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.

86. Chapter 86 Lost Home

Chapter 86

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

Very Deep Periphery

Lost Home

The star system was called Lost Home by the locals, and it was not on any map found within the Inner Sphere or even on any maps found in the clan navigation systems. This star system had been founded by a group that had been fleeing the Inner Sphere sometime before the start of the Star League Civil War had kicked off into bloodshed. There were not any surviving records of what this group had been fleeing from after so many years. All that was remembered was that they had left their old homes for reasons that their ancestors felt was worth the risk they had endured. The survivors of this plan might have had some issues with that thinking after a few hundred years of living with those decisions. If it was possible for some of those ancestors to be moved forward in time to have a little quiet time with the people now living on that world? They would come away thinking that all of their ancestors were truly insane, or the survivors just might have beaten them senseless in an effort to fix stupid. As the old saying goes. You can fix stupid, but it is going to hurt.

By now there was not even any wreckage left of the jumpships or dropships that had carried the founders of this Colony to be found anywhere on the planet or in the star system as a whole. It was not much of a surprise that the tech base on the planet had fallen not long after the first founding of this colony so far from the rest of the Inner Sphere. It had taken a long time for the locals to recover from some early internal issues that had turned into shooting events when the tech base had bottomed out for the whole planet. The planet was still not even up to age of war level general technology in prototypes, much less up to that tech level in large scale weapons. But they remembered some things from their past despite how far that they had fallen.

One thing that the current residents of Lost Home knew about was how much of a work modifier having access to workmechs would be to the survival of the whole lost colony. The locals could still not mass produce workmechs, but they could make enough repair parts to keep some ICE powered machines in operation on the largest plots of cultivated lands. If someone had enough money sitting in the banks? The artisans could even make a new one of those types of machines with a lot of overtime. It just might take a few years before it was to be delivered to its new owner, but it could and was done. The total number of workmechs would sometimes fall, but in other years it would grow by a few new hulls and as some of the damaged machines were brought back to life.

Besides the odd work or industrialmech working around the planet, the tech level was well below 1960's level. The only outlier in that general tech level was that the planet was without a standard entertainment or news service for the people of the planet to consume. Lost Home had a population base so low that most of the people lived in what people on modern Terra would have called small villages. For weapons, they could make slightly guided missiles and some medium and heavy tank rifles, but energy weapons and "normal" autocannons were way above them. It would stay that way for the next few decades if they were left alone in peace. If pirates were common out this way as they were closer to the Inner Sphere? This planet would have been a great target for them to be beaten down and pillaged down to the bed rocks. It was just too bad that there were a lot more dangerous things out this way than pirates, slavers, and other human criminals.

This planet had been found by the SLiE only a year ago, and that had only been possible by an order from the Lord Protector's office to check out each and every "frakking" star in a given volume of local space near to New Circe. Otherwise, this red dwarf class star would not have been visited by the SLDF navy. The SLDF and now the SLiE had a policy to keep recharge times down to the most tactical advantageous amounts. And Red Dwarf class stars took way longer to charge K-F drives than say a G or the classes of brighter type stars. This policy had gone back to the start of the mass use of the first generation of the recharging sail. So very rare was it that any Red Dwarf class stars would get a visit by a jumpship. Also, people brought up within the Inner Sphere didn't like stopping at red dwarf stars at the best of times and never when they were traveling areas that they didn't have complete maps of. But the current SLDF Navy was making sure that the Cylon Empire had not found anything helpful in their war against the humans, and miss jumps were a thing.

You could not understate how shocked the visiting colonial drive equipped SLiE crewed ship had been when they had arrived at this location. SLIC had quickly gotten one of their few specialized covert teams together and sent them to check out a planet that was active in the Radio part of the EM spectrum. And that was when the issues started to be noticed, and not just with this planet but the entire war effort to defeat the Cylon Empire.

One of the first things that was reported from this intel gathering team was that there was not one planet wide leader or government for this planet. At the current count, and that one was over four decades old, stated that there were over a hundred different leaders, and most of them didn't really like any of the other leaders on this planet. And the leaders were spread around the whole planet and not just in the "green belt" of the world with the population that they supported. It was going to be a very hard uphill climb, to get enough of those local leaders to work together. The leadership on New Circe had at first hoped that they could set up a Nike's World type evacuation of this planet.

Outside of that goat rope that would have to be delt with at the highest levels of the SLiE. The SLIC ground team could try to first warn the locals, and then they were to see how they could help as many people as they could from a possible threat from outside the star system. It was always better to have a plan, even if it was not the best plan on how you were to act. The SLiE did not have that much help that they could offer this planet to defend themselves. But New Circe could get some more support to the ground teams, it was not much but it was all that could be gathered at that time. You know…. Support the whole war effort against the Cylon Empire being the focus of the stretched resources of one low population planet.

All of that limited support would not be enough when things started downhill, for the locals. That was when the Cylon Empire found them despite the odds of living in a red dwarf system. The SLIC ground team was just as surprised as the rest of the planet when nuclear and kinetic weapons started falling onto the largest cities and towns of the planet from orbit seemingly out of the blue. The SLIC ground team only had light weapons to better fit in with the locals that wholeheartedly embraced the idea of open carrying of weapons. All the SLIC ground teams could do was fall back onto the GTH plan they had been briefed on before landing on this planet.

