Well things have calmed down a bit, so I'm going to post this and check out the ensuing fireworks when I get back from work.

Tex Talks Battletech Episode WZ: The Reaper, the Goddamn Bats with Demo Packs

Chapter 1: Don't just check your six.

"Hitler made only one big mistake when he built his Atlantic Wall. He forgot to put a roof on it."

-Aphorism by a World War II USA paratrooper

The idea of getting troops into location they can cause the most havoc for the other guy has been a long-standing one for damn good reason. After all, why waste your time trying to beat down a wall when you can go over, under or around it? Said notion got a big step up (in more ways than one) when powered flight let generals toss out entire squads suspended by large squares of lowest bidder-created fabric out of planes to (sometimes) gently float down in or behind enemy lines.

Great tactic but it came with a few drawbacks. First planes flying overhead could be pretty obvious and if they weren't dropping bombs; you'd have a pretty good idea what they would be doing. Second those parachutes could be fairly easy to spot depending on the circumstances and aren't the fastest means of travel. Ergo if seen, you tended to have a lot of bullets headed your way as the enemy attempts to forcefully revoke your flight privileges.

Now there have been various forms and derivatives of this idea over the centuries but the most well known (if rather rare) forms nowadays are the Jump Infantry. Where a footslogger straps a big-ass rocket to his back and uses the thing to hop around the battlefield like an overgrown frog. All the while hoping that A: the pack doesn't spin out of control/run out of gas and/or B: his knees and ankles aren't reduced to powder from landing too hard. Sure they can't carry much in the way of heavy firepower but as unfortunate mecharriors have often found out; satchel charges and similar party favors are light and can easily be tucked into places on your ride that you really don't want explosions to happen.

Why am I bringing up this topic? Well as a colleague once said the Terrans are 'Better, not different' about a lot of things (well except in how they treat salvage). As such today we will be talking about that group of maniacs that put the true fear of infantry back into mechwarriors long before the Clans showed up with their hopping toads; the Terran Reapers.

Chapter two: Can't get it cheaper, call the Reaper.

"Welcome to the Torus system, prisoners. You are here because nobody else in the entire galaxy wants anything to do with you. This is your final chance to make yourselves useful to the Dominion. There are only a few rules here, but they boil down to a simple concept: you will become a reaper, or you will die trying. Do what you must."

-Warden Kejora addressing new recruits

The first thing to understand is that of the various groups in the Terran army, the Reapers are in fact among the youngest; only appearing after Mengsk's shiny new 'Terran Dominion' got going. And like any despot worth his warcrimes, Mengsk ended up with a whole bunch of people that he needed to quiet or 'get rid of'. And since you could only shoot and dump so many people in shallow graves before your image as a 'savior' starts getting shaky even with the best PR; the prisons were getting a bit full. And while turning crooks into expendable cannonfodder, I mean marines is something of a Terran tradition; there were certain individuals that couldn't be trusted to 'behave' due to them being resistant to Neural Resocialization.

What's Resoc, as the Terrans call it? I'll expand on it in a future lecture but it's a little bit of nightmare fuel that is very much like what it sounds like; and we should all be damn grateful the Terrans are keeping a very tight lid on the tech. Because the Combine and Confederation higher-ups would probably get so excited they need a change of robes thinking about everything they could do with that shit.

At any rate, Mengsk set up the Dominion Reaper Corps as a sort of volunteer-only 'parole' for the various pirates, petty crooks, murderers, political dissidents and other problematic individuals taking up space in the prisons. Do the required training program, serve in the Reaper Corps for two standard years and you'll be free to go. On the surface it seemed like a comparatively good deal for the inmates as opposed to staying in prison or worse. Turns out, it was not a good deal.

You see, practically all specialized military organizations in existence, past or present can have some pretty damned exacting requirements for who makes the cut. See the Black Watch and what was expected (and delivered) by those mad bastards. And if you don't make the cut, too bad and you might get redirected to a 'lesser' posting instead so the government doesn't lose all the investment they've put into you. It was different for the Reapers however, as said former prisoners would only have value to the Dominion if they managed to pass the training course. And any failures would be dead for one reason or another.

