(Side Story of the Jokers Wild: The Inferno That Is Chicago)
(Note: Read to at least Chapter 11 of Flight of the Jokers Wild before this one, it contains spoilers for prior works)
Okay then, if ever a case of user-generated feedback giving me a wealth of ideas that probably should not be, this is it. I mean, in the end I think I did the Battle of Chicago part justice, but in the final analysis I know I can do better and I need to do better. Thus, this side story. Note that this will not be completed until way later in the Chronicles of the Jokers Wild, since the absolute last chapter revolves around an event that happens significantly later in the story. The main storytelling will be told here, but how these came to be known will have to wait until long down the road (like+24000 years down the road, hehe)
If anything, this is a telling of the battle of Chicago from both the viewpoint of the Mendel forces and the Earth Alliance, showing the two different perspectives that make up the ongoing conflict, to the conclusion as the spirit of the Earth Alliance is shredded on the 55 Expressway along with their advanced prototype Gundams. Also making their debut is some of Mendel's newest weapons to be added to the fray, including the Skygrasper II and the resurgence of low-cost low-tech units like Battle Armor and Tanks. Be prepared for a tour de force of Mendel ass-kicking as the Earth Alliance desperately tries to kick them off the planet.
GENERAL DECLARATIONS (These apply to all sections, and other declarations may be added in the chapters)
Stravag does not own any part of the Gundam franchise. If I did, you could rest assured GSD would have been a lot bloodier than it was. Not quite as bad as Zeta, but close (har har har). And Stella probably would have survived (not Shin, though), and…
Also note that Stravag does not own any part of any other included works. I intend no offense or copyright challenge to any included works.
BAAAAAD LANGUAGE WARNING: Much as in real life, there will be foul language in just about every section. Even the best of us let fly a four-letter word when really pissed off, startled, or else.
VIOLENCE WARNING: This is a subset of the Jokers Wild focusing almost solely on the war effort. That means, no shortage of very brutal violence. Most of the action will be Mobile Army, but there will also be a lot of air, infantry, and even some naval action to be had. A little bit for everyone, shall we say.
ANTI-POLITICAL-CORRECTNESS WARNING: To strive to be politically correct serves no purpose, for real life makes no such distinction. I will not do so. Death before dishonor. End of story. Please don't ask me to explain this one.
And now, on with the story!
(01: Uninvited Guests)
(POV: Earth Alliance ATC Personnel, ORD Airport, Chicago, Illinois)
The few. The crazy. The Air Traffic Controllers.
"Ralph, you're out. William will be up here in about ten seconds."
"Good, I need a beer." Ralph stood up and put his hat on. "Hey, you heard that latest shit Mendel's been running? Who's frigging next, the Vatican?" 'that latest shit' was in reference to a clear warning tirade made by the Mendel Special Political Affairs Officer, Azalia Joule. Her message was to the Equatorial union, who had been off-and-on nuisance against the Mendel policies, and basically told them to shut up or get in line for an ass-kicking. After Telomeres, however, everyone except ZAFT and the Earth Alliance was listening real well to the Mendel administration.
"Don't say that too loud, they may get an idea."
"Yeah, you're right. Wouldn't want that."
"Hey, Ralph, what's goin' on?" William asks.
"Just gettin' ready to head out for a few beers. We should have a quiet night tonight, just the usual in-out-in stuff. Nothin' like three nights ago." That was a major debacle in one word, or to use the military expression, a 'clusterfuck'. The Earth Alliance had decided they were going to 'bolster the defenses' of the Chicagoland area with an additional two battalions of Mobile Suits, and made the classic mistake of air-transporting them without consulting the ATC network. Oops. Sorting that out had taken well over 12 hours and no shortage of diverted flights to Midway, South Bend and Aurora. On the flip side, though, they had gotten a good look at the Earth Alliance latest Mass-pro unit, the Windam.
The ATC staff figured if Mendel tried anything they would have to start with O'Hare, at the least as a landing field for their Dropships. That made them first responders for any Mendel bullshit, which made them mildly important in both allied and enemy eyes.
"Huh?" William looked down the stairs of the tower to where the door was. "Funny, I thought the door closed faster than that."
"Nah, just like the rest of this ancient tower, it's a piece of junk. I'm out of here, guys, later."
"See ya tomorrow." Ralph was out the door fast enough.
Wilhelm had to stop and reflect that this was going to be like just about any other day, all work and no play. His shift started at 0600 and ended at 1600, ten hours on duty that would test his patience more than his nerves or his skills, especially if nothing major was scheduled to happen.
"Uh, what's that?" William points to a series of blips on the military search radar screen. Since O'Hare is a secondary military facility (meaning that Air Force pukes could use it for refueling and basic repairs, and sometimes did), they had a set of Military Radar systems and radios. For most, there is a bit of confusion as to how civilian and military radar differs. For civilian application, a civilian radar looks for a device called a transponder in an aircraft. Military radar actually puts out a signal looking for the aircraft itself.
In this case, the military radar was seeing something, but the civilian radars were not.
"Attention unidentified craft at 37 Kilometers outside ORD VOR, this is ORD ATC. You have no squawk active. Please state craft type, flightplan, and cargo, over."
"ORD ATC, this is unidentified contact. Craft Type Gamma-Xray-9900-Delta-Victor, common name Gundam X Divider, Flightplan...looks like straight drop to 63rd and Maple in Aurora, Illinois, cargo is three cans of whoopass to be delivered to Blue Cosmos and allied parties, over."
"Oh, shit," William says automatically. He knew what the Gundam X Divider is, Mendel defined it as a heavy close-quarters Gundam for use in melee or urban environments and battles. Inasfar as things were concerned, they sent it to the right place, you didn't get much more urban than Chicago and its suburbs. The catch was, there wasn't really shit in the area to stop it from landing and beginning to entrench itself and the other forces it was coming down with.
"Put out an alert. We have incoming Mendel forces in Chicago."
"Already done it, Will. The Colonel in command of this area says he'll send some forces to try and stop them from gaining a foothold, but he isn't making bets." Why was fairly obvious, since most of Mendel's forces were absurdly resistant to incoming fire, and nothing was worse in that respect than the Armored Marines.
" 'Some forces', he says. Sure. Give them some warm-up target practice. Smart."
"Oh, fuck."
"What?" William asks.
"Look...behind you."
William did not have to. The sound of a very large firearm bolt being released was enough of a tale that he knew what was standing behind him. A Ghost. The very creepy, invisible mother-fuckers of Mendel that everyone and their grandma was afraid of, because there was theoretically no way to detect them, unless you were Mendel and knew their secrets.
