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Periphery Redemption

Chapter 2

Hengyang, Shuen Wan
Duchy of Oriente
Free Worlds League
21 April 2994

   â€œTighten it up, Nicky,” ordered Lieutenant, Senior Grade Giuseppe Castiglioni.  “I don’t want you wandering off.”  Joe smiled as he watched Mechwarrior Papadopoulos’ Hermes move back into formation on his tactical monitor.  Nicky was a great pilot, but she was so fresh out of Allison that everyone swiped the back of her ears whenever they walked passed her.  Of course Joe was no grizzled veteran himself.  He was only a little over a year out of Princefield and had yet to see combat.
   â€œSir, I’m picking something up to the north of us,” informed Staff Sergeant Christina Morini.
   â€œI’m picking it up too, sir,” Sergeant Gregory Sinclair’s deep voice boomed over the lance channel.  Just then two blips appeared on Joe’s tactical display.
   â€œRoger that, Morini,” responded Joe.  “Bravo Lance, wheel left.”  Joe throttled his Phoenix Hawk up to a trot.  To his left Nicky’s Hermes slowed down to act as the pivot of the wheel.  Behind him Gregory’s Firestarter moved up to close the distance between the flamer toting mech and the Hawk.  Off to his right Morini picked up the pace of her Hermes II to cover the outside of the movement.
   â€œSir, I’m picking up three contacts.  One of them is moving off to the west.  Cancel that.  It looks like it’s stopped,” Nicky was speaking in a whisper, as if the enemy mechwarriors could hear her from inside the cockpit of the Hermes.
            “Where there’s three there’s four,” Joe said to himself as he switched channels over to the battalion frequency.  “Force Commander Donaldson this is Lt. Castiglioni, do you copy.”
   â€œDonaldson.  What do you have for me, Bravo Lance,” the commander of 2nd Battalion’s voice was calm and relaxed.
   â€œWe’ve got at least three bogies 125 clicks north-northeast of base.”
   â€œRoger that, Bravo Lance.  Have you made visual contact yet?”
   â€œNegative.  We’re still closing in on the contacts.”
   â€œYou know your orders, Bravo Lance.  Do not engage.  We just need to know who we’re facing here,” reminded FC Donaldson.
   â€œRoger that, Commander.  Moving in for visual identification.”
   Bravo Lance, and the rest of the recon units of the 3rd Oriente Hussars’ 2nd Battalion, had covered hundreds of kilometers of the rolling plains and light forests of Shuen Wan’s continent of Hengyang in the past day and a half looking for Capellan mechs.  It was as if the planet had simply swallowed up the enemy unit, or units, dropships and all.  Joe and the rest of his lance were tired of chasing shadows and wanted whoever was out there to stop and fight.  FC Donaldson, however, had other ideas.  She wanted to find the enemy, surround it, and crush it all at once.  No running battles, no independent actions, just a classic envelopment.  That was all well and good for a field commander, but green troops wanted action anyway they could get it.  And Bravo Lance was plenty green.
   Having gotten itself mauled on the FWL-Lyran Commonwealth boarder, the 3rd Oriente Hussars had been rotated off the frontlines and put into repair and refit.  2nd Battalion had just begun to recover when Joe was assigned to them fresh out of Princefield.  Being the son of a lesser noble he was given command of Bravo Lance, one of the battalion’s recon lances.  Morini and Sinclair were both former techs that had been awarded mechs for excellent service; Morini with the 4th Oriente Hussars and Sinclair with 1st Battalion of the 3rd.  Papadopoulos had only joined the unit in January after graduating from the Allison Mechwarrior Institute the previous term.  None of them had seen real combat from the cockpit of a mech and they were all itching for a fight.  Today they would get their wish.
   â€œOkay, mother still doesn’t want us to play,” quipped Joe after he switched back to Bravo Lance’s frequency.
   â€œIf they engage us what choice do we have, sir?” Morini jokingly asked.
   â€œNone at all, Staff Sergeant.  None at all,” responded Joe. 
