WEST LANDING FIELD

ORIGIAN MILITARY RESERVATION

SADALBARI I

FEDERATED SUNS (CONTESTED)

26 JULY 3039

It was a beautiful day for a walk.

The sun was high in a cerulean sky clear save for the barest wisps of cloud, bringing a nice spring warmth without the oppressive heat and humidity that could come later in the year. There was a fresh breeze playing through the branches of the distant jungle and a general feeling that today was supposed to be a Good Day if you knew how to reach out and grasp it.

Shame about the invasion, really.

Elise Durand-Géroux was a MechWarrior from a long line of MechWarriors out of Kathil III. She grew up on stories of her grandfather’s heroic battles, her father’s derringdo actions, eventually attending the NAIS College of Military Science and graduating in the top ten percent of her class, straight into a commission with the 3rd FedCom RCT.

Old instructors would have described her on their reports with things such as “motivated”, “assertive”, or “a good head for leadership”.

In private they might have said “brash”, “reckless”, or “confident to the point of arrogance”.

They were right on all counts, whether she realised it or not.

“Battle lance, form up on me as we make the push, Mooney you stay over my left shoulder,” she instructed, pushing the throttle and bringing her grandfather’s Victor VTR-9B to running speed with a whine of actuators and the deep thrum of a 320-rated fusion engine firing to capacity. “Striker, I want the meds ranging ahead to find targets and Fire Support, hit them as I mark them.”

A chorus of affirmatives echoed across comms as the company did what they were told, moving to their positions with gratifying speed.

The 3^rd was only three months into their occupation of Sadalbari when the Draconis Combine launched a counterattack. The Commonwealth forces had barely been given the time to recover from their gruelling initial assault so were not as ready for it as they could have been.

A week ago, reinforcements from the 7^th and 8^th Ghost Regiments landed, pushing Elise and her comrades out of Solus City and back to Origian, where they had at least a chance to fight on solid ground. The 3^rdboasted some of the best combat engineers in the business and they had put themselves to good use, working hard to build a defensive line out of spit and rubble that would have made old Brian himself proud.

Major General Tam called for reinforcements from the 5^th Davions while the Dracs could only wave their fists from out of range, occasionally probing the perimeter to no effect. The 3^rd had pretty much settled in for a good old fashioned siege and everyone was happy to put their feet up for a bit; constant warfare can really take it out of you. Elise might have been in school while Fourth S.W. was going on but she’d heard it was kind of like this, only more so.

She was really feeling the “more so” now.

In a move that really should have been seen before it happened, the Ghost Regiments did a sub-orbital hop and dropped right on Origian; it might have been called “audacious” by the defenders if it had not been so devastatingly effective.

The words “target rich environment” were also very much applicable in this case and for both sides too. Loss and kill reports were coming over the command channel with equal frequency, giving an incomplete picture of abject chaos.

“Drac lance other side of the hangars, mixed weight, high speed,” Sullivan called from the Stiker Lance. Elise could see the blue beam of his Enforcer’s large laser, stabbing through the thickening smoke.

“Good job, now pull back,” she ordered, marking the targets on her command console as the telemetry came through. Immediately, without needing to be asked, a thick flight of missiles sailed overhead, blocking her view of the sky for one brief moment. Two Archers, a Dervish, and a Longbow put out an awful lot of them and they arced past, over the high roofs of the already-battered hangars, onwards out of sight. She knew Valentine’s lance would be chafing to fire again while their weapons cycled, so no need to tell him twice.

“Catcat, Mooney, pull ahead and tie up those heavies, Striker in support, see if you can’t keep them up against the hangars,” she ordered. “Catcat” referred collectively to Vaughan and MacLeod in their Cataphracts – CTF-1X and 2X respectively. They always worked as a pair, the heavy digitigrade machines complementing each other, and Carrie Mooney in her broad-shouldered Crusader CRD-3R could provide long or close support as needed. “When I catch up, I’m going to try for the Slam Dunk.”

The three heavies broke formation with Elise’s assault ‘Mech and began to move around the side of the buildings. She could already see flashes of weapon fire as Sullivan’s Strikers took pot shots without fully committing.

Let’s try for no losses today, hmm? she thought to herself.

Another wave of missiles poured overhead as the hangar loomed larger, the conventional aircraft stored within little more than burned out husks. Catcat and Mooney had now engaged, reporting a Cicada, Shadow Hawk, Champion, and Lancelot, finding difficulty hitting the faster ‘Mechs but making an impact when they did. Elise felt it was a weird combination, but just assumed the Dracs were scraping the barrel for reinforcements.