"Just shoot me and be done with it," William knew this would come some day, though he was expecting them to just completely destroy the ATC tower, not try to take it over.
"Only if you're Blue Cosmos." To William, the voice sounded a lot like a twenty-something country girl. It definitely did not sound like a cold, merciless assassin. "Otherwise, you have a job to do, Air Traffic Controller."
"Huh?" That caused William to whip around on her, and much to his dismay she had a MAR-type assault rifle combat slung right now, as well as four other small arms and something that looked a lot like a miniature tank cannon depending from her right upper arm.
"You have civilian aircraft to land. Just keep two runways open for the incoming dropships, unless you want the dropships to land on a plane, that is." The voice was a guy's voice, and still invisible. They had two Ghosts in the tower, maybe more, and one of them was still invisible. That made resistance almost assuredly fatal.
"Why should I cooperate with you?"
The Ghost shrugs, a gesture amplified by her armor. "Think about it. Cooperate, and you will be pulling hazard pay for your services. And we ain't stingy, unlike your superiors. Don't cooperate, well, you can be replaced. Quite easily, actually. And then there is the fact that Blue Cosmos and their protectors and supporters are about to get the shaft, so I don't think it is a hard choice."
She was right, and wrong at the same time. In terms of cold logic, she was right, triple overtime or death is a dead simple choice. The matter that she grossly overlooked, however, is that one's allegiance is not something easily violated, and after a fashion these two were government employees. Magi tended to overlook such things, since allegiance within the Empire was very rarely questioned or called into play.
In the end, cold logic overcame any sense of duty he thought he had for the Earth Alliance, since his bosses were assholes and probably would not survive the matter and mostly because he had a family to feed and provide for in the end. "All right, how many dropships and how long?"
"Two, for now, in four minutes."
William takes a seat and starts scanning his incoming boards. "That I can do. We'll put them down on Runway 6 left and 7 left, that way they're close to each other and we'll just leave them there. We'll land the civilian traffic on the rest of the airfield."
"What, you're going to work with these shitheads? What are you on, man? Blue Cosmos will kill your family!"
"I get this strange feeling that between now and hell freezing over, Blue Cosmos is not going to win against Mendel." William changes a few settings on one of the radars. "And, at the end of the day, triple overtime is a helluva lot of pay." He raises an eyebrow toward the visible Ghost. "That is what Hazard Pay is for civilians in Mendel, correct?"
"Aff." Military normally did not pull hazard pay, but they did have a higher overall average salary than many civvie positions.
"Well, our Gundams and 'mechs are down in Aurora, the fun is just beginning and you got a bird's eye view of it."
"KLM-402, this is ORD ATC, you are cleared on runway 3 Right. Set ILS to Auto on channel 12, over," William says, almost completely blocking out the Ghost. She takes the hint, simply watching as the collection of ATC workers (six on duty right now) did their jobs. After a fashion, she had to realize that this was just about as frenetic as air traffic control on the Mjolnr, the one time she had been on the bridge as an escort to Lady Cagalli.
"This is Ghostrider to ORD ATC, coming down hot, ETA 3.5 minutes. Identify craft type as Guild II-class Dropship, military cargo. I daresay you have been briefed on procedure, quiaff?"
"Ghostrider, this is ORD ATC, flight controller Wilhelm. I will be guiding your craft in as per arrangements with ground assets. Ghostrider, you are cleared for landing on runway 6 left, your second Dropship is cleared on 7 left. Declare your pattern status, over."
"ORD, Ghostrider declares full nominal descent, no enemy presence in the air at this time. We register 62 civilian contacts within ten flying minutes of ORD. We are on track with 1-5-0 seconds to touchdown."
"Ghostrider, ORD rogers your last. Bring her down nice and easy, pilot. ATC has the welcome mat out for you, over."
"Ah, a logical bunch among the civilian ranks. I may have to buy you guys a round of beers after this fracas is over. Ghostrider is clear on this channel, over."
It did not take long for the military radar to pick up the Dropships, two very large blips coming in from the north with a direct course for the airport.
"Ghostrider, this is ORD ATC. I have visual, though I don't know the first thing about how to land a Dropship so I can't advise on procedure. Just bring her in smooth and steady, pilot." He remembers something he wanted to ask a Mendel flight crew: "Ghostrider, how much debris is your engines going to kick up?"
"ORD, a Guild II-class will turn 100 meters of ground under it into a 10-meter-deep crater unless we're blasting off from or landing on solid concrete. If your runways are by the book, you should have nothing to worry about. Side-blast debris from the engines should be minimal from concrete as well, over."
"Roger that, Ghostrider. Bring her in smooth, we have a pair of charters coming in on 6 Right and 7 Right, over."
"Aff, understood. We should have engines off before they touchdown. Ghostrider is beginning landing cycle at this time." The landing gear of the two Dropships came out, large column-like legs themselves that were ten meters wide. After the Dropship landed, it would be sitting on its oblate bottom where the six engine nacelles were, balanced and braced by the eight legs.
The evolution of landing a DropShip was an interesting thing to watch, since it more or less hovered in sideways over the runway and then settled down fairly calmly, though even without hostile action it still made an impressive impact sound as its metal base touched down on the runway that was only slightly wider than it was. The whole Dropship extended out over the accompanying taxiways a good deal; at a guess, William figured it was just slightly less than 175 meters wide and well over 400 meters tall, the whole thing bristling with guns and doors for releasing the units held inside.
"Hey, don't you guys have some kind of rule of thumb for assaulting a Dropship?" One of the other ATC officers asks the Ghost visible in the room.
"Yeah, sort of; it's an equation. The minimum amount of 'mechs needed to take down a Dropship is 1 for every 500 tons of ship, divided by the amount of times you want to get butt-fucked in the operation. Basically, you don't assault a Dropship, doing so is asking for a swift and very messy death."
"Then, what did you guys do against the Negaverse when you had to take down a Dropship?"
"We, as in the ground forces, did nothing. We either did the job with suborbital bombardment, a warship or monitor, or a shitload of artillery. Think about it, that is the largest of combat Dropships ever implemented, it has over 130 guns on the outside and can carry up to 375 Omnimechs, mobile suits, or Gundams. It is a fortress with engines strapped to it. To destroy that ship, you'd need an equivalent force to what it carries plus forces to assault the ship, and the butcher bill for something like that is insane. You might win, yeah, but how much of your force is going to come back after the job is done?"
