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.

89. Chapter 89 The Cylon Ground landings

Chapter 89

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

New Circe

The Cylon Ground landings

Jim Brown looks through the high-tech optics that he was holding in his hands at what looked to be the death of him and all of his people. Jim had thought that his fighting days were over after he had been evacuated from the Colonial worlds a few years back. His fame of being a retired sport's hero of some renown had given him the edge in setting up his own little cell to fight the Cylons in the early days of this new war. They had not been that successful in dealing critical blows to the invaders, but he had been successful in keeping most of "his" people alive.

After leading his group onto the evacuation ships the first chance he had, and then seeing to the settlement of his group within the lands of the Colonial City State. He had been wavered from being drafted into the colonial or SLDF military due to his age, body damage, and what the medical department called a major case of post-traumatic stress with depression. He was of two minds of this decision but after a few meetings and after trying to keep up with "military aged" recruits. He had at least resigned himself to not being on the front lines of this war.

After about six months of being on New Circe and notified that he would not be drafted. Jim had joined one of the colonial militia units that would meet every other weekend at the north edge of the still growing city. After working 10-hour days, six days a week supporting the war effort, that was about all that any of the members of this unit could handle at this point in time. But those Militia meetings had let them talk through more than a few issues to help with their collective PTSD issues, as well as having a few other perks that most Colonials would not have thought of as being worth their spare time. Well, that would have been before the Cylon surprise attack on their home planets that killed 20 billion of them.

The difference between line and local defense units when compared to the militias on this Planet. It comes down to who is buying the weapons and paying for the training that they can use. Front, second, third line, and the Reserve units were outfitted with whatever the government could buy and then they would spend the funds needed to train the units on how to use them to be at least somewhat effective with them. A militia is only armed with what the members could find by hook or by crook, and then it would be up to them to work out how to be trained on the equipment they had on hand.

So, Jim, who had lost all of his family and possessions to the Cylons, had diverted a good part of his post evacuation paychecks into kitting himself out with the best equipment on the market and then made sure that he was trained on how to use it correctly in combat. Jim had made a vow to never be caught flat footed like he had been at the start of this new war with the Cylons. Sometimes Jim would trade in a weapon like his colonial made battle rifle for something that he liked better…. like say a real frakking laser rifle with a 40 kilohertz range. Like who does not want to own a real-life laser rifle….. you know in case the Cylons come back? The funny part was that almost every other member of his "unit" had about the same way of thinking as Jim.

When the alert was sounded, Jim had reported with most of his militia unit with a locally made copy of a Colonial pilot's twin barreled pistol and an Inner Sphere made Interk laser rifle. The only thing that the colonial military had given him after checking in, was a radio and then they had pointed him towards the estimated enemy landing zone. Thanks to Jim's skill of staying alive under Cylon occupation, and his natural athletic skill, he was more than a fair scout. So, he had slowly moved forward out of the trench line. A trench line that no one had thought was needed when it had been put into the ground after the founding of this city to do what scouts do…find the enemy before they found you.

As Jim Brown was watching the enemy gather near their flat black almost organic looking hulled landing ships. He was making mental notes as well as sending the raw feed through a reel of thin fiberoptic cable back to the trench line and hopefully to someone that knew what they were doing. He had no idea that some of that data was being sent to the long shooters on New Circe. Long shooters that prayed to the gods of….. FASCAM. They were already laying belts of it between the Landing zone and the main city of the Colonials City State, but a lot of eyes were on data like what Jim was sending back.

The one thing that stood out to Jim Brown, it was that he was seeing every type of Cylon that there might be on the open field to his front. There were even what looked to be like groups made up of everything from old U-87s to 005s models in the ranks of those Cylons. Also, there were too many to count of massed second-generation Centurions with and without shields in the growing formations. Then there were the support weapons or captured colonial weapons those Cylons had in numbers that would make an accountant blush. And still those were not the only hodgepodge of weapons that Jim Brown could make out from his hidden location in the tree line.

After the waves of still forming up Centurions, that it was the mechs and rhinos that drew his attention next. But only after the shock of seeing so many Centurions falling into the attack formations. Back when he was an insurgent leader ten Centurions would have caused him issues, and a few dozen would have been the makings of a nightmare. He could see combat rhinos that looked both to be older and newer than the 1st Cylon war versions that the Colonials had fought against before. There also were Rhino's that looked like they were more made to build or destroy buildings than to do combat with the SLDF, and then there were the ones that he had no clue about what they could be used for. Jim had no idea that many of those Rhinos that he was seeing had been pulled from construction sites where those pusher blades, mining flails, lifting cranes, and bridges were useful in the first steps of setting up a new Cylon base.

When Jim had just started to count the number of different "battlemechs" in the enemy force, if only to keep his mind from shutting down in terror? He became distracted when an old Viper MK II, being chased by four Cylon Heavy Raiders, stitched a double line of 30mm dirt fountains into the growing blocks of Centurions. Jim had kept his vision device on his eye after he looked away from the ground units just in time to see that the old Training Viper pull up and work on dodging the return fire from at least two different directions. That old Viper was only saved from destruction when a pair of Viper MK VIIs also in training unit colors blasted two of the trailing Cylon Raiders apart with energy weapons mounted under their fuselage. This surprise attack forced the remaining two Cylon Heavy Raiders to break off pursuit of the lone MK II.

Not long after the attack run made by the Vipers, Arrow IV missiles and Long Tom class weapons started dropping bomblets in the general area of the unloading Cylon ground forces. There were to many of the falling objects for the very effective Cylon Airial denial systems to deal with after they had separated from the human made projectiles. The software on those Cylon systems had a priority list of engagement given to them by the Number Ones. The Cylon CIWS were to prioritize going after Vipers, point detonating heavy shells, and anything that their DRADIS said was a can of instant sunshine. Those falling rounds were not carrying the "normal" and larger weapons that even an Atlas would worry about. No these were designed to kill Centurions and light mechs in job lots. This would make them less effective at killing or damaging anything larger than the Cylons Pretorians. Most of the time war is a matter of tradeoffs and the SLiE had decided the Cylons were a larger threat.

Before Jim had left the trench near the city, he had been told that currently no one controlled the skies over their heads on this part of the planet. That was better than many colonials had to deal with on the last planet that they had been forced to leave, but it still was not that great either. Friendly overhead air cover was going to remain being spotty unless something could be done with a dozen Cylon DreadStars filled with Heavy Raiders in near orbit over this planet.

It was only thanks to the Wolverines knowing that they could be attacked by the Clans that the majority of their combat power was spread not only around this planet but around the whole star system in case of a surprise attack. That had the downside of diluting the power projection of the SLDF, but it did protect them from being ambushed in just a few locations. This had happened to many times in the human past for it to be ignored by anyone but the bean counters.

#######

It took a little over four hours before the Cylon landing forces were able to get from the landing zones to the first line of manned defenses put together outside of the Capital of the Colonial City-State. Besides the odd attack from the air launched by the humans, the Cylon's advance had not been directly attacked by the locals in any great numbers. But also, by then more and more long ranged artillery had been falling on the Cylon landing zone in ever growing numbers. Many of the heavy cannon shells and powerful missiles were intercepted by the Cylons one way or the other, but not all of them. That was just the nature on war of this scale when all you could get was strategic surprise. At times there were so many black clouds of exploding ordnance that it was like fighting in the shade. Just really, really deadly shade.

Three SLiC or Colonial made nuclear weapons were able to slip through the Cylon's interception fire and CAP before the ground Cylons had been able to breach the last belt of mines the humans had dropped from overhead. Those three multi kiloton blasts made it so that many of the landing ships would need months of repairs to get them space worthy once again. It also took out, at least for a while, many of those point defense interception systems the landing ships had been fitted with to deal with the human attack craft. That human success story had caused the Cylons to adjust their very detailed attack plans to block that route of success after the blast clouds had moved downwind by a few dozen kilometers. It was one of the core axioms of war that even a halfway dumb enemy can learn… if you hit them over the head hard enough or often enough.

The Cylon hammer was made up of five divisions worth of Cylon forces and they hit the Colonial defense line like the fist from a God. And it was only thanks to two things that the line held against this attack. One was the massive number of Cylons that had at least been rendered immobile thanks to all of those artillery dropped mines. And the other was because of the anti-mech ditch and short wall backup by manned defenses that made that hammer fall bounce on the first strike.

That was where what the Inner Sphere would have called combat engineering vehicles proved their worth for the Cylons when the second attack wave showed up a few hours later. It also was where the Cylons made the next mistake in their battle plans, the first mistake had been not waiting until they had more forces to attack this group of humans in the first place. So, instead of pulling back those modified Rhinos from the point of contact with the enemy when the anti mech trench and short wall had been breached. Instead, those combat multipliers were kept close to the front contact with the human's firepower and the Rhinos paid for that tactical issue.

It was after this action in the breaching of the first line of obstacles that the Cylons showed that they had developed energy weapons to almost mass production levels for use. They were heavy and massive things, and even compared to what the Inner Sphere could make, they were very underpowered for the mass of the weapons. More than a few of the low-rate production of the early production laser weapons had been fitted onto hulls of Rhinos replacing the large turret normally carried on those beasts.

One of the many issues that the Cylons had to deal with in using these new weapons? It was that even the massive engines in those heavy tracked transports could not provide the needed electrical energy for this prototype directed energy weapon. The current fix was to use a heavy armored trailer fitted with a tylium fueled secondary generator that was pulled along behind the massive tracked vehicles in a combat zone. It would have been better to have used a chemical laser, but the Ones had wanted an electrically powered laser… just like what the humans had been using against them for a few years now.

