Chapter Text
Barony of Upper Winslet, Pencader
Lyran Commonwealth
September 25, 2990
“I can’t see him either, but I know he’s there.” The tip of his tongue tapped against his upper lip, his default concentration expression.
“Say again, JJ? Did not hear you clearly.”
“Slayer One, Slayer Four - I say again, contact in grid Echo Two. Battlemech, one light, suspected Stinger. Tracked AFV in support.”
“Gotcha that time, Slayer Four. You want Two to come backstop ya?” came the voice of his uncle and eponymous commander of Kessler’s Kommandos, such as it was with a bare four mechs to call its own.
His own Locust was a rough match for the Stinger - equal in tonnage but more lightly armored. Faster, too, which was important with the little pee-wee matches that often happened out here on the border. It just wasn’t possible for him to go toe to toe with any kind of mech. His job was to recon and call in his comrades with actual hitting power, like Rebecca’s Commando or Uncle Hermann’s Quickdraw. Still, given the chance, he’d be able to punch a little harder than usual, as his Locust was a -1S, swapping the machine guns for a pair of SRM-2s at the cost of protection.
“No, I’m trying to get a hard read on the vee that’s with him, then I’ll pull back to Charlie.” Johnny flipped through his alternate scanning functions, but at long range and without a clear line of sight, he wasn’t expecting much. He slapped the MFD as its monitor hummed and crazed briefly before snapping back to normal. “Where are you…” he murmured, stepping across the small defile that his map told him was the eastern boundary of their employer’s landhold and getting ever so slightly closer to where the AFV’s icon had popped up, then vanished.
A further ten minutes and another five hundred meters off his assigned patrol path, and he still hadn’t gotten more than a glimpse. The Stinger, though, was popping up now and again, always on the same bearing and maintaining his distance. “Don’t be a sucker, Johnny,” he muttered again, then half-turned away as his threat receiver warbled. He side-stepped, spun, and slammed the throttle forward as his little ‘mech bolted like a sprinter, back towards where he’d started moments ago.
LRMs fell around but behind him, only two hitting his legs. Even a Locust could take that kind of minor hit. The missiles hadn’t been fired with a lock, just eyeballed as he’d obediently walked a more or less straight line towards his unseen foe. Still, by the sheer number that had been thrown his way, it would have ruined more than his paint job.
“All Slayers, this is Slayer Four. I have two hostiles at Echo Three, one Stinger confirmed and one AFV with many LRMs.” His comm line growled static back at him, a reply forming as a brief burp before resolving into sporadic hissing.
Johnny switched through his frequencies, going to the secondary, then guard with the same result. Behind him, the Stinger was being left behind. The jump-capable mech had made good time through the border scrubland while Johnny had to pick his way around, but before him laid the sweeping golden sea of Winslet’s grain fields, the hills occasionally dotted with equipment sheds or a silo here and there. What was most important, though, were the wide paths between those fields that allowed him to throttle up as fast as he dared, topping out at just over a hundred KPH - well short of his theoretical maximum, but few mechs near the Lyran periphery were in top nick and operating at their design limits.
At what he could comfortably call a ‘run’ even if it wasn’t a full sprint, it took him just shy of fifteen minutes to gain visual range of Winslet Manor and its grounds. To call it a manor at all was a reach; it was a really fancy way of talking about a structurally reinforced lodge surrounded by the buildings of a productive and working farm operation.
On the far side of the lodge, he could see his Uncle’s Quickdraw lope smoothly towards the low berm that separated the manor’s grounds from the surrounding countryside. Most importantly, though, he was moving to intercept a pair of Hetzer combat vehicles plodding towards the house itself, launching a spread from the SRM rack they’d used to replace the LRMs. That had been, what, two years ago?
His comm board lit up as he was hit by a comm laser. “Boy! Where have you been? We’re taking it from two directions!” There was little heat in Hermann Kessler’s voice, and did Johnny detect a bit of relief?
“Jamming all the way here. A Stinger and something with a lot of throw weight. Where do you need me?” he asked, angling out to the north to box in the boxy Hetzers.
“Keep on as you are,” came the reply, then a cut out as his uncle triggered all four of his medium lasers, cutting a wheel from the lead Hetzer and causing it to ground itself by its front corner and block its comrade’s path. “Two is covering the southwest. We’ll clean up here and you’ll go help her out.”
