Vote Results:
"Beta-Hunter, be aware that primary hostile force is now vectoring in your direction. Suggest you move out and intercept them before they hit your location." Madmarcus advises.
"Look, Lieutenant." Wolf suggests. "We can intercept them just past this little town over here. If Delta-Ranger can split them up a little, we should be able to pick them apart."
"Let's do it." The lance leader responds. The Archer, Orion, Guillotine and Stalker move out, flanked by the Zephyr hovertank.
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The Union that disgorged the mech company decides to support them a little more by lifting off and heading our in a sub-orbital hop. Our un-committed aerospace fighters engage its escort, but are unable to prevent it from coming down almost right on top of Delta-Ranger's position. Our mechs are nimble enough to avoid getting sumo dropped, but it's still an unsettling experience. Not to mention they have to run a gauntlet of dropship fire.
Round 1:
"Move it! Maximum speed, don't stop until we're out of weapons range!" someone calls out. As we run by, we unload LRMs and other long-range weapons at the giant ball of death that's decided drop in on us. Archinerd takes a few LRMs to the right side, while Paingod's PPC blows out an autocannon turret. A minor firepower reduction, but still.
Round 2:
Freyland breathes out a sigh of relief as the distance indicator to the dropship goes beyond maximum LRM range. Now, we just need to stop a swarm of tanks, mechs and hovercraft. Madmarcus absorbs the last of the LRMs the dropship is capable of firing at us, and we make our way to the town Wolf has designated as the interception point.
Round 3:
Our lance continues moving south as a lance of hovercraft (and a Vedette) move rapidly. A few LRMs from Freyland's Quickdraw impact a Plainsman hovertank, and an autocannon round goes flying overhead, but otherwise nothing serious happens.
Round 4:
Paingod cuts it a little too close to the Union and catches another salvo of LRMs while attempting to take out a Saladin hovertank. Freyland takes that kill anyway, blowing the mobile AC/20 away with a laser and streak SRM salvo.
Round 5:
Beta-Hunter arrives from the south, while the bulk of the enemy force enters from the north. Delta-Ranger is totally clear of the dropship's firepower, which just leaves the firepower of all those mechs. Thankfully, the assault mech is a standard model Banshee, so that's about as threatening as a medium mech (unless it gets close, then you better hope you're buckled up)
Madmarcus scowls as the Plainsman unloads a salvo of SRMs at our Wolverine, and the SRM launcher flashes red after firing its last missile load - seems the ammo feed mechanism has been severed by a stray SRM. At least the Plainsman is history, after being carved up with lasers and the last of Madmarcus' SRMs.
Freyland, helped by Paingod's PPC and Archinerd's LRMs, takes out a Vedette to the west, nearly wiping out the advance lance.
Round 6:
The main body of the enemy force engages Delta-Ranger at maximum range with LRMs, to little effect. Our return fire isn't really that effective either, although Madmarcus dings a Drillson hovertank with a medium laser.
Round 7:
The bulk of the enemy lighter units close to range and get stuck in.
Archinerd flits backwards through the town, firing LRMs at a Scimitar that shows through an opening. The hovertank's armor is breached and the air cushion lets out. Freyland finishes it off with lasers.
Paingod jumps forward, avoiding the majority of the incoming LRMs and autocannon rounds (only eating one of the latter), then kicks over an approaching Drillson hovertank.
Wolf engages a Vedette that's moved past the town, scoring multiple hits with the Orion's LRMs.
Round 8:
Freyland also backs up. Being the last one out of line of sight, the Quickdraw takes a couple of AC/5 rounds but nothing serious. Our mechwarrior squeezes the trigger for lasers and streak SRMs, being rewarded with a light show and a pair of smoke trails, followed by a Condor hovertank kicking up a dirt plume as black smoke starts pouring out the side.
Wolf is unable to get a good bead on a Jenner running past as the little mech zaps the Orion with lasers. In frustration, our mechwarrior kicks out at a nearby Vedette, nearly breaching the right side of the tank.
