personal6

14

May 7, 2994

Morten Protectorate

Drymo

Oasis

Arne sat in his mech watching the dropships land a few kilometers away to the east of the spaceport, standing alongside Flynn Donegan in a matching Phoenix Hawk. Ahead of them was the line of heavy and assault mechs in the Company, all neatly in a row waiting for the Red Baron's forces to come to them. In the center was the assault lance, which meant mechs weighing 80-100 tons…which was a massive difference from his Phoenix Hawk's 45 tons…though technically it was down to 43 with all the rework that had been done to it.

The standard chassis had a Large laser in the right arm, Medium laser in both forearms, and machine guns in both arms fed by ammunition canisters in the chest. Those machine guns had been removed, as had the mech's jump jets and the fuel for those jump jets, which would have allowed the mech to hop some 180 meters…but he agreed with removing them here. There was no terrain to work with, and the mech was already faster than most at 97 kph, so it was definitely a runner and didn't need the jumping capability here.

Arne wasn't all that used to using them anyway, for his old Centurion wasn't designed for them. But this refit had, in addition to adding a face shield, removed the medium laser and hand from the left arm and put in something he'd never heard of before called a NARC. It wasn't a weapon at all, but an object that when launched would hit another mech and attach itself…unless it hit at a bad angle. He'd gotten practice out here doing just that to another mech with Flynn, for they'd both only gotten that part of the refit done 5 months ago, and none of the other mechwarriors knew where the damn thing had come from, for it wasn't in use in the Inner Sphere as far as any of them could remember.

But he knew what it did. That little piece of technological 'gum,' if stuck on a mech, would send out a homing signal that missiles would head towards even if they didn't have a radar lock. That wasn't such a big deal if your mech had missiles, but if your fellow mechs had them and you stuck a NARC on somebody else, they could all just hit a preset button and fire in that direction, with all the missiles converging on that mech until the NARC was destroyed in the blasts.

Arne had four rounds crammed into the left arm…because they were too big to be fed into it from the chest…and the chest cavity that used to hold the machine gun ammo was now mostly wasted except for two more heat sinks they'd stuck in, which would let his heat heavy lasers fire a bit more often without overcooking his mech.

The problem was, when doing refits, the holes other weapons were designed to be mounted in were a specific shape designed to that weapon. It wasn't modular. So if you were going to swap out an autocannon and put in a laser, all that laser's equipment had to fit in the cavity of the autocannon. So what usually happened in these swap outs was you lost tonnage and equipment by putting in smaller stuff that would fit, then bracing it up with struts to keep it secure. A round peg in a square hole didn't fill the whole hole, after all.

So his Phoenix Hawk still had its main Large laser, but the rest of its weaponry had been diminished considerably in exchange for this NARC. He and Flynn both had them, so 8 little beacons in total to be used to home in the missiles that would be firing, not from the other mechs, but from the towers.

Recon mechs were not supposed to stand toe to toe, he reminded himself, they were for utility work, but this was a whole different type of recon work than he'd ever known about before…and he'd have to get within 100 meters of the target mech in order to get the NARC on it. Which was far closer than he needed to be to hit with his Medium or Large laser. It was danger close, but that's why he'd been told they wanted them on the fastest mechs so they could scoot in and out during combat and attach the beacons.

Which meant Arne wasn't going to be doing much damage on his own, and that's why he was standing behind the line of mechs, almost as if the two medium Phoenix Hawks didn't even count in the coming battle.

All the mechs standing before him were refitted with less weaponry than they'd originally had except the Awesomes that were designed to be energy-only. Each of the assault mechs weighed 80 tons, carried 3 PPCs, a Small laser, and a battlefist on the left arm that was designed for punching mechs and destroying armor that way without damaging the hand too much. Other mechs with hands could do the same, but how long the hand would hold up was dependent on what you were punching. The battlefist was meant for fights at a range of 0 meters, while long range weapons like the PPCs and Large laser would get you out to the 500-600 meter range.

