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Edited on Wed Feb-11-09 05:16 AM by Red Demon
Styx: January 3071
Ezekyle checked his sensor screens, and then his clock for what felt like the thousandth time that night. Intel had indicated that a sizable enemy force was supposed to be in the area, trying to flank the main body of the Clan Wolf forces on planet. So of course his star had been selected for conducting night patrols to make sure that none of the freebirth mercenaries managed to slip by. It was now 0200 local time on the fourth night they had gone on patrol and like before, nothing was going on.
He supposed that it made sense that his star was one of the ones selected for night patrols. His Star Commander was a level headed veteran who could be counted on to do what ever needed to be done. They also had a rare capture from Clan Nova Cat, a forty-five tone Shadow Cat. The mech was fast and came with a state of the art sensor and ECM suite. Working in concert with Star Commander Ward's Hellbringer they were able to cover a lot of ground while still maintaining some pretty heavy firepower.
Speaking of heavy firepower, Ezekyle had just caught a glimpse of one of his star mates pausing on top of a little hill. Mechwarrior Elizabeth drove the star's other rare mech. Yet again a capture from Clan Nova Cat, the seventy ton killing machine bearing that clan's namesake. Her Nova Cat strayed a little from the Clan Nova Cat typical load out of mostly heavy energy weapons. Instead she packed a pair of Gauss Riffles and a pair of Extended Range Particle Cannons. A little cumbersome in a close in fight, maybe, but still capable of punching gaping holes in any mech foolish enough to go toe to toe with her.
He made a failed attempt to stretch inside the cockpit of his Timber Wolf while reaching for the canteen he kept behind his seat. Letting his mech continue more or less on auto-pilot he pulled a long swig of water and chuckled. His was the heaviest mech of his star, but he was the least experienced out of all of them. The official excuse was that as the greenest pilot he should get the battlemech with the most armor. As a consequence however he also was assigned the mech with the most firepower. Ezekyle had already been knocked out once in a circle of equals for having claimed that he could do more battlefield damage in five minutes then a star of Elementals could do all day.
Ezekyle was so busy day dreaming about how he should have beat that Elemental that he didn't notice the warning tone until it was too late. From a nearby woods to his left missiles arced up and homed in on his seventy-five ton omni-mech. He sat up straight, sprayed his controls with water, and thumbed on his laser AMS system, all in vain. Just as the anti-missile system acquired it's targets the missiles started slamming into the side of Ezekyle's Timber Wolf.
Ezekyle, a true born warrior of Clan Wolf reacted with the reflexes bred and trained into him since birth. He rolled his heavy mech to his right, spreading the damage as much as possible. The explosions from the rockets wanted to push the mech that way anyways, and as a result no two warheads managed to find the same patch of armor. Pulling hard to his right Ezekyle brought his Timber Wolf full circle, angry that somebody had managed to get the jump on him and ready to dish out some pain of his own.
The woods, about sixty meters out, swung back into view. Presumably the attack had come from there for his sensors had been clear and he hadn't seen anything with his optics. However as he squared off with the woods there was nothing there to great him. Ezekyle turned his sensors up to full power, grateful that he had sacrificed a heat sink for his Beagle Active Probe. Nothing.
He was about to check his damage screens to make sure that he hadn't imagined the whole attack when he saw it. Movement at the base of the trees, tiny and slow. Ezekyle zoomed in where he had seen it but already he knew what he would fine. Nothing. A truly competent infantry platoon wouldn't have given him that much, but the lone figure dashing to better cover had given them all away. Pity for them, they had chosen to ambush the only mech in his star with machine guns.
Four of them, and Ezekyle started pouring fire into the trees concealing the enemy troopers. His quad .50 cal machine guns had no sooner started turning the trees into kindling when the troops in the woods fired their second volley. Missiles arced up out of the woods and he knew that his was the perfect time to call in the contact. Ezekyle keyed his comm system and over the sound of his own machine guns and the blaring missile alarms he said as calmly as he could manage...
“Bravo five to Bravo leader, contract troops in echo two seven.”
Star Commander Ward said something in response. It was probably even important, but Ezekyle was too involved in the battle now. His laser AMS opened up, plucking incoming missiles from the sky and the heat in his cockpit spiked dramatically. His adversary decided to go all in, adding lasers and auto-cannons he had towed in to the barrage. Ezekyle almost felt sorry for the man, but then he remembered that regular infantry should know better then to pick a fight with a seventy-five ton battlemech.
As light cannon fire panged off of his armor and small lasers scored hits and ruined his paint job Ezekyle quickly punched in commands for his long range missiles. Normally, against a large target such as another mech or a tank, all one had to do was wait for missile lock, pull the trigger, and watch the light show. However when you had to target a chunk of real-estate you had to take a little time and explain to the targeting computer where you wanted your missiles to go.
The firing solution ready and the barrels of his machine guns glowing a bright red Ezekyle stopped spraying the woods with machine guns and loosed his missiles. Once out of the square launchers on the shoulders of his Timber Wolf the thirty long range missiles spread out and screamed for their own little patches of earth. The woods turned into a mini hell. Explosions rippled over an area covering almost three hundred square meters, sending trees, soil, and body parts flaming into the sky. Ammunition for the towed auto-cannons cooked off, adding to the cacophony. The few infantrymen who survived the onslaught showed their support for the plan by running and hiding.
Ezekyle smiled as the woods in front of him disintegrated. Slowly as his AMS system spun down and the explosions died down his communication channel stared to register with him. Apparently his star had encountered enemies across their front. His closest star mate, Elizabeth, was having some trouble with a pair of mechs, one of which had some heavy missiles. He pushed his throttle up to full and started his mech loping in a direction that he hoped would catch the enemy by surprise.
