Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale

by cliff.west

This is a spinoff story. It takes place after "But a somehow a most melancholy" and" Hunted Tribes". Please read those before this bit of work. I will not be recovering those stories, but re-reading them will help you fallow this story. This fiction also will be slow on the combat action.

75. Chapter 75 18 Dec 3051

Chapter 75

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

18 Dec 3051

Hyner DC

Smoke Jaguar assault.

The Lore Master of Clan Smoke Jaguar Edmund Hoyt was not happy with both himself and his whole clan. The renewed battle with the barbarian fighters of the Scavenger Lords had not gone as smoothly as anyone in the leadership of the Smoke Jaguars had hoped for. He had even understood why the new high leader of all of the clans had made his clan share their invasion corridor with another but weaker clan. But there was a big difference between understanding and accepting the need for a supporting clan. Well, it was a weaker clan in the eyes of anyone that called Clan Smoke Jaguar home. He had known that his clan had not been able to keep up with the Wolfs before the Jaguars brought up more forces. And there was no way that he would have admitted that fact to a single soul outside of the Khan and SaKhan of his clan. Even then he would not be the one to bring up the issue in company of that high of a leadership level.

With the new forces that the Smoke Jaguars had brought back from the home systems, and the additions that the Nova Cats had brought with them to do battle with the Inner Sphere? He had thought. No, he had known. That his clan would roll over all of the roadblocks the Scavenger Lords had set up to blunt The Clans liberation of the Inner Sphere. Still, the Smoke Jaguars would be the first Clan to set foot on Terra because they were the best of the Clans. The leadership of his clan believed that it had only been a string of bad luck and machinations by Clan Wolf that had held up his clan's advance. After all his clan was the best of all the rest of the clans that The Great Father had set up, it even said so in the Clans official Remembrance.

Edmond thought that "he" could keep the Nova Cats in their place, all while the real warriors did the work and won the glory. He thought that the Nova Cats should only be allowed to hold the capes of real warriors, like the Smoke Jaguars. It just would take some of the limited free time of the three top leaders of the Jaguars to achieve this fact of the universe. After all the Nova Cats had not done well enough in the test of combat to be selected to lead the liberation of the Inner Sphere from the Scavenger Lords in the first waves of this invasion. There was only so much that could change in just two years.

Then the reports had started to come in as not only his Jaguars, but the other clans were being slowed down just before they had lost the iLKhan to a cowardly attack on the warship carrying the great leader of The Clans. The barbarian combat units that The Clans were attacking were reported as being better than the data from what the Wolf's Dragoons had sent them on the last updated data drop in 3019. The reports also had not matched perfectly with the information that they had been given to them by ComStar before they launched attacks in the later waves of the invasion.

That updated data and a review of the combat ROMS had been considered in the year that the Clans were gone from the Inner Sphere. They had concluded that the units they had been fighting had still only been using mostly age of war tech weapons. It was also noted that they were better supported with spare parts that allowed them to field more weapons than the clans had planned on them being able to field. The attacking Clans had expected the locals to only be able to field half of their assigned combat forces. It turned out that they were fielding closer to 90 percent of the assigned forces on average in the first early waves of attacks into the areas "actively" claimed by the House Lords. There also had been what the Locals called "lostech" weapons fitted to a growing number of mechs as the warriors of Nicholas Kerensky spent longer within the Inner Sphere.

With this new understanding well in hand, some counter plans had been made for when the clans returned to finish the drive to liberate Terra. But despite this planning, and still the clan combat units were being bogged down all the way across the invasion routes. All despite the updated planning made by all of The Clans involved in this "liberation". He had not thought that the Scavenger Lords could make that much of an improvement in less than a year of no combat.

Edmund Hoyt had secretly thought that they would be able to make "some" improvements as the House Lords were given time to redeploy more combat harden troops from other fronts to counter the righteous clan liberation efforts. How could their grand plans go soooo wrong? After all the locals were all barbarians. Also, the old Star League Communication department now called ComStar, and the Dragoons had turned out to be traitors to the true path of the Great Father. That treachery made any data suspect in his eyes, but he had never thought it would be this bad.

Now it was proving that not only were these Scavenger Lords units fielding better warriors after The Clans year away from them. They also had even better maintained war machines to support those better warriors. That did not even count that they had better weapons to fight with, that they should not have had in the first place. Towards the end of the last invasion wave before the death of the "real" iLKhan. There had been a growing number of reported Star League era weapons on the battlefield under the barbarian's control. If all of the reporting was to be believed, the total numbers had been less than a few hundred weapons of different types were spread over all of the invasion routes. It was a shock to work through, but after the total number of second generation PPCs that had been left behind after the Great Exodus was reviewed. Finding a few dozen back in operation against each clan should not have been that big of a deal for the great warriors to overcome.

All of that had changed in this newest wave of attacks to drive to the birth world of man. By now it seemed like every war machine mech or tank that the clans fought had at least some late Star League tech fitted onto them. That still was not enough to counter the tech edge that his clan brought to the battlefield or the ability of the clan warriors thanks to generations of genetic modifications to make them the best possible.

That was one of the reasons that he was currently leading the attack on this planet. The Lore Master wanted to show his warriors that they could dive the enemy before them, despite their numbers and higher than expected tech weapons. He needed to show them, that the reported setbacks to the rest of the clans were just due to poor warriors that somehow had not been weeded out of the touman of The Clans of Kerensky.

Then he had landed in the glade on this minor planet, and he had seen something that sent a shudder down his spine. All around his landing area were real SLDF mechs waiting for his forces, and they were all in near as perfect condition as not to have mattered. The defenders were in such good of a condition that his mech's system could not find any flaws in them as they waited for the battle to begin. When the fighting started, the Jaguar Lore Master had found out that the pilots for the Scavenger Lords were almost as good as his own. They also were in heavier mechs than his fielded machines, for the most part.

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When the battle started, it was not one on one combat like proper warriors of The Clans had wanted. It was more like the Grand Melee only without a limit and only two sides. The Combine forces had cut into his bid cluster like they were carrying the knives of the gods, which the Lore Master didn't believe in. One part of his mind told him that if this Combine unit had access to clan grade weapons, they would have carried the field against the Smoke Jaguars.

By the time his command star had pushed the Combine forces of barbarian pilots back from the declared landing zone. The cluster that the Lore Master had been attached with had been gutted more than the legal term of decimated would have called legally. Before the Lore Master could push them back a safe distance from the LZ to back around the starting combat lines, he had to call down his full opening bid for this liberation. The fresh 1st Striker Cluster of Delta Galaxy had landed less than an hour after being called down to the planet's surface. It was going to be up to them and what was left of his Fourth Jaguar Dragoons to take control of this planet. He would not be able to stay on the planet until the fighting was over. Unfortunately, he had found the information that he was looking for, even if he had not liked it.

The Lore Master was going to have to go back to the Jump Point and handle the political fallout caused by his calling down of reinforcements and breaking his bid, among other issues. He was going to be in more trouble for that, and not that the Fourth Jaguar Dragoons was now down to 20% of its mechs and Elementals fit for duty when he jumped out. 1st Striker Cluster was "only" down to 60% of pre-landing strength, but the support teams should get some of those damaged combat units back into operation and the pilots released from the body and fender shop under the doctors and medics tender mercies.

The Lore Master needed to pass a warning to the rest of the key leadership of his Clan, and he was very worried that he might be too late with that warning. Somehow the House units had found a huge number of late Star League grade weapons. Then they had the time and the trained support techs to outfit all of their combat units with what must have been newly found updated weapons. He needed to know where those old Star League weapons had come from, and then there was the other reports of something that just could not be true. There was no way that the scavenger lords could have made a weapon that the Great Father had not had access to when he had killed the usurper. Edmond was already drawing up requests to be sent to the other clan's Lore Masters. He wanted them to see if this new weapon was something that only the Combine had started building or was it more widespread. He never even thought that this new weapon might have been made, and then sold, to the major players within this part of space. He also never thought that the Khan and SaKhan would not listen to his counsel. He was wrong on so many counts, that it should have been funny.

30 Dec 3051

Hyner DC

Smoke Jaguar assault.

Star Captain Tim Wirth was sweating like he had not done since he had gotten out of the sibco with his two kills in his final trial. Wirth reflected that he had not even had this hard of a time when he had won his blood name in the time that they had been away from the Scavenger Lords. The Star Captain gave a slight head shake under his heavy helmet. He was pushing his 55ton Stormcrow hard, very hard, and maybe dangerously hard for him.

Star Captain Wirth's map had said that he was near something called the Binar Heights. He mentally kicked himself one more time. Tim knew that he should not have been chasing what he was currently chasing, and he would not have been on such a mission if things had been different. That is if the person who should have done this job in the first place, had been successful, that would be true. Instead, the nonblood named warrior in a Timber Wolf had been shot out of his machine by some free birth barbarian. Now the Star Captain had to do it himself, just to make sure that it was done correctly this time. Wirth could only think that the warrior was lucky that he had died in the ejection seat, instead of facing endless circles of different types when this planet had finally been taken under the care of the Smoke Jaguar.

