Raiders of the Lost Urbie part 2
Anderson Continent
Dumassas
The Periphery
Date unknown
Dumassas was 78% water with several stringy landmasses, with only the continents Anderson and Leon near the equator good for permanent habitation with a mean equatorial temperature of 19 degrees. Saint-Robert City was the world capital. It was an irradiated ruin.
The Union DropShip SLS CLAY landed about eighty kilometers northwest of Saint-Robert city and disgorged its company of Mechs - a full three lances. Carefully they followed the directions provided to a small snow-covered valley. The Mule DropShip FLDS BARTERTOWN remained in holding orbit. Two Eagle Heavy Fighters launched from the Union to provide air cover.
Edward Stimson raised the hand of his Devish BattleMech. At 55 tons with a top speed of 86 km/h, it had a similar speed profile as his preferred 30-ton Valkyrie, but with a heavier load in missile fire support role. His Command Lance included two Valkyries and a 40-ton Clint.
There were no changes made to the loadout of 2nd Recon company, which consisted of a command lance and a strike lance. Captain Raymond Allwine of the Command Lance piloted a 55-ton Wolverine, with Jack Finsrud's 40-ton anti-infantry Vulcan BattleMech, Terry Little's 50-ton Enforcer armed with a Large Laser and an Autocannon/10 for anti-Mech work, and Barbara Mosley's fast 45-ton Phoenix Hawk to round out the lance.
Strike Lance was led by Lickin Graspkoot, and yes that was his real name, piloting a 35-ton Ostscout, with a 30-ton Valkyrie, a 20-ton Stinger, and 20-ton Wasp; all of the Mechs could easily hit 96 to 120kph.
"Still nothing on sensors, Major," responded Lt. Gus Avery in the Eagle ASF as he circled the skies above.
"Maintain Combat Air Patrol," Maj. Stimson ordered. He then turned around to address his company, waving the Mech's right arm for emphasis. "Pick a side and search, but be careful. If I wanted to hide something, I wouldn't lay booby traps to tell people there's something there. But if they already know there's something there, I'd want my traps to start activating to make them fuck off right quick."
The two lances separated and walked slowly into the glacier-carved valley, his command lance following.
Eventually the valley opened out into a bend, with one following the source of the thin river and the other leading down into a fjord with a series of oxbow lakes.
"This looks suspicious, sir," said Captain Allwine. "If we were the SLDF, and I wanted to hide launchers for a DropShip, I'd hide them under water."
"Good point. Then we should be double careful," replied Maj. Stimpson.
-.
The three lances went down the left downhill bend until they reached the first lake. They kept an eye on their magscan sensors. Water could also easily hide minefields or sentry turrets. The waters looked crystal clear, reflecting the sky perfectly, only here and there showing the stones beneath. Maj. Stimson broadcasted the authentication signal he was given on open radio frequency.
Nothing.
Gingerly the twelve mechs walked in single file around the edge of the waters until they reached the next lake. Maj. Stimpson broadcast again. This time he spoke "Authenticate Stone Eggplant Latitude Mango, Three, Three, One, Over." The authentication signal was composed of a digitally encrypted string and a passcode.
He received a brief electronic bleep, and nothing else.
This did imply they were on the right track. The lance moved to the next lake, and beyond it a deep fjord going all the way to the ocean.
"Authenticate Stone Eggplant Latitude Mango, Three, Three, One, Over."
Three short bleeps was the response. The surface of the lake rippled. Something large and rectangular rose out of the water. It was a signboard on a pole.
The lance warily readied their weapons and locked on. Major Stimpson zoomed in. Then he sighed.
"What's it?" someone asked idly.
"Clear the frequency on non-essential chatter," said Captain Allwine. Then he zoomed in with his own sensors, and then also sighed heavily.
The sign said:
- TURN AROUND.
- YOU ARE GOING
- THE WRONG WAY.
"Well that's encouraging," said Jack Finsrud.
"Wait, sir!" Barbara Mosley spoke up quickly. "What if it's a bluff?"
Major Stimson paused. He didn't think the SLDF would play games like that, but said again "Authenticate Stone, Eggplant, Latitude, Mango, Three, Three, One, Over."
The signboard rotated.
On the other side was:
- SLDF AUTHENTICATED.
- THIS IS NOT THE WAY.