Going on best guesses by 'Liz and his own knowledge of the local terrain Ezekyle headed for where he thought the enemy missile boat would be. He strolled over a small ridge to the right while he looked to his left, and sure enough there stood a mercenary Archer. What he didn't expect to see however was that the enemy mech didn't bother to find line-of-sight with the Clan Wolf Nova Cat before it fired it's missiles. He just arced them over the ridge he was sitting behind and they seemed to track all on their own.
Ezekyle knew that Elizabeth had LAMS, but even so against a pair of mechs, one of which she couldn't even return fire against, she must be hard pressed. The Archer had no idea he was even there yet, so Ezekyle took a little time, and lined up his shot. He let fly with his pair of LRM-15s first, the thirty missiles leaving his mech's weapon bays with evil intentions in their little CPUs. Then he waited for the enemy pilot to react, like every pilot he had ever encountered would react. Alerted by the warning siren of incoming missiles the Archer pilot started looking around. He saw the thirty missiles coming down on him from slightly above and to his east, took a step...and that's what Ezekyle had been waiting for.
He feathered his main trigger, sending a pair of beams arcing in to the Archer from the arms of his Timber Wolf. The streams of accelerated particles from his ERPPCs met center of mass on the Archer. Paint peeled, armor splintered, and circuits shorted out. The heavy Inner Sphere mech staggered from the onslaught but it was far from out of the fight. It's armor was designed to withstand such torture, it's primary circuits shielded from such technology, and it's pilot quickly recovered and responded.
Warning sirens soon sounded in Ezekyle's cockpit, the Archer sending it's forty LRMs speeding towards his Timber Wolf in counter battery. He was mildly surprised that the pilot had managed to get a shot off so quickly, after the rocking he had sustained from his particle cannons. In fact his own missiles had yet to reach the enemy mech, and he smiled grimly as he noted the the Archer lacked an anti-missiles system. Now it was time for him to decide how to meet the missile barrage of his enemy.
He could try and roll with the attack, spreading the damage about, but that would minimize the effectiveness of his laser AMS. Or he could try and maintain maximum speed, hoping to throw some of the missiles off, and leave the rest to his AMS. Ezekyle chose to do neither. He charged towards the enemy mech. Some of the missiles soared over his head, some got plucked from the sky, but plenty more found their mark.
Explosions rippled along the outside of Ezekyle's Timber Wolf, but his mech was designed by some of the best and brightest the Clans could muster. The heavy armor of his seventy-five ton mech shrugged off the damage from the explosions and he remained fully combat effective. He was already riding the red line, having fired most of his weapons along with the AMS system, but as he cleared the fire and dust of the explosions he saw that the enemy mech was looking right at him.
Ezekyle triggered his pair of extended range medium lasers, scoring hits on the enemies torsos. The Archer was starting to smoke, but even so it was lumbering forward, raising it's own arms. From the wrists of the Inner Sphere heavy came a pair of lasers, cutting gouges across the left leg of Ezekyles Timber Wolf. His mech complained of the heat, it wanted to shut down, but he over-rode the automatic process. He waited for tone, and let lose with another flight of missiles, followed almost immediately but a flight of the same from the Archer.
This time he gave his AMS system time to get a few shots off but then rolled to his left as the missiles landed all around him. The Archer pilot was good, his armor was getting thin, but at the end of the mini-apocalypse he still had all of his weapon systems. As he rolled his mech back in line with his enemy he became a little startled. The Archer was only a few hundred meters away from him and closing fast. The Inner Sphere mech had lower arm and hand actuators, and could if pressed prove to be a devastating hand to hand opponent. His mech lacked the tools needed in a serious melee combat, but he had vastly superior firepower.
Ezekyle had to drop this guy, right now. He took care, lined up his cross hairs, and sent his ERPPCs crashing into the torsos of the closing Archer. The heavy mech staggered a step, fell to it's knees, but then began to recover. Ezekyle flushed his coolant, his heavy omni-mech screaming that it needed to shut down from heat. He ignored it, waiting for the Archer to right itself.
The Archer was barely two hundred meters away as it staggered to it's feet once more. Ezekyle's Timber Wolf was on the verge of shutting down, whether he willed it or not. He did, however, have weapons he could still use. Squeezing hard down on his trigger Ezekyle let fly with is four machine guns. These weapons would normally be shrugged easily off by the armor of a mech, especially one as heavy as the Archer. However this opponent had been punished by his ERPPCs and long range missiles, and had very little armor left to speak of.
Shell casing cascaded down to the ground as .50 caliber rounds stitched across the chest of the savaged Archer. They found an ammunition case for the heavy mech's long range missiles, and explosions blossomed from within the stricken mech. Armor, internal structure, and other vital mech parts mushroomed out from the doomed Archer, it's pilot riding a pillar of fire up into the heavens. Ezekyle finally let his mech shut down.
When he finally made visual contact with Elizabeth's Nova Cat she was trading shots with a Mercenary Warhammer. Her twin Gauss Rifles and ERPPCs made fairly short work of the heavy mech, her Nova Cat and the Warhammer lighting up the night with traded volleys of particle cannons. The Nova Cat's heavier armor and the hyper sonic gauss rifles won the day. Ezekyles barrages of missiles were more token then substance, but they made him feel better none-the-less.
Together they rolled West and met up with Star Commander Ward and his Hellbringer, ending his firefight with the weight of their heavy mechs. As the sky began to lighten they had pulled together their entire star, minus Menoin in his Shadow Cat. He was in radio contact however, using his cutting edge ECM to shadow the mercenary forces as they regrouped and prepared to try another push. ---------------------------------------
Darkness always comes.
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