That was why he was now chasing an 80ton old SLDF designed Thug class of Battlemech, which just would not die like it should. He had not thought much of the old SLDF machine when it had been first reported on the battlefield by the now dead Timber Wolf, but it had been an assault weight battlemech. The Star Captain had been studying the Scavenger Lord's weapons for some time while he had waited to be sent to the front to win glory. Wirth had not believed what had been reported by some of the survivors of the first cluster to have landed on this planet.

Then the Timber Wolf in his star had it's center torso shot out so fast that the auto ejects system had to fire its pilot into the air. The real shock had been that this happened just after only four hits from the arm mounted PPCs on the ancient machine! He had thought that odd, but the old machine had pulled back out of range and line of site from the rest of the star before another member of his star could step forward to challenge that mech pilot to a proper fight. So, now he was chasing the old assault class battlemech as it pulled away from the rest of the battlefield going on around this now 4 mech strong Star.

Normally a 55ton unit, even one of the powerful clan omnimechs, did not try and "chase" down an assault weight battlemech. Then again, this Star Captain knew that the Clan's weapon tech was second to none in the universe and he was very good in the C Configuration. Then he had been hit by a PPC type blast into his mech's right leg that had been at very long range, and then he saw that one hit had taken just under half of the whole armor layout on his right leg. That same single purple colored lightening hit had also damaged that leg's knee and hip actuators. This damage had slowed him down in his "chase" against the Combine flagged assault mech. That time delay in the chase did give him time to work out what had happened to him.

Tim Wirth had not had much sleep before landing on this planet mainly due to his excitement of the chance to win glory for himself, and his mind was slow to react. The Clan military had been fighting for over two hundred years, but they were used to "only" fighting short fights after they had taken back the planet's left behind from the second exodus. This fight had been going on for 18 hours straight already, and it didn't seem to be showing any sign of ending any time soon or even soonish. Some types of Combat drugs could help, but that was looked on as cheating by many within the leadership caste of The Clans.

Wirth had known that the average Thug class mech only packed two old Tiegart class PPCs for long ranged battles. The newer Royal class Thug only could pack a pair of Kinslaughter H Class weapons, but it lost two old tech heatsinks to do something like this, but they were about twice as effective as the old ones. What had hit his machine in the leg had done so at the very edge of effectiveness for the H classes known combat range. Only one of the odd PPC's had been fired by the enemy mech, so maybe the Thug was trying to control its heat level. Then again? That one hit had been a 20 percent harder hit than what any old H class PPC should have been able to do according to the historic data anyone in the know knew about. That should have been impossible, but his armor layout screen was telling him something different, and it was very rare for a computer to lie about data. Not saying that it didn't happen, but it was very rare.

Star Captain Wirth had no idea what made him pull his trigger, but he did, and a Large Pulse laser and a solid slug from his LB-10 X class autocannon were going down range before his brain knew he had done that action. The pulse gamma ray 8cm weapon struck and blew apart some kind of local tree, but the slug from his autocannon flew true. That shot took the Thug low, near the hips of the hulking mech. The shot must have been timed just right, and only one of the two PPCs shots that had come back at him scored a hit on his rapidly moving omnimech. That one hit was in the right arm of his mech. It almost took all of the armor off in that location, but as luck would have it, it did not damage the laser mounted there or damage anything that would affect their use in combat. Wirth quickly dropped the damaged arm and turned to try to protect the weapon with the total mass of his mech. It was how the book said to do it, and it had worked for him in the past while he learned the combat trade fighting in Clan space.

The Thug and Storm crow started to dance around each other with the reduced speed each machine was now capable of. The smaller machine should have been the fastest of the pair of machines, and thus able to control the pace of this lethal dance of this small battle. But the damage to the hips and legs on the clan machine now made the two machines very close in "average speed. The two machines started to exchange weapons fire between heavy trees as both were drawn into a final battle far from any support.

Wirth flipped a selector, and he went to cluster rounds for his LBX autocannon, his last solid slug had just been used and lacked any visible results. Much to his surprise he found that his skills at gunnery and in the cockpit were just about equal to the pilot in the Thug. That was something that he had never thought was possible, before this battle. The enemy did not have the advantages of all of the engineering that Wirth had, so he should have been better in every way than this free birth should have been. At least that was what he had been trained to believe, going all the way back to his time when he had first remembered starting his training. This attack of ego might have let him make a few mistakes that could end his life.

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In the end the heavier of the two mechs won this contest between clan and Inner Sphere designed combat machines. First Wirth lost his arm mounted very powerful 8cm pulse laser to the overly powerful enemy PPC. But the Thug could not string any of the hits together to take out any one location on the enemy mech after that weapon was blown off of the Stormcrow. It was not the death of a thousand paper cuts. You could not call hits from an improved ER PPC as a paper cut on a 55ton mech. It was more like a slow death by hammers, and large ones at that. They were just not the size of Mjolnir, but a close third.

The Clan pilot did not go down without the Combine mech pilot knowing that it had been in a real fight, and he was able to sand blast a lot of the armor off of the old SLDF mech. Sometimes that sandblasting of the cluster type autocannon fire would find areas that had already been hit, and then it would start working on the soft internals of the 2nd Arkab Legion machine. But in the end the Arkab mech was able to leave this part of the battlefield under its own power, and that was something that the clam mech could not claim.

All of that firing had stopped, and the battle had been decided on one hit from the Thug. It was when some of the energy from the Bear Slayer class PPC had leaked into one of the three ammo bays of the high tech clan grade autocannon. The Stormcrow or as those that were born within the Inner sphere called it, a Ryoken, was fitted in configuration C. It had a CASE system built into the huge war machine to protect the rest of the mech from its own ammunition from exploding. After all of the damage that had been done to the Clan mech, it now had lost all of the weapons but a pair of working 5cm pulse lasers.

The battle was over when the CASE was activated in such a way that it was visible to both sides of this battle. The auto ejection systems kicked in, and Star Captain Tim Wirth was launched high into the air a heartbeat before his remaining ammunition had gotten very angry with the gene modified pilot at the mech's controls. It was just too bad that the rocket under his seat had launched him into a massive tree limb at a speed of a few hundred km/H. He did not live long enough for a clan or local recovery team to find him and offer him….aid. The only thing that was left to tell the tale of the battle was the battleROM of the now wrecked clan war machine.

The Thug did not make it to the evacuation point to be taken off of this planet and repaired so that it could be used in another battle against these invaders. Besides the Mad Cat/Timber Wolf taken down at the start of the battle, she was able to take out the Ryoken/Stormcrow team member of this star. And she had even been able to quickly kill the Puma/Adder, which had bumped into her after that fight with the medium class machine had ended. Still the Star Captain had done a huge amount of damage to the Combine Thug, but even the much lighter Puma had been able to add even more damage to the assault weight machine before it was removed from the battlefield. The Vulture or Mad Dog C had no problem staying at long range and putting enough Gauss Rifle rounds into the already badly damaged old SLDF mech to make her machine non-combat effective. That also did not mean that she was done fighting the clan and their invasion. She thought that it was a good start by taking out three clan mechs in one day.

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Mechwarrior Tabatha Hisashi Tezuka had been briefed about how these clan's internals were thought to work during the almost full year of peace after an FRR pilot had killed their top war leader. She did not mind being a Bondswoman, but she was not going to be working on her old ride when she lost her battles with the invaders. That was just one insult to many for her to have to live with. She had heard that event had happening before, from a few different briefers about The Clans, and she had wanted to throw up afterwards. She had loved her modified Thug when it had been first issued to her. She had told everyone that was within earshot, that it still had the "New Mech" smell when she had been given it eight months ago.

She had no idea that this mech had been first given to the Combine for it to be used in the 3039 War against the "new" FedCom by a high level member of ComStar. It was just by luck that this one mech had not been issued to a combat unit, but one of the few that had been withheld to be used as combat replacements and study by LAW. Sometime later it and others were brought out and refitted with H class PPCs purchased from the MoC, and then pulled back again when something better had come along. This last set of refits were to have the two H class PPCs replaced with the growing number of Bear Slayers PPC that the Combine could buy from the MoC. The hard part had been making sure that ComStar didn't get one of the Bear Slayers and then poison the supply well of these very special weapons coming out of the MoC.

Tabatha had gotten this mech when she had turned in her very battle damaged Thug 10E to the recovery unit deployed out of the LAW office on Luthien. She had no idea that her wrecked 10E was going to go through the same modifications program that her new ride had just been put through. The Pitban 320 engine would be pulled out and Freezers fitted into it before the 22.5ton engine was reinserted into the mech. It would not be replaced with the lighter but more fragile extra light engine of the same power. There were just too few of them, and this was going to be a mech that was needed to stay on the battlefield as long as possible. The pair of Donal PPCs would be replaced with either some of the newest generation of Lord's Light 2 ER PPCs now found in the refitting of the Panther class light mech, Royal Flush class ER PPC, or if any Bear Slayers are sitting around. There was not any time to refit these rebuilt Thugs with CASE, but any extra mass would be used to have more reloads for the two Holly 4 racks mounted in the mech's two side torsos.