#######

Jim Brown was standing looking out the half open door and absentmindedly wiped dust, blood and sweat from his eyes with his grime covered gloved hand. After making it back to the first line of defensive points around the city, he had been sent back to rest. That had been just in time to avoid the first attack on the wall by the Cylons. That had only meant that he was there when the wall and mostly dry canal was breached by the Cylon attackers in the more aggressive second attack waves. At first, he had been on the firing line pouring fire into a wave of Cylons as they forced a breach in the wall not far from him.

Jim and the rest of his militia unit had been rotated out for resupply when a sudden push had overrun that defensive line behind them. The whole line had started to unravel not long after the breaches had started…. kind of. Any defender that had lived had fallen back all the while firing into the advancing Cylons every step of the way. The idea of "unit" had quickly fallen apart for the human defenders, but firing into any nearby Cylon was the order of the day. This was something the average Colonial did with glee. If you ran from the Cylons you just died tired, and these colonials were the survivors of their people. At least if you fell back while firing your weapon, you might take just one more with you to see Hades.

That kind of action had led to Jim being with his current unit. This was not a normal unit but only a group of people who just happened to have the same idea at close to the same time. Of course, that didn't mean that it was a good idea, only that it was less bad than some. It was a small group of people that was centered around an 8mm Colonial military medium sized machine gun, The Frakking thing was almost as heavy as the gunner in charge of this weapon. Then there also was a Blazer rifle and a SRM team that were off to each side of the machinegun making sure that no one was sneaking up onto them while the humans waited for a juicy target. It was not much in the way of firepower, but they all wanted to bleed the enemy before falling back one more time. All they had to do was wait for the enemy to show up to try to kill some more humans.

Soon a line made up of a mixed group of Cylons made a turn in the road not far from Jim and his adhoc unit. The Cylons were not shot at by anyone in Jim's group even though the Cylons were within range of their weapons. That all changed when the wave of Cylons passed a wrecked ground car and then the medium class machine gun opened fire in short 7 to 10 round bursts that was the hallmark of a well-trained colonial gunner. The heavy 8mm anti-Centurion projectiles punched through or shattered the first rank of shields carried by the Cylons like they were butter. Then those heavy rounds started wrecking the metal Centurions and the odd commanding human form that found out the hard way that they were a little too close to the front line.

As it turned out, this was just a probing attack being made by the Cylons and after only moving a few dozen meters the attackers fell back and out of the line of fire of Jim's little group of friends. By now that little trick played by the Cylons had not been a surprise for the humans. Cylon style Recon by fire was now being trained to Wolverine Kits units. The MG had been the only human weapon that had put down a line of fire from this one position.

The rest of the "team" were held back to surprise the follow on Cylon attack with a lot more firepower. All of the members on this human team knew from experience that they would most likely not be able to stand up to a third wave of Cylons, and they would have to fall back if they were able to successfully repel the next Cylon attack following this Recon by Fire. It was easier to fall back between enemy pushes instead of in the middle of one. That was a good way to get shot or stabbed in the back while being swarmed over by the Cylons.

######

After the Cylon ground forces had made it threw four breaches in the outer wall around the colonial city, their assault had been stalled once more due to the human's willingness to keep killing the attackers every chance they got. At first the Cylons had tried to fanout into a wider area to thin out the defender's firepower, but all it did was dilute the offensive power of the Cylons for the humans to wipe out in detail. When the sun fell over the western sky to end the first day of battle? The Cylons had not taken the Colonial city, and all throughout the night weapons fire went both ways killing and wrecking anything it touched.

The night didn't cause that much of an issue for Cylons normally, as had been seen and reported back from Colonial space. But it was now less of an issue for the defending colonials thanks to this planet being in a nebula that cast a glow no matter the time of night. Oh, and the humans had learned of this trick about the ability of Cylons to fight at night, and the humans had made sure that night vision devices were on top of all of the production lists. Those devices were right up there along with every type of Vibro blade that could be thought of by some very demented teams on and off the planet called New Circe. The Cylons would not be the only ones to use blades to frighten their enemies, they might have the advantage of one-on-one strength, but the humans had worked out a few tricks of their own on how to use the "bladed" weapons against their foes.

That night

Under SLiE capital city.

The Lord Protector of the Star League in Exile looked around this underground room. This part of the bunker was so deep that it should be safe from any attack from orbit the Cylons might try. Thanks to the small units that had helped salvage and recover what they could from the Colonial Planets, there had been some changes to how the SLiE made bunkers. Those teams had learned that the Cylons had found a way to get to deeply buried bunkers that the Colonial government had invested in during and right after the 1st Cylon war. It was very much a brute force way to get the job done, but in the end, it was a way to get the job done. These teams had taken notes to see how to defend against these attacks as well as how to do a better job of completing the same task. After all Clan Command and Control centers back in the Pentagon worlds were also underground.

Thanks to Copeland and some tech that he had brought back from the Inner Sphere on these resupply runs, even without it being on his shopping list. This had allowed the older SLiE command bunkers to be moved a lot deeper under the planet's crust without interfering with its operations during these extensive modifications. Now this and a growing number of like bunkers were deep enough into the crust of the planet that heat rising up from the core of the planet could have been an issue. That is if the DoME part of the old Star League had not already known how to deal with little things like some heat from getting close to the upper mantle of a planet. They even had a quick way to turn that heat into power for the base to use as almost free energy. Where this technology might have been lost to the Inner Sphere, that was not the case for this group of humans.

The Lord Protector Jennifer Vaun looked around the room and then back to the massive holographic display that took up the center of the room. By now Vaun had been awake for close to 24 hours, and she would need to get at least a few hours of sleep very soon. "So, the Station is still holding out against the Cylon probing attacks. But we lost two of our capital grade SDS bases and one of the close in forts have been…reduced but it is still useful to our defense plans. At least that is some good news. But how can we use that? What about the forces that have already landed?"

The leader of the SLDF Navy spoke to the rest of the room and the holodeck zoomed onto The Station high over their heads. "The building/repair slips had taken some damage, and countering the in close jump attacks has been a Frakking pain for the crews to have to deal with. All of that training they endured with the Heavy Raiders and Raptors has helped in countering real world attacks, but now it seems that it was not nearly rigorous enough compared to what they are having to deal with in real life."

Some in the room had an issue with this statement but the briefer just talked over them. "The work crews on those slips are doing their best to get the Pegasus cleared for combat, and at the same time keep a handle on the growing damage being done to The Station. When it is ready, they will launch a counter raid to try to relieve the pressure in the orbitals that are not covered by ground-based weapons platforms. It's too bad that the Bismark is still making it the slow way back on her original K-F drive. That would give us two capital warships to contest the high orbitals."

The great Texas class battleship had taken two Cylon Raider class nuclear weapons in close but not touching the hull almost on top of each other. The damage had not seemed that bad at first during the battle, but that quickly changed. It was found out during the post battle inspection that the Colonial made jump drive was damaged beyond local repair. It was just a bit of good luck that it was found to be too much of a hassle and a risk to her internal strength to remove her "old" jump core. It had been listed as a "emergency faster than light travel method" just like as it was listed on the Zug. It was now living up to its new listing in the inspection logs.

The pause was only a few seconds before he started talking again. "Our remaining SDS forts are keeping the Cylon warships from getting any free shots over our heads, but that does not stop them from launching raids and weapons on ballistic arcs when they think they can get away with it. I fear that we are at an impasse on that front until we get some heavy metal of our own back in system. The Cylons have the high ground, and they know how to use it."

The ground force commander was next to speak to who was more than just the defacto leader of this planet. "After we took out those three DreadStars in the early parts of this battle, the Cylons seemed to be focused on taking out the Colonials first. They landed a metric frakk ton of forces north of the capital of the City-State, but very few seem to have been military units as we would think about them. One of the colonial commanders said that it looks to be like the Cylons brought everything to our planet besides the kitchen wash basin. The call up of all of our reserve personnel is still on going in the rural areas, and small groups are already activating the plans for displaced operations against an invader." Everyone in this room knew that this was the first time for something like this to be done, at least outside of small to medium sized training events. Granted those events were regimental to multi regiment sized events, so the small size was relative.

The speaker kept going with his line of thinking. "The Cylons started sending small groups of their forces out to attack some of our artillery units doing those artillery raids to get into effective range of the core of the Cylon Invasion force. They were able to take out a few batteries before this tactic was countered by local commanders thinking outside of the box. We don't think that they will try that again without diverting major firepower from their attack on the Colonial city. I just wish we had more Vali class systems on hand instead of pulling them for front line service. The ones that remained are doing some damn fine work."

The lord protector had an odd look on her face and interrupted the speaker. "And how was that done?"

The head of the ground defenses gave a smile that a shark would have love to be able to sport. "After the Cylons took out the second dispersed artillery battery? The people out that way worked out how the Cylons moved without being noticed and they adjusted their scouts to counter these smaller groups of Cylons. A scout platoon backed up by artillery firing FASCAM is devastating to those Frakkers. That didn't stop the third battery from getting hit, but one of the gunners was able to get her Sniper's barrel down and set the shell's fuse to super quick and then just aimed low. Well, it seems like these Praetorian's armor is hard enough to set off a fuse on the shells, and the blast took out most of the attackers. It was just too bad that that was only part of the attackers total committed forces."