“Copy,” he said, triggering his own laser, carving a slashing line along the flank of the second Hetzer. The Quickdraw maneuvered to stay outside of the fixed forward arc of the disabled vehicle, and the second stopped to slew around in an attempt to keep the heavy mech in its sights. As the huge AC/20 opened up on his Uncle, the Quickdraw jumped, soaking what portion of the burst that did make contact across his mech’s right leg.
Johnny slowed and slid his reticle over the smoking exhaust of the firing Hetzer, and let it have all four SRMS, followed a heartbeat later by his laser. The exploding missiles set the rear of the vehicle on fire, and he got a full burn in on his laser.
His uncle’s Quickdraw landed, paused, and swung its left foot into the rear of the Hetzer. It shuddered to a stop, and a grinding noise that he could hear even in his cockpit howled for long seconds before fading as the tank lost power.
“Nav Juliet, JJ - I’ve got this last one,” came the order. Johnny’s Locust turned south to go around the manor itself, seeing his uncle’s mech fire a pair of lasers into the first Hetzer, then kick it for good measure, spinning it half-around with its broken wheel as a pivot.
“Yep,” he replied. “Those two that attacked me may be coming this way. Watch out to the east.” As he slipped out of view, the static returned, and Johnny tapped his throttle up just a bit more to try and get to Rebecca’s aid just that little bit faster.
…
Nav point Juliet was the last of the series set by Kessler when they set up to garrison the Barony against the separatist militia. The series of raids and attacks by the nominally independence-minded militia forces on planet were not so secretly supplied by Marik interests from just over the border. The Marik world of Galisteo was only a single jump away. In response, Pencader was entering year three of an every-nobleman-for-themselves counter-insurgency. The various Dukes and Barons and Viscounts and what-have-yous had gone shopping for mercenaries to hold against the militias. Privately, Johnny thought it lucky that the militias were just as fragmented and disorganized as the nobles. The two Hetzers had borne the bright green A of the Anarchy movement, for example, and they represented the only repeat offenders across nine skirmishes in the same number of months. October, though, would bring the end of the Kommandos contract here, and the grapevine told them that Nina St. John, Baroness Winslet, was not keen to renew.
Johnny’s thoughts snapped back to the present as he came to his nav point, and his instruments directed him west, where a smoldering hulk burned bright on his thermals. Again, he tried his primary and secondary frequencies. “Slayer Two, this is Four, over.”
A repeat gave him no response, and the hulk revealed itself as a gutted and burned out Vedette tank, its turret lying some five meters from the hull. He could still make out the markings of the Third Column militia, a rectangle with three horizontal lines inside. A take on a roman numeral three, maybe? A burst of static and then a clear voice came through on his primary channel. “-id that do it? Slayer Two to any receiving unit, this is Three.”
His HUD helpfully showed an arrow to his left as the message came through. “Two, this is Four, I am at Juliet and am here to assist.”
A sigh - of relief, he hoped. He and Rebecca hadn’t always gotten along. “Good to hear you, JJ. Come to grid Alpha Seven, use the south road and turn north. I’ve got a couple tanks out here you can help me with.”
“Got it. What cleared up the jamming?”
“Some modified hauler with an old power pack on it. Fuel cell or somesuch rigged to a big ol’ transmitter. Brute force. Blew it up and everything cleared up. Got a second Vedette to go with the one back your way. I’ll be there soon.”
…
It hadn’t taken the two light mechs long to link up and flank the remaining combat vehicles, as only one of the two had been worthy of the name. The light Galleon didn’t outgun his Locust, even, and was easy meat for Rebecca’s SRMs. The other ‘tank’ she mentioned was a heavy truck with a jury-rigged AC/2 on its back, and hadn’t lasted long once they’d closed the range.
“So I don’t like this level of collusion,” he said on secure link as they made their way back to the manor. Uncle Hermann hadn’t seen or heard of the mystery attackers from the east but wanted to concentrate their forces as soon as possible.
“Me either,” Rebecca said after a brief ‘hm’ of agreement. “If whoever chased you today is a third group, then something smells pretty bad.”
“I’d hate to stick around if the militia finally gets their heads screwed on straight.”