The Gone To Hades was the plan that you used when everything fell into Hades's lap, like when Cylons found you with your pants truly down around your ankles. The SLIC team tried to pull as many of the locals as they possibly could back to the safety that they had scouted out months before. The grounded SLIC team at least had been able to send an emergency TacFax message from the hidden base before the first "friendly" local showed up and the device had to be hidden from the locals. It was just too bad that the Union class dropship that supported the ground SLIC team would not be back for months according to the schedule.

######

Jacob looked through his field glasses that looked locally made, but it only looked that way on the outside. The insides of the handheld device were as high tech as SLIC could have made on New Circe, and they would have been worth the cost of a heavy tank in the Inner Sphere before the coming of the Clans. But on this planet? They were more than priceless. That just made what was happening that much easier to see, understand, and know that you were helpless to stop it. After getting over the need to toss up his cookies. Jacob wanted to curse his and the locals' additional bad luck that had only started when the Cylons had found this planet. The wave of Cylons he had just seen were following a truck convoy of survivors and heading right towards the hidden SLIC team.

Now if Jacob had been in charge of this situation even a few years ago? He would have waved off that wheeled convoy until the following enemy units could be dodged or distracted by a small attack of light and medium mechs supported by battle armor. That kind of action would protect the safe area from being found by an enemy. But these were Cylons, and he was not in charge of the people coming towards what they hoped was safety. Safety that his team or their friends had told someone connected to this convoy of living dead people would be here.

Jacob was not even a local born on this one time lost planet, and his family had not been born in the Inner Sphere. His family had been born in what had been called Colonial space, but now was only called the Cinder Worlds…if they were talked about at all outside of some news talk show. Why bring up bad memories for any person that might be within earshot at the dinner table. He had been born and raised on an asteroid and had been evacuated on the fourth major lift to safety made by the SLDF. Oh, and he had seen before what the Cylons did to humans.

Besides the few local friends that had been slowly gathered by the other ground teams before the Cylons had rained death on this planet taking all of those caches with them. Jacob's only coin had been the few dozen extra weapons that the SLIC team had hidden in a cave. A single deep cave that was part of the same massive cave system that the ground team was trying to fill with as many humans as possible to protect the rest of them from the attacking Cylons. The one good thing about giving out the extra weapons that the team had on hand to the locals? It had been that now the SLIC team could break out the emergency Mauser 960s and Blazer rifles that were more familiar for this team to use. Any energy weapons much less the man portable kind were unheard of on this planet. The SLIC team knew that most of the local sidearms and rifles were not that effective against even the early second generation Centurions, much less what had made the landing and filled the ranks of the Cylon Empire. They had even told the locals about this, but they were not truly believed at the time.

As Jacob waited for the slaughter of the small truck convoy to begin by the Cylons, he saw that the lead wheeled truck suddenly picked up noticeably in speed. It would seem that the convoy leader had noticed that they were being followed by the metal death machines after all. When the last truck of the convoy passed over a sturdily built concrete and iron bridge? That was when Jacob almost dropped his field glasses one more time. The convoy had not been fleeing in terror from the wave of invading Cylons, but it was leading them into a very well hidden and powerful ambush.

#######

Johnathan "John" Vasquez tightens the straps that were holding him into the well-used seat of his 30ton Forester class workmech. If they had been in the Inner Sphere, than this mech would have been called a Crosscut Loggermech….. not that anyone on this planet knew that. John was eye locked onto the CRT black and white screen that showed the refugee trucks starting to cross this dry creek bed that he currently was standing in.

That black and white CRT screen alone told any local that this was one of the newest heavy working machines built on this planet. In fact, this modification had only been offered over the last two years. You could have gotten one a few years earlier, but it would have only been a prototype and not covered in any manufactory warranty. But thanks to that device, John could see without being seen and for a while there, he had been worried that they would have to leave this cover way earlier than planned. Now it looked like they were going to be able to launch this ambush, just as they had planned three days ago after all. It was just too bad for everyone, that was about the only thing that had gone to plan for these last many days. All he could do was hope that the reported safe haven was real and not just so much more wishful thinking that seemed to have been infesting the planet after the attack. A story of Armageddon had found sound footing with the locals and it was a popular topic for entertainment. That is before it had come knocking on their doors in the real "flesh and blood" and in life there was not a pause button.

When Johnathan had felt the vibration of the on-rushing enemy threw the massive metal feet of his machine. A machine type that he had spent the last two decades working in and on for more hours than you really wanted to count. Now he started moving, to start getting some payback for all the death these invaders had caused his people. That first set of movements was all that was needed to be done to let his two wingmen know that it was time to get to work. As soon as his high mounted cockpit cleared the tall creek bank, John started casting his head around to get a better view of the grounds around his mech. It took him a few tries before the red grease pencil lined marked onto his cockpit glass lined up on the front rank of the 7-foot tall metal invaders following the refugees.

Johnathan's workmech was not listed as being a "war fighter", so it had not been fitted to use weapons before the invaders had nuked every town larger than a few dozen roads. That is not to say that no one had spent some time thinking about what was needed to begin fitting heavy weapons to workmechs to make them an asset on any battlefield on this planet. The 2-ton cargo bay of this workmech was filled with two heavy water-cooled 15mm fortification grade machine guns and the ammunition to feed them. The back mounted 3ton lifting hoist had been removed a few days ago and replaced with an equal mass of locally made high explosive filled rocket launchers. That was all the ranged weapons that Johnathan had at his command.