The General was still smiling but the gleam would have been a little disturbing…. If you were not a wolverine. "Then the guns crews took the rest down copying that tactic, but they lost a pair of Snipers tubes before they could get clear. After that enough ground forces were able to ambush the Cylons looking for the guns hitting them from a distance. The artillery is using shoot, a slow scoot, and then shoot to draw any QRF into a complex trap. The last report I received had said that they had taken out more than a battalion of Cylons acting as a QRF with each Cylon attack being about a platoon to company in strength."

When he received a head nod from their leader the briefer got back into the flow of his part of the briefing. "We will be sending the first combat units into the Colonial City-State territory in the morning. It will be only a company taskforce with heavy artillery support, but we are more thinking that it is a recon in force and not a move to reinforce the colonials. If the Cylons don't launch a direct ground or air mobile attack on us tonight? Then we will start moving more combat forces down the main transport lines going into the southern part of the Colonial City State's areas. The last thing we want the Cylons to do is drop the big firecrackers on our forces as they move to reinforce the Colonials and are out of cover from the bulk of our antimissile systems."

The Lord Protector gave another head nod in understanding, and she asked a question that should be expected. "What are the latest reports from the Victorian City State?"

#######

The head of the ground forces made a sour face, but he had expected this question…even if he was wishing it would not come up. "The Victorian city state has moved all noncombatants into the dispersed bunkers within towns and/or deeper into the undeveloped areas…. just as they have always planned on. A set of hover tanks with people hanging off of them showed up near a support base out of the blue and wanting to help fight the Cylons. We also have reports that some workmechs have been seen moving at speed through the forest going towards active combat areas within the Colonial city state. They are not any organized unit, more like just small groups that are frakking hot and wanting to collect a few Cylon heads to put on pikes. And they are bringing their own pikes!" The last part had a tone of respect from the ground forces general. It was very wolverine like… even if it would have been better if they were military units instead of civilians with…. axes to grind.

The Lord Protector lets out a snort and as proof of how tired she was, Jenifer lets out the first thing that comes to her mind. "That is what you get when you mix hillbillies, close to modern weapons, and fast transports together. Well, you have to admire their willingness to get into the fight. Between the Victorians and Terry Copelands people, they are not lacking having some fire in the bellies. Make sure any local combat units know that there are volunteers heading towards the sound of the guns and try not to shoot them." With that statement, the Lord Protector on New Circe gave permission and even help would be offered to anyone that wanted to be getting hip deep in this fight. Very few within this room would understand how that might affect New Circe down the road.

Now the Lord Protector had let a deep frown come to her face. She was not a direct military leader, but she did know a few things thanks to her many years of military training. One of those things was that if you attacked an enemy piece meal, then the enemy could destroy them in those same penny packets. The term that she remembered was "concentration of force." Another thing that she knew was that you didn't give an order that you knew was not going to be followed.

She kept that look on her face as she addressed the room. "I know a dropship hop is out of the question at this time. That would just group a set of our defenders together for the Cylons to kill with a Capital grade weapon while they are more or less defenseless in a hauler. Still is there any way we can get some heavy haulers out to the Victorian city state to help move any heavy firepower closer to the Cylons? We are all in this together."

The ground force General let out a deep breath. "At this time…no. But that could change if we can bleed off some of the Cylon's numbers so that we don't have to worry about being encircled and being put under siege ourselves."

Jennifer let a sigh slip her lips. "Well at least the Colonial supplied DRADIS had let us cut down on the number of nuclear weapons we are having to deal with after the warheads go critical. I also have cleared it to be released on a press release that word of this attack has been sent out to all of our units that are currently off planet. It will be at least a week before enough forces can be brought into counter the current Cylon numbers that we are dealing with in space. Now, after "Our" city is set up for defenses. Then I would like to launch some spoiling attacks to support our allies anyway we possibly can without too much risk for our current lines." She did not need to say that this was a political as well as a military decision to get those spoiling attacks moving. Only so much could be done with asymmetric warfare, even with modern weapons.

Near local Midnight

New Circe

The list of reasons of why Nike was pissed off was long, and many of those reasons were not totally known to the one-time Casper warship drone. She had more than a few issues after finding herself in this meat and blood body that would not just go away after a good defragging. Oh, and now she had to deal with human hormones on top of her well-known anger issues when dealing with people she felt were oxygen thieves. She was surprised a planet like New Circe could support so many rocks with lips with such a small overall population base. If you looked at in as maybe one positive, if you looked at it just the right way, had a few drinks, and close one eye, it was that she had finally understood the human term of being so mad that you could see only red. And at least now she didn't have capital grade weapons and nuclear warheads at her command to deal with the little frakkers that were at the top of her personal kill list.

The first revelation had taken a few months of her working with some of the human form Cylons to learn to be at least humanish to come out. She still had those sessions with Cylons and clan mind doctors, at least once a week now that she had been dumped into a human high school. As it turned out, that might not have been enough counselling and guidance from the human forms to help with Nike's other issues. Nike had seen many shows about high schools in her life at least when she massed over 600ktons of warship. With this "experience" Nike had thought that she could handle any issues that might come up while she socialized with "real" people that at least looked like her agemates. After viewing all of those shows she could find on the local network, Nike was confident that she could not be surprised by any group of teenage girls. Yea righttttt.

For once Nike was very thankful that many of her memories were not as sharp as they could have been. That fact had kept her from going off the deep end when she had to deal with a real life human high school. The classes that she had to attend were not that bad, and they filled in many gaps that Nike had not noticed in her skills and logic trees she was used to using in her everyday life. It also worked on filling in gaps that she knew about thanks to dealing with humans for the last half decade as part of her crew.

Still, that had not helped when one of the boys in class had let one of his hands slip just a little lower on her waist at a school dance. She had reacted as quick as you would expect someone fitted with a human form Cylon based body. So, she had punched the boy in the chest. It had been a very fast strike but at the same time it was a very weak strike, and she had known it by the look on the boy's face. And that was when the boy and his friends had laughed at her on the dance floor in front of the rest of the school.

In a flash Nike felt rage and a few things that she could not understand. Between human eyeblinks, she fell back onto "default programming"'. In English? Well, she had reacted to being laughed at by trying to kick a part of the offending boy's anatomy into low planetary orbit. No one within a city block of that dance would ever say that this second strike was a weak one. And more than a few of those gene modified humans in that dance had been surprised by how fast Nike had gotten that kick off onto the one-time laughing boy. Well after the sympathetic pain had stopped and they didn't need a crowbar to help get their legs to uncross from the involuntary muscle spasms.

That had gotten Nike grounded…. again. Allen had not been impressed when Nike had told him that it was well within the current SLiE medical technology base to fix a pair of ruptured gonads. So, what was the big deal with her punting them up around his ears? Oh, and if they couldn't fix his… glands. Well, that just meant that she had improved the Wolverine's gene pool for them free of charge. Nike knew that on at least some level, that her legal guardian had agreed with her. It was in the way that he had covered his mouth while he went to verify her statement.

Nike knew that if she had "her ears" back in her old hull, that she would have been able to hear him laughing as he was going down the hall. She had felt very smug when Allen had returned to the office that he had been using to berate her. While he was gone, she went into her systems to make sure that any evidence of her adjusting her combat overrides had been disabled. So, she was extremely surprised when he had double the length of her grounding over what the school had suggested. That was just so unfair, and she had been very vocal about that fact when she had informed Allen of this turn of events.

Nike would swear that it was a false statement that had been said that she had stomped her foot during this part of her unjustified sentencing. That was something that a warship didn't know how to do or could had performed that type of action. There for it was something that she could not do. It also had been entirely coincidental that towards the end of the school year, that somehow, all of that group's final graded papers were deleted from the school's main frame… entirely coincidental. She had at least four different lies….er alibis ready to be launched when she was questioned about this event. It also was just coincidental that Allen's personal noteputer was stuck on showing the movie Carrie on continuous loop. There was no way that it could have been traced back to her, but in the end, Nike was both grounded again and cast out of the City of McEvedy's schools for the next year.

Instead of home-schooling Nike, like was normal for the more mentally advanced students within the SLDF controlled parts of the planet. Allan had enrolled her in a Colonial school that had the audacity to run already long training days even longer. And on top of that? Every weekend and school holiday Nike had to spend "working" for one of the many small reserve bases spread out around this part of the planet…. without pay. And all of that was on top of her required military training that she had to do as a citizen of the SLiE. All of that was just so unfair.

#######

On the upside, that was how Nike found herself in a modified Maxim class hover Transport. And now Nike was very thankful that Allen had made sure that she had been spending so much time out in the cold and wet sticks of this planet. While somethings had not carried over from Nike's time as a warship into her new body… her gunnery skill was one of them that had. Well, she had taken to gunnery after complaining and cursing up a blue streak about not having access to a real fire control computer and X band radar to see her targets. That skill and digital records of her military training at the range had seen the young woman put into this mixed tech Maxim as the gunner when the invasion alert was sounded around the planet. It was almost like the unit commander had put some thought into this event before the Cylons had launched this attack on New Circe.

The mission that this Maxim was currently on was to move down this small river or large creek to drop off supplies to the embattled Colonial city. If they made it that far? Then the hover tank was going to pull out as many wounded or those that were noncombatants, like the very old, kids, infirmed, and pregnant out of the city. It sounded like a good mission…. On paper. In the real world it left more than a little to be desired.

This was the first run for Nike and the crew of the hover tank, and the large Maxim was only the second vehicle on this creek. But it was the last vehicle on this part of the mission to hopefully fly under the Cylon's radar. The lead in this mission of the two-vehicle element was an almost 200kph capable Sea Skimmer class hydrofoil. The faster and more lightly armored hydrofoil was being used to scout and clear the way of light threats. Secondarily they could warn the slower hover transport coming behind it of larger issues that the lightly armed and armored craft could not handle.