When Tabatha knew that her fighting days were done, and there was no way that she was going to make it off this planet with the survivors of her unit? She let the remaining SRM ammunition detonate within her mech, and she took "The Ride". With her knowing when it was going to happen down to the half minute. This had allowed her to do a little planning before the….energetic event took place under her piloting seat. So, she made sure that there were not any tree limbs or other obstructions going to be in the way when she pulled the yellow and black striped handle mounted between her legs. Seeing that happen once so recently made her keenly aware of that possibility, and that was one way to die that could be avoided.

The War Dog C pilot that saw her punch out of the wrecked Thug had not taken her as a Bondwoman when he saw her floating down from the sky on her ejection seat. The Jaguars felt that free born mech pilots were not worth the effort, and that they would dilute the combat power of his clan like it had already done to others. But recovered battleRoms from her three victims had quickly moved her to that status most Clanners would not have minded. This transition was greatly delayed due to some work being done by O5P to her mech in secret.

The Thug's battleRoms were not recoverable after the SRMs ammunition cooking off event, due to what some of the techs called a software modification being activated by the pilot before punching out. But this Thug had stood out every time a Clan combat unit was near when it's improved ER PPCs were fired. Oh, and everyone and that includes The Clans, wanted to know were an assault class mech might be on the battlefield. Even if it was "just" an Inner Sphere designed mech with age of war level tech, it was a possible recoverable asset that the clan military might be able to use after someone with the right skills got a good look at it.

The very understrength Clan Watch of the Smoke Jaguars would take a few days to track Tabatha down with the general captured military personnel. When they had finally found her? She was working in a mess hall on one of the dropships. They had her washing dishes chained to a sink after catching her spitting in the food being served to Clan mech pilots. But she was soon on her way up the ladder of the clans. Well, going up the Bond Ladder as the Smoke Jaguars saw how it should work for those not true born of that clan.

Most of the information about the harder hitting improved ER PPCs would be marked up to poor warriors by anyone under the rank of Galaxy commander. But the name Bear Slayer was added to the lexicon of the Jaguar Watch, even if the leadership of very few clans would take the time to notice much less read the files that this battle generated. It would be some time before any one of rank thought much of what the Watch had found, but many would later point to them as proof that the new weapons were known about for some time. Some would even be noted as wanting to find out where these barbarians had found all of these weapons. To find out that a Periphery power like the MoC was credited to have made them took many, many years to be accepted by even the moderate members of The Clans. Others would take even longer to accept this information.

4 Jan 3052

Luthien DC

Smoke Jaguar assault.

Tabatha would not know it, but her, her unit, and other units like it, would have a major effect on future battles against The Clans. When the battle of Luthien started it was short four full Smoke Jaguar Clusters and the Nova Cats were short three Clusters for what had been planned to be used to counter and battle the local defenders. Even short these front line units for both groups, the Smoke Jaguars would not postpone the attack. Also, there were not that many other front line units to replace them that could make it that far in this short amount of time. This caused another domino to fall in the battle that an over ambitious clan leader had planned.

Instead of the five full Galaxies of front line and only the best combat forces that were planned on being used in the attack on the capital planet of the Combine. "Only" the firepower equal to four full Galaxies would be available for the invasion of the capital world. Even that number could only be made up by using some second line equipment to replace some of the front line mechs that had been lost in battles taking place on other planets in combine space. With less units to defend against, and the fact that almost a third of the Combines units were outfitted with at least some Bear Slayers. The numbers were not what the leader of the Smoke Jaguars had thought.

The first Luthien based Bear Slayer factory had come online from stolen plans a month before the attack of those clan forces had been launched onto the capital world of all of the Combine. That work needing to be done in setting up of that new factory on the Black Pearl was also when ComStar was able to get their own copy of the plans to make the Bear Slayers class of ER PPC. The Combine were only able to put another one hundred of the locally built upgraded PPC weapons into the hands of the defenders before the assault on their world had begun. But still that was a nice addition for the defenders to call on when the chips were down.

These local built high tech weapons were added to what was coming in on the open market from across human space. Not all or even half of the Combine flagged units would have even late Star League style weapons to use against the clan invaders. But the attacking clans did not give a Batchall, so they could not find out what was waiting for them when they made it close to Luthien. That was more than a little oversite on their part, one that would come back and bite them on a soft and sensitive part of their metaphorical anatomy. Oh, and the Combine units were not the only ones waiting for the landing of the attacking Clan forces, and they had brought their own high tech weapons.

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Jaime Wolf looked around the command center that was set up for him to use for this battle. He had been offered the use of one of the main command centers on the planet after the shock of his landing had worn off for some of the key leaders of the Combine. But he had declined that offer after his run in with one of the leaders of the Combine. Everyone was just very lucky that knives, swords, or side arms were not pulled, and blood left on the floor by the event.

After that? Jaime had set up a full staff section specially hired on Outreach to just do one job, and that would be to stay between Jaime and any contact with combine officers of any rank over a company commander. At 72 posted years old, Jaime Wolf was not sure he was strong enough not to lose his cool and torpedo this mission by the simple means of kicking the crap out of some of the high born Combine officers. Surprisingly that preplanning had made both sides happy. Many within the Combine leadership were still not happy with mercenary commands, much less the Dragoons, and the long serving Kell's Hounds to the long time number two enemy of the DCMS. But there were some that welcomed any help they could get to stop the clans from taking over the Black Pearl. With the mercenary units having their own areas of the planet to defend, they could fight the Clans any way that they wanted to. It added some complexity to the command and control, but it also cut down on the odds of a blue on blue or blue on green event taking place.

The Smoke Jaguars had not fought in The Clan way with Zellbrigen more or less being thrown out the airlock before they even had landed on the planet. But the Nova Cats would still fight honor duels and use other clan rules. Finding this information out had cost the Dragoons a full company of mechs and their pilots when miss steps had been made. But now with the gloves off, the Dragoons and Kells had fought total war against the Jaguars and formal duels with the Nova Cats. That was where the non-clan updated units came into their own, and the Jaguars were shown that Artillery was called the king of battle for longer than the Star League had been around. If the Jaguars wanted to play at total war? Then the defenders of this planet were more than happy to oblige them. It was a case of be careful what you ask for, you may very well receive it.

Not all of the Nova Cats had fought within the clan honor code systems, but most of them had. And that was where all of those Clan grade mechs that the Kells and Dragoons had come to this planet had come into play. The pair of mercenary units didn't win all of the battles, but the Dragoons and Kells won a lot better than 90 percent of the honor fights that the Nova Cats had fought so far in this war. Then there were the odd fights, which sometimes came up when a pair of more….dynamic personalities bumped into each other on a battlefield.

Jaime had gotten a good laugh out of the battle of 20th century movie one liners that had been reported back to him. And that was how a Wasp 1W in Dragoon colors won a battle over a Timberwolf without some much as damaging the paint on either battlemech. A scouting Savanah Master had been lost in a card game against a point of Elementals. That had cost the 2nd Kell hounds the hover craft, but the scout pilot was returned a few days later. He had been space taped, upside down, on the side of a tree with a note glued to his forehead. It would seem he had tried for double or nothing in a card game and he had lost very badly. The Elementals had seen this as him having bad luck, and they had returned him so that it was not catching.

Jaime let out a little breath and thought that sometimes it was so much simpler just to fight the other house militaries. Then the report had come in from the Kells that reminded him why that was not a nice thing to think about in the middle of a mothering great big set of battles. The 2nd Kells had gotten stuck in-between a binary of Jaguars and a heavy Star of Nova Cats. It had gotten very bloody for them, but it had only been when someone had fired at both groups. That little bit of poor marksmanship had started a free for all of a battle without support from larger units of Kells or Dragoons being able to respond in time to help the beleaguered unit.

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Mechwarrior Alice Locke Park loved her mech, just like any other mech pilot over the last few hundred years. Most would have almost wished to fight on their own feet instead of fighting from the insides of the cockpit of a quad legged 55ton Scorpion class battlemech. But Park had other ideas, and the mech had belonged to her mother before handing it down to her when the older woman had decided that a training billet was a perfect fit for her in the current stage of her life. In other mercenary units, this type of mech could have been a pain to support, but the Kell's hounds were not your average guns for hire found around the Inner Sphere.

Not only had they put her mech threw a full rebuilding on Outreach, but they also had some choice bits of Star League tech added to make her beloved machine even more deadlier. Still there was not much that you can do when modifying a quad mech like the Scorpion, at least not outside of a specialized factory. But the Dragoons and Kell support teams had proven to have a few tricks up their sleeves that only elite level techs can pull off. The massive and huge Vox 330 engine had been pulled out and completely rebuilt to fix some lingering battle damage to its radiation shielding. Then they had added a Star League grade heat management system that had been added to the 24-ton engine. The old Anderson Armaments Type 12 PPC had been a heat hog that taxed the old tech heatsinks every time she had fired the thing in combat. Now that was not an issue that she needed to worry about.