During her speech, the second Dropship had landed and was now disgorging Marines, which the first ship had done as well, though the first was unloading a combination of ground vehicles, Marines, and some Mobile Suits. The tanks coming out of the bay of the first Dropship were immense, easily far larger and more menacing than the Linear Tanks used by the Alliance. Some of the tanks even had Armored Infantry riding along on their back decks, attached to a set of locking lugs that would keep them from falling off if the tank made any sudden jolts.
Also of significant strangeness was a profusion of lighter vehicles that moved like hovercraft, with weapons and armor that definitely made them combat vehicles; these immediately spread out and forward, toward the peripheries of O'Hare as picket-guards, moving at blazing-fast speeds that no Mobile Suit could match without heavy use of its thrusters. One appeared as if its main gun was a single large Gauss Rifle; another appeared to have two large missile packs and a laser on a turret assembly, as well as two much smaller four-tube missile packs on the main body, and yet another type of the hovercraft appeared to have a large laser weapon as its main gun, accompanied by a ten-silo missile pack and a two-silo missile pack.
"Jesus H. Christ, what is that?" One of the ATC officers points to a vehicle coming out of the second Dropship. It was a monstrous sucker; if the largest that had come out of the first Dropship was 100 tons and about 22 meters long and 14 meters wide, this one was half again wider, slightly longer, and had a turret that looked almost as big as the Alacorn IIM that it was compared to.
"That is a Guardian Missile Carrier. Slow-ass bastard, but it has more armor than eight average Mobile Suits and 210 missile silos spread across three range brackets. Weighs like 165 tons or something like that, and more than a quarter of that is armor."
"Holy shit," the same controller says, still staring at it with his binoculars. "Man, I am not seeing this shit right."
"Fuck, a tank with two turrets? That's nuts shit!" Another ATC officer says. The lower-mounted of the turrets had an ERPPC and a three-silo missile launcher, the higher-mount turret had a gauss rifle and two of the three-silo missile launchers. The unit also had three CIWS turret assemblies, one on the front, and one on each side. "God, don't you guys do anything by the rules?"
The still-invisible Ghost barks a sharp laugh at that. "We play by our own rules and piss on the competition," he says with a hint of humor. "Those are the Monarch Assault Tanks. They may not be as powerful as some other platforms, but they can do the job against all lesser units."
"Wilhelm, we're getting major interference on our equipment, man."
"Angel ECM systems," the Ghost notes. "Our advanced ECMs must be jamming up your equipment. Wait one." She turns off her external speakers and activates her radio. "Ghostrider, this is Phantom, request all allied forces turn off electronic jamming equipment at this time, it is interfering with ATC."
"Roger that, Phantom, will relay the request." Ten seconds later, almost all the static in the radar sets cleared up, though it would flicker temporarily as a unit came online with its ECM and then shut it off.
"This whole thing is just administrative for you guys," Wilhelm notes.
Silence, from the Ghost for a few moments. "You were mil, were you not?"
"432nd Air Assault Wing, out of Chehalis airbase. After Mendel crashed the final battle of Yakin Doe, I pulled the plug since I knew this was coming." His gesture was to the floor, though meant the evolving invasion of Terra.
"A wise move."
"You guys bring your air along with you, or are you going to everything from space?" He pauses; "Sorry, stupid question."
"Neg, not a stupid one. You would know just by sitting here and observing, regardless. The answer is both. Some will come from the Nirvana Celeste, others will come from the airport facilities here." The Ghost folds her arms over her chest. "Just sit back and watch, this is going to be rather entertaining."
A few of the ATC personnel look to each other, wondering in what fashion someone would consider an invasion and siege battle something even close to 'fun'.
-x-x-x-
The 24th Technical Regiment, Atlantic Federation Ground Forces, had been called to duty. There was activity in Chicago, no real warning as to what was happening, though the estimate was that Aurora had become a Mobile Suit battlefield. Thus, 1st Batallion, 24th Technical was arrayed forward, lancing in from the outskirts of the Chicago metropolitan area toward the likely great strongpoint of any Mendel invasion, being O'Hare International Airport and Regional Departures (ORD to the air traffic control system). Expected resistance could be anything up to a mixed Galaxy of forces, including the dread weapon Gundam. CentCom did not believe they had enough assets, even after the reinforcements, to drop more than one Galaxy into Chicago, since they would need the forces elsewhere for operations on the east coast of North America and in Iceland.
The 24th had initially cut its teeth in battles in Panama, in the last war, and in skirmishes with forces of ZAFT that were trying to gain a foothold in California. In both cases the battles had been rather inconclusive, pointless footnotes on the much greater war and its outcome. Win or lose seemed a rather pointless turn of events in such a case, since the outcome of the war was not even marginally affected by it. This time around, however, every trooper from the Colonel down wanted to nail Mendel to the barn door, as proof that it did not matter where you came from, the Earth Alliance was better than anyone who tried them.
The 1st Batallion, numbering about 400 personnel, consisted of the main armored fist of the Regiment, which was more along the lines of a ACR (1) than a Technical force. The 1st had 80 Mobile Suits, 68 of the Dagger-L model and 12 of the new Windam model, armed with beam weapons. The other 320 personnel were split between the various companies as support personnel, and a pair of rather antiquated towed field guns in 105mm caliber, that still had limited effectiveness against armored targets, or so the commanders had said. The only thing they fancied using them on were the Armored Marines, and that only with good cover and concealment. The barracks rumors about the Armored Marines, of how they could take incredible amounts of abuse and carried miniature tank guns on their own, was enough to scare shitless the personnel of 1st.
And, if anything, the Marines would be involved arse-deep in taking Chicago.
Southward about two kilometers was the 2nd Battalion, a force comprised of four companies, two of Dagger-L units and two of the Linear Tank, which nobody was expecting to be of any real use against the Mendel forces, but something is better than nothing, which is better than a stick in the eye. But not by much, except when dealing with Mendel, because their stick to someone's eye usually does not miss.
Third Batallion, along with the Regiment's artillery forces, were hanging back and roughly in between the two advancing batallions, so that when contact was established the whole force of the Regiment could be quickly brought to bear on the enemy forces and this job could be done as expediently as possible. This was wagered against the possibility that a competent enemy, with their own artillery forces, could barrage an area and get kills at random, depending on how powerful their artillery was.