Nike didn't jump when the radio activated in her ears, and she would work on her punting skills again if anyone said something differently when they lived through this. She was starting to feel just a little vulnerable with only five and a half tons of old Late Age of War style ArcShield IV armor spread around her instead of the hundreds of tons of the real Lamellor Ferro -Carbide plate that she had grown used to over the last few years.

"Any Station this net….. Any Station this net! This is Flash 2! I really could use someone to do some light backscratching for me. I mean that I REALLY COULD USE that scratching!"

A calm voice came over the radio in reply to this frantic radio call from an unknown unit. "Flash 2, this is Hex Bravo four-niner. We are just passing point Kilo on the Green Water….. Over."

Nike didn't need her old Caspar Computer Core to know that the voice she had heard coming back was relieved at hearing the calm voice. "Thank the Gods. You're only around the next bend! I'm two minutes….or less out! PLEASE HAVE SOME GUNS WARMED UP! Will you frakkers get the frakk off my ride!" It was a good bet that the last part of the transmission was not meant to be sent over the radio or heard by anyone.

Nike didn't need to be told to start looking for the oncoming friendly unit that was in need of some help. It also didn't take long to find each other with both vehicles moving towards each other at a very high rate of speed that was only possible by hover craft. When Flash 2 was visible coming around the next bend of the river, it was at very close range for weapons fire. Nike was not even surprised when the Savanah Master with a thick red Number 2 painted on the inside of a white circle came around the bend of the river/creek at danger close level range.

With so many of these little speed machines being bought up in and around the Colonial City State from the many supply runs to the Inner Sphere. It was of little surprise that organized racing classes had become a very popular event even with the 5cm laser still fitted to most of the racing craft. Again, it was living through getting your first home blasted into radioactive dust, now they would be ready when the Cylons came a calling. So very quickly those racing teams had become scouts and or they performed light attacks on the invaders.

The battered hover craft was weaving around like a drunk person was at the controls, and it was covered with flaying legs and arms of Centurions. Nike could tell when the Savanah Master's pilot had seen the larger hover craft coming down the small river or large creek towards it. Three turret mounted heavy machine guns twitched sideways and then the metal tubes started to rotate until they were just a blur even to Cylon eyes. Soon flames leaped away from the speeding 50ton hover tank from those same weapons mounts. Three lines of mud fountains started at the creek banks before headed inland as fast as the weapons could adjust the beating zone. All on its own, the light hover craft aimed right for the fountains of hot mud that was a show of skill for the gunner or hover craft's driver.

As the heavy projectiles slammed into the Centurions that had covered the 5ton hover scout with metal arms and legs now were being blasted off the speeding hull. The higher tech and harder armor skin of the Savanah Master was able to shrug off those impacting rounds that had not been absorbed by the covering metal bodies of the Cylons. It was almost like they had both planned and trained for this kind of event, but nothing could have been further from the truth on Nike or the pilot of that hover craft's part.

After the first run through the "back scratching", the onetime hover racer charged a few hundred meters up stream only to show off the skill of the ex-viper pilot by spinning in place and coming back down the water way at what most people would have called breakneck speeds. As the faster and smaller hover craft came parallel to the Maxim another but shorter burst of machine gun fire comes from "only" one weapon. This second pass was successful with the removal of the rest of the clinging Centurions from the scout.

The pilot kept following along downstream for a few hundred meters, before doing that spinning trick again and came back towards the Maxim. The pilot gave a wave of one hand to the larger hover craft threw cracked cockpit glass before turning at 90 degrees and leaving the creek bed one last time. The whole action had not slowed down the heavy hover tank by more than a few kph, and now it was over, and the Maxim and scout were back on mission to try to take out more of the enemy.

#######

Nike kept her eyes moving down both sides of the deep creek now that they were back on the main mission. There had not been any reports of the enemy being on both sides of this water way that she was using to get closer to the Colonial made city. And that never stopped an enemy from pulling a surprise on you. But soon the small river would join the larger river that ran through the city on its way to the sea. The sun was still up when the Colonial city came into view of the hover tank. As the hover tank went from cruse to flanks speed, the damage the Cylons were inflecting on the Colonials became more and more visible instead of less visible due to the blurring of the speeding craft.

The hover tank was racing down the river on a set course, and the driver started aiming for a gap between two spans of a bridge that had seen a lot better days. The bridge had already been cut when the Cylons had breached the first line of defense of the city. This bridge, just like every other bridge built on this planet had been designed to be brought down with pre-rigged charges in the "Swiss Style". And in this case? The cutting of that bridge had been important to keep and control the invading Cylons, but it had the down sides of locking in anyone not fast enough to get to the other side of the river before it was cut by those explosives.

Nike was at first keeping track of that bridge as a major threat point. This only made her worried that the driver might miss the gap between two sets of piers that had been needed to support the road deck. It would have been better if she would have kept her mind on her job instead of worrying about another member of the tank's crew.

Nike had almost jumped out of her skin when the tank commander's voice breaks into her ears. "Target! Modified Rhino working on the bridge! 2 O'clock."

Nike's head snapped over and worked out what the tank commander had meant with his command. Nike could see some kind of heavy engineering combat vehicle on the bridge, and it did look like it was working on laying a metal ramp to cover some of the missing parts of the bridge. The Caspar knew what she was seeing, and it was second nature to access some of the old SLDF manuals that this body had only needed to review to "know". With an evil grin, Nike put the crosshairs on what was called a combat multiplier before she touched the trigger lightly. There was not a need to do a full alpha strike…. At least not just yet.

A rain of 15 LRMs guided by a clan grade Artemis fire control systems fell onto the top of and around the modified Cylon tank. Soon a wall of fire erupted on the bridge and then between eyeblinks a great fire ball rose into the sky over the already battle-scarred bridge where the bridge laying tank had been just seconds before. The fuel tank for the massive engine on the combat engineering vehicle had taken too much damage and ruptured the very unstable fuel into the fires caused by the hover craft's exploding missile attack.

The hot and burning fuel would have killed anyone standing near the bridge layer, and the few nearby human form Cylons did just that. The nearby Centurions were only warmed up a little or blown off their feet, but soon they would be able to regain their feet…. That is if they had the time, and if the humans were foolish enough to give the enemy machines that time to recover. Then again, the Colonials had found out that fighting fare was for suckers.

The driver did a complex movement of her controls of the huge hover tank, and the massive beast quickly spun 90 degrees to the right while still moving down stream. This movement happened just as the hover tank was passing the wrecked and now burning bridge at over 100kph. This gave a view down the street to Nike, and it showed a mass of Cylons waiting for the bridge to be patched so that they could continue the attack on the other side of the river. A lone hover tank at the right place and at the right time had put that little attack into jeopardy even if the enemy out massed the attacking hover tank. Most of the time it is better to be lucky than good.

Nike aimed center mass of that group of standing still Cylons on that road, and with a smile she fired every weapon at her command on the hover tank in one massive wave of death. Waves of long and short ranged missiles reached out and flames of orange and red filled the roadway that had been filled with nonmoving Cylons. Between the loss of the engineering vehicle and the first few waves of Cylons, this attack was as good as blunted. It also would take some time for the controlling human forms to work out what had happened to the attack. That delay would have a knock-on effect of delaying other parts of the Cylon assault on the rest of the human city.

######

It was only another couple of minutes after passing the bridge at flank speed before the hover tank slowed and angled to climb a sand slope deeper into the colonial city. The sand slope ended in a small park that had lanes marked out and a massive number of people waiting around for someone to arrive. As soon as the Maxim started up the small beach of the park, Nike was coming out of her gunnery seat. Nike made her way to the aft ramp and bumped her head only twice before she made it to the craft's cargo area. Even with her speed, the tank commander had reached that infantry bay before she did. The pair made eye contact for a second before the tank commander hit a button and the massive metal hatch opened to the sun light outside.

The pair of them quickly started dumping heavy boxes of ammunition, spare charged battery packs, and then finally weapons that were heavy enough to stop any type of Cylons… even if they might need a few strikes to do the job. The now slowly moving hover transport was leaving a line of boxes behind them that was fallen on by packs of human figures. This happened many times before the boxes had fully stopped moving on the dirt. Nike might have looked like a teenage girl, but she was a female form Cylon, and they were not known for being weak. So, she was able to keep up with the large man with ease dropping the vitally needed cargo out the infantry bay hatch.

Before too long the 5ton infantry bay was empty of cargo and the commander passed a message to the driver from the commlink built into his helmet. Soon you could feel the tank shifting in direction and in no time the tank had come to a stop and clear of the marked traveling lines. Almost between breaths bodies started flowing into the armored box from the nearby road. Some of those bodies were being carried into the craft and the stretchers were attached to points in the bay with ease only found by the most experienced or the very well trained.

After six stretchers filled with bleeding bodies were brought into the bay, the combat medics left and next came in the walking wounded. There were only a few of those walking wounded, and they were followed by shorter passengers. These were children and it would be a rare event that they were accompanied by an adult for the ride out of this hell. It would be the rare member of clan Wolverine or Colonial that was any way into puberty would not want to fight against the great enemy. After the younger ones were set up to be evacuated, the older ones would return to battles slowly taking over this human city.

The Infantry Bay quickly became filled and then over full with bodies that were both large and small. The 5ton Infantry Bay became so full that Nike and the tank commander had to exit out the back of the tank's hatch. Then the pair had to use the emergency hatches on the outer hull of the Maxim to reenter the war machine. This had been only the first run and action that Nike would partake in with her new style body. It would not be the last, and very few knew who she was much less what she was or could be in the future. Nike had found that she liked being anonymous.