She was nearly flush with the hangar and grinned savagely in the privacy of her cockpit. This was her favourite part of any fight, not always doable but highly effective when it worked. Not waiting for confirmation from the others, she slammed down pedals at her feet, the Victor’s mighty frame shuddering as its four jump jets ignited and launched eighty tonnes of machine into the air on pillars of bright blue fire, Elise’s cockpit beginning to noticeably warm before the sinks bled away excess heat.

She passed over the top, and Elise had a view of the flash and snap of weapons below and the wider battle spread out for kilometres around. This was a hell of a fight but she was confident the 3^rd would come out on top regardless.

Feathering the jets, she manoeuvred while airborne, judging the angle on the descent, cutting any sort of upward thrust so that…

She came down right on the Champion’s back.

With an impact that rattled every bone in her body – a medic once told her this wasn’t good for her spine – the Victor’s feet hit the heavy ‘Mech, her HUD’s wireframe readout flashing as it registered the damage. Armour plates crumpled and actuators tore in the enemy ‘Mech when they had to deal with a sudden weight more than double what they were rated for.

Elise grinned wider as she imagined the surprise the Drac pilot must have felt when she knocked them to the floor, kept her own balance with long practice, and delivered the hammer blow of an AC/20 shell into their weakened centre torso, smashing the engine and killing the ‘Mech.

That was a Slam Dunk.

Sure, a headshot would have been just as effective but it’s a bit unsporting when your opponent’s down.

The Drac lance was in a panic, scattering at the sudden appearance of an assault-weight ‘Mech in their midst. The Cicada was running around as aimless as a startled hen, snapping off the green bolts of its medium lasers to minimal effect, the ‘Hawk was at least attempting to make some distance, and a battered, one-armed Lancelot was positioning itself for a fight. All three ‘Mechs – and the concrete around them – were peppered with impacts from Valentine’s indirect fire.

“Strikers on the meds, battle lance form up on me,” Elise snapped, trusting Sullivan to handle the more manoeuvrable ‘Mechs. She turned towards the Lancelot, even as the fast sixty-tonner tried to back-pedal, and let loose with a withering alpha strike. Lasers, missiles, and a heavy shell filled the space between them, waste heat turning Elise’s cockpit into a sauna. The Draconis ‘Mech returned in kind, lashing out with its remaining energy weapons.

Wireframe flashed in warning as her Victor shuddered from the impact of a large laser on the right torso, blasting away armour with the thermal shock, but there was plenty enough to spare, especially when the enemy PPC went wide. While devastating, Elise alone was not enough to bring down a heavy, which was why a MechWarrior rarely travelled alone.

Concentrated fire from Catcat blew out the Lancelot’s left knee in a shower of glowing metal shards, abruptly halting its escape. Taking the opportunity to save ammo and drop some heat, Elise charged, her neurohelmet’s advanced technology interpreting her will as the Victor’s great fist closed around the enemy’s remaining arm. She twisted out of the way of torso weapons trying to fire point blank, a swift kick bending the PPC out of shape and another rendering the medium laser inoperable.

Even as her opponent struggled, Elise planted one foot against the Lancelot’s chest and pulled. She was the Victor and it was she, person and machine united in perfect symbiosis to create a terrifying god of war. Through the feedback she strained, muscles taut as myomer and actuators in the Lancelot’s shoulder resisted, budged, then gave with a horrible screech of tearing metal.

Whooping in victory, Elise pulled the arm free and tossed it aside, taking stock of the situation.

The Drac Cicada was down, twitching impotently on its side after a lucky shot had shattered one ankle, and the Shadow Hawk was little more than a smoking crater and scattered parts, a hit having penetrated its armour and set off one of the ammo bins. Waiting for Sullivan to finish his fun with the big bug, Elise formed up with her lance.

“Arms and armour check, sound off,” she ordered.

Vaughan and Mooney were doing alright, glancing blows and scattered missiles mostly, though Zubair was down to red on his right side after taking the brunt of the Lancelot’s ire when they first engaged. Striker Lance was in good health and Valentine’s missile boats were virtually untouched. Ammo was at roughly half capacity across the board – good enough. “Company get into formation – that means you Rico, I want you with line of sight – we are going to hold this line, use the hangars as a choke point.”

“Negative C Company,” a new voice came over comms. It was Major Levine, the battalion's commander. “Instruction from on high, we are calling a general withdrawal, I want you to help reinforce 2^nd Battalion before we move south in good order.”

“But ma’am, what about the DropShips?” Elise argued.

“Screw the droppers,” Levine snapped, frustration colouring her voice, though Elise couldn’t tell if it was at the situation or her unruly subordinate. Maybe both. “We are in danger of being overrun, captain, and if you do not get your company at the waypoint in five minutes you better have a damn good reason or I’ll court-martial you so hard you never see the inside of a cockpit again!”

Elise ground her teeth but manage to bite off an almost-polite “Yes ma’am.” before the link cut. Seeing as that was the company channel, her entire command would have been party to the exchange, witnessing their leader being smacked down like that, and they would be waiting carefully for her next move.