Then his radio received a synthetic voice replying "Authenticated. Star League Defense Forces Three Hundred Thirty First Battle Regiment. Authentication code Sonic. Tails. Cherry. Diamond. Pearl. Respond."
He replied "Authenticate, Hedgehog. Fox. Rumbler. Ruby. Sapphire."
The voice returned "Accepted. Primary defenses deactivated. Turn around. You are going the wrong way."
The signboard retreated back into the blank depths.
"All right. Turn around…" the Major said. "Let's get this done."
As the twelve mechs moved, Jack Finsrud said over comms "Captain, permission to engage in nonessential chatter over the lance frequency?"
Capt. Allwine clicked on his radio to confer with the Major, and then came back with "You are clear to proceed."
So Jack clicked his radio to the 'open' mode and said "Like I was saying, you can't just apply it as a metaphor. The Avatar does have strong similarity to the SLDF as a peacekeeper among wildly different nations, yes. Sure, the Fire Nation is easy to conflate with the Draconis Combine, but the Earth Nation isn't a clear-cut stand-in for the Lyran Commonwealth or the Capellan Confederation. The Air Nomads and the Water Tribe don't have any parallels to what we see today.
"That more than anything proves this was made way back during the Terran Alliance days... "
-.
-.
The Mechs went uphill until the valley narrowed to the point Mechs could only pass one at a time. Then it opened out again to a small clearing in front of a waterfall.
"Oh, the hidden base behind the waterfall!" Barbara chirped. "That's a classic!"
Major Stimson spoke again: "Authenticate Stone, Eggplant, Latitude, Mango, Three, Three, One, Over."
A voice, no longer the clearly artificial generic female voice of a computer, but a male one filled with energy but still containing that electronic buzz. "Eridani Light Horse, I presume?"
"This is Major Stimson of the Eridani Light Horse, yes. Who is this?"
"This is Robotnik. Did you bring my son?"
Stimson let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Oh thank whoever, they had not wasted five whole goddamn months just getting to this abandoned rock.
"No. As you requested, he is busy with Combat Training."
"Excellent. If the Eridani Light Horse could not even fulfill such a simple requirement, then there's no hope for their competence to handle the rest of my gifts. Hang on. For now, let me welcome you to SLDF EXPEDITIONARY SUPPORT FACILITY PORT STONE."
The ground rumbled beneath them. Then it began to hitch, and with a metallic groan, sink.
"Holy shit, this whole thing is an elevator!" Barbara squealed excitedly.
Twelve mechs descended into darkness. In the distance they heard hard mechanical clangs of flood lights turning on. Red eyes watched them from the dark. As they turned on the driving lights of their Mechs, they found gun turrets recessed into the shaft. The gunsights followed them as the elevator descended, but the guns failed to deploy.
Then, the view opened up.
Behind the armored glass walls of the elevator they saw a massive semi-spherical cavern. Clang. Clang. Clang. The lights turned on to reveal its full size. Approximately three hundred meters underground, and almost a kilometer wide, this was a hemispherical geofront - an excavated space made for habitation and/or manufacturing.
There was a section that elongated out like a stadium, then a rounded area at the end with walls that sloped up before converging into a dome, oddly evocative of the Great Roman Colosseum.
It was large enough to have its own indoor park, it was large enough to park Overlord-sized dropships and still have twice the height to spare, it was large enough to have its own micro-climate. The rows of buildings laid out in the grid gave the illusion of deeper space. Walls and blast shields surrounded the spaceport area at the far end. The roof of the cavern was a smooth white dome, and subtle blue lighting gave the impression of a sky.
Just the sight of it made their hearts skip the beat. Some of them shivered with uncontrollable emotion. This place -
Seven great dropships sat in a half-circle on the far end on rail platforms that could move them each in their thousands of tons onto a launch pad elevator.
Utilitarian buildings crowded the side walls of the base, but laid out in a sensible grid surrounding the central space. Everything was painted a clean and pristine white, shining under the halogen lights. The sight of it all was dominated by the symbol laid into the ferrocrete at the center of the facility - a bright white four-pointed star with two elongated rays, and four more rays set at corner angle behind, and inside a black sunburst of negative space with a center white dot.
The Cameron Star.
The icon of the Star League.
