personal6

15

Company Commander Jules Lenning was sitting in his Warhammer as it navigated the edge of Brinestorm's outer buildings and the forest that had been irregularly cut around it. To the south there were grasslands, but the north was part of a forest that stretched thousands of miles and the city had been built on the edge of it. There was a considerable amount of farmland to the east with good water, but go south and it got dry, leaving only prairie grasses and poor soil.

So walking his Company around the buildings did not leave a clear path when there were large trees jutting out into the mowed areas. Sometimes the gaps were only a few meters, and he had to push through the trees to avoid taking a detour into the city streets. That kept his Alpha Company, and Beta behind it, narrowed down to single file as they repositioned to the northern side as the mercenaries came in along the southeast.

"Jules," Vander's voice said into his helmet.

"Here boss."

"The northern component of the Lion's Teeth is assaulting the Comstar compound."

"What?"

"I know, it makes no sense unless they're hitting their own facility in order to blame it on us later. I have no doubt they're willing to sacrifice their own people if it helps their agenda. Get there double time and engage them while they're busy with the Comstar turrets and tanks and do what you can. You'll be outnumbered three to one, but they're mostly mediums and lights. They're keeping their heavier mechs to the south and some are turning back to chase Grady. Don't make a last stand up there, but swat as many of them as you can. If you accidentally save the Comstar compound, I won't hold it against you."

"Copy that," he said, increasing his mech's pace to a run and barreling into a set of trees with his left arm PPC barrel held up like a shield that knocked them over. "Alpha Company, we're late to a fight. Move it!"

Commodore Itoro watched as another of his dropships got split in two by an internal explosion…probably the H2 tanks were breached, and they had additional armor plating incapsulating them so such a thing would nothappen, but the naval grade lasers provided such a strong punch that if they found a hole in the outer armor, they could go through the tank armor without much effort and explosively mix it with oxygen from the dropship's internal atmosphere.

One of those four massively powerful lasers was now offline. Itoro had his dropships surrounding the warship, but only on the top side. The blocky vessel that didn't have a single curve in its construction was actually shaped like a rainbow so that it could wrap itself around a jumpship's hull and still stay within the hyperspace bubble. So from the front it looked like a fat curve comprised of blocky extensions here and there, but from the top and sides it still looked like a gigantic brick.

But the curve meant the underside of that brick had a cavity in it, and within that cavity were two of the naval grade lasers. They could not be targeted from the sides, only the front or back…or directly from underneath since space didn't have any 'ground' to it. The two on the top side, however, could fire to cover the flanks of the ship as well.

It was one of those two that had been taken out…on the port flank, and Itomo had all his ships firing on the area of the hull where the other one was on the starboard. As it was, only one naval laser was firing at his fleet right now, because the warship's curved structure didn't allow the ones on the underside to shoot at his ships that were clustered above it.

The Lion's Den kept shifting, however, to bring the other two into range…meaning Itoro's fleet had to keep dancing around it to stay on target and out of the line of fire of the other two as the remaining naval grade laser continued to punch holes in his dropships that he had spinning in place to make it difficult to line up two shots in the same position.

But the warship had plenty of other weaponry on it. Regular lasers, PPCs, missile launchers, and autocannons. Those were damaging the hulls of the dropships in many places, enough that when the naval laser got around to them they had plenty of spots to shoot to go the rest of the way through.

That alone didn't mean the dropships would explode, and a lot were fighting with decompressed bays from such holes, but a shot to the upper portions where the bridge was immediately put a dropship out of the fight, and two of his ships were already drifting helplessly as the two previously-avoided naval lasers on the warship rotated around and took aim at them for sport since they had nothing else to shoot at the moment.

Eventually, though, his ships landed enough firepower on the area of the second naval laser that some of it hit square on and knocked it out…at which point the warship stopped rotating to try and shake the 'fleas' off its back, and just accelerated hard towards its own approaching dropships.

And it was in that moment that Itoro knew he had his chance.

He ordered his ships to stay on the topside of it, and all of them had better acceleration than the warship…except some of the damaged ones that limped behind. His original 28 dropships were now down to 21, and of those 4 were slow to follow.

