Scrub makes up her mind. "Striker lance, expect Probe lance to approach from the north."
By the time Striker lance gets there, the bad guys are just about on top of the depot. They're split up about half and half, coming in from northwest and southwest, with a lone Drillson hovertank zipping in from the west. The lone defending mech links into our comms network and reports ready for action. The good part is that it's a Crusader, whose 65-ton bulk will be pretty helpful. The defensive turrets look pretty sturdy as well, so we'll have some time to work on the incoming hostiles.
Round 1:
"Striker-four, you're too far out!" Sgt. Bosse calls out as she feathers her Ostroc's jump jets to clear a building and watches the rookie in the Wolfhound run out into a crowd of hostiles like an idiot. She hasn't been with the company that long (having only joined up at the beginning of the year during our last R&R period on Outreach), but she still knows a dumb move when she sees one. Her main concern is the SRM Carrier to the north turning towards the Wolfhound and letting rip with its sixty SRM tubes.
The rookie gets lucky though. His Wolfhound's three chest-mounted medium lasers all miss as the mech is shaken around by only five SRMs, and he holds the large laser to conserve heat. The nearby Phoenix Hawk misses as well, except for a few machine gun rounds plinking off the armor.
The main success this round is an LRM turret from the base landing over twenty missiles on the Valkyrie, flaking all the armor off its left arm. The Valkyrie's left arm isn't very important, having no weapons (it's just got the one laser in the right arm and an LRM/10 rack on the left torso section), but it's symbolically nice. We observe that one of the turrets is a Sniper artillery tube, but at this close range it's kind of pointless. Still, they might get lucky.
To the south, our mechs whiff their shots while the Vedettes begin plinking away at the depot's turrets from long range. We'll need to close distance and take them out.
Round 2:
Guess that rookie in the Wolfhound isn't as dumb as we thought. He runs right through the enemy formation, winding up behind the SRM Carrier. This time, he lets rip with the large laser and two mediums, bringing the heat in the cockpit up to sauna level. He's just about to pull the trigger when a large laser from the Phoenix Hawk nails him center of mass, throwing off his aim.
To the south, the Lieutenant in the Cronus gets outmaneuvered by the Vedettes and Firestarter, running in only to have them advance towards the base. Still, both of the tanks are in medium range of his shorter-ranged weapons (three medium lasers and an SRM/4 rack), so he lets rip with those, holding the large laser to keep heat down. He scores a couple of hits, but only manages to flake off armor. The Crusader, though, does better - Lt. Vazquez watches with some amusement as its target Vedette dodges several laser shots and a string of MG rounds, then gets disabled by a salvo of SRMs from the left side.
Sgt Bosse jumps in next to the Drillson hovertank as it zips back and forth, firing both of the Ostroc's large lasers at its back. The Drillson is a solid piece of Lyran engineering, but the two blue laser beams hit the same spot, breaking through the armor and continuing to the engine compartment. The hovertank slides to a stop along the ground as its power goes out and the turret seizes up, and the crew clambers out rapidly.
The rookie in the Jenner is too busy staring in horror at the SRM salvo heading her way (although the rockets scatter and fail to hit her) to do any aiming. Probably part of the reason they missed was that the SRM Carrier's right side armor was entirely scraped off by the Wolfhounds boot.
Round 3:
Seeing the SRM Carrier pull back, the Wolfhound lets it go and gives chase to the three mechs that have now gotten into the base. He's backed up by our Jenner.
A Sniper artillery shell lands right next to the Phoenix Hawk and Wasp as they move in on the LRM turret, hitting both and catching the turret in the blast as well. Guess our buddies aren't too concerned about friendly fire or preserving their own facility. The Wasp lands on top of a building, unloading its limited armament (a single laser and a couple of SRMs) on the LRM turret. It's a little hard to track, but the building isn't. The Jenner overheats quite a bit, firing all four of its lasers and the SRM rack - the mech's actuators and structure groan in protest... and then the Wasp jumps off. Sonofabitch. She manages to land a kick on the Phoenix Hawk in frustration, but armor holds up.
