Retrieval? Armor Up Boys and Girls
This Chapter is Dedicated to Sophie, my Co-Writer's most adorable Blue Heeler, who passed away May 18th, 2023.
SLS Huntress
Interior of Shield World 0459 Etran Harborage
Shipboard time 1310
Paladin strapped himself down into Stormwing as the cockpit sealed around him and his passenger. Across from him, he watched as the cockpit of Templar's Marauder was sealed around him. The Huntress was minutes away from a combat drop of Knight Lance directly on top of a Forerunner depot held by the forces of the Covenant that had been waging a war against the UNSC for the past six years. Reconnaissance flights over the area had revealed a number of Covenant anti-air batteries preventing a hot-drop by Pelicans, along with Covenant armor, so that meant an ODST deployment was also a poor option. As such, Knight Lance was being deployed. He bit back the phantom taste of blood he associated with war, and brought Stormwing's reactor up from the cold depths of slumber into familiar neural handshake rushed through him, and the mech's senses became his own.
Shaking off the euphoria he turned his head to look over his shoulder at his passenger. Each member of Knight lance was carrying a marine from the Huntress as a passenger for this mission. This was a retrieval mission, and part of retrieval was bringing along someone to grab whatever you were trying to retrieve. The marine Corporal strapped into Stormwing's jumpseat gave him a thumbs up to indicate he was all good to go. There was too much noise for anyone to hear anything except over radio comms, and the marine didn't have his radio plugged into the jumpseat yet.
Jason signaled to the Corporal that his radio was unplugged by motioning with his right hand by his hip, next to where the radio port on the jumpseat was positioned. Once the marine plugged in his radio, and the light in his HUD lit up green, Jason asked his first question for the marine. "Your climbing line is all secure, Corporal?"
"Yessir," the marine answered with a pat against his left hip. The marine was carrying a laser pistol and a General Dynamics LGS-57 SMG, the same gun that Jason had secured in webbing on the left side of Stormwing's Command Couch. Below the pistol, Colonel Watkin could see the coil of rope that the marine would use to descend from the mech once they reached their objective, and later use to get back aboard the mech when it was time to leave.
"Second, you remember what we're looking to grab?" Jason asked him. They'd quickly put together a list of priority salvage types on the flight over to their objective, before sending it to the Admiral for approval via the Iga's HPG.
"Tools, material supplies, weapons. In that order," the Corporal replied. Jason nodded in approval, then brought his attention back to his mech as the 60 second warning light illuminated the mechbay in an amber hue.
At the 30 second mark, amber strobes began to spin as the mechs were rotated in their cradles to face the exterior hatches. At 10 seconds, the hatches began to open. The lights turned green, and Paladin stepped Stormwing out of the Huntress and into battle with an alien enemy.
The initial response to the battlemechs of Knight Lance stepping onto the field of battle was pandemonium. The tall saurian Elites held their ground, fighting from cover with plasma spewing PDWs, the diminutive Grunts fled into whatever hiding holes they could find, and the purple hulled Wraith tanks lobbed plasma shells at the mechs.
Paladin sidestepped a falling plasma shell, drawing a bead on the tank that had fired it and cracked it open with his Defiance ER PPCs. The exposed workings of the plasma launcher detonated with a brilliant blue cloud of burning gas, and the hover tank nosedived into the ground, lurching to a halt with enough force that he felt a brief moment of pity for whatever crew the tank carried inside its hull.
He targeted another Wraith tank with his Whirlwind autocannon and fired. The three round burst of GP-APHE impacted the tank, but the Wraith was able to take the rounds on its frontal armor due to the heavy sloping that made up the frontal section. He immediately followed up with his medium lasers on the tank, and was rewarded with deep gouges burned into the tank's outer hull, though it failed to penetrate into the interior of the tank.
"Valiant is Armor state 60," Knight 4 reported. "Those plasma shells hurt." The entire right side of her mech was outlined a brilliant orange, reflecting her accumulated armor damage as the blue cloud of a nearby plasma shell impact dispersed around her mech.
