Williamsburg Ice Sheet, Hikes Point, Lyndon
ComStar Intervention Zone, Lyran Commonwealth
7 May 3051 (Day 1 of Operation GUILLOTINE)
"Damn this cursed blizzard!" Joseph growled as he pushed his mech through the howling gale that smothered him in an impenetrable haze, the young MechWarrior grateful for the barely perceptible pulse of heat that followed each step. "Damn this cursed planet!"
Peering past his sensor display as it futzed and shook—contact symbols of dubious provenance flickering in and out at the very edge of his scopes—Joseph squinted at the twilight beyond his armoured cockpit, layers and layers and layers of snow-bearing cloud plunging the entire Williamsburg ice shelf into chthonic darkness. Without the storm, he would have had clear sightlines over a kilometre of ice shelf. With it, he could barely make out the ground a few metres distant.
Sighing to himself, he refocused on the display and sneered as it revealed only the blue-on-black outlines of rolling snow banks and wind-sculpted ice. Already, the planet was starting to get on his nerves, and he did not think it would get much better from here out.
"How many hours has it been now since we saw sunlight? Three?"
"Three and a half," his sibkin, Cantara, replied sullenly from his Nova; the man's good cheer vanished along with the sun; his voice a crackling burr thanks to the radio.
Joseph grunted as he tried and failed to spy his Starmate's mech in the darkness, the pitch-black void devouring any trace of the outside universe as effectively as a blackhole. "Aff, three and a half. How could I forget?"
"One too many blows to the head," a woman's voice interjected, her tone laden with warning despite the blizzard-induced distortion. "Warriors Joseph and Cantara, mind your radio protocols, or I will discipline you myself when we return to the Star Colonel. The surats are out here somewhere, and I want the channel clear while we scout the way for the main force, quiaff?"
"Aff, lead."
"Aff, Star Captain Masino," he replied momentarily, phantom pain pulsing through his shoulder as he recalled the last punishment his Star Captain had delivered.
Driving the sense-memory of bone sliding over bone from his mind, the MechWarrior turned his attention to piloting through the screaming wind, the man taking every step gingerly. Already difficult to drive on at the best of times, the constant snow flurries, the buffeting wind blasts, and the near-total absence of light rendered the ice sheet almost designed to frustrate, a sudden burst of wind unexpectedly sending his mech swaying to and fro.
Thank the Great Father that I picked a Stormcrow! He thought as he fought to regain control, the mech's wide-legged gait and his preternatural sense of balance working hand in hand to keep the birdlike machine upright.
Some in the main force, he knew, would not have so easy a time of it; their mechs too lightweight or top-heavy to easily stay the course. Doubtlessly, their difficulties would slow the assault force and further frustrate the Khan.
Keeping one eye on the holographic map and the glowing checkpoints of Argon Star's scouting route, Joseph's gloved hands worked with a mind of their own as he tried to sink into the comforting patterns of patrol, the rattle of ice shards against his cockpit dragging him out with their machine gun noise.
"We should never have come here," he muttered under his breath as he stared out at what should have been a sunset-drenched landscape but was instead a black haze, the snow so deep about him that his mech waded rather than walked, his helmet jolting against the back of his seat with every exaggerated step.
Coward, a part of him argued. None will steal the honour of first blood from the Coyotes!
Joseph snorted aloud. "Perhaps if ComStar had been founded by warriors and not technicians, there would be honour in facing them."
As it was, the forces the Coyotes had bid for Lyndon had only had sensor ghosts and the occasional drone to keep them company through the long march from their landed dropships to the chosen battlefield. Veterans of the war against the Inner Sphere's despotic rulers, the Coyotes had chased off the ghosts and destroyed the drones, but neither had done much to sate their bloodlust. Worse still, at least from Joseph's increasingly tetchy point of view, the blizzard's arrival had given the Clan a pressing need for eyes-on intelligence; Khan Robin Steele ordering Stars deployed ahead of the main force to ensure a clear route for the rest of the Clan's bid.
About to curse the blizzard once more, the scrape of ice against his cockpit sending shivers down his spine, Joseph paused as a deep chime rang out and a seldom used symbol appeared on his head's up display. Clicking on it with a thought, Joseph grinned as Cantara's voice rolled from his neurohelmet's speakers.