That gave him 17 keeping pace with the Lion's Den and hammering its topside, trading weaponsfire with the conventional batteries as he ordered his ships to not try and pluck off those weapons, but to hit the engine compartment that the warship was so graciously showing them with no further maneuvering.

Admiral Neeva must have lost his mind. This was as rookie a maneuver as you could get. They were running for help and ignoring the fact that the battle was still continuing. At the minimum they should have been spinning on their axis to spread out the damage and make his dropships continue to move around to stay out of the two remaining big guns' firing arcs. But no. They were effectively just sitting there thrusting hard to get closer to the 13 dropships that were still some 10+ minutes away.

Itoro knew he could not take mercy on them. Any delay would allow their reinforcements to catch up in time to assist the warship. He had to take it out now, and the first step was to take out its engine vents…and the next would be to penetrate into its own fuel tanks, get through the supplemental armor there, and use its own fuel as a weapon against it.

He didn't have the big naval lasers to do it, but he had enough dropships…some with extra weaponry on them in case of the pocket warships…to chew on through, despite the fact that all the supplemental missiles had already been fired to take out the first naval grade laser.

Admiral Neeva didn't know what to do. He found himself wandering the hallways of the warship he'd just been dispossessed of as he both heard and felt the incoming hits. There was no artificial gravity in this part of the ship, so he was bouncing off walls as the ship maneuvered this way and that…then something horrific happened.

The ship stopped maneuvering and artificial gravity suddenly pulled him down to the deck…meaning the warship was thrusting forward in a straight line at maximum acceleration. He could tell by the pull on his body.

But the incoming blasts were still ongoing.

Commander Chester had lost his god damn mind!

There was no way the Lion's Den could chase down fleeing dropships. It didn't have the speed. So the only reason they would be running in a straight line was to flee, probably in the direction of their own dropships.

And he knew, in that moment, that not only his own career was over, but that this ship was going to be destroyed.

The former Admiral ran through the decks, climbing ladders to get 'higher' in the ship…which actually meant more forward…until he got further away from the explosions on the hull. That told him the upper side was getting hammered more than the underside, so he headed for one of the lifeboats on the underside and was thankful that he didn't run into a decompressed area, either locked down or one in the making.

He pulled the emergency handle and the airlock door opened. He climbed through and sealed it behind him, then slid through the already open second door into the lifeboat itself and into the pilot's seat.

The inner door sealed at the press of a button, and he turned his head to visually confirm it had not gotten jammed. The green indicator light over it confirmed a good seal, and the one next to it that was blue indicated that the door was also locked, so no accidental leaning on the handle could jar it open.

Neeva executed the launch program, and explosive bolts on the ship's outer hull blew away the armor covering the lifeboat and created a pathway into space that he could see out of a very thick and narrow viewport ahead of him.

A few moments later he hit the launch button, visually confirming there was no debris in the way…and the fact that the ship was not twisting made the launch even easier. The lifeboat was shot out on a compressed gas cannon, getting it enough initial momentum to clear the ship and drift 'down' away from the ship.

Fortunately Neeva had ended up in one of the few Life Raft-class lifeboats the warship carried, and he used its thrusters to twist it around so he could look backwards…where he saw the swarm of Morten dropships hammering the top side near the engine compartment with no response from the helmsman to try and shake them off. That made the shots they were firing into it damn easy to aim, while all the Morten dropships were moving about and spinning on their axises so the active guns on the topside of the warship could not hit the same spot twice without very good aiming, and then not at all as those spots rotated around to face away from the warship.

This was even worse than he feared, and as his lifeboat drifted further away, the warship continued to thrust on, moving it to his left and quickly shrinking it to a dot. Neeva didn't activate his emergency beacon just yet, but he did turn on his radar…seeing half-destroyed dropships in the other direction.

He had a lifeboat that was empty save for him. The least he could do was see if there were any survivors out there that he could pick up…because he wasn't worried that the mercenaries would come back to shoot their lifeboats. He doubted they would have a chance to…and as he maneuvered the lifeboat on the proper trajectory and used some of his limited fuel to thrust in their direction on a gentle course that would take more than half an hour to reach the debris field, he spun back around and coasted backwards for a while, watching the distant specs and trying to glean any knowledge of what was happening to his former ship.

