Whether or not it's super soldier serum really depends on if you've got a couple of necromancers on retainer.
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Scrub's comments in a meeting held deep within the bowels of the Moonraker re: nerve gas are that we'll need to figure out a way to talk to the Davions without the Capellans listening in. Currently, they're not really listening to us (she tried). Unless you're talking about using RADAR to monitor our force movements whenever possible. Her joke suggestion is that we get one of our mechs to zap out a message in morse code using PPC shots. We do have a bunch of their people prisoners, so we could probably see if we can get our info across under the pretense of a prisoner exchange.
The main thing that we need to avoid is having any more of these suitcases set off in populated areas. There's at least one missing, and we've got several sets of coordinates for where these things were supposed to go.
That being said, we're still under contract and, at least as of last month, the correct portion of the contract payment was released to our accounts. So, we deploy the Union with Beta-One, Gamma-One and Alpha-Two. Because we don't entirely trust our employer, Alpha-One and
The liaison and her attached lance remain around the dropship, while Gamma-One moves to the rendezvous point with the convoy. It's a small deal, three vehicles and a Dervish. Scrub look at the convoy with a raised eyebrow - there are three "Fox's Breath" crates on each of the vehicles. The escorting MAC guys acknowledge the command transfer and return.
"Why don't we just slag them and say they got blown up?" Hyena asks over tightbeam laser comms.
Scrub gets a smirk. "I've got a better idea. I don't think that liaison has figured it out that we know what this stuff is, yet. Better keep stringing her along and load it up on our dropship. We can always shove it out the airlock and blow it up later."
The escort doesn't go as smoothly as we think. Outside what's apparently a logging town, we're intercepted by a company of light militia units, backed up by a lance of heavies and a couple of mechs. Gamma-One is as usual - Scrub/Warhammer, Hyena/Striker, Cylus/Grasshopper. Xwraith's Thunderbolt is still in the shop, so we have two Grasshoppers instead of one.
"Convoy, hold position to the north of town while we take care of these guys.", Scrub instructs the convoy.
"Affirmative." comes the response.
Round 1:
Gamma-One advances to the south, aiming to close with the southwestern elements of the intercepting force as soon as possible, the idea being to split them up from the guys to the southeast and defeat them individually, rather than getting dogpiled on by both.
Round 2:
Some of what we'll be facing.
Round 3:
"Visual contact with light enemy mech. Locust." reports Cylus. Xwraith fires some symbolic LRMs at it, but the bug mech is moving way too fast, pumping its relatively huge legs for all they're worth.
Round 4:
The Locust continues to slink around, no doubt reporting on our mechs' positions. Xwraith fires another salvo of LRMs, hitting trees. "Geez, this LRM launcher sucks, too few missiles per salvo."
Round 5:
Here they come - although, with the woods in the way, it's hard to get a target lock. The Locust gets around the back of Scrub's mech, pinging her with a couple of laser shots (this is the 1E variant, which has two medium lasers and two small lasers) and landing a kick on the back of her leg. However, this leaves it wide open for attack by Xwraith, who unleashes the Grasshopper's laser arsenal on the light mech. Two medium lasers hit, drilling through the "shoulder" joints where the lasers are mounted.
Round 6:
The Locust appears to be done for the day - its weapon mounts throw out sparks instead of firing as it continues circling around Scrub's Warhammer, then a missed kick causes it to fall over. Xwraith's quick glance at the damage indicators shows that it's completely unarmed at this point. That also serves the purpose of alerting our mechwarrior to a Stinger jumping through town to get at our convoy.
Hyena, meanwhile, eats almost a full 40-pack of LRMs from an Archer as it comes out from behind a cluster of trees, throwing off his aim and blasting off a bunch of armor. The accompanying Manticore tank adds a few more LRMs to the mix, along with a PPC shot to the right arm, stripping armor and damaging an actuator.
