YEYEEEESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!! Finally got it done.
The ending sorta had me hung up, so I half-assed finished it....probably shows. Leastways. No garuntees it'll go faster, but I got some of my Crimson Skies stuff done, and my Monster Hunter International story is continuing as I worked through that writer's block!
WOW....I didn't realize it's been nearly a YEAR since I updated.....
Warning: Slight language in this chapter.
Any feedback is appreciated!
"Delta Lance Leader, do you copy?"
Grant glanced around, instinctively tensing at the voice before replying, "Delta Lance Leader. Code Delta, Echo, Alpha Three."
"Alpha Lance. Code Alpha, Bravo Six," came the reply, pegging it as the Blaze's unit leader.
With Clan Wolf getting closer every hour, Hell's Blazes had resorted to a confusing and haphazard mix of coding to authorize each unit. With unnerving accuracy, the clanners had begun anticipating the units movements. This of course led to the serious possibility of a spy----or traitor. And as a last resort, began using radio codes in the off chance of the Clansmen gaining control of their frequency.
"Go ahead Alpha Leader," Grant spoke into the comm.
"Fall back as fast as your can. Charlie is engaging a Star and Toads about a klick behind the convoy and 3 ahead of you. Make sure you don't get caught behind us," Daniele "Hella" O'neill's voice came in abruptly.
Grant's lance consisted of lights and mediums, all jump capable and were acting as a rear sentry to the retreating convoy of techs, important civilians and supplies, all fleeing from the steadily encroaching clan forces.
"Roger Alpha. Falling back," Grant keyed the lance band, "You copy that?"
"Roger Lance Leader."
"Yes sir."
"Aff."
At the last report, Grant smothered the urge to snarl at the speaker. He still disliked the fact that the clanswoman had been assigned to his lance. For some reason the unit's commander had insisted on it. The woman...Kenna was the name, had been firm in the fact that Grant, and Grant solely was her bondsholder, as she called it.
As he throttled up his Clint he again felt himself wishing that Daniele O'neill, the unit's CO had not been able to retain "ownership" of the clanner. He still couldn't figure out what deal she had cut with the Rasalhague leaders, but in his mind, it didn't work out on their end.
The other three mechs in the lance throttled up and began trotting and jumping back as fast as they could safely. The terrain surrounding the small lance was steep, and what few slopes were traversable, were covered in gravel and loose stone.
The lance had barely covered half of the distance to the convoy, when a rock bounced down the hillside in front of them, followed by another, then a small stream of rocks.
Twisting his mech, Grant got a glance uphill just a second too late, seeing the outline of a Puma, . A PPC blast whizzed downhill and impacted Dave Anker's Valkyrie.
"CRAP," was the last word out of Anker's mouth as the light mech's leg bowed and then snapped, falling the mech. Off-balance when it hit, the mech slipped off the level ground and down the mountain's slope. From there it only gained momentum, bouncing down the hillside like a toy truck before coming to a rest at the bottom of the mountain, a twisted pile of metal.
"DAVE!" screamed the second member of the lance, Joel Green.
Shaken, Grant forced himself to ignore the squeamish likelihood of the death and opened a broadband transmission, unable to go through the lengthy process of authorization.
"CLAN MECHS APPROACHING THE CONVOY. PASSIVE SENSORS," he quit the transmission, focusing his attention on his jumpjets as he lept forward, attempting to avoid the incoming hail of fire.
The remaining members of his lance, the clanswoman Kenna, in her Jenner and Joel in his Assassin scattered in the face of overwhelming clan fire. It was only luck they were not annihilated. They had stumbled onto an entire trinary, skirting a mountain ridgeline for cover and running on passive to avoid detection.
The initial destruction of the Valkyrie had only been after careful, deliberate aiming on the part of the Puma's pilot, the passive sensors were no aid in sighting at this distance. That advantage was now rapidly being lost as the clansmen realized their cover was blown and began activating their full sensors.