######

Nike was starting to feel the last few days as the stress she was not used to had started to build up. In the last two days, Nike and the Maxim had made sixteen high speed trips to and from the Colonial City. This was the seventeenth run, and it was the first one that the hover tank would not be working with another combat vehicle. The Sea Skimmer had been taken out on the last run when it had run aground at flank speed, and it had broken its back on those hidden rocks. It was a loss, but the vessel had proven to be very useful even before the coming of the Cylons. Even after they had crashed, the small 25ton coast guard craft had collected more than a few Cylon heads of all sizes to be added to the ones they had already collected on these runs.

Nike had to shake her head to keep focused on her job as being the gunner on the tank. She smiled at seeing the "kill" marks one of the supporting staff had painted on the inside of the vehicle for the crew to view and maybe draw some motivations from. After the first run, and on each of the other runs had seen her missile launcher bins needing to be refilled on the Maxim. And with Nike as the gunner, that had led to a very fine reaping of the enemy with that ammunition. The tank commander had not been focused on taking down Cylons, but in getting supplies to the city and the wounded, weak, or young out of the line of fire. That had not stopped him from forwarding any threat to that mission to his new gunner.

The battle lines set up against the Cylons were more or less holding… well if you count holding as slowly falling back and bleeding the massive numbers of Cylons. In all of the SLDF Books that covered the different military arts, this was called being a Kursk. Why that name was used had been lost to the dustbin of time by the time of the founding of the Star League and only the term and meaning were still known to those of flag rank or higher. It now was a matter of supply and the will to give it their all to defeat the enemies on who would win this battle.

Nike's head jerked up and she realized that she had dozed off in the tank's gunner's seat. Her eyes just started looking around outside when she saw the Cylon missiles coming towards her at speeds not found in nature. Even with the body of a Cylon, it was the commander of the tank that alerted the crew of the incoming danger to them. Nike knew that it was a lost hope, but she turned the three machineguns mounted in a turret to point towards the homing enemy missiles at the speed of muscle memory. It was almost as much of a surprise to Nike as it was to the crew and the human form Cylon spotters hidden in a wrecked building that four of the incoming missiles ran into streams of tracer fire that lashed out from the hover tank to greet the homing killing machines.

It was just unfortunate that the remaining eight Cylon made bulbous nosed missiles slammed into the top of the speeding hover craft. Nike had been looking just the wrong way and saw that one of the lifting fans on the right side had taken one of those missiles into the top of the device. Seeing the smoke was all she needed to let her know that they were on borrowed time. The sound that started and the vibration confirmed that the hover tank was in very deep trouble. And Nike knew one thing, combat hover tanks don't float without power.

Somehow the Maxim made it to the evacuation park, but it was a near run thing with the hull already riding a few inches in the water instead of floating over the wetness with half a meter to spare. It had not taken the crew long to find out that there was no way to fix the lifting fan with the tools that they had on hand, much less did they have the needed parts to do the job. And now much like what happened to the crew of the Sea Skimmer, the crew of the Maxim was pressganged into the defense of the city.

Besides the crew adding their own guns to the battle, the damaged hover tank was moved thanks to a lot of help from a pair of workmechs. This was so that now the hover tank was moved so that its LRMs could be used for indirect fire support and the machine gun turret had clear lanes of fire down two major roads in case of a Cylon breakthrough that would threaten this evacuation area. The massive hover tank was now just a glorified pill box like defensive point for the park and it was being manned by the walking wounded. The local commander broke up the pressganged tank crew, and that was how Nike found herself with a unit near the center of what was the colonial city.

######

Nike slams a Bar 7 grade combat shield into the face of a Number 4 while her vibro katana does a back hand cut that takes the head and most of the shoulder off a nearby Centurion. The flat chrome combat unit had been working around to attack Nike from behind the captured Cylon War shield. It had been thinking that the human girl/woman was solely focused on the Human form to her front. That had been a poor decision tree for the Centurion to follow. With a twist of Nike's right wrist, the high tech sword comes swinging back around to her front at the speed only possible by a human form Cylon. Her left arm with shield moves away and the vibro weapon comes up between the knees of the still staggering human form Cylon she had smacked in the face with her shield.

Thanks to the twist to get the shield out of Nike's way, the katana comes out of the male at an angle but only after cutting threw half of the human form Cylon's sternum like it was little more than paper and not a body covered in the best body armor the Cylons could make for their human forms. Nike puts back the shield in place just in time to soak up some of the return fire. And before it stops, she is punching her katana threw a shield and into the central core of a second Centurion that had been standing behind the now dead human form Cylon. While the third Cylon was leaking blood and other fluids onto the ground Nike looked around, but something tells her that this push was blunted by this limited counterattack. With this attack now blunted, Nike and the rest of her "unit" fell back behind the reforming Colonial defensive lines.

Nike had been assigned to one of the squads that had been shattered after first contact, but soon Nike had lived and found others willing to fight with her. Now she was working with a free Centurion painted a mix of blue and grey with an odd paisley like print in black over both of those colors, a female human form Cylon, one SLDF grunt, and 3 Colonial civilians that still had a lot of fight left in them. Nike had given up her laser rifle to one of these civilians, but she had kept her sunburn pistol and vibro blade that had been issued to her on the first supply mission to the Colonial city.

#######

Nike was stretched out on the stained carpet that was the floor covering of this wrecked home. The rest of her team were spread out around the room resting, if something came up a runner would be sent to them to go and reinforce the lines. She had never been so tired….and sore in her life. Oh well with everything else that was making her life…difficult so what was one more thing in the larger scheme of things. Nike rolled over and looked at the blue, grey, and black glypheid Centurion.

Nike watched the Freed Centurion work on an open panel on the lower right arm that seemed to have his undivided attention. As Nike watched, she saw some kind of round and brass colored object come flying out and a soft audible thunk was heard by Nike but not likely by anyone else in this room. The oddly painted Centurion kept the small tools in the open part of his arm for a few more seconds before they were withdrawn.

Nike about jumped when a white and black bag fell on her from out of her field of view and almost onto her head. She didn't reach for her side arm thanks to her quick mind already noting that this bag was in the colors of the standard field rations referred to as Meals Ready to Eat by the SLDF. Before Nike could reach for the packaged food a set of legs came into view and a voice like breaking glass cut through the quiet of the room.

"So, Kan, did you fix it? Do you even know what happened to your weapon?" The woman kept talking while she tossed field food packs to the other fighters spread out around the room. As the Centurion who had chosen a name connected to a tin can worked on tightening a few fasteners seemingly at random.

The blue, grey and black Centurion was still working on attaching the cover panel on his forearm. "The modifications to my built-in weapon so that they can fire the new 10mm HE rounds has caused a 1.556 percent decrease in time between jams."

One of the other Colonials looking down and opening his meal by pulling at the corner tab. "1.5 percent doesn't seem that bad?"

Nike was looking down as she opened a package that said Frankfurters and tried not to toss up her lunch when the smell hit her nose. So instead, she spoke to get what looked and smelled like four fingers of death out of her mind. "The Centurion's weapon fires at 1000 rounds between jamming when new. That means that every 900 rounds or about a minute of firing he will end up with a jammed weapon. With a load that your average Centurion has built in, and without any modifications for a larger magazine. Kan will have a jam every other load and leave him with only his blades to fight with. Well, that is unless someone wants to hand over one of their weapons to him to use when he has his next jam or weapons misfire."

While the colonial government and SLiE had been buying almost every weapon that had come onto the market, more than a few had been picked up by anyone that had the extra coins. Many with the word doctor before their names thought that this was so that the colonials would not be powerless again. That still had let a lot of firepower to be deployed against this invasion in the early phases, but what had not been on the market in any great numbers had been heavy weapons and spare parts to support all of those different rifles and sidearms anyone could buy. It had not been long before there were more broken weapons than active weapons for all of the people who wanted to fight the Cylons, even if the military were bringing in more as fast as they could. That was why Nike, an activeish member in the military, was only packing half of a recovered Centurion war shield, a pistol, and a vibro sword. So, no one that had a good and powerful weapon would be willing to give it up.

The comment made by Nike had stopped the man in his mental tracks like a car hitting an assault mech. The woman that had dropped off the food walked over and looked down at what Nike had to eat. "Hey Nike, I will trade your main meal for my egg and basil omelet?"

Nike looked down one more time before passing over her opened four fingers of death, after all how could someone mess up eggs? When she opened the meal after activating the heating tab, she takes a bite and for the first time she understands the term Meal Rejected by Everyone. It would seem that someone had found out a way to screw up cooking eggs, after all. As Nike tried to force down the warm mass so that it would go down her throat, she was able to notice that everyone had a look much like the one that she thought that she was wearing.

That was about when the Free Centurion named Kan spoke to the room. "At least it is warm, and it will not kill you…. right away."

With that statement of a joke made by a Centurion. The room started to laugh, and then a round of what was the worst field ration you have eaten started up. This was only to be quickly followed up with just plain old what was the worst meal they had been subjected to in your lives. Nike found that she had very little to add to this round of bantering between combat veterans. She had only been in this body less than two years, and yes many within the ranks close to her had found out that she was "that Nike" after the first rounds of combat after her hover tank was damaged. The first few groups had not wanted to fight beside her for a number of reasons. They ranged from her being an AI to not wanting to be around when she did something dumb and got herself and those arounder her killed all while pulling off some kind of stunt. You know like the ones the network of this planet had said she had done time after time.