"Set a laser to comm mode and paint me back," the man said boldly, his resonant voice blessedly free of static thanks to the invisible beam that carried it through the false night.
Manipulating his controls as he had been taught oh so many years ago during his warrior training, Joseph grinned as one of his Stormcrow's six ER medium lasers changed from green to blue in his HUD, the obscure symbology of the Star League Defence Force informing him that he had successfully downgraded its power and extended its focal length.
"Clever, Cantara!" He said with glee as he lased his friend and Starmate. "Even if the Star Captain overhears, no one else will."
His Starmate chuckled. "I am glad you have not forgotten every lesson we learned."
"Not as glad as I will be once we are free of this stravag storm."
"Aff," came Cantara's reply from within the furiously churning snow. "I do not wish to second guess the Khan..."
"But he was too eager," Joseph finished for his comrade. "He should have allowed the Ghost Bears to win this battlefield—or the Snow Ravens. Either would have been better suited. Coyotes belong in the deserts and prairies, not this wretched waste."
"Ha, do not remind me of warmth. Just looking out the cockpit is enough to chill my blood."
Grunting quietly, Joseph spared the outside another brief look, a powerful gust ripping up a layer of snow bare metres away to reveal the pristine blue ice beneath.
Intellectually, he knew at least thirty metres of ice stood between his mech and the sunless waters below. Practically, the knowledge was not much of a comfort. Dimly, the thought of the ground beneath his feet cracking open and swallowing him whole flashed through Joseph's mind. Shivering despite himself, the Clanner drove the thought from his mind and relaxed his suddenly white-knuckle grip on his mech's controls, an act of will required to tear away his gaze.
"All elements, report," Star Captain Masino demanded suddenly, her rank automatically overriding the pair's private channel. "Does anyone have eyes on Brimstone Star?"
Blaring through the radio without warning—the squeals and pops worsening with every word—Masino's strident words set Joseph's jaw snapping shut with an audible click.
"Neg lead," came Franciszek and Emilie, a soft whine underscoring their words.
Flicking his radio open and replying similarly, Joseph felt his irritation redouble as the distortion that plagued his sensor display worsened before his eyes, ghosts appearing at the edge of his mech's vision only to vanish moments later and the map icons denoting his Starmates stuttering back and forth.
"Stravag!" The Star Captain cursed after Cantara provided the final response, the woman's words half-swallowed by the noise. "We should — been out of this blizzard — now. I — Rahat to — at — Echo."
Grimacing at the noise, Joseph interjected before he could stop himself. "Star Captain, the interference is worsening. I recommend we switch to laser comms."
For a long moment, no sound emerged through the MechWarrior's radio save the dull hiss of static, pops and whines attacking his ear as he strained to hear the woman's reply. An instant later, his Stormcrow's silicon brain reported a wave of laser light playing over its hull, and Joseph stiffened automatically as his commander's words reached him courtesy of her Mad Dog's large lasers.
"Good thinking, MechWarrior," the Star Captain told him in a tone on just the right side of grudging, the marked position of her mech updating before his eyes. "Your mech has lasers, quaiff?"
"Aff," he replied automatically before cursing and reorienting his modified laser towards the source of the laser light.
"Aff, Star Captain," he repeated. "Be advised, I can only send to one mech at a time."
Piloting the B configuration of the Stormcrow, Joseph's mech boasted six ER medium lasers in total, all carried in the mech's right arm to make room for a UAC/20 in its left. As a weapons package, the Stormcrow B hit incredibly hard for its weight, but as a communications platform, it was proving lacking.
"Hold one," the woman replied as her comms beam narrowed until there was little overspill. "Acknowledged MechWarrior. Hold your position while I connect to the others; we would not want to lose contact in this blizzard, quineg?"
Doing as she bid, instinct and common sense in agreement for once, the Coyote MechWarrior waited and watched as a spider web of laser comms established itself between the members of Argon Star, the byzantine chain of connections allowing them to communicate with ease.
"This is a poor substitute for a radio net," the Clanner grumbled as his Star Captain ordered them to set off.
Returning an eye to his map and the glowing checkpoints it hosted, Joseph sunk back into the familiar mindlessness of patrol, the howling winds accompanied by the crunch of diamond-treaded feet on ice and the swagger of his chicken-legged mech's motion through the snow. Slowly, the minutes began to bleed together, one moment passing into the next without resistance as Argon Star pierced the darkness with their varied sensors. Without warning, Emilie's voice boomed through his neurohelmet's speakers, their fragile laser-comms net rendering it crystal clear despite the tempest's bitter fury.
