Vote Results:
Delta-Intercept's flight leader briefly considers engaging the incoming Triumph, but opts against it, tailing it at maximum sensor range instead. While we're able to locate the approximate landing area, our fighters are forced away by the blaring of multiple target lock alarms from long-range air defense systems.
The good news is that damage from our earlier engagement will prevent the dropship from leaving the system, unless the crew get the docking collar repaired. Which means they'll either attempt to jury-rig something if the damage isn't too bad or they'll need to raid a spaceport for space parts. We'll consider keeping a force close to the nearest one to respond to any such raids.
The other good news is that the Gotha managed to survive an internal ammo explosion, mostly because the aero jock had basically emptied his ammo bins.
Meanwhile, while our aerospace units are in the shop or returning home, we dispatch ground forces to narrow down the Triumph's location. As per the terms of our contract, we'll also need to retake the various facilities that have been seized from the locals.
October 13, 3049
Linser Valley
One of Beta-Hunter's sweeps around the dropship encounters encounters a force of medium tanks, plus two mech lances - a light and a medium. Two Wolverines and a Griffin will be a threat. There's also a laser centurion and a Scorpion quad mech. Obviously not all of those came from the Triumph.
Beta-Hunter is Leraje/Guillotine, Xwraith/Catapult, Wolf/Warhammer, backed up by an Archer, our Zephyr hovertank and a Hornet from the planetary militia. The Hornet is technically a "bug mech" - 20 tons. Not very Lyran or useful generally, but beggars can't be choosers. Our Zephyr is jamming comms with its ECM, but the bad guys will eventually break through the jamming to report on us. We'll see if we can take some of them out first.
It's a perfectly clear day, although a little hot (39 degrees C)
Round 1:
Our mechs sprint forward to engage the hostiles as rapidly as possible. Leraje and Wolf are both experts at navigating hilly terrain, so their mechs take the front.
Round 2:
This group is our main concern. Leraje takes a couple of LRMs to the right leg from the Griffin, but armor holds. Our Archer sends many more LRMs back, blasting armor off the 6K Wolverine's left leg (the 6K is the Kurita variant without jump jets).
Other long-range fire goes wide.
Round 3:
Ah, classic hovercraft. Our Zephyr zips in, avoiding a few lasers, then attaches a NARC beacon to the Wolverine's left leg, while plastering it with laser fire. It takes a laser from the Jenner, letting a little bit of air out of the hoverskirt, then, as it swerves around, the Wolverine blasts it with a large laser, and that's that for our hovertank, it's out of action.
The Wolverine rocks a little as Leraje and our Archer focus it down with LRMs and long range laser fire, but stays upright.
Wolf scores two PPC hits on a Goblin tank trundling up, but fails to breach armor, and the tank moves to hide behind a hill.
Round 4:
Leraje moves up, hoping the Guillotine will be a more urgent target than a disabled hovertank, which proves to be a good move, as the Zephyr is able to sit there, ignored, while mechs trade large laser fire.
Wolf moves the Warhammer southeast, holding a PPC to conserve heat, instead letting rip with short range weapons at a pair of hovertanks. The Condor escapes the storm, the Falcon does not, being caught by pretty much every shot fired and breaking up. The counterfire dings the Warhammer's head and armor, but the mechwarrior straightens the mech up and keeps it moving.
Round 5:
Wolf gets the Warhammer nestled into a nice comfortable spot, taking some damage which throws our mechwarriors aim off a bit as tanks, hovercraft
Leraje continues going after the Wolverine, which attempts to pull back behind a Griffin. The Wolverine takes a substantial amount of damage to its center of mass from a combination of Leraje's lasers and fire support from our Archer, which dings the gyro and drops the mech to the ground. The Griffin eats a kick from Leraje as well, losing armor on its left arm.
Round 6:
[data feed lost]
Some unannounced units - three mechs and a tank - show up to the east and immediately start laying into the hostiles attacking us. Except for a Vedette which takes a pot shot at Wolf.
Wolf ducks the Warhammer down for a second to give the poor mech a break from being pounded by every hostile on the field. Going prone is a little risky, but does save on a lot of incoming damage. Our mechwarrior still blasts the right arm off a hostile Wasp, taking the laser out with a PPC. Combined with fire from the new arrivals, the Wasp goes down, having lost most of its right side. At which point, the nearby Griffin stomps on it, detonating its SRM/2 ammo and annihilating it entirely.
Leraje's Wolverine target manages to stagger up, but our mechwarrior whacks it lightly on the Guillotine's arc through the air towards the Griffin trying to pull back, and the 55-tonner winds up on the ground again. Gyro damage is a little rough sometimes. Leraje is distracted dodging missiles and PPC fire from the Griffin but does land a kick on it, stripping left leg armor off.