Knight 4's Warhammer twisted its torso and unleashed an alpha strike into the offending tank, the combined weight of fire from her PPCs, lasers, and shoulder mounted SRM-6 reducing the Wraith to a flaming wreck. A secondary explosion scored the silvery metallic surface the tank hovered above a dark black as it crashed into the ground.
"Knight Lance, ignore the crunchies and hover bikes for now," Paladin ordered, mentally highlighting all five of the remaining wraith tanks in Rim Worlds blue and silver. "Those mortar tanks will kill us if we don't deal with them first. Target Left."
As one, his lance turned to take aim at the left most Wraith before unleashing their collective fury, ignoring the small arms fire from the Covenant infantry. The phantom taste of blood and sweet mirin crept into his throat as he felt the satisfaction of watching his opponent simply vanish under the weight of fire of his lance. As the cloud cleared from the destruction of the alien tank, only the side wings of the vehicle remained in any identifiable form, the tank's crew simply reduced to vapor.
The few remaining grunts brave enough to stand and fight broke before their awesome might, turning and fleeing up the forested valley. An alarm sounded, and he felt a stabbing pain in his leg as Stormwing took a hit from one of the shoulder fired cannons that an Elite had picked up after the fleeing grunts had dropped it.
"Left Leg, Armor State 90," the Marauder's DI Computer (1) dutifully informed him with its thunder-like voice. "Marking threat." A purple highlight appeared around the offending infantry, and Paladin turned his mech's legs towards the alien. It took him three steps to close the distance to the poor alien, before he raised the mech's right foot high and stomped down on the Elite.
He carried that vindictive satisfaction onto his next target, as his lance again focused their fire on another wraith. He watched as Templar ducked his Marauder under a plasma shell from their next victim, only for it to splash next to Equites' Catapult, reducing its frontal armor coverage by a decent chunk. It received a series of laser strikes from across the lance for its trouble, as the Veteran soldiers held back on their higher heat weapons to allow their machines to bleed off heat. Even the air around the mechs shimmered from the vented heat and the weapons fire.
The last wraith tank fell, crushed beneath the foot of Valiant's Warhammer, as she turned her lasers and machine gun on the now vulnerable infantry. Finally, the saurian Elites began to break, retreating back into the forest. After the area was clear, the four mechs pulled up to the entrance to the facility. One by one, the marines disembarked from within the mechs, the lance covering each member as they were made vulnerable while their passengers rappelled to the ground.
Marine Retrieval Party
Storage Facility 0405
Interior of Shield World 0459 Etran Harborage
Shipboard Time 1320
Corporal Hunter Cunningham led his team of four into the dimly lit internal bay of the storage facility where the Monitor had said it's physical body was. Hunter didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't a series of collapsed humanoid robots in positions to guard the doors his team just came through. Even collapsed, there was still the faintest of glows from ring-like emitters on their bodies. He silently signaled the rest of his team to move up, and they all activated the flashlights attached to the sides of their rifles as they moved into the gloom. As if the light had been a signal, a turquoise glow flickered to life behind a stack of crates.
"Possible contact," Hunter muttered into his helmet mic. The quietness of his voice was unnecessary, but habitual. The combat helmets worn by the SLDF Infantry and Marine Infantry were fully enclosed with internal radios, though they did come with external speakers so others could hear them without having to remove their helmets.
"Eyes on," Melissa Hawthorn answered. Melissa was the small team's breacher specialist, and had brought along a breaching laser to open doors and crates with. She slung her rifle and called out towards the light. "Hey, Mr. Watch, is that you over there?"
A battered shell illuminated by glowing internal turquoise light slowly floated around the stack of crates. "Ah, at last," the monitor said, its glowing 'eye' flickering in time with its words. "Recovery. Hopefully there will be someone who can repair the damage my frame has suffered."
"Not sure how much help we'll be with that, given I couldn't begin to guess what you and these bots are made of," the team's tinkerer spoke, looking up from his examination of one of the collapsed robots. "How high off the ground can you float? Need to know if we gotta carry you back up the rope to our ride out of here."