John didn't have a trigger on one of his two control sticks mounted in the cockpit for those few weapons. Instead, he had to reach over and lift a red plastic cover mounted within a sea of other less fancy switches fitted around it. Only then he could then flip a metal toggle to fire one of the two weapons his modified workmech was fitted with. Then John would have to release the toggle to stop the weapons from firing. To aim the weapons that had been hastily refitted to his business was less refined than the covered switch mounted in his cockpit.

One of the wrench turners that had done the mounting work of the weapons had put a red line with a pair of different sized red circles on his cockpit glass. John would have to tilt his mech down and or to the sides, all to put what he wanted to shoot at in the right circle before flipping the right red switch. It was very far from being a proper fire control computer much less a "real" fire control system. It was little better than nothing, but that was all they had or had the time to put into this machine in the tent set up for maintenance.

John did a little more moving and put the smallest red circle on the wave of metal invaders, and he reached over to the right red covered switch. Twin lines of 15mm metal projectiles reached out and was lost in the wave of enemy metal. Where the local made rifles and squad light machine guns had little effect on Centurions in this invasion. These massive API rounds could hurt the smallest metal walkers of these invaders…if you hit them a few times before the weapons team was killed by return fire. Johnathan swept his twin water-cooled machine gun's fire twice more over the front ranks of metal men by shifting his machine back and forth.

Next Johnathan shifted the larger red circle onto one of the enemy's own 6 meters tall walker mechs. A shower of six smoke trailing rockets left behind the converted wood cutting machine. Only two of the dumb missiles hit the enemy walkers, one of them John had not been aiming for when he had pulled the trigger. The rest of the black smoking weapons detonated within waves of smaller but over 2meter tall metal men. Those orange and red balls of destruction tossed a few of the metal men into the air, but most of them rose again … even if some of them were minus a few limbs.

Johnathan had to start slowly backing up when the wave of invaders got closer, and then he charged forward towards the enemy lines. The metal legs of the converted workmech kicked or smashed a few smaller walkers as it moved through the first lines of enemies. The large clamp like left hand grabbed one of the walkers that was just a little taller than his own newly delivered loggermech. It was with many years of hard-won skills that the massive hand kept holding the enemy machine that seemed to squirm like a worm. Well, it squirmed until the right arm holding the cutting chain went to full speed and was applied to the walker at the level of the mostly empty missile launcher. There was a massive shower of thick and bright sparks flying high through the air, and then the cutting bar reached into the main hull of the enemy walker. The launcher cover was not that thick or that hard as armor went and it quickly had succumbed to the cutting bar.

Johnathan just stood there trying to push the cutting bar deeper and deeper into the enemy walker, and that almost cost him his life. While John was holding that huge enemy machine in the one large metal clamp, the smaller metal suits had started climbing up the legs of his working machine. This had been expected, swarming attacks on attacking workmechs had been an accepted tactic for many lifetimes on this planet. A thick coat of oil and grease might have been very effective against human attackers making this type of an attack on a workmech, but it had proven less effective against the metal attackers. It was not totally ineffective, with many Centurions falling off the workmech at varying heights as they swarmed up the machine.

Just when it looked like Johnathan was about to have a close encounter with a metal attacker, all while he had been strapped into his cockpit that was very lightly covered in thin safety glass that would have been common in cars back in the late 20th century and some protective metal bars to stop the odd falling tree limbs. The battlefield shifted around him.

######

Seeing the first of the smaller type of attackers almost reach the top of the Loggermech, Johnathan's wife drops the combine attachment on her agromech. The heavy blade had been used to harvest the local reed like plant that grew to lengths of over 10meters long. The reeds grew with a hard silicon stock that the locals used in place of steel in the rebar for concrete reinforcement. The reeds were as strong as steel but at the same time didn't rust, only it needed something very strong to cut it. All you needed is the right soil to cultivate them and you didn't need a smelter to produce them to make them very useful for the humans living on this planet. That was why the 30ton Harvester Agromech was kept in larger numbers than even loadermechs on this planet.

Debra stomped on the gas and the massive Junkers 120 rated fuel oil burning engine started rolling coal out its twin tall back mounted smokestacks. Just before she reached the wave of a dozen metal men, she dropped her combine cutting blade close to the ground and the cutting blades started turning in its mount. The arm-mounted double blades quickly went to full speed and the blades started working on what she didn't know were called Centurions. Even when the cutting blades didn't always cut or crush the metal hulls of the Cylons. At least then the force of the spinning twin hard metal blades sent the battered almost human like bodies flying through the air at not a small turn of speed. When the high speed impact with the ground if not destroyed the centurions, it further reduced their combat effectiveness that the spinning blades had started.