All would-be Reapers were shipped to an isolated training center/prison called the 'Icehouse' in the Torus system. At that point, every 'trainee' had one goal put to them: Become a reaper, or die trying. And use whatever means possible to succeed. To give an idea of the kind of fucked-up environment these people were thrown into, these are the nine 'precepts' that the Icehouse drilled into them.

1. There are many paths to death. There is only one to victory.
2. Victory is worth any cost. The cost is always high.
3. Inmates must pay the price for their own survival.
4. Inmates must protect themselves at all times. Regard every calm moment as a battlefield, and every battlefield a calm moment.
5. Your enemy is your greatest teacher. Learn well.
6. Never allow your enemies to lull you with a false front. Look behind their deception, and the threat shall reveal itself to you.
7. Dictate the battle to your enemies. Leave them no option but to face you in the manner of your choosing.
8. Enemies must be confronted and destroyed with efficiency. Method matters not. Use the knife, or the gun, or the bomb, or the fist. Never hesitate.
9. There is no truth but in victory. All else is dust, easily swept away.

Yeah, kind of messed up. And the training itself wasn't any better. Sleep cycles for all the trainees were completely randomized, harsh track and field and sparring practice would start at day one, and then there were the 'sim-cages' that sent every Reaper trainee into a blitzed-out rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows, universally leaving them crawling on the floor, weeping and shaking.

Even the meals weren't safe. The nutrient paste that they received would randomly be doused with steroids, neutralizers, hormone retardants; and even varying types of poison, lethal or otherwise. So by the end of lunch-time you could be in anything from a drug-induced roid-rage, suffering paranoid fits or collapsed on the ground, struggling to breathe as your airways swelled shut. Better yet, any potential life-saving medical support had to be earned. Training in their weapons and equipment was similarly dangerous. The jetpacks could be hard to control and often resulted in injuries or death. And I don't need to tell you what sort of results training bomb prep and disposal exercises with live anti-mech-grade explosives can result in.

And if you managed to survive all that, "Graduation Day" was one final screw-you present from the support staff. They would retreat into heavily-fortified safe rooms, unlock the armories containing the Reapers weapons and equipment; and then unleash a swarm of mechanical Zerg and other sundry kill-bots on the poor saps. And thus the final exam began, fight to survive or die trying. All told, survival rate of the Dominion Reaper training program averaged between ten to fifteen percent with everyone else succumbing to the training conditions, being killed by fellow recruits, or committing suicide. What emerged from the Icehouse were twitchy, paranoid, over-aggressive wrecks that would be likely to kill you as talk to you, and were barely capable of functioning in normal society in any way, shape, or form. So kind of like super-chill Smoke Jaguars that don't care that much about honor.

Even after getting out of training, the life of a Reaper didn't get any easier since they were constantly thrown into suicide missions and similar situations. While they were required to stay in the Corps for two years, the longest surviving Dominion Reaper on record lasted all of six months.

Chapter three: Wrong side of Heaven and the Righteous side of hell

"The Grimm Reaper has arrived."
"Relax folks, he's a total softie. Volunteers as Santa at the orphanage back home every year."
"Shut up Kenny."

-Two off-duty Raider Reapers introducing themselves

Of course with all that it's no surprise that a lot of Reapers at least try to fly the coop. Sure, desertion was a crime worthy of being shot; but considering they were already on a near-literal death row, so why not take that chance?

Some would strike out on their own as pirates and outlaws. Others would end up aligning with larger groups that (more often than not) were anti-Dominion to varying levels. Can't imagine why they might be holding a grudge against Mengsk and want to get some payback.

At the same time after seeing the potential of the Reapers, said organizations all wanted their home-grown supply of said lunatics. While they could replicate the equipment easily enough, training new ones was a different matter. Because, surprise, surprise, nobody was interested in replicating the messed up insanity that were the 'training methods' used by the Dominion Reaper Corps. As a result there was a lot of 'make it up as we go along' happening.

Now we don't know how most groups train their Reapers but the Raiders are at least semi-open about the matter. Apparently they look for individuals that are 'naturally unpredictable' and work up from there. Why that trait in particular? Well to understand that, we have to look at how Reapers (at least those serving with the Raiders) fight and what they use to fight with.

