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Open Log, Apprentice Quinn ?Strobe? Cuzen, 26 August 3000, 0200 hours local. I can see Combat Lance making their slow progress through the Prinis wilderness. With how dark it is out there, even night vision is a crapshoot. There's no moon tonight, and this far out on the fringes of the spiral arm there aren't even a lot of stars to go by. The ops room is tense. None of the pirates are visible on sensors, somehow. It's like they're not even there, but we know they haven't evaded our 'Mechs. Then something happens to break the silence.
Knight 3-4: ?Contact! Contact! Hetzer at 30 meters!?
Knight 3-2: ?Multiple contacts, close proximity!?
Knight 3-1: ?All Knights engage, engage now!?
Already the tone was vastly different from the Knights' first engagement. It was a different lance, but no less skilled or trained. The difference was that suddenly, instead of a few slow armor units at the envelope of engagement range, this was a huge group of dangerous pirates at point blank. All around the holodisplay of the mission space, red blips sprung to life, identified by type and model a few seconds later. The display is still for a brief moment, displaying 12 blood red contacts. Four 'Mechs, eight vehicles. In a gasp of good fortune, most of the pirates came to life on the other side of a wooded copse. That'd give our guys some valuable breathing time.
Suddenly the moment of silence was gone. Even over the shoddy comms network fading in and out we could hear the gunfire and sounds of impact. The view was too hard to read as the ordnance started flying, until an explosion rocked the display. A big explosion, not like a missile hitting something. The commander practically broke the comms button. ?Knight 3 report!? The response was a few seconds in coming.
Knight 3-1: ?Hetzer down! Fuel tank went up. Congratulations to our tagalong.? Even with a momentary lull in the combat, strain was evident in his voice coupled with the adrenaline surge from a surprise engagement. ?Minor damage, no penetration. Scourge nail that Scorpion!?
Knight 3-4: ?I'm hit! Armor holding, switching targets.?
He wasn't quite the youngest, but he was definitely the greenest. You could hear it in his voice as panic gave way to cool, collected resolve. I don't know how the hell Derrick did it, but something about this unit lent itself to that cold exterior. Maybe that was why his callsign was ?Iron?.
Another few seconds of silence came over the display while weapons reloaded and recharged, and the Pirates absorbed the loss of one of their heaviest hitters in just seconds. Then all hell broke loose again.
Knight 3-3: ?Engaging Galleon!?
The comms were full of similar reports. With how black it was out there, I can't really say for sure, but on the display it looked like night turned to day with how many lasers went shooting back and forth.
Knight 3-2: ?Direct hits on the Scorpion! Bastard's track came clean off.?
The display was starting to coalesce into something resembling order again. The Hetzer was a burning hulk of ruined metal. The Scorpion Scourge had tracked stood less than half a dozen meters away, and a 'Mech's foot was just as good for caving in armor as a heavy autocannon. Half of the Galleon's bogey wheels were a fused, ruined mess. There was an honest to God hole in the Wasp's torso, and another hit of just about any power would separate the entire arm assembly. The pirate Urbanmech, already too slow to escape the lance, found itself surrounded and mercilessly beaten until it crashed to the ground.
Scourge's Wolverine connected on the kick, and the Scorpion crumpled like wet paper. The crew didn't immediately make a break for it, probably stunned by the jarring impact. A spark from a misaimed laser ignited a patch of brush. Five seconds later the Scorpion's hulk and a Vedette that had been shadowing it were engulfed in flames.
The image was unreal. Combat Lance had stumbled, literally, into an entire company of hostile Pirates with a score to settle. Twenty seconds later, two of their tanks were burning wreckage, one could barely move, and two 'Mechs were already in danger. It was like the hand of some benevolent deity had decided to damn the odds and damn the pirates. Everyone in the ops center watched silent with anticipation.
Something in the Urbanmech's leg gave out when it tried to get back up, and this time it stayed down. Tally three for the good guys. Some of the tanks looked like they were trying to get away already. Their ambush had totally, utterly failed, and the less disciplined of them tried to back away.
That's right about when everything turned chaotic again. Smoke billowed out of the inferno around the Scorpion, and the pirates that didn't turn tail and run were regrouping and making their way through the woods. Whoever trained them didn't do it very well, though, and for the second consecutive salvo not a single beam or shell struck a Knight.
Knight 3-4: ?Watch that Wasp!? On the display the Wasp managed to get around the Knights' line into the rear. It missed, but being flanked is an unnerving feeling.
Knight 3-1: ?Scourge! You've got jets, hunt him down.?
Knight 3-2: ?Wilco! Moving to engage.?
Esarai concentrated on the Vedette. By the end of the brief assault, it was limping too. Scourge went after the Wasp. That made five Pirate units disabled. The other three made sure the Urbanmech would never walk again. It wasn't, strictly speaking, destroyed, but both legs had been amputated around the knee, and half the armor on its torso was gone. It wouldn't get up again, and the Knights left it for salvage. Seconds later the pilot ejected.