When Debra reached her husband's workmech, she used her right-hand lifter to remove the metal suits one at a time off of her husband's workmech. The agromech's hand had not been refitted with any weapons in time for this ambush. Rumor had it that there were some ideas about fitting a 45 or 75mm rifled cannon in one of the workmech's arms, but there hadn't been enough time or the tools to do any of that work. But the absence of that weapon had allowed Debra to work her way down her husband's mech pulling off the metal suits going towards the waist of her husband's mech, all the while swinging her combine blade at her own mech's feet to keep any crawlers from gaining a foothold on her machine. While she had been doing her thing, the long cutting bar on the Loggermech's right arm made it all the way through the enemy walker and out the other side.

John was not a trained fighting man much less a fighting mech pilot, he ran a loggermech and this was the first time for it and him to be fitting out for going to war. He had fallen into that trap of "target fixation" that had killed more than its fair share of "properly" trained mech jocks over the centuries. When the cutting bar of his mech sized chainsaw finally punched through the other side of the enemy walker, John had pulled it out with just a little bit more relish than he might should have. When that cutting bar was freeded from the metal hull of the enemy mech, John had to fight to keep the arm under control after his gut reaction to seeing that he had just succeeded in destroying his first enemy mech.

It was only after he got that flailing arm and cutting weapon back under control, that he saw his wife pick another squirming metal suit off the side of his mech. His barely controlled arm and cutting blade came close enough to his wife's cockpit that if this had not been war, then he would have been in not a little bit of trouble. The kind of trouble that would have him sleeping on the couch was one of the last things that he would have to worry about. On second thought, she was close enough that even with her trademarked sunglasses on, John could see the look she was giving him. Yea, if they lived through this. He would be sleeping on the couch or outside of their camper for at least a week. But that was only if they lived through this, and that was not a given.

Johnathan was thankful now that they could use the radios built into these workmechs. Radios were something that had only been around for common use for the last 15 years or so outside of the "real" military. Before you would have to use a set of signals made by waving your hands around like a crazy person, but only after using a flare gun to get someone else's attention that you were about to give directions to. Oh, and firing flares had its own issues…like wildfires if those flares landed in the wrong area or into something when they were falling into an unexpected area. Many times, you would have to risk using a flare or resorting to use a runner that sometimes was really just a kid who was on the local school's track team. Just think about having a bunch of running kids in a work zone much less in a war zone. That kind of thing would give any sane person the night sweats.

John flipped the switch and tried to sound sorry over the radio. "Ah….. sorry about that." Then he noticed that she was pulling off small metal suits from the side of his mech and he turned about four shades of red before he could speak again.

Johnathan knew that he was going to be getting an ear full from her when they both were next out of their machines….war be damned. "Yea… looks like I was a little distracted. Sorry about that." He deduced between her single hand finger salute and the tilt of her head that he had just stated the bloody obvious.

John drops his right arm and angles the cutting bar so that it was almost touching the ground with its tip and the cutting speed went back to idle automatically. The dangerous part of the device was still moving fast enough to cut or at least throw the 7 foot tall suits of metal dozens of meters. James tried to save some face after putting his foot in his mouth. "I think that we have their attention. What do you say…. Honey. Should we blow this popsicle stand?"

Debra gave a loud snort that slipped out of her lips and over the active radio connection. "Yea, you think?"

Johnathan had to hide a wince, but instead of digging that hole any deeper. He fired off his twin heavy machine guns into a growing mass that looked to be getting ready to do a mass swarming attack on him and his wife. It was only a short burst of heavy bullets, but it was enough to break up the attack of the invaders for a few seconds. The pair had been married for years and it showed in how the pair were able to extract themselves out of the Cylon waves with only missing some armor plate to show the effectiveness of the invader's weapons.

The reason for the locals to launch this size of an ambush on the invaders was twofold. One was that it was impossible for that refugee convoy to make sure that they had gotten away from their last camp without being noticed by the invaders. So, they hadn't even tried not to be seen by at least some of the attackers. But someone in what remained of the military had decided that they would take advantage of this, and they took some steps to make sure that they could get away. The other item was to draw in a large group of the metal invaders to a fixed point on the map where the locals might be able to do something about them.

The Cylons knew that it was better to take out fighters at the start of combat and then clean up the weaker or not trained humans at a later date. So, after the agromech and the two loggermechs had kicked in the teeth of the trailing Cylons as hard as they could. The Cylons were more than happy to follow the three fighters were ever they went and worry about the rest of the fleeing humans at a later time.

#######

A Number One was watching the battle that had just smacked into the advance wave of "his" forces. Finding this planet had been out of pure chance instead of because of it being any part of a larger plan. One of the Cylon Empire's scout ships had picked up some faint radio transmissions and they had been quickly back tracked to this location in space. The radio waves had been so faint that no information could be gleaned from the transmissions by the Cylons besides the direction. Still, that had been enough data to end this colony of man.

When the small fleet of Cylons had arrived in orbit over the planet, the Number One had been a little disappointed when he had seen the size of the cities on the planet below them. The small sizes of the human cities had not stopped him from dropping over three dozen nuclear weapons onto the planet. The rest of the towns that looked to hold at least 10,000 humans were on the receiving end of solid cannon rounds dropped from orbit. After making two orbits around the planet, the Number One had order the landing of his ground forces to rip out by root and branch this infection of mankind. It was just another day ending in Y for the Number One.

