BY: Punisher
Lennark Donne snapped awake. There was a lot of commotion around him. People were
running down the halls and alert klaxons were blaring. Stan “The Man” Winnon,
Aerotech pilot extraordinaire, burst into the room and grabbed his flight gear. He threw
it on as fast as he could.
“Lennark! You better bust a nut man. It looks like the apocalypse out there!”
“Who’s attacking?” By now Lennark was strapping on his Mechwarrior suit, he
quickly stripped off the plastic plugs and made sure the interface leads where clear.
“God only knows! We’re hearing reports of Mechs three times bigger than an
Atlas!!”
“Man that’s bullshit and you know it,” he tied his ebon hair back into a
pony-tail and headed towards the mechbay, “listen, if this is gonna turn ugly
we’re getting out of here. Get airborne. Do a recon. If things look too bad, use our
special freqs and get the rest of the Angels to the dropship.”
“Boss, if we bug out we’ll lose our award fee.”
Lennark pondered that for a moment, “Look we signed up for garrison duty, not the
apocalypse, Besides,” he fell back to an old mercenary adage, “what good’s
a reward if you’re not alive to use it?”
“I’ll see you topside.” Stan moved the lift taking him to the airfield.
Lennark moved into the mechbay. Both bay doors were opened and deploying mechs as fast as
possible. “Get to your mech Merc! That’s what you’re paid for.”
Someone shouted.
“I won’t let you forget it either come payday asshole!” He despised them.
Once they were in battle they’d be the first to hang back and let the Mercs take the
brunt of the beating. He had once been one of them but then he’d been fortuitous
enough to salvage (some might say steal) a dropship. With the profit from that venture he
had managed to leave his unit and find some like-minded individuals. Together they had
formed the small mercenary company called “The Angry Angels”, suitable for
garrison, small patrol operations, and, to the less discriminating buyer, other, more
illicit, services. As he approached his mech, a WarHammer, a man who looked like he could
be a small mech himself, approached him.
It was his crew chief, Bolston, and he was probably the single best mech-tech in the Inner
Sphere—at least in Donne’s opinion. “She’s geared up and ready to rock
boss. Your L.T. SRMs were shot. I replaced ‘em with infernos…stole ‘em from
the Feds…but I don’t think they’ll notice right now.”
Lennark climbed into the cockpit. Bolston helped him hook in. “How’s the left
foot actuator. Still sticking?”
“Nope fixed that.” Bolston looked around as more mechs mobilized. “Can the
Dracs’ attack be this bad?”
“Might not be the dracs. Get our gear and the other techs. Move to the dropship. If
we need to jump out of here I don’t want anyone left behind.”
“You got it sir.” Bolston pushed the access ladder away and Lennark Donne closed
the cockpit and started his mech’s power-up sequence. The familiar computer voice
filled him in, “Planet: Twycross. Zero nine four zero local standard time. Ambient
temperature: two eight degrees Celsius. PPC’s Online. SRM’s Online. Lasers
Online. Comm Net established. Targeting computer online.”
The mech hummed to life as it powered up then lumbered forward as he eased the throttle
upward. He moved out of the doors and accessed the comm-net.
Chaos.
He switched to the Angry Angel’s private frequency, which had been scrambled through
an encryption key to provide secure communications.
“Angel One with a roll call. Go!”
“Angel Two here, no damage, no contacts, clean and green.”
“Angel Four here, medium damage, multiple contacts, retreating.”
“Angel Five, sky is clear. Will have visual on contacts momentarily”
“One copies. Four relay contact.”
Lennark could tell Angel Four was scared. His voice was still professional, but the man
was shaken.
“We have encountered heavy resistance. Three is down and extravehicular requesting
S&R immediately. I contacted the Feds but we don’t rank highly on their
list.”
“Five. See if you can pick up Three’s transponder and pick him up.”
“Five copies. Inbound.”
“What the rep on the enemy mechs?”
“Like nothing I’ve ever seen. If they’re Kurita…then we’re
working for the wrong team. My guess is they’re someone new. Two primary
configurations. A small light mech fifteen to twenty tons. Not much bigger than a Locust.
Packs a whallop. Saw one take out Three’s Rifleman. Second configuration is huge.
Three to Four Hundred Tons easily if not more. Same weapons as the lighter one but more
powerful variants. Great armor. It’s to strong for our blasters. LRMs and SRMs have a
limited effect. Thank god there aren’t many of the…Oh my God!!!”
Four’s voice completely cracked. Lennark instinctively checked his radar readout.
Nothing. He extended the range. He could see Two, about five klicks ahead of him, some Fed
mechs, nothing else. A cloud passed over the sun and cast a dark shadow. But something was
wrong. The shadow's lines were too regular. Lennark apprehensively looked up and saw the
triangular silhouette of a massive dropship against the backdrop of Twycross’ Sun.
His brain screamed that it had to be an optical illusion. But it hung there, and even from
the surface Lennark could tell that it was laying down a terrible planetary barrage on an
unseen target.
“This is Two. I have inbound air. I’ve never seen anything this fast.
They’re swarming. I’m engaging.”
“Two…One…inbound from your two three three.” Lennark throttled forward
bringing his mech to a run. His heat indicator moved up slightly to reflect his power
plant’s added effort. Underfoot he saw several tanks glide forward with infantry. The
computer interrupted him.
"Enemy power-up detected."
"Enemy mech detected two three five degrees. Enemy mech detected two three four
degrees. Enemy mech detected two three three degrees. Enemy mech detected …”
Lennark shut off the voice. It was useless if it was telling him what he already
knew…and it was impossible to ignore the sea of red blips on the threat indicator.
Then he finally saw one. One of the lighter ones, it chicken-walked up to several tanks
and let fly several powerful laser blast. The tanks were stopped cold. Lennark hit it with
some medium lasers. They did little more than char the armor. He readied his PPCs and
reconfigured his weapons so that both PPCs were on the same trigger. He targeted the
little mech directly above the cannons and fired. His hear indicator rose dangerously. The
PPCs tore through the armor like tin foil. His computer announced his victory, "Enemy
mech destroyed." Lennark smiled to himself. While the armor repelled lasers
well it did not like super dense particles accelerated to relativistic speeds one bit. A
burst of forty missiles streaked past his cockpit as a nearby archer slammed one of the
bigger mechs.
Lennark hadn’t even seen it. But now that he could, he just wanted to run. It
lumbered slowly towards them. The first LRM volley caused some damage but obviously none
of it was critical. The Archer fired again. The second volley ripped into the thing's leg
joint. It fell to the ground so slowly, Lennark thought it reminded him of some terrible
beast lying down to sleep. When it crashed to the ground Lennark felt the impact, even
through his Mech.
“Rescue Rescue Rescue! This is Angel Five. I am extravehicular! Three is dead. There
is armored enemy infantry on the ground. Our forces are holding their own but I don’t
know for how long. I need immediate evac.” Five kept broadcasting.
Lennark clenched his eyes shut. He didn’t want to ever have to make this decision,
but he knew he must or none of them would get out. He broadcast. “Angry Angels, this
is Angel One fall back to the dropship. This place is fucked. I say again, full on
retreat, get back anyway you can. Five…I’m sorry.”
“One…this is Five. I understand. Good luck.”
Lennark swung his mech around and blasted another of the little chicken mechs with his
PPCs. He looked around. At the rate this battle was going Twycross would fall in no time.
Lennark couldn’t have know that Twycross had already fallen. It was now simply a
problem of mathematics.
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