CHAPTER 6
Pummelo, Outworlds Alliance,
May 17, 3074
The Okita's plant was cleverly camouflaged on the mountain. The structures were painted in white and dark green two-tone scheme to blend with the snow-covered vegetation. The turret grid was quite dense; a mix of laser, ballistic, and missile turrets covered the ground in staggered formation. The turret control tower sat toward the back end of the plant, near the power generator. Both were accessible from a small pass overlooking the plant. One could only wonder why the Okita never bothered to make this passage unavailable, as the enemy could use it to stab the plant from behind.
Whatever the reason was, Neptune was determined to make the Okita pay for that mistake.
"Alright, people, the plan is not to get shot by artificial intelligence, so run passive sensor and stay on the pass, no matter how juicy the targets look," Neptune broadcast his briefing through general frequency. "There will be plenty of time for fun. But now, we have to take the turret grid offline. Otherwise there'll be a hell lot of shooting before we even get to our main targets."
"Complied," Sgt. Mogami responded.
"Yes Sir," Alec tuned in.
"Roger," Joezen added.
"Aye aye, Sir," Ian followed suit.
"Single column, weapons hot but hold fire until we reach Nav Point Alpha," Neptune said before pushing up the throttle. His Jagermech made a large arc encompassing the plant complex. He brought his mech very close to the ridge so the enemy radar didn't pick up its heat signature. His lance mates followed his lead. Mogami's lance did the same thing, trailing the support lance by 50 meters. They were just paramilitary, but their discipline as a unit was commendable, and Neptune was thoroughly impressed.
Fifteen minutes passed and the eight-some arrived at the end of the pass: a shallow cliff overlooking the back end of the complex. The power generator was a mere 300 meters from where they stood, chugging along to deliver electricity to power the entire complex. Multiple heat signature from hostile units scattered around the half-click radius. The defensive pattern was no joke; there was something valuable on that base. And that fact pumped adrenaline into Neptune's veins.
"Alright people, listen up," Neptune aligned his crosshair with the generator. "Take a solid hard lock on the generator bearing 10 o'clock. Fire your biggest weapons and don't let up until the building goes down, because when we start shooting, the turrets will start looking for us. I want them offline before they can open fire at us. Got it?"
A chorus of 'Yes Sir' reverberated in his comset. The Jagermechs formed up on him and raised their arms with a smorgasbord of ballistic weapons aimed squarely at the generator's broad side. A Gauss rifle from the Royal Sentinel, a Plasma rifle from the Clint, a Heavy PPC from the Cicada, and 5-pack missile launcher from the Assassin joined his arsenal.
"Ready on my mark… Fire!" Neptune roared. The dusk turned broad daylight with muzzle flashes. Laser strands, ballistic tracers, and missile exhausts lit up the complex. Fireballs blanketed the generator, splitting foot-thick concrete walls. It didn't take long until the building collapsed, and the machinery it shielded erupted in a geyser of scorching metal. A black plume of smoke mushroomed where the generator was a few seconds ago.
As the generator disappeared into a cloud of smoke and dust, half of the hostile units disappeared from the radar. Neptune quickly switched to active radar, watching a dozen Vedette tanks marched toward his position with murderous intention. Two Dragons and two Kintaro's brought in their heavy firepower on the rear flank, a complement to the stinging UAC5 of the Vedette swarm.
"Break and attack! Fire at will!" Neptune yelled.
Two Vedette closed in on Neptune's position. Their cannon rounds ricocheted on the Jagermech's can-like upper body. The armor dulled the shots but Neptune wouldn't just shrug it off. Outdated and outgunned by just about any mech in existence, Vedette was most dangerous when they worked together in large number. He knew first-hand how dangerous it was to be the receiving end of those 5-class ultra-autocannons. He had to disrupt their synergy before they ganged up on one target.
