating the planet's most popular sitcom and several sporting events. Not only did it mean more money in everyone's pockets, it also meant that the acts featured on those episodes got a significant boost to their careers that they might otherwise not have gotten. In that sense, I guess karma paid off and balanced out for everyone.

As an aside, the aforementioned trio did finally earn the title of "hero". As the commanders of the garrison and the corps of cadets, they had no choice but to perform as officers rather than scoundrels when the Word of Blake arrived. Granted, by this time they had managed to turn the Klondike School of Tactics into Blackjack 2.0 and so *everybody* was playing dirty to at least some degree, but they were still forced to stand on their own for the first time in some years. Thanks in large part to their leadership, not only did Klondike remain free but they were able to muster up a few units to go help retake portions of the Lyran Alliance.

[Fortress Ironhol...]

[23] A Mon-umental Mistake

Although it might seem like a side-story right now, Maxwell related a story to me one Sunday, about a month after the incident with the cow and the reporter, that wound up setting the stage for later incidents. As such, in order to understand some of what was to happen, I need to go ahead and explain it. Fortunately, he left me a fair amount of documentation to back up what was going on.

Apparently, between the introduction of Terran animal species to the planet and the forcible changes to the environment from the centuries of warfare (warfare that included NBC weaponry – nuclear, biological, and chemical), the planet is home to a number of unique creatures, unique even by the standards of such galaxy-wide transplants as the Odessan Rax. Enough people on the planet get it into their heads to try and tame the things that the New Nauvoo region actually put rules in place for how to properly handle them, and even encouraged the creation of a number of competitions concerning them. Among this number is Maxwell himself, who back in his younger days raised a few such critters for show.

Although most of the ones he had back then have long-since given up the ghost, he still had a small group of six that he kept with him and tended to for the sake of helping to promote the survival of the respective species. As part of this, he kept a bio-habitat on the grounds of his stable so that the animals could safely lair in an environment roughly analogous to what they might have had back on Caph. Of course the animals were frequently allowed to come on out and explore, but this is not their planet and so, for reasons that will soon be obvious, back in the habitat they go if nobody is present to actively watch over them.

Remember the reporter that tried to sneak onto my property? The one that quite literally had that run-in with the cow? The incident spawned a number of conspiracy theories, theories that we later learned were being furthered by external parties who would have benefited from letting things fly had the rumors been able to go on long enough. Not only did the rumors concern Olympus Mons and all of us who resided in it, they also began to increasingly concern those people who were our allies.

A number of the rumors concerning Maxwell's stable involved the habitat and the animals he kept there. Thing is, apparently none of the theorists were aware of the fact that it was a habitat; all they knew was that he would occasionally drop in there for what seemed like extended periods, and that on occasion he would bring something out that would cause an amount of excitement among the folks he had there with him. This led one rather intrepid theorist to the decision that he needed to go in and check it out himself.

The theorist was just smart enough to know that he'd have his best chances at night, when everyone else was asleep. He was also smart enough to park his vehicle about two hundred meters away, far enough to where it wouldn't be right at the site but close enough to where if something went wrong he could dash back to it quickly. Unfortunately, he was not smart enough to call the whole thing off while he still had the chance.

Instead, he managed to force his way into the animal habitat. The silent alarm he tripped would have been more than enough to seal his fate, as it was rigged to sound an alert in the main building and so immediately woke Maxwell and Wolf. The sound of the former racking his shotgun and the latter activating his vibrosword woke Meos (who went to protect her children), Spirit (who went to call the cops), and Bedlam (who monitored the security cameras and fed information to Spirit). But rather than just poke his head around, the man decided to actually probe inside.

Maxwell has three breeding pairs of Caph animals. The first is a species that appears to be descended from a group of Terran penguins that were introduced to the planet back when the planet was first settled over eight centuries ago, albeit in shades of red and orange instead of black; in reality, they represent a new species that was introduced when a similar native species cross-bred with said penguins. For reasons that nobody can quite explain, the animals naturally have an incredibly hot core body temperature; also inexplicable is how they manage to stay alive, as most other animals would cook themselves to death if their core temperature reached that point. Another unique feature that they have is that they have large water sacs running down from their throats and into their chests. What happens is that they will frequently drink until they've filled the sacs, at which point their natural body temperature will boil the water and thus remove any and all impurities. They will then regurgitate this water to drink it, giving them an internal supply of relatively safe drinking water that they can carry with them as they go.

