Chapter Three: The Meet

...She sighted him a half an hour later, moving somewhat erratically as he twisted his head and his 'Mech's torso from side to side, sweeping for her.

She noticed how he was making far more control adjustments than almost every other pilot she had killed. It was unlikely the VI system was damaged, which meant he had reduced the input it had. She knew about this kind of pilot; the "fly by feel" kind of pilot. And when she thought about it, they had always been the hardest to kill. Regardless, she lined up a shot and gently squeezed a trigger, the urban environment removing most of the wind effect as the round pierced the sky, streaking towards its target...

Two Months Later
Some god-forsaken Ice Planet in the middle of bloody nowhere
Nikolai Kerensky's POV

I hate Ice Planets. They're cold, but I don't mind that. The Aerospace assets, however, very much do bloody mind that, so we get this stupid situation where the 'Mechs are perfectly all-bloody-right while the aerospace assets freeze up and crash. Repeatedly. Without fail. See, a 'Mech has a reactor that dissipates heat all over the damn thing and keeps it warm, which is why they don't freeze up easily, with the cooler temperature aiding the heat sinks that make sure the lasers don't melt the arm off when fired too much.

Aerospace, however, utilises far more precise engineering, so we get this funny situation where the engines and all that work, but the ailerons freeze up like your computer when you have smut on and the wife's just pulled up into the driveway. The only way to counter that is to fit in a bulky and weighty coolant system to prevent the wings from freezing up, and if that coolant leaks, or the pipes burst, then the ailerons freeze up and your plane goes down and you either bail and die anything up to several hundred degrees to cold, or don't bail out and die several hundred degrees to warm. The Peeping Toms were all operational, which was a good thing, because we knew exactly where everything was, so we could at least set up the Marauders we had with us in ambush formation – Arctic white works so well in these conditions, sometimes the enemy even doubt their own RADAR!

Now, I'm saying all this, because ten minutes ago, we saw a large-ass Drop Ship land in a ravine. As there was no SLDF presence here, then it was either explorer corps – in which case they would have hailed the planet from orbit a few times first and we would know they were there, and they would be able to get someone to help us out of this mess. If it was the SLDF looking for us, then there'd be two Drop Ships – scouting was done with Peeping Toms, and all SLDF Drop Ships within a certain vicinity of a Peeping Tom Spy Satellite would receive the signal transmissions, so we'd know who was there and they'd know we were here. Look, long story short, if it wasn't an enemy, we'd know about them by now. So these guys were either a third party not affiliated with the SLDF or the SLEC (Star League Explorer Corps) who didn't know we were here, which wasn't likely given this was a god-damned Ice Planet and there is no god-damned reason to land here, or enemy forces.

One or the other, we were still going to make first contact with a collective four hundred tons plus of the finest military equipment the SLDF could provide, which was why I was with four of my best – Lucas "Fury" Lister, a close-in brawler who stood at six foot nine, had an extensive workout routine and could leave a noticeable dent in whatever he punched. His piercing green eyes and military buzz-cut, combined with the mint condition of his uniform meant he looked a whole lot more intimidating that he actually was, especially when one considers the two-shot, rifle-calibre hand cannon he calls a side-arm. He was in his mid-twenties and he'd spent his entire military career in his custom Atlas, which was a powerhouse of experimental technology –three lightened LBX AC/10s and two lightened SRM-6s were all the firepower this behemoth had, and although I didn't know it yet, a lot of what we ran was actually identical to Clan spec, minus the armour, which was standard due to it being easier for us to build. The net result was that each of the LBXs had two tons of ammo; the two SRMs had four tons of ammo to share while a pair of Anti-Missile systems helped keep him in the field for longer.

Up next came Jonathan "Borg" Jones. He was the oldest man in the unit, well into his sixties, but there's few I'd ever trust to watch my back as much as I trust him. He was tall, thin and scarred heavily, kept his dark hair cut military-short and had steely silver eyes that almost looked through you. He stripped out everything but the armour on his 'Mech, and replaced it with four medium and two large pulse lasers and the long-range Hellfires replaced by an SRM 6, while our triple-strength heat sinks kept the machine in check, and then removed a few tonnes of armour were removed in favour of a larger engine for top speed. The net result is that thing can put most medium 'Mechs to shame. It was the ultimate example of the heavy scout – fast enough to spot the kink in the enemy's armour, and able to exploit it right away. The man himself was grouchy, made a mule look compliant and wasn't afraid to voice his honest opinion.