“You and me both. Let’s see if we can raise the Captain.” The laser link dropped, replaced by Rebecca’s voice on the primary net. “Slayer One, this is Two.”
“Two, one, good to hear your voice,” came Hermann’s reply. “I’m over east a bit. JJ’s playmates are dicking around over here and have thrown some volleys into the grain elevator.”
“On our way,” she said, then eased her Commando that direction, Johnny sticking to her right flank.
Only a few minutes later, they’d pulled even with Kessler’s Quickdraw and he’d sent them on a looping circuit to the south, trying to box in the Stinger and his consort. “I’d bet it's some kinda bodged together LRM carrier. Maybe one a’them like the truck you took out, Rebecca,” he’d offered. “Still, we don’t know what kind of Stinger it is. Maybe a G, so watch out at range.”
“Got it, Slayer One,” Rebecca, ever the professional, responded. “Let’s go.”
It turned out that Uncle Hermann did know a thing or two. The LRM carrier they found was not quite so kludged together, but was a purpose-built vehicle. Its regular old diesel engine wasn’t letting it set any speed records, but the big box on its tracked chassis certainly meant business.
“Okay, Four, hammer that crawler and we’ll see if the Stinger shows - oh, there he is! Get on him and distract, I’ll take the carrier.”
Johnny clicked his mic twice, then leaned forward in his command chair as the Stinger fired one, then a second laser at him. Both missed high, but Uncle Hermann was right again - two lasers, no machine guns on this Stinger.
He slowed slightly and fired his own laser, keeping an eye on his heat levels, though they were far from dangerous at this point. His shot went wide, and a second follow-up carved a trench in the Stinger’s right shoulder. The enemy pilot wasn’t slowing, though, and gave a short burst of his jets to angle low across the fields of wheat and streak past Johnny. In return,he slowed, planted one bird-like foot, and spun off in pursuit, snap-firing his laser into the Stinger’s leg as it fired at the Commando.
Rebecca had loosed only her four-pack SRM at the LRM carrier, and then followed it up with her lone laser to try and conserve ammo. The carrier remained firmly un-destroyed, though its armor was visually compromised on its left flank. The single machine gun manned by a brave crewman threw tracer rounds her way, but the Stinger’s lasers caught her from behind, her torso twist saving her delicate rear armor from a savaging.
That was the good news for the Stinger pilot, though, as the single hit to his leg had also popped one of the jump jets there and the landing was, to put it mildly, rough. Still, Johnny thought, he couldn’t have done half as well. Only his Uncle’s Quickdraw had jump jets in their lance, and he’d not had the opportunity to practice.
The rough landing flattened wheat around the mech, and its struggle up from a crouch let the Locust focus an alpha strike squarely in the Stinger’s back. One of the four missiles went low, but the damage was focused enough to put the Stinger on its front, gyro damaged and core in shutdown.
An explosion from the direction of the Commando put the finish on Rebecca’s target and she strode over to the downed Stinger. “Stinger pilot, if you can hear me, pop your canopy and come on out,” she said over her loudspeaker. A long moment passed, then another, and finally there was some movement as a pale form wiggled out from the face-down cockpit of the downed ‘mech.
“You gonna shoot?” came the male voice, shouted through cupped hands.
“Not tonight, but those tankers didn’t make it out,” she replied, gesturing with her Commando’s left arm towards the smoking shape of the LRM carrier some meters away.
“‘Preciate it,” he called, then started walking east, back the way they’d come.
“What outfit you with?” called Johnny, joining the conversation.
The figure turned. “Sons of Jubal!” he yelled, just audible over the external microphones. “But you didn’t hear it from me!”
“Huh,” Johnny said to himself as Rebecca’s voice came over the shared tacnet.
“Slayer One, Two. One vehicle destroyed, one Stinger dropped. Send recovery, my nav point, sending now.” She clicked off, then raised Johnny alone. “What kind of screwdriver you think they’ve got over on the militia side, hey?”
“What?”
“For their heads, you know? Screwed on straight?”
Johnny breathed a laugh into his mic. “Philips, maybe?”
“Bet it’s a number seven Torx,” Rebecca countered. “Pricks.”
“Letting that pilot go didn’t make Silas too happy,” Hermann said, pouring water for all four of the other people at the table. Johnny had his head leaning on one fist. Rebecca had her arms crossed, focusing on nothing up towards the far corner of the room. The other two present for the informal meeting were their fourth mechwarrior, Samuel Katz - though his Commando was down with a damaged hip and knee - and the chief tech, Ivan Kuznetsov.