Neptune swung left and peppered one Vedette with his own UAC5. His depleted-uranium rounds bounced off the Vedette's hull. The Vedettes tracked his movement, but he kept moving in circle, putting one Vedette in front of the other, thus negating their two-pronged attack. The Vedettes tried desperately to get away of the gridlock, but Neptune fired his lasers at the Vedette closest to him in quick succession. The blocky armor plating sagged, exposing the internal structure and engine. Neptune pressed his assault with a long burst of UAC5. Half of his shots cracked the hull open and torched the ammunition bins. Fifty tons of metal flew into million pieces.
As the other Vedette crisscrossed its way to evade burning debris, Neptune set his crosshair on a Dragon. It was the -7N model, with a powerful Gauss Rifle on its right arm, AC/5 on its left, a Medium laser on its left shoulder, and a MRM10 right underneath the cockpit. Such a fairly new design in a periphery planet like Pummelo told him that the mechwarrior might be an important person in Okita's hierarchy, something Neptune came for in the first place.
The Dragon launched its missiles at Neptune's Jagermech. Neptune hung right, missing most of the shots in a cloud of white smoke. Two that hit his upper left arm ruptured but failed to breach the armor plating. The Dragon followed up with its class-5 autocannon. Neptune continued evading shots to the right, but caught one on the left shoulder nonetheless. A brutal punch wobbled his mech, a direct outcome of catching a Gauss slug squarely on the torso. The armor stopped the projectile, but only for this once.
Still off balance, Neptune answered with his pulse lasers. Bright energy strands danced in the air before liquefying several layers of armor plating on the torso. The Dragon shook off the strike, but Neptune's subsequent strike buckled the Kuritan. His twin large laser swiped another half-ton of armor. Bubbly metal drooped as the 60-ton mech shifted from leg to leg, trying to find compromise between the two.
Neptune realized that while his Jagermech had 10 tons over the Dragon, the Kuritan hit harder. That Gauss slug already marked his torso armor once. Another hit in the same quadrant, or any other quadrant for that matter, would give him trouble. Supported by a plethora of deadly ballistics, the Dragon -7N was a force to be reckoned with. He ran a few scenarios to deal with the bruiser, in his head, and slugging out was not one of them.
The Dragon found poise and tagged the Jagermech with a missile salvo, but Neptune backed up his mech, taking cover behind a large building. Half of the missiles hammered the corner of the building. Two of them managed to get past that barrier and hit his right arm. Neptune winced; the Jagermech's main power hinged on its arms. Losing one early in the fight would be catastrophic. He backed up his mech further just as the Dragon sent a flight of armor-piercing rounds to him. The shells ravaged the building further, but none of them touched the Jagermech.
Neptune prepared for a counterattack but the Vedette – one he engaged earlier – crept behind him and sank a good salvo onto his back. He groaned as the Jagermech jerked forward. Sirens stabbed his ears with warning messages he already knew. The thin rear armor breached under the backstabbing, and the next salvo would definitely crush some heat sinks. Or worse, the gyro.
Lucky for him, he killed the other Vedette a few minutes ago.
Growling in mad urgency, Neptune quickly pivoted his mech and fired his UAC5 as soon as the pesky tank fell into his firing arc. His rushed shot flew a few meters above the tank's turret, but it forced the Vedette to move to a position more favorable to him. His next volley – a tandem of large laser beams – turned the carapace red. The Jagermech was creeping up toward shutdown sequence but Neptune ignored the heat, firing another salvo of depleted uranium. The Vedette caught fire, and even though the vehicle still had some fight left, the flame warranted the crew to climb out and let the tank adrift in livid fire.
Meanwhile, the Dragon used Neptune's momentary loss of focus to position itself in the open. When Neptune realized what had happened, it was too late. The Dragon's firepower came like a tidal wave, hitting the Jagermech with unwavering savagery. The Gauss slug and missiles reduced the Jagermech's left torso into scrap. The armor-piercing ballistics tore a deep gorge on its left leg. And the laser melted whatever armor left on the center torso. Neptune's head was thrown every which way. If it were not because of the harness, he would've flown right through the canopy.