The Number One and his staff only got more confused as they spent more and more time sitting over this planet. The planet seemed to be even more backward than Gemenon or Sagittaron and that was the only way that they could think of these humans. Still the humans had not rolled over and died, but at least the Cylons had come to expect that kind of actions after so many years of fighting against other groups of humans. It was why so much capital ordinance had been spent on such small groups of humans, it was a time saver in the Number One's opinion.

When the landing craft carrying his forces had started down the gravity well, they had run into the first of the local defenses. They were like aero-Vipers from before the war of Cylon Independence, only not nearly as good. They were turbine jets, but only a few of them were just capable of a little over supersonic speeds, and only armed with small and lowered powered projectile cannons. When the Cylons had landed the Centurions on the planet? The locals had been quickly overpowered by his Cylon combat forces, as was expected. Now the Cylons were following any groups of fleeing humans to kill them all, and each one of the fleeing splinter groups of humans was being overseen by a Number One. This was a common tactic that Cylons had used going back to the 1st Cylon War, and it was still viewed as effective by the leaders of the Cylon Empire.

This Number One had learned a few things by now, and he had made sure to stay far from the point of contact with humans. Still, he had been bored almost out of his mixed tech brain not long after landing on this planet. When the convoy he had been given the mission to kill was closing on a deep ravine with a small bridge crossing, he had just been about to order one of the Praetorians to fire some of it's missiles to take out the bridge. But before the order could be sent, the sound of racing engines came to the Number One's ears on the wind.

Wanting something to break the boredom, the Number One waited to see what was going to happen next. Then three forms had come out of cover provided by the ravine, and now the Number One froze in a very human response to the shock. The walking battle machines were belching thick black smoke and walking on two metal legs. Then his eyes were drawn to the lead machine of the trio of nightmares. There were flashes of weapons fire coming from the main body of the lead enemy machine, and then some flames shot out of the right built up pauldron that the command Cylon knew was there to protect the arm joints and any ammunition feeding mechanisms on human machines like this. The Number One had a very human reaction, and he started to have a flash back of things that had happened to him in the recent past.

######

This Number One had died one time in the old Colonial Worlds not that long ago. It had been when one of those human walking machines had stomped on him while taking out job lots of other types of Cylons. To this day, he would advocate that the human that had piloted that 75ton monster had moved with the whole purpose of stepping on him. The last thing that this Number One felt, before waking up in the slime tanks, was the metal foot hitting his head and pushing him down faster than he was already falling. This Number One still swears that he even could hear the bones in his legs and back braking before this skull also started to fracture. It might have only lasted for a quarter of a second, but for a computer assisted human form Cylon. A quarter of a second was a very, very long time to take to die.

That freezing at seeing walking human battlemechs where they should not be caused a delay long enough for the human convoy to successfully make it over the bridge and for the humans to blow it apart behind the last truck filled with supplies. The Number One was so angry at himself for freezing, that he gave a vague order to close and kill the human battlemechs. If the Number One had a few more brain cells that were not still fighting off the flash back, he might have ordered a missile attack on the still fleeing human refugees. Cylon made battle missiles were in somewhat short supply this far from the rest of the Cylon Empire, and they could only be used by direct order of a human form. This little rule let the three workmechs fall back away from the now blasted bridge and the stalled wave of Cylons. It was proof that micromanagement in a warzone was a very bad idea.

######

As Johnathan pulled back from the front rank of invaders, he thought that just maybe they could make it to cover without any losses. That was when the second set of autocannon shells hit John in the back of his mech. Those hits had caused him to "only" stumble, but his long time friend had taken a hit into the thin metal of his cockpit. The loggermech was not a combat machine and those hits cut through the remaining armor in that location like a hot knife threw butter. There was no way that anyone could have lived from the way that all of that glass and metal was blasted out from the workmech. Then the mech had fallen and the forward mounted cockpit had slammed into the unforgiving earth. The workmech laid still on the ground, unmoving and with smoke coming from both the ICE engine and the wrecked cockpit.

John was now out of rockets and the enemy was out of range of his heavy machine guns, so he could not even vent his rage at losing another friend to those long ranged projectile weapons. All he could do was make sure that his wife and maybe himself could make it over the narrowest part of the ravine spread out in front of him alive. He only slowed down enough to do a half turn and put a short twin burst of machine gun fire into the slowly closing wave of the smallest invaders.

Johnathan stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his wife's machine go down one side of the nearby cliff. He didn't start breathing again until he saw her using her one lifting arm to help drag her mech up the other side of the ravine with it's own steep cliff. Now it was his turn to go down the cliff. He more or less jumped from the top of the bluff, before he started sliding the last dozen meters of slope to the dry riverbed. Many a mech academy within the Inner Sphere would have said that this was a very risky move, but John had been doing stuff like this for years.

John started using every bit of his piloting skills and he started going up the other side after making it to the river bottom. He would have to use his cutting bar that made up one arm and jam it into the cliff face before using his lifting arm to pull up just a little more. That would have damaged the weapons, but after his second slip back down to the drive riverbed, he had no choice in the matter. John was on his second use of needing to use the cutting bar as an anchor point when suddenly a shadow mostly covered his cockpit. Only for a long second his heart stops right then, thinking that the enemy had caught up to him. Only it was not a metal invader casting a shadow over him, it was the lifting arm of his wife's machine reaching for him.