"I am afraid that this is currently as high as my frame can manage," 295 Harken Watch said regretfully, the Monitor bobbed briefly before stabilizing. "A fabrication matrix with access to the correct materials would be more than sufficient to repair my frame, however there was none that I could reach with the past and current crisis that had the necessary materials. Additionally, my duties were capable of being carried out remotely for most of the hundred thousand years since the damage was inflicted. This was the safest location my few guard armigers could get me, before their power supplies failed from catastrophic damage."
"So if we brought one of these to this fabrication matrix, you could use it to fix yourself?" Hunter asked. He had a sinking feeling that he was going to be asked to help carry one of these robots all the way back to the 'Mechs.
"Certainly, though it is more likely that using the matrix to repair the armiger and transferring my core into the armiger's shell would be the optimal solution," the monitor stated. "We will likely require two of the armiger bodies to effect the repairs in any case, as the necessary materials to perform the repairs most critically needed are only present in small quantities."
"I figured you were going to say that," Hunter groused, turning to his team. "Alright, pair up and we'll drag two of these bots outside and see if we can't get the ever lofty MechWarriors to help us get these things up the ropes."
With Harken Watch providing color commentary, the four Marines dragged the two 'armiger' bots out of the storage bunker. Despite some of the parts lacking any obvious physical connection, the machines remained intact and whole. As they entered back into the light of the interior sun, it was to the sight of the four BattleMechs of Knight Lance standing in a semicircle around the entrance, two facing outward, and two facing inward.
"Oh my, what absolutely phenomenal combat platforms," the Monitor exclaimed with glee, its eye shining brightly as it scanned the Marauder. "Genuine laser weaponry. Particle cannons. Ballistic and missile weaponry as well. What wars you must have seen to create such marvels."
"Glad to be appreciated," the pilot of the second Marauder, the one facing outwards, said with cheer. One of the arm pods rose slightly in a small wave before returning to position.
"Cut the chatter, Templar," Paladin rebuked the sociable MechWarrior. "Save it until after we're back to the dropship." He addressed his next words to the marines. "Do you need us to throw down some spare webbing or harnesses?"
"It would be appreciated," Melissa called back. "These armiger things are kinda heavy." The trooper dropped the armiger she had dragged with a loud thud.
Sixty seconds later, a pair of crash webbing nets had been produced from among the four Mechs and the armigers had been tied up and secured to the end of the climbing ropes on the Warhammer and the Catapult.
"Alright, let's mount up!" Hunter called out to his squad, and turned to the Monitor. "I'm gonna have to carry you up with me, so I hope you don't mind any rough handling?"
"I believe I can bear the indignity, if I must," Harken Watch said with a chuckle. "Please, I would much rather be secure behind armor than exposed in the open."
"Did you just tell a joke?" Hunter asked in bewilderment. He had no idea a computer was even capable of joking.
"Yes, now please," the Monitor spoke with some emphasis, "let us be on our way."
Knight Lance
Interior Surface of Shield World 0459 Etran Harborage
Shipboard Time 1330
Colonel Watkin observed the Marine Corporal as he strapped himself back into Stormwing's jumpseat, the floating robot bobbing about beside the jumpseat. The Marine's impromptu three-point rigging allowed the Monitor a limited degree of movement about the cockpit, though the straps were positioned in such a way that they would prevent the monitor from colliding with either occupant. Upon the Marine giving him a thumbs up as he plugged his radio back into the jumpseat, Jason turned forwards again and called up the rest of his lance. "Knight Lance, report ready status," he ordered.
One by one, his lance confirmed their ready status, and he gave them the order to move out for their designated extraction point. Templar took the lead position, with no onboard cargo, and Jason took up the trail position for this segment.
As the lance got underway, the Monitor came to hover beside his head, watching out the viewscreen. "Such an interesting apparatus," Harken Watch commented. "And all without a single visible gauge or display(2). Such a marvelous creation. How do you process all the information it must feed to the pilot? A display within the helmet perhaps?" The AI began to ramble on about its theories, and Jason couldn't help but smile at the inquisitive machine.