Third was Thomas "Blitz" Jones. He was close enough to myself in appearance that we sometimes pulled a brothers act, with long silver hair and silver eyes, neither of which I was sure were natural and piloted a machine identical to Borg, preferring the higher speed of that Marauder variant over the standard Unit one, which was quick in its own right and not something to be trifled with, but to each his own and all...

Then there was Samantha Smith. At fourteen, she was theoretically too young to be in the unit, but she was a war brat, and knew how to fight and how to kill at least as good as anyone else in the unit and her loyalties lay exclusively with me – where I went, she invariably followed unless I specifically ordered her not to, and even then she tended to cover me with her favourite anti-anything bolt action rifle. She could reach out and touch you from over two miles out if she needed to, both in and out of a 'Mech. Normally, she piloted a Commando with a jury-rigged main gun from one of our tanks, which was modified with an auto-loader, but that specific 'Mech was slag. So we took the base design of Blitz's 'mech, stripped out the guns and had Lyla put in a few of her auto-loading main guns due to be mounted on our tanks. Each only fired about every four seconds, but the auto-loader is reliable and the ammo's light enough that the two ton guns can fire their shared ten tons of reloads until the god-damned cows come home – she doesn't have the Hellfires, but she does have the torso-mounted lasers.

The five man assembly we ran was unique to us, and it was something my commanding officer was thinking of putting into common tactics at some point in the future. It also meant we had a unique layout during patrols, with the five pilots forming a rough, five-pointed star formation. The Lance Leader is rarely directly out in front though – too many commanders have died because of that common mistake of taking the lead when they should have been hanging back.

Right now I was in the cockpit of my unit-standard Marauder, the chilling sensation of my cooling suit perking me up as I went through the final checkouts on the multi-function displays – unlike most 'Mech cockpits, we utilise a more expensive upgraded system that gives each 'Mech advanced communications system equivalent to a standard command cockpit with two tons of communications equipment. The net result is we're always better co-ordinated, with each pilot capable of sharing their targeting data almost immediately and often to devastating effect. These MFDs are also the reason we can fit non-standard equipment so easily – our cockpits have a sort of plug and play capability that means we don't have to worry about the complex re-wiring involved in attaching a different weapon system, allowing us far greater technical flexibility – we can strip out everything from our Marauders and turn them into pure missile boats. All we have to do is replace the weapons and squeeze in the reloads.

But that's beside the point – right now we have an unknown quantity to deal with.

I got the all clear and put on my neurohelmet, the familiar HUD coming up – our multi-function targeting computer, which could calculate with near-pinpoint accuracy the location each individual weapon would hit up to five hundred metres, at which point it went a bit crazy and the familiar Head Arms Torso Legs armour bars – mine on the right, Sam's on the left to make sure the screens were working properly.

"Okay people." I stated, catching their attention, "We have an unknown quantity due six miles north from here. I shouldn't have to emphasize the need for caution – we don't know where we are and unless we've hopped through time, there is no way the SLDF could have tracked us here so fast."

I worked my 'Mech up to the hangar doors as my men followed suite, the hangar bay lights casting long shadows on the virgin snow as we prepared for our heavy scouting run in a blizzard. Heavy scouting meant we would be running the recon of an area with no knowledge of what to expect – which meant the units doing the recon work had to be able to shoot back, and while a light-weight glass cannon might work better, we simply have no idea what they can sling our way and we should have firepower impunity here – the cold, combined with triple-strength heat sinks allowed us to fire our lasers until something breaks, though the max-level concussion rifles would still put a bit of a heat strain on the 'Mech – the over clocked weapon didn't dissipate the heat as quickly as it should, and speeding up the cooling process too much always broke something. Still, it was a good edge to have – it took some specific manual tweaking to get our feared fifth level and it could only be activated on a 'Mech with five or more triple-strength heat sinks, it put out that much heat.