Reginald (Reggie) Lance had once heard of a Mendel affectation, called the Long Tom, a cannon believed so accurate that it could put a shell into the same impact point four times in a row. Details were sketchy about the Long Tom, but the raw fact that he knew of it was that this was not a piece carried by a Battlemech or Omnimech. They had a different artillery piece for that, something that could also be carried in single shots by an Aerofighter, or so the rumors went. Much of what the Mendel forces could do was still a mystery to everyone, supposedly including the ZAFT forces that they cross-trained with. The rest was some form of arcane half-cracked bullshit that they picked up from some group known as the Clans, which they honed in an impossibly-long war against another Star Empire.
Yeah, right. Posers, they don't know shit about how to really slog it, Reginald thinks within the confines of his own mind. Ten bucks, they just got lucky at Yakin Doe. Or it was that warship of theirs, that nobody can match.
"Think you ready, Reggie?"
"Hell yeah, bring 'em on. I want to test this new Thunderbolt Launcher on them, see how they like a taste of their own medicine, eh?" His left-arm shield was on a swivel-mount, so it would hang down while his left arm held the Thunderbolt Launcher, a rather squat missile launcher that also braced on his shoulder. It was designed to be fired and forgotten, and recovered after the battle was completed to be reloaded. Basically, it was a short-term weapon designed to punch holes in the enemy, be dropped, and the Mobile Suit would go in close or continue with its beam rifle.
"1st, this is command, we have a report of a sensor system in your area, be warned that the enemy may know where you are."
"2nd command to Regiment, I have what looks like a Mendel light 'mech haulin' ass dead east as fast as possible. A couple of my pilots tried shooting it, but they missed. They know we are here, Colonel."
"Roger that, 2nd. All battalions continue with operation plan as stated. We should be inside their lines before a response force is in place. They can't have been on the ground that long that they can get a decent defense set up."
"Uh, Colonel, I don't know how you define 'decent defense', but I got a company of enemy 'mechs headed right at me. Smallest one looks like a Cauldron-born, sir." They had some briefing as to what Mendel Battlemechs looked like, though their capabilities were still a mystery.
"And the biggest?" The Colonel replies rather innocently.
"Dire Wolf, Atlas, or AtmaWeapon, take your pick." The speaker, Reggie's best friend in the battalion, did not sound pleased at all.
"Stand on-line, commence standoff fire. Cut 'em to ribbons at range."
"And pray they can't do the same thing to us. Artillery, commence area denial barrage grid ref 282 by 965."
"Artillery rogers request. Firing five salvos." Five salvos of 155mm artillery was a hellishly powerful barrage, but there was some question as to how effective it would be against Omnimechs, the supposed pinnacle of the Mendel Armoed Forces' ground combat capability. It was often said that some Omnimechs could outdo Gundams on the ground, which made them terrible foes indeed, for a Gundam was a foe that they all dreaded.
There were fifteen of the enemy, headed right in at the front of the 2nd Battalion without any form of reserve. The Mobile suits had begun firing at them well over four kilometers away, where they were just barely visible as they ducked between buildings at a steady walking pace. Whatever hesitation one may have showed was covered by the whole of the unit advancing on them in a steady fashion. At 2.5 kilometers, when the Earth Alliance 2nd Battalion was just beginning to hit effectively, the Omnimechs opened up with their long range weapons, ER Large lasers, Long-Range Missiles, Advanced Tactical Missiles, ER-PPC weapons, low-caliber Autocannons. And even after their first barrage, they continued marching inward, straight at the throat of the enemy.
"Lieutenant Colonel, we got incoming!" Reggie's 'wingman' shouts as he notices the movement in the blocks ahead of them. They were a helluva lot closer, apparently using the battle to the south as screening and distraction. These were medium and heavy 'mechs, not as tall on firepower or armor, but faster to close and beat the shit out of the enemy.
"This is Regiment to Battalion commands, our artillery force is down. Their artillery fired first and scratched them all off the map. Hold your positions, I am calling for air and artillery support form Dekalb and Michigan." Even this long after the dissolution of the United States of America, the personnel still referred to locations by their old American names.
"For what we are about to receive..." Reggie mutters under his breath, as he was staring at five monster shots coming in with missile contrails behind. This was the Arrow-IV that the Mendel Forces carried, a 'light' artillery piece with a range of five Grids in their parlance. The shells were Cluster munitions, they broke open at 800 meters away and 200 meters over the ground, and the bomblets that fell to the ground had a footprint of over 300 meters wide per missile, and the patterns overlapped.
His shield blocked most of the incoming crap, but not all of it. What did hit his Mobile Suit immediately jammed his right leg, tore a chunk out of his right shoulder, and caused his radar to black out. His wingman fared worse, as the pattern was centered on his unit and he took several dozen hits; his Dagger L went down in a crumpled wreck, having lost both arms, the head, and taken several armor-penetrating hits to the chest. Down the north side of the front he could see that fate repeated several times, and this was simply the first enemy wave.
A rather large explosion hit behind Reggie's Mobile Suit, throwing it forward and down. Whatever it was, it was a very high-pressure explosion that threw him forward, not something that you can stand several hits from, much less a direct hit. When his unit stood up, he looked backwards to what it was, and the sight shocked him shitless. Two of the Dagger L units from 3rd Company were literally blown in half, and there was a stray leg just standing straight up; from damage to buildings and trees, Reggie could only guess that whatever had hit the hapless Dagger L had hit it directly and more or less completely obliterated it from the knees up, as well as having enough leftover fury to knock his thrusters out and kill off two other Dagger L units.
His unit and view centered forward once more, looking toward the advancing enemy. They were much closer now, as a Bushwacker passed from behind a medium-rise building and centered on him. The four machine guns and ER Large Laser spoke, immediately putting a barrage right into the shield that Reggie had set forward just in time, and though the laser did not fire again the machine guns continued, the slugs hammering into the shield with ferocity that belied their firing platform. The Mendel (Magi) Bushwacker used either 10mm BG, something akin but slightly smaller than the .50-caliber, a 15mm MG, or a 20mm MG, and the latter was rumored to be a threat to even Mobile Suits. In Reggie's estimate, the rumors were not all that far off the truth, because his shield indicators were creeping toward red at a significant pace.
WRAAM. Whatever hit his unit's shield apparently did so with tremendous force, as the shield was ripped completely clear of the forearm mounting and sent caroming right into the side of a ten-story apartment complex. As his vision came to, Reggie could see part of the tell-tale gauss trail that led right back to the right arm of the enemy unit, which meant that the enemy was driving either the XC1G or XC1GS variant of the Magi Bushwacker, the former having a Gauss Rifle and standard LRM launchers, the latter having a Gauss Rifle and Streak LRM launchers. There was a variant that had the traditional Autocannon, though he figured he would not see it any time soon.