Well, they can also shoot the water out of their mouths like a fire hose as a means of defending themselves against predators. This is exactly what the female half of the pair did in order to protect her egg. The theorist was so busy trying to figure out what sort of sinister purpose the habitat had that even with the guide lights scattered throughout the facility he still managed to blunder into the mother, giving himself first-degree burns on his hands as he did so. The mother, thinking him a predator after her egg, made a horrific screeching noise that was picked up by the security camera's microphone before dousing him with a spray of boiling water.

The clatter was enough to wake up the male half of the pair. Much like peppers, the color of these mon can be used as a rough guide to how hot they are. The male half was one of the rare yellow members of the species. Why is this important? Yellow samples burn so hot that you could light a cigarette just by touching it to their beak (something that most trainers do not recommend, as the yellow samples also tend to be crankier than normal). Well, Mr. Yellow added his scalding spray to the mix as well. He then followed it up by tackling the theorist, then biting the man in the hand while using a flipper to slap him in the face.

The sound of battle awoke the other two males, who came to investigate. The second species Maxwell has is a rather large green-colored owl-like creature whose quills are comparable to needler rounds. Much like the Terran porcupine, this animal has a large number of quills that end in hooks rather than feathers. These animals also use their hooked quills in a similar fashion, as the theorist learned the hard way when the owl creature chose to lend Mr. Yellow a hand by flying into the struggling theorist at full speed.

By this point, the theorist was already in bad shape. He had been hit in the chest and face with scalding hot water. He had been bitten in the hand and was now bleeding. He had been slapped in the face several times. And now he had numerous quills in his back. He tried to feel his way towards the entrance, but wound up moving too slowly. Species number three consists of a variety of creatures that look like miniature Terran elephants. Just like the penguin creatures, they have sacs in their noses and cheeks that permit them to carry water… both for drinking and for spraying. One final deluge of water was all the theorist had as warning before the creature plowed right on over him. Maxwell and Wolf arrived on-scene in just enough time to accept the battered and broken theorist's surrender.

The theorist was initially charged with breaking and entering, but given the nature of the injuries inflicted Maxwell convinced the judge that the theorist had suffered enough; instead of jail time, the theorist was given community service hours. The theorist did try to sue for wrongful injury, but since Maxwell had gone out of his way to obtain permits for the animals (even going so far as to provide written documentation describing their potential to do just what they did) and the habitat – and there were warning signs visibly posted next to the entrance he broke into - the case was thrown out. If anything, the incident actually brought a fair amount of positive press for Maxwell and his crew. Not only did people want to come and see the bizarre animals that he had, once the police no longer needed the footage he was free to sell it to the network up in St. Elmo, who included it on an episode of a show dedicated to collecting videos of people doing stupid things.

On the surface this was a win for the good guys and an embarrassment to the theorists, but as with so many others the theorists responded to the embarrassment by getting even madder…

[Fortress Ironhol...]

[24] It’s A Conspiracy

Sometimes, life has an odd way of working out. For starters, the final three storefronts in the strip bugged out, each one having been lured to strip malls elsewhere in the city. I bought them off of the owner, completing my ownership of the strip; Olympus Drive, as it would soon be re-named, was now entirely in my possession.

And I didn't have to wait very long for a new tenant, either. It seems that the Simmons Corporation was looking to open up a used vehicle lot in the area, and the now-empty half of the strip corresponded exactly to where their site placement software predicted would be the best spot. The plan was that they would lease all three storefronts. The corner storefront would be the showroom / customer service area, the one next to it would be the back offices, and the third one would be converted into an admittedly small mechanic's bay. That half of the parking lot would become the sales lot. To compensate for all the work that would be needed to convert the third bay over – and the fact that I'd have a hard time leasing the facility to someone else after the conversion was done – they decided to leave me a rather unique down payment: a vintage Firestarter. The mech had been purchased lock, stock, and barrel from a failed mechwarrior a few years ago for use in an advertising campaign, the premise being that Simmons' heavy work trucks could stand up to anything, even a mech. (Eisensturm, who was here with my father at the time, informed me that the campaign backfired spectacularly when someone who was inspired by the ads stole a Simmons-brand armored truck from a now-defunct private security company and sold it to a local crime lord as a rolling fortress. True to the advertisement, it took a direct hit from a police Urbanmech's AC/10 to bring it down, as small-arms fire was completely insufficient.) The company had kept the mech in the hopes of using it as the basis for their own stable of fighters, but apparently they had finally decided that the thing was more trouble than it was worth. It was now mine, and I would eventually set the technicians who weren't occupied with the Initiate to work on rebuilding it.

