April 27, 3039
While Beta, Delta and Gamma are doing their thing (and getting shot up), Alpha conducts recon and an extraction raid on an airbase. Alpha-Two does a decent job, extracting the transponder-marked gear, though two of its mechs get shot up in exchange for taking down a light mech lance and sinking a hovercraft. The Lyran diversion accompanying Alpha-Two gets shot up as well, though they're just crappy tanks. Alpha-Two's Merlin winds up with a damaged foot actuator, while the Griffin gets its left arm disabled, so the Trebuchet winds up having to carry the equipment.
Alpha-Three reports tracking a large force moving to back up the airbase, so we send in Alpha-One right away, before the bulk of the hostiles can get there. The airbase didn't get shot up too badly, so Alpha-One is facing most of the defensive complement. Alpha-Two loops around and rejoins the attack, to serve as long-range fire support (not too much of it, since they have a single PPC and twenty five LRM tubes between the four of them).
The angle which Alpha-Two used for their approach is good enough - there are two hillstops from which the Kurita forces can fire at us, and there's no real way to approach them. On the plus side, there are a few small lakes which our PPC-firing mechs can use to cool off.
Having been whittled down a little, the opposition consists of a short lance of damaged mechs (anchored by a Warhammer) and assorted light/medium tanks. The fixed defenses are all short range crap. Should be a piece of cake.
Round 1:
El Guapo looks at a big sensor blip passing overhead. "Major, sensors show a dropship coming in. Is that one of ours?"
"Uh, negative. What's it doing?"
Four blips separate from the bigger one, which then leaves. "Dropping a lance of assault tanks, looks like."
"Well, bend me over and call me a Canopian." comes Gbasden's response.
While the assault tanks gently float down to the airbase, the dropship zips away, having business elsewhere apparently. Alpha-One moves up and engages the base from long range. Gbasden puts a PPC through the dome of one of the base turrets, moving on to the next target rapidly.
Round 2:
Stefan looks up to the top of the closer hill and sees a Wasp limping down. He shrugs and sends a pair of LRM/15 salvos at the basically immobile target. Even though only nine missiles hit, they blow out the center torso section, sending the mech to the great mechbay in the sky.
A Vulcan jumps to the base perimeter, engaging El Guapo with lasers, but missing every shot. El Guapo retaliates by blowing off its right arm with a PPC, the limb making a nice splash as it falls into the water.
The Vulcan (probably having tussled with Alpha-Two) decides it's had enough and moves away from the fight.
Round 3:
"Oh, shit!" One of the Demolishers drifts gently down, landing right next to Gbasden. That could be a problem.
Every mech in Alpha-One focuses as much firepower as they can on the landed assault tank. Stefan's LRMs pound the turret, causing sparks to come out, while Isgrimnur peels armor off the right flank, at which point El Guapo's PPC shot goes internal and cores it out. Gbasden hits it as well, although his aim is thrown off by an AC/20 impact on the Awesome's right arm. That could have gone a lot worse.
Round 4:
A pair of aircraft (makes sense, it's supposed to be an airbase, after all) zip in, a Mechbuster flying at Gbasden. Anti-aircraft fire from Isgrimnur forces the fighter to jink, right into one of Gbasden's PPC shots. It disintegrates.
Round 5:
With the distractions done with, we get back to leveling the base. El Guapo starts by collapsing one of the buildings with PPC fire, while Stefan fires an LRM salvo at a Partisan tank, inflicting some tread damage, but the tank remains more or less functional. On the plus side, the LRMs outrange its AC/5s by a good bit, so we're in no danger of return fire from there.
Round 6:
Stefan gives the Catapult's LRM launchers time to reload and uses the mech's lasers to slice the turret off the top of an outlying building.
Isgrimnur watches a fighter come in for a strafing run as Alpha-Two moves up from the south. The Hatchetman, for some reason, has been equipped with an advanced anti-aircraft tracking system, so the AC/10 is able to get a good lock on the Sparrow and blast it in the nose. The fighter manages to avoid crashing after losing about half its nose, which is no mean feat, but decides against circling around for another pass.
Gbasden fires PPCs at another turret - one of the shots goes a little low, and the entire building disappears. Guess we know where they were keeping the MG ammo.
Round 7:
Stefan retargets the Partisan on top of the hill, blowing it away with LRMs. El Guapo collapses another building (it's so much easier to hit them when they don't move, can't shoot back and you're standing still in a shallow lake), while Gbasden breaches armor on a Galleon tank that shows itself before
Alpha-Two's Trebuchet blows it away with an LRM salvo.