Bravo Lance continued on its northern track steadily closing in on the three contacts.  “Alright, here’s the game plan.  Nicky and Morini swing out wide, Gregory pull up on my left.  It looks like the bogies are on the other side of the ridge in front of us.  We crest the ridge together and see what we’ve got.  If it looks like we can handle it we handle it.  If it looks like we can’t we call it in and let the big boys deal with it.  Agreed?”  A chorus of affirmatives filled the frequency.  “Alright then.  Bravo Lance, let’s bag some Capis.”
            The recon lance crested the ridge in line abreast.  At the base of the hill, trapped between Bravo Lance and a section of forest, stood a Hussar and two Wasps.  The pale purplish-blue and red paint scheme didn’t ring any bells with Joe.  Neither did the unit’s insignia, which consisted of a cartoon dog wearing a crumpled top hat.  What Joe did notice was the units lack of a Liao raised fist clinching a katana and the patch work pattern of the mechs’ armor.
            “Mercs,” the contempt in Joe’s voice only hinted at his distain for hired killers.  He never even gave the order to engage.  Instead he fired off his large laser at the Hussar.  The beam sliced through the light mech’s pitiful excuse for armor and slagged its left knee actuator.  The Hussar staggered from the impact of the blow.  Robbed of its best asset, speed, the light mech turned to make a stumbling retreat for the tree line.  “Nicky, cut him off,” the order was wasted.  Nicky was already moving to place herself between the woods and the damaged Hussar.  Even though the lance was inexperienced it didn’t mean they hadn’t trained hard.  Joe was a stickler for military discipline and a taskmaster when it came to training.  Bravo Lance was one of the best drilled units in the 2nd Battalion.  All that intense training quickly showed.
            Morini moved in to cut off one of the Wasps that was having the same idea as the Hussar.  Gregory throttled up and started trading shots with the other Wasp.  Joe’s own training quickly kicked in as he started to move down the ridge to help out where needed.  From what he could tell it looked like the Wasp Morini was tangling with was a WSP-1L while Gregory was duking it out with a WSP-1D variant.  Neither one of the Wasps really had a chance against a larger mech, but that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.  But that was the least Joe had to worry about.
            Just as Joe made it to the bottom of the ridge the missing forth enemy mech made its dramatic appearance.  Rocketing out of the trees on pillars of white hot plasma a Javelin was trying to jump over Joe’s Phoenix Hawk.   He snapped off a shot from one of his medium lasers, causing the Javelin pilot to change their trajectory.  Instead of landing behind Joe, the sneaky Javelin was forced down to the Hawk’s right.  It would be several exhausting minutes before Joe would have a chance to see how his lance faired.
            Nicky moved her Hermes with skill.  She cut the Hussar off from the safety of the forest and started to blast away at its armor.  The Hussar, however, had no intentions of going quietly.  Its large laser dug into the Hermes’ left arm.  Flame gel canisters started firing off in every direction as automatic safety mechanisms detected damage to the Hermes’ flamer.  Nicky deftly handled the shift in weight and returned fire.  Her two medium lasers cut into the Hussar’s left arm and center torso.  Either by skill or luck one of the laser hits disabled the merc’s sole weapon.  Cut off from the forest, defenseless, and with no sign of any help from his lancemates, the Hussar pilot did the only thing they could do:  power down and pop their cockpit hatch in a sign of surrender.
“Splash one Hussar!” exclaimed Nicky.  Gregory, however, was too busy to congratulate her.