The tech waved off the water and instead produced a battered hip flask. He offered it to no one else. “Is never happy, that man,” he said slowly. “Stick all the way up ass, yes?”
Johnny snorted and nearly spit water. “Yeah, agreed. But that’s three militias in one spot for the first time ever. And the Sons of Jubal aren’t even operating on this side of the continent. It’s, ah, worrying,” he finished, then drank.
Hermann had been tapping his fingers together silently, elbows on the table. “Four more days, then we’re shut of this place, everyone. We’ll only have a half-day or so in Pencader City before we’re rotating out, so we need to think next steps.” He turned and pulled a pair of folders from the bag hanging off his chair. “I’ve gotten us a short-term corporate garrison on Giausar. Should be mostly quiet, not much but trees and mining concerns.”
Johnny and Samuel shared a folder while Rebecca looked at her own. Ivan stared at Hermann. “League raids?” Samuel asked, rubbing an eyebrow.
“Maybe, maybe sabotage concerns. Sponsors are three companies splitting the expense. We’ll lift from here and get as far as Bella. Won’t be much waiting there, our new employers will take care of the last leg to bring us to our new assignment.” Hermann leaned back in his chair. “Real question,” he said, meeting Ivan’s gaze, “is if you can get Sam’s Commando walking again. That Stinger gonna work out for us?”
“Da,” Ivan said, wiggling the hand not holding his flask side to side. “All Coventry actuators, weight close, will work okay, but not hold up forever.”
“Commandos are thick on the ground everywhere in Lyran space. We’ll see what we can dig up once we’re back on the right side of the border. If we need the whole right leg replaced, I’m sure we’ll find something we can use.” Hermann leaned forward and smacked the table lightly. “Anything else before we leave?”
“Um,” Rebecca said, raising a finger from the folder. “I know we weren’t hit hard in the recent skirmish, but we still need reloads and some patching up. Has Silas coughed up their end of the deal?”
Silas Yeager was the Baroness’ security chief and de facto mercenary liaison, as such things went for small contracts and units like theirs. He had also been famously tight-fisted with meeting their ongoing maintenance requirements, even a low-fat operation like the Kommandos where their only ammunition consumables were SRM rounds.
Hermann rubbed a hand over his balding scalp. “Yes and no. He’s letting us take all we need, or can, from that Stinger, but our contract doesn’t let us keep it. That’s a small blessing of a kind.”
“Sure, but it’s our techs and time. It costs him nothing and he’ll get the leftovers,” Samuel said, pushing the folder towards Johnny and leaning forward on his elbows. “All profit as far as he’s concerned.”
“Still,” Hermann said, “it’ll be all hands to get what we can off that carcass. Both lasers are good, though one’s a little damaged from its fall. Get that set of actuators out first - that’s the focus. I’ll be down to the barn to help in a couple minutes. That’s all, folks.” He stood, gathering the two folders into his bag, then leaving.
Ivan was the next to stand. “See you in barn,” he said, capping his flask and secreting it away in his coveralls.
Winslet Manor Grounds, Pencader
Lyran Commonwealth\
1 October 2990
The sum total of Kessler’s Kommandos was arrayed for departure. Four mechs led by the Quickdraw, a heavy 70 ton mech recovery vehicle loaded with two large containers of what spares and ammunition they had, and two 10 ton trucks of local manufacture to bring along the three permanent astechs and baker’s dozen of ground security personnel they kept on payroll. The trucks weren’t coming with them.
Samuel’s Commando, their -1D model with the large laser, had been buttoned up only the night before, its right leg showing a patchwork of panels and rough welds. Almost all other damage had been made good, but Rebecca still showed minor pitting across her mech’s chest from the previous battle, and Johnny’s Locust had gotten off light enough to not need much repair at all, just some armor fixes on the legs.
Locals who had been seconded to them over the course of their contract and Yeager’s local security types were in small knots on the opposite side of the drive, waiting for their departure. Johnny’s Uncle Hermann was standing with his hands clasped behind his back at the feet of his Quickdraw, the collapsible ladder leading to its head dangling behind him. Before him, the Baroness herself stood, a fan moving lazily in her left hand in even the very moderate late morning heat. At her elbow stood Silas Yeager.
