Steven McEvedy sat back in his chair and sighed. He'd been commanding the Sturmovik mercenary unit for perhaps ten months now, and this was by far the most boring mission they had ever taken on. Two months prior, they'd been approached by a Lyran employer who had wanted them to provide a security force for one of his new mining facilities. The pay had been great, and they had taken the job willingly. However, now even the modified quarters on their Union dropship, spacious compared to some vessels, were beginning to feel cramped and confining. The only solace he had was that in two days time, they would be heading for the jump point to be picked up and receive their paycheck. Pushing himself up, Steven left the area and headed to the bridge. At least there he could maybe find one of the dropship cremen and swap stories about the old days.
The bridge was quiet today, as it usually was, since the other crewmen were finding other things to do. The only three people in the room were Jason Yanovitch, the captain, and two techies monitoring the sensor readouts with rather bored expressions. Jason looked up from the papers he was filling out and smiled. "Steven, have a seat." Steven nodded and pulled up a chair. He and Jason had been friends for a while now. Back in his youth, the old man had helped guide him to where he was now, and the two had been friends ever since. The two of them were soon involved in a deep conversation about times gone by, while the techies listened with rapt attention, their sensors forgotten.
Suddenly, the sensor readouts started blaring warnings, snapping all of them out of their enjoyment. Steven rushed to the sensors with Jason directly behind him as the technicians rapidly began processing the information. It didn't look good. "Sir, we have numerous hostile forces inbound, dropships are landing due south of our position and naval forces are moving into planetary bombardment positions. They're moving on our position, ETA, twenty minutes." The technician's face was creased with worry. Steven turned to Jason. "We may be in a real fix this time, mate. Think we can make it past those ships?" Jason frowned and shook his head. "Too many of 'em. We don't have the speed or the armor. We'd be blasted before the halfway." Steven nodded. "Then I guess we have no choice. Give the order to stand and deliver."
In just ten minutes, everyone on board the dropship was at their combat positions, with Steven and the other mechwarriors lined up in a protective formation at the base. "Get ready, people, here they come!" Steven called. Just as the first wave of forces appeared around the trees and ridges, the team began firing with everything they had, while the crew on the Union started firing their guns at the enemies beyond the sight of their ground-based members to try and weaken the charge. Steven headcapped one of the enemy mechs just as it charged around a ridge, frying another one that had closed the distance with his medium lasers. Sidestepping to the left to dodge an enemy round, Steven relished the responsiveness of the Osprey beneath him. Firing his Gauss once again, the round streaked into another mech, sending it toppling into another mech behind it and setting off an ammo explosion that destroyed both mechs and a third behind them. The enemy forces were weakening. They could do this. But their opponents had a trick up their sleeve. A flight of ten Hydaspes fighters suddenly came streaking up over the ridgeline, pouring their entire load of weapons into the team's dropship. Unions were robust, but not even their modified vessel could withstand that kind of a pounding. The starboard side of the vessel crumpled inward under the force of the attack, knocking out the weapons on that side. As the fighters finished their pass, Steven watched in admiration as the six Sparrowhawk fighters launched directly onto their opponent's tails from the undamaged side of the dropship. He knew that the pilots would handle the airborne enemies. But the damage was done.
Without the Union's guns firing into their ranks, the enemy was advancing faster and in larger numbers. Steven locked up an enemy mech, a Marauder IIc, in his sights and watched the crosshairs blaze gold as he pulled the trigger. His gauss rifle thundered as it launched a nickel-ferrous slug int the mech's head, toppling it like a felled tree. Another mech had managed to get in a bit close for comfort, and Steven responded with a volley of SRMs from his MML rack. The missiles impacted the opponent, followed shortly by a smaller volley from Vidia's Thunder Fox. The missiles stripped the armor from the mech's torso, allowing James' Rifleman to fireball the mech. Steven then fried another mech with his lasers while Vidia headcapped another with her gauss. But despite their performance, they still had almost twenty mechs left, and they were being forced back closer and closer to the dropship.