            The WSP-1D was not known for its offensive abilities, but apparently no one had told this particular Wasp pilot that.  They pushed their mech forward blazing away at Gregory’s Firestarter.  The merc’s medium laser slashed at the Firestarter’s right arm while its two small lasers did little more then bubble the paint of the mech’s 3rd Oriente Hussars insignia.  Gregory responded by firing off both of his medium lasers, one of which drilled the Wasp in the center torso.  As the distance between the two mechs rapidly decreased Gregory unleashed his two medium lasers again.  One clipped away the last of the Wasp’s center torso armor and dug into its internal structure.  A tell-tale heat spike on Gregory’s HUD let him know that he had damaged the other mech’s engine shielding.  His second laser shot took most of the armor off the merc’s right arm.  The Wasp’s return fire burned into the Firestarter’s torso.  Gregory was about to add his three forward firing flamers and two machine guns to the fray when a medium laser came out of nowhere and burned into the hole in the Wasp’s chest.  The heat reading coming from the Wasp went off the charts as its engine went nova.  Gregory’s vision was saved when the Firestarter’s view screen automatically darkened in response to the blinding flash that marked the death of the Wasp and its pilot.  The mystery shot and the blacked out view screen caught Gregory off guard.  He blindly backed his mech away and only brought it to a stop when he heard Nicky’s voice.
            “Sorry about stealing your kill,” Nicky chirped.  Gregory’s only response was a grunt.  On the other side of the battlefield Morini was doing some grunting of her own.
            Unlike the WSP-1D, the WSP-1L pilot was doing their best to beat a hasty retreat.  And Morini was doing her best to stop them.  As she used her mech’s superior speed to run the merc down and bring it into weapons range the Wasp turned on her and fired.  Two of the quartet of missiles found pay dirt, one hitting the Hermes II’s left arm and the other splintering armor off the left torso.  Morini shot back with her three medium lasers.  One missed high, but the other two took armor off the Wasp’s right arm and right leg.  The merc weathered the hits and fired off its SRMs again as it tried to work its way to the tree line.  Two of the missiles slammed into Morini’s lightly damaged left torso while another knocked some armor off of her center torso.  The Hermes II was barely fazed by the SRMs and Morini responded with a grunt and her three lasers.  One missed again, this time igniting a tree, but the others struck home.  Both lasers burned into the Wasp’s right torso.  Armor fell away in molten chunks and internal structural members melted under the extreme heat.  Somewhere in the Wasp’s torso one of the beams found its ammo bin.  A ripple of explosions began inside the light mech.  Explosive bolts fired and the Wasp’s head split open.  A split second before the chain reaction of the ammo explosion consumed the Wasp, its pilot ejected.  Small bits of the mercenary’s mech bounced off the Hermes II and it sounded like music to Morini’s ears.
            While the rest of his lance battled it out with the mystery mercenary unit, Joe was going toe to toe with the enemy Javelin.  As soon as its feet touched the ground the light mech opened up with both of its SRM racks.  Missiles impacted all over the Phoenix Hawk’s arms and torso, staggering the medium.  Joe quickly got his feet back under himself and returned fire.  His large laser missed wide but his medium laser cut a line across the merc’s left torso.  The Javelin began moving off to Joe’s right, trying to gain the height of the ridge.  Joe dodged the Phoenix Hawk into the Javelin’s path.  Years of training and simulations took over in a split second.  Everything slowed down as Joe saw the light mech’s torso swivel just enough to bring its SRM launchers to bear.  His fingers tightened on the firing studs for his large laser and one of his mediums.  SRMs were just leaving their tubes in the Javelin’s right torso as the Phoenix Hawk’s large laser burned into the light mech’s chest.  The SRMs in the mercenary’s left torso never got a chance to launch as Joe’s medium laser punched through what was left of the torso’s armor and set off the missile ammo it was meant to protect.  Explosions tore the light mech apart, sending arms, armor, and internal components in every direction.  Joe weathered the last wave of SRMs as he brought his mech to a halt near the top of the ridge.  Quickly catching his breath he turned around to survey the battlefield.  What he saw brought a smile to his face.
            Nicky and Gregory were standing a little over a hundred meters away near where the WSP-1D had exploded.  Off to Joe’s right Morini was finishing off the WSP-1L.  It looked like Bravo Lance’s first combat engagement had been a resounding success.  All the training and practice had paid off.  Beaming with pride Joe was about to radio in that the enemy recon lance had been dealt with when a wave of LRMs came raining down on Gregory’s Firestarter. 