"Star Captain, I am picking up a contact two hundred metres north-north-west. It is weak but consistent."
"Hostile?"
"Unknown, Star Captain," the younger warrior replied before trailing off. Then, as if she'd never stopped speaking, she continued. "I'm picking up a transponder. It's Brimstone!"
Automatically, a flair of irritation rose within Joseph at the woman's use of contractions, the unclanish behaviour like metal grinding on metal to his ears. Then, as quickly as it arose, the anger vanished as the import of her words reached him.
Brimstone Star!
Smiling thinly at the thought of finishing their patrol and leaving the miserable blizzard sooner rather than later, Joseph glanced out his cockpit window and saw, with some surprise, that its wrath appeared less total than before, the darkness without tinged with grey and the snowflakes tumbling through the air a little more gently. Letting out a huff at the thought he could have missed such a change, his smile broadened into a grin when a single yellow contact icon appeared on his HUD five hundred metres to his left.
It was close. Closer than Joseph would have expected it to be, but then the storm had been playing hell on their sensors the entire time they'd been in it. Without a word between them, moving with a fluid grace born of long years of service, the Star altered course as one, pumping steel legs as tall as houses pushing through the snow as they manoeuvred towards the distant signal.
"Joseph, take the lead and bring Brimstone to heel," Masino commanded as they approached. "Cantara, follow him. Emile, Franciszek with me. We will provide overwatch. Perhaps we will be able to finish this mission after all."
"Aff," the unit replied as one, the counter in the corner of Joseph's eye winding down with every heartbeat as his course diverged from the others.
Three hundred metres.
Two hundred metres.
One hundred metres.
Crossing the eighty-metre mark, Cantara close behind and the others hanging back a little further, Joseph slowed his mech to a leisurely cruise, a twitch on his joystick snapping away the link to his Star and bathing the still-unseen signal host in a sheet of laser light.
"Painting it now," he told his Starmate through the radio, his answer underlined with so much static it was almost more noise than words.
Huffing at the interference, Joseph cleared his throat with a machine gun rattle. "Brimstone mech, this is Argon-Three. Report."
An icy rattle was all the response he received in turn, countless tiny grains scouring the crystal surface of his cockpit and filling the cramped space with a low scritching sound.
"Brimstone mech," he repeated as he closed, impatience tinging his tone. "I repeat. Report your Star's status immediately."
Again, there was no response.
His brow furrowing at the pilot's obstinacy, Joseph slowed his advance and ordered mech to run a diagnostic on his kludged-together comms laser, the faithful machine taking a moment before reporting no faults. Hissing under this breath, leather gloves creaking as he tightened his hands around his controls, the Clan MechWarrior was about to repeat his demand a third time when a patch of haze darkened ahead of him, a dollop of black looming out of the omnipresent haze like an iceberg in a wine-dark sea. Halting and glancing at his HUD, Joseph's irritation turned to concern as he read the blur's temperature: a mere handful of degrees above ambient.
"Cantara..." He began only to cringe at the earful of static he received.
"Cantara," he tried again after realigning the comm laser on the nearby mech. "I can see the Brimstone mech, but they are not answering hails, and their reactor is inactive. This storm must have knocked out their systems."
"Affirmative, Joseph," came the response from the invisible Nova. "You know the Star Captain will want to know what has happened..."
He sighed under his breath. "I will investigate."
Kicking his mech up to speed—the winds biting at his Stormcrow's heels and the ever-present cold seeping into the cockpit despite the mech's furious heart—the graphite-grey blob grew more and more defined as he approached, the indistinct shape slowly transforming into something roughly humanoid. Facing away and covered in a thick layer of snow despite the gale, the strange mech kneeled against an upraised section of ice as if resting its head, its right arm braced against the metres-high wall and its left braced across its chest.
An Ice Ferret! He realised as he and his battle computer reached the same conclusion simultaneously.
"A fine target for Isorla, one of Brimstone's members must be a worthy warrior."