A second surprise had been given to her not long afterwards. It had been a few months ago after returning from a training event. She had simply been told to turn over her mech to the support teams for more work that needed to be done. She had been very surprised when the techs had taken her newly rebuilt mech in for another refit. This one modification had been completed in the Kell's hound's mech bays on a dropship and not a shared bay on the field base. The old Anderson 12 had been pulled out of its housing, and faster than she could have believed possible a replacement weapon had been put into its old mount. She had gone for a shower to clean off the sweat from the hard training event and got some food. And when she had returned to the repair bays to offer her help to the tech and repair crew? The work had been done and the mech was ready to off load from the dropship's mech bay.

Alice had found out on her post maintenance checklist that the new PPC was listed as a Bear Slayer class weapon. You could have knocked her over with a feather, and she had been frozen in the ejection seat. When feeling returned to her and her mind got back into gear? She had remained in her cockpit for an hour running sim after sim getting her used to a weapon she had mostly thought of as a myth like unicorns. She knew that the 1st Kell regiment had gotten 36 "new" battlemechs from the Dragoons, that "public" rumor had said that they were FedCom recovered salvage they had help rebuild. At least that was the cover story, but the Kells were Lyran and they knew how to get….things. The 2nd Kell hounds were not that lucky, but they still were getting some nice toys and all of those so hard to find spare parts.

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Now it was time to put that weapon to the real test, which was combat. The report had come in that a scout lance had been found by the Jaguars while they had been dealing with a Nova Cat heavy star. Even after a renewed warning from High Command, to be careful. One of the scout lances members had panicked at the wrong time, and they had reportedly fired into the Jaguars. Then both groups had gone after the four light mechs like a pack of wolves on an old and lame deer. Now it was up to others to plug the hole in the lines.

Alice had found a good spot and folded her mech's legs under her, and now all she had to do was wait on this part of the Kell picket line and see what was going to happen. It was not long after setting up behind this hill that she saw a Spider in Kell colors and IFF jump over a line of trees. As soon as the legs of the Spider had touched the ground. The light mech had went to full speed, and for a Spider class mech that was not a slow pace. As the mech got closer to her, she could tell that it was more of a wreck than a fighting machine anymore.

Alice waited to see if anyone was close behind the scout mech before opening a close ranged radio call to the Spider, which still might be heard by any bad guys that might be closer than she thought. Not for the first time, she was glad that the Kells and others could keep the IFF's systems on for this battle. "SB2, this is Picket 24. Where is the rest of your lance, over?"

The Spider might have slowed by a few KPH, but the arms that looked to be bare of any armor plating were still pumping like a sprinter with the finishing line finally within sight and the very hounds of hell was on his heels. "I'm the last one. John, in his Valkyrie, went down on the other side of the ridge. I don't know if he will make it out of his mech alive. Both of my lasers are offline, and I'm down to a few kilograms of armor as it is. Looks like it's your turn to be the speed bump for a while. Here's a copy of our data. Good luck."

The scout mech's pilot was stressed and at the same time sounded thankful that he was passing friendly units. Scouts were a funny group. They generally like being alone out on the battlefield. That is until they ran into something bigger or meaner than them, and then they very much liked being around others. But only as long as they were larger and more powerful than whatever it was that they had bumped into out on the forward edge of the battle space.

The burnt and battle scarred light mech went running past Alice's hiding point without giving any outwards notice that she was hiding there. Alice looked down at the data that the fleeing scout mech had passed her, and it was not good. There were fifteen mechs with Elemental battle armor support in the area. She didn't have time or the skills to go digging that deeply into the raw data that she had just been given. That was why there was a staff further back from the battle lines to do this kind of work. The clan like using ECM too much to be able to plan on sending radio messages with the recon data while the scouts were too close to the enemy combat machines. Alice knew that she needed to buy time for the rest of the defenders to get set up in the Waseda Hills, or they were going to lose this whole section of the battle lines to the clans.

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Alice had just finished her second scan of the tree line that the Kell's hound Spider had jumped over when a hunched back mech she knew without the battlecom telling her the identity jumped into view. The rest of the Inner Sphere called it a Blackhawk, but the Dragoon software her mech had been updated while on the run from Outreach had called it a Nova in the prime configuration. Alice made a mental note that it was a nice mech….if way under heatsinked from the data that was displayed for her to review before she had to fight it.

By the time the Smoke Jaguar mech landed clear of the tree line, Alice could see light, but still some battle damage had been done to the enemy mech. Maybe one of the scout mechs had gotten a bite or two out of the Blackhawk/Nova before now. One thing was for sure, and that was that it was still fully combat ready. Or maybe it was just that the pilot thought that it was combat ready to go against non-clan combat units. The rumor had it that some Clan mech jocks thought that they could take on an Inner Sphere Atlas with a pocketknife, and win. The enemy mech was coming at her at the run, but it was not taking the time or delay in trying to zig zagging as it moved across the battlefield. It was on the hunt for a battered old light mech. Too bad it was about to find a bigger fight than it had planned on when it had jumped over those trees.

Alice didn't smile under her second generation neurohelmet as she watched the enemy mech get closer and closer to her at high speed. It was not as light or as good as a Star League grade neurohelmet that had started showing up around Outreach and now "only" cost as much as a heavy mech, that was instead of the cost of an assault mech that they had commanded just a few years ago. But it was both lighter and better than the old trashcan that she had been using for years after getting her mech. Many of those older types of neurohelmets were being packed down for future use or just scrapped.

Alice gave a slight shake of her head to get back into the fight she was about to start. She put her targeting reticle on the approaching mech, and Alice waited from it to go from red to the green of a good firing lock. The Bear Slayer was longer ranged than her old PPC and it hit a lot harder, but she wanted to make sure that she was going to hit the running enemy battle mech. And so she waited until she thought that the time was right, before she used her only long ranged weapon.

When her mech's battlecomp said that the enemy was just crossing into medium range of her main gun, she pulled the trigger to the first detent. The purple bolt of energy cleared the low hill just high enough that it didn't start a fire in the local grass analog. That grass fire would have given away her location to the charging mech, and that fell into the "not a good thing to happen" category in her book. She had been aiming center mass of the hunchback looking mech, but in the real world. That had said, she was aiming at the cockpit glass covering the enemy mech's pilot.

Alice didn't score a hit on the head of the enemy mech or even on the center torso of the running mech. She did hit the enemy mech, but it was down in the right leg. But a hit was a hit, and almost a ton of armor was super-heated into steam, or it had fallen off the Nova due to the physical impact energy of the blast. Alice made a note on how the mech seemed to almost fall over after the afterimage of purple lightening had cleared out of her vision. Something like that could have happened due to the damage or just due to the surprise of her ambush.

Alice might have been hidden behind the small hill, but the Clan pilot had an idea of where the fire had come from even without needing his own battlecomp to help him out. The damaged Nova shifted a little in the track it had been running down, and now it was headed towards the hill instead of following the damage made by the running light mech just a few minutes before. The prime version of the Nova had a lot of firepower in the form of a dozen extended range 5cm lasers that were cutting edge weapons technology. But they were "only" 5cm lasers, and they would need to be closer to the enemy that had just used a PPC to hit it before it would be able to return the favor.

Alice kept an eye on the enemy mech as it closed on her hiding spot behind the low hill. There was not much she could do while her heavy weapon recharged by pulling a huge amount of power off her 24ton Vox 330 fusion engine. Being hull down had a down side, and that was that an enemy could get out of your line of sight while heading towards you….if it was fast enough or it took to long for your weapons to recharge or reload. When Alice's system showed that she could fire again? She pulled a trick out of her piloting play book that only a quad mech could do. She rose up just by her extending legs like she was in a high tech elevator and not a war machine. The back legs rose faster, just as she had wanted. When her PPC cleared the hill, and she was now looking towards the base of the hill? She fires again into the very surprised Nova. Quad mechs were almost unknown within Clan space, and there were some things that you can only learn if you have fought against one before.

She got a second hit on the right leg, which this time she had been aiming at. That was too much damage to that one limb, and the running mech lost the leg just below the knee. Almost between eye blinks, it's forward angled cockpit slammed into the base of the hill hard enough that Alice felt it on the other side and threw her mech's four legs. She didn't get a second free shot at the now fully alert charging enemy mech. Eight 5cm lasers were fired at her before the Nova fell, but "only" three of them hit her. The rest had been close enough that if she had been a human shaped mech, more would have hit her and each was almost as powerful as a "normal" 8cm laser. She knew that it was just luck and her piloting an odd design of a mech that she was still combat effective and not a burning mech hulk.

Now most people would have kept watching to see what the other mech was going to do after a hit and a reaction like that. Those were called green pilots, and they were just waiting to be put into a body bag…if they were lucky. Alice was not rated as an elite mech jock, but she was very close to that rating after so many years in this mech's cockpit. Alice just folded down her mech's legs again, and she dropped back down behind "her" hill into what was called hull down. All she could do was wait for more enemy mechs to show up onto her part of the battlefield.