But all that's also beside the point. What we have now is a situation wherein we may have to engage in a turf war against god-knows-what, and all we knew about our enemy was they used a standard issue re-entry – no hot drops, no advanced recon work, nothing, which meant they were either overconfident or underprepared. Either one helped us out for different reasons.

So we got into a rhombus-based patrol formation – Sam at the front, whilst diagonally back, either side from her lay Blitz and Borg, ready to pot-shot any flankers while I took up the rear, ready to cover one or the other if need be while Fury lay in the middle, his close-in brawler restricted by the range. It was his job to blast anything that got too close with those LBX-10s of his.

"Okay troops, the objective's the ravine two clicks north. We don't have any idea of what enemy force concentration is, so we have to assume it's a rogue Royal. Keep your weapons hot and tempers cool – I don't want any more heroics than necessary and try to minimise damage – we can't afford a bust 'Mech right now. I want all of us on passive radar for now."

"Roger that, Lead" replied Fury's voice over the comm, "Star formation on entry?"

"Nah – we'll napalm that bridge when we get to it. For now, focus on maintaining visual contact. We need to get to that ravine before this blizzard fades; we want to maintain the element of surprise as long as possible. Remember folks, the blizzard's made the Peeping Toms effectively useless. Call 'em as you see 'em"

The romp to the ravine was interrupted primarily by the blizzard not fading, meaning we were still blind, though within the ravine we had more or less standard vision, given it was actually night right now, but we weren't going to use flashlights or active radar – we needed every edge we could get.

The ravine itself wasn't anything special, though it was somewhat wider than we thought – the ice had formed something of an overhang, making it look a lot narrower than it actually was, so we could go two abreast. That meant Sam would take point beside me, while the Jones brothers would cover our flanks as Fury got the rear – there were some turns here, and everything was within range of his short-range brawler. Net result, we had the advantage.

Then, of course, we found the enemy dropship as we hit something of a plateau within the ravine, and we could see where the dropship had crashed through the ice and landed clean by way of a miracle, a skilled pilot or both. There was also a group of five 'Mechs out there, three that looked like a cross between a standard-spec Marauder and a Catapult (which was making my targeting computer go erratic), and two monstrosities that looked like nothing I'd ever seen before, with arms carrying what looked like some variant of an AC/5, I could see a few laser barrels and most importantly I could see each of them had an LRM-10 rack on them.

And looking at the other enemy 'Mechs, how many damn LRMs does one machine need? Let's see... Two apparent LRM-20 racks on what the computer decided to call Mad Cats. And the twenty LRMs carried by those two unknowns made for, drum roll please, one hundred-forty LRMs per group salvo. Yeah, one of us ain't coming back from this.

Then I saw a communications alert from an unknown source. Two guesses who it was. I responded anyways – any time spent chatting would allow us time to aim at them, and they couldn't lock on with the LRMs – we'd get the lock warning and we'd open fire. Here's to not being slag by the end of the day...

"So the Surats respond!" said a somewhat agitated and pompous voice, "I am Jacob Ward of Clan Wolf. I ask that you identify yourselves."

Proud warrior race much? I thought as I replied, "I'm General Nikolai Kerensky, commander of the SLDF four-hundred-and-forty-second Royal division. Now, who is Clan Wolf? There was no such unit within the SLDF records when we left."

I reset the concussion rifle on the right hand to level five and left hand to level four – I wanted an opening salvo that could potentially cripple them. Then I realised, I was just at the outer edge of our weapon's effective range – only Sam really had a clear shot, and our Hellfires were meant more for an anti-air role. This was going to be fun.

"You jest, quiaff?" 'Jacob' replied, "There is no valid reason for anything not of the Clans to be out here, now identify yourselves."

Well that was great. This one wasn't paranoid – he'd have blasted our 'Mechs out first, so he was resolutely against hearing anything that wasn't what he expected, so I gave a subtle gesture with my Marauder's right arm, indicating to my men that now was the time to aim.