Cautiously approaching so as not to slip on the freshly driven snow that lay around the catatonic machine—a sweep of the area revealing mounds and banks of pristine flakes in all directions—Joseph halted his machine within arms reach of the medium mech and noted with some dismay that it was not merely resting against the ice shelf, but had toppled into it; the Ice Ferret's snarling face buried within the unyielding material. Giving it a quick once-over, he decided he could not see anything wrong with the mighty war machine, no tell-tale burn scars or crater marks marring its armoured surface to tell of a worthy death in battle.
Fantastic, the Clanner wryly thought as he realised he'd have to pull the machine away to identify if the pilot within was still alive. Shaking his head minutely, Joseph flicked his radio to short-range broadcast mode and spoke.
"I have you, Brimstone mech. If you can hear me, brace yourself while I get you out of the wall."
"Great Father, preserve me," he muttered as he grasped the machine's shoulder in his Stormcrow's one humanoid hand, a brief pause all the respite Joseph had before he ordered his mech to twist its torso as far as it would go.
All at once, a sound like knives scraping against canteen dishware rang out as the 55-ton mech heaved against its lighter cousin, the screech of steel on steel rising over the din of the still-blowing storm. Feeling his mech's myomer muscles strain, Joseph ignored the galaxy of amber lights that lit up across his HUD and focused instead on the shower of ice spilling from the wall as he pulled the forty-five-ton machine away. Moving slowly at first and then with gathering speed, the Ice Ferret lifted from the snow-dusted wall with an audible groan before suddenly pulling free and rocking backwards on its heels, a sheet of fresh snow falling from the mech's every nook and cranny before whisking away as the wind took it.
About to reprimand the fallen mech's pilot for their many failures, not least of which was their failure to avoid an icy wall, Joseph's insults died on his tongue as a hollowed cockpit grinned back at him; its split-open visage leering like a skinless skull.
He swallowed thickly. "Stravag."
With a booming howl and a terrible burning heat, a ball of synthetic lightning slammed overhead; the PPC shot so bright Joseph's eyes instantly ached. A moment later, the bolt vanished as it plunged into the mist beyond; Cantara's Nova abruptly silhouetted by a blue-white flash as it struck true. Throwing his mech into motion as the light died away, painful tears rising, unbidden, to his eyes, Joseph's vision unexpectedly filled with another shade as his sibkin returned fire with his medium lasers, scattered photons staining the dolorous fog around him a vivid green as the Nova's ten beams blinked on. A heartbeat later, his mind caught up to reality, and he slammed his radio channel open.
"Move, Cantara!" Joseph cried, the words tearing at his throat as his mech waded through the cotton-soft snow towards his friend and Starmate.
There was no response from his comrade save another burst of laser fire, a fan spray of lasers missing the Stormcrow by mere metres as Cantara fired at an unseen foe. Before he could repeat his command, the whoops, howls, shrieks, and pops pouring from his radio suddenly redoubled in strength, and every screen and hologram across his HUD began to waver.
Jamming, years of training told Joseph coolly, the blood seeming to freeze in his veins as another thought popped into his head. Ambush.
A heartbeat passed in utter silence as the world paused to absorb the fact, and then all hell broke loose.
Like the shot that first broke the silence, a dozen snow banks around his still retreating mech burst apart in a spray of powdery white flakes as things black and terrible roared to life within them; a hasty glance revealing to Joseph the familiar form of Helghan-made scout drones. Snarling at the scuttling vermin as their spidery limbs carried them across the snow, the Clanner threw his mech to the side just as a string of grenades exploded against his hull, a twitch of his hand bringing the Stormcrow's laser-encrusted fist to bear. A second later, a golden reticle wavered into being around one of the scout machines, and a savage grin split his face.
"Cowards!" He growled as he thumbed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Confusing marring his features as the insectile drone slipped out of his firing arc, Joseph blinked owlishly at his juddering HUD only to realise, in a wave of fury, that he'd left his lasers stuck on comms mode.
Cursing himself and ComStar in equal measure as more grenades detonated against his flank, armour chips falling from the mech's hull with each explosion, the furious Clanner twisted his mech towards a cluster of drones even as he ran. Bringing his other arm to bear—the weight of the barrel so great it dragged the mech to one side—Joseph had just enough presence of mind to hiss a single word before he opened fire.
"Die!"