The team was able to finish eating in more or less peace and even get a few hours of sleep. Then the local area commander had to call on his first response reinforcements to plug another leak in the defense line that thankfully had already lost its "heavy" support to human weapons fire. Sometimes this was also due to it had been drawn off going after the limited number of combat vehicles or even fewer workmechs that had been in the area of the capital city of the Colonial City State at the start of the invasion looking like better targets than the small and squishy humans.

#######

Nike found her and her team sitting it what remained of a coffee and sandwich shop after the latest set of "small" battles they had lived through. Their last "base" had been first flattened by Cylon fire and then the human lines had been pushed back by three city blocks. The good thing was after the humans had been pushed off that line, heavy artillery came crashing down on the Cylon's heads. Nike was not currently on lookout duty, but she was awake while most of the rest of the team was getting as much sleep as they could. Nike was awake because a now flame scarred and paint blistered Kan was working on her vibro katana.

Nikes favorite weapon had steadily taken damage in the close quarters battles in the Colonial city, but in the last spoiling attack on a group of Cylons that had been trying to widen a breach in the human lines. About midway through the assault into the side of a Cylon unit, her sword had stopped working after halfway cutting threw a Number Two human form like he was so much warm butter. Nike had reacted by pulling out her powerful side arm and had kept right on fighting after only stopping long enough to pull the now useless high tech sword out of the still bleeding Cylon. She had not even finished off the human form, and just let him bleed all over the sidewalk until there was not enough blood for the heart to pump.

Nike had been very upset about losing a weapon that she had proven to be very useful in these battles, at least if someone had the skills and the right kind of reflexes. Then Kan had walked over to her while pulling out his set of small tools after arriving in this coffee shop. Nike had refused to pass over her katana until Kan revealed that he had worked for Callahan Munitions as an electronics and line repairman in the production facility that made a host of different types of electronics. Nike was intrigued and passed over the weapon, but she had kept having second thoughts about this decision. That second guessing had kept right up until Kan had started using an improvised hammer on her sword and for some reason this relaxed her… if only a little bit.

Sarah Emma Edmonds could see the distress on the young woman as she watched the Centurion banging away on the weapon that the young woman had been very effective with to date. Sarah had been the defacto leader of this group all day as it grew and shrank due to casualties. So, to keep peace in "her" unit Sarah feels like it would be better to distract the very old computer program fitted into a young woman's body. She was about to put her psychology degree and practice in use in one of the oddest places she could have thought of before the alarms sounded.

"Hey, Nike. Why don't you let Kan work without you looking like your eyes are still laser cannons, and you want to use them to modify his body art without him giving his consent." Sarah made sure her tone was light.

Nike's head shoots up and over at hearing her name. After biting back the comment that had first popped into her mind, she just shrugs her shoulders and rises from the floor. At least she had not been asked to leave this mixed bag team.

Sarah turns and heads deeper into the deli shop after seeing that the "young" woman had risen from the wreckage covered floor as quiet as a mouse. When they arrive in the Kitchen of the shop, Sarah points to a cleanish counter and then hopped up and sets on what should have been a food prep area of the small kitchen to face the young woman.

"Nike, I have been following the public or mostly public information about your situation over the years. I know that you were assessed as having PTSD with some survivor's guilt thrown in going back to the 2780s. Now that I have seen you in action and post action a few times by now. I wanted to see how you were doing from your own point of view."

Nike tilts her head to one side and after thinking about what the older woman had said. "I think I'm doing…. okay. I know that fighting and killing is going to come back to me when I have to shut down for some sleep. But getting hand to hand with someone and all of the counseling that I had before the Cylons dropped on our heads seems to have helped. I have not been able to really do "something" and before I was recovered by the SLiE that was very rare thing for me to be able to do. Besides spiking some of my own kind early in the Star League Civil War, killing of the Ray, and then those two pirate groups were all I could do besides just watch everything burn like a bump on a log."

Sarah didn't know what to say at first, this was her first time talking to an AI that was not a Cylon and she had only talked to a bare handful of them. "Well, if it works for you... then great. But I wanted to let you know that if you have questions or even issues, please let me know as soon as you can. We are under a lot of stress, and I would prefer that you get pulled off the lines if you start having issues. I remember an old saying the Wolverines have. It goes something like…It's not your job to die for your country, but to make the other poor sod die for his."

Nike snorts, this was not the first time that she had heard this particular statement. She had even seen the "movie" Patton that had added that saying to the public lexicon in the late 1900s. She could have been snippy, but Nike could tell that the other woman was trying to be helpful without being a bitch about it. That was something that Nike could understand and accept. "Yea, I have heard that line before. If I need a break? I will let you know, but if I go back behind the lines, why can't the rest of the team join me?"

Sarah was a little taken aback by the young woman's statement. "Nike, this is our home. We fight or we die. We can think about later, if we live." There had already been a dozen reports of Cylons cracking open shelters and killing all of those within.

Nike gave a snort. "Yea the Cylons hate humans, but they will only kill you. Me? I would bet that the Number One's won't stop with just vivisection me without using anything like pesky anesthesia drugs to get in the way."

Before more could be said between the two women, the once smartly painted Centurion entered the kitchen with a sword that was humming at just in audible range of the humans. "Nike your primary weapon is repaired. And Sarah, there is a runner waiting for you in the Dining room. I think we are on mission…. again."

Nike took the high tech sword with a cold smile and then looked back to Sarah. "Looks like I get some more time to vent some of my pent-up anger all over some Cylons." Nike turned and headed towards the front of the business with her sword still vibrating in her hand.

Sara noted that she almost had a skip in her step at the thought of killing more Cylons. Sara knew that this was wrong on so many levels it was not funny, but needs must when the devil drives. And in most humans books the Cylon Empire was as close to real devils as anyone could think of at this time but humans had a way of living down to that level also.

##

Frank was leaning forward in his command chair almost willing his machine to move just a little faster. The company that Frank worked for had been hired by the SLiE and the Colonial City State to blast and cut a roadbed between the capital of the Colonial city state and the Victorian City State. It also would support some new mines and farm produce collection points for both of the city states. After the rough roadbed was emplaced, some rough road capable traffic would be able to use the time saving route before all of the work was technically done on this contract. As the route was cleaned up and finer detail work done, a rail line would start to be laid in the cleared route. That would not stop the use of that route for other types of tracked, large wheeled, or hover trucks. This planet could not just do one thing at a time.

You would think that something as old school as a train would be replaced by dropships or other types of space capable craft by this late in the 31st century. But that was not the case if you needed to move bulk items that might not fit into a cargo bay's door, or a cargo made up of high bulk and low mass items like fuel and food. Also, it was harder to take out a rail line than it was to shoot down passenger jets, or short hopping dropships when you hold the high ground of orbital space. Now you could plow up the rail lines with weapons fire, like has been done for the last few hundred years. But that would still leave the bed to be used as a transportation route.

When the alert had first gone out to the planet, the construction site had shut down and the workers had tried to be as invisible as possible. That hiding had more or less not been needed by the time that the Cylons had been forced to only one landing point. Frank had no idea whose idea it had been, but when the other supporting staff had split to either run for home or run towards the sound of the guns. Most of the workers with the working mechs started heading towards the sound of battle and most had done this without needing a second thought. Frank was at the controls of a modified Bombardier type battlemech that had come to this planet with Duke Terry. It had lost one of the chest and shoulder mounted heavy LRMs racks and the training school had replaced the wreckage with "working tools" that also were needed on this planet.

While Frank and his modified SLDF fire support mech might have been the largest workmech heading towards the sounds of weapons fire, it was not alone. It had been quickly followed by a Quasit and a Wasp that had lost all of its weapons but the old school 5cm laser and replaced with a 2-ton wrecking ball that was just made for breaking things. The Quasit was the most heavily "armed" of the trio of mechs leaving the worksite and heading towards battle.

The old Quasit was a privately own security mech that had been fitted to use its Chipshot 4 SRM and the Fairway 5 LRM racks to fire special missiles. They were "normal" missiles bodies that had been filled with blast warheads but without guidance packages that TTM had been known to make before coming to New Circe. The old Pepper machine gun had been replaced by one that used the same "SLDF standard" ammunition as the rest of the SLDF military not long after coming to this planet. That old weapon and any ammunition for the beast had been sent back to the Inner Sphere on the Styx many, many months ago. The newest weapon for these three pilots to use was still empty, and the pilots hoped that this issue would be addressed until they had gotten closer to the battle. After all what use is a machine gun at a construction site.

The three "battlemechs" could only move at a steady 50kph and they were soon being passed by faster transports heading towards the sound of battle all on their own. This had turned out to be a good thing, that was because it gave some of the gate keepers time to work out what they might could use those three machines to the most benefit against the Cylons. It also gave the pilots some time to get out of the cockpits and outfit themselves for fighting with items collected just for them. It also gave the pilots time to have some input into the best way to use them with the current intelligence on the battlefield. It was not like anyone in higher command really thought that workmechs would be needed to defend the Colonial city state from a Cylon ground attack.

#######

Frank ran as fast as he could and slammed into the side of a Pretorian class Cylon mech as hard as he could. He had been lucky that they were fighting within a city, so his attack only had to cover a few hundred meters before "getting up close and personal" with the enemy machine. While the Cylon autocannons were still crap and short ranged, the same was soooo not true of their missiles. This was a badly needed counterattack to keep the Cylons from breaking the lines and overrunning one of the only three supply points on this side of the river.