Round 9:
Freyland keeps pace with a Valkyrie running by, unloading lasers into its left side. This time, the streak launcher doesn't fire, eliciting a "goddammit" from our mechwarrior. Madmarcus lays into the same mech as well, causing it to lose armor cross the torso section and an armor breach on the right arm. Avoiding a clumsy punch, Freyland brings the Quickdraw's leg up, breaking the Valkyrie's leg off just above the knee. As it keels over, the mechwarrior inside punches out. Not very successfully - the ejection seat brushes the adjacent building, sending the poor guy tumbling to a nearby rooftop.
Paingod times a jump to land almost on top of a Saladin, then turns north and fires at a Scorpion tank, blowing it away with the Griffin's PPC and LRMs. The cockpit heats up quite a bit as the cooling systems are unable to keep up, but it's worth it - the light SRM-toting tank is destroyed. The Griffin shakes a bit as SRMs pepper it, and LRMs from longer range, but armor holds. The Saladin is flattened.
Wolf continues "dueling" with the Vedette, marveling at the unusual sturdiness of the vehicle - despite multiple laser and autocannon hits, as well as a kick, the tank is still going.
Round 10:
The Jenner nimbly dodges past Wolf and Archinerd (who gives it a pair of lasers to the left side to remove some armor), then runs right into Siljanus' Stalker coming around the hilltop. Lasers carve away the light mech's armor, while a salvo of SRMs goes internal, cracking engine shielding and busting up a pair of actuators on the left leg. The little mech keels over, snapping off its left weapons mount.
Freyland continues flitting between buildings in the small town, picking off another Vedette.
"I got him, I got him!" Hyena calls out, firing the Archer's LRMs at the Vedette Wolf has been picking on. Except the LRMs miss. Wolf and a Shadow Hawk exchange fire, our mech coming out a little worse, although both get pockmarked armor.
Round 11:
The Jenner's pilot is unable to get the mech back up, snapping off the damaged leg and having to bail out.
Freyland's eyes go wide as a heavy mech lance, with a heavy tank in tow, stomp through the center of town. That Quickdraw's pretty good, but not that good, so off go the jump jets and the mech lands out of sight, behind the Banshee. All lasers and the SRMs fire at the back of the assault mech. Combined with an LRM/20 salvo from Hyena's Archer, it's enough to knock the big bastard over.
Wolf confronts a swarm of tanks emerging from the town, absorbing a good amount of autocannon fire and knocking the treads off of one. Archinerd disables another one, while Beta-Hunter's Guillotine finally finishes that one Vedette that Wolf started working on almost half a minute ago. Well, 'finishes' is a strong term. The tank's crew just finally has enough and peels off from the breakthrough attempt.
Round 12:
There's a vaguely familiar charge-up sound and then a gauss slug flies right past Freyland's Quickdraw as our mechwarrior jumps north. Quickly zeroing on the target, our mechwarrior returns fire. The lasers fail to penetrate the heavy tank's armor. We've never seen one of these before, so we'll have to examine the data later.
Hyena engages a Crusader coming out of the southeast corner of the town, clustering lasers and LRMs around the 65-ton mech's upper torso, scoring a head shot.
Siljanus and Archinerd team up on another Crusader, hitting it with large lasers and LRMs. Paingod adds a PPC, which hits an ammo bin, but disappointingly, doesn't blow the mech up - looks like the bin was empty. Still, the damage causes the enemy mech to fall over.
Round 13:
Freyland seeks to close the distance with the gauss tank, avoiding another slug and cutting into the heavy tank's treads with lasers and streak warheads. One of the tank's laser barrels burns out, and then it stops moving. Our Guillotine helps clear the air a little as well, destroying a Scorpion tank zipping around underneath the nearby Banshee while avoiding the assault mech's fire.
Siljanus' Crusader target gets up, somewhat painfully, then eats a substantial amount of laser and SRM fire, along with another PPC shot from Paingod. It returns fire, disabling our Zephyr hovertank, but the armor loss unbalances it and down it goes again, this time scanners showing its center torso armor completely gone. Siljanus easily ignores the attacks of the nearby Shadow Hawk as well.
Hyena's Crusader target gets away, but an Orion presents itself for pummeling by LRMs and lasers and is knocked over.