More stray weapons fire ignited more trees. Half the copse was aflame now, and the Knights had to move or get caught in the inferno. Scourge moving to engage scared the Wasp away.
Losing so many tanks in less than a minute must have shaken the pirates. That's the only explanation I have for how none of them, not a single one, had connected with a shot since the opening salvo. The Knights' discipline came into its own, and when the pirates measured up found themselves wanting. This wasn't an ambush anymore, it was a route, punctuated by how the Vedette's turret tore off at the behest of Scourge and his Wolverine's savage kick. That was two on the day for Scourge.
Knight 3-2: ?Splash two! Shifting fire to Condor. Esarai, on me!?
Knight 3-1: ?That Wasp is back!?
Knight 3-2: ?Condor over water! Open fire, knock out his engine.?
The next salvo saw some hits get through. Two 'Mechs flashed orange for a brief moment on the display, but neither were badly hit. Then the carnage continued.
The Condor got out from over water before it was disabled ? the only minor break the pirates had gotten yet. Archmage finally got to take a good shot at the Wasp. He missed, but that many lasers and high caliber shells is bound to put the fear of God into something as fragile as that bug. Fires raged all across the field, forcing more pirates out of their prepared positions and into the line of fire. The Condor, in particular, was about to experience a special sort of hell under the combined fire of three 'Mechs. It crumpled like a tin can, but not before a lucky shot disabled one of Esarai's jump jets.
Knight 3-3: ?I'm hit! Damage to a jump jet, but nothing major. Condor destroyed, engaging Goblin.?
The Knights were winning, handily. Each second ticking by a pirate 'Mech stumbled and fell, or a pirate tank withered until it burst into flame. Victory was seconds away.
Knight 3-4: ?Additional contacts! Pirate lance inbound from heading 08-70!?
Knight 3-1: ?Continue to engage current targets! Make way toward heading 08-62 to regroup.?
Knight 3-4: ?SRM Carrier detected! Engaging!?
Suddenly the room was tense again. SRM Carriers were fragile, but they were lethal. No less than 60 SRM tubes poised and ready to launch. It was too late to stop it before the lethal salvo launched. The display momentarily went fuzzy trying to keep track of that many missiles. When the distortion cleared, Archmage's Hunchback... was nearly unscathed. Miraculously, over 80% of the missiles launched had missed their target.
Knight 3-4: ?Fucking kill it!?
No one commented on the breach of comms discipline. Several Knights took what shots they could against the carrier, but not enough connected to put it out of business for good. Amidst all the commotion, our liaison's Blackjack immobilized the pirate Galleon in the middle of a raging inferno.
Next came something no one in the ops room had been expecting, after that brutal brawl. The SRM Carrier swiveled in place, and then made best possible speed for somewhere not in the middle of combat. We had all forgotten that these pirates weren't line troops. They either owned their equipment outright, or they owed a lot of money to whoever funded them. Losing a tank or 'Mech was as good as signing their own execution papers.
That didn't do a goddamn thing when it came to the Knights holding fire. Three separate 'Mechs unloaded on it all at once, and three separate sections of the vehicle blew apart. Archmage took out his frustration on a nearby Scorpion, and the liaison fired the final shots into the side of the Galleon. Ten seconds and three pirate tanks had gone up in smoke.
Turns out that was the straw that broke the pirates' back. They immediately started withdrawing, frantically trying to get away from the Knight 'Mechs.
Knight 3-1: ?All Knights, disengage from main body. Esarai, help Scourge run down that bastard.?
All across the field, pirate 'Mechs and tanks were withdrawing, but apparently Hobbie wanted that Wasp in particular dead. It didn't quite work, but the pirates were well and truly on the retreat now.
Knight 3-2: ?Negative, Hobbie. He's gone.?
Knight 3-1: ?Roger. Regroup at coordinates 08-55 to reconsolidate.?
An audible aura of relief spread through the assembled. They'd won! Not only had they won, they'd done so emphatically. The Knights' single medium lance took on and beat down an entire augmented company of pirate 'Mechs and armor without suffering much more than superficial damage.
Knight 3-1: ?Command, this is Knight 3 Actual. You might want to prep salvage and recovery ops. There's at least two units worth more than just scrap.?
There it was, the unit's first salvage. A couple of the assembled techs cheered and clapped. They'd had damn near nothing to do for nine months, and now they'd have a bunch of goodies to get their mitts on. ?Roger that, Knight 3. Stand guard until we get there. Ruth! Get me six teams and one of those salvage trucks the militia lent us. You've got six hours to get as much of that stuff as you can, and leave the militia the rest. Get Jimmy and SAR out there too. That's a lot of ransom money if we grab a few vehicle crews.?
What a great night.