Not wanting to lose her commission, Elise had no choice but to comply. However, the manner of compliance had not been specified and she pulled up her tactical map. The most direct line to 2^nd Battalion was also the clearest, so it made sense to head that way, but off at a bit of a tangent she saw an opportunity to let off some steam and thumb her nose at Levine in a way that couldn’t be construed as insubordinate if it went to tribunal.

“Company form on me, we’re going to hit those vehicles putting pressure on A at grid sixteen-oh-four,” she instructed.

“You sure, Cap?” Vaughan asked over a private channel.

“Carol, they’re only combat vehicles and you know as well as I the Dracs don’t take non-mech’s very seriously – not honourable enough for them or whatever,” Elise replied. “Should be a doddle.”

“Not what I meant, Cap.”

“I know what you meant,” Elise continued, her voice hardening. “We go there, we kill the bloody crates, then we dance through whatever hoops Levine wants us to, alright?”

“Alright Cap,” was all Vaughan had left to say on the matter.

They closed from the flank, an open swathe of airfield allowing the drifting smoke to clear, revealing a scattering of heavy Pos and lighter Vedettes, a few weapon carriers of various makes lurking back in support. Striker lance tore through the lightly armoured carriers while Elise and Valentine’s lances took the so-called tanks by surprise. The wannabe-Pattons and “baby’s first tanks” could muster a decent amount of autocannons between them but after weathering sustained fire from A Company, they were in no position to put up any kind of defence.

With no mercy and buckets of glee, Elise and her company planted a field of smoking flowers, burning through ammunition and leaving no vehicle in working condition, stopping short of taking snapshots at any crew that tried to flee.

“Captain, what it the hell are you doing?” Levine demanded as Elise neatly put an AC/20 round in the gap between a Po’s turret and its hull, feeling a surge of pleasure at the resulting explosion. “Get in position, now!”

“We are en route, major,” Elise replied cheerfully, knowing full well how much it would annoy her superior. “Thought we would lend a hand on the way!”

There was a moment of silence in which Elise could imagine the major trying to keep her fury in check before levelly, and with admirable control, saying, “Fine. We’re withdrawing so gather up your company and follow. Now.”

“Of course major, right away!” chirped Elise, noting on her readout that A Company were already pulling back, abandoning three of their downed machines to the Dracs.

Elise snorted derisively and regarded back to her own, full-strength company. “Right everyone, let’s get in formation and show th-,” she began, interrupted by comms from Sullivan.

“Contact, contact! Multiple ‘Mechs bearing north-west!” he all but shouted across the channel. Elise could see the Strikers take to the skies, jumpjets flaring blue as they scrambled to withdraw, followed by a hail of lasers and missiles. Even as she watched, a Wolverine – Keaton Marquez – was knocked out of the sky by the lighting bolt blast of a PPC, coming down hard on his back and not getting up again.

Her telemetry pinged warnings as three then five Combine BattleMechs showed up on her scanners, emerging from the smoke a moment later, their weapons blazing.

“All units, fighting withdrawal now!” she ordered. “Valentine get over here and provide covering fire!”

Catcat and Mooney were now beginning to return fire, picking targets of opportunity rather than showing any real focus. Elise herself was already taking shots at a Dragon variant she had never seen before, bearing a PPC instead of an AC/5. There were far too many heavies for her liking, and the situation was quickly turning sour.

“No can do, Cap!’ Valentine replied tensely. “Flanking force surprised us, we-.”

The comm was suddenly awash with a burst of static, followed milliseconds later by the crump of an almighty explosion. Elise knew exactly what that was. Weapon fire had found one of the tonnes of ammunition in Valentine’s Archer with predictable results. There was no way of knowing if he had ejected in time, she needed to focus on what she had left, hard as it was.

“Strikers support Fire!” she snapped. “Battle, on me! Fighting withdrawal!”

Grimacing with barely-contained frustration and a rising undercurrent of unfamiliar panic, Elise raised her thick arm to shield her cockpit when a brace of missiles peppered across her front, responding with a booming shot from her AC/20 that pummelled armour from the chest of a…

Wait, is that an Exterminator? I thought they were extinct?

Whatever it was, the ‘Mech withdrew, the combined effort of Catcat doing the same to one of the Dragons, now minus an arm and limping from a damaged knee. In response, the Dracs stripped the remaining armour from Zubair’s right torso, causing enough internal damage for that side’s arm to fall away when its mounting disintegrated, taking the CTF-2Xs large laser and wrecking its AC/10 in the process.

She was down two ‘Mechs already, with heavy damage across the rest and ammo reserves running low.

Mooney’s Crusader toppled over as the bright line of a PPC smashed a molten hole through her cockpit.