Reggie's arms seemed to move of their own accord, as he centered his manual targeting pipper on the enemy unit and fired from both triggers at the same time. The beam hit first, scoring into the rotary missile launcher in the left arm, though he could not tell offhand if it had any major effect. The first of his experimental Thunderbolt copies failed to guide properly and passed between its legs, detonating harmlessly behind it. The second beam shot hit in the upper left missile pack, though it did not penetrate nor did it cook off a missile. The second missile struck just left of the centerline of the 'mech and in the upper torso area, immediately ripping a serious chunk out of the armor plates there.
The enemy pilot fired next as he sidestepped his 'mech past Reggie's third beam. Three missiles from the left arm joined five from the left-torso missile pack just as Reggie pulled the trigger on his last missile, and the missiles guided in clean, without hesitation. Reggie's unit took all eight of the incoming in the center and left torso, immediately knocking his Mobil Suit down and running several of his indicators red. Strangely, though, after a few moments to reorient on what he was seeing out of his monitors (those that had not busted from the sheer impact), he saw a white-and-red striped parachute with some kind of cylindrical pod depending from it floating to the ground.
With some serious cadging, Reggie was able to get his Dagger L to stand up again, and laying in front of him at 600 meters was the dead form of the Mendel Bushwacker, a gaping hole in its left side and a blown out rear torso armor testament that he put his last missile on target, and that Mendel's forces were not invincible, even when wagered against an outdated Mobile Suit of the Earth Alliance.
His reverie was short-lived. What stepped out behind a building and directly behind the defeated Bushwacker was something far nastier in the confines of a city: a Hunchback IIM. The single 300mm armor-penetrating slug it fired from the cannon over its right shoulder immediately knocked his Mobile Suit down and put everything on the engine board of his unit in the red. The slug had tore into the center of his suit and blew out the back, it had that much energy behind it. His suit powered down in less than three seconds, now incapable to the battle because there was a gaping hole where more than half of his capacitor had been.
Reggie pulled the 'oh shit' handle, the handle that blew the explosive bolts around the cockpit so he could escape his incapacitated suit. With his cockpit vented to the outside world, he stood up on the back of his seat and levered his way out into the fresh air of Chicago. Or what would have been fresh air, if it did not smell like missile propellant and gunpowder mixed with burning fuel and fried electronics for ambience. He also got a whiff of smoke, as a fire had been started by the hot barrel of his beam carbine, which had landed on top of a stack of wood pallets that were now burning.
The Hunchback that had killed his unit was now just walking past his Mobile Suit's carcass, though it stopped, looked left and down directly at him, and Reggie could still see flecks of the propellant for that 300mm cannon on the barrel's rim. The torso centered after a few moments and it continued walking, apparently not severely concerned with a living pilot of a dead machine. It was followed rather closely by another medium 'mech, the Centurion IIM. The two diverged as the Centurion put a pair of three-round bursts of its 100mm Ultra Autocannon downrange, gunning for a Windam that had the Sword Strike pack attached. Three of the slugs hit and tore into its shield, immediately busting the shield in half and detonating the missiles on the back plate of it, just before the pilot fired a barrage of missiles at the Windam and ducked behind a building again. Reggie got the feeling the missiles were aimed indifferently, as they impacted in the street as much as they did actually hit the Windam, though the three hits tore large rents in the armor of the targeted unit nonetheless, which Reggie knew was not something that normal missiles did.
The last unit to stomp by was an Axman IIM, combining the sleek and menacing Inner Sphere form with advanced Clan and Magi technology and serving it up in one helluva nasty package for both long-range and close-quarters battle. The Windan that had been started in on by the Centurion was its next target, as it brought up the combat-engineered left arm and fired the three laser weapons on it, the Large Pulse Laser, with its maroon beam coloring, and two Medium Pulse Lasers, each with an emerald beam that did not miss at the grossly short range between the two units. The three beams hit, followed by a pair of repeats from each of the Medium Pulse, even as it charged down the enemy at full walking speed. The final blast from the Large Pulse Laser tore off the right arm of the Windam and dropped it to the ground, as the Axman brought its ax up for use on the almost-dead enemy. The blade came down, straight into the head of the Windam, and did not stop its transit until it was half-buried in the chest of the Windam. The Earth Alliance mobile suit hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, its neural linkage surely severed and nevermore would it move.
Knowing instinctively that he was now behind enemy lines, Reggie headed forward to the building where his shield had been blown clear of his Dagger L and entered the bottom floor through some broken windows. His hold-out pistol came out, though he knew it would not be any good against Mendel's feared Armored Marines, as there were tales of Blue Cosmos pricks that had been caught in hand of a Marine that had fired the pistol into the visor of a Marine's armor and it did nothing more than infuriate the Marine. And that incident had also proved that a Eugenic Armored Marine had the strength to rip an arm off an unarmored person. Hearing that had run shivers up his spine, back in barracks, back when this whole nightmare was theoretical. Today, it was a lead pit in his stomach, knowing that he could end up dead for his allegiance.
A nightmare it had indeed become. On the flip side, a transport of infantry headed westward, away from the centroid of Chicago, had beckoned him quickly into their transport, apparently they had seen him get loose from his downed machine and run into the building. He sprinted the ten meters to the truck and jumped in the load bed as quickly as he could, since he could hear machine guns down the way and they were approaching.
Thankfully, this time he was able to hitch a ride with some retreating Earth Alliance infantry. Tomorrow may be a different story, he told himself within the confines of his own mind. At the least, however, he had a tomorrow. That fact alone beat the alternative.
-x-x-x-
William had called home to make sure his family was all right; some of the fighting had been in the area of where he lived, out in the suburbs. They had called back with a rather unexpected tale: they were all right, but an Earth Alliance main battle tank had driven through their house the long way, then had been shot and disabled by an Armored Marine point from across the street. The phone his wife had called on was the only surviving phone, one out in the garage, where the kids were being seen to by a Mendel Armored Marine corpsman (2) for some very minor cuts and a fractured wrist, from when the tank had crashed through their bedroom.
The conversation was bound to take the turn that he did not want to.
"How's things going out at the airport, honey? I kept hearing wild rumors on the television that some kind of ship had landed at O'Hare or at Midway or something like that..." He did not immediately reply, which elicited her next: "Honey, is something wrong?"