A group of distinctively shaped Mechs stood in formation on the way to the starport area. Eight Mechs per section separated into two four-unit rank, eight sections long, that was sixty-four mechs standing at attention.
The elevator came to a stop.
A small spherical walker machine waited at the foot of the elevator. Painted bright red on top and black in the lower half, it looked up at the war machines and waved with its arms ending in oversized hands.
"ERIDANI LIGHT HORSE! WELCOME, LOYAL CHILDREN OF THE STAR LEAGUE!." The robotic walker spun around as if dancing. "EVERYTHING YOU SEE HERE BELONGS TO YOU NOW."
"Holy shit!" it was unknown which MechWarrior gasped, but it was a sentiment they all shared. "Seriously?!"
"SINCERELY."
"You knew about this…" Jack hissed at Barbara through the comms.
Barbara looked around, boggling. On each side of the receiving area were two blank walls that had images projected onto them from below. On the left was the symbol of the SLDF, below that a map of the entire united Star League right before the usurpation of Amaris. Upon the other, the plumed helmet of the XIX Army and below that the six-pointed star of the LXV Corps. Nineteenth Army, Sixty-Fifth Corps, a record of a time when a single Army like this designed to keep the peace in the Taurian Concordat was composed of a mere one hundred and forty regiments.
In this underground city, for much of his childhood, Devlin Stone lived here with no other company than his father and some robots to simulate social interaction.
"Not like this. I didn't imagine this…"
-.
-.
The Mechs disembarked from the elevator, which after thirty seconds detecting no weight began to rise up again with a fitful groan.
Nearby were rows of Mech gantries where MechWarriors could park their BattleMechs. The small spherical walker hopped back to give them room. Major Stimson walked his Dervish over to one of them, and the pad beneath his feet rotated the whole Mech to face the other way. The Mech Bay detected the location of his hatch, and lowered a walkway to the proper height.
Stimson took off the heavy bucket-like neurohelmet from his head and tried to calm the shaking in his hands by clenching them repeatedly into fists. It did not help.
He popped the cockpit hatch and exited his mech. The air in this facility tasted faintly like ozone. He paused standing on the walkway for a moment. It was high enough that he could still see the shining Cameron Star behind the rows of lostech Urbanmechs standing as if on parade.
The Mechs were irrelevant for the moment.
This was the Star League. This place - was a relic of their glory.
This place was glory itself.
As a man of the Eridani Light Horse, he thought it should feel like coming home - but he felt like an intruder trespassing onto a holy place.
He raised a hand and gestured for the rest of the lance to disembark but for one lance to remain in their Mechs at combat ready.
The walkway lowered so he could step off, and he faced the spherical walker. Its bulbous head smoothly faded onto its body, discernible only by a pair of goggles, a large hook nose, and a cartoonishly oversized bushy red mustache.
"Major Stimson, I presume?"
Stimson faced the walker and saluted. There were rules on saluting civilians and specialists, many would have equivalent rank in the SLDF, but none of that mattered to him right there. It was the least he felt he owed this man. If he was one. It looked fat, but this close and towering over him at eight feet tall, that walker was large enough to contain a person.
"Major Edward Stimson, Eridani Light Horse, 121st Regiment, 6th Recon Battalion, sir!" He lowered his hand. "Doctor Robotnik, I presume?"
"You presume correctly, but not all that accurately. That is not important right now. First of all-
The walls groaned and roared like the pack of savage beasts as a watershed started to drain. The ground trembled beneath their feet. Ferrocrete landing pads were exposed as the silt in the lake bed was sluiced away.
The mountain broke open. The facility's primary protection was its secrecy. Once exposed, there were only two possibilities - the DropShips would be able to launch and escape under the shadow of anti-orbital guns, or they would suffer conventional invasion.
"The ECM and orbital defenses have been disengaged. You can contact your ASFs and DropShips to make your landings now."
A group of egg-shaped robots in butler paint schemes carrying trays of food and drink - specifically cola and heated SLDF rations - approached.
"It's been a long journey for you, my friends! Ease off, take a dump, mi casa es su casa."
-.
-.
FLDS BARTERTOWN
Mule-class DropShip
In orbit above Dumassas
same time
"Are we there yet?"
"I WILL MURDER YOU."
"Captain, please don't. The blood is going to get everywhere in zero-g." The pilot started the engines for a landing approach. "ETA to waypoint, nine minutes."