Chapter four: Click Click Bang Bang

"First sign a Reaper is lying to you is if they say that they have enough explosives for the moment."

-Lieutenant Deke Cavez to his subordinates.

Now I'm sure everybody knows the general notion of jump infantry standard setup; Jump pack, small arms, grenades and potentially some support weapons spread across a squad for anti-mech work. In some ways this is identical to what the Reapers have; the same way that a House infantryman is the same as a marine in CMC armor using a Terran gauss rifle. Same overall role but one is infinitely more dangerous than the other.

Let's start with the jump packs. While the Star League probably had some super-secret advanced packs that got lost when everything blew up; nowadays all the various models out there are more or less equivalent with two 'travel' options. The first launches the poor shmuck into the air, letting them clear some 120 meters and a max height of 20 meters in the arc. Assuming they stick the landing (and let the pack recover for the next jump) they can do this about 200 times before running out of gas.

The second option involves actual flight which is a lot more limited. First they need to get off the ground and then kick the pack into high gear. At most they can go at speeds of 108 km/h, though only for a minute before draining the fuel tank. Or it can be dialed down to as low as 36 km/h which lasts eight minutes. Almost catching up to a running Jenner for one minute or barely outpacing an Urbie for eight. Great options, really. And of course, even when just hovering, using anything but 'jump mode' for these things requires constant tweaking and placement adjustments or you're going to spin out and crash into something at potentially very high speeds.

Reapers? Only time you'll see one of those nutjobs using their feet to move around is when the space is too cramped to safely (by Reaper standards, which is rather different than a normal person's) fly. Properly trained in their use, these packs create person-sized VTOLs with bonus rocket boosters for when you need to really hoof it. And while we don't have solid numbers for how much fuel their packs have, they've been seen blitzing around like amphetamine-soaked dragonflies for the entire length of combat engagements that lasted well over twenty minutes.

The good news however is in order to pull off all those stunts Reapers can't layer on the armor like the ground-pounders in CMC suits. Instead 'all' they get is a sealed body suit with some basic exterior armor protection; coupled with a helmet and breathing system to allow operation in void along with CBRN protection. Now I say 'basic' but that's in the Terran's eyes. You know; the people who give their grunts rapid fire gauss weapons that can gib infantrymen and do a good job against standard armor plating? So while Reapers don't need a medium laser shot or two to put down, don't expect your typical rifle to do much unless you empty half a clip into the bastard.

In a similar fashion the P-45 'Scythe' pistols Reapers like to use are meant to be useful in a world where nearly every grunt on the field is wrapped up in a suit of neosteel power armor. So it's a good news, bad news situation for any infantry facing them. On one hand, the guns are shorter ranged than Impalers and don't hit as hard. On the other hand, 'don't hit as hard' still means they will shred a standard bullet-proof vest and take big chunks out of you with each hit. Also if you ever get the chance to fire one of these things, be prepared for a ton of recoil since they use the same gauss tech as the Impaler. It's bad enough that Reapers actually need special supports on their hands and wrists to deal with the constant recoil of firing the Scythes.

Finally there is the Atlas in the room; the explosives. Out of everything you can always expect a Reaper to be loaded down with as many types of bombs and grenades as they can hope to carry. While they'll take specialized load outs depending on the mission, their 'default' form of boom are the somewhat infamous deuterium-eight (D-8) demolition charges. I say infamous because when this civilian explosive that got used in controlled civil demolitions got repurposed for military use, it was found to be 'somewhat unstable' in combat situations. And by 'unstable' they mean likely to explode if shot by a stray bullet or even handled too roughly. Considering that these explosives were meant to take apart structures made out of neosteel, that was a lot of boom sitting in your belt pouch. So what did the Reapers do to try and limit the risk of using these things? They learned to throw the charges at targets like grenades. I repeat, they throw around bombs that can punch holes in dropship armor like they're frags. Must be something in the water over in Koprulu.

Chapter five: Crazy like a Fox or just plain Crazy?

"Hmm, this looks important."