He couldn't make out anything at this range, but his radar could, and he saw the dropships coming up from Cholis were getting close to an intercept.

And then the Lion's Denexploded…which he could see with his own eyes.

Itoro would win the day with his remaining dropships, and the mechs on the surface would no longer have any way off the planet. They were trapped down there, and for their sake, he hoped they could win and hold out the months it would take for one of their jumpships watching from the star to leave, travel back to their landhold on Woodbine, and return here with more dropships to either resupply or evacuate them.

Though if the Mortens held on to enough of their own dropships by the end of this fight, it was going to be doubtful that the Lion's Teeth Legion would even be able to get relief dropships to the surface again without a naval fight first.

Neeva activated the comm on the standard emergency channel and started picking up a little chatter from the shattered dropships ahead. There were lifeboats out there too, thankfully, but some of the dropships that had been torn apart still had their bridges intact, apparently, and he tried for nearly 6 minutes to contact one on a standard channel before giving up. Either the transmitter wasn't working or they were ignoring him.

He used the radar on the Life Raft to find one of the drifting Morten standard lifeboats that had no thrusters. Only a gyroscope to stabilize them from twisting end over end as they floated helplessly wherever they drifted. He saw a few of the smaller Escape Pods maneuvering on their thrusters, and they were actually equipped to survive reentry to a planet. His Life Raft was not designed for that, but as a sort of command and control center for survivors with enhanced thrusters so he could find and attach to standard lifeboats and group them together.

He had room for four people in here, while standard lifeboats held six, and Neeva headed for the closest Morten one at a crawl. By the time he got there the naval battle behind him was long over, with the results unknown, but these lifeboats were drifting further and further away from the debris field, and keeping them closer to the semi-intact dropships, the better chance there would be of them getting picked up.

He maneuvered alongside his target, using as little thrust as possible, then docked with it. He tried the comm again, getting nothing, so he just let whoever was in there sit rather than opening the airlock, and used his thrusters to pull them both in the direction of another wayward lifeboat.

They'd get there eventually some hours later, losing any chance of intercepting others that were now far too out of range. He used another of the four docking ports on the Life Raft to mate with the second lifeboat then activated his emergency beacon and just sat there. Opening up the airlock would be a good way to get himself killed when they saw his Lion's Teeth uniform, but the three lifeboats stuck together would make it easier for the surviving Morten dropships to collect their two, and with them they'd also pick him up.

He just hoped they weren't the vengeful sort.

When Commander Lenning finally got eyes on the Comstar compound, it was through a gap between the trees ahead and the city buildings on the right. The walled compound was actually set partially inside the city, with about 3/4ths of it sticking out into a piece of the forest to the north that had been carved out of the trees. But around that walled compound was 120 meters of paved tarmac that he walked his Warhammer out onto and immediately got hit by a pair of Lion's Teeth mechs that turned away from a growing hole in the perimeter wall to shoot at the newcomers.

Lenning walked left, clearing the way for the rest of Alpha Company to follow him out, and torso twisted back right, firing both PPCs on the 40 ton Vulcan that hit him with an underpowered AC2, then the Shadow Hawk beside it hit him with a larger AC5 burst, which was five mass units of rounds fired in rapid succession as opposed to two. Depending on the type of autocannon, that could be fired in a single high caliber round or a stream of smaller ones. Either way, the kinetic impact totaled the same after 10 seconds, which is how they were rated.

The Vulcan immediately turned and ran back towards the other mercenary mechs that had gotten stretched out around the perimeter of the base, while the Shadow Hawk stood its ground. Whether that was because the pilot was gutsy or didn't realize his buddy had left, but by the time the four heavy mech in Alpha Company came into view he should have already been sprinting away from them.