“I am sad to see you go, Commander Kessler,” she said airily, a tone not suiting her age and solid plumpness. “You have proven to be worth every Kroner,” she said, gesturing to Yeager with the fan. He produced a slim folio which Hermann took, and upon seeing the variegraphed signature, slid it into a pocket of his uniform jacket.
“I am well pleased, madam,” he said with an incline of his head, “and we’ll be heading to our next assignment. I wish you and yours well in the coming years.” He bowed slightly then, and turned to his ladder.
As they formed up and marched single-file out of the gate, Hermann’s Quickdraw led the way, followed by the Locust, the BRV and trucks, then the two Commandos.
The assembled staff of the Baroness watched as the small convoy receded at a sedate pace dictated by their large truck. She waited in silence until only the dust remained of their passing. “You’ll take care of it?” she asked archly, snapping her fan closed but not moving her head to look at him.
“Yes, my Lady,” he said. “They’ll be forced to use the bridge at Tellasco with that truck of theirs. We’ll be well ahead of them before they reach the outskirts of the city.”
“Good,” she said, eyes narrowing. “I need that equipment intact, Silas,” and here she turned her full attention to him. “If the militias are uniting then I need it all.” She turned and started her slow amble back to the manor house. Yeager spun and moved beside her as they walked.
“I could have taken it easier when they were based here,” he half-whispered. “You needed to only give the word.”
“Not while they were under contract, Silas,” she chided gently and tapped his shoulder with her fan. “Your eagerness does you well, but the Troubles here have gone on for years now and will do awhile more, I fear. The militias and separatists have their supply pipelines and we must have our own, while also maintaining our reputation.” She stopped. “And old Uriah has made more than a passing reference to that Quickdraw. You know it may be the largest battlemech on planet right now?” She gestured in the direction of the gate with her fan. “In any event, I think it a small price to pay as a wedding gift, don’t you?”
Yeager paused. “Wedding gift?”
She gave a small barking laugh. “Uriah won’t live much longer, bad liver, you know, but he’ll make me a Duchess and you’ll have plenty of time to figure out how to get his sons out of my way, won’t you, dear?”
Outside Pencader City
1 October 2990
“Thought you said we’d have a whole half-day before lift?” Johnny complained.
“Well, we were delayed leaving, and delayed on the way by traffic on the one bridge that’ll take the BRV, and that’s why I built in some leeway, alright? We’ll be fine, just have less time before we board,” replied his uncle, with not a little bit of impatience.
“Relax, Johnny,” said Samuel from his position in the rear with Rebecca. “We’ve got another hour or so, tops. Then you can get your last meal in a gravity well for awhile,” he joked. “Why, I’ll bet that -”
“Break!” shouted Rebecca suddenly. “Fire control warning!”
Hermann felt a lurch in his chest, then keyed his radio. “Weapons hot! Two, Three, stay with the BRV and keep it and the trucks moving!” Pausing to pop a small tablet from his in-cockpit kit under his tongue, he double-checked his coolant flow. “JJ, go right, see if you can flush any ambushers out of those heights. I’ll go left.”
Johnny’s Locust throttled up and shifted away from the road, pounding up a small switchback to the wooded heights about a hundred or so meters from the road. Magscan lit up and he peered through the shadows of the wooded ridgeline and made out a pair of low shapes and a thin cloud of exhaust. As he closed, the clouds surged, thickened, and a pair of heavy tracked APCs pushed towards him. “Contact right! IFVs, two APCs, unknown number of infantry!”
Behind him, the BRV tried to speed up, going from ponderous to walking speed. Samuel moved up to lead the vehicles as Rebecca took the trailing position and snap-fired a laser his way, burning into the side of one of the APCs. Its machine guns opened up on Johnny as he spun and dropped down the bluff face of the ridgeline, racing back the direction the convoy had come to try and flank the tracked combat vehicles. An SRM corkscrewed out of the forest and detonated behind him as the infantry got into the action.