Alice didn't have to wait that long before three more mechs in Smoke Jaguar colors pushed their way through the tree line that the Kell Spider and clan Nova had been able to jump over. Alice didn't have one of the new TAG systems to help call for guided heavy artillery fire, but her rebuilt mech did have the ability to auto call for supporting fire. It just would not be the hard hitting guided weapons that were making a comeback onto the battlefields across the Inner Sphere. All she had to do was push one button, and then wait for the fireworks to start. She watched as a new Hankyu, Ryoken-B, and a Ryoken prime sat at the edge of the tree line trying to work out what to do next.

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Behind Alice and near the main camp that held the staff for both Kell's Hound regiments, Sniper class artillery guns fired in support of this battle. There were only a six pack of the towed guns for the whole regiment to use, which could be used on calls for fire support for a wide section of the current battle areas. There were other tasks for them to support, but each of those four large cannons assigned to this one fire mission fired four rounds as fast as they could, before they had to realign to cover other areas that needed the "real" king of battle.

It seemed like forever before the first huge dirt fountains rose very near the enemy "lance" or under strength star of Clan mechs. Alice gave a war hoop when the dirt and fire concealed the enemy mechs that were still just standing still near the well-groomed tree line. Then out of the blue the training kicked in that the Dragoons had been beating into her and the rest of the Kell's hounds for a few months. She only rose high enough to clear the upper legs of her Scorpion, and she sidestepped out of her hiding point. Just as she moved like a crab, her screen showed that she had stepped on something that was…..crunchy. The Nova had been carrying battle armor, and they were coming over the hill to cut her out of her mech.

Alice smiled and fired off the only weapon she had besides the updated PPC. In a flash of smoke and flames, six SRM's came off the top of her mech from the old Marvel Six Load missile launcher. In the cross training that she had done with the Dragoons, that all of the Kell's hound pilots had been put through. They had learned through the school of hard knocks about learning to fear the 1ton armored suits, which most of The Clans used in place of tanks or infantry. The Hounds had worked out some ways to deal with them, that a lot of the older Dragoons were not that thrilled with. But if it worked, was it really that crazy or distasteful? War was not for children, and if you were not using all of your weapons? Then you were not going to win the war.

Now the explosive warheads on any SRM would hurt a single Elemental grade battle suit, but not that badly, and they always worked in groups of five or ten suits to an attack point. That was where the Hounds "new" little trick came into play on the current battlefield. Some, but not all of the mech pilots had switched from explosive warheads to inferno type of warheads mounted on some or all of their SRM racks when they rolled out to do battle with the Clans. Those weapons would not punch into the hard outer armored skin of the clan made battle suits, but they could cook the pilot if they got hot enough. This normally took about two inferno SRMs hitting close to the same area that also just happen to have the clan battle armor sitting in.

Alice had just fired off six of the fat little missiles at very close range, and she had already stomped on one of the suits with her 55ton mech. There could be anywhere from four to nine more of those little armored cockroaches out there. But a wall of flame should do nicely in getting the rest of the Elemental battle armor to leave this area as fast as they could run or jump away. She did one more scan of the area in time to see four localized explosions that her battlecomp said was a SRM hitting something that was not the dirt.

"Well, that is five of those runts no one else will have to deal with," thought Alice as she moved back into better cover from the three clan battlemechs.

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Star Captain Markus Canto looked at the turned-up ground around him with discussed. He felt a frown come to his face when the falling shells of the artillery had stopped. To him using artillery was not an honorable way to fight. The 30ton Hankyu class mech was laying on the ground, and it would not be rising again. At least not without help now that one of it's thinly armored legs was blown off at the mech's hip. The light mech was now joined down on the battlefield by the dead Nova and the few remaining Elementals it had carried. He had heard the alarm in the voice of one of the battle suits before it shut off just as the screaming had started.

Canto looked over to a hill that was burning next to the fallen Nova, he reached over to activate the radio on his Star's freq and short ranged open channel. "What Surat fights like a pirate using dishonorable ambushes, artillery, and flame weapons? Quineg."

Alice shot the radio an odd look. "Well, what the hell. The more they talk, the longer it will take to get to the next line of defenses."

She hits her own radio to pick up the other mech's carrier wave. "Sargent Alice Locke Park 2nd Kell's Hounds at your service, and it seems like you've already stooped to name calling. Besides it's war and you smoked kitties liked using orbital artillery on a city, so you aren't playing by your own rules. Welcome to the party, pal."

Canto made a sour face at the language and statement made by the barbarian in front of his command. "I am Star Captain Markus Canto of the 366th Jaguar Combat Cluster. Alice, if you are going to speak like a barbarian? I will just kill you now."

Alice knew this game, and she was very good at it. It was how she had lost officer rank within the Hounds, three times now. "It's Sargent Alice Park. And oh, so'ya don't like me using contractions. Don't you think that is a bit hypocritical on your part? After all what does batchall mean but battle challenge. Quineg or should I say query negative if you don't like contractions?"

Canto was having a hard time breathing at what this jumped-up free birth was saying on an open line that his whole star could hear. "How dare you talk to me like that? You fight for a Scavenger Lord or for their coins!"

Alice now smiled and waited for just a few seconds of dead air going over the radio before giving it one more go. "Scavenger Lords? That's a new one. If you don't like the way we are? Then why don't you all just board your dropships and head back out to deep space like General K did and then the real adults keep working things out."

When she heard the shout of rage coming back over the speaker. She now knew it was time to go in for the kill. She had heard this line in a bar on Outreach, and it had gotten the goats of some of the older Dragoons. "Hey Clanner, you're going to love this one. I heard it over at #10 Shrapnel a few months ago. You want to know why little Nicky K liked Iron womb tech?"

When there was not any sound over the open radio line, she dropped the hammer. "It was because he didn't have any lead in his pencil!"

She smiled and when the shouts suddenly cut off, "So that is what a speaker sounds like on 11. Good to know."

Alice rose the top of her mech over the side of the still burning grass covered hill. She knew that the last exchange would get a reaction off of the nipple necks, and she was not surprised to see both 55ton mechs coming charging at her. She took her time and lined up on the Ryoken-B with her Bear Slayer. Her battlecomp said that her target was packing an ultra fire rate close assault autocannon in the left arm. She could not afford to let a weapon that could remove almost three tons of armor at an exchange get within range of her lower tech mech.

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Canto's eyes flew open at the hit his mech just took from the Dezgra mech. He had no idea that the other pilot was as upset that she had missed the left arm, and they had only hit the left torso of his charging god of battle. When the shuddering stopped? The armor display went from green to red. Canto could not believe that a ton of his armor on that part of the mech's chest was almost blown threw with that one hit of purple lightening. After doing some quick mental math he was shocked to discovered that if he took anything larger than a 5cm laser in that location? It would have no problem finishing the job that the one PPC hit had given him. Markus made a note to find out if the clans were trying to work out how the barbarians had been able to super charge a late Star League era PPC this way. Still all the Star Captain could do now was to take the hits and rush the still burning hill at his mech's full speed of 97 km/h.

Alice knew that she was in trouble at seeing the speed that the enemy force was closing with her. She had forgotten in her verbal games with the nipple necks, that clan mechs were very fast for their size, armor layout, and weapons load. Alice crab walked her mech to the one side of the hill that she had not been to yet. It was not a good move, but that was the only way to get a line on one of the attacking mechs that massed the same as her but had taken a hit from her already.

That one shot had not been the only damage given out between this group of clanners and Alice. Before Alice could drop down behind the safety of the burning hill from her third shot of the battle. She had been hit by a pair of super charged long ranged 8cm lasers mounted in the arms of the Ryoken prime. She had only been lucky that the hits were in the left torso and center torso and not in one location on her battlemech. But those pair of hits had hurt her machine none the less, and at least the heat management system was not having issues with her super high tech PPC weapon's fire and the heat from the burning hill. That was about the only thing that Alice currently had going for her in this battle.

Alice was perfect in her line up of a second shot on the damage Ryoken-B. She had been surprised that her Battlecomp said that one more hit in the same spot should take out that side of the enemy mech. She got her next shot off first, but the second clan mech had not split off to go around the other side of the hill like she had expected. That would have let them catch her in a pincher movement with only one way to escape and leave the battlefield in their hands.

She fired her PPC at the damaged clan mech, and then she did a snapshot of SRMs Racks full of inferno rounds at the second charging clan mech that she had yet to engage. The return fire was nothing short of devastating to the old four legged mech that was older than the combined ages of the pilots involved in this battle. If Alice's auto eject system had not been working, she would have died right then and there. Still the Kell's Hounds would not send a mech into battle without a working ejection seat, even if the pilot had demanded that it be disabled. The Kells would not let a pilot that foolish fight under their colors, if they could help it. Not that someone with that kind of mind set might have its uses on certain types of battlefields, only this was not one of them.