But that was only the start of it. The same day I picked up the Firestarter was the same day I got another phone call. Another poor soul who had been soaked in the wake of the S7 Realty fiasco wound up with a truck stop that was on the road between Solaris City and St. Elmo. The person was a mechanic by trade, and so while he was able to keep the gas station, convenience store, and repair bay portion of the facility perfectly operational, the on-premises diner got away from him and entered into its own death spiral. He was willing to subdivide the lot and sell me the diner in exchange for the debt it had racked up plus ten percent, and I signed the paperwork a few days later.

As with Texas, I quickly set to work revamping it… my way. Those underperforming staffers were fired, and replaced by either Heimdall operatives, Comstar operatives, or “trusted” persons from within St. Elmo. The diner itself was given a top-to-bottom revamp, the idea being to make it accessible to the families and farmers that were increasingly going back and forth along with the actual truckers. Instead of a lazy and somewhat sloppy greasy spoon, within a week it became the Any Time Food Company, a retro-themed (as in, approximating design elements of the United States during the middle of the 1900s) diner that specialized in serving a small amount of dishes that could be served 24/7 (such as ham steak with fried potatoes) in order to match how long the convenience store and gas station aspects would be open. I even tracked down some vending machines and kids' rides that were modeled after items from that period. Just like Texas, it wound up being an instant hit.

Under normal circumstances, I would be rather happy to score no less than two major business deals in such short order and have them turn around to be hits. But at this juncture, things were once again decidedly not normal. While the business reporters hailed me as an up-and-coming genius, the conspiracy rags regarded my string of successes as the result of me – or someone above me – pulling the strings. They also argued that my matches were all likely staged, in that I always seemed to have just the mech to take out whoever I was fighting.

In order to help settle matters, I challenged one conspiracy type – a listed arena jock – to a battle. I even noted that I would be using the Firestarter instead of the Shad or Archer. (At the time, it was still a stock machine; I would not have it customized until immediately afterwords.) Given that he was listed as piloting a Spider, I figured that we would be roughly equal.

You can probably guess how it ended without my even telling you, but just in case here goes.

We wound up in The Factory, an arena where it had been some time since my last match. As with so many others, the conspiracy theory type tried to use my own tactics against me. This time, however, it was actually rather sensible given the fact that he was in a Spider; it was pretty much what they were designed to do in the first place. He was good, but not quite good enough to actually score a hit against me, usually just narrowly missing. Granted, I wasn't using my own jets, but still – he was getting there.

Unfortunately, it was obvious that he had forgotten I even had said jets… or my medium lasers. He apparently presumed himself safe so long as he stayed just outside the range of my flamers and machine guns, a bad mistake even under the best of situations. I decided to remind him of this, and waited until he was leaping away from his latest attempt to do so.

To his horror, I hit the jets as well, and landed pretty close to where he landed. I then used my medium lasers to slice the Spider's left arm off at the shoulder, further shocking the conspiracy theorist. I could not initially tell if it was from shock or from the mech being unbalanced, but the Spider moved erratically after that and the shots were farther and farther afield.

I will give him credit with the fact that I only scored two more hits against him: a medium laser to each leg. However, hitting him like I did ultimately led to my winning the battle. The Spider became even more erratic at this point, such that I almost thought that I had somehow hit one or more leg actuators. The conspiracy theorist tried what appeared to be a desperate gamble in that he leapt the mech straight up onto an elevated section of walkway, perhaps in an attempt to put some terrain between our two machines. For whatever reason, though, the conspiracy theorist botched the landing, causing the mech to topple over. The conspiracy theorist managed to remain on the walkway, but the mech slammed hard against its left torso; in the process, the conspiracy theorist legitimately dislocated his left shoulder in the impact.

I doubted that the walkway was in good shape after something like that went down, and so I rapidly moved to handle matters. I had the Firestarter run up the ramp that led to a platform connected to the walkway, then nudged my way over to where the Spider was. Although the Firestarter had no hands, the Spider still had a functional right arm and the pilot was still conscious enough to extend it when I reached out towards him. It was a bit of a challenge since both mechs were about the same weight, but I was ultimately able to drag the Spider off over to the platform. At that point, the arena staff finally figured out that something was wrong and so halted the match. A medical crew was sent over to recover the conspiracy theorist, who later recovered at a nearby hospital.