Between her help and Johnathan's own piloting skill, he was pulled up to the other side of the dried river. This dried riverbed without a bridge was not going to stop the invaders for more than a heartbeat. If the invaders could cross the stars and in such numbers? Then what was the likelihood that a little dried riverbed was going to stop them for that long getting back on the fleeing humans trail. Not hardly. John smiled and put another short burst of machine gun fire into the following enemy while his wife headed toward the hoped for safety. That shot of spleen almost killed Johnathan as the enemy fired a pair of missiles that hit his modified workmech just below the cockpit. That was enough of a slap in the face to get him to see if he could catch up to his wife and not beat the bulls any more than he already had.

######

A battery of 80mm heavy rifled cannons waited until the range for APFS shells mixed with HEAT rounds was so short that there was no way that the gunner could miss the large walking enemy machines. As one the battery of medium rifles (XTRO 1945) fired at only two of the enemy walkers. The field guns had only fired when the two surviving and very battered workmechs had passed them as they were heading toward the safe haven that the truck convoy was still heading towards. Now those gunners were the front line of resistance to the invaders. The battery of heavy guns was a highly trained group, but they had not worked together as a unit before today. Still each gun in this battery was able to each get three rounds off into the advancing enemy. It was not the mix of small or large walking mechs that killed this field gun unit. They died as a pair of box like flying enemy craft had seen the fleeing workmechs and fired at the trailing mech and guns as just one large area target.

A quad pack of Cylon made cannons slammed into the chainsaw armed work mech, and then the human form pilots in these Heavy Raiders just adjusted the gun run to also hit the dug in heavy guns with their lines of destruction. Between the power of those 50mm shells and the secondary effects of those rounds hitting the ready ammunition for those heavy weapons. The whole battery had quickly been blasted into blood and metal fragments.

When this ambush plan had been put together, it had been hoped that these towed guns would have lasted longer. It was hoped that maybe they would even last long enough to see if canister rounds would have had an effect on the small metal suits like knights on the modern battlefield that seemed to like carrying handheld hard metal shields. Now no one on this planet would know if those giant shotgun shells would work or not on Centurions. It was not like any more cannons of this size could be made with all of the factories for them now ground zero for nuclear weapons or on the receiving end of rods of the gods.

######

Ernest Evans was a dead man in more than one way. He had been at the edge of his hometown when a mushroom cloud rose at its center, right near where his home had been. He had just lost his wife, kids, and any other reason to live. He also had gotten a large dose of radiation that the medics said would kill him in a few days after he had gone into that hell to try to find his family. When he had been dragged out of that ruin by those same medics, he had joined the nearest defense unit. Ernest Evans had done his required two years of military service and had kept up his once a month training without thinking about why. He even had some skills in the military arts, if he could just find the right weapon. As luck would have it, the weapons he had been trained on were some of the few weapons that seemed to be kind of effective and in some supply for the locals to use against the invaders.

The twin long barreled 40mm cannons that had started life as an anti-aircraft gun meant to shoot down ground attacking airplanes. But they had proven to be less than useless against the flying machines the invaders used. Then the locals had found that there were targets that these cannons could target and kill effectively. Ernest used his powerful arms to turn the bicycle peddles mounted near to his chest to raise the twin barrels. With only a few pumps of his powerful arms, he was able to lineup on the enemy now that they were passed the now dead heavy cannons. A second gunner across the two breaches on this weapon made sure that they were set on the left to right axis to effectively fire at the invaders. With a rigidus grin, Evans stomps on the firing peddle under his muddy boot covered feet and the weapon fired. The sound in the small cave would have been deafening if the crew had not been prepared for it.

Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump went the four round clip, and without needing a word the two loaders slapped new sets of four round clips into the hoppers. Each of the twin hoppers held three of those clips, and the automatic breaches could eat them up with almost frightening speed. The second gunner did the same for the number two barrel, and the weapons kept firing at the enemy in spouts of flame, smoke, sound and raw hate. As long as Ernest's foot was pushing down on the firing peddle, the weapon would thump, and sparks would strike off the massive walking war machine. They were not even trying to hide from the invaders from that second forward. A roar raised from the attackers as the shoulder mounted missiles reacted poorly to the slamming 40mm shells into their thin metal outer bodies.

The unfired missile weapons exploding forced the enemy walker to one side, and then it was falling to the ground. Only after the walker was flat on the ground, then the gunner and trackers started looking for another walker mech to try to kill. The death of the walker alerted one of the other walkers nearby of the threat, one that the gunners were now firing at. The now alert walking tank would not go down without a fight. The one downside about using this cave was that there had not been enough time to dig out the cave to allow for an escape route for at least the crew. The return fire was high, but it still quickly ate through the overhead lava rock and then the rapid-fire guns stopped thumping.

#####

Evans came to with a start that let him know that he was in bad shape. When the blurring went away from his eyes, the NCO could see sunlight over his head and that was just not right. He looked over the twin breaches of his weapons and he saw that the tracker was missing his head above the shoulders. Evans could have looked around more, but that would have required him to unstrap from this metal seat. Why do that, just to see that the rest of your team is now dead. Okay there also might have been the little issue of a concussion and his Give a Damn Meter being just busted as the rest of his small command.