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Alice blacked out during the launch of her ejection seat out of her family mech, but that was not uncommon with the g loading the pilots were given in this type of event coming out of a Scorpion. She would wake up many hours later. It was when the sun was setting, and she was still hanging in a tree overlooking Basin Lake off to her right. She had no idea what had happened in that last exchange of weapons fire, only that she was now mechless and dispossessed. She thought about eating her holdout handgun right about then, until she remembered that The Hounds had put at least two dozen mechs into storage before coming on this mission. The other dozen "extra" mechs had been stripped for parts for the rest of the units within the Kell's and the remains sold off for scrap. Still, that was two dozen mechs that could be issued as replacements, and that was not counting the salvage or what was reported to be on order from the Dragoons and the Archon's own factories.

The Jaguars had taken up the habit of shooting at ejection seats of Inner Sphere born mech pilots much less mercenary pilots that had drawn their ire by daring to fire at them. And the pair of Clan pilots Alice had been fighting had done just that a few times already today. The only reason that Alice had lived to wake up hanging in that tree, was that the damage she had done to those other two clan mechs had given their pilots more things to think about other than trying to shoot down an ejection seat. The Bear Slayer had no problem punching threw the last armor covering the left torso of the Star Captain's machine, and it cut deeply into that side of the mech before running out of power and physical force.

The eight remaining rounds of super heavy autocannon ammunition was the first to react badly to the PPC's energy, but the built in CASE system did its job. Still the bones of the clan mech were almost cut threw to the back armor of the mech. The already damaged huge 330 XL engine made in the far away Tokasha MechWorkds was cut into along with the oversized gyro that an Omni mech needed to stay standing. The Star Captain was good, but he was not in the Ristar class. He was shot out of the top of his mech only a few heartbeats after Alice had started her own rocket ride into the sky.

The other Ryoken had not been hit with all six of the snapped fire SRMs, but two did score solid hits on her. Between those two inferno jell filled missiles, and the full alpha strike the Clan pilot had fired at the four legged mech in the heat of anger at the insults to the founder of The Clans. This had caused the medium class mech to have a heat overload, and its engine shut down until a lot of heat had been dumped threw the built in heatsinks. Heatsinks that just happened to be now covered in a very hot burning substance delivered by Alice.

That one remaining functional clan mech and pilot was able to rejoin the battle as the sole surviving combat unit of her mixed star. The young pilot had learned one very important lesson about fighting Inner Sphere mechs that morning. You don't go at them piecemeal, to fast, or without a half dozen different plans on how to deal with them. It could end very badly for you; it was something that would help that one pilot in the long run after this set of battles were long over but never forgotten by that one Smoke Jaguar.

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Staff Sergeant Irwin Tyrell had been in a Wolverine class mech until it was shot out from under him on a planet called Misery for now more than one reason. Then he had moved to the command lance and given a Cataphract that had seen better days out of the Dragoon's then limited supplies. That mech had lasted through the damage his body had taken on Harrow's Star, but it and its new pilot were destroyed on Crossing along with so many of his few remaining friends.

Still, he was one of the "Old Hands of Gamma Regiment" that could be made whole one more time. When Gamma had been rebuilt and Jaime had let Gamma Regiment take another contract to get them off of Outreach before they broke something that Jaime would have to pay to replace. He had gone right with them at the rank he wanted and not one step higher thank you very much. Oh, and Jaime, you can take that battalion slot or any other officer rank and shove it.

Irwin had been hoping for a new machine or maybe a rebuilt Archer or Warhammer when he had made it known that he wanted to come back, but instead he had gotten a rebuilt Cataphract. Irwin knew that it could have been a lot worse, he could have been issued a Hornet or a Wolfhound to pilot instead of a heavy class battlemech. Still the Cataphract that he had been first reissued was nowhere near like the mech that had been lost during the battles around Crossing. This "new" glorified frankenmech had lost its old CeresArms Smasher PPC to be replaced with an Early Star League grade ER PPC, and the old StarLon made MaxiCannon Type 10 autocannon had been replaced with an SLDF Royal grade LB-X 10 autocannon made on Outreach. The Confederation had made a lot of the same modifications to their new built Cataphracts, but they had used a rapid fire class 5 autocannon emplace of the mech scaled shotgun fitted to the Dragoon owned mechs. That modification just didn't give enough firepower for the Dragoons.

The Vox 280 was the sameish engine that the mech had been first built within a now FedCom operated factory on Tikonov. But now it had an updated heat management system that was found in late Star League or Royal class combat mechs. There were some other modifications done by the Dragoon's support staff to the heavy mech, which were a closely held secret from the rest of the Inner Sphere in 3045. One was only seen when the units did a software only training events in the mechs or in the training sim pods while they were off of Outreach. It had Irwin fighting in not the mech he was in for the last few years, but a different one. He had not been told what other members of his regiment might be using, and they were not "normal" battlemechs that the rest of the Inner Sphere used at the time of the training.

When Jaime had recalled all of the Regiments back to Outreach, two of the Dragoon regiments were quickly refitted with the "real" mechs version that they had been training on in simulations for a while. Irwin had gotten his Summoner or as the military in the Inner Sphere had called, a Thor. All while the house lords were being trained on how the Clans liked to fight and learning to fight together instead of against each other. You know like they had been doing since before 2800. The refitting of the Dragoon's combat forces had been very slow after that first major burst of new combat equipment. He was part of the command company for Gamma Regiment, and it was part of the half of the unit that had been outfitted with clan tech mechs when it was time to go back to war.

Irwin found out later that he had been issued a Summoner because he had been using 70ton war machines for the last dozen years. Irwin was very happy with the omnimech, and it was not just because of all of the clan tech firepower that the huge beast was packing. You had the "standard" or primary weapons load outs for this mech, but you could outfit a machine like this with what was a better fit with the way you liked to fight. That future ability could come in handy, not that he would need that function on his mech for the near future. Besides with the Jump Jets, and two heavy weapons, this mech was a lot like his old Cataphract, which was sitting back on Outreach or being used by one of the non-clan tech Dragoon combat units deployed to this planet.

Plus, having been in the command company of a Dragoon regiment for almost the whole of the 4th SW gave him some deep insights in what a large unit needed to stay in a fight. Irwin knew that his old unit had needed to keep extra CeresArms Smashers, Lord's Light, Magna Hellstar, Kreuss PPC, Fusigon PPC, Anderson Armaments 12, and many Donal PPCs on hand. All of that was just to keep his battered unit in needed PPCs. Now that was not an issue for his lance. The whole Dragoons force now only used H class, Broadswords, or Clan spec ER PPCs. And this was so much easier to have to deal with after the crap show supplies had been in his military career. Oh, and he was only talking about simplifying your supply headaches for a company much less a battalion or Regiment.

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With this last thought, Irwin lined up his clan grade ER PPC and fired it at a Jaguar high end medium mech that his battlecomp said was a Stormcrow/Ryoken prime. It might not seem fair for a 70ton heavy mech to be taken on even an upper end medium like a Ryoken. And Irwin didn't care what others might think about this fight. One of the Galaxy commanders of the Smoke Jaguars had stated on an open broadcast, that only clans deserved to fight by clan rules and not jumped up pirates or traitors to the "true path". That was okay with Irwin and the rest of his lance. This lance all was on the heavy side, and that was thanks to the Wolfs only being able to make a few different types of Clan mechs with the lightest being a few of the 35ton Puma class. Irwin was leading a lance made up of all Summoner class omnimechs. He was in a Prime configuration, with the rest of the lance being made up of a pair of long shooting B configurations and a crazy SOB that liked close in fighting. He had been strapped into knife fighter of the C configuration of the Summoner.

Irwin's ER PPC blast was quickly followed by an 8cm super charged laser and four sets of LRM20s from the rest of his lance. The Ryoken could not take that kind of damage, and it falls to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut by an angry child. The targeted medium mech had still been able to return fire before it hit the dirt. The Summoner C had taken one of the ER 8cm lasers mounted in the arms of the already battered Smoke Jaguar painted mech. Now all the Dragoons had to do was wait for more enemy mechs to show up to this part of the battle.

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Star Captain Erika was both missing and not missing the Gargoyle class omnimech that would have rounded out her star this morning. The assault mech had packed a lot of firepower, but it would have slowed her down for this mission. She didn't need a bloodname to know that the battle was going wrong for her clan and the rest of The Clans in general. The plan had been for most of the landing forces to have been sent to take the Imperial city from this House Kurita. By now she knew that all of the "side" attacks meant to spread out the defenders had been called off. Those forces had been set to reinforce the main attack being led by SaKhan Furey as the overall invasion leader. And still they had not been able to force passed the second line of defenders on this hell spawned planet of the scavenger lords.

They had finally been able to force the first defensive line made up of Combine defenders. The attacking omnimechs had been able to force the Combine units back and even break them in a few places by using very unclan like tactics. But only to find out that they were not fighting militia after those breaks were achieved in the main lines. They had run right into the teeth of Clan tech mechs piloted by warriors that knew how to effectively use them. She had been sent out to try to flank the suborn defenders in this area of the again stalled battle lines. The lead mech had been a Jaguar piloted machine that had seemed to have been insulted to be sent on a flank attack by his SaKhan. He had taken off and pushed forward out of support range provided by the rest of this unit, in some kind of show of spite.