The conspiracy theorist never again bothered us, as he was now convinced that we were legitimate. But he still persisted in going after various other groups, and so we decided to help him in this regards. I convinced Conrad to speak to a few people, and in short order the conspiracy theorist had his own weekly late-night show on that holovid station out of St. Elmo. Although most of his episodes were dedicated to so much in the way of fluff past and present, he did occasionally find something useful. In fact, he was part of the reason why we found out about the Jihad ahead of time, as a few of his investigations inadvertently probed around the edges of intelligence data that we wound up capturing and helped fill in the gaps. He would also continue to battle in the arena once his mech was fixed, and did far better from there on out. He also, believe it or not, took out an Initiate during the first Blakist assault on the planet and forced a Grand Crusader to withdraw during the second one. Guess he actually had something in him after all.

[Fortress Ironhol...]

Burning In Paris

(note: fits in the same continuity, so I'm throwing this one in anyway.)

"Talcum 2, reporting in," he said into the comms. "We've broken them; it's just a mop-up operation now."

"Understood, Talcum 2," his commander replied. "Be careful, Michael; they might still try one last feint."

"Wouldn't surprise me."

For centuries, Paris had been regarded as one of the most important cities in the entire Inner Sphere in terms of culture and education. While the Amaris Coup had briefly brought a halt to this as part of the devastation that covered the entire planet, the city succeeded in rebuilding itself and reclaiming its title. That is, until the Word of Blake took over the planet. Now it was back to square one.

By all rights, he should be mourning for the city. His family - the LeFluers - could trace their origins all the way back to Earth. In fact, a lot of the families who resided within the New Nauvoo region could. It was why he had volunteered to join the effort to liberate the planet, and most likely why several others had volunteered as well. But at the moment, he was not there to sight-see; he was there to pilot his AFNN-model Guillotine and wage war against those who had sought to claim what wasn't theres.

Somewhere along the way, the AFNN engineers came to realize that having an absurd quantity of standard heat sinks to deal with all of the mech's waste heat was just that: absurd. By going over to double heat sinks, among other modifications, they created the walking abomination that was the 9X. Near-maximum armor. A PPC in place of the large laser. Twin SRM 4s instead of the single 6. A full seven medium lasers. Few mechs, Clan or Inner Sphere, stood a chance against it in a straight-up fight. Today simply reinforced that fact.

A lone Thorn darted out from behind a building and snapped off a shot with its LRM 5. For whatever reason, however, the missiles just narrowly missed; it was possible that he was up against a rookie pilot, or a pilot so badly shaken not even a Star League-era targeting and tracking system could compensate for an unsteady hand. Either way, he wasn't going to give the Thorn a second chance. Before the mech could dart back under cover, he fired off a shot from his PPC. The azure bolt tore through the paper-thin armor over the Thorn's right torso, and very nearly cored straight through. What it did do, however, was detonate the LRM ammunition stored there. The CASE mechanism shunted the blast out the machine's rear armor, but the pilot couldn't compensate and so the mech crumpled up in a heap. Realizing that he had no chance of winning, the Thorn's pilot climbed out of the cockpit and ran down the street. The Blakist pilot disappeared into a random building whose door had been plowed open, essentially surrendering. Michael sent out a general message concerning the pilot's location and resumed his patrol.

The higher-ups had concluded that if the city was to be attacked, the Blakists would likely fall back towards the city's major landmarks; not only would they make obvious rally points, the Blakists could try to blackmail the liberation forces out of the city by threatening their destruction. Instead, volunteers from among the infantry and battle armor were dispatched to infiltrate the city and set up defensive positions near these facilities. Although the defensive positions were largely abandoned in short order once the fighting got intense, the volunteers had done enough. Sufficient confusion had been sewn into the Blakist ranks that individual units had become scattered, attempting to hunker down in the city itself rather than form en masse for their own mutual protection. This is where Talcum and Gypsum lances came in: their mission was to ferret out these stragglers and finish them off before they could find their friends or exploit any potential holes in the line.