"Partially a HUD within the helmet, yes," he told the AI, deciding to play along so he could judge the AI's behavior for himself. "The neurohelmet actually feeds most of the information directly into my own senses and nervous system, and provides only complex information that may need to be accessed at a moment's notice in a visual format. It works in the reverse as well," he continued to explain, triggering the DI Computer's auto-walk function so he could focus on the conversation.
"Indeed?" the monitor turned its eye towards him. "Most fascinating. How does that work?"
"The neurohelmet takes my intentions," he elaborated, "usually in the form of specific mental patterns, and translates them to the 'Mech. It also allows me to utilize a form of 'waldo' control, where the mech copies complex movements that I, the pilot, make directly." He demonstrated by making his right arm, and thus Stormwing's right arm, salute as they walked.
"An intriguing method of control," Harken Watch bobbed to his left. "There is no AI interface?"
"No space, AI's require rather large processor cores," Jason replied. "They're not that common at all among us, actually. Humans do most of the jobs we'd use an AI for just as well, if not better. AI can't operate a mech, for example. It just falls over. No sense of balance to translate to the gyro. Any drift, and down you go." He chuckled as the monitor tilted in apparent puzzlement.
"Truly?" Harken Watch asked. "Every spacefaring species my creators ever encountered utilized Artificial intelligence for space travel, if nothing else. Slipspace is nearly impossible to navigate otherwise."
"Slipspace?" Jason asked the monitor in confusion. "I'm assuming you're referring to 'Faster than Light' travel?"
"That is correct," Harken Watch began. "Slipstream space is a set of 11 non-dimensions that allows an entity, ship or otherwise, to travel faster than light from one location to another, provided the traveling body possesses sufficient shielding or structural integrity to prevent the decomposition of the material structure. The travel may take anywhere from a few minutes, to months or years depending on the quality of the drive, emitters, and the power used to create the entry and exit portals."
"Yeah, we definitely don't use that," Colonel Watkin groused. "A KF Jump is instantaneous, and can go up to 30 lightyears in one go, with our current tech at least. Though the drive needs time to cool and recharge afterwards before you can jump again." Watkin, concentrating on his path and the surrounding area, failed to notice the Monitor twitch in surprise. "I know there was a ship that they'd built that could do 40 lights, but that was still experimental, and there was only the one around last I checked. So I know there's more to get out of the tech."
The Monitor's eye lit up to speak when his sensors pinged a contact ahead. "Contact, one moment," he said to the monitor. "Knight Lance, contact's ahead, 2500 meters. Light weight class, near 30 tons. Close and identify. You may fire on any known hostile."
"Looks like we're about to get a show," the marine chuckled to the Monitor.
As they closed to 1500 meters, with only a slight ridge between them, Templar spoke up on the radio. "UNSC Warbook match. Contacts are Covenant Locusts. Building killer quad walkers, single beam weapon on the chin. The entire upper section is basically a turret, so if you can pop that in the side, you'll probably get a good kill." A wireframe of the Covenant mech briefly appeared on Paladin's HUD, highlighting the aforementioned weapon before fading. The data was replaced with the locations of the spotted Locusts with a box-overlay, the data fed to Stormwing by Templar's mech.
"10-4, Templar," Paladin answered his status report. "Knight lance, free engagement. Pick your targets as you wish."
The four mechs of Knight Lance began to spread out, clearing fields of fire for each other. At a range of 1000 meters, Equites opened fire on the lead machine in the enemy formation with her LRMs. Seeing the contrails of the incoming ordinance, the Covenant war machine attempted to evade, but it was too late. The missiles descended from the sky, pummeling into the shield of the Quad-Locust, then breaking through and slamming into the left torso section of the machine. Even though some of the volley missed, the ones that landed were enough to destroy the Locust, hitting something critical to its operation on the inside. The Locust stalled in its advance, before its central joint sparked in futility and gave up the ghost, emitting blue smoke as the vehicle simply collapsed.
"All units, be advised, enemy 'Mechs are shielded," Valiant called out. "Exercise fire discretion, better overkill one than leave it alive."