Round 7:
Wolf backs up to the north, still taking a good amount of fire. Armor continues holding for now, and our mechwarrior disables a Condor hovertank that's been zipping around. Our Warhammer takes a PPC hit to the left arm disabling its PPC.
To the west, Leraje finishes off the Wolverine with a shot at the weakened center torso, removing the mech from circulation permanently.
Xwraith engages a Firestarter, but has little luck.
Round 8:
Xwraith's Catapult is taken out by heavy weapons fire from a distant Centurion specifically, but everyone pitches in. Well, the mech is still intact, but the left leg is gone, so it's basically done in at this point. He does inflict some serious damage on the nearby Jenner though, blowing out one of its lasers and causing multiple armor breaches, which inspires the light mech to fire its jump jets and disengage.
Wolf barely manages to fend off the Firestarter's attacks while pulling back. Retrieving Xwraith is going to be pretty tough, but we'll see if the Lyran Hunter can make the attempt while Wolf pulls back due to damage adding up.
Leraje is unable to finish off the Griffin to the west with weapons fire, but does manage to take out the treads on a Vedette with a kick.
Round 9:
Xwraith takes a quick look at the tanks and mechs converging on his Catapult (and gets a brief image of drooling wolves) and opts to punch out. For once, the ejection seat doesn't shoot the mechwarrior into a hill or a building, so Wolf runs over to pick him up. The Warhammer's surprising movement causes most of the fire coming its way to miss, which is just as well.
To the west, Leraje works on the Griffin, getting in behind the lighter mech and working it over with lasers and delivering a solid kick, which snaps an actuator on the left leg. The 55-tonner keels over, breaking its right arm in half in the process, so now it just has an LRM rack.
Round 10:
[data feed lost]
"Hunter-Two, what's your status?"
"I've got four, and am pulling back."
"Understood, I'm en route. Hunter-Three, continue long-range fire." Leraje states, leaving the Griffin to try to struggle to get up as it tries to move off the field. Our mechwarrior's last glance notes that the mech's other arm has snapped off as well.
On the way out, Wolf snaps the Warhammer's remaining PPC to the right and zaps a pursuing Goblin tank, nailing the vehicles fuel storage after melting through the armor and evaporating it.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the Zephyr attracts attention once more and is destroyed by a combination laser and LRM salvo from the hostile Centurion. Our Archer manages to jam the main gun on a Vedette.
The additional unidentified force continues exchanging fire with the initial hostiles as we pull back, picking the Zephyr's crew up along the way, with what looks like more blips forces coming in - we don't really stick around to find out what happens afterwards. Losing the Zephyr kind of stings.
Delta-Recon also encounters a hostile force, which disengages after a brief firefight in which our Spider loses an arm while an enemy Griffin gets completely blasted to bits. When the fight is over, we notice that the mechwarrior driving our Assassin has ejected and is nowhere to be found.
Other than the lost Catapult and Zephyr, the rest of Beta-Hunter lance is repairable given a little effort.
---
Scrub calls the command staff in for a conference with the liaison. The only good news is that said liaison informs us that he has hired additional help, in the form of the 12th Star Guards, a mercenary outfit we've worked with before. To mixed degrees of success. There may or may not have been a friendly fire incident caused by an IFF misconfiguration. We did apologize several times.
"You mean, they're already en route?" Scrub asks.
"No, no." The liaison responds, twirling his finger in boredom. "They're already here, they have engaged several pirate forces and routed them."
Scrub sighs and rubs her temples. "I'm going to send you the battle ROM of our last engagement, and a list of units our mechs observed engaging both the contingent from the Triumph, and our mechs. Do you think you can tell me if those were from the Star Guards?"
"Whoops." The liaison states sheepishly after reviewing the footage. "I'll uh, have them update their IFF database and send over their signatures as well."
"Well. At least we didn't shoot at them this time, they shot at us." Scrub responds with a sigh. The meeting then moves on to other matters, of which we've got basically four.
First, we need to track down that Triumph. Second, one of our mechwarriors appears to have run off, so we need to figure out what info he took and where he went. Third, the guys from the Triumph are obviously getting help from forces that were already on the planet, we need to identify where they're coming from and deal with them. Fourth, we still have a list of facilities we need to defend (including a local spaceport).
All of a sudden, we've gone from being on vacation to having a full plate. What's our main priority? We'll obviously work on the others as well, but we have a limited amount of resources to throw at these problems.
[] Continue trying to localize and destroy the Triumph
[] Track down deserting mechwarrior
[] Identify and localize forces supporting the Triumph
[] Maintain defensive stance around our contract-required facilities and dropships (i.e. turtle up)