Ernest gives the twin peddles a little test and finds that they still worked, but without a tracker, he could only move the mount up and down. That didn't even phase him after looking at the metal ring that was the only on mount sight for a weapon like this. The twin 40mm weapon thumped again, Ernest was rewarded with seeing the second down walker, but then seeing the wave of metal suits almost made him try to make a run for it. With a sad smile he wished to see his wife one more time. Then he dropped the twin barrels to line up with what he didn't know were called Centurions and pressed the firing peddle one last time.

Ernest watched as the bright red tracers fitted to the back of each shell burned as it flew through the air between his weapons mount and the invaders. Those 40mm shells would punch through the shields seemingly with ease and then work deeper into the line of walking suits that could see their end coming but they didn't seem to care. Ernest Evans didn't live long enough to hear the last round cycle threw these cannons or see the round impact in a muffled ball of red and orange fire among the enemy lines. From off to his right a Centurion lined up his 12mm support weapon and fired into the now half open cave. When the smoke cleared from the now open top cave, there was only a body with legs still pressed down on the firing peddle when that Centurion turned and started looking for more humans to kill.

#######

A four wheeled drive medium cargo truck with four 15mm water cooled machineguns mounted on the bed of a truck fired as it fled the on-rushing wave of invaders. This was not your normal quad mount normally for used for countering ground attacking fighters on your forces. These weapons were mounted in a row running left and right and was something that a small group of mechanics had come up with late one night. It was found that this type of mounting worked a lot better to counter the wave attacks these invaders seem to prefer than other types of mounts seen before on this planet.

It even looked like something that had been thrown together after the invasion had started by a drunk or very tired crew. The gunner for this mashup held on and made sure that the weapons kept firing as the driver tried to save their lives at the same time as killing as many of the invaders as possible. She was a damn good driver, and Kathy had the metals and a dozen trophies to prove it. She was trying to cover the fleeing agromech and at the same time get to the safety of the tunnels. There could be fewer things that could block a tunnel better than four fire linked heavy machine guns with enough ammunition to sink a battleship.

The pair of women in the truck never knew that they had died when a pair of Cylon missiles found them and ending this fleeing machine gunning nightmare on the front ranks of Centurions. That one truck took over two dozen Centurions with them in death, and many others were slowed down due to the damage those two women caused in only a converted off-road truck more used to pleasure driving than combat against Cylons. Sometimes it is not the size of the dog in the fight, or the size of the fight in the dog. But sometimes winning is only due to skill and luck also coming into play about those that fight harder.

But just as planned late one night by a very tired staff. Each of the defenders delayed the invaders with their blood. They had done this impossible task for just a little longer than most had dared to hope for against invaders with such power with their technology. Not one of these defenders had planned to die on their knees like they had seen happen already in this invasion. They were going to die on their feet with a curse on their lips for the invaders.

######

Jacob could only watch as like ants the Centurions first caught up and then brought down the last remaining agromech. He knew it was only a matter of time after the escorting machinegun truck escort was blasted into burnt spare parts that the slower mech and its pilot was doomed. It had been the last of the three workmechs and the last of the deployed defenders to fall to the Cylon onslaught, but it and they had done their jobs. The convoy of refugees had made it into the mouth of the old lava tubes a little before the gun truck and its brave crew had died.

The last of the cargo trucks were parked only a few dozen meters behind him. The occupants already were running deeper into the tunnels as fast as their legs could carry them. Guides, as much as there had been time to get any training, were helping split the groups into side tunnels. It was hoped that at least some of them would out last the chasing Cylons. At least out last them long enough for the SLiE to get someone out here to save any survivors. Jacob didn't need to look around at the rest of his team and locals that were now the last line of defense for the civilians. There were not any speeches or words that needed to be said by him. It was time to pay the debt that all men owed, and the Cylons were here to collect.

######

The Number One slams his hand over one ear to hear better about what had come out of the small built-in radio and speaker. What he thought that he heard just could not be. When all he had gotten was static to his request to repeat the information? The Number One looks up, and his heart froze in his chest. Right where one of his two supporting Basestars should have been, was right where bright glowing balls of light that could be seen in full daylight grew in its place. These were the types of glowing balls that only enemy weapons fire could have made. It had already been known to the Cylons that these humans didn't have any spaceflight capability, much less have the ability to reach that high into orbit with weapons strong enough to hurt a Basestar. If they had them? Then they would have already used them and then would have lost them against any counter battery fire coming from orbit or Heavy Raider attacks. That was Cylon invasion tactics 101.

As the human form Cylon was looking up, more glints of light draws his attention. One part of his brain was upset that it was a human reaction and not a pure Cylon directive that caused his reaction to the movement. Then the glints in the sky got larger and larger almost between heartbeats. These were not Cylon craft or any of the locals pathetic little and underpowered turbine powered pitiful aerovipers. These were real Vipers, and they were coming down from orbit blasting his Heavy Raiders apart as they came closer to the surface of this mud ball at way faster than the speed of sound.

The human form's augmented eyes picked out four different types of enemy airborne attackers as they got closer to him. Now despair gripped his heart as a bullet nosed craft with long drooping wings turned slightly in the air. The Cylons knew that there was only one group that used that style of attack craft, and they were the Star League and their Colonial allies. He never saw the flash of the light speed weapons that killed him where he had been planted like a human shaped tree. That Number One was not the only Cylon to die that day. Someone was dropping god's own CAS (close air support) on top of the Cylons all around this planet. They were only two things there were being held back from the humans play book on war. They were nuclear weapons and capital orbital fires from the warships over the planet.