A hit on his radar caused him to react reflexively. A Hermes, likely alerted by the destruction of the Thorn, had tried to flank him. But the pilot was just as clumsy as the Thorn pilot, and so the mech's MAsC system was essentially wasted. Michael's reaction time was just fast enough to where the Hermes charged past him instead of charging into him. By the time the Hermes pilot realized what had happened, Michael had already fired off his full volley of lasers. The beams flashed out through the space between them, spearing the Hermes in the torso and legs. The Hermes' auto-eject kicked in before the mech even hit the ground, sending the pilot airborne. Michael watched as the pilot's parachute deployed, allowing the Blakist to make a reasonbly safe - if awkward - landing in a tree.

By his count, that made seven. And he was still operating within a few kilometers of the Eiffel Tower, where one of the volunteer teams had been sent. Either the team had overestimated the number of kills it made or underestimated the resolve of the forces it had scattered.

Sheer chance brought him up behind a Blakist choke point consisting of battle armor operating in support of a Hetzer and two wheeled APCs. An alpha strike cleared them out in short order, albeit at the cost of a slightly uncomfortable heat spike. Even with doubles, alpha-striking was still a risky endeavor. Fortunately, it appeared that there was nobody else around him right now, and so he could take his time walking the mech on another sweep.

As he considered the situation, a thought occurred to him. Once upon a time, the guillotine was the scourge of the nation. During the Reign of Terror, anyone who the powers-that-be declared an enemy faced its sinister blade and their demise. Now, many a year after the fact, another Guillotine was the scourge of the nation. His.

His sensors detected someone trying to ping him, likely with a Beagle probe. Shocked back into action, he pointed the mech in a random direction and put it into a full run. Discovering that its cover was blown, a Mongoose rushed out from its alcove inside a destroyed building in a desperate effort to flank his mech. Michael hit the jump jets, allowing him to do a mid-air spin. He snapped off a random shot with his PPC, and was mildly shocked to see the Mongoose topple over backwards, a gaping hole where its faceplate once sat. No doubt that he had hit the cockpit.

He didn't have much time to contemplate what just happened before Gypsum 4 filled the airwaves. "Target-rich environment!" the anxious pilot shouted as PPC and laser fire sounded in the background. "Artillery train!"

Gypsum 4 took enough time away from the carnage to show everyone where he was on the map. 4 had a 5D Rifleman, and so Michael had no doubt that 4 would have an easy time of the vehicles unless they had heavy supporting weapons or a heavy escort. No, he was more worried about where the train was heading: the Eiffel Tower. Someone was, indeed, trying once more to set it as a rally point. This could not happen.

"Talcum 3 here", a somewhat startled voice chimed in. "I've got a big kahuna making its way towards the Tower. I can dog it, but that's about it."

"Fall back", Michael said; "I'll deal with it." "Big Kahuna" was the code for an assault mech. The AFNN-mod Stinger that Talcum 3 had sported a head-mounted medium laser in lieu of the right arm machine gun and half of the machine gun ammunition, but two medium lasers were still no match against the average bruiser. Better 3 continue to observe and report than risk getting involved.

He pulled up the Tower as a nav point and put the mech into the best flat-out run it could muster, literally over-running several infantry and light vehicle emplacements along his way. He hastily scanned through the assorted communications channels in order to try and get whatever additional information that he could. The Blakist forces had pulled back from several entire sectors of the city. But as he feared, as soon as the volunteers withdrew from the monuments, the Blakists resumed their efforts to fortify themselves around them. The bulk of the direct-combat forces and remaining air forces were likely being sacrificed in order to provide a shield while the command forces and support forces pulled back. Unacceptable.

Making matters worse, the three other Gypsums and the other two Talcums were busy making their way through their respective opponents; none of them would be able to break off in order to help him. So far as he knew, it was up to him to find the assault mech - and the high-level Blakist officer that likely piloted it - and deal with it. He had already racked up eight kills for the day, and was hoping that he would not be kill number nine.

A lone Hussar was tasked with escorting a group of slow-moving cargo haulers; they were a speed bump before him. A Sentinel tried to ambush him, only to fall before an alpha strike. A second alpha strike downed a Hermes II with the same idea.

By now, the heat was washing over him. His was a 9X that had a handful of creature comforts in the cockpit, including a small refrigerator. He had stocked several bottles of water in there for just such a situation, but fate intervened in the form of an Initiate. The Initiate fired off its LRM 15 and then immediately dove for cover, indicating that the pilot was competent enough to try for a proper skirmish. But while an LRM 15 uses missiles, a PPC uses energy. He gave the pilot credit for keeping him distracted for a full minute, but in the end PPC blast after PPC blast had probed the Initiate until it was able to breach the right torso. For reasons unknown, only the LRM ammo was protected by a CASE; the SRM ammo was sitting wide open. He was almost glad to see the ejection seat appear in the midst of the fireball that emanated from the doomed machine.