Round 8:
Isgrimnur uses the outlying buildings for cover, and blows up what appears to be another ammo dump. El Guapo moves up and melts most of a Bulldog's turret off. We're starting to take some return fire, with light autocannon rounds whizzing around, but as long as we stay at range and resist the temptation to close in, we should be ok.
Round 9:
El Guapo continues picking off tanks, destroying a laser carrier. Gbasden moves up, taking some fire from an LRM Carrier and dinging a Demolisher. The LRM Carrier outranges our Awesome's PPCs very slightly, but not for long.
Round 10:
Gbasden squeezes the trigger to fire all three PPCs, the cockpit temperature rising rapidly, but the LRM Carrier is cooked as well. The Merlin gets a little excited targeting a Pegasus hovertank, a few LRMs causing the small vehicle to explode - Alpha-Two's mech exposes itself to PPC fire from the Kurita Warhammer and takes an armor breach in a torso section. El Guapo melts the armor off a Scorpion tank, allowing Alpha-Two's Trebuchet to empty the last of its LRMs into the little tank's internals, destroying it.
Round 11:
Alpha-Two's Phoenix Hawk has moved around the east flank of the base and destroyed a turret.
Round 12:
Stefan moves up a little too far and eats a full short-range salvo from the Warhammer. The left missile rack is ruined, and the right leg indicates an armor breach. He returns fire, melting gobs of armor off the heavier mech, but this isn't really what we want to be doing right now.
Round 13:
Stefan pulls back out of line-of-sight of the Warhammer - him and Isgrimnur continue to hammer on the cluster of buildings housing short-ranged turrets directly ahead. Gbasden detonates another ammo dump, while, to the west, the Griffin from Alpha-Two disables a Packrat and evaporates several infantry firing their rifles at it.
Round 14:
Gbasden and the Phoenix Hawk from Alpha-Two move in on the east side of the base, where they're confronted by a Saladin. The hovertank blasts Gbasden's right torso wide open, but then is melted to scrap by PPC fire.
To the west, the Griffin jumps on top of the Demolisher and starts peeling the turret off, while the Merlin finishes off a couple of infantry squads. It's got a flamer and a MG for that.
Round 15:
El Guapo detonates another ammo dump, while the Griffin pries the lid off the Demolisher's turret.
Round 16:
Isgrimnur and Stefan collapse a couple more buildings, while El Guapo exchanges fire with the Warhammer - the Marauder takes one PPC shot, while the Warhammer takes two, including a head shot, damaging the life support system.
Gbasden's right torso PPC is blown out by an AC/5 round from the Scimitar, which is annoying but non-fatal.
Round 17:
Some indecisive firing - we score some hits, they score some hits, nothing critical. Well, maybe the infantry guys that Isgrimnur squashed don't feel that way.
Round 18:
The Warhammer tries to get out of El Guapo's line of fire, which allows Isgrimnur to get to its rear and nearly core it out with the autocannon. Isgrimnur's right arm has the armor melted off of it by a PPC, but it's irrelevant. The light tanks do ok, crippling our Griffin's right torso with laser fire, but two of them are disabled, a Galleon and the Scimitar that dinged Gbasden earlier. With Alpha-Two's Phoenix Hawk breaching a Pike support vehicle's armor, the Warhammer and a Galleon are the only two mobile units left, while the base has three turrets left.
The guy in the Warhammer offers a cease fire. Which is very reasonable of him, considering the state of his mech.
We accept, letting the remaining mobile units off the field (not too many of them) and calling in salvage. It's a pretty decent haul, although it's tempting to skip picking up all these crap-ass tanks. We pick up a Demolisher and a Partisan to sell, along with an LRM Carrier for spare LRMs, and a laser carrier for spare lasers. Plus the crashed Mechbuster and a Saladin for the AC/20 ammo.
At least now we won't have a bunch of airborne gnats buzzing around, strafing our mechs.
The other positive side is that our various tech crews really up their game, and, as a result, we're only down two lances worth of mechs by the time the next set of sorties rolls around.
Gamma-Three conducts their recon run, detecting an additional two lances of tanks led by a Marauder (and even disabling one of the tanks for shits and giggles).
The defecting mechwarrior doesn't really have much in the way of useful information to share, but we put him through a couple of runs in the sims and he does ok. To give him something to do, we get him working on stripping armor and weapons from salvaged hulks, and running systems tests on our repair jobs. "Wow, three Awesomes AND an Atlas? We usually don't see anything heavier than Marauders." he laments.