Instead he tried to zigzag backwards, firing as he went. All that did was delay him enough that the Rifleman and Warhammer behind Lenning's own stayed in range long enough to smoke him. The damage done in exchange was minimal to his mechs, and the Shadow Hawk crumped into a slouching pile billowing smoke as the cockpit opened up and the pilot climbed out in a hurry. He dropped to the ground, probably breaking his leg in the process, then rolled around to put out the flames on the back of his jacket as Alpha Company walked on either side of him and his mech, firing into the distance at the Vulcan and the scattering of mechs beyond it that were just starting to become aware of their presence rather than the Comstar defense turrets and brave infantry that were popping missiles over the walls at the mechs seemingly at random.

Lenning continued firing with his PPCs down the 'trench' to his right that headed back deeper into the city, with three other mechs coming up alongside him in a line. They worked their way forward, meeting the lighter resistance and hammering them hard. Some got away, some didn't, then when the four mechs' forward armor started to get a little chewed up, they stopped and let the four behind them take the lead as they fell back to become the third row.

They didn't break that formation until they got to the corner of the Comstar compound box, in front of which was a huge number of mechs heading their way from the east.

Alpha Company retreated backwards behind cover and spread out, with Beta Company coming up behind them, and waiting around the corner for the mercenaries to come, then pounded each mech as it turned the corner. Nine of them went down before the other mercenaries took the cue not to poke out around the edge.

"Aaron, pop up and see what's cooking."

"On it," he said, walking his Victor up near the Comstar wall and hitting his jump jets. He didn't go in any direction, simply up and down, but it was enough to get his cockpit above the wall and able to look inside as well as down the other paved lane outside it.

"They're starting to break through the wall. Hammering a gate I think. They've got a Company or two knotted up waiting for us ahead of that."

"Guys in the green up front," he ordered. "When we go, get twenty meters past the corner along the wall and stop. Everyone else fill in the line heading perpendicular to that wall. I want us stretched all the way to the city buildings before we start advancing. As many lines of fire as we can get on these guys. Lennox, you're the first guy around the corner."

"Yippie," he said deadpan, stepping up almost to the opening. "Say when."

He waited for the other mechs to shuffle around a bit, as if they were all stepping up to a cross country start line. "Go," he said, surging his mech forward as well.

One by one they emerged around the corner and started taking fire, with Lennox hugging the wall closely and stopping as he opened up on the closest mechs. Then Bradley did the same on his shoulder…and Harold…and Markinson. All 12 of Alpha Company's mechs started firing the moment they each got into position, then when they were shoulder to shoulder in a straight line, Lenning ordered them to start marching forward at 20 kph as Beta Company circled around them and dove through the outside gap on the ferrocrete one or two at a time sprinting ahead along the city buildings and throwing in their firepower without getting in front of Alpha Company's firing lane.

The medium and light mechs held their ground for about twenty seconds, then began retreating after a few of them went down and the Morten mechs seemed to keep increasing in number. They pushed them back near a smoking turret they'd taken down, with one of the little infantry guys popping up over the wall and firing a shoulder-mounted SRM at Lennox.

The mechwarrior turned to face the wall and activated his external speaker at maximum volume, which was still hard to hear over the roar of weaponsfire.

"Do not shoot my mech you dipshits! We're here to take down the mercenaries, not you."

Whether they heard him or no one else was brave enough to poke up over the wall, no more missiles came their way, but a few more did from further ahead as Markinson's mech seemed to become the mutual target of the Lion's Teeth, with most of their firepower now focused on him.

"Slide behind Harold, Marky."

He didn't respond, but his smoking mech stopped walking then turned to the side as its left arm was hit so bad it broke and was dangling from the shoulder joint before he got cover behind the line.

The mercenaries didn't have time to coordinate fire again on Alpha Company, for by this time Beta had gotten so far ahead they were actually flanking them on the run and started taking down the corner of the loose Lion's Teeth formation.

At which point, they all turned and ran as fast as they could.

"Full speed, Alpha," Lenning said, but the gap was already increasing and continued to do so. They got a few more mechs, and Beta even more than that, but the mercenaries had the faster mechs and they eventually got out of range and off the Comstar compound, heading around the safety of the city edge probably headed back to join up with their heavier mechs to the south.