Frank had already used up his limited amount of dumbfire LRM-20 missiles into the last wave of Cylons with the oversized warheads wreaking havoc on them. There had not been the time or the supplies to refill his ammo bins faster than he was needing to use those weapons, there was just too much to do just to keep the Cylons at bay for a little while longer. This was the tenth attack that Frank and his two wingmen had been involved with already. The first had them only in support with heavy weapons fire, as they had the second attack. But that all changed after the later attacks, and now that the three of them had proven to be useful for the defenders. Now they were more or less pointed in the right direction and told to kill Cylons.

Frank used his massive right hand to grab the enemy mech and quickly lined up the piledriver that had been fitted onto that arm thanks to the weight saved by not replacing the wrecked 300 year old LRM launcher. And now thanks to Frank's skill at the controls of this mech, it didn't take long to line up the object that had not been intended for war against the side of the Cylon war machine. With a slight movement of his pointer finger the piledriver fired twice in rapid secession. The first strike of the pointed metal shaft had mostly shattered the armor on the enemy mech for it to fall to the ground. This let the second strike come along and finish punching a hole in the hard skin and move into the area that held the "biologic " Cylon component of the enemy light mech.

Frank didn't have to "see" the fluid leaking out of the targeted enemy mech to know of the successful attack. His training told him that the second strike had driven the working part of his tool deep into the inner workings of the hostile machine. Before Frank dropped the still dying small mech, he looked to the side just in time to see the Wasp do a bowling motion with the 2ton wrecking ball fitted to one arm. The mass of metal hooked out and around taking down about a dozen shield carrying Centurions like they were little more than bowling pins on the alley and someone had just rolled a strike….. hard.

Frank's mind was brought back to his part of the battle when his old Buzzsaw Anti-missile system activated and swatted four incoming Cylon missiles from the sky leaving behind only orange and black fireballs. Frank fired off the Arrowlite-4 missile launcher low to put a wave of flames between more of the Cylon fighters and the Wasp. Direct contact with inferno jelly would kill even the newest model of Centurions much less the 005's that seem to dominate this current attack. Blast warheads worked a little better for something like this, but the flame warheads had a little more of an "it factor" if there were any human form Cylons that happened to be in the general area of the impact point of those little parts of hell.

While Frank was pulling back from the battle, he used his mech's one functional hand to swat any Cylons that were close enough for him to reach without deviating more than a step or two from his running path. Frank was just starting to breathe a little easier when he saw the road that cut between two large buildings to give his team some cover was getting closer. Just as planned, Frank spun around and took up a guard position while the rest of the "lance" pulled back behind him.

Frank looked around and saw something that he had not wanted to see, but it was not unexpected. "Walter, if your done playing with your food? We need to get out of here!" There was not a reply to his comment, but he saw the small Wasp class mech stop moving for a second or two before pulling back towards the waiting larger mech.

That distraction of the light mech not following the plan almost cost Frank his life… or at least a lot of armor that he had left on his "workmech". While Frank had been distracted, a Cylon mech had been able to sneak up on him and try to get into hand to hand range with a larger human piloted mech. After the surprise wore off, Frank was able to defend himself against the lighter combat unit. But it cost him the Anti-missile system mounted on the top of his mech when it was over and the enemy mech was just so much smoking wreckage.

That had not stopped Frank from kicking out with his right leg of his mech and it goes right into the enemy's mechs only remaining fully armored leg, the left one. That one strike was enough to get the enemy off balance. That delay in any counterattack coming from the lighter machine gave Frank the opening he needed to use the piledriver, and he used one hand to shove the Cylon mech to the ground. A second stomp and a single strike of the piledriver ended the enemy and this lance pulled back to some "safety" behind the buildings.

Franks counterattack had only left empty rocket bodies and spent shell casings along with slabs of battered armor plate behind them. As the small unit faded into the dark, the real reason for Frank's spoiling attack spoke for the world to hear. Some of the few Long Toms in the area not already tasked fired their heavy shells into the stalled Cylon attack force. Those massive shells were still few in number, but they more than made up for the low number with the shear explosive power that each of the shells carried. Those few shells turned the stalled Cylons into great circles of blood or burnt parts mixed in with the now fallen Colonial buildings. Just as hoped, those tall buildings had blocked this avenue of attack for the near future.

This blockage was enough to stop the Cylons, but it would not be that much of an issue for battlemechs to clear using jump jets to attack deeper into the slowly advancing Cylon lines. It would just be too bad that only the Quasit of the trio of workmechs would be able to be involved in that part of a human counterattack. Frank would be evacuated to a SLDF military hospital before that counterattack could be launched. Walter and the wrecking ball wielding Wasp had been reduced to so much smoking wreckage not long after Frank went down. Walter had triggered a suicide charge when the Centurions had been cutting into the cockpit of Franks down mech. It was said that his laughs could be heard on the radio… until that charge ended it all for the wasp and its pilot.

#######

Joanna Crafter adjusted her mechanical legs to make sure that they would not rub together and cause issues for her later. Joanna had been a Viper pilot of only average talent until she had a close encounter with a Cylon capital weapon. She had been considered unbelievably lucky that she had "lived" after the event by not just the deck crew but the commander of the Colonial fleet. She had lost both arms at the shoulder and both of her legs were gone from just above the knees. But thanks to her Colonial space suit, it had stopped her from dying of blood loss or shock.

Even for Clan grade medical teams, this was a major repair job for a human to have to deal with, even one as young and as fit has Joanna had been before her close encounter with the heavy weapon. Then it turned out that Joanna belongs to the .005 percent of the human race that didn't react very well to clan tech cloning medical techniques and their required drugs. They had worked on her, but it had taken them six times as long to grow her a set of new arms. That had delayed her getting a new set of lower legs until something could be worked out how to do the work more efficiently. Her odd medical reaction had gotten the attention of the Wolverine doctors who were using her as a study subject to find out what was going wrong. This reaction was something that had only been covered in the oldest medical textbooks on New Circe. Now a whole new generation of saw bones would get a chance to study a real-world example of this issue.

While she could not pilot a Viper anymore, and her time under the care of the medical department had seen her "medically retired" from the Colonial military. That left her with enough money to live on, and then the Wolverine doctors had paid her for her time for any tests they wanted to run at the SLDF normal rate as a professional lab rat. She also was getting a paycheck from the Medical Divisions of Callahan Munitions, and the much larger New Circe Military Industries. Those two companies had supplied her with her "new legs", and while they were better than the last generation, they still needed some work. This set of legs had been made by using a mix of Centurion, Star League, and Clan tech. That last group had been giving her not a small check going into her bank account, and as long as she reported in for a medical/mechanical check up every month that money would keep coming in. And while it was sitting in the bank, it was just begging to be spent.

She had used the extra money to buy a down checked Lightning class hover… tank. The 35-ton ex SLDF tank had not been working when she had bought it at an open auction, but after a few months of hard work and a hard hit to her savings all of that had changed. It also had taken calling in a lot of favors and using students and even a few instructors at the local center for higher learning to get this way. But it was working just in time for her to be able to sign up for the 20-35ton (military) weight class racing circuit as an independent. She had been a good enough hand on the control sticks during the races to make some good coin. She had even done well in the unlimited class races. That class had no rules on the weight of your craft or if you had mass used up for weapons or if the craft was just all skin, pilot, and engines.

Her ride was not as good as strapping on a Viper going crazy speed in the deep black of space far from any star, but there was something to be said about "flying" only four inches off the ground at over 175kph. Still in those races, she was not the fastest competitor, but she was good enough to win a few. She also was good enough to make any other race interesting to both the watcher and for those participating in the races with her skills at the controls. She had thought that the fame was almost worth more than the winning of the purses for those races…. almost. That time keeping her skills sharp and her investment in this armored hover tank had ended up saving her life in the early stages of this Cylon attack.

She had lived long enough to make it to a repair base set up by the Military in the early stages of the attack. It had just been bad luck that her home and racing headquarters were almost under the landing Cylon ships. Joanna had been able to do the bug out boogie with just the clothes on her back and her armored hover tank left to her name. She had been surprised that she had only run into one other member of the racing circuit at that base when she exited her hover craft.

That other driver had been an old Wolverine that liked speed a lot and people only a very little. Rumors had it that it had taken two years after the founding of the Colonial city state before anyone found out about him. It turns out that he had been living in an unlisted "homestead" that now fell under Colonial control. It was also said that he was only "found" when his hover tank was seen running down a river towards a SLiE farming village on the now edge of the Colonial City State.

The man only known to the Colonials and Racers on the circuit as The Quiet Man, or Quiet. He was running a stock 25ton J Edgar that someone in his past family had picked up from the supply run that had come back in 2998. Now were as the Lightening that Joanne was currently piloting had been modified so that it only needed one crewmember… like most clan crewed vehicles. Mr. Quiet's smaller tank needed someone to run the 5cm laser and SRM launcher in the turret while the other person drove the hunk of junk. That was why he had been at the base that Joanna had found this early in the Cylon attack. He was waiting to find someone to run the turret weapons for him while he drove around the battlefront. The two of them had been "asked" to work together so that "they" could better coordinate the battles. More it was to get Mr. Quiet out of the base before he freaked out too many more people. A Cylon invasion was more than enough stress already without adding to it by a man that had been reported to be able to freak out cinder blocks.

#######

Now Joanna was sitting inside of her light hover tank in an underground parking garage deeper into the city. From the front mounted cockpit, she could see red-orange flames on the road that was ahead and up from her point of view. Those flames were being made by the J Edgar and it held the bodies of Quiet and the Administrative assistant that had volunteered to work the light tank's weapons turret to kill some Cylons. Joanna had no idea what had killed the 25ton hover tank. It had been burning when she had come around the corner, when the gunner had stopped transmitting mid-sentence. The enemy had been long gone before then and she had not seen any clues on how that tank's crew had died.