"I have no idea what you're on about!" I stated, easing my own fingers on the trigger and getting ready to charge forward and into concussion rifle range, "We had a mis-jump and here the fuck we are!"

"End this tasteless joke!" 'Jacob' barked, one of the 'Mechs swaying its arm, "Identify your Clan now, Surats, or face the true might of Clan Wolf!"

"And I've already told you." I replied as calmly as I could, "I don't know who you're talking about. We were undergoing a planetary reconnaissance mission for General Aleksandr Kerensky when we had a mis-jump and ended up here. You're the first non-442nd contact we've had in a while."

Apparently, this wasn't enough, and it'd somehow pissed him off, going by his response.

"You dare mock the name of our Great Father?!" he roared over the radio, "Wolves! Let us defeat these Surats and show them the strength of a true-born mechwarrior!"

Now, theoretically, only the LRMS should have had the range to hit us at around this range – seven hundred metres, but the enemy 'Mechs seemed to have extended range weapons, something that even the skunk works of the SLDF was having trouble with, so they got us with a complete opening salvo of lasers and LRMs that blasted Fury's Atlas almost to ruin as armour was laid to waste across the board and weapons either jammed or exploded.

"Fury, get the hell out of here! We won't be able to mount an effective rescue operation if you have to bail!" I barked into the headpiece as three of us began closing the distance.

I got a disgruntled grunt of acknowledgement as his shattered Atlas turned its back to the field of battle and began limping home.

At this point, I suppose it would be wise to mention the reason Sam has a tank gun and not a Gauss rifle mounted. The reason is simple – Gauss slugs are rather fragile compared to the armour they hit, which means the slugs often fragment when they impact, meaning although the slugs do impressive damage to armour, they have surprisingly little chance of piercing the armour, which is why 'Mech snipers choose between Gauss Rifles and PPCs for sniping instead of one being the superior sniping system.

Now, our tanks use a High-Velocity Armour-Piercing round that goes clean through a 'Mech's armour, and even Fury's Atlas offers little resistance to the penetrating power of the round. That's also a downside – it goes clean through, so the chances of actually causing an ammo explosion are rare, as what tends to cause them is heated shell fragments rattling around and striking the gunpowder or warheads of a weapon and causing a chain reaction, or a missile explosion causing the ammo bins to go up as well, or a laser superheating the ammo bin to the point of auto-ignition. You get the point. This means that those rounds are inferior in theory – they do almost nothing to a 'Mech other than hit in the front and exit through the rear and such, leaving an entry hole very similar to the exit hole and doing little to the internals, which have a bit more space in between them than one might thing – oh, there may be miles of cables in an Atlas, but paranoiac use of cable tidies and smart packing that would be the envy of even the most seasoned jet-setter means that even the most cramped machine has at least twice as much space and redundancy as you think it has. What this means for us is that, unless we deliberately aim for a critical system, we ain't doing much damage.

I say this because Sam is an expert shot, and the gun has a range of about two and a half miles before ballistics are accounted for, and she has a fun little modification to her targeting computer that tells her where critical components should be in a known machine. It may not be able to overlay the image onto her targets, but countless hundreds of pilots can attest to how little that matters to her, and while we don't really know anything about these 'Mechs, cockpits are obvious and joints are always good targets.

So we got some return fire in – my left concussion rifle caused an ammo explosion when it shredded the missile pod of one of the Mad Cats, though it did less damage than I thought it should have, while Sam was able to snipe the cockpit of a second and nail the other rocket pod on the one I crippled, effectively halving the maximum salvo size, the missile-less Mad Cat charging forwards as his compatriot slumped to the floor.

"That was truly a shot worthy of a Nova Cat!" Jacob roared, "Most impressive, but you shall still fall before the might of the true Wolves, Surats!"

Unfortunately for me, my level five concussion rifle decided to have a moment, the weapon going from the green "ready" to the red "malfunction" state, used for everything from the weapon having no ammo to a state where it's in sixteen different pieces, two of which are in your 'Mech, and not in a good way. Still, a lot of their long-range punch was gone, so the second salvo was easier to dodge and slammed into the rock wall behind me, thankfully not bringing down the entrance.

