Introduction
Drake looks over the plans for the Awesome’s refit and deems them good. It’s Kepano Endo again who takes on the task. Between reconditioning all the damaged internals, coming up with a way to fit Clan technology in, and changing the engine heat sinks out, it’s going to take…
Five months. Well, when it’s ready, it’ll be a sight to behold.
The Action of April 10, 3052
There are rumblings amongst the Rasalhague garrison that something big is going to happen soon: a truce, an Inner Sphere counterattack, something.
That’s a long way off, though, and we have more immediate concerns. A Rasalhague officer appears in the Bastards’ command post—a little more makeshift and a little more tumbledown than in the past; moving world to world at this pace is hard—and lets us know that a full Star of Clan mechs has been spotted marching toward the city of Spanac. There’s a Rasalhague force moving to intercept, but they’ll need reinforcements. Second Lance and Bear’s Bruisers drew patrol duty today. Drake redirects them there. It’ll be a race against time.
Since it’s been a while since these two lances deployed, here are their dispositions. The Ryoken still has a damaged arm, but will have to get by. The Ultra AC/20 is its main punch anyway.
The Opinionated Bastards are arriving a little late to the party. We’ll deploy as we arrive. To get full credit for the mission, we’ll have to keep at least some of the extant Rasalhague forces alive.
Round 1
None of our forces arrive until before Round 4.
The Rasalhague forces deploy around the city in the middle of the map, while the Clanners appear all along the northern border. They advance, exchanging LRM and PPC fire to no effect.
Round 2
The Rasalhague forces remain entrenched in the city, while the Clanners close from all angles. The lightest Rasalhague mech, an Ostscout, takes heavy damage and loses a leg.
Round 3
The Clan mechs, rushing into combat and toward glory, slip on the pavement. A Fenris trips, sliding into an approaching Ryoken and nearly tripping. The Rasalhague mechs, whose pilots are largely green, fail to take advantage. The Clanners, however, remain focused on the ailing Ostscout.
Round 4
Severe is the first to arrive on the scene. (The minimap shot up under round 1 has her position highlighted.) Her sensors paint a confused picture. Firing continues in the city. Severe is going to move closer, but attempt to stay out of the way until reinforcements arrive. Teddy Bear‘s Vulcan arrives before Round 5, and Simona in the Ryoken appears before Round 6.
Round 5
The Rasalhague Ostscout finally falls. A full company of mechs now battles in the city, although two of the Rasalhague mechs are hanging back. Teddy Bear arrives, and he and Severe link up on the road south of the city.
The heaviest Rasalhague mech, a Thunderbolt, falls. Chatter on the Rasalhague radio net turns panicky; that must have been their commander.
Teddy Bear quickly switches his radio over to the right channel, and calls for the Rasalhague forces to retreat and regroup south of the city, falling back on the Bastards.
Round 6
The six remaining Rasalhague mechs are a little slow to respond, and a little out of position to boot. Happily, most of them have jump jets, and the command to turn and run seems to be a pretty welcome one. Milspec in the Crab, plus the ever-dependable Wizard and Hanzoku in their Guillotines, arrive soon. With the Rasalhague forces rallying to us, we may be able to turn this around on the Clanners.
The allied Lancelot appears to be trapped; unable to jump and deployed on the wrong side of the buildings, it’s facing down the enemy Ryoken and Man o’ War. We’ll see if we can extricate it.
We can’t support it with weapons fire yet. Its pilot aims, not for the Fenris shooting at it, but at the building underneath it.
Round 7
The gambit doesn’t work; the building survives. The Lancelot is likely to take a serious beating.
South of the city, the Bastards and the Rasalhague forces are consolidating. Soon they’ll be in position to make a push.
The allied Ostroc actually has a shot on one of the enemy Fenrises, and takes it gleefully. So does the Cicada. Severe joins in, firing the Bastards’ first shots in anger from a Clan mech.
Round 8
Double Dog hits the field. Only Rook remains to join the fray.
We don’t have a lot of LRMs, but we also don’t want to charge around the corner until we can bring more mechs to bear at once. The allied Cicada, perched atop a building but out of sight of most of the enemy mechs, will do some spotting, as will the Lancelot, which is probably doomed this turn.
Round 9
The allied Lancelot does indeed eat it, and the Cicada takes a hit from one of the Fenrises which knocks out one of its legs. Fully half of the allied mechs have been either destroyed or rendered combat-ineffective. Happily, we’re now in a position to begin our own attack, swinging around to the left to engage the Clanners.
Simona finds himself a good position with the Ryoken, switching his Ultra AC/20 over to burst mode and targeting the rear of the enemy Ryoken. Rook, too, takes her first shot of the day, a low-percentage LRM-10 salvo against the enemy Ryoken. The allied commander, who survived the destruction of his Thunderbolt and managed to eject, is directing fire.
For his trouble, he immediately takes a hit from the Man o’ War’s large pulse laser.