-Comment by a Reaper while slapping a D-8 charge on the armor covering a mech's ammo storage.

As I've previously stated, Reapers don't exactly function like normal infantry. In the Raiders they're nominally under the command of the local CO, but at the same time their orders tend to consist of 'This is the problem, this is where they are, have fun.' Because Reapers will push back hard against any sort of micro-management from the higher ups.

This attitude is because any Reapers; escapees from the Dominion Corps or 'homegrown' versions, have learned that if they want to survive long term they need to be completely unpredictable and never maintain contact with the enemy long enough to take any meaningful return fire. You have to remember that 'back home' for the Terrans what's considered basic protection for the footsloggers is a multi-hundred kilo suit of battle armor, of which many weapons can still cut through with relative ease. And while Reapers do have body armor it's not nearly as effective.

To give a comparison, the Reapers were a bunch of Locusts in a world filled with Centurions, Enforcers, and Blackjacks; and they damn well knew it. So when on the battlefield Reapers made sure that nobody could blow them apart by being the most unpredictable and terrifying wackjobs ever to constantly ensure the enemy was on the back foot and reacting instead of acting. Blasting around like out of control superballs so much that they need to get treated for G-force strain and whiplash afterwards in order to dodge incoming fire, intentionally laughing like unhinged madmen over general broadcast radios to freak out the opposition, the list is endless. Back 'home' these were the bunch of adrenaline jockeys perfectly willing to (and capable of) 'safely' playing bait against a swarm of Zerglings that could have reduced them to ground beef in under five seconds.

But here in the Inner Sphere? Whole new nightmare (for us that is). Remember how I said their armor was basic for Terrans? After finding out just how well the standard infantryman's small arms could do against their armor (not that much), Reapers realized they didn't always have to be sneaky flankers anymore since the only things that could kill them easily were combat vehicles, mechs, crew-served equipment or missile launchers. Instead they could just blitz straight into areas guarded by infantry, toss a bunch of satchel charges at them like the a bunch of Blackwatch trainees (and/or shoot them to pieces) before continuing on to plant even more explosives on anything and everything important.

And against mechs it's just as terrifying in a different way. You see not only can the Reapers zip around like hovercraft, they can also boost all over the place like jumpjet-equipped mechs. Meaning that they can be waiting on cliff tops, inside high-rises, forests or any other hidey-hole to leap out and latch on. Said trick wasn't used back in Koprulu because the big stuff could either react fast enough to swat them or had enough support to blast the Reapers apart before they could do anything. But with mechs, assuming you can even reach where they've landed, the lunatics only need a moment to attach some form of boom to your ride. And while their heavier explosives can do plenty of damage to mech armor, they'll take 'softer' targets if they can (mostly so they can save more explosives to continue to cause more mayhem with). Limb joints, heat vents, ammo feeds, cockpit windows; Reapers will happily slap bombs onto any and all of these and it doesn't stop there.

Because even if you manage to protect the 'normal' weak points on your machine, that just means they'll get creative with you. Support mechs have found out the hard way that somebody shooting the missiles in loaded launchers will cause an explosion just as if the ammo bay got hit. And surprise, surprise, somebody tossing explosives down the barrel of your autocannon results in some 'interesting' issues the next time you fire the thing. Even worse as a result of multiple urban defense missions over the years, Reapers seem to have found kindred spirits in various Urbanmech pilots and have started working on joint tactics. Said good relations are probably due to both of them being the 'little guys' that love introducing assault mechs to the ground.

The difference is that while the Trash Can hops out from behind a building to deliver surprise proctological exams with heavy autocannons, the sign that mechs are 'being reaped' in the AO is finding entire lances with their cockpit windows being blown apart and the interiors looking like they just got a fresh coat of red paint.

Right, I guess I should clarify where the 'get Reaped' meme came from. Nobody can say precisely when it started but this recording is the first instance of it being caught on tape. It had been sometime after the Terrans had been 'properly' introduced to the Inner Sphere at large and some of their mercenary units (old and new) had started offering their services. This audio recording was from a conflict that wouldn't normally be anything to write home about. Just yet another meaningless skirmish between Great Houses over who gets to plant what flag over the biggest pile of rubble on yet another backwater border world. The only change was that this world had actually managed to previously contract a mercenary company to help defend them since the PDF was in no way capable of fending off multiple lances of mechs.