Three down…

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Elise muttered, feeling a cold chill down her spine despite the heat warnings flashing across her HUD and the sweat sheening on her bare arms.

This was most definitely not turning out to be a Good Day.

And it got even worse when three more ‘Mechs joined the engagement, their purposeful stride and hulking silhouettes marking them as assault-weight even before her scanner could give that information away.

“Withdraw now! Reverse best speed and disengage!” she snapped over comms, a shrill edge entering her voice.

Striker and Fire lances had managed to join up with her now, or what was left of them. Velasquez’ Longbow and Odling’s Griffin were nowhere to be seen.

To give them their due, her MechWarriors were withdrawing in a disciplined way, firing for effect and doing their best to disengage, the nimbler mediums helping to shore up gaps where the heavies could not. In a twist of irony that was not lost on a grimacing Elise, the destroyed tanks were proving a hindrance, the wrecks getting under foot and slowing their progress. Bullock’s Archer stumbled, nearly tripping on a Vedette, and went down hard when a blinding salvo of high-energy lasers carved it apart. A final burst of smoke and Bullock ejected, Elise feeling a pang of regret that they would be forced to leave him behind.

The faster Drac heavies were easily keeping pace and the assaults were happily in the brackets of their longer-range weapons, leaving Elise impotent as they pulled away from her brawler’s arsenal. One of them – a newer design that looked like a Thug pretending to be a samurai, identified by Intelligence as a “Hatamoto-Chi” – cored Sullivan’s Enforcer with enough power to punch a hole clean through and another began scoring blue lines from its twinned large lasers across Elise’s front.

“IS THAT A GODDAMN CROCKETT?” she yelled at her targeting computer. She could have sworn she saw a Black Knight too, shredded down to a skeleton by the rest of Fire’s LRMs. There were too many designs here that had been out of production centuries-past for it to be purely coincidence, and Elise’s company was paying for it, now down to half strength. “What’s going on…?”

With an alpha strike, she crippled an Ostroc that ventured too close, ignoring the way the heat stung her eyes, how every breath was like inhaling an oven, and the feeling of water pooling in her gloves. She had lost track of damage reports, her wireframe having long since faded from green through to orange, showing red in too many places.

Russell’s Dervish fell to a Guillotine, even as her SRMs turned its gyro into a three-tonne paperweight, the ‘Mech wobbling drunkenly for a step before pitching sideways, and McLeod had to bail when the Hatamoto-Chi burst his engine. Vaughan’s revenge shattered one of its elbows, but the massed missile fire she took in response caused her Cataphract to fall apart around her. The dismembering of Gibson’s Enforcer, a sister mech to Sullivan’s, left Elise all alone and heavily outnumbered.

This was not how things were supposed to have gone.

All she had done was try to do her duty, sticking it to Levine in the process.

Instead she had lost her entire command.

‘It was not supposed to go this way…’ she said in a small, shaky voice, any audibility lost over the din of impacts and warning alarms. She belatedly realised she should have called for reinforcements. She should have swallowed her pride and let the Major come and help.

Maybe then more of her MechWarriors would still be alive.

Maybe then she would make it out of this in one piece.

Throwing any sense of order to the wind, she slammed on her jumpjets, blasting backwards in an arc over the last of the wrecks, her ‘Mech shaking from the forces enacted on it from outside and in. The engine was on the verge of automatic shut down, her AC/20 was almost dry, and there was barely a tonne of armour left on her entire ‘Mech.

Correction, her grandfather’s ‘Mech. The family Victor that had passed down to her, as firstborn, on graduation. A hundred year-old ‘Mech that she was on the verge of losing.

She landed and immediately stumbled when, with a harrowing CRACK, the actuator in her left ankle gave way under the impact. Barely keeping steady, she sunk to one knee, and raised her arm to fire at a Dragon closing in for the kill. Taking a moment to aim, she snapped off a shot before a concentrated beam of lighting tore that arm away at the shoulder.

Elise screamed from the neural feedback and the overwhelming, helpless rage she felt in that moment. In one last act of stubborn defiance, she triggered her remaining weapons with shaking hands, baring her teeth as green lasers and smoky missiles brought down the wounded Dragon in sheets of flame.

Another glance across her instruments. The Crocket and its attendant assaults were closing in on her, confident now her greatest weapon was gone but still cautious enough to respect what she had left. Regardless, the next shot would be the killing blow, that much was for certain, it was only a matter of how.

Tears were running freely from her eyes, tracking coolly against her hot skin.

This was not how things were supposed to go..

After one last, gentle caress of the machine that had served her family for three generations, Elise reached between her legs with both hands and pulled the ejection lever. Charges clapped as the cockpit roof blew out and jets fired once more, shooting Elise back into a cerulean sky that was clear save for the barest wisps of cloud.