Simona hits with one of his two AC/20 shells, shearing off the enemy Ryoken’s right arm and cutting deep into its right torso armor: a successful sneak attack. He’ll get down from the building now, to avoid taking any return fire.
Round 10
The allied Cicada is still clinging to life, but not for very long. Rook, who took command when she took the field, encourages its pilot to eject. The Rasalhague pilot does so.
At present, our forces are still jockeying for position.
Round 11
The next round sees the Bastards moving into attack range of the enemy. Severe takes a shot at a Fenris caught a bit out of position, joined by Wizard and the Rasalhague medium mech drivers. Simona is itching to bring his AC/20 to bear, but is just out of range behind a building.
The Fenris unloads at point-blank range with four medium pulse lasers, knocking the Rasalhague Wolverine over and readying a kick. Severe misses with everything, though Wizard scores with her PPC. The Rasalhague Griffin readies a kick itself.
Though the Wolverine absorbs a kick, the Griffin’s kick knocks the Fenris down.
Round 12
A pillar of dust around to the west comes as a surprise to the Bastards on the field. Sensor records later indicate that it was an enemy Fenris, attempting to flank, which skidded into a building.
The Rasalhague Wolverine loses an arm to fire from the Fenris, but beyond that, not much happens.
Severe is on the hunt for the enemy Fenris to the north, while Simona and Milspec aim to put some fire on the enemy Ryoken. Simona, unfortunately, is under fire from the enemy Man o’ War, too. Hopefully he’ll weather it well.
It seems he does: he takes a few hits, and fire from the Ryoken facing him eats into his left leg and strikes the myomers in the shin. Otherwise, his armor holds, and with a devastating AC/20 shot to the chest, he knocks the enemy Ryoken out. We’ll have to see about salvaging it later.
Round 13-14
The Clan Wolf Man o’ War moves up, and the battle is well and truly joined. Teddy Bear, Severe, Hanzoku, and Milspec have clear shots at it, while Simona has managed to move just out of its path. He exchanges fire with the flanking Fenris, now back on its feet, instead. Double Dog shoots at the back of the Fenris from up north, hoping to bring it down in concert with the friendly Wolverine.
As might have been expected, Simona loses the Ryoken’s right arm and its attendant medium lasers. Hopefully we can salvage those. The Man o’ War takes a good bit of damage, but Milspec‘s cockpit flashes with alarms: his right torso armor is gone.
Round 15
The Man o’ War lays heavy fire on the Koshi, which I stupidly put a little too close to its arc of fire. Severe does what she can to stay on her feet, but bolts shear apart and her mech’s left leg detaches at the hip.
Hanzoku, however, scores a kill on the Fenris hassling Rook, while Simona blows a leg off of the other one.
Round 16
Simona is out of danger now, and Rook is in LRM and large laser range of the Mad Cat perched on a building over to the east. The enemy Man o’ War, though still evidently in good shape, has nearly been cored; its center torso is all but gone.
Wizard scores the kill on the Man o’ War, shooting through its tattered rear armor, and knocking out its engine.
Round 17
Milspec is left to deal with the downed Fenris, while the rest of our little force advances on the Mad Cat, the only enemy still in fighting shape. Its pilot jumps down from the building, taking it out of the arc of fire of most of our mechs.
Trading fire with the Ostroc, the Mad Cat neither deals nor takes serious damage. Milspec gets the kill, kicking through the Fenris’ chest.
Round 18
For once, initiative goes our way. The Mad Cat moves first, and we’re able to bring a lot more firepower to bear; six or seven mechs take shots at the Mad Cat. Not many hit, however; we’re shooting from a bad position. Hanzoku and Wizard are going to try to get closer; their mechs are well-armored and have legs fit for kicking.
Simona takes a few hits, and his poorly-repaired Ryoken doesn’t behave quite like he expects. It tips over and falls, and as he recovers his senses, he realizes his left leg is out of action.
Round 19
It looks like the end for the Mad Cat, and indeed it turns out to be. Wizard‘s barrage of medium laser fire chews through its engine and brings it down.
Damage, Injuries, Salvage
In the Crab, Milspec took heavy damage, while both Simona in the Ryoken and Severe in the Koshi lost legs. Despite that, injuries are light, and salvage is good. We take the Mad Cat and the Ryoken.
Both end up yielding good salvage. Unfortunately, we don’t manage to pull any intact ER PPCs out of the Mad Cat, but we do secure a Clan 375 XL engine, which we could probably trade for an Inner Sphere assault mech without too much difficulty.
The Ryoken ends up being an even better haul than expected. Its engine survived, too, and now we have a spare for Simona’s Ryoken. We also take an ER Large Laser from the wreckage.
Otherwise, the Mad Cat yields a brace of Streak SRM-6 launchers plus some ammo. We also strip a good deal of Clan Ferro-Fibrous armor off of the two mechs, which is important for our long-term capability to field the Koshi and the Ryoken.