Blitz and Borg, however, knew their variant was a right tricky bastard to hit and they'd bolted as soon as the missiles were fired and were weaving towards the enemy, taking rapid-fire pot-shots with no regard for accuracy, more rounds missing than not, stray bolts kicking up clouds of steam as they superheated the snow as they tried to swing round to the rear of our opponents, dealing glancing blows, claiming another LRM-20 rack from the remaining Mad Cat.

Then things went downhill – Borg's Marauder took an unlucky hit to his SRM system and the internal explosions forced his retreat. So, he reversed out as he fired erratically to keep potential pursuit off his tail and Blitz followed suite in a machine which was lacking armour everywhere – our objective was intelligence, and now we knew that they were hostile to us and had some idea of what they had, we had to pull back and plan accordingly. We may not have much in the way of active soldiers, but we have more than enough machines. Our priority was now the survival of the men who worked them.

Sam had ducked back to the path we'd come in, ensuring a rearward attack was unlikely as she took pot shots at the enemy cockpits. Although she hit the enemy almost every time, they were too agile to be hit in critical areas consistently so rounds passed through other areas instead, meaning we had the disadvantage in both agility and numbers. That is, until Sam got a shot in on the cockpit of one of the large 'Mechs and killed the pilot, bringing the number down to three on two, though we'd taken a pounding – a combined LRM salvo had destroyed one of Sam's tank guns while I'd lost the systems on my left arm completely, limiting me to my lasers and a hellfire system that wasn't all that good against ground targets.

I took stock of the situation – Sam was in the ravine, ready to retreat at a moment's notice. I was four hundred metres ahead of her while this Jacob fellow was still kicking about praise for Sam's accuracy.

"Sam!" I barked as my remaining Concussion Rifle went green, "Get the hell out of here, I'll cover for you."

Of course, she protested the order but she still obeyed – better one of us went down than two of us. Unfortunately, another LRM salvo followed her as my level five shot went wide; impacting the ground and causing an explosion that earned me an increase in enemy radio chatter, while the missiles missed and crashed into the rock wall, causing a landslide as she cleared away, potentially trapping me in with them. Fun times.

"It is three on one, Surat." Jacob growled in anger. We'd somewhat bloodied his men, after all, "Will you accept our offer of honourable surrender?"

Okay, so what are my options here? Headshots with the torso lasers and the remaining arm-mounted laser were possible, but risky while we were far enough apart that my Hellfires would lock and hit.

Probably.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Please?

"You're in the big 'Mech, aren't you?" I asked, locking the Hellfires to his cockpit, lining up the torso for the not so crippled Mad Cat and aiming the final gun at the rather crippled Mad Cat. I had one chance, and the armour state of my 'Mech was nearing the point of critical failure; I couldn't take a three on one salvo – two had to go down here or I'd had it. The remaining Concussion Rifle would need fifteen seconds to recharge and heat sink damage meant it'd take about thirty more after that before I could safely fire it again.

I got the lock tone from the missiles and I fired. "Not just yet!"

Guess what? It didn't work. The two Mad Cats were hit, but I missed the cockpits and only succeeded in melting off a decent amount of armour on the less crippled one and missed the other one completely. The Hellfires hit the cockpit, but didn't kill the pilot. Yeah, it was wounded, but nowhere near enough.

"It will take far more than that to down a Dire Wolf, Surat" Jacob growled, confirming my suspicions, "You seek a fight to the end? Then have it!"

With that, they locked and fired a volley of missiles at my 'Mech. I dodged most of them but took some bad leg damage, limiting me to a slow limp as I hastily wrestled the controls to keep her upright as I went for the eject function – I had on arctic survival clothing and the mandatory presence of relevant survival gear in our cockpits meant I should be able to get contact with a Peeping Tom for navigation back to the Den. Of course, the eject function didn't and I got that ringing sensation as I slammed my head against the headrest from a salvo of way too god-damn many ballistic weapons hitting my cockpit and blacked out when a stray piece of metal hit my neurohelmet.

"Never get between an Arctic Wolf and their coffee" – Anonymous SLDF officer, wounded in action