*
Hermann pivoted his Quickdraw towards the convoy and the threat beyond, wishing again that he’d retained the Mech’s LRM system. Long ago battle damage had him swap it for an SRM-6 and some more heat sinks, giving him devastating close range firepower but making his lance’s only long range choice the large laser on Sam’s COM-1D. His own threat system screamed at him as a pair of contacts appeared to his left, in the original path of his convoy. A flight of LRMs arced towards him, and he pivoted to spread their impact all over his arms and torso sections. A large brick of a vehicle marked as a Vargr squatted in the center of the road, and the gangly shape of a Panther battlemech lurked beyond it, extending its right arm towards him.
He put the Quickdraw into a short jet-assisted leap forward that spoiled the incoming PPC shot, then turned and charged towards the blocking force. “Sam, give me some support here!”
A blue-tinted beam bored into the heavy frontal armor of the APC as he moved up before adding all four of his own lasers before his SRMs exploded along the still glowing armor of his target.
He only registered the impact of a PPC on his left arm amid the distortion of its feedback and blamed his sudden shortness of breath on the blast of heat in the cockpit. His charge indicator for his lasers blinked green and he divided his fire, first a pair into the Vargr as it spun to face his charge, LRM turret lowering for direct fire, and the second into the Panther, who turned to take the shots on his weaponless left arm.
*
“Rebecca,” she heard as she moved up with the trucks, “swap out with Sam. We need to pull these guys away from the trucks. If they get close enough to the dropport local security will keep ‘em away. We have to buy time.” Hermann’s voice came in short bursts, his shortness of breath obvious.
“Copy, One. I’m moving up to support you.” She pushed her throttle up to the stops, glanced over where Johnny’s Locust was playing peek-a-boo with the smaller APCs, and tried to - unsuccessfully - stick the Vargr with a long-range laser shot.
*
Samuel eased off his throttle as his repaired hip and knee started to protest. Past about sixty KPH they produced a worrying wobble. He’d keep pace with the trucks and BRV no problem, but even that Panther would outpace him in a flat pursuit. As much as he hated the order, it made the most sense for him to keep back with the more vulnerable parts of their convoy.
He didn’t have to like it, though, he thought as he fired again at the overgrown APC in their way. His computer told him it massed the same as Hermann’s Quickdraw, which just didn’t seem right to him. The Vargr had turned away and his laser hit the undamaged flank of the heavy vehicle. It fired its LRM launcher right in Hermann’s face, twin machine guns chattering.
The large laser hadn’t finished charging by the time the Quickdraw plowed into its front quarter, hot on the heels of another SRM salvo. The Panther moved to get an angle on Hermann’s weak rear armor, but Samuel snapped his laser in that direction, only briefly making contact as the Panther driver spun and twisted, scattering its own SRMs across the Quickdraw’s flank and rear. An answering burst of missiles from Hermann’s rear-mounted launcher all found their target, and yet another cloud of missiles, twice the size of their own hit the Panther from the side, three finding his right arm where his valuable PPC was.
Rebecca’s arrival in range finished the calculus for the Panther pilot, and he turned off at maximum speed, keeping his torso twisted to minimize rear angles while Hermann extricated his Quickdraw from the ruined front end of the Vargr. The rear ramp clanged down, but the infantry inside, of which there were only half as many as could be carried, were in no mood to fight. The thin, hazy smoke that drifted out of the exposed compartment may have contributed to their flight.
“Help me move this thing,” Hermann muttered over the open lance frequency as he pulled his right foot out of the caved-in APC. “Boogered my ankle but good,” he said, and the Quickdraw visibly limped to the side as Rebecca, and then Samuel moved to push the stricken vehicle off the road to let the BRV pass.
*
Johnny had looped back towards the tail-end of the convoy as the APC ambushed faltered, then failed entirely. With the convoy steadily moving out of range, there wasn’t much for them to do. Hermann’s quick thinking and charge had removed the blocking force, but it all seemed to have gone pear-shaped for the ambushers.
As he pulled level with the rear-most crew truck and passed the Vargr wreck, he couldn’t help but search it for any clue as to their attackers. The sky blue paint matched the Third Column they’d tangled with earlier, but the Panther was an outlier. Nothing beyond bug mechs had been spotted with the militia, and few enough of those that the Stinger from earlier in the week was only the fourth mech they’d faced in opposition. All of them, in fact, had been Stingers. Where had this thing been the whole time?
“Four, One. You’ll take up the rear guard. Move out.”