Paladin and Templar both opened up with their ER PPCs, and two more Covenant Locusts stopped briefly, their shields flaring as the particle beams impacted before popping completely, whence the particle beams tunneled through the Covenant nanolaminate armor. The electrical discharge of the PPCs burned out even the hardened circuits and systems as they passed through causing the mechs to spasm violently before exploding as their plasma containment systems overloaded. Jets of plasma vented through the top of the Quad-Locusts, bathing the area in blue light.
Two of the five remaining Quad-Locusts turned and fled, while the other three came to a quick halt and fired their beams at Knight Lance as the mechs accelerated into a run. A testament to the skill and discipline of their operators, the three Covenant Locusts hit their targets much to the irritation of Knight Lance, with the plasma beams ablating Ferro-Fibrous armor as they impacted.
"There goes half my right leg armor," Templar complained, as he returned fire alongside Valiant. Their combined PPCs, along with Templar's autocannon, destroyed two more Covenant Locusts. Valiant's PPCs managed to shred the two right legs of the left-most Covenant Locust, rendering it inoperable as Templar's autocannon sheared off the reactor covering, causing the mech to sputter and shut down. Meanwhile, Templar's PPCs destroyed both front legs of the center Quad-Locust, causing it to collapse. A brief purple glow could be seen from the mouth of the turret now buried face-first into the dirt, before something inside it sparked and exploded.
Paladin took aim and fired his autocannon and ER PPCs at the last Quad-Locust. The autocannon missed entirely, whizzing overhead as his aim drifted a touch high, but one of his PPCs sheared off a leg as the other hit the Quad-Locust's center torso, and the walker vanished in a cataclysmic blue fireball. Paladin watched most of the Locust's turret fly skywards as the phantom taste of sweet mirin filled his throat, only for the walker's head section to crash down a few seconds later.
"Huh, they explode like Light Mechs, too," Equites snarked over the radio as the lance reformed from their combat spread, black smoke rising high into the air. Paladin joined his lance as they chuckled in amusement at the Catapult pilot's joke.
"All right, let's hurry back to Huntress," Paladin ordered as they slowly stopped chuckling. "I'd rather not run into another ambush like that." He re-enabled the auto walk for the DI computer and breathed a deep sigh as the adrenaline began to leave his system.
"With skills like that, I can see why AI's wouldn't be very useful in ground combat," Harken Watch hmmed.
"There are a few AI-controlled Drone Tanks running around the Inner Sphere, but mostly they get used for Static Defense, if we even use them for combat," Jason answered the Monitor with a wide smile. "Hyperspace does strange things to AIs. So instead, the few we have are either in the Space Defense Systems, or running intelligence analysis or helping manage Mega-Cities. They're too large physically to really be placed in anything mobile."
"How odd," Harken Watch said. "One would think AI's would be easily portable."
"Until I met you, the smallest AI core I've ever heard of took up slightly more space than the cockpit of this mech, Watch," Colonel Watkin told the AI outright. "I'm pretty certain that you're the most advanced AI we've ever encountered, moreso even than the UNSC's AI's."
"Why thank you," the Monitor accepted the comment with polite gratitude. "I take it by the way you speak of them that you are of a different faction than this UNSC? Presumably you refer to the Reclaimers you have been siding with," the Monitor clarified.
"If you mean the natives, then yes," Colonel Watkin confirmed, even as he took note of what the Monitor had said. Between the use of Star League English and the word; Reclaimer, Watkin had a feeling there was a lot more going on than he or anyone else realized.
"Natives?" Harken Watch inquired.
"Yeah, we suffered a KF misjump, and landed here, instead of our intended destination. As far as I can tell, based on the data astrogation collected, we're in an entirely different universe than we started in. Something that no one thought was even possible to survive."
"Fascinating," the Monitor responded. "My creators were aware of the existence of other universes, but never actively attempted to reach them. This would make your people the first known entities to successfully cross the barriers between universes." Harken Watch casually elaborated with about as much fanfare as one would talk about the weather while confirming the existence of more alternate realities.
"I'd be pleased if we had any way to recreate the jump phenomenon in reverse," the Colonel groused. "So if you know of any ways to cross that boundary, now would be a good time to share it."
