Chapter 3
Peripheral Vision
???
15th April, 3022
More than a month had passed in our trip out to the Periphery, the Invader class Jumpship taking us well beyond the regularly charted systems to a place that surely only had names in older maps. Something that should have made me feel safe, and yet it had nothing of that sort of calming effect as I looked out the bridge windows of our Leopard down at the world below. To our port side the Mule class dropship 'Trade Factor' was beginning it's descent, the Captain William Lett was a good man that i'd won a few hands of poker with in the long trip to this ass-end of space. On our starboard side, another Mule the 'Grim Fandango' was waiting for it's own window.
I felt the drives rumble as our Leopard began its descent and reflected on the mission, the Federated Suns Liason was a woman named Kim Smithson and she was cold as ice, but other than her, and her small entourage of bodyguards, the people of the expedition were friendly, open and enjoyed talking about themselves and the job ahead. None of them were actually expecting any trouble, but policy was with such an important find to pay well for a security detachment. Using FedSun units would attract unwanted attention, and paying the Mercs too low would invite theft of the find.
All told it was almost a reasonable justification, if one had never met Ms Smithson. It was her that caused me to check the small armoury in the cockpit of my Knight and take to wearing the Bolt Pistol I found there whenever I was not on the Leopard, and if she was visiting it even then.
The world below however was far from inviting, according to the ships analysis minus thirty celsius was to be celebrated as a warm day. While my colleagues celebrated a world that would make heat more manageable, even joking about possibly having a more temperate atmosphere in their mechs instead of blistering hot summer day under a sweltering sun, I had no idea how the Knight would take the cold.
Instead I listened to the chatter.
"Site Beacon has been identified."
"Activating remote sensing suite."
"Port thrust is having a wobbly, get that pilot to even it out!"
"Dammit, half the units won't come online, I think the hydraulic units froze."
"Thermals are picking up nothing. The site is cold."
"Seismics are at background levels, nothing unusual."
"Phil, looks like it's a blizzard down there."
"It's always a blizzard down there Susan."
A stream of irrelevancies continued for several minutes of the descent before Ms Smithson's voice came over the line.
"Markhams Marauders. I want you to go in first. Several of the sensing units are non-functioning and i'd like to make sure that's an environmental concern, not a malicious action."
"You've got it Ms Smithson." Markham responded as he stood up. "Ok warriors, I know we only have four bays and we've crammed six mechs into them, hopefully we can touch down more like a majestic bird than a brick and avoid any damage, but I don't want to go into this blind. Everyone get to their Mechs."
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The descent in fact had not been like a majestic bird and was far more brick-like than expected, if not as bad as Markham's worst guess. The Locust fared the worst, being rattled around with the Shadow Hawk. Touching down, even before the doors began to crack the howling of the blizzard outside could be heard through the hull. With no further noticeable drama the Locust and Spider raced out into the snow.
Communications with them were flecked with distortion and white noise. The Vindicator marched out next followed by the Shadow Hawk and finally Markhams Marauder. Engaging with the Machine Spirit I hunched under the lip in front of me and scooched out having to manipulate the Icarus turret to fit. Finally out into the storm itself I looked around at a field of white before the Auspexes of the Knight came alive.
My vision changed as the datafeeds into my skull changed, the Knight swapping true vision for an artificial enhanced vision based on auspex returns. There were still sensor ghosts due to the frenzied blizzard, and I estimated my colleagues were probably using thermal vision to navigate.
"This is Marauder, I *crzz*ow that the situa*szzle* is imperfect. Home in o*fzkrek* the beacon." The comms were in a terrible state, made worse by my lack of understanding whether the entire unit was having these communciation difficulties, or whether it was the Vox system being unable to handle it in such a white noise environment.
Locating the strong beacon, I began to make my way towards it restraining my speed to that of Markham's Marauder, keeping close, just in case.
We marched into the four billion tonnes of white shit.
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The good news was, the Knight was not overly troubled by the cold conditions, and after three hours of marching through the blizzard this was a good thing. The bad was, Medusa and Dekker had found the beacon, and it had been sabotaged just enough to make a Union Dropship slip through its sensor coverage. The craft was unmarked, but Medusa said he'd already seen a pair of ASFs on patrol. Now that the rest of us had arrived, I was able to survey the situation myself.
The worse news was that the Blizzard was beginning to clear up and soon we wouldn't have the shelter of the storm to conceal us. Dekker, what mechs have you spotted?" Markham said over the unit comm net.
"They appear to have a full three lances sir. Three Urbanmechs, two Catapults, one Shadow Hawk, a Cataphract... and an Atlas, I don't know what the others are, only intermittent readings."