"I'll be straight about it. Yes, a ship landed here. Mendel controls the airport and everything within a good two kilometers of it."
"Wh—what's happening? Have you been arrested? Are they torturing you or anything? Are they killing civilians by firing squad? I know they'd do--"
"Stop. Now. They have done nothing like that, Brittany. These guys are professionals, not thugs and not monsters. They're keeping it on the level. They shot a couple Earth Alliance soldiers after they landed, and they had a heavy run-and-gun action going on down in the suburbs about thirty minutes ago, but that is it."
"But—but haven't they started executing Naturals yet? I thought--"
"They don't believe in that, Brit. They ain't like the hard-asses in ZAFT or the Blue Cosmos pricks. They never have been."
"Amen to that," The visible Ghost says.
"Then, what's going on? What about the television stations? What about the radio stations? I haven't been able to get anything to pick up!"
"Someone pulled the plug. Hold one." He looked to the Ghost. "Have you guys been messin' with the television or radio stations?"
"Uh, good question. Let me pass it on up." Thirty seconds elapsed, then: "We have a couple teams headed into some of the buildings to check on them, actually my Galaxy Commander is asking the same question right now, who's screwing with the stations?"
"Uh, honey, they don't know who's knocking the civilian stations offline."
"THEY? YOU ASKED ONE OF THEM?" Even at normal hearing levels, both the Ghosts had heard that. As did the other controllers, two more of which had been called in to help with the way Mendel's aero assets were starting to make the skies rather crowded, and this was without having even put their helos up. Yet.
"Well why the hell not? They ain't going to lie to anyone, it won't do them any good in the long run."
"They've lied to everyone from the governments on down since they got here two years ago! They can't be trusted!"
"Better the demon she knows than the ones from afar," William says while holding his hand over the reciever. This drew snickers from one of the Ghosts as well as his neighboring ATC officers. "Honey, just take the kids over to the neighbor's house, if it ain't been flattened yet. They'll put us up until we can get our stuff replaced, okay? Look, I'll be off-duty in eight hours, I'll come straight home at that time, okay?"
A reply was ten seconds in the coming. "You're collaborating with them."
"No shit, Brit. It's either triple overtime or being jailed for dereliction of duty." He covers the reciever. "I'm right about that, right?"
"Yes and no. Yes, it would be if you were Mendel, but you're a civilian so you can't be arrested because you don't have an assigned military duty post."
"...I'm taking the kids out to my sister's in Colorado. Don't come looking for us. I won't have then anywhere near a coordinator sympathizer."
"Oh, for the love of—Is there anything you can do?"
"Neg. She has done nothing illegal, yet. If she tries denying you the right to see your children, for one example, she could get time in bond."
"I take it you've been there, done that?"
"Aff. My ex was a right and proper wench about the matter. She tried disappearing without any form of authorized sevarance, and sure as hell without my permission. The Administrative court officer had her for lunch and crapped out a brick with her name on it. Kidnapping, abuse of her ward, fleeing a summons to court, interdimensional flight to avoid prosecution, she got mulched by the system. 225 years total term of bond. Last I checked, she was on year 62. It's going to be a long time before she could even begin to contest her actions. But wait, my four kids and I are here, not back in 2SL-12 Multimage Empire. She loses by circumstance the whole way around."
"So, in essence, if she follows through with this, without my permission, she's hamburger?"
"If she splits your family up without a consensual, written agreement, or without a court order to that effect, it's kidnapping and abuse of her ward. Both of those are 100 years minimum term of bond. And in the case of Abuse of Ward, the judges are normally pissed off enough by those charges to have someone mandatory rejuvenated to serve their full sentence."
"And how could she have the court give such an order?" William wanted all his bases covered for this issue.
"If she could prove you were a wife-beater, for example, she could have the marriage annulled and your ass brought up on charges. She'd have to prove it, though, and that usually requires some form of Psionic Review or investigation. That isn't going to happen here, any two-year academy grad would see through her ploy faster than reading a porno mag. Not to mention, the Strategic Psionic would have her ass for lunch if she tried—huh, wait one."
"Huh?" He was gestured silent by the now-visible second Ghost. This one had a heavier weapons compliment than the first of the Ghosts, including an array of the Longbolt missiles.
"William, your last name."
"Jenose."
"Wife Brittany Jenose, right? Two daughters?"
"Yes, has something happened?"
"Aff, wait one. I'm pirating a feed for info right now."
He did, though the tension was beyond visible in his features.
"Okay, here's the scoop. Your wife went crazy and tried shooting up a group of refugees, shouting something about them being traitors or something. They had to take her down, hard. Your daughters are alive, one of them took some shrapnel to an arm, nothing major. The other one spot-on requested to join the Mendel Armed Forces."
"And?"
"Well, don't know if anyone said she could join, but they're both being checked out by a MedTech right now."
"Oh."
"Go and put your family back together. I relieve you."
"What?"
"You are relieved, William. I will take your place. Move out," the Ghost orders a lot more insistently.
"Yes, sir." (X Ref, see footnotes)
-x-x-x-
Reggie wasn't entirely sure how he got himself into these messes, but this time he thought he had bought the farm.
A Mendel attack helicopter had been patrolling in the area where he was trying to retreat through, and instead of keeping a low profile one of the dicks in the truck had decided to fire a RPG at it. If he had hit, the whole matter would have been a different story, but the soldier missed by three times the length of the chopper. The chopper did not miss, however, when it pirouetted in and fired a short burst of 32.5mm autocannon at the otherwise civilian truck. The truck was shot, and Reggie was one of three that lived for the misdeeds of that one soldier. The other two were a very timid, very green lady and a mobile suit mechanic, both of which had taken a hint of shrapnel from the attack. Reggie had taken a steel shard about as long as his hand, that had entered his left leg and was sticking out both the front and the back of his thigh.
And Reggie had little doubt that they would have called in the Infantry to verify everyone was dead.
"Chopper's gone," The Mechanic says. "God damn it, how the hell can they have this much firepower?"
"That's just an attack chopper, man. You should have seen their Battlemechs in action."
"You a pilot? What with?" The lady asks.
They were in a low urban structure right now, and there were a few civilians in as well, just hoping (and praying) that they weren't killed before the night was up. Across the shopping mall's parking lot were two dead Dagger L units and a dead Windam.