            Just like with the Javelin time seemed to slow down, but this time Joe’s training failed him.  He froze as twenty LRMs ate into Gregory’s mech, sending shards of armor and dirt blasting into the air.  Most of the missiles tore into the Firestarter’s center torso while a handful cracked open the light mech’s head.  Between the suddenness of the attack and the hammer blows against his cockpit, Gregory lost control of his mech, stumbled backwards, and crashed to the ground.  The LRMs had dug deep into the Firestarter’s torso and breached one of the mech’s flame gel tanks.  As Gregory’s mech slammed into the ground a wave of gel washed over its head.  It gushed through the cracks in the cockpit coating everything it touched, including Gregory.  In an irony no one would ever discover a spark in the Firestarter’s cockpit fire suppression system ignited the flame gel.  A geyser of fire burst from the mech’s head marking the death of Sergeant Gregory Sinclair.
            The sudden attack on Gregory also caught Nicky completely by surprise.  Her Hermes was standing close enough to the Firestarter to feel the ground shake as it fell and also to be splashed by some of the flame gel that was gushing from its chest.  In actuality there was very little gel on her mech, but Nicky responded like she had just been unloaded on by an entire squad of Inferno toting infantry.  She started to frantically flail her mech’s arms and never even saw the Cicada that came stomping out of the woods behind her.  The bug like mech fired its two medium lasers into her back at point blank range.  The lasers easily cut through the Hermes armor and clawed into its gyro.  Without the stability provided by the complicated device the speedy light mech gracelessly crumpled to the ground.  The last thing Nicky remembered was the sky filling her view screen and the shrieking of over taxed metal.
            With her back to the rest of the lance and being over 300 meters away Morini didn’t see Gregory die and Nicky crash.  What she did see was a Vindicator come out of the tree line and open fire on her.  A handful of LRMs scattered damage across the Hermes II’s left torso and left arm.  Morini’s armor absorbed the missile damage but the Vindicator wasn’t through.  The PPC that made up the medium mech’s right arm unleashed a burst of lightning into the Hermes II’s chest.  Machine gun ammo began to cook off and Morini pulled in tight preparing to eject.  Slamming down on the eject switch caused the entire command couch to launch out of the stricken mech’s head.  But ejecting out of a mech was never a safe proposition.  As the command couch rocketed free of the Hermes II it clipped one of the panels that was supposed to blast away during an ejection.  The slight collision sent the ejection seat spinning out of control and straight into the forest.  A large tree finally stopped the run away command couch and ended Staff Sergeant Christina Morini’s life.  She never saw the destruction of the rest of Bravo Lance and the rest of Bravo Lance never saw her die.
            After what seemed like an eternity but in reality was only a fraction of a second, Joe was able to move again; but what he saw made his blood run cold.  His brain went into overdrive and a terrifying reality slapped him in the face.  The merc unit hadn’t been on a recon mission, it had been the screening force for an offensive thrust and Bravo Lance had stumbled right into it.  And this offensive movement wasn’t being made by any militia or run of the mill house unit; it was being made by Warrior House Dai Da Chi.  The golden green paint scheme with black accents was unmistakable.  Joe watched as Gregory died and Nicky was cut down by the Cicada.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Dervish that had attacked Gregory turn towards him.  But the Dervish wouldn’t get another kill today.  From about the same spot as where the Javelin had burst from the forest arose a Griffin.  Its pilot didn’t even wait to land before it opened up on Joe.  LRMs and a PPC blasted through the Hawk’s right torso and obliterated its internal structure.  The loss of the mech’s right arm and a good portion of its torso were too much for the Phoenix Hawk’s gyro and Joe’s central nervous system.  The mech started falling to its left as Joe over compensated before loosing its footing and tumbling down the ridge.  Ground replaced sky replaced ground several times before Joe blacked out.  Bravo Lance’s first, and last, combat engagement was over.