Chapter 3
March 8th, 3025
Continent of Gimli
Suk II
The pinging sound of machine-gun fire deflecting across the reinforced glass cockpit of Emily's Shadow Hawk 2D brought her attention from the map she was briefly daydreaming about, back to sweaty reality. Each spark created tiny suns in her vision through the almost pitch-black night. Fortunately, the glass held without a problem, this time.
Well shit, she thought. Shit! How'd they find us so goddamn fast?
After arriving on-planet on one of the main continents, her lance had run into a RoughRider patrol trying to scour the some of this thick jungle she and her company had begun to set up caches of supplies in. That patrol became two, but fortunately it was mainly lighter tanks of the hovering variety. Given there were several companies worth of hardware on this planet, and a decent number of infantry, aerospace, and dropships, the odds of them being discovered this quickly seemed unlikely at best.
Her lance, simply consisting of a Valkyrie and a Spider for now, was already starting to loop around to the northwest. She opted to put Nymph's Urbie in her lance, and left it behind for bivouc security. Nymph had protested, but knew it was the right call. It was just too slow, usually.
The night was cooler—cooler by comparison to the almost constant forty-plus degrees Celsius during the day - and they were in a small clearing with the two lances of hover tanks blocking their serpentine route back to their bivouac site.
"Vi, Maiden, break left and circle around. I'll go the other way and split them up." Maybe split them up, anyway, she thought quickly. "Vi try to draw as much fire as you can but don't shoot back if it means you'll get hit yourself. Stay safe for now!" Two ayes came in response.
Vi-Linlet Chandran's Spider, which ironically looked nothing like it's namesake, was already starting to show early problems with the flamer in its right arm since making planetfall. It started picking up speed ahead of Maiden's Valk. The slightly-lighter-than-Hesperus gravity of point-nine-three g's made it a little easier to get a stride in this clearing.
Emily angled her Shadow Hawk's torso parallel to them and fired some potshots from her fifty mm autocannon 5 and five-tube long-range missile launcher toward the cluster of hovercraft moving cautiously toward them in the night. She wanted them constantly changing their target back and forth between her and her team, while they made their way around to regroup with her people.
A stroke of good luck came through, and though the missiles splintered trees behind the group, the autocannon's shot happened to clip a Harasser hover tank, going right through the left side into the engine. The tank reeled to the side from the hit, bumping another Harasser, then lost power and hit the dirt like a china plate, sending more pieces of it's skirting into the open.
Awwyusssss haaaa she silently cheered to herself through her teeth, throttling up to a modest forty km trot. The responding fire came mostly in the form of missiles hitting greenery where her weapons flashes originally came from.
"Dirk, I think they like me more than you…" came the nervous voice of Vi, who's silhouette could be seen occasionally amongst the lasers cutting through some of the steam of the night. Tiny flecks of dark reptiles running, flying, or hopping for their lives made them seem like ghostly insects from Emily's viewpoint.
"Keep going. Jump if you have to. We have the room."
"Roger." Another laser shot ends up just behind her, making a tiny rainbow shape in the tree on the other side.
Maiden's Valk was starting to pass the hover tanks as well, now. Emily silently approved of showing no bravado, resisting the temptation to get a little slap or punch or even a lucky kick on any of the half-dozen-or-more more concerned with Vi at the moment.
"Shit! Saladin, boss lady!"A hover tank that qualifies as a 'mech-killer, one of the most popular variants sported a single AC20 that could end any light 'mech pilot's career in a single shot. Emily wasn't sure which one this had, but she always assumed the 'twenty. Her Hawk was a little too far on the other side of the tanks to use her shorter-range lasers missiles, but she fired some LRMS in that general direction, unable to get any locks on in time.
Nothing hit, but it seemed to spook the Saladin gunner, because—as hoped—a massive belch of fire came from the front as a single AC20 round split a tree in half near Vi.
"Run!" Emily shouted while alternating on the foot pedals to get more speed. She was just too far to do much at this point.
Vi attempted to give a nudge with her Spider's shin towards the Saladin but wound up missing. She stumbled for a split second, then regained her original speed. The tanks were behind her now by a few hundred meters, with Maiden starting to gain ground as well.
More fire erupted from the main group, with their attention on Maiden. Shit! Shoot me, you fuckers! Emily clenched her jaw and fired another round from her autocannon, trying to get more of their attention.
"Mongoose!" Came the panicked voice of Maiden. "Bearing zero-seven-zero, closing in!" So, the last member of this double-lance has entered and signed in. I guess this is their boss. Any more surprises tonight? Emily thought. A Mongoose was designed for hide-and-seek missions, primarily as the one doing the seeking. At a mere twenty-five tons, it specialized in command and control more than anything, but it still had a group of medium lasers to offer as party favors. But against other light 'mechs like a Valkyrie, who's armor was about as thin as the holoscreen that listed it on her TO&E, it was a big problem.
Meanwhile, a few lucky missiles caught the back shoulder of Maiden, sending her forward momentum into a bit of a stumble and she lost a lot of speed trying to regain her balance. Vi was too far ahead to do anything against eight of them, and Emily wasn't in range with much, so all she could do is watch while the Mongoose landed a shot in the back of Maiden's other shoulder, igniting the LRM ammo stored in there.
The chain reaction only lasted about an eighth of a second, but within that time, dozens of missiles combined from within to literally split what was left of the Valkyrie in two, sending most of it from moving forward to almost a standstill as the kinetic energy simply cancelled out most of the 'mech's momentum. The auto-ejection system also worked equally as quickly, sensing the rapid amount of damage and orientation change and decided now would be a good time to do what I was programmed to do, mmhmm, yep.