He had not even bothered to contact them when he had gotten out of line of sight of the rest of the Star, and that had hurt her Star. That was how they had lost Oscar in the Gargoyle just before sunrise this morning. What where now called Q mechs had come out of nowhere and attacked him in a wild wave of mechs. One had been packing an old age of war tech class 10 autocannon, which was used to distract Oscar long enough for the second Q mech to get close to him. The distraction of the heavy autocannon packing mech had been so good. That the second and smaller mech was able to physically grapple with the legs of the assault mech before detonating the booby trap within the mech's body. The explosion had blown off the right leg of the Clan mech with ease and almost the same thing happened to the Clan assault mech's left leg. Oscar had lived to punch out of his mobility killed mech. But it still was an open question when she had been sent on this mission, if he would live to see the circle many were thinking about calling because of how he had lost his top of the line assault mech to what turned out to be workmechs.

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Irwin had to wait almost half an hour before the rest of the Clan Star showed up to his battle line. He was a little taken aback at what he saw with his well-trained eyes. The first mech had been clearly painted in Smoke Jaguar colors, but the rest of the "lance" was clearly painted as Nova Cats. From all of the reports that Irwin had seen, it had showed that Nova Cats were playing by the clan's "normal" rules of combat. Now Irwin had been very young when he had taken the trip from clan space back in 3019, but some things still spoke to his 50 year old soul.

He activated his radio to an open channel that he knew the Nova Cats could hear. "I see that the Nova Cats have decided to come to my den today. How would you like to fight this old wolf?" Irwin had smiled at his own play on words. After all he had been a member of the Goliath Scorpions and not Clan Wolf when he had come to the Inner Sphere, but now he was a long standing member of the Wolf's Dragoons in body, heart, mind, and soul.

Erika smiled at the voice coming over her speaker mounted over her head. It was not a proper challenge, but she knew what she had heard. "I am Star Captain Erika of the 32nd Nova Cat Assault Cluster, Bravo Star. What will the old wolf defend this flank of the battle to bring this planet under proper clan control? If you wish to die in The Clan way? Then my claws will send you on your way. If you play games? All will know that you are a truly a fallen group before the eyes of the Great Father."

Irwin smiled and stepped out from a group of trees to be fully exposed to any Nova Cat fire that might be sent his way. "Well kitten, let us fight in the old ways one more time."

He sent a signal to the rest of his lance to step out from cover. "But as you see. You will not be facing old mechs from before the Exodus to be blasted at as if we were helpless targets on a range. Are you sure this is a fight you want to try your claws at?"

Erika almost stumbled in her walking mech as she saw the four clan designed heavy mechs stepping out of the far wood line. She had not believed that the Combine had been able to recover enough salvage in this war to field any real numbers of clan war machines. And the ones she could see didn't look to be slapped together scrap made ready to fight at the last second. These four 70ton mechs looked to have been factory fresh and ready to fight.

There was not much she could do under the clan warrior code that she had just accepted to duel under. "Let no one enter this circle. Who will fight me?"

Irwin lined up with Erika in her own Thor prime and he gave his name to the younger Nova Cat warrior. Then the rest of the lance took up sides facing each other, but Irwin's lance out massed each of their opponents. Normally in something like this were to happen back in clan space, the heavier machines would have taken a weapons system offline to make it "a more fair" fight. The younger mech pilots of Clan Nova Cat were not game for that. The general idea was that the Inner Sphere born pilots would need all the help they could get to stand up to the "proper" mech pilots that the clans were turning out for the last century.

Irwin had not said a word at the insult and let the Nova Cat learn something that he knew deep in his bones. There was nothing like experience and survival to overcome quick hands given by some gene splicer. This battle was not like your normal circle, but then again, they were a long way from Clan space. It was more like the small battles fought within sight of each other in the clans past and at the end of the 3rd SW.

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Erika was getting frustrated, and it had started almost from the first steps of her battle with this old Wolf. No matter what she did, it seemed like even though that this old Wolf was in the exactly the same mech as her, he was always at least one step ahead of her. Then she had run into an issue that she had not known about with her mech. On this version of the Summoner, it only could carry a single ton of ammunition for the second generation LB-10 X autocannon. She could have a load of solid or cluster rounds, but only one type of ammunition at a time. Now her LRM Launcher held two tons of missiles, but only a single ton for her "more flexible" autocannon. She had gone for the higher tech cluster rounds when she had last been at the resupply base, and now she had found out that might not have seemed like the best decision for her to have made.

Irwin had gone with solid shots in his autocannon, so that he could get two concentrated hard hits with his main weapons. Then he could use the LRM Rack to find any weak spots or holes in the enemy mech's hard armored hide. So far that had worked out very well for him in this one on one battle against a clan mech. He would hit with one or both PPC and autocannon, and then he had rained down missiles to damage the insides of the enemy mech almost at will. He was not getting out of this fight without damage, the clan mech driver was too good for that to happen. But she was not as good as she thought, at least without winning a blood name. She now understood why her blood house had not put her in for a blood name yet. She would have only been an average clan mech pilot, and blood names were reserved for the better pilots or gunners within the clans.

Irwin watched as the ejection seat of Star Captain Erika sailed high into the sky over this little battle site. When her ejection seat arc reached its high point and it had started to come down, Irwin looked around his mech. He had six reloads for his missile rack left, and that was counting what was currently loaded into them. But it would not fire due to damage, and he could not even dump them due to even more battle damage done to the internals of his mech. His autocannon was dry as a bone, ammunition wise, and now useless for the time being. His only remaining weapon that was worth the name, was the hard hitting and long ranged clan grade ER PPC. All of this damage and most of the issues could be fixed with enough time.

All four of the Nova Cat mechs were down or shut down around the local area of the battle between the two leaders of this small unit. A slight frown came to Irwin's face as he saw that the Summoner C in Dragoon colors was laying on its side with smoke and flames coming out of it's left torso. The Vulture C that had done that deed was not far away. It was standing frozen in place on one leg with heat coming off the mech in waves so thick that it was hard to see how much other damage it had taken in its own small battle. Then he saw the other mech pilots hatch open and a small body come climbing down the field ladder that looked very shaky as it moved. Then the small form falls face first into the mud of the battlefield and it didn't seem to be moving.

Now it was time to report to higher command. "Gamma Command, this is Tyrell at Block 76. We stopped a mixed Nova Cat and Jaguar Star. We need some recovery assets at this location. If we can get some ammo sent out to me? I might be able to stop a kit school squad, but right now we are spent."

Irwin waited and he had almost fallen asleep, only to be jerked awake by the speakers telling him that he was on his own for the next few hours. A small resupply and repair contact team would be out shortly, but they were spread thin, and he was on his own. He also was told to make sure to protect the forces under his command. The only good news that came over the radio, was that the battle lines were being pushed back towards the clan landing zones. Oh, and the Imperial City had not been breached by the clan forces.

The support team was a whole six people outside of the drivers for a pair of large 50ton trucks. One of the large trucks had a crane for helping with ammunition reloading and the other one was just full of beans and bullets on a mech scale. The support team had found that William had died in his mech, along with the Jaguar taken out earlier, and one of the Nova Cats. The Star Captain had been TKOed landing in a tree that took some work to get her out of without causing more damage to her battered body. She and the other two Nova Cats would be staying with the Dragoons, at least until the battle was over. The little one had passed out from heat stroke, but she should pull threw. Irwin was betting that she was a failed-out aerospace cadet or very underage, even for clan standards.

After that, and the battle for this planet was over, someone with more metal on the collar would work out what to do with them. Irwin was betting that they would be the newest members of the Dragoons by the end of the month if not before then. The issues would be if the now ex-clanners would be able to live with that change of leadership. It was not unheard of for a member of a clan to "remove themselves" instead of becoming a bondsman to another group. It was a rare event, but it was not unheard of within the clans.

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Around midnight, many bright blue/white lights cut the night like huge white knives of visible wavelength energy. Irwin had been keeping one of his mechs active after the reloading and food had been dropped off, and he was only the first one of his lance to see the lights in the night's sky. These lights turned out to be a full support platoon complete with heavy equipment needed to support battlemechs in the field. After the first reloading team and some spot repairs done to the three Dragoon piloted mechs, it had been a quiet time for the lance. They only had to run off some of the locals, which had thought that they could do some scavenging off of the battle and the dead. You would be surprised what a jumping 70ton pissed off battlemech can get locals only outfitted with LPCs (leather personnel carriers) and sidearms to do and how fast they would do it.