He made one more scan of the radio. Gypsums 1, 2, and 3 were busy hounding a Toyama and its bodyguards near the Arc De Triumph. Talcums 1 and 4 had blundered their way into the flank of one of the last major pockets. No word from Gypsum 4 or Talcum 3. So far as he knew, it was just him and the big guy to see who would be kill number 13. Lucky number 13.

He put the mech into a run one more time, bearing straight down on the Tower. As soon as he saw something large and bulbous on the horizon, he fired off a round from his PPC and hit the jets. His timing was perfect, as a massive barrage of LRMs flew right beneath him; the building that had been right behind him exploded under the impact of 40 missiles.

He was up against a Grand Crusader.

Staying at range was not an option, as not even the armor of a 9X could withstand the LRMs for very long. But closing in was not much of an option either thanks to the mech's array of pulse lasers. No matter which option he chose, he was going to take a beating as well. After weighing his odds, he figured that he would put his lasers and SRMs against the pulses.

Someone or other in bright green Helaman battle armor shot past him, obviously using the "interceptor" jet pack that enabled the armor to essentially fly. Most likely, he figured, the trooper was a volunteer from earlier who felt the need to resolve unfinished business. The squad machine gun the armor was sporting simply did not have the punch to do more than token damage to the rotund beast, but was more than enough to make it an official nuisance. The Grand Crusader pilot foolishly used the machine's left arm to try and swat the battle armor away, leaving the mech wide open.

Twin azure bolts flew through the air, hitting the Grand Crusader in the left armpit. Gypsum 4 had apparently long-since finished with the artillery train, and was now eager to horn in on the fight. The Grand Crusader pilot kept the machine upright, but momentarily blanched at the realization that the battle was now three to one. Michael once more hit the jets when the massive missile aray pointed in his direction, but figured that the resulting property damage was better than his mech getting damaged. Gypsum 4 and the Helaman armor continued their barrages, pinning the mech in place.

From out of nowhere, Talcum 3 came rushing up as well. Now facing threats from all four directions, the pilot made the fateful mistake of splitting the mech's fire: LRMs against the Guillotine, right arm against the Stinger, and left arm against the Rifeman. Once more, nothing hit. Even if the mech had been standing still this would have been a tall order, but the pilot was also trying to dodge and weave the mech around.

Gypsum 4 managed to double-tap the Grand Crusader's left leg, causing the machine to stumble into a kneeling position on the wounded limb. Seeing this, Talcum 3 hit his jets and planted his right foot into the brute's back before hitting the jets again and leaping clear; as reckless as the move was, it obviously put even more stress on the mech's left leg. The Helaman trooper followed up by throwing what must have been a thermite maxi-grenade with all the grace of a champion baseball player; the lethal fastball lodged in the Grand Crusader's knee, and almost immediately gouts of flame began to shoot out.

Its leg now out of action, the Grand Crusader could do nothing to protect itself. Michael had gotten to within 270 meters, and with a loud roar of a scream he triggered one last alpha strike. His PPC tore into the Grand Crusader's right arm, while his arm-mounted lasers scoured the mech's left arm. The torso lasers dug holes in the side torsos, while the SRMs pockmarked the machine's center torso. None of the shots breached, but that was besides the point; the point was that he had just stripped off four tons of armor in a single volley, something that the Grand Crusader pilot could not compensate for. The mech rocked backwards, landing on its already damaged rear armor. The Helaman trooper sealed the deal by landing on top of the mech's head and pointing the squad machine gun's barrel at the canopy glass.

Triumphant, Michael flipped the master comms switch, meaning that his next broadcast would be heard on all channels as well as the mech's speakers. "Talcum 2. By the Eiffel Tower. Scratch one Grand Crusader." He savored kill number 13 like he savored the bottle of water he finally retrieved.

As he figured, the pronouncement was the turning point of the battle. The Grand Crusader pilot was the highest-ranking officer to survive the initial assault, and so with him out of the action the Blakist lines began to collapse; those who could made it out of the city en route for the Blakist fortifications in Germany, while those who could not either surrendered or fell where they stood. Not bad for a day's work.