"I was a Dagger driver. Went in bare-bones, carrying a new, experimental Thunderbolt Launcher, similar to the Thunderbolt-20 that Mendel has one some of their Battlemechs. I killed a Bushwacher with it, but before I could even laugh a Hunchback popped out and blew a hole in my Dagger big enough that the three of us could walk through it." The mechanic low-whistled in amazement; the lady looked even more pale in the midday sun.
"You mean...that...Hunchback...can kill a Mobile Suit in one shot?"
"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Hell, that Bushwacker I tangled with blew my shield clear off my Dagger's wrist mount with one shot of its Gauss Rifle, which is a helluva lot more common weapon for Mendel than their Autocannons. Their missiles are hellish as well, incredibly damaging, something on the order of the Wurger missiles carried by the Windams. These guys're serious players. And to think I thought they were posers a few hours ago..."
"Posers? How in the hell do you get that?" The Mechanic asks with a tone that clearly stated that he thought the pilot in their midst was an airhead.
"It's bullshit now, of course, after getting my ass handed to me with a hole in it, and then watching how they fight, it's natural to them. They can switch off from one unit to the next as they weave between buildings like they're being expertly played in a massive game of chess. Like right after I jumped ship, I watched a Centurion fire two bursts of autocannon and a half-dozen missiles at a Windam, then duck down a side-road to let an Axman come straight down the street, chain-firing its laser weapons into the Windam. The gap between the end of the first and the start of the second was a second and a half. Twenty bucks, that Windam pilot never knew what log-chain just hit him."
"Damn, that kind of fighting takes expert quarterbacking or expert training, or both," the Mechanic notes.
"You sound like an old hand, I guess."
"I was in the first one. Drove an Aile Dagger. Got my ass handed to me by a straight-white-painted Neue Ziel. Come to find out a few months later, back when I was still in traction for my busted back, that the pilot that ownzed me was Gerald Lightbringer, the great ace of Mendel and the Magi. They call him Angel Zero, and his three lancemates were Angel One, Angel Two, and Angel Three. I thought I heard that Angel One was killed by one of ZAFT's aces, but I don't really know if that happened or not. Kinda sounds like propaganda if you ask me, the kind to raise spirits and get it through people's minds that Mendel ain't invincible."
"But...they aren't invincible, if he took one down, didn't you?" The infantry grunt lady asks.
Reggie snorts rather loudly. "They don't have to be. They just have to kill more of us than we kill of them. Oh, and they have to somehow take Blue Cosmos out of the picture, which for them they probably have three or four plans for that."
"I don't know about any plans against Blue Cosmos. That's way above our level." Eyes and sights were on the speaker, one Armored Marine among ten. After about two seconds, they realized that they were outnumbered, outclassed, and severely outgunned, so they lowered their weapons. "As to the Angels against ZAFT, yeah, that battle did happen. I watched it on C3 while it was happening. Rau Le Creuset, ZAFT's greatest ace at the end of the war, and a raving psychotic to boot. He tried maneuvering both sides into a nuclear war that would have killed everyone on both sides. He lost that gambit, but only after killing Angel One. Heavy Beam Rifle through the long axis of her Gundam. Angels, well over 300, Earth Alliance, a partial, ZAFT, one."
"Oh, so that did happen. Wow," the Mechanic says. "So, you going to line us up against a wall and hose us, or what?"
"I choose 'or what'," the Marine says.
"Huh?"
The Marine sets his shield down and unlatches it. Reggie could identify four different rifle or machine gun weapons depending from the rear of the shoulder plates, some kind of energy weapon hanging off his right upper arm, a pair of shotguns built into the forearms of his armor, a short-barrel cannon over the right shoulder, and another energy weapon over the left shoulder. Just for kicks, the Marine also had a pistol on his right thigh, a pack of missile launchers attached to the outside of each calf, with five silos per pack, and a pair of beam sabers on his left upper arm. The shield itself was over a meter tall, closer to a meter and a half, a shade more than a meter wide, and curved; if anything, it looked almost exactly like the shields of the Roman Legion of many centuries past, only modern and completely metal. The decorations on his were rather plain, compared to the others in his unit; he had only the Mendel symbol of the three stacked triangles over the picture of their colony, with what looked like gold leaf around that symbol. He now understood really why these crazies gave the Infantry such jitters, as the armor looked like it was heavier and more durable than that of the Linear Artillery vehicle, which was a rail gun on wheels, not a pissed-off-looking Marine. And somehow, the styling of the armor just made it look plain frightening.
What the Marine did, however, was just plain strange. He squatted down in front of the three, being backlit by where the windows in the shop would have been. That got Reggie thinking that their armor was even more advanced than most believed, if they could move and balance just like a normal human could. That more than else was a bit frightening to him, since in theory one of these troopers could jump or climb up a Mobile Suit and rip into it with its weapons at point-blank range.
"Your question was predicated on a belief, an errant one. We're not here to kill everyone our sights cross. Never have been, never will be here for that purpose. We're here to stop your dumbass brass from killing off the population of the world, which for better or worse includes us as well as them and the Coordinators. I hate to say it, kiddies, but you got fucked harder by your own command structure than we ever did. Our commander tried long and hard to placate the Earth Alliance big-wigs, but they just would not see the light of reason. So we show them the light; the light our Particle Cannons up their ass. You have my apologies for it coming to this, but duty is duty is duty, and Magi never shrink from their duties."
Reggie gets a rather irreverent thought: "One question, big guy."
"Hit me," the Marine replies automatically.
"How the hell did you sneak up on us wearing all that shit?"
"Huh. Strange question; I don't really know how our armor is silenced, though I know part of it is that the primary plates never touch unless you physically bang them together. The rest, you'd have to ask an Armor Tech about." He looks over to the others. "Any of you know?"
"Neg, Star Captain." "Nope." "No clue, boss." "Nada." "Not the foggiest."
"Can you stand, Pilot?"
"Not on this." Reggie indicates the shard of steel in his right leg. Blood had already soaked through both sides of the tourniquet he had applied to it with the Mechanic's help.
"Egh, that's a pretty bad one. I'll see where the nearest Medic is; use this on it." he reaches around his back and pulls off his storage container one-handed. When he sets it down and thumbs an access code, it opens up. What he pulled out looked nothing more than a hockey puck with a red button on it. "It's a nanotech wound sealant cartridge. Just set it on the wound and press the button, then don't move it for a minute."
Reggie accepts it in sort of a daze, since the blood loss was beginning to take a toll; he figured if it was some kind of explosive, he'd die pretty fast, or if it was whatever bullshit he said it was, it might help. He sets it on top of the tourniquet and presses the button.