A quick check on the radio to his higher command about the approaching lights had said that they were a team from the Kells helping out with the removing of down mechs and doing what repairs they could in the local area. There were three heavy mech recovery trucks and a super heavy lifting and personnel transport that looked to also be supplying the needed escorts for the larger support team. It would take the whole team two trips to get the down Wolf Summoner, Jaguar Ryoken, the other Nova Cat mechs, and some other wreckage off of this part of the battlefield. They were taking all of it back to the nearest salvage collection point run by the Dragoons or Kell's Hounds.

When the last massive mech recovery truck had left the battlefield, for the last time, it had left only Irwin and his least damaged lance mate waiting in the tree line. But soon the pair of them had a ring side seat to see dropships launching into the early morning air of the Black Pearl. He didn't need to have the radio tuned to the right channel to tell him that those dropships were the clans leaving the planet after losing the fight to take this planet from the local ruler. The only thing that a very tired Irwin didn't know, was how much it had cost the winners. As they say the only thing more devastating than a battle won, is a battle lost.

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When the battle was over, the Kells had been able to lift off Luthien with only four battalions' worth of functional mechs and tanks. It would take the Kell's support and repair units' months to rebuild the broken mechs, tanks, and bodies of the pilots that also had been damaged in this one battle. They had taken the time to recover every Kell Hound machine, Clan mechs that they knew were theirs before they had lifted off of this polluted planet. Well, maybe they took a few more than that. And oh, the odd handful of Combine machines that looked to be easily repaired and could be of used to help rebuild the Kell Hounds after saving the Combine's bacon. They were a Lyran based and mostly crewed mercenary unit after all, and business was business. It also fell under the term of "it is easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission" in the contract they had signed

The wounded from the Kell's hounds, Wolf's Dragoons, and the Clanners recovered by those two groups were on a pair of large Dove Class medical dropships, which Hanse Davion had attached to this mission after a note from Jaime. Jaime knew how many of his people had died after the battle of Misery and some of them could have lived, only if he had access to one of those hospital ships back then. Then there had been a slight trust issue about trusting the Combine with wounded Kell or Dragoon personnel. It was the whole Death to Mercenary directives.

The clanners had been added to the list of wounded that should use those dropships just before the battles for the planet were "officially" over. Some in the Combine had wanted to… see each of the Clanners while they had been in the field medical tents very urgently. The first few that had been taken by the ISF or other Combine officers had yet to be seen again. Jaime and Kell had passed down written orders to not let that happen again. The wounded and captured Clan personnel would be protected at almost all cost to include shooting someone wearing any of the uniforms of the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery.

The Dragoons made it off planet a few weeks after the Kell Hounds had started burning for the pirate point that held their jumpships. They had a little more than three and a half regiments of troops that could still be called somewhat fit to fight by the time the Dragoons made it to the jumpships waiting for them. All of the mercenary jumpships had been hidden at a previously unknown pirate point that had caused some in the Combine military many sleepless nights for many years to come. The delay had let the Dragoons to be able to pick up some extra replacement warriors from the Jaguar or Nova Cats as well as tons and tons of top of the line clan tech off of the battlefields.

But Jaime Wolf knew what the real diamonds in this game were, and he had traded very dearly with the local combine leaders to get them. He made sure that his staff did this collection at the lowest level possible. The last thing that Jaime wanted was for some political officer or high ranking officer with an ax to grind against the Dragoons or other mercenary units to get in the way. The diamonds that Jaime wanted so badly were the tech crews, many that the Dragoons had already taken care to collect and then hide from any that were not the most trusted members of the Dragoons. The loss of Hephaestus had been the brick to the head that had showed Jaime and the rest of the key leaders of the Dragoons the true value of clan trained support staff.

Jaime personally had even gotten more than a few from lower ranked Combine officers that had not known what they had held in their clutches. Normally all Jaime had to do was trade a few wrecked mechs, which might or might not have been brought down by his warriors but had been collected by the Dragoon support personnel. You would be surprised what a Tai-i, Shu-sa, or Sho-sa would give you for a clan grade ER PPC or ER 8cm laser or two. The Dragoons had taken losses, but not so bad that Jaime could not be very selective about what warriors were added to the Dragoon's combat ranks. The last thing he wanted was to rush their integration to "just to get more butts into seats" only for it to raise more issues down the road for him or other leaders within the Dragoons to have to deal with at a later date.

The local Combine forces had suffered greatly, but they had come out on top of the battle just not as well as the mercenaries had done. Some of the empty dropships were taken by victorious defenders from the Clans using the limited battle armor at the local's command. Some of the damaged dropships had been left behind by the Clan commanders, so that they could have enough surviving crews to man the dropships needed to flee this planet of death with what remained of their combat forces. Jaime had asked and received the lion share of the recovered aerospace fighter wrecks on the planet, in space, and their pilots by written order from The Warlord of the Combine. They were freely given in return for the Dragoons only asking for only one Overlord C and a Union C dropship from those vessels captured from the Clan dropship fleet.

Out of four Galaxies worth of ground combat forces that made land fall on this planet. Thirty percent of the Nova Cat's forces were able to leave, and an almost….almost a matching number of the Jaguars were able to do the same. But most of the Jaguars would be without operational omnimechs or battle armor for the survivors. In less than a week of battle between Clan and Inner Sphere forces, four full-strength front-line Galaxies of troops had been gutted, and that was in addition to some other losses in this area of space.

Those also were not the only losses that the clans were given in that time period over this new wave of invasion. Every other clan combat force used in this wave of the invasion had also been reduced by the better equipped and trained defenders. Many key leaders within most of the clans knew that the easy pickings of the early days of this war were now over. The only thing that none of them could know, was what was going to be the final cost if they were still willing to run headfirst into the Inner Sphere defenders.

At the start of the invasion of the planet called Luthien, a third of the Inner Sphere aerospace fighters operating around this star system had some kind of upgrades. But none of them had been up to clan levels of technology. Those kinds of weapons had been reserved for the ground fight, but they still had a telling effect on the clan attacking force. This damage had been reaped on both the run towards the planet, and when the clan forces started pulling out when the surviving leaders had found out that they were not ready for this type of fighting.

The Jaguars and Nova Cats had not thought to ask for Safecon or Hegira and the Combine would not have granted it even if they had been asked. This was the capital planet of the whole Combine, and they were not that happy with the invasion of this same planet. This let a third of the dropships used in this operation to be destroyed or had been allowed to be captured by the different units gathered here from around the Inner Sphere.

The only area of the clan forces that were not heavily damaged in this attack on Luthien? They were the warship escorts and jumpships needed to carry all of those dropships, but some within the other Clans were wondering how long that was going to last. This war was not turning out as many leaders within the Clans had been led to believe by some of their key leaders like the Smoke Jaguars. They also were starting to wonder about the group that had been supplying so much of the information used in these planet falls in the early days of the liberation.

In dark rooms, voices would start to talk, and plans laid. The people of the clan did not like being misled. They also needed to find out how the barbarians could come up with these improved ER PPCs and then make so many of them. Those new weapons along with the huge number of H class weapons that only the Star League had been known to make before the Great Exodus were a pair of shocks in the first order. The rest of the late Star League grade weapons were just thought to be recovered older weapons by many within the attacking Clans.

Another issue the Clans needed to address was how the traitor Dragoons and the mercenary group called the Kell's Hounds had been able to field so many clan designed mechs in the battle for Luthien. The only area that Clans had a still measurable lead on the battlefield was in battle armor, but again the Dragoons had deployed full clan tech battle armor if not that many of them. Also, this battle had revealed that the powers within the Inner Sphere were now starting to field their own, if currently less capable, battle armor suits in real numbers. The different leaders within each Clan would come up with their own plans, but a few would find common cause and join forces.

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Notes

Mechwarrior Alice Locke Park 2nd Kell hounds battle: She is in an updated scorpion (DHS, IER PPC, and inferno SRMs) vs Nova (elementals), Hankyu, Ryoken-B, and Ryoken prime. This battle was gamed out in a FLAGs but both players were new to the game. The Clan player was using the Nova as a heavy scout because that was where he put is BA on before he knew what the goal should have been. Luck was on the IS player side when the light mech lost the leg to the artillery strike along with spot damage to the rest of the clan mechs just standing in the open.

Clan Elementals and fire. If they were fireproof? Then why spend the time and effort making the Salamander class suit that are fluffed to be fireproof.

Sergeant Irwin Tyrell 1st battalion Gamma Rgt: He was an old Cataphract driver but now has a Summoner/Thor-P and is part of a lance of Heavy mechs made up of Summoner B, B and C.

The clans reporting on the Bear Slayer. I was channeling the report to the Brits and US about the Japanese Zero. Many knew about it but many commanders and pilots didn't seem to accept this. The same thing happened about the BF-109 to the US and the Brits. Germany got the same treatment about the Enigma machines and the Russian T-34 tanks in Sep 41.

I cut a battle. A battle was planned for a lance of IS mechs with Q-mechs in support vs a Clan Star. But it was cut due to writer's block and not being able to even get someone to play out the battle for me.

Data to support this was supplied by TRO 3050, 3050U, 3039, Wolf Dragoons source book, Mercenary 3055, and Battle of Luthien (01678).

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