I felt every backbone in our company tense at the word Atlas. The situation was no good, a pair of Catapults meant they had fire support from range, the Urbanmechs were probably to tarpit an attacker ... but the Atlas, that was the killing stroke, if the Union's own guns didn't join the fray.
"This is Marauder to Trade Factor, it's not looking good here. We have a landed union with three lances of mechs and two ASFs." Markham squirted the data to the Mules which had landed near our Dropship until we verified the integrity of the site.
"This is Smithson, we're paying you for a job, generously with equally generous salvage rights. Are you saying you cannot do the job?" The irritated voice of the Liason came over the comms and I winced. Since she, and the Invader, were our ticket home, the implications of her question was dire.
"Three lances a pair of ASFs and a Dropship are a little over the odds,..." Markham said, pausing, "But we can do it." He shut down the link with the dropship. "Can we do it?" Markham asked, it took me a second to realise that he'd engaged a private link with me rather than just a squad-wide communique.
"In a frontal assault? No boss. Even with the power of my Knight, I cant charge into the guns of three lances and a dropships guns. We've got what, 2 LRM-15's on the Catapults each, 6 LRM-20 on the Union, another LRM-20 on the Atlas maybe, an LRM-5 on the Shadow Hawk... plus four unknowns and whatever the ASFs carry?" Just the thought of near 200 LRMs made my skin itch.
"Well, what do you recommend?" He asked plainly.
"Fall back. If Medusa and Dekker can find out what the other four mechs are that'd be great. But we need to draw them away from the fire coverage of the Union. The ASFs don't worry me too much, that's what my Icarus Array was installed for. But we need to be out of range of indirect fire support from the Union before we go baiting people."
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Stepping out onto an outcropping I watched the ASF's coming in on the patrol route they'd been following for the whole time we were observing. My Auspexes snapped online and homed in on the craft as I ran the threat recognition software through the machine spirit identifying them as TR-7 Thrushes. The Capellan 'frisbees' juked suddenly adjusting course as their systems detected the target locks.
The lead fighters medium lasers flared and the Ion shield redirected the energy into the glacier behind me, upon my back I felt the Icarus snap onto the fighter and the comforting sound of ammunition auto-cyclers began spewing autocannon rounds at the fighter. More laser fire sparked off the ion shield as the second fighter joined the first in its attack, not noticing until too late that it's colleague had been chewed up from prow to stern by the autocannon rounds.
In attempting to avoid the shifting lock of the Icarus it juked into the exact worst possible course for survival. The burst of fire from the Avenger Cannon was relatively short, only three seconds of fire, and in that time, precisely three hundred shells were spat into the blizzard with a sound like a world being ripped in half, behind me in the chasm I actually saw Medusa in his Locust flinch away from the sound so near to him. While the first of the Thrushes crashed into the ground the second simply ceased to exist.
"Incoming LRM fire!" Markham said and I turned towards the dropship, the crashing fighters had had long enough to secure enough targeting data to lock onto me.
I backpedalled rapidly as I raised the Ion Shield to hopefully provide adequate cover from the descending missiles as I stepped back into the chasm. Falling like rain the missiles, having lost guidance, began slamming around us, the occasional one detonating on contact with my ion shield. Raising the Rapid Fire Battle Cannon I fired three shells on an indirect trajectory for the Dropship.
"What now Warden? If they decide to hang around that Union..."
"They can't. I just dropped three battle cannon shells on their position. As far as they know we've got at least a small artillery battery out here and will just pound them from range." I began moving back towards our prepared position. Markham didn't respond instead simply crushing the remains of the frisbee under his feet as he backed off.
It took didn't take long for the scout elements to advance. The surprising part was not that they had Urbanmechs, but that the third mech bay must have been converted to carry armored vehicles. Three Bulldogs escorted a Demolisher that was taking the lead.
Markham didn't hesitate before opening up with an Alpha Strike on the lead Urbie, the snub nose of an AC/20 sticking out from one shoulder. Medusa and Dekker focussed on the Bulldogs as Glitch and Behemoth focussed fire on another Urbanmech. The ion shield came around as the Demolisher sighted me in and two salvoes from its 185mm ChemJets. Despite the ion shield the Knight rocked under the impacts from the heavy guns.
I could almost sense the crew of six scrambling as they watched the heavy shells hit. And by the time their next salvo was about to fire I moved. The shots went wild as my own guns came around, the Battle Cannon firing four shells in as many seconds, the blast from each rocking the Demolisher as it's armour was ablated away before the Avenger Gatling cannon spun into action, the third salvo of AC20 struck home, one shot being deflected, the other blasting a small crater in the right pauldron swinging the Avenger cannon wide, the burst of fire from it carving across a bulldog instead.
