CHAPTER 4
Review Corner
Ulquiorra9000: The Black Dragon Society (or Kokuryu-Kai) is a group of traditionalists within DCMS. They do not like the leadership of Theodore and Hohiro Kurita, and always try to find a way to replace Theodore's and Hohiro's administrations with something that goes in line with their beliefs.
In this story the Black Dragon Society is trying to discredit Hohiro's administration by inciting a "bogus" conflict between Lyran Alliance and Draconis Combine. The real objective of this mission is Hohiro Kurita, not Strantor or Coventry. Noloty, Enrique, Ras Farlow, they are just "pawns". This will be revealed later (much, much later) but hopefully this piece of information will clarify things and make the story easier to follow.
Strantor Military Academy,
Strantor, Lyran Alliance,
November 3, 3073
Noloty paced her Daimyo through the dark savanna, using the stars as the only source of light. Her lance mates, riding on Chimeras in 'reverse vic' formation, spread out 30 meters from each other in an attempt to hide their numbers from Lyran radars. She instructed them to maintain radio silence and run passive sensor, a textbook mission parameters for a raid. Nevertheless, she was not entirely sure if it would make a difference.
The last six hours before the raid, Noloty stayed awake to draft every possible escape plan for her company, or at least her lance. Not that she didn't have confidence in Enrique or her team mates, but the Striking Tigers was an elite unit with years of front-line experience. Her company, with the exception of Chu-I Enrique, had never seen a real combat. She didn't like Enrique's decision to gamble with the target of opportunity. She would rather wait until the Striking Tigers left Strantor. But it was not up to her. Enrique decided they would do it. The least she could do was to prepare herself and her lance, in case things didn't go their way.
Strantor Academy appeared like a storm in the horizon: dark and black and stretched out as far as the eyes could see. The outskirt of the training fields was encircled by concrete wall with laser and ballistic turrets scattered on the upper side. The Chimeras had jump jets. Noloty's Daimyo didn't have that luxury. She had to break through the wall to get inside the complex.
So as soon as she reached 600 meters, she fired her PPC. The particle bolt illuminated the savanna for a split second, and charged the bulk of the wall. Static electricity crackled upon impact, and concrete rubbles flew every which way, but the wall still stood. Noloty waited for her PPC to recycle, a little less than 550 meters away, and blasted the wall again. More concrete bricks filled the air, yet the wall stood unbroken.
At 500 meters the turrets started working. Laser strands and ballistic tracers lit up the dark plain. The Chimeras broke formation and crisscrossed their course, but two of them caught laser beams flush on the torso. The 40-tonners staggered and started falling behind.
"Light them up!" Noloty said while keeping her crosshair on the wall. Cannon shells whizzed all around the Daimyo. One laser beam grazed her shoulder. But she kept her course, bombarding the wall with blasts after blasts, carving a hole at the concrete slab.
The Chimeras traded fire with the armorless turrets. Just like in countless simulation scenarios, they used the muzzle flashes as bullseyes. One by one the turrets went up in flames like beacons that illuminated the wall.
"Jump over the wall and destroy any oppositions on the other side!" Noloty barked her order. "I have to get myself a door!" The Chimeras broke into a sprint and took to the sky in three pillars of smoke. As they crossed over the wall, tracers of laser and ballistic lit up the night. The sound of explosions and metal grinding against metal told her that the Lyrans were far from being caught off guard.
Noloty was 50 meters away from the wall, and she started to see through the perforated concrete. Her relentless bombardment paid off; the wall grew weaker with each strike. Noloty put everything on her weapons and mashed the alpha strike button. A section of the wall crumbled in a big cloud of debris. Noloty dove headlong into the black haze, and when she cleared it, she was inside the complex, right in the middle of a pitched firefight.
Half a dozen Lyran cadets in Commandos and Sentinels swarmed the Chimeras, gnawing and clawing at their armor with sharp laser shots. The Chimeras held their ground and managed to dispatch a Commando and a Sentinel, but they lost too much armor, and even if they didn't succumb to the cadets' assault, they had nothing left for the next round.
Noloty activated her C3 computer and linked her mech with the rest of the Chimeras. She lined up her crosshair with a Sentinel, the more lethal of the Lyrans. Her twin lasers preceded a torrential missile shower from the Chimeras. As many as 25 warheads exploded on the torso, already damaged from the shootout. It didn't take long for the Sentinel to crumble in blistering shards.