"Unfortunately, my creators never even attempted to find ways to reach them, except to draw upon vacuum energy from the nearby mirror universes, which slowly destroys them in the process," Harken Watch dashed his hopes entirely there with a single statement. "The process was one gleaned from one of the few times they peered into another reality; of another race's venture into drawing Zero-point energy. Though my creators had assumed they would be able to correct their mistakes. They were not."
"Wow, dick move," the Marine Corporal in the back seat deadpanned.
"In some respects, I would agree," the Monitor commented. "All those opportunities wasted where we could have observed alternate developments. Now we will never know what may or may not have existed in those mirrors, such a shame."
"We can continue this later, we're almost at our extract," Colonel Watkin remarked as the lance turned down the path to the landing site the Huntress had selected to extract them. "Huntress, this is Knight Lance, we're inbound now for Extract. Let's get out of here before we get any reinforcements from the Covenant in the area headed our way."
"Roger, Knight Lance. You are cleared to board at your assigned mechbays. Welcome back."
SLS Huntress
Approaching UNSC Spirit of Fire Top Deck
Shipboard Time 1440
"Ma'am, we've been cleared to land on the Spirit's upper foredeck," the Comms Lieutenant informed Captain Remis, interrupting the uneasy silence on the command deck. "There's a marked off cargo elevator that's large enough to land on, but we're too big to actually be taken into the ship's hold. They're lighting up the pad for us now." (3)
"Thank you, Lt. Karauna," Captain Remis responded, her voice carefully neutral. "You may inform the flight crew that they are to proceed ahead as cleared."
She turned back to look at Colonel Watkin, telling him, "I will be quite glad when you get this thing off my ship," her voice was frosty, and her anger justified at the Monitor after it had tried to access the ship's database without the Captain's permission. "I'm not taking it outside this shell aboard my ship, that can be done either on Spirit or the Cat. If I see it again, I'm afraid to say I might just have it shot. With my ship's guns." She turned her cold eyes to the Monitor, currently being held in place by Corporal Cunningham. "Am I clear?" This question was directed at the Monitor specifically, and it was clear the Captain wanted an answer.
"Your point has been made about myself not being welcome aboard your vessel in the immediate future, Captain," Harken Watch apologized. "It was not my intent to create such friction."
"Compartmentalization of classified information requires that we restrict access to certain data, so that others do not learn secrets that they could then disseminate to those who would use that information to do harm to us," Colonel Watkin explained to the Monitor. "What with us having just come from fighting a Civil War, it is even more important to control access, and we must be stricter with our responses." Jason's face softened slightly. "In time, some of the information may be disseminated when we can determine if it will be safe to trust you, or others, with that information, but we cannot make such a judgment now."
"Not a dissimilar set of measures to those taken by my creators, with the possibility of capture by the Flood being a not insignificant risk," the Monitor admitted, sounding somewhat ashamed about not realizing that others might practice such measures as well. "It appears I allowed my enthusiasm for new information to get the better of my sensibilities. You both have my apologies."
Before either the Captain or the Colonel could respond, the intercom came to life. "Attention all hands, touchdown in 30 seconds," the bridge crew announced to the ship for the benefit of those without windows to check for proximity to landing zones. With a quick nod to the Corporal, Captain Remis dismissed him to grab a seat for the landing.
Colonel Watkin double checked that his neurohelmet was secure on his belt, and looked over at the two Armiger bodies the team had recovered, secured to a pallet at the rear of the dropship's mechbay. Two techs were sitting in the back in their own jumpseats, waiting to move the pallet off the rear loading ramp once the dropship had landed.
Seconds later, everyone onboard felt the thumps of the Huntress' gear touch down on the Spirit's deck. Colonel Watkin released the safety restraints on his seat and stood, before nodding politely to the Captain. "I'll be retrieving my service weapon from my mech before departing," he commented to her.
The Captain's response was interrupted by the Comms Lieutenant announcing that Captain Cutter was inviting them aboard. She instead turned to the Lieutenant and said "Inform the Captain that I will not be disembarking, but the four mechwarriors will be." After a quick glance at the Colonel for confirmation that he would be taking his entire lance over with him, she turned back to the lieutenant. "Also inform the Captain that I am requesting that he not send the package back to my ship."