Nothing happened for ten seconds as they looked on. "Is it busted?" The Mechanic asks.
"Give it a little. Nanos aren't the fastest devices in existence." Just after he finished, the sides of the cartridge seemed to get four holes in them, as something that looked like nothing but slow-moving water started flowing out of the cartridge, soaking through the tourniquet and down the sides of his thigh. Strangely enough, the blood-soaked tourniquet seemed to disappear as the stuff flowed over it, as well as the other blood components that it came with, until it started appearing as if it was drying up as well as his leg being partially sealed wit something that looked almost like a plaid thatch over where the steel shard was embedded in his leg, except the pattern was in hexes instead of squares. "Well, kid, your wound is sealed, now all we need to do is get you to a surgeon. Wonder where the nearest MASH (3) unit is..."
"Three blocks north of here, boss man." One of the Marines notes. "Only problem is, between us and there is a known enemy infantry strongpoint."
"Well, not any more, Slick's Star is headed in right now." As if on cue, to the north gunfire had just picked up dramatically. Whoever was fighting was not playing nice, that much was for sure. It lasted for about two minutes, then died down audibly. "Slick's Star is inside. Looks like once they lost the advantage of a building to themselves, they tossed in the towel. Willi, your team, prep these three to move. We'll take them up to the MASH on 33rd and sort them in there." One of them pulled out a telescoping stretcher and extended it. They knew what was coming; they would become prisoners of the Mendel forces, for whatever it was worth. They had heard rumors, but not one of them would hazard a guess as to what that really entailed.
For now, they all knew that Chicago was lost to the Earth Alliance, for now if not forevermore. The sight of civilians cheering on the Mendel troops as much as they were being jeered and derided made them all question what would happen in the coming weeks.
Author's Chapter Afterword:
Welcome to the Mendel and Magi equivalent to MSV. Har. Har. Har.
This first chapter was just a taste of what is to come, a different look at the initial fracas in Chicago. Next to come will be the real heavy hitting forces as the two sides bring in their reserves and reinforce. Mendel is just getting warmed up, however, as air flights into and out of O'Hare become almost exclusively military. And the Operation Plan calls for a lot more forces to be dropped into Chicago for the coming operations.
The Earth Alliance got it right and wrong, they would need more forces to take the Atlantic Coast and Iceland. How they got it wrong, however, is that Mendel's intention is to land them in Chicago and march them overland to Washington, not try a suicidal drop operation on the Earth Alliance capital. By marching them overland, the force commander can pick the vector by which he blitzes the enemy forces instead of hoping he can land enough close to Washington to do some serious damage. This also gives him the advantage of having his forces in a cohesive formation right from the word 'go', without having to try and assemble clusters that are spread from hell to breakfast while under enemy fire. That is something that ZAFT got right and wrong at the same time when deploying their forces by atmospheric drop, since they had a lot of shock value in assault timing but very little unit cohesion when they landed. At an estimate, such tactics degraded their unit effectiveness by about 20 percent in my opinion, and in major battles twenty percent is enough of a margin that you can lose a battle in such conditions, unless you plan ahead for that loss of effectiveness.
A side of the Mobile Forces less seen: the medium and heavy forces, namely in Battlemechs. Where the Assault Mech is king of the battlefield, under the right circumstances the medium and heavy units can be just as effective. This becomes drastically obvious in the confines of a city, as demonstrated by the Hunchback v Reggie, and the Centurion / Axman combo against the Windam. Fire and maneuver are hard to achieve at a steady pace in urban confines, all the more so when fighting a significantly larger force; doing so requires expert quarterbacking, elite tactics, precision fire, and veteran troops that don't spook from seeing their own shadow or when charging down a wall of enemies. In this case, such dodging and weaving, combined with precision shooting, scared the hell out of the enemy Mobile Suit forces, and essentially caused the remnant half of the Regiment to rout and flee the area, simply because they could not match the tactics of the Mendel forces and figured (not incorrectly) that they were facing veteran shocktroopers trained for this kind of warfare. Think of it as the Jet Stream Attack of old, performed by Battlemechs inside the confines of a city.
The super-heavy vehicles seen coming off the Dropship, as well as some units that were not illustrated yet, happen to be one of my favorite affectations of the Battletech Level 3 rules. Designing good, effective Super-heavies is difficult, especially when you want to make them practical (Ergo, no cost over 50,000,000 c-bills each) as well as combat effective. Given that I have designed effective units with the armor equivalent to two heavy 'mechs and a cost less than one assault omnimech, this could get very interesting when the Guardian, Drilewagen, Adamantoise, or Monarch go at it in upcoming chapters. The only thing that is hard to do right on a ground vehicle is energy weapons, due to Battletech rules pertaining to vehicles and energy weapon heat.
Also expect to see some classic Battletech vehicular whoopass rebuilt in Magi form, as all your old favorites like the Schreck and Alacorn, or the Fulcrum and Condor come back to haunt the Earth Alliance with advanced Clan weapons and Magi ingenuity. And, expect to see Omnivehicles, the ground-pounding equivalent to the Omnimech, which can have their weapons config rebuilt by a competent mechanic in less than five minutes. Also, in upcoming chapters you will see the support vehicles and forces at work as well, since combat is the last 10 percent of an army's effort in operating.
Note that the next several chapters are the same battle in each case, called the Mid-Day Mash by Mendel, because for some ungodly dumb reason the Earth Alliance started it at noon two days after Mendel landed. The difference between the chapters will be that each focuses on a different segement of Mendel's assets and a different segment of the battlefield Chicago. It will be a chaotic, frenetic, destructive battle where time-tested tactics and new technology on both sides are tested to the breaking point, as Chicago becomes the bloodiest battlefield the world over.
Next up: The Mid-Day Mash, as seen through the eyes of the Mendel Infantry.
Footnotes
(1): ACR is an Armored Cavalry Regiment. Usually an ACR has between 1000 and 2000 personnel, a normal ACR has everything a growing Army needs to take land, but is traditionally short on the assets to hold it. ACR is typically heavy on armor assets, lighter on Infantry, and normally has attached or organic artillery and ELINT (electronic intelligence) forces.
(2): a Corpsman is a Navy or Marine medic, basically. In Mendel, they are often called MedTechs as well as any other title they may have.
(X Ref): You saw part of this in the Flight of the Jokers Wild chapter 11.
Murphy's Laws applicable to this section:
(EA): The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions:
when they're ready.
when you're not.
(EA): Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.
(Mendel): There is no such thing as a fair fight -- only ones where you win or lose