"Vander, are they all gone?"

"Looks like it. I'm not seeing anything on the north, west, or east side beyond the walls."

"You want us to hold here?"

"No. Keep going east and Grady will circle back around to you. He's heading north with a pack on his tail."

"What are the rest of the mercenaries up to?"

"Grocery shopping," Vander said heavily. "We can't do anything about them until the rest of our mechs show up."

"How bad?"

"The spaceport is trashed and what's left of the militia is running back to Delta. Apparently they had orders to stand their ground no matter what. The smart ones contacted us and we're adopting them effective immediately."

"That bastard of a Duke."

"Save it for later. At this rate he might not even survive."

"Are they torching buildings?"

"Everything they come across," Vander said heavily. "I don't think they want any witnesses left alive."

Polly Vren launched from the Morten airstrip just before the main body of mechs made it to the city in her Centurion aerospace fighter and did a few laps around the Estate grounds while the rest of her squadron got into the air…then they headed as a group at high speed towards the battle, having been ordered to hold back until now.

They were only the Ardent Falcons, for all the other aerospace fighters in the Morten Protectorate were off guarding other planets. That meant 14 fighters, for added to the squadron were two 100 ton Stukas that out-massed every mech on the ground. Her 30 ton Centurion was a lot more maneuverable, but didn't have nearly as much firepower. Fortunately the mercenaries hadn't brought any aerospace fighters of their own to ground, so the only incoming fire they had to worry about was from the mechs…who would hopefully be so distracted with the Morten mechs that they'd not even notice the fighters and give them easy strafing runs.

That's why they'd been held back until now, but with the green light given they were ordered to the north of the city away from the soon to be brawl to the south, with orders to assist the three Companies up there that were already down 5 mechs.

"Single file strafing runs by flights. Stukas are free for all," Squadron Leader Dan Trevor ordered just as the weaponsfire on the horizon became visible.

"Flight three, behind me by numbers," Polly said, being the third flight leader, officially labeled Ardent 9, with the others being Ardent 10, 11, and 12. She saw the others forming up and knew to take the starboard position in the squadron, then picked a heavy Crusader that was trailing behind the other mercs as Commander Grady had his three Companies moving constantly to the northeast, drawing out the enemy lines.

"Thank you, Grady," Polly whispered, because it made the spacing between them larger and easier to isolate the target mech. "Going for the Crusader," she told her flight, getting a bit lower to the ground then discharging all three of her Medium Lasers into the back of the mech as she flashed past and turned south, banking back around the way they had come to set up for another pass on the rear armor of the enemy mechs.

It took her about 20 seconds to do so, with her hanging around another 8 so her flight could catch up to her, then she went back in on the Crusader and hit it again as it stupidly just kept walking towards the other mechs and exposing its back armor…then again, the fighters could circle around from any direction to get behind it, so it didn't really have any recourse except to turn into them and shoot back.

It didn't do that, but a laser flashed so close to Polly after she passed it that her entire body convulsed once in shock, then she was hard banking away and weaving back and forth hoping to avoid another shot to her backside.

When she got clear and circled around, she saw the Crusader standing still and gushing smoke as a parachute above it slowly sank towards the ground nearby.

"First kill, flight," she congratulated them. "Let's go get another one."

Zax Bilby was strapped into his pilot's seat in the cockpit of one of House Morten's attack helicopters as 38 others cruised over the treetops enroute to the fight breaking out to the southwest of Brinestorm. His orders were simple. Stay along the edges and snipe targets of opportunity with his missile launchers, but not to get in close and try to hit anything with his machine guns. The mechs needed as much additional firepower as possible, but VTOLs didn't carry the armor plating that aerospace fighters did, and they pretty much went down with a single shot from a mech laser.

His VTOL was better suited for anti-infantry missions and non-lethal support roles, but it had the firepower to smoke small tanks one on one, just not mechs. He'd gotten a long lecture before they'd boarded their craft while watching the bits and pieces of live footage they were getting from the front lines. Their VTOL commander, Colonel Tarney, had got to the point of yelling trying to impress on Zax and the others that one wrong move around that many mechs would end them in an instant. House Morten needed them alive and their craft intact, not more junk on the battlefield to clean up later. For this mission they were mobile missile turrets and nothing else. He didn't want anyone going off on their own trying to do more than that.