Scrub, meanwhile, blasts a stray Vedette with PPCs and a laser, the damage going internal and inspiring the crew to drive the tank away as fast as possible.
Round 7:
The Archer steps back to cool off, while the Manticore isn't quite as quick on the ball. This baits Hyena into unleashing a full alpha strike, even though his mech's cockpit turns into a sauna as a result. The tank takes some serious tread damage, but remains mobile and inflicts another PPC hit on the Striker, while sending some LRMs at the damaged right arm.
The Stinger to the east refuses to die, dodging a PPC shot and some laser fire, then opening up on one of the transports carrying the Fox's Breath, causing Xwraith to cringe.
Round 8:
Scrub curses as she follows a disobedient convoy vehicle and sees an SRM Carrier pull into LOS. She takes a faceful of SRMs - less than half of the sixty missiles hit, but twenty eight is still a lot of SRMs. She manages to hold her mech steady long enough to give it a taste of its own medicine. The vehicle's lesser armor proves unequal to the challenge, and it detonates as the fuel tank explodes.
Cylus and Hyena exchange unfavorable with the Manticore, with Hyena's damaged arm being completely disabled. At least this time, most of the Archer's missiles hit the water instead of our mech.
To the east, Xwraith really works that Stinger over with lasers, ruining the left leg, then basically melting the right torso to slag. The bug mech collapses, and its heat readings spike as it hits the ground. The mechwarrior inside wastes no time in shutting down.
Round 9:
Scrub continues chasing after the "Killjoy", and manages to blow away another SRM Carrier while dodging a Von Luckner's AC/20 burst (although she takes an SRM hit and loses a heat sink). The SRM Carrier, however, fires at the "Killjoy", completely evaporating it and its nerve gas cargo.
Hyena continues engaging the Manticore, this time hitting with everything while the Manticore misses. Cylus gets in behind the Archer and gives it a good dose of lasers and a boot, stripping off a lot of armor. This is pretty suboptimal range for the Archer, so that's pretty good. The Manticore is still giving us a lot of trouble though.
Round 10:
Hyena's just not having a good day - a Scorpion tank and the Archer breach his right leg armor, then the Manticore zaps him with the PPC and an SRM salvo - the upper leg actuator blows out, and the Striker falls over backwards. At least Cylus uses the distraction to crack open the Manticore's armor and engine compartment. Scrub engages the Von Luckner from an advantageous position: directly over it, repeatedly stomping at the tank's thick armor from point blank range where it can't bring its AC/20 turret to bear.
Round 11:
Cylus jumps in behind the Archer, outmanuevering it completely, and directs lasers at its legs and rear torso, cutting off the last of the armor there, then cracking the back of its right leg. Several actuators burst, and the Archer keels over.
Now that the Manticore has stopped firing, Hyena gets revenge on the stupid little Scorpion tank, blowing it away with an AC/10 burst. Scrub, meanwhile, keeps working on that Von Luckner, snapping off bits of tread.
Round 12:
The Archer struggles to get up, and Hyena uses the opportunity to feed it a PPC through the armor breach, cracking the engine shielding.
Scrub has to avoid an AC/20 round, but manages to disable the Von Luckner with short range weapons fire, taking only a few SRMs in exchange. The reduction in AC/20 fire is a major relief.
Round 13:
The guy in the Archer bails out as Hyena limps over, the ejection pod landing in water. "Hey, come over here for a second!" Hyena calls out over the loudspeaker.
Cylus jumps over to attack the Behemoth as it moves belatedly to support its Von Luckner buddy, scoring several hits which rattle the crew. The Grasshopper deftly avoids the dual streams of AC/10 tracers as they tear up trees.
Scrub moves to engage a Condor, scoring a PPC hit, while Xwraith opens fire on a J. Edgar that's attacking the convoy Dervish, which insists on "helping" us "clear the route".
Round 14:
The Condor runs away from Scrub and joins two other hovercraft in harassing Xwraith. The hovercraft and our mech exchange fire, with some armor damage.
