And so we do. While our Jumbo's crew diligently works to put their ship back together; with the spare parts, a week later, most of the hull breaches are sealed. Replacing the avionics system is the biggest job, that got fried something fierce. The dropship's chief engineer goes into some extreme detail, but nobody really understands it except for other dropship engineers, who all nod sagely. Long story short, they have to take the entire system out and re-install it.
We "find" the missiles on board our dropship and hand them over, which accounts for a portion of what the FedCom people are looking for. Eventually, our search pattern turns up sensor signatures from the rest.
November 12, 2059
After allied aerial recon locates them, Gamma-Battle and Gamma-Striker lance move in to surround a bunch of cargo vehicles and mechs hiding in a jagged debris field, borrowing Lich to replace the Rifleman with the damaged arm. On the surface, the hostiles have no chance: it's a heavy and a light-medium mech lance, guarding a bunch of civilian-grade units, against two of our heavy lances.
Round 1:
Round 2:
"Pretty low." Bass replies. "But hey, at least they're not going anywhere fast, either."
Round 3:
Round 4:
"Man, I love these LRMs." Lich comments, dragging the reverse-jointed mech's foot across the Hunchback's left leg, the motion causing one of the heat sinks to rupture and spray green coolant fluid everywhere.
"Yeah, we know." comes the reply from our Catapult's operator.
Round 5:
"Think we're supposed to try to capture them intact?" Lich asks, questioningly.
"Yes, like this." Wolf comments, surgically removing the leg from a SecurityMech to the north with one of the Hellbringer's PPCs - the mech emits multiple creaks, groans and clouds of debris as it hits the ground.
Our Grasshopper takes a good laser hit from the surprisingly durable and well-armed Loadermech, frying a heat sink and a laser. The mechwarrior brushes it off and joins our Catapult in returning fire, forcing multiple armor breaches and watching a gout of flame emerge from the Loadermech's engine. It stumbles, allowing our Grasshopper to crack its right leg in half with a kick. The engine lets out one last puff of red smoke then stalls.
Bass, meanwhile, engages and exchanges fire with an overweight Wasp to the east to little effect other than armor damage.
Round 6:
To the north, Wolf opts not to engage a Warhammer, a Crusader and a couple of light mechs all alone - the Hellbring is good, but not that good. Instead, our mechwarrior hops east, using the 65-ton mech's lasers to cut through an ultra-light mech's center torso, melting its engine to slack.
Bass engages an Ostsol, multiple laser blasts from the Stormcrow removing enough armor that the mech becomes unbalanced and falls over.
"Hey, anybody want to get this stupid Wasp off of me? It's getting annoying." our mechwarrior calls out after yet another laser blast removes a little more armor from his mech.
"On the way." Lich responds, cracking a Stinger's leg with a kick. Upon impact with the ground, the mech's right arm comes off as well, its right torso section crushed.
Round 7:
To the north, Wolf engages a Crusader, the 65-tonner avoiding most of the Hellbringer's weapons fire, but being tripped up by a kick to the ankle joint.
Round 8:
Wolf and Lich engage the Crusader and a Phoenix Hawk, supported by a couple of lighter units. Wolf's weapons fire knocks the Phoenix Hawk's right arm out, dropping the hostile mech to the ground, while Lich switches it up to fire at the Crusader, knocking one of its LRM launchers with a laser blast - Inner Sphere LRMs are nearly useless in this environment, but a weapon knocked out is a weapon knocked out.
Round 9:
Lich and Wolf switch targets, Wolf going back to the Crusader to fry its right arm with a PPC blast while Lich penetrates the Phoenix Hawk's left torso section with a laser, blowing the machine gun ammo sky high. The Crusader simply drops to a knee, which allows Wolf to bring the Hellbringer's leg down on its right leg, crushing the part sticking out.
Round 10:
Stefan fries an APC trying to make its way out of the ongoing massacre, while our Catapult zaps a smaller loadermech, damaging leg actuators and frying its arm, while Lich takes the engine out from a construction mech.
Wolf knocks another random industrial mech over - the ID on the heads-up display reads as "Marco" and so our mechwarrior has to fight very hard to avoid calling out "Polo" over the general frequency as it drops to the ground and its left arm comes off.
Round 11:
Our Grasshopper disables the last of the APCs, while Bass and Xwraith work on the last of the loadermechs, removing an arm.
Round 12:
"Got the missiles." Leraje reports, panting as the Warhawk cools down - pretty rapidly, but it got really hot in there after firing all four PPCs.
"Not all of them. We're still missing a pretty big stack." Captain Okamoto radios back.
Turns out, in practice, they also had no chance - we barely took any damage. Salvage is good - with parts from that Crusader, we're able to get the rest of our off-lined 65-ton mechs back into working order, and we even score a spare medium pulse laser.
---
Over the next month, our Jumbo's techs pull the avionics system out and give it a complete overhaul. Meanwhile, we continue sending mech patrols out to coordinates indicated by our employer. For some reason, nobody interferes with us any more. Perhaps we blew them all up.
The Jumbo repairs are still a couple of weeks from finishing when our employer calls us up.
"Recon reports that dropships carrying the rest of the Barracudas are getting ready to burn for the jump point. We don't have the right vector for it, but you guys do. Get your aerospace fighters and whatever dropships you can up there and stop them." she says.
Zenn7 scrunches up his face. "You don't have *anything* you can send to help?"
Okamoto thinks for a second. "Sure, we've got a pair of Cheetahs that can probably make it in time."
Zenn7 sighs. "That's like telling a mech jock you're sending him a couple of bug mechs for backup."
She shrugs. "Yeah, well. If you've got something to change the rate at which time advances or the rate at which the planet rotates, I'm all ears."
A Condor and a Union are making a break for it, escorted by three light, two medium and a heavy fighter. Both are transports rather than combat dropships. We want to leave some firepower on the ground, but we can't take the dropships and fighter escorts with just fighters.
[] Launch the Thunderball (Overlord-class dropship)
[] Launch the Moonraker and Sparrow (both Union-class dropships)