Some of the other guys' attack helicopters did have a small laser in the front, and there would probably be times when they were tempted to get in closer and use it. The Colonel was flat out ordering them not to. The battlefield was going to be chaotic enough that maneuvering their 4+ squadrons with enough room to evade as necessary was going to be a headache. Each 8 chopper squadron liked to keep close to each other so they could see out the side of their cockpits where they were and didn't have to rely on radar, but with as many dots on the screen to his lower left as there were now just from the helicopters, it already felt cramped, and they hadn't even caught up to the last of the mechs getting to the big melee fight ahead.

But they were moving much faster, which was why they had been held back to leave as the last combat troops heading towards the city. When Zax finally got close enough to see explosions of light and smoke on the horizon, his adrenaline started to spike even before the Colonel's voice came over his noise-dampening headset, for the choppers' rotors were so damn loud you couldn't hear a fucking thing without the ear protection.

"Steel Hornets," he said from a transport chopper trailing them that he was using as a mobile HQ rather than piloting one of the attack helicopters himself, "swing up around the north flank. Iron Hornets, northwest. Silver Hornets, west flank, and Gold Hornets…I want you to move as far south as you can then swing up around and try to hit some of them from behind coming from the southeast. Move it, or you'll be late. Don't get close enough for them to take any shots at you until you're in position."

"Let's move it, Goldies," Squadron leader Jason Tallo said, tilting his chopper to the right with the other 7, including Zax, following in turn. They became a long line of gray objects skirting across the horizon until they left the tree cover behind, then they looked like the Hornets that were their namesake, collecting into a closer packed group as they flew as fast as they could to get all the way around the perimeter of the nasty fight that was going down.

The Colonel was right. Mechs were down everywhere, from both sides, and if they didn't hurry opportunities would be lost to take some of the mercenaries out before they could do more damage to the Morten mechs.

They eventually got all the way behind the enemy lines, seeing some mechs fleeing to the far east. Tallo told them to ignore those…they weren't shooting the Morten mechs at the moment, and they needed to trim down the incoming firepower as much as they could, so they came up behind some of the larger mercenary mechs and targeted them from 800 meters out, which was the approximate range limit of the LRMs.

Zax combined his missiles with three of his squadronmates' on an 80 ton Zeus assault mech, while the other four targeted a 65 ton Thunderbolt. The Zeus kept firing forward, ignoring the attack helicopters, but the Thunderbolt did not. It spun around and launched a flight of LRM 15s at the choppers.

"Machine guns!" Tallo yelled, and as Zax saw the missiles heading for him or the chopper to his right, he pointed the pair of machine guns in the general direction and fired even as he drifted his chopper to the left at the last moment.

With 8 helicopters firing a total of 16 machine guns, they were able to hit 6 of the 15 missiles and knock them out, but the rest came in at their target…and Zax got hit by three of them.

Two hit the rotors and shredded them, but the third hit the right side of his chopper midway back and blew through the light armor plating enough to send shrapnel into the innards. It missed his cockpit, but his chopper fell from the sky and hard landed on its left side some 20 meters down.

Zax got slammed into the side of his padded pilot's chair enough that he could feel the metal frame underneath the padding on his shoulder…which broke, then the hull of the chopper continued to roll until it was upside down and he was hanging by his safety straps.

He wanted to swear, but his mouth was bloody and he was just having a hard time breathing. He smelled smoke, but couldn't see or feel any fire, but there was no way to raise the cockpit with the ground pinning it in place above his inverted head.

Once his head stopped ringing he released the straps and fell 'up' onto the reinforced glass that was an extra 4 inches thick in the Morten version of the attack helicopters. He could see through it fine out the front, but his sidearm wasn't going to be able to shoot through it and get him out. Fortunately the designers had prepared for this situation, because there was an emergency escape hatch in the floor that he got to work on. It wasn't as simple a matter as pulling a handle, but he eventually removed the clasps on it and jerked hard.