Cylus takes advantage of the Behemoth crew's disorientation to walk up and unload at point blank range, but it's a tough tank and its armor remains intact. Well, until a boot strips it off the left side, anyway, immobilizing the tank while it's there.
Round 15:
Cylus jumps away, moving to support Scrub and Xwraith. Scrub scores a solid PPC hit on a J. Edgar, melting most of the armor off its left side, while Xwraith pings the Pegasus with lasers, avoiding most of its SRMs, then gives it a solid kick. The driver grips the throttle and runs for it.
Hyena forgets that his right leg armor is breached and steps in the water to pick up the downed Davion mechwarrior. The leg immediately seizes up, sending our mech into the drink.
Also, what's that crashed helicopter doing there?
Round 16:
The guy in the Pegasus is a little too enthusiastic and crashes into a building. The J. Edgar finds itself facing both Scrub and Cylus - it puts a couple of SRMs into Scrub, but Cylus' lasers breach its armor and get at the crew a little bit. Just enough to give them third-degree burns and convince them to zip away.
Xwraith scores a couple of LRM hits on the Condor's front viewport, injuring the driver with blowback. "Ugh, with my Delta Dart, that would have gone right through. Pretty solid heat sinks on this thing, though."
With nothing remaining in the way, other than a pair of running hovercraft, the convoy is able to continue its advance, minus one crate of nerve gas. Technically there are still two lances of enemy tanks to the east of our mechs, but they opt not to engage.
The guy Hyena was trying to scoop up swims away, pointing and laughing. "Yeah, well, at least I still have a mech, asshole." Hyena grumbles.
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The convoy arrives at our dropship. "Get this stuff loaded up. Full environmental seal on the cargo bay. And jam all comms going in and out." Scrub directs the dropship crew. Despite the "secure" communications, the liaison cuts in.
"Why the precautions? And where's the third crate?" asks the liaison, her smile a model of plastic insincerety on the video display.
Scrub makes the Warhammer approximate a shrugging motion and returns her own fake smile. "Well, you're not telling us what's in those boxes. Might be candy, might be neutron bombs. Can't be too careful these days. As for the third crate, it drove by an SRM Carrier."
"I see." says the liaison, her jaw moving around as she grinds her teeth. "Look, I need to be able to remotely monitor the contents of those crates. I can't do that if you're jamming comms. Drop the jamming, or you're in breach of contract."
"Drop it why? So you can gas us?"
The liaison scowls. "Not if you do what you're paid to do."
That's when the Davion forces attack. Quite a nasty assembly of units - an assault lance, two heavy lances and a medium lance, all mechs. Plus a small amount of vehicles, with more tanks coming in behind the initial group. Our defense is pretty solid: Beta-One and Alpha-Two, plus the somewhat beat-up Gamma-One. And the Capellans have temporarily put aside their beef to help us repel the incoming forces. They're not going to be *too* much help, but a Manticore, a Bulldog and a pair of SRM Carriers are nothing to sneeze at. Scrub narrows her eyes as the enemy forces approach and finds herself hoping that they'll blow the liaison to bits. Shouldn't be too hard for them, she's driving a Wasp this time.
At the same time, our remaining dropships observe the remaining MAC dropships lifting off. "We'd better get some backup to the Moonraker." remarks Gbasden, supervising from the other Union's bridge. "And it's time to start packing it in."
Who do we send? (pick one or two)
Delta-One
Alpha-One (with a Crusader substituting for Gbasden's Awesome)
Alpha-Air (with lots of bombs)
Artillery battery
Delta-One and Alpha-Air will arrive more quickly, but are less useful in a meatgrinder.
Alpha-One will arrive a little bit slower, but packs a pretty mean long-range punch.
The artillery will arrive the slowest, but can make a serious dent in densely-packed enemy units, especially with the Long Tom.