Just then, the Sparrowhawks swooped in on a strafing run, spraying the enemy with a hail of deadly laser fire. Four mechs dropped in the face of the assault as the fighters pulled up and started coming around for another run. Encouraged by the attack, Steven pulled his triggers once more, racking up another kill as a Locust IIc toppled with a useless gyro and went up in flames. Turning to another Locust, Steven launched a missile volley and as greeted with an explosion as the mech's AP gauss rifles overcharged and detonated, blowing the mech's side torsos into shreds as it collapsed on its face. The other were also doing well, already having felled another nine enemies, and the Sparrowhawks claimed another three in their strafing run. They were winning, he could tell, but it was going to be close. The other mechs had already been hit hard, and he himself had taken a few glancing blows. The PPC hit to his right torso got his attention, and he turned to see a Marauder IIc charging him. Immediately Steven fired his gauss, followed by a missile volley and his lasers, dropping the mech not more than twenty yards away from him. The final two mechs tried to charge their position, but were mowed down by a withering barrage from James' Rifleman and Ethan's Prefect.
Steven jumped down from the Osprey, weary and sweating, and ran to the dropship's lower cargo bay. There, he was greeted with the sight of three crewmen injured and the others bruised and scarred, all being tended to by the team's medical staff. Jason looked up at him. "Don't worry, we're all alive. But this ship ain't getting us anywhere now. We're sitting ducks." Steven nodded and sought out Raikan, the unit's intelligence specialist. "Raikan, I need a plan. You got one?" Raikan smiled wanly. "Yeah, but it's a bit desperate…"
"I don't care, let's hear it."
Steven's comm crackled. "Seems to me like we're being a bit cowardly, Harpy-boy." He sighed at Vidia's smart remark on his nickname. "We don't have much choice, Vidia." And that was the truth. Raikan's plan had been to retreat to an old Blakist fortification to find shelter until they could find an escape route. It wasn't his style to hide away, but Steven and the others didn't have much choice. The rest of the team was loaded onto the truck, and the fighters had flown ahead to find a place to land.
"Whatever. I just hope you know how to get us off this rock when we're through, smart-aleck."
"Well, that all depends on how sweet you are during our trip, deary." A few snickers could be heard on the comm as Vidia growled an incomprehensible response in Japanese, despite the growing tension.
Twenty minutes later, they were standing outside the base. Steven could see ample evidence of the attacks Raikan had mentioned - the outside looked like a dump. But entering inside one of the hangars, it was a different story. Despite the outside appearances, the part of the base they had entered was in very good shape. The darkened mech hangar seemed almost like a giant cavern. There were twelve cubicles lined up on either side, and loose wires and tubes dangled from the ceiling girders. Steven and the other warriors parked their mechs facing the door, then proceeded to group together with the other team members.
"So, what do we have to work with, Raikan?" Raikan looked up from his noteputer, the glow from the screen giving his face a somewhat eerie look in the gloom. "Well, the fighters landed on the field and are hidden nearby, so no problems there. What we really need to figure out is what we're going to do now that we've got our hidey-hole." Steven nodded, then turned towards the truck. "Jason, how long will we last on what we grabbed from the ship?" Jason glanced towards him, then called out. "We'll be fine till day after tomorrow. Then we're in for it." Steven turned back to Raikan. "Allright, so our first order of business is extending our food supply. Then we need to find out how to get off this dirtball planet."
Raikan nodded, eyes transfixed on his noteputer. "Well, according to the information I have here, this base is actually mostly unexplored. When the Blakist forces here collapsed, the base was left untouched by the liberating forces. It's possible that there might be supplies and equipment left behind that could prove useful to us." Steven grimaced. "Even if we did find supplies, I'm not sure I'd want to eat food that old." Raikan grinned at him. "Well, they won't be like gourmet cooking, but at least they should be edible."
Steven sighed and nodded his head. "Allright. Raikan, grap some torches, extra power packs and three survival kits. You, me and Vidia are going to go searching around for anything we can use." As Raikan ran off to collect the goods, Vidia turned on Steven. "Why am I going? I didn't volunteer."
Steven smiled. "Well, then, I guess I'll just have to draft you instead, won't I." When Vidia pouted, he relented a little bit. "Look, you're the one I trust my back to in a fight. I can depend on you in tight spots. That's why I'm choosing you over anybody else. Okay?" Vidia nodded and accepted the pack and torch that Raikan handed to her. Steven shouldered the load and called over his shoulder. "You're in charge till I get back, Jason. Don't screw up on me."
"Ditto, ma boy" Jason called after him.
With that, the trio flicked on their torches and proceeded to enter the dark depths.