Wolf and Madmarcus engage the Thunderbolt, blasting it with enough ordnance that it has to take a knee to retain stability.
Round 14:
The Banshee makes a critical mistake and slips on the pavement, falling over on its right arm. Freyland takes advantage of this, blasting the PPC off the assault mech with the Quickdraw's lasers. The amusing thing about the standard model Banshee is that the PPC is about 2/3 of its firepower, so now it's just reduced to an autocannon and a dinky little small laser. Next to it, the Rifleman falls over as our Guillotine works it over with lasers and a boot.
Siljanus continues focusing on one of the damaged Crusaders - a large laser blast from the Stalker cracks open the gyro housing, causing the enemy mech to wobble. This leaves it wide open for an AC/10 shot from Wolf, which goes through the structure and hits the engine. Upon hitting the ground, the 65 ton mech shuts down completely.
Archinerd targets the second Crusader in the area, jumping in right behind it and opening up with lasers and SRMs at the heavy mech's rear armor - a laser torches an LRM ammo bin, and this one was completely full, annihilating the hostile mech.
Faced with these catastrophic losses, someone in the opposing force broadcasts their surrender over the open frequency. We make the standard arrangement - anything that can walk off under its own power is free to do so, we keep everything else. A single Locust did manage to break through, but the defensive turrets at the facility we're guarding here drive it off.
The remaining mechs (and tanks, uncomfortably) load up into the Union and blast off.
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We hold a brief funeral service for Pvt. Leon "Stefan Mk II" Eng. He'd only been with the company for two years. Over that time, he participated in 9 missions and racked up 8 kills, including two light mechs. Having joined our company on Basalt during our cadre duty contract there, he got to travel halfway across the Inner Sphere, shooting at all kinds of opponents with that Catapult.
Stefan, feel free to pick a replacement mech (subject to player override, mechwarrior will be the same regardless):
[] Hunchback HBK-4H (AC/10, 4x medium lasers, no jump jets)
[] Stefan Mk II's Catapult (2x LRM/15, 4x medium laser, jump jets)
We strip the double heat sinks from the Chippewa. We're also going to keep the XL engine and the small pulse lasers.
In addition to a bunch of the usual mech and tank wrecks (including a Crusader with severe damage to both engine and gyro), we recover the gauss rifle tank. A detailed search through our database indicate that it's called a "Demon". Originally a Star League design, this wheeled heavy tank fell out of use once the tech to make gauss rifles and cellular ammo storage bins became impractical. But, we're in the future now and both gauss rifles and CASE are back. Nothing complicated about this tank - one big gun with a couple of smaller weapons on the sides and front. The CASE prevents the on-board SRM ammo from blowing up.
Unfortunately, our Zephyr hovertank was rendered inoperable by stray weapons fire. It... wasn't very good anyway, but it did have some good toys on it. We'll strip off all the good stuff (NARC, TAG, ECM, armor) then sell the wreckage off for scrap.
We get one of our dropship crews to come out and take a look at the Triumph we captured last mission. It's a giant god-damned mess. Some of those gauss slugs El Guapo put through the front really ricocheted around in there and made a mess of the interior. And then there's the external damage from PPCs and such. The chief engineer informs us that it'll probably take about eight months and about 5-6M C-Bills to fix all the damage.
The thing about the Triumph is that, while it's better than the Seeker in terms of transport capacity and firepower, it's an aerodyne dropship, meaning it needs long, flat, relatively hard terrain to land. Unlike a spheroid, which can pretty much land anywhere it pleases as long as it's not too tilted. Also, aerodyne dropships have notorious 'blind spots' on their aft-port and aft-starboard sides, letting hostile fighters (and mechs, when on the ground) get in there and fire with impunity.
Selling it will be tough, as there's a strong suspicion that Larry didn't really offer us "fair market value".
[] Repair it and replace the Seeker (we don't need two tank/infantry transports at this time)
[] Repair it and sell it to someone who's going to pay more then a couple of million C-Bills
[] Sell it as is for a small percentage of actual worth, not worth the hassle