Unfortunately, the forward angle prior to the explosion had Maiden's torso angled downwards, towards a massive trunk of a tree that shot up to the canopy…
...and the ejection pod went straight into it. A small secondary explosion created a dot in Emily's vision where the tree had taken the hit, and any remaining fuel in the escape pod quickly went poof, then went dark. The tree seemed slightly peeved, either at the loss of life or small chip of itself knocked off.
Emily had seen death before, but never to someone she knew for more than a few days, and certainly nobody under her command. It hadn't sunk in yet, there was no way she could worry about it when multiple turrets swung in her direction on her HUD. They were almost in range of her with everything they had, and she was much slower than either of her lancemates. Lancemate.
"Vi…I might need your help now."
"Roger th-oh Kerensky was that Maiden?!"
"Focus, Vi!"
"R-Right! I'll try to keep the Mongoose busy, just stay away from the tanks!"
Those two 'mechs could dance for a while, if the tanks weren't providing so much fire support. They only needed about two more minutes before some of their own help would arrive. Could my Hawk take that much of a pounding from so many little guys for so long, she wondered. The quick math in her head didn't agree with that.
Didn't wanna do this tactic so early in the war…she started frogging, which consisted of multiple varying hops with her jump jets to mess up enemy targeting and their ability to lead her. She slammed both feet on the pedals and braced for her stomach to do somersaults over and over and she lept, slammed the semi-soft mud and took at little of it with her on the next jump. And the next. And the next. The heat in her cockpit combined with the desire to puke into her neurohelmet's viewscreen made her dry heave, but she was rewarded as tracers, missile flashes and lasers went flying past her HUD, bound for a few unlucky trees and whatever small reptile life was dumb enough to stick around at this point.
"Vi-oooagghhh" Emily involuntarily made a guttural sound at the height of her next jump, as fifty-five tons of Hawk made small golden rainbows of afterglow of the vision of anyone still chasing her at this point. "Vi. You ok?" She said as she hit the ground right when saying her name, causing the word to come out a little too forcefully.
"Mongoose still on me. Neither of us can really hit each other. I'm not too far from you." Vi sounded like she was holding back tears.
"Help's coming soon. One minute or so?" Emily's response sounded more like a question with how uncertain she sounded. "Frog if you have to."
She switched to her company frequency, while giving her stomach a break by breaking the Hawk back into a run. Many tracers went well above her head this time, anticipating another jump. So instead of a rapid roller coaster ride, she settled for being strapped to an angry bull trying to shake her off. Still, an improvement, considering the circumstances.
A quick check of various distances on her HUD showed two 'mechs, one good and one bad, within a few hundred meters to her left, with six angry blips a little further back than they were last time she checked. C'mon…C'MON!
One blip almost immediately faded out as it must have crashed into something while chasing.
Remembering the command freq, she put some effort into her dried-out voice. "Dirk here. ETA on backup? We lost Maiden. Outnumbered about three-to-one. Skippers plus Mongoose."
"Chrome Lance is 30 out."
"Clothesline…Lance…almost in LURM Range."
"Flock sending LUR—" a loud burst of static as her Trebuchet launched thirty LRM's almost simultaneously.
A low roar that made the ears ring for anyone or anything outside a sealed cockpit as the volley ripped across the distance separating Emily and Vi from temporary freedom, and the left side of Emily's cockpit streaked with a bright flash as most of them found their mark on two "skippers." One was a Pegasus, the other being the Saladin.
The assault hover took the worst of it, kinetic energy hitting its forward right side so rapidly that it went into a clockwise spin for a couple of seconds. Moving back away from its comrades, it ramped up over a gigantic tree root, sending it into a slow end-over-end flip until the gunner either panicked or simply was slammed into the trigger for the AC20, which was aimed straight up. A massive push sent the hover tank butt-first into the mud at over one hundred kph. Whiplash at that speed was typically lethal. The tank's fans slowed lifelessly to a halt as it settled into the ground.
The Pegasus, being much lighter by design and simply less-armored, was battered ruthlessly by about a dozen remaining missiles. One must have broken the driver's viewscreen, because it too lost velocity from its fans and landed on the ground roughly.
All the remaining tanks immediately halted, including the Mongoose, seeing such instant devastation and the arrival of a lot more firepower than they can handle, while also becoming outnumbered themselves. Emily punched her company frequency again. "Everyone, searchlights on! Blind whoever's not using thermals!" Within seconds the horizon around the Lyran-hired patrol went white.
Fighting the urge to throw up again, Emily went to a more public frequency. "RoughRiders! You took the bait. Stand down now or lose everyone you have left." A half-truth. She had no idea if they had any more reinforcements but decided to make the bluff.
After a few tense moments, while everyone seemed to slow to a dead stop, including Emily's cavalry, the pilot of the Mongoose came over the same channel. A disgruntled, older male voice crackled through his own dry throat and some light static. "Fine. Ares Conventions. Hurt anyone in my command and Hansen will probably just nuke this whole jungle." Did he have access to those here? Emily wondered. She turned her 'mech back towards the remains of the Valkyrie over a kilometer away, and the tiny orange dot of the smoldering remains of Maiden.
"Clothesline, take over for a minute," she said over the command freq, then shut it all off and let the tears come. They washed away the sweat on her cheeks, at least for a minute.