Kill Board(s)
Last Battle
Wizard continues her charge up the leaderboard with another two kills this month. She’s tied for second in mech kills, and has a dominating lead when it comes to bringing down Clanners.
All-Time Leaders
- “Rook” Ishikawa (26, 7 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- “Drake” Halit (14, 6 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- “Woad” Kohler (13, 5 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- “Carcer” Ngo (11, 5 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- “Wizard” Que (7, 6 mechs, 6 Clan kills)
- “Teddy Bear” Jamil (5, 3 mechs, 2 Clan kills)
- “Double Dog” Dare (5, 2 mechs, 1 Clan kill)
- “Linebuster” Atkinson (5)
- “Severe” Payne (4, 4 mechs)
- “Milspec” Ortega (4, 1 mech, 1 Clan kill)
- “Ker-Ker” Ec (3, 2 mechs)
- “Hanzoku” Yuksel (3, 3 mechs, 2 Clan kill)
- “Euchre” Kojic (2, 2 mechs)
- Gwenael Hernandez (1, 1 mech, 1 Clan kill)
- Simona (1, 1 mech, 1 Clan kill)
- “Wojtek” Frajtov (1, 1 mech)
Status
As the Bastards scramble, as usual, to repair and refit before the next fight, something strange happens. On April 15th, the Clan Wolf forces raiding Tukayyid pull back to orbit. Soon after, our little backwater is suddenly the center of a tremendous amount of activity. Ships from six other Clans appear in orbit, along with a vast fleet of vessels with the ComStar insignia.
Our Rasalhague liaison bandies about terms like ‘batchall’ and ‘Trial of Possession’, which Hanzoku explains, and other terms like ‘the fate of Terra’ and ‘utter ruin if they lose’, which the rest of the Bastards understand just fine.
ComStar has taken over all defense arrangements against the Clans, and shunted the Rasalhague Republican forces off to provide security for civilians evacuated from the combat zones to come. We’re more than happy to babysit refugee convoys and sit out of the action for a bit. After all, we still get paid.
It is now May 1, 3052.
Contract Status
Our contract has been extended, but there’s a reasonable possibility it might be cut short early, unless ComStar loses.
Finances
We have 42.046 million C-bills on hand.
Repairs and Refits
With the obvious exception of the Awesome, which is still four months away from completion, the Bastards are at full strength. With the Clan heat sinks we salvaged from the Mad Cat and downed Ryoken, we were able to bring Simona’s Ryoken back to a full complement, and we even have five to spare.
As far as negatives go, several of the ER Medium Lasers in our Ryoken’s arm were total losses. At present, it has four instead of the design six, and we have no spares.
Training and Promotions
Teddy Bear acquitted himself well in combat, rapidly taking stock of the state of things when he arrived on the field. By taking command of the Rasalhague mechs, he managed to keep a full lance of them alive in the face of overwhelming Clan firepower. As such, he’s been promoted to Sergeant.
Mechwarrior Claims and Assignments
- For the record, the following mechwarriors are claimed.
- Captain Huri “Drake” Halit (Mephansteras) – Awesome Custom (refitting)
- Lt. SG George “Linebuster” Atkinson (Hasek10) – Lancelot LNC25-02
- Lt. SG Mariamu “Rook” Ishikawa (Culise) – Stalker STK-3F
- Lt. JG Sung-min “Double Dog” Dare (a1s) – Thunderbolt TDR-5S-T
- Sgt. Jose “Milspec” Ortega (milspec) – Crab CRB-20
- Cpl. Damayanti “Carcer” Ngo (Dorsidwarf) – Flashman FLS-7K
- Cpl. Tedros “Teddy Bear” Jamil (Knave) – Vulcan VL-5T
- Cpl. Ferdinand “Woad” Kohler (A Thing) – Grasshopper GHR-5H
- Pvt. Jan “Euchre” Kojic (EuchreJack) – Trebuchet TBT-5S
- Pvt. Cathrine “Severe” Payne (Burnt Pies) – Koshi Custom
- Pvt. E-Shei “Ker-Ker” Ec (Kanil) – Lancelot LNC25-02
- Pvt. Ed “Hanzoku” Yuksel (Hanzoku) – Guillotine GLT-4L
- Pvt. Ik-jun “Wojtek” Frajtov (Blaze) – Trebuchet TBT-5N
- Pvt. Xue-Min “Wizard” Que (Rince Wind) – Guillotine GLT-4P
- Pvt. Abdul-Hafiz “Pepper” Popalzi – Archer ARC-2K
- The following mechwarriors are available.
- Pvt. Gwenael Hernandez – Phoenix Hawk PXH-1K
- Pvt. Kevin Stirzacre – Wasp WSP-1A
- Rec. Simona – Ryoken/Stormcrow B (missing lasers)
Action Items
- Not much to do right now, except sit back and watch the fireworks.