Joanna had come down to this parking area hoping on the off chance to find the crew of the tank hiding from the Cylons, but she had not found anything. Then she had hit around the idea of waiting here to ambush anything that might have come back looking to add more human kills on top of the old hover tank and her crew. With her hover tank powered down to only providing enough power for the scouting sensors that the old tank had been fitted with, she was as close to being as invisible as she could get. Then a sound started to be carried on the wind and after only a few minutes she had an idea of what that sound was. To Joanna's ear it sounded like hundreds of metal boots striking the ground all at once and in time.

It didn't take long before Joanna could see figures moving in the shadows cast by the flames of the still burning tank. When she felt the time was right, she brought the GM 210 to full power as fast as possible. Within a few seconds more she was rocketing up the ramp at a full 178 kph and onto the open streets spreading out around her. Joanna made a hard turn of her right-hand stick and her craft responded like a dream. Her eyes went wide as she saw a wave of Centurions and human forms walking right in front of her, but the reason her eyes grew large. That was because behind the front line of death was a wall of large Pretorians mechs. The sounds of all of those steps marching in rhythm had acted like a jamming field.

Joanna didn't remember when she let the TGI 2331C/TGI F-190 fire off the two front mounted Maxima class One Shot SRM launchers, it was just out of Viper trained instinct that those missiles were let off the leash. Eight Short range missiles had been launched from the left and right side of the hover tank at the speed of muscle memory, and they flew towards the wall of taller mechs on flame red tails. Three of the fat little missiles hit the right most mech and two of the missiles hit the one on the far left of the first enemy mech. The one on the left was blasted and fell to the ground, but the second one was only knocked a little off balance. With the missiles acting like strobe lights Joanna's eyes were drawn to movement to the sea of smaller Cylons.

Thanks to Joanna's Viper training, she didn't pull the trigger on the now empty one-shot missile launchers mounted on the nose of her craft. After all Vipers only had single use launch rails fitted under the wings and bodies of the little craft. Instead, Joanna used her controls at her fingertips, and the airfoil that had been mounted on the back tilted down. This adjustment lifted the back of the hover tank by about two inches, and this lifting tilted the nose of the craft down by those same two inches. With the craft now slightly nose down, the craft moving at full flank speed slammed into the wall of Centurions and human forms like a wrecking ball sent by Hades.

Joanna had no idea that she was laughing like a maniac as the now mangled Cylon bodies flew over the top or bounced off the side of her bullet shaped craft. The smooth and hard skin needed to slip through the air for better racing performance, also had made it hard for the Cylons to gain a hand hold that was strong enough to counter the impact force of the craft moving at over 150kph. The idea might have seemed crazy, but it was based in lessons learned from units that had been fighting against the wave attacks of the Cylons for years now if only on different worlds. While the larger Praetorian might still fire at the attacker like this, the run of the mill Centurion would hold fire as not to risk friendly fire into any other Cylon unit types. You know that human forms and not just the Number Ones get more than a little touchy if they are hit with friendly fire.

As Joanna bulldozed threw the waves of shorter Cylons with glee that should have seen her fitted with an "I love me Jacket that buckles up the back". Then the hover tank started to fight the controls in her hands, and the speeding craft started to slide left and right like a drunkard at the company Christmas party. As it swayed to the left and right it took out even more Cylons….at the ankles or knees that Joanna could have hoped for when she had acted on this idea almost on the whim. It was like the hover tank had been turned into a 35ton wrecking ball, only now with a mind all of its own and with a hate-on for Cylons.

When the sun rose again over this part of the planet, legs of Centurions and human forms were found sticking out of windows three stories off the ground or even found on a few roof tops at least four times. Rumor had been told that it was half a hundred, but it was really only a few that had been on the receiving end of the hover craft hard enough to achieve that result. Math, it is a thing.

Joanna had been fighting the controls to keep from wrecking her tank when she noticed that after every few rotations, she could see a pair of the largest ground based Cylons anyone had lived long enough to report not far away. Then an idea popped into her brain that she had seen being used a few times in a movie about Vipers. She also knew that just because she had seen it on the big screen, didn't make it a good idea. She does the count twice and now she had a base idea of what was needed for her timing to at least try to pull this off. On the third count, she fires her fixed mounted 1st generation Raker-IV 5cm pulse lasers, and for the first time she steers into a vehicle slide to make contact with something unforgiving. This time she was aiming for the legs of the second Cylon mech with those energy weapons.

One of the pulse lasers blasts was a clean miss, but the second energy blast hit low into the body of the enemy mech about where the support was between the legs and the main body. The powerful broad beam weapon blasted the enemy mech nearly in half. That hit was in one of the few places that the Cylons could not uparmor after the craft had been designed. Well, they could do it, but it had been deemed too many adjustments in that location would have caused to many secondary issues. The enemy light mech more or less was cut in two and it was falling to the ground without any way to stand or move. That was about as good of a mission kill as anyone could ask for.

While the one enemy mech was falling, the hover tank slammed into the leg of the other one not far away. This strike by 35tons of moving metal was not enough to topple the enemy war machine, but it was enough force to stop the out-of-control flat spin Joanna had found herself in. The hit was hard enough to both dent the armor on that side of the tank, but also knock off any Centurions that might have still been holding onto the outer hull of Joanna's tank. And that was the story she was going to be sticking to if she lived through this battle.

Thanks to her reactions speed, the old colonial government didn't just give a Viper pilots slot to just anyone that joined the military, she shot off heading away from this fight with a war whoop hundreds of generations older than her hover tank. Now it had been a fight that she wanted to find; but this was just a little too much of a fire fight for her to handle by herself. Still her systems had been pumping all of their data back to both command centers of the SLiE and the Colonial city state. As the now slightly dented Lightning shot away from the battle, two of the remaining Praetorian class mechs were able to fire off a heavy volley of missiles at their tormentor fleeing from them at over 100kph and accelerating.

The armor on the old hover tank might have been old school compared to what the clans could make, but it was thick enough that all but the rear side could not take a gauss rifle hit before it would start working on the soft insides of the vehicle. Joanna's tank was not built to pack an old anti-missile system or even one of the new laser based systems that a regular military unit would have been fitted with. So all of those missiles would hit her, unless she could drive crazy enough to generate a miss….. The short story of that was that she was not that good of a hover tank driver and the Cylon missiles seekers were just that good.

A wave of fire from a dozen Cylon warheads rolled down the left side, top, and rear of Joanna's privately owned hover tank like a red waterfall from hell. But when the flames cleared away, she had left behind just a trail of shattered Star Slab/3 Ferro Fibrous chips for the next half a dozen Kilometers, still she was able to evade any Cylon that tried to give chase. Joanna was just lucky that the Cylons had not developed inferno jell warheads or fit those thrust bodies with larger warheads that didn't degrade the range or the already built in seeker's performance below the Number One's expectations.

The damage those Cylon missiles did was enough that it would force Joanna to head back to a small support base for a few hours. That would get her some down time while at least some of the battered armor could be replaced by some volunteer techs. It was just going to be too bad that it was going to be a patchwork of whatever types of armor that the support crew could get to fit in any given hole on her tank. That would have to do, or she would have to be sidelined from her tank and then possibly sent to the battle line as your average infantry private instead of a hover tank and scout driver. One of these is sooo not like the other.

Things looked to have been a stalemate and for once the Cylons were not the ones that had the advantage of numbers on their side. Granted a lot of those numbers of humans were little more than cannon fodder, but they had weapons and were willing to die… just as long as they could take at least one Cylon with them in death. Then the rules of this battle were tossed right out the old airlock, and it was done in a way that none of the combatants on both sides would have expected at the beginning of this war much less this battle. The god Murphy was entering from stage right.

#######

Notes:

Cylon laser weapons: Some Cylon Rhinos have second generation lasers fitted emplace of the normal turret from the 1st Cylon war. They need a trailer power generator to supply power needed for this weapon, but the energy weapons reach as far as a SRM but hit a little harder than one missile, but they don't need reloading. At the time of the invasion of New Circe, a dozen Cylon mechs also have this prototype weapon.

Maxim Hover M Transport: A modified Inner Sphere made Maxim Hover Transport brought to New Circe but slowly refitted. The armor and frame were the same as seen on the Maxim's of the Inner Sphere. Then as soon as possible the PowerTech 165 Highlift ICE were replaced with imported and down rated Magna 175 or Omni 175 engines as they became available. As the older weapons were removed after wearing out, they were replaced with higher tech ones made on New Circe. Some of the saved mass was used to expand the cargo bays to a massive 5tons, the ammo bays were deepened, and even CASE was added when there had been enough time.

Bombardier workmech Lance: (SLDF Bombardier with pile driver and only one LRM launcher) and joined with Quasit (TRO 3075) as escort. A Wasp class mech with small 2ton wrecking ball in place of the SRM2 and ammo but the 5cm laser is still good for cutting.

Another Cliff hanger: Yea sorry about that guys but the next chapter will have the conclusion. That is unless you wanted to wait another two or three weeks and it be half done 😊. This way I can have the time to finish up the battle and post battle in the detail I wanted for the climax of my part of this story.

SomewhatEvil: please PM me about your question so that I don't do a mass release of spoilers.

Nike rides into battle on New Circe: Originally, she was going to be on the Sea Skimmer and charge in acting like a pirate. But then after a closer look, that ship is two thin on armor and even thinner on weapons. So, I had to find something with more of both.

40