The Clint landed on solid ground and Grant glanced at his mechs. It looked like two stars of the trinary were ignoring his lance, instead accelerating towards the convoy, while the last star, a pair of Puma's, a Uller, a Fenris and one of the faster medium mechs, a Ryoken, broke off and moved to annihilate his three mechs.
Green's Assassin stumbled slightly as his mech landed. It only took a second to re-orient itself, but the Uller was quick to take advantage, darting ahead of the main force and sinking a large laser into the mech's chest, following it with a blast of four streak missiles, which gouged out holes throughout the body, the Assassin teetered, and just barely righted itself, while the light clan mech streaked behind the still shaken mech and readied for another strike.
"HEY ASSHOLE, OVER HERE," Grant yelled into the external speakers. The clan mech twisted just slightly towards him for a second before turning back to the mech in front of it. It's large laser fired a split second after the PPC round slammed into it's arm, stripping off the armor and sending the Uller's bright, green beam into a rock instead of it's target.
"Didn't expect that did you ya' bastard," he crowed over the com. Grant had been one of the lucky ones, his mech was only one of a handful of the unit that had received the technology upgrades, his was an ER PPC, a pair of pulse lasers and double heat sinks. It flat-out amazed him at what the new stuff could do. A vast improvement over his old AC/5 and twin medium lasers.
The recovered Assassin twisted on the clanner and fired it's medium laser, searing off more armor, although the pair of SRM's missed wildly.
The Uller quickly retreated back to the rapidly advancing clan mechs. By now the ER lasers were beginning to cut through the rapidly darkening evening, missing at the extreme range and high speed, but coming closer every second.
The one advantage his mechs had were jumpjets, which the clans seemed to universally reject. Another jump put them out of range of most of the clan weapons, except for the Puma's.
The ER PPC carriers slowed and began leapfrogging, with one firing, and the other running at breakneck speed while cooling, the blue bolts hitting dangerously close, and forcing them to focus on piloting rather than returning fire.
By now it was only pure luck that no one had been tagged by the vaporizing PPC's.
".........OME IN DAMNIT. THIS IS THE LAST TIME BEFORE I BLOW YOUR FUCKIN' HEAD OFF," a voice roared over the radio. It startled him a moment before he realized he had tuned out the comm's unit, and the inhuman voice was the Danielle.
"Alpha, we're coming in. You're just appearing on our scope," Grant glanced at his sensors, and a small cluser of signals appeared behind him, both red and blue, indicating the skirmish behind him.
"Well get your ass moving," Danielle snapped, "The clanners are hitting us hard, and if you don't get here ASAP, you're getting left behind." A massive hiss in the background signaled a hit on her mech, punctuating her sentence.
Grant glanced at the clan mechs. Seeing the battle now in sight, they had abandoned all caution and were charging across the slopes, firing wildly in-accurate shots on the off-chance of hitting, only intent on closing the range.
The other two mechs had overheard the commander, and with his mech turning, followed it in a mad dash back to the battle, knowing that the 3 light mechs couldn't tangle with twice their weight of mechs, especially clan ones.
What followed was a half kilometer mad dash. From another perspective it may have been amusing, 3 lightweight mechs running and jumping at high speed, with a larger pack of heavier machines chasing, with all the appearance of sheep fleeing from a pack of wolves. Of course the consequences were as harsh as the scene looked as well.
The battle that the trio ran into was the consequence of a 800 kilometer chase across mountains and forests. Hell's Blazes had been assigned a "plum" objective, which no one really believed, as Rasalhague had never been all that receptive of mercenaries. A "Quick and easy as cake", as spoken by the FRR liaison, objective of making a quick drop onto a Clan Wolf occupied planet, snatch off a small bunch of high level personal that had been hiding since the occupation, and as many resistance fighters as they could within the time constraints.
It had probably been business-as-usual, that the liaison had neglected to mention that the planet contained a front-line Cluster that was there temporarily, on top of the garrison the planet normally had.