"Command, this is Lance leader Bravo."

"This is Command, you're coming in clear."

"We found Jenkins, his mech, at least. The cockpit is demolished, but there's not much else in the way of damage. Precision strike, are you sure the locals don't have any mechs?"

"I assure you Captain McHenry, our intel is up to date. The PDF only have a handful of Quikscell products, a scattering of portable SRM launchers and...one Infantry mercenary company on hand."

"Wait, they have mercs? Why didn't you say anything about that?"

"It's an infantry company Captain. I would hopefully presume that somebody as highly ranked by the MRB as your unit is capable of dealing with...(shuffling of paper is heard)...Frank's Firehawks out of the Dumassas Union."

"Dumassas?...Wait, you mean we're up against Terrans?! Shit, shit, shit, shit! That explains it, Jenkins got Reaped! All lances, this is Captain McHenry; at this moment I am invoking Article 10A of our contract. Everybody get back to the dropships and make ready for takeoff. We are leaving this rock now!"

"Captain, might I remind you that your unit had already accepted the down-payment for this operation and withdrawing now will result in significant repayment fees to House-"

"All the C-Bills in the galaxy don't matter if I'm dead you idiot! I'm not sticking around here wh-"

"Cap, Ten and Four o'clock high! They're in the buildings!"

"Fu-Weapons free! To hell with collateral damage, kill those psychos now!"

*Recording descends into a discernible mix of screams, yells, and the sounds of combat. But the screams and yells start to turn to static.*

"McHenry, McHenry? McHenry report!...Dammit it, to any and all units of McHenry's Maulers this is-"

*Crackle* "Yeah, sorry 'bout that. Ol' McHenry can't come to the phone right now. Boy lost his nerve and 'heh' went all ta pieces. Going to be a while cleaning up the mess he made in his ride."

"Who is this? How did you get on this channel?!"

"Oh me? I'm Frank of Frank's Firehawks. Now that introductions are over, I don't suppose you lot would be willing to shove off and leave these fine folk alone?"

"Never! My lord has decreed that this world shall be restored to its right and proper allegiance and I will not disappoint them."

"Well then, let me welcome you to the jungle boyo. We got enough fun and games for everybody!"

Chapter six: Hit and Run

"We're going to need to drastically enhance the anti-infantry and AA capability of all our forces. Even if the other Houses can only field second-rate copies of these lunatics, our slower mechs would get torn to pieces if they get caught out."

-Federated Suns general on reviewing the capabilities of the Reapers.

Considering the demonstrated capabilities, it's no surprise that the Great Houses immediately started trying to get their mitts on the technology that made the Reapers possible or at least make home-grown equivalents and devise countermeasures.

Dealing with Reapers was relatively straightforward (on paper at least). Namely fill the air with so much lead it didn't matter how well they could dodge, you would eventually hit them. Prior to the LBX coming back into production you would see a lot of modified flak and flechette shells for autocannons in use. Of course that reduces the amount of normal ammo tonnage resulting in poorer performance against other mechs. Arrays of machine guns, modified anti-missile systems, the list goes on for what's been tried. But like all would-be countermeasures against Terran technology, there is never an ideal solution.

As for 'homegrown' equivalents, while there has been an uptick in jump infantry units being trained, making something like the Reaper flightpack has run into the same problem as so many other projects; the ability to copy Terran technology. So far the best options are various types of battle armor that focus most of their weight around jump jets and related systems. Was something of a surprise for the Clans when they arrived since they thought the Inner Sphere would be completely unprepared for something like their Elementals.

So what does all this mean for us mechjockeys at the end of the day? Stay light on your feet, finger on the trigger, eye on your sensor systems, and practice swatting highly mobile, heavily armed flies. Or the last thing you'll see before coming down with a extreme case of explosions is the large detpack attached to your cockpit window. Which might or might not have a smiley face sticker on it because Reapers are assholes.

Class dismissed.