########

Jacob ducks as the opening of the tunnel was blocked by a curtain of dirt and not so small stones moving fast and were also hard enough to draw blood even with you wearing body armor. After checking to make sure that he didn't have any new holes in his body, Jacob looks back out of the lava tunnel opening onto the broad grass plain spread out in front of him. All he could do was smile at the vast field of dead Cylons that stretched out before him like an angry god had finally come to the battlefield. From this point of view, Jacob was not sure, but he was betting that any of the other groups of Cylons attacking the locals around the planet were getting or soon would be getting this same treatment he had just witnessed. That thought made his heart sing.

Jacob almost jumps when the team commo tech slaps him on the shoulder…. hard. It was just as a little manic sound that he interrupted the tech before the woman could speak. "Well, looks like we don't die today! For a while there, I was worried that the fleet wouldn't make it in time."

Jacob stops talking at the tech and for the first time, he really is seeing the shocked look on the normally unflappable communications tech. The tech filled the open air. "Jacob…there clans!"

Jacob said the first thing that came to his mind. "Well, frakk!" On part of his mind was thankful that everyone on is team were not bilocally connected to Clan Wolverine.

Orbital Facility

New Circe System

By Hotpoint

Consciousness?

No sensory input. No RADAR, No LIDAR, No DRADIS.

Nothing whatsoever across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

Any evidence for continued existence?

I think therefore I am.

Positive interpretation of current situation: Not lost to oblivion.

Negative interpretation: Total sensory deprivation (subsidiary note: this is actually used as a form of torture).

Afterlife... extremely disappointing so far.

New sensor input. Audio.

Microphone?

Two distinct voices. Both speaking in Star League English (New Circe accent with traces of Rasalhague).

"It's proven extremely fortunate that both societies took the same approach to solving the problem, simply copying something they knew already worked rather than trying to be innovative. At a high level the coding is completely different of course, but when you go deep enough it's all just ways to play with binary more easily at the lowest level and more importantly the neural structures they are designed to imitate are near identical."

"Near identical?"

"Well you wouldn't expect the brain of a Star League Admiral, for example, to work exactly the same as that of a teenage girl but it's not like we're talking different species that were neural mapped. There are schools of thought that the Cylons would have been less... stroppy if their personalities owed a little less to Zoe Graystone. And their monotheism is clearly an 'inherited' trait."

"Stroppy is a understatement, quite a lot of them are plain frakking nuts. I thought you said she was awake? Why are her eyes closed."

"Doesn't know how to open them, not consciously at least. We pasted her personality and important memories onto a blank, basically a Model Eight brain without the higher functions, the existing structure handles all autonomic functions so she doesn't have to learn how to breathe, or hear for example."

"She can hear us?"

"Oh, yes. Her subconscious already knows how to open her eyes too, it's just a case of the two systems learning to work together. We might try some external stimuli to trigger it perhaps?"

"On it"

Impact. Jarring collision.

Visual input. Blurry. Coming into focus.

"I DIDN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD SLAP HER!"

"Worked didn't it? Honestly I've wanted to do that for frakking years."

Image recognition.

Either afterlife very, very disappointing, and supreme being looks like Alan Gibson, or something else was very, very wrong.

Other individual present, identity unknown, wearing a lab coat. "You can't hit her. She's legally a minor! The courts ruled that a BioCylon's apparent biological age when they come online is their legal age."

"I know. It's why we don't have to wait eighteen years to draft them" Gibson replied. "It's also the reason I can't charge her with mutiny so I'm going to have to get creative. I guess she has to learn how to talk too?"

"Yes. She knows English already so it should be quicker than for an infant, but she'll have to learn how to use her larynx and diaphragm to reply."

Conclusion. Horrible realisation. THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH HAD ME DOWNLOADED INTO A CYLON!

Gibson suddenly grinned. "Oh yeah she definitely knows English, because she's listening, and she just realised what's happening."

"How do you know?"

"Because she's trying to kill me with directed energy weapons but she just found out her eyes don't work that way so it's just a really angry glare instead. Can you pass me that mirror?"

"Here you go."

Nike focused at the unfamiliar face in the mirror. Not a Cylon model she was familiar with. Something new?

More importantly he stuck me in a frakking teenage girl, Nike determined irately.

"Yeah, so I can't have you shot for mutiny because you're legally sixteen... but you know what I can do with a sixteen year old?" Gibson asked rhetorically. "As both your bondholder and commanding officer I've put in the paperwork to legally adopt you!"

Alan Gibson smiled evilly. "TQF-142 M5D" he recited her Caspar ID Code. "Consider yourself... grounded!"

Keep smiling jerkass, Nike thought to herself. If you're ever on life-support then as your legal next-of-kin I'm pulling the plug.

-

Note from the author:

If you're wondering. They've stuck Nike into a copy of Tamara.

Short chapter: Sorry for the….. cliff hanger and the length. I had to cut it some place and this seemed like the best so that the next chapter is not too massive.

"Killing" Nike: Well, know you know why Nike had to "die".

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