Round 4:
"Hey, we've got mechs in the perimeter, are you gonna clear them out or what?!" comes a panicked call from someone at the depot.
"Keep your shirt on, we're working on it." AWS replies as Probe lance arrives from the north, sprinting in.
The arrival of the four new mechs is just what the doctor ordered, and the fight goes from slightly in our favor to completely in our favor.
AWS sights in on the hostile Phoenix Hawk as it jumps around and drills it with his own Hawk's large laser. Then Sgt. Bosse's Ostroc comes around the corner and hits the center torso section, blowing through the armor and dinging the gyro. The enemy mechwarrior can't keep his mech upright and it falls over.
Our Wolfhound targets the building that the Valkyrie landed on - a few kicks to some structural looking elements and the important section of the building comes down, bringing the mech with it.
Our Jenner blasts the enemy Wasp with just two lasers, allowing her mech to cool off, but the two laser shots are pretty effective, taking out the Wasp's right arm laser and breaching armor on the left leg.
To the south, our Cronus continues drilling the lone remaining Vedette with lasers and also gives it a solid boot, ripping all the armor off the front. The tank has had enough and pulls back rapidly.
Round 5:
The Valkyrie gets up, but the Phoenix Hawk's damaged gyro makes it difficult for it to do so, and it collapses back down on top of the building where it landed.
"Allied artillery, cease fire!" Sgt. Bosse calls out as a round from the Sniper blasts chunks off her rear armor. It was funny when they were blowing their own stuff up, but now that it's our mechs getting hit by friendly fire, it's a little less fun.
The Valkyrie runs off to the north, trying to get past Probe lance. Not so fast, though. It dodges the Wolfhound's shots, flaying armor from its right arm with the laser, then our Phoenix Hawks turn on it. AWS scores the kill shot, blasting through the right arm and torso with all three lasers and torching the LRM ammo bin. His 1D model doesn't have the machine guns of the standard model, but they're unnecessary. The lighter mech disintegrates, sending chunks flying every which way.
To the south, there's only one active enemy unit remaining, a Firestarter, which jumps away to avoid the allied Crusader but gets knocked over after our Cronus works it over with lasers, SRMs and a boot.
Cleanup:
The Phoenix Hawk is unable to get up, and the mechwarrior ejects. The Firestarter manages to get up and rapidly disengages, as does the Wasp. Well, the Wasp tries to disengage, but makes the mistake of trying to take a couple of last shots with its SRMs at our Phoenix Hawks as it passes, and eats a well-deserved pair of large lasers. AWS' shot takes off the right arm, while the other Phoenix Hawk hits center of mass. The 20-ton bug mech drops to the ground, motionless.
The Firestarter, a Vedette and the SRM Carrier manage to escape, and we don't make a particular effort to pursue - we've got the guy who was driving Phoenix Hawk.
Our contract stipulates that we get to keep 40% of the salvage, so we claim the Phoenix Hawk, leaving the rest of the crap for our employers. Well, we don't tell them it's crap, but it's crap. We don't use tanks, except to strip for armor and ammo, and there's not much to do with a cored-out Wasp, either. It's a no-brainer, as our techs report that they can get the mech back up and running within the week. We'll be keeping it as you never know when you might need a spare mech.
The guy in the mech defending the depot is pretty impressed with our performance, although some important-looking guy (balding, with a combover, wearing a cheap suit, and sweating worse than a mechwarrior after an alpha strike) comes out to yell at AWS as he admires the debris from the Valkyrie. The two have a heated exchange about damage to the buildings, but AWS points out that their artillery hit one of our mechs. And their own buildings. We agree to call it even.
It takes a couple of hours to patch up our mechs, with the exception of the salvaged Phoenix Hawk. Which takes a couple of days and ~200k C-Bills worth of parts ("the gyro wasn't hit too bad, just needs a replacement housing and a re-alignment", the tech tells Scrub). But we're currently working on a 53M budget, so that's chump change. Despite the factory workers strike, we're still able to purchase the three actuators that blew out, which proves to be the limiting factory - two of the bundles don't arrive until a week later.