*
What should have been the final hour of their trip turned into two and a half. Between raised alert levels, slow moving trucks, and the Quickdraw’s leg damage, the somewhat battered convoy had been stalked by the mystery Panther, popping up to harass them every so often with PPC fire from beyond any range they could reasonably respond.
Hermann’s Quickdraw had taken an additional pair of hits, and now Samuel’s Commando had issues with its other leg that had been pristine at the start of the day. The Panther hadn’t shot in the direction of the BRV even once, though, so it had chugged along without much of any problem at all.
“Dropport Security, this is Commander Kessler, Kessler’s Kommandos. We’ve been harassed by a Panther battlemech along our path and require clearance all the way to our Dropship,” came Hermann’s voice in the clear as Johnny listened in, detecting the forced calm in his Uncle’s tone.
“Understood, Commander. Dropship Here and Gone Again is in pre-flight. You are just in time.” The reply was clipped and professional. “Proceed to Gate Two, you’ll see your pathfinder there.”
A short moment later, and the mechs of Kessler’s Kommandos were watching back the way they’d come as the vehicles moved up to the Mule class dropship that would take them away. First, the trucks dropped off their passengers and turned back as a smaller truck with flashing yellow light bars trundled up to the gate.
“Contact, dead ahead!” called Samuel as the Panther that had been dogging them the whole way appeared from behind some low-rise buildings. As they made ready for what might turn out to be a combat embarkation, another new voice on the open channel called out.
“In the name of Duke Uriah Radcliffe, stand down and surrender your mechs!” From within the dropport itself, another set of icons appeared on their instruments. An ancient Clint strode into view, flanked by a pair of Wasps and trailed by a pair of Hetzers, their large-bore autocannons promising the lion’s share of the firepower arrayed against them.
“We are leaving Pencader after legal exercise of our contract, you have no authority to confiscate a damn thing!” Hermann argued, not bothering to hide the anger in his voice.
An icon representing the lance encrypted frequency flashed and Johnny clicked over. “They want to take us intact, that’s our edge. Move to cover the BRV and get your asses in that dropper!” said Hermann tersely. “Here and Gone Again, you ready to lift?”
A harsh feminine voice cut in. “We are lighting our mains in two minutes, get aboard boys. Mama Petrovsky didn’t raise no quitter!”
Johnny felt and heard the thud as the dropship only a few hundred meters away kicked up its preparations. He gripped his control sticks as Uncle Hermann’s orders came over the comm, quick and serious. At the call of “Go!” he broke towards the newcomers, aiming for one of the Wasps and trying to pull them in front to block the Hetzers. Samuel shot at the Panther, which had just been standing in the open, and Rebecca and Hermann both teamed up on the Clint, which didn’t seem to anticipate anything going wrong at this point in the day.
The Clint stumbled as its right leg gave way to the storm of SRM and laser fire, then fired a wild AC/5 shot that clipped the dropship.
“Bastard!” came the call over the open channel, and Johnny saw the formerly quiescent turrets rotate into line, pumping laser fire into the crippled Clint, severing its right forearm and destroying the autocannon there.
The unengaged Wasp jumped slightly sideways and put laser fire into one of the trucks, which had done nothing wrong thus far except for being the nearest target. Both the Hetzers added their own fire, blowing the truck into shrapnel.
Charging towards the dropport, the Panther fired off its PPC, ruining the Quickdraw’s right arm as Hermann turned towards the dropship and staggered aboard behind the BRV.
“Move!” he called over the comm as Samuel, then Rebecca clambered up the ramp. “JJ!”
Johnny pivoted around the pair of Hetzers, ruining one of their real wheels with his missiles. The Wasp he’d targeted first was nowhere to be found. The growing sound of the dropship’s main drive filled his consciousness, and he saw the Mule’s ramp begin to raise and close.
Desperately, he pushed forward, sparing a laser shot at the remaining Wasp and never seeing the Panther’s PPC take him from behind as he placed one foot on the ascending ramp. With an actinic crash, the shot entered the Locust’s left rear torso and angled out the front, carving a line of destruction across and through the light mech. Johnny’s last sight, through screaming pain and heat and distortion was of his Uncle’s Quickdraw taking the remains of the bolt front and center.
The two mechs crashed together, the ramp behind them locked in place, and the Here and Gone Again boosted for orbit as their assailants scattered away.