Which was the reason that the Blaze's had been caught on-planet, with the dropship destroyed, pursued by a Cluster of Wolf battlemechs, and now, with the last reinforced company and a half of Blaze's battlemechs and an assortment of vehicles, duking it out with one and a half trinaries of clan omnimechs and elementals.
"Delta lance, cover the convoy. Keep the toads offa them," O'neill's voice came in short gasps across the radio, "We're a little tied up."
"Copy Alpha," Glancing back, Grant could see why, as her much-modified Cyclops smashed a gauss slug into a Gladiator, only to be on the smashing end of a burst of 50MM shells from the UAC/20.
Somewhat drawn to the battle around him, nonetheless Grant pushed ahead, through it to the convoy. The protection of it's inhabitants was the most important objective. It's loss, would nullify any gains by the battle's win.
Somehow, in the confusion, the vehicles had managed to pull ahead of the main battle, and were pulling through a valley, barely fitting down the narrow road through the tightly clustered forest.
The only thing annoying them was half a dozen elementals, or "Toads" as they were referred to by the Inner Sphere. So far they were only picking at it. The firepower of the four tanks was enough to keep them from doing anything foolish, instead picking away at the armor, slowly bettering their odds.
"Green, cover the right flank," he barked, "Clanner you're with me, we'll try and clean out the left for them."
The Assassin moved to the right, lending it's firepower to the tanks, picking at the elementals without straying from their protective firepower.
Grant's Clint and Kenna's Jenner peeled off to the left, towards a pair of elementals harassing a personal carrier. He snapped off a shot at an elemental, the shot missing, and instead slamming into a massive pine tree, setting the branches ablaze. The Clanswoman's shot went better, as a quartet of red lasers straddled a battlesuit, two of the beams hitting it's torso and sending it into the ground.
One of it's comrades leaned from behind a boulder and fired it's arm-mounted laser. The tiny blue beam hit the Jenner on the arm, but didn't faze the pilot, who instead turned and slammed a laser into the rock providing cover.
An explosion rocked the convoy as a Von Luckner tank, their heaviest, exploded, showering the rest with shrapnel. However that was the final casualty, as the elementals pulled back in the face of overwhelming firepower.
The convoy proceed as quickly as possible, considering the tight manner of the forest, pulling away from the battle.
"Delta Lance. Mechwarrior Green remain with the convoy, I am returning to the battle," Grant swiveled the battlemech back towards the explosions of light behind me, "Mechwarrior Kenna, follow me."
"Should the convoy remain unescorted?" Kenna's voice came on the radio, "Only one battlemech and 3 heavily damaged tanks are not much if elementals or a Clan light mech catch them."
"Just do as I say clanner," Grant snapped at her. The Jenner swiveled a second to glance at his mech then silently continued ahead. The two battlemechs just reached the battle as Blazes mechs began pulling towards the forest's edge.
"Blazes pull back. We're outgunned here," the unit CO called over the radio, "We fall back into the forest, try and use the cover to get out of here as fast as we can."
"We won't be able to," came a harried reply, "They're coming too hard, their numbers are too many."
The Cyclops paused a moment, then a voice came across the radio, "Surrender now mercenaries and you will be allowed to live. Refuse. And you will die." The transmission came just as a final star clomped onto the battlefield, a massive Daishi, accompanied by a Mad Cat, Vulture, and a pair of medium Ryokens.
"You can go fuck yourself clanner," Daniele snarled over the radio, "Jackson. on me." Her Cyclops accelerated directly at the incoming command star, her lancemate's Orion following close behind her, "Blazes, fall back under our cover. If possible fire on the command star."
"What're you doing? That's suicide," snapped Anders, her third lancemate, tilting his Catapult towards the two charging battlemechs.
"She knows," interupted Dennison, her XO. With a resigned voice he continued, "So does Jackson. Let's get the hell out of here and make it worth their death."