In addition to the mechwarrior (who's in pretty bad shape with a punctured lung, along with multiple cuts, bruises and sprains), we've captured a pair of tank crew members. What do we do with those guys?
[] Interrogate. Try to find out where they came from, who hired them, etc.
[] We're mercenaries, not detectives. Just hand them over to the liaison for a standard prisoner capture bonus (80k C-Bills).
---------------
Delta Company is currently en route to Maule in the Free Rasalhague Republic and is expected to arrive in mid-to-late August.
Our remaining two companies continue entertaining contract offers, coming up with five potential ones that we may consider. Of those, we eliminate three immediately because of crappy salvage rights (10%, 10% and 30%), which leaves us with two.
A representative from the Draconis Combine contacts us, requesting our services for a "delicate" operation. It's fairly significant, due to house Kurita's public stance against mercenaries. A bit of back story - in the War of '39, FedCom forces were initially pretty successful in pushing into Combine territory. However, Gunji-no-Kanrei Theodore Kurita launched a counterattack which caused Hanse Davion to panic and hold his forces in place, resulting in basically a stalemate.
One of the counterattacks was towards Galatia III, a mostly unremarkable world. The force in question was left stranded after their jumpship suffered a jump sail failure, and is apparently still putzing around there, engaged in intermittent guerilla-style warfare with the Twelth Deneb Light Cavalry Regimental Combat Team. This is obviously embarrasing for the Combine - they don't want to admit that they still have active military units in FedCom territory, so sending a jumpship for pickup or officially asking about it is out of the question.
So, our job would be to jump in, spring the Kurita forces loose, then provide transport out. Nitty gritty details:
Liaison command
Regular/F allied forces
Regular/A estimated opposition
4 months expected contract duration (once on planet)
100% transport coverage
80% salvage rights
60% battle loss compensation
228M estimated profit
1 month estimated travel time
Going up against FedCom is somewhat risky, but the salvage opportunities would be excellent.
The second contract offer is from Scrub's old buddy, Colonel Geoff Ferrerro of the Free Worlds League. It seems that some "mercenaries" hired by the FWL have gotten themselves into a pickle on the planet Eom. He's being a little bit cagey as to why the FWL would hire mercenaries to carry out an attack on a Capellan world (and who can blame him really, it's a little embarrasing - they're supposed to be allies after all). Our job would be to get in there, get the mercs and their equipment out, and assist them in carrying out their objectives.
Segeant Major Song "Zarathud" Jian posits that the FWL is trying to steal some kind of tech that the Capellans are refusing to share. Nitty gritty details:
Liaison command
Regular/A allied forces
Regular/D estimated opposition
5 months expected contract duration (once on planet)
100% transport coverage
80% salvage rights
100% battle loss compensation
277M estimated profit
2 months estimated travel time
Nothing like wading into a little internal spat between allies. Other than the longer expected duration, the main difference is that the salvage is likely to be second-rate knockoff Capellan crap.
Reviewing the force estimates, we conclude that we'll need to deploy both Alpha and Beta on these jobs.
Thus:
[] Take the Galatia III "sensitive" relief duty contract
Great salvage, but against the Federated Commonwealth
[] Take the Eom "embarrassing" relief duty contract
Good salvage percentage, but only of crappy Capellan tech
[] Skip the additional contracts
Also:
Due to space constraints, Delta Company could only fit two of their three aerospace fighters into the Sparrow (it's a Union with only two ASF bays). Pick two of three to take.
[] Cheetah F-10. 48 armor, 2x M laser, 1x small laser, 12/18 movement
Super fast, weak armor, weak armament
[] Seydlitz SYD-Z2. 32 armor, 5x M laser (but only 10 heat sinks, yikes), 11/17 movement
Super fast, paper-thin armor, strong armament
[] Centurion CNT-1D. 120 armor, 3x M laser, 10/15 movement
Still pretty fast, good armor, good armament