"Aye ma'am," the Lieutenant said. A short flurry of typing later, before he spoke up again. "Message away."
"Better get moving, sir," Lenora told Jason. "I'll let your lance know, while you get your gun. You can meet them on the ramp."
"Thank you, Lenora," Jason replied, and stepped onto the catwalk of the mechbay to get his gun from his mech.
Authors Afterwords:
And thus ends another chapter. Here we have our first showing of Covenant armor against Battlemechs, and they actually fare decently. The Covenant's weapons are actually pretty powerful, but they generally lack the gunnery skill to kill a Battlemech before an elite Mechwarrior can kill them back. The Wraith tank's plasma mortar especially, with how slow the shell is, is easy enough to dodge, even for a heavy mech. Assault Mechs and Urbanmechs might have a harder time actually avoiding the wraith bombs.
Speaking of the Wraith bombs, they hit like you would expect from a large bore artillery weapon. They're fairly devastating, and were able to strip roughly 40 percent of the armor from the right side of the Warhammer mech involved in that battle from a very near miss. On a direct hit, it will certainly penetrate the armor of a Battlemech, and on lighter mechs, depending on where the hit lands, may score an outright kill.
Also, Covenant Wraiths, which don't have shields, are easily killed by hitting the exposed workings of their main weapon, even in game. A PPC hit to the plasma mortar is just gonna make the whole tank go kablooey. A scorpion's gun does the same if it hits that spot.
Onto the Cargo elevator on the Spirit's top deck. The elevator I can estimate based on its appearance in the Halo Wars level Repairs to be approximately 100 meters by 60 meters. With an estimated maximum height between bulkheads on the internal surface of the Spirit (for safety reasons, based on the location) of no more than 20 meters, the Leopard cannot be safely brought into the internal structure of the Spirit, as it is too tall, at 22.4 meters.
Next Time: The After Action Report and discussing plans for the immediate future.
Co-Writers Notes:
Another Chapter, and this one had to go through a couple of rewrites. Much appreciated to Follower38 for some of the corrections and suggestions.
As you may have read at the top, I had to take my companion animal of 16 years in on 5/18/23 to receive 'end of life' care. And this made me incapable of story work for a few days. My family and I had bonded with that dog, and it hit some of my family members especially hard. My brother, for example, had grown up with her since he turned 5 years old. The emergency vet that we took her to was able to ease her pain, and buy us enough time for most of the family to make it to the clinic to say their goodbyes.
Looking up the lore for this chapter and getting math right was a pain, as Nightwing can attest. Also, the lore accuracy in some of these games are… questionable at best. Resulting in a few nights where we've torn our hair out in frustration. Is a little consistency too much to ask for? I had to resort to Pixel measurements for accuracy… PIXEL MEASUREMENTS!
In this chapter we see a few things that may confuse or irritate readers, so I'll get them explained as best I can:
Wraith shells:
The Wraith's plasma bolus hits at a temperature that will flash melt Titanium A armor plate and concrete with a close range impact, so it's not much of a surprise that they'll seriously damage Ferro Fibrous armor from a near miss. I did the math, and if it really hit a Scorpion in game, the chassis of the tank would melt, and the ammo would detonate due to the extreme heat. Some theories have estimated that the Wraith's shot is nearly the temperature of the sun. 'Armor state 60' indeed…
Paladin's questioning of Harken Watch:
This is a known interrogation technique that stretches back into the early 1900's known as 'soft questioning', 'information fishing', or 'conversational interrogation'. In this example, Paladin is offering information that he perceives as freely available to anyone with access to a public information source, and is using that to get information that he thinks would otherwise be considered 'restricted'. It's a technique that was used by the famous Spanish spy, Juan Pujol, who famously used information from British newspapers that he provided to the Nazi party as 'Classified Intelligence', while really feeding information to the Allies when he received intelligence from Nazi Command.