It didn't budge at first, then he took advantage of it being above him rather than below and hung from it, jerking his weight around until it finally pulled free. He grabbed a survival bag from a side compartment and started to climb out, burning his hand as soon as he placed it on the outside hull.

"Shit," he said, rubbing it on his pant leg again and again trying to get the pain to go away. When it did, he pulled on his pilot's gloves that he never wore when he needed a light feel on the joystick, then gingerly tried again. They held up against the heat long enough, so he climbed up, dragging his pack behind him, then stepped off the edge and dropped to the charred grass all around the chopper.

He was standing inside a ring of fire, for the crash had ignited the grass and it was spreading out around him. Zax let it get a bit further, coughing through the thin smoke in the center, then saw it die down in one spot and ran off through that gap, getting further away as more missiles were raining out of the other helicopters towards the mechs.

They had to be almost out by now, and would be heading back to the Estate to rearm and return, assuming there were any mechs left by that point to fire at.

His squadron ignored him on the ground, and that was for the best. Trying to climb in behind one of them in the cockpit was doable, but you had to be a contortionist, and he didn't feel like putting himself in a position to get shot down a second time when he couldn't be behind the stick, so he just started walking further to the south to find a gentle hillside to camp out on as he watched the battle taking place about a mile away.

He didn't want to be in their retreat path, for sure, but there was a line of damaged mechs heading back due east towards where their landing zone had been, so he didn't think there was any issue with him camping out here until it was over.

Zax sat down, and when he did his shoulder remembered that it was broken. How did he climb out with it this bad?

Maybe it was just torn rather than broken, but 'broken' felt like the right word. His head was also aching, probably a concussion, but his right arm was fine and he used it to start tearing into the survival pack and found some pain killer pills along with a bottle of water. He had to have the water, for he couldn't have swallowed them without it, and after he got two down he just sat there, with his body waking up to the damage more and more with each passing moment, as well over 300 mechs tore into each other ahead of him.

He sat there for a few minutes, then a bright light hit his eyes and his face got very hot. He twisted to the side, covering his eyes with his arm too late, and tried to blink away the laser glare.

"Stupid!" he cursed himself, then was overjoyed when he could vaguely see the ground beneath him…meaning his eyes hadn't been burnt out by the 'spit' from one of the mechs' lasers that had made it all the way out to his position.

It was then he realized he was still wearing his helmet. He hadn't even noticed it there, and the visor that came down to his nose had probably just saved his eyes. The rest of his face and neck…the only exposed skin on his fully suited body…felt like it had instantly got sunburnt, and the grass he sat on was smoking slightly. Cooked enough to sizzle but not quite enough to catch flame.

Zax grabbed up his pack and hobbled over the shallow hillside and lay down there, his eyes still overloaded and carrying an afterimage of red light. The grass, he could tell in his peripheral vision, was not scorched on this side…line of sight, after all…so as long as he lay down there and was below the crest of the shallow hill, he couldn't get hit again.

Unless a mech came this way and stepped on him, or an errant missile landed nearby.

Zax laid face down into the ground, keeping his helmet on, and just waited it out as his eyes slowly recovered. The Colonel would have scolded him for being stupid enough to sightsee this close to laser combat where every miss kept going until it hit something. He was just glad it had spread out enough, and ionized enough gas molecules enroute, not to fry him on the spot.

Bit by bit his vision slowly returned, and by the time the sound of combat was gone the glowing spot in his vision had reduced down to a much smaller dot, giving him back more and more vision.

He eventually crawled up the hill until his helmet poked over the top, trying to see who had won…and found a carpet of destroyed or partially destroyed mechs everywhere. The few that were still walking around were Morten ones, and while he had to tilt his eyes to the side in order to see forward, he noticed a lot more further to the east and heading that way.

He crawled back and pulled out the emergency radio in the pack, then started broadcasting an automated pickup call as he laid down, glad that the pain in his shoulder was diminishing rather than increasing, and just closed his eyes, suddenly very tired…but still seeing the light show even behind his shut lids