The remaining Lyran cadets took the hint from Noloty's maneuver and ganged up on her Daimyo. But without C3 network, Noloty easily broke their synergy. She fired her PPC on the nearest Commando, knocking the wind out of it. Then she switched target to the other Sentinel and linked her radar with her lance mates. Immediately the Sentinel glowed in red as laser spears stabbed it from every direction. Wobbling heavily, the Sentinel made a last-ditched effort to return fire, but its cannon shells sailed harmlessly past Noloty's cockpit. Noloty punished it with a debilitating double-laser blast to the torso, followed by similar shots by the Chimeras. The Sentinel fell backward and its torso burst like roman candles.
Seeing that the threat had been neutralized, Noloty thought it was time for her objective. She set the course to the power generator. "Kurama-Ni, Kurama-Yon, finish the Lyran cadets! Kurama-San, on me! We'll destroy the generator!"
"Ryokai!" her lance mates replied almost in unison. One Chimera broke off and joined Noloty, the other two engaged the remaining Commandos. With one Commando heavily damaged, Noloty was comfortable splitting her lance so she throttled up toward the power generator, located on the main building complex. Two Whitworths tried to intercept them from the right, firing their long range missiles in a wide arc. Noloty fired her PPC, forcing the Whitworth to take evasive maneuvers, then sped up toward the power generator. The Whitworths retraced their steps and fired desperate shots at Noloty and her lance mate, but the Kuritans were already out of range. The missiles exploded harmlessly on the grass.
Coming out of the training field, Noloty and her lance mate snaked between buildings to avoid turrets until the power generator came within sight. She locked on the target and fired everything. Her Chimera lance mate followed her steps, firing everything it had at the building. Waste heat from the energy weapons turned the cockpit into a boiler room, but Noloty overrode the shutdown procedure. The Daimyo did not have ammunition, so as long as she could endure the heat, she would be fine. She fired her weapons as fast as they could recycle, overcharging the capacitors sparks fizzled transmission lines. The Chimera emptied its missiles tubes, and half of the building disintegrated in a brilliant fireworks.
"Nice work, Kurama-San!" Noloty chimed. She switched to Enrique's private frequency, and smiled as the electronic signatures for the turrets disappeared from her radar. "Kyuubi-Ichi, this is Kurama-Ichi. Target's destroyed. Do you need help?" She was about to turn her mech around when she noticed something powering up behind Enrique's lance. It was a battlemech for sure, but it was different from the other Lyran battlemechs. The heat signature was not Lyran's. She let her computer identified the heat signature, and her eye almost popped out of the sockets.
"Mad Cat? Who uses Clan omnimech for training?" She hailed Enrique's lance. "Kyuubi lance, be advised, a Mad Cat just powered up on your six, now moving to your direction!" Then another mech powered up, then another one, then another one. "Kyuubi lance, you have a Shadow Cat on your two, Uziel on your four, Cougar on your…"
Then suddenly, she realized that her nightmare just came true. "Holy Shit, those are not training cadre! Kyuubi lance, you are being boxed in by Striking Tigers! Get out of there now! Now! Now!" She switched to her lance mates. "Kurama lance, rally on me! Kyuubi lance is in trouble!" She maxed out her throttle and radioed the other team. "Kitsune lance, Kyuubi lance is getting pinned! Disengage and make best speed to the HPG Uplink!"
The other team replied, but Noloty was too nervous to catch it. Her heart pounded in her ears, watching the four Striking Tigers omnimechs – except the Uziel - moving to close all exits, trapping Enrique's lance at the HPG site. "Enrique!" she cried out, not bothering using his call sign anymore. "Get out of there now! Please, please, please, get out!"
At the HPG site, Enrique went directly toward the direction of the Cougar and linked his C3 with his lance mates. If they could dispatch the Cougar before Striking Tigers' bigger mechs could get a shot at them, they had a good chance to escape. "Firing line at the HPG! Fire at will on the Cougar!"
The three Chimeras formed a line moving toward the Cougar, still covered behind a building, while Enrique took a place behind the Chimera 'wall', ready to singe the Cougar at the first opportunity. He cursed at his situation. Noloty warned him about this. If he didn't ignore her, he didn't have to resort to these circumstances.