The Locust fight:
The Covenant Locusts aren't a dedicated combat vehicle, like the Wraith. They're classified as a 'Mining/Excavation' vehicle that's lightly shielded. Worse for them, they get ambushed at what's considered 'knife fight' range for that type of unit, and they don't do well in close quarters. Further contributing to their poor performance is the inability of the Locust to move and shoot at the same time. They can do one or the other, not both. They were used as improvised siege units when enemy armor wasn't a threat.
Worse for them, they were jumped by an Elite rated unit, so their chances weren't good either way. We gamed the encounter out, roughly, and the unit leader for the Covenant was one of the first casualties. This inflicted a morale check, which caused 2 units to retreat. The others did pretty good with their gunnery checks, but lost unit cohesion, and didn't work together. If they had focused fire, they could have at least heavily damaged or destroyed one of their opponents.
Even then, they were vastly outclassed by a force that out gunned and out massed their entire unit. A Covenant Locust weighs in at just over 32 metric tonnes in the lore, whereas the Catapult, the lightest SLDF unit against them, weighs in at 65 Imperial tons (which is heavier than a metric tonne). The fact that only 2 units retreated after losing more than a 3rd of their group, shows just how disciplined and loyal the Sangheili are in combat. In modern military strategy, a large unit that loses 10% of their fighting strength in an engagement has a decent probability of routing. Smaller units fare better, but the risk of a route rises with each casualty. Losing the commander was the tipping point in this engagement, as the unit fractured in the confusion.
Either way, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and look forward to bringing you more. Coming up; the after effects of the battles, and after action reports.
Glossary of Terms:
(1) DI Computer:
The Diagnostic Interpretation Computer is a distributed computer network located in every BattleMech. The DI computer can be thought of as the 'Mech's central nervous system, and is critical to the functioning of a 'Mech in combat.
The DI computer consists of separate processing units scattered throughout the 'Mech, connected to each other and all other components of the 'Mech via fiber-optic wiring. This wiring is extensive, embedded into every armor plate and throughout the chassis, allowing the ability to bypass damaged sections. So long as a component remains connected even by a thread (both figuratively and literally), data can be sent and received, allowing the 'Mech to continue functioning despite suffering catastrophic damage.
Using its connection to every external and internal sensor and every component in the 'Mech, the DI computer is responsible for monitoring the status of all other systems, communicating this information to the pilot, and relaying their commands to the 'Mech. When a pilot uses their controls to move their 'Mech forward, it is the DI computer which coordinates between the fusion engine, gyro and actuators to get the machine walking. The DI computer can also stand in for a 'Mech's battle computer, though at a reduced efficiency.
Beyond simply monitoring and managing systems, the DI computer is incredibly smart and capable of making independent decisions, though it is not truly autonomous in the sense of artificial intelligence like the Caspar drones. When the 'Mech is moving forward, it is the DI computer which adjusts each footstep to remain stable over uneven terrain or shifts the 'Mech out of the way to avoid collisions with obstacles. This helps new pilots quickly learn how to control their 'Mechs, and a pilot can override these instincts when needed - crashing through a grove of trees or smashing an arm through a building to get a clear shot with its weapon - but it takes years of training for a good pilot to know when to rely on their machine's intelligence and when to use their own judgment.
Some DI computers are allowed to develop a form of personality by their Mechwarriors, to make the interface more pleasant to interact with.
(2) Gauge/Multi-Function Display:
The Marauder is one of the few mechs that doesn't have any built in MFDs, though it does possess an auxiliary swing arm on the right hand side of the cockpit where a pilot could mount MFDs or other displays if they so choose.
(3) "Light up the pad" - Landing Lights / Beacons:
A series of lights around runways, hangar bays, or landing platforms used to direct aircraft/spacecraft. They are generally left turned off outside of landing operations, and are used as a visual cue for pilots that are landing at/on the air/spaceport or ship. They are capable of strobing at variable speeds to indicate distance, constant illumination to indicate boundaries, and can even be used for alignment correction. They currently exist on Blue-Water Navy ships for several countries. Most Sci-Fi settings make use of lighting beacons for any docking sequence.