But the Demolishers luck ran out and the next two Battle Cannons hells punched deep into its internal structure, the blast of the shells spalled the ablative armour off of the rest of the vehicle out in all directions, scything blades of debris striking most objects in range. One of the Urbanmechs charged on my left side and I swung the ion shield just in time to prevent an AC/20 shot from punching in on that side as I turned to face him. The pilot spun the legs as the turret continued to face me in an attempt to make room.
But he had come too close in an attempt to punch through my armour with his unusually heavy weapon and three heavy steps confused his aim long enough to kick the machine in the head, balance lost the Urbie fell forwards, only the turret-like arrangement of its upper torso still facing me, a last deseperate shot from the AC20 sailed wide as I crushed its legs beneath one foot and discharged the carapace meltagun directly into the weapons barrel, the ammunition in storage cooking off as its ammo feeds were reduced to molten metal.
"Incoming!"
The warning howled across the comms as I turned, trying to face the threat only for the machine spirit to pick up over a hundred incoming missiles the Catapults, Atlas and Dropship attempting to break us with long ranged fire support. The salvo from the dropship itself detonated before reaching us, our chosen battleground out of range of the landed starship.
My hull rocked as over forty of the missiles found my own hull like a rain of explosives, another mech might have fallen under the stability shattering salvo, but the wider leg stance and mass kept me upright as damage readouts filled my cortex along with an all too real pain, facing the Urbie my shield had been in the wrong place and failed to intercept any of the salvo, though each missile was weak, and my armour almost proof against it, the size of the salvo found natural weak points in armour and joins, the blasts failed to compromise anything, but the damage was there and had the potential to become much worse.
The sight of the enemies other mechs coming up lead to Dekker and Medusa backpedalling furiously as the Atlas blasted at Medusa's locust, sending one leg spinning off as it collapsed.
"Pirates. I am Theodore Lee of the Capellan Confederation. You will surrender. Or you will die." The voice came through the comms and I practically laughed as I stepped out in front of the Atlas.
"Teddy. I am the Knight Warden. If you have any more honour than a rapid dog step forwards and face me if you think you can." I broadcast as the Knights warhorns blared, the deafening cacophony of rage physically causing a micro-squall in the snow as the sonic assault continued for several moments.
"You pirate scum. You don't deserve such an honour as to die at my hands." The snarl of anger at the challenge clear and free.
"Perhaps once I beat your mech like you beat your wife i'll allow you to return to Romano Liao and report your incompetence so she can punish you properly!" I was having too much fun with this. And almost realised it a moment too late as the Atlas began a shuffling charge towards me, all weapons blazing as the Capellan pilot fought to bring me down quickly. It was also time to realise that the ion shields capacity to protect was not an infinite resevoir, and the volume of fire put out by the Atlas was enough to quickly overload it, the alarums blaring as it raced quickly to failure point.
But my head was now back in the game and my own arsenal began to discharge, and the surprise was perfectly evident in the way the Atlas moved, ponderous and slow the pilot forced to seek out his balance as the Avenger's screaming gun stitched lines of agony across the torso of the Assault as I pounded shell after shell from the Battle Cannon into the ground near his feet.
The combination of assault was as unexpected by the Assault Pilot as it was effective, the blasts around its feet destabilising the ground it was charging on as the heavy shells from the Avenger carved into its torso, the recoil pushing it back. The AC20 fired with his missiles and I felt a stabbing agony as my right arm was disabled, the heavy shell gutting the ammo feeds for the avenger and the missiles threatening to tear the limb from the Knight as the ion shield completely failed.
The Warhorns blared again, a symphony of anger and hate mirroring my own pain filled scream, the machine spirit rising up into full furor as adrenaline pumped through my body like a surging tide of incandescent rage. The Atlas actually stopped for a second, paused as if realising its folly, the rapid fire battle cannon lifting from the intelligent action of trying to destabilising the mech to angry intent to decapitate.
In three seconds three shells punched into the Atlas, massive calibre explosives punching through it's right torso and detonating with enough force to throw the Atlas ten metres in one direction while its right arm went many more metres in the opposite. I closed like an angry god as Theodore struggled to get up, the right foot of my Knight caught the Atlas in the ribs and I felt the left torso cave in under the enormous force exerted by a hundred and forty tonnes of rage. SRMs boiled out of the Atlas' belly and stitched a line of little potholes against the head of the Knight.
The sudden pressure of a foot against it's chest and launcher ceased the struggle as the creaking sound of metal bending under stress reached the pilot.
"This is the Warden. Surrender, order your lancemates to stand down, or die and let your dropship die with you." Elevating the Battle cannon I plotted the position of the Dropship and began firing a slow barrage of shells towards the Union.
Ten shells were away before the hatch on the Atlas popped off and a man climbed out in inadequate clothing for the weather, he would freeze in short order if he were not secured somewhere warmer. The neurohelmet on his head was clearly still connected to the comms unit.
"We.. surrender..."