Built to tear through assault mechs and bunkers with equal ease and aimed by the result of a generations-long military breeding and training program, Joseph's Stormcrow's Ultra Autocannon/20 spooled up and fired in less time than it took for his heart to beat twice, the trio of Scarabs vanishing in a cloud of greasy black smoke as the lead wall struck true. His hunger for blood barely sated by the carnage, the Clan warrior heaved the heavy weapon to the side before the smoke had even ceased wafting from its four barrels and jammed his thumb on the trigger again, a bone-shaking burst turning yet another of ComStar's drones into scrap and rattling his teeth.
Taking a steadying breath as his mech slewed to a halt at his command, Joseph worked his control panel with one hand even as he sent a third torrent of shells at another pair of spidery machines. Swifter-minded than their siblings or simply luckier, the duo zigged where he had hoped they would zag, craters erupting across the smoke-wreathed snowfield as the rounds went wide. Intent on scattering the machines before him—the rest of his attention taken up with the process of reactivating his lasers—the warrior felt more than saw ComStar's response, a shrill shriek all the warning he had before a stream of LRMs slammed against the Stormcrow's shoulder, and a coppery taste filled his mouth.
Broken lip, the analytical part of his mind diagnosed as blood dribbled down his chin.
"Freeborn scum!" The rest of him spat as Cantara answered the insult for him, lasers piercing the churning snowstorm towards the LRMs' source. "Honourless freebirths!"
Turning his war machine to face those still-living Scarabs—a tap of the foot sending him into a fifty-metre orbit of the mech used to lure his Star into the ambush—Joseph speared the midnight-black creations one by one with quick blasts of his ER lasers; the nine machines transformed into burning hulks in short order. Ready to report his success to the others, he instead snarled as another PPC bolt lanced the space where he'd been standing mere moments before, pristine snow exploding into steam as the blast of charged particles flash-converted it.
"Star Commander," he all but shouted into his warbling radio, pink spittle spraying the inside of his neurohelmet. "We are taking fire at the transponder!"
If the rest of his Star heard his plea over the jamming, Joseph couldn't tell. However, a withering barrage spilt from somewhere behind him nonetheless—lasers, missiles, and even an autocannon firing into the impenetrable wall of snow that flurried all about them. Letting loose a long coyote howl as he felt the others join him at his back, Joseph arced his mech towards the still-unseen subject of Argon Star's ire and allowed a wattle of bloody phlegm to spill from his mouth as he began a single-minded advance.
Come on! He urged the unseen technician-warriors mockingly as he blindly fired into the haze. A split second later, his comrades followed suit, blasts of all description colouring the blizzard a wild melange of colour. Come and fight us, cowards!
Students of Clan Coyote's oft-lethal warrior training program and veterans of myriad struggles across equally numberless worlds, the members of Argon Star knew bone-deep that the key to turning an ambush was to advance on the enemy and use mass and momentum to turn the tide. Unfortunately for them, they were not alone in this understanding.
Ten seconds after starting their counter-attack on the ambushing ComStar forces, as Argon Star crossed over an otherwise unremarkable section of ice on an otherwise unremarkable ice sheet on an otherwise unremarkable planet, a spiderweb of passive sensors buried just beneath the landscape's icy surface registered their presence. As coldly as any spider, as bloodlessly as any vampire, three low-power computers within the widely-spaced sensor web weighed and measured the mass that stalked overhead through countless subtle means, a parade of conditions checked and rechecked at a speed no human could ever hope to match. One after another—ponderously slow by the measure of computers but strikingly fast by any other—the three machines agreed that what they saw was nothing less than a force of BattleMechs passing directly overhead, the tripartite collective registering their unity with a single definitive command.
Seated within a cockpit flush with heat for the first time since he had entered the blizzard and howling with wild abandon, MechWarrior Joseph of Clan Coyote was striding past the Brimstone Star wreck when he felt a gentle rumble run up his mech's tree trunk legs. His howl fading away as the rumble grew more and more insistent, the young warrior had just enough time to frown before a calamitous roar filled the air, and the ice beneath his mech heaved upwards as if struck by some unseen leviathan. Cast into the air as if by a careless child, Joseph had one fleeting glimpse of churning black water and tumbling icebergs beneath him before his helmet slammed against the back of his command chair, and the world went mercifully black.
), and Im not sure it's a quantitative edge. Whatever's making him feel confident, it may very well be qualitative in its nature. Quantity... im fairly sure he wont risk breaking the agreement by not disclosing additional forces.