Taken by surprise, the clan mechs hesitated a brief moment, deciding whether to break zellbrigen and fire on the charging mechs, or continue their fights. Their hesitation cost them their leader. Even as lasers, PPC's and autocannon rounds tore into the Cyclops, the heavy battlemech slammed into the Daishi. The impact brought both giants down, and it cracked the final shreds of armor surrounding the mercenary's battlemech reactor casing. The resulting fireball engulfed the Clan assault mech and pelted the remainder of it's star with shrapnel.
A few pilots who had been to occupied to fully realize or acknowledge the radio's content now filled the net with chatter, roars of exclamation and anger. The harsh voice of Dave Jackson snapped everyone back to the moment, "GOD DAMNIT YOU PEOPLE MOVE, Get out of here now."
The Orion he piloted was limping along, one actuater on it's right leg destroyed, while the hip was partially welded to the body from slagged metal. Knowing the chances of retreating with the battlemech were next to none, he had followed O'neill's mech into the fight. As the clan forces regrouped and began pressing the attack, he limped his mech towards them.
As Hell's Blazes mechs began pulling back from the battle, running or walking to the cover of the woods, the Orion went the opposite direction. Following the lead of his commander, Jackson engaged the Clan forces head on. The AC/10 belched a 102MM round into a charging Madcat, ripping off one of it's dominant "ears" containing LRM20 launchers.
Grant stared at the burning wreckage containing the Daishi and Cyclops. The unit commander. Their leader. Hi.., "Move it," he heard, as Dennison, now the unit's commander nudged his mech as he passed, "We're getting out of here."
The Orion stood it's ground, pouring rounds into oncoming Clan mechs. Out of missiles, the mech fired it's last round of autocannon ammo, missing the Vulture, but hitting a Fenris behind. The heavy battlemech pivoted quickly and slammed it's medium lasers into a Clan Ryoken as it moved to bypass him and pursue the main group.
Drawing the ire of the remainder of the Wolves, the remaining mechs turned as one and destroyed the Orion. Combined fire from over a dozen mechs annihilated the loner. It exploded in a large fireball......
"Crap," Grant muttered. No use trying to get back to sleep. It was 2:00 AM standard time, 1 AM on this planet. He stood up from his cot and walked to the tent's doorway and flipped open the tent's flap.
Rosice, on the southern edge of the Lyran Alliance was a long ways from the Wolf-occupied planet that he'd just visited in his dream. But the hundreds of light years in between hadn't made the thought's any less distant.
That had been ten years ago. Just before Tukayid stopped the Clan Invasion. It had decimated the unit. Battles before and immediately after his dream had whittled the Hell's Blazes from a powerful unit of a reinforced battalion and three tank companies to a pair of mech lances and four tanks. It had also cost them half of their friends and comrades gained from three years of fighting the clans. Their unit commander, both Daniele and her Executive Officer Dennison.
It had netted him a unit.
Grant turned back in the tent and ran a hand over his face. He still harbored guilt over the unit he had come to command. It wasn't his. He hadn't earned it. It was given to him because after the top four leaders were killed, his mech was the least damaged and he wasn't wounded.
The battle that was playing in his head was also what kept his intense dislike of the Clans alive. It wasn't hatred. He had lost that years ago, after both years of experience alongside his bondswoman Kenna, and working alongside both the Nova Cats and other bonded Clansmen. He knew their beliefs and ideals and his calmer, logical side cooled the prejudiced hatred, but he didn't accept them or give up his feeling of anger to the Clans in general. He couldn't.
The Clans had pursued him. First destroying the Outpost Planetary Militia, and driving him from his home, killing both his father and brother. He'd joined the Hell's Blazes only to have the majority of his new family killed by the Clans, along with his fiancee, and Dennison, a man who had become an uncle figure to him.
He put aside the thoughts of the past. It wasn't no good now. It was better to think ahead. His gut began telling him tomorrow would be a helluva day.