The Dragon circled the Jagermech while waiting for the weapons to recycle. Neptune knew he only had a few seconds before the Dragon launched another salvo. He pulled his joystick hard, swinging his mech to the opposite direction, then fired all lasers. Waste heat spiked inside the cockpit, and his HUD screamed in protest, warning him of ammo explosion. But Neptune simply ripped his comset off his head and continued throwing bombs. His autocannons rattled, spitting cannon rounds down the range. Smoke and muzzle flashes obscured his vision, but he knew he hit something when a flare of flames burst in front of him.
The heat was almost unbearable, but Neptune wouldn't give in to shutdown sequence. He overrode the computer and backed up his mech, waiting for his weapons to recharge. When the smoke subsided, a most pleasing scenery greeted him. The Dragon was on its knees, with its right arm amputated just below the shoulder. Neptune's berserk shots had hit its Gauss rifle. The Kuritan tried to pull up, but the loss of mass – and its main weapon - proved to be too much to compensate.
Neptune took a swing toward the Dragon's rear and plinked the Dragon's thin armor. His autocannon rounds shredded the metal hide and ground the conduits between the reactor and the engine. As the engine lost power, the Dragon went limp before slumping, face flat on the ground.
Neptune was careful enough not to unload on the Dragon, because he wanted the information from the mechwarrior. A couple of Vedette rolled over, trying to give aid to the downed mechwarrior. Neptune fired his lasers in a brilliant display. The turret of the closest Vedette turned bubbly red. The Vedette threw a slew of ballistics at his mech, and Neptune felt it in his stomach, as every blow to the Jagermech's torso rattled the cockpit hard. He kept mashing the pulse laser triggers, raining down laser strands at the Vedette. The near freezing air temperature helped him a bit. The Vedette was forced to turn around, but its lance mate hurled a well-placed salvo at the Jagermech, threatening to breach its arm.
"Anybody free?" Neptune twisted aside and moved his mech out of the way for it couldn't handle the heat any higher without risking ammo explosion. "I have 2 Vedettes on my two. I need them gone!"
"I'm on it!" Clover's missiles arced from across the field, soaring over the war machines from both sides, then pierced the top carapace of the tank. The Vedette swiveled its turret to deal with the threat but Ian's Jagermech slammed home a Gauss slug into the hull, stopping it dead in its track. The other Vedette fired its UAC5 in a long burst but the Assassin's Artemis-augmented missiles rained down on the Vedette's weakened armor. The tank caught fire, and the crews perished in the flame before they could escape the death trap.
Losing assets at an alarming rate, the Okita/Yakuza defenders rounded up for one last 'Banzai charge', but the mercenaries and Davion loyalists used pincher movement to box the Kuritans in an inescapable entrapment. Sustaining fire from every direction, the Kuritan defense soon collapsed, and its war machines were left charred hulk on the snowy ground, scattered between buildings.
Neptune approached the fallen Dragon cautiously, thumb on his pulse laser trigger. The Dragon didn't show any sign of movement, yet the cockpit seemed intact. "Sergeant, check the Dragon, see if the mechwarrior is still alive," he called Mogami.
"On it," the sergeant parked her battered, bruised, but otherwise operational Sentinel next to his Jagermech. She enlisted her lance mates before raiding the cockpit of the Dragon. Two of them slipped into the cockpit then dragged a kicking, writhing, squirming mechwarrior who happened to be a female, evident from the long strands of hair whipping out of her neurohelmet.
"She's a wild cat but we got her!" Mogami said as her lance mates pinned the mechwarrior to the ground.
"Alright, let's bring her inside for interrogation," Neptune grinned. "Let's hear what she's got to say about this whole Yakuza deal."