Unfortunately for Enrique, the Mad Cat found an opening between buildings and sent a school of missiles through the tight space. Half of the missiles exploded on concrete structures, but those which went through smashed into the thin rear armor of the Daimyo. Enrique groaned as the Daimyo jolted. His monitors burst into shards, and sparks fizzled from every crevasse on the console. Klaxons and sirens blared on top of each other, and the blinking alarm light made its way through the thick smoke, turning his head upside down. No doubt that his C3 network was broken.
"Oh My God! Enrique! Hang on, I'm on my way!" Noloty's voice sorted through the madness. "Kurama lance! Open fire at the Mad Cat!"
But Enrique knew he was beyond help. That missile strike damaged his gyro. If he could conjure up a miracle to pull his Daimyo up, it wouldn't make over 40 kph. He would just drag everybody down with him. "Negative!" he said gravely. "All units, abort mission! Make your best speed to Nav Point Zeta!"
"No! No! No! We will make it!" Noloty was in denial. She found a firing solution and hit the Mad Cat with her PPC. Her lance mate launched its own salvo, an unadulterated missile volley at the right flank of the big omnimech. The Mad Cat, which was moving for the kill, was forced to turn left to avoid Noloty's next salvo. "All hands! Assist Kyuubi-ichi, double-time!"
Enrique's lance mates turned to help their lance commander but the Shadow Cat jumped over a building and fired its Gauss rifle midair. A laser-laden arm flew spinning while the owner, a Chimera from Enrique's lance, lurched sideways, desperately compensating the sudden loss of mass. The Cougar pulled off similar maneuver, clearing the building and stabbed another Chimera from the back. The Chimera wobbled as black smoke bled from the gutted right torso. The Cougar's laser spears incinerated whatever missiles still stored inside the damaged right torso, and the Chimera roared in a blinding fireball.
"Dammit Noloty! Take the company to Nav Point Zeta before it's too late!" Enrique managed to straighten up his Daimyo. "I'll hold them as long as I can!"
"No!" Noloty's voice broke. "Not without you!" She inspected Enrique's mech, and her hands trembled, watching the Daimyo quickly succumbed to its damages. "Exit your mech! I'll carry you to Nav Point Zeta!"
"There is no time!" Enrique turned his Daimyo around. "You were right; we shouldn't have considered killing the Lyran officer. But it was on me, so let me be the only one who go down from it. The company is yours, Noloty. Now go to Nav Point Zeta before you lose anymore lance mates!"
"Enrique…"
"That's an order!" Enrique's voice grew ragged. "Know that I will always lo…"
The Uziel sprung into the open, right in front of the limping Daimyo. Its barreled arms flashed in cerulean glory.
"NOOO!" Noloty screamed as blue charges enveloped Enrique's Daimyo, moments before it turned into a geyser of burning metals. She froze in her seat as her brain denied what her eyes were seeing. Her body trembled so violently her safety harness rattled. She tried to convince herself that Enrique survived the blast, that maybe, just maybe, he ejected at the right time and landed somewhere on the field. She turned her active radar frantically to find Enrique's locator beacon on his ejection seat, only to realize the only signals she traced were battlemech's heat signatures.
Slowly her common sense seeped in, and her denial sizzled, like Enrique's fiery remains that gradually turned to ember. Enrique didn't eject, and even if he did, the burning shrapnel would've killed him. No one could escape an explosion like that.
Coming to grips, Noloty observed the battlefield, and her throat clenched upon learning their situation. Kitsune lance arrived late, only to face the wrath of the Mad Cat, a battlemech that was considered to be the perfect war machine. The lead mech of Kitsune lance quickly went down in flames. It was the bald mechwarrior with the blue tattoo, one that traded blows with her early in their training. They rarely interacted with each other, and the times that they did were filled with animosity. Yet he was her 'brother in arms', and Noloty's heart sank watching his Daimyo exploded.
Now Noloty's mech was the only Daimyo left, and she was certain the Striking Tigers would go after her to render the Chimeras leaderless. There was only one way out of this ordeal. Noloty lined up her crosshair with the Mad Cat then buried her particle beam on the omnimech's right torso. The omnimech slanted left, then retaliated with cannon shot to the leg. Noloty gunned her jets, bringing her mech out of the Mad Cat's murderous volley.
And then, she spotted the Uziel, sneaking behind a building to take pot shots at her. Vengeance surged through her veins. She put her crosshair squarely on the Uziel's chest then linked her C3 with the rest of the team.
"All hands… kill the sonofabitch!"