Most people would think that wasn't 'long' at all, and in truth you could still see the opposing mechs just fine to manually aim at them at that range. The truth about mech combat was it was a gruesome and personal affair, not the solitude of a sniper killing a man from two kilometers away with a slug rifle or high powered laser. Mechs carried such armor plating that the weapons designed to kill them had to be used up close. While you could build a laser the size of a house that could put a dot on a moon from the planet, there was no way you could get enough power there to do any damage.

And the only way a laser sniper rifle worked was if the person didn't have any armor on. Otherwise you'd have to use a slug rifle to get through it. Lasers fired in a straight line…in myth only. Take any civilian laser pointer, the type teachers like to use in class, and it looked precise, but shine it on a wall fifty meters away and the little dot would expand out so much you might not even be able to see it anymore.

Now try that with a mech's laser at 150 meters. The only way to get enough laser energy to destroy armor plating was to get a very concentrated amount into a small spot enough to not just heat it up, but to heat it up so much it couldn't bleed off into the rest of the armor fast enough, resulting in the target spot melting or, in extreme cases, exploding.

Spread out the same energy over 5 seconds instead of half a second, and the armor wouldn't be damaged. Just heated up, then it would cool on its own…or faster with heat sinks, which were just really high end air conditioners…and you'd end up with no damage. So the lasers, in order to damage armor, had to fire very fast with very large amounts of energy. Now try putting all that into a small box on a mech's arm and you suddenly started to see the limitations of laser weapons. You could accomplish the task at kilometers range, but you'd have to build a laser so big it was the size of a barn.

You could do that on warships, but not on mechs. So to try and cheat the physics, mech lasers were designed not like a flash light. You turn a flashlight on and the light spreads out in cone. Lasers were meant to be a straight line, but in truth it was just a narrower cone. Knowing you were going to lose concentrated damage with every meter the laser traveled, the engineers had decided to make an inverted cone…meaning most of the laser light would be aimed not straight forward, but in towards itself, making the beam shrink a little after it left the barrel.

This compensated for the natural spreading of light rays that didn't go exactly where they were supposed to, especially given that you had to create so many emitters within the barrel they couldn't just be at the far end. They had to be along the walls of the barrel and jammed in every which way you could get, then the reflective barrel would corral them all and send them in the approximate direction you wanted.

Get too many in there and the mirrors would melt, so it was always a game of 'how much can you fit' without blowing up or melting down the weapon. So when the laser energy left the end, it wasn't as neatly pointed as one could get with lower power lasers…such as the building sized one that could put a spot on a moon. It was more of a firehose, and that fire hose…with an adjustment to the barrel…concentrated the beams in on each other just enough that you could get a conduit of damage past the barrel end that was the same as when it came out the barrel.

Technically the highest point of concentration would be further out, but there was leakage immediately, so it was impossible to know the sweet spot for each weapon unless you did extensive testing. But in general, a Small laser could get you 150-200 meters of damage sufficient to destroy armor plating. Beyond that the laser would widen and just sand off a little armor on the surface rather than penetrate. Go further and it would just apply heat. This non-damage effect was called 'spit,' and while only generating heat on mechs, it could wound or kill infantry if they weren't wearing protection. It could also start fires in dry areas just as easily as a missile exploding and throwing out burning shrapnel.

Mech warfare was messy, and the lasers were no exception. The bigger the laser, the more equipment it required, but that more equipment also offered more destructive power and more range. The PPCs worked a bit differently, as they were actually charged particles, but they likewise had range limits and would typically fly apart more than lasers would past their range.

All of this meant the defenders were going to have to get within 600 meters, and in some cases within 300 meters, for their weaponry to be effective against other mechs. And the Awesomes held the longer versions of said weaponry, in addition to mounting a huge bulk of armor that could take a hell of a beating. Not as much as one of the nearby defense turrets, but a lot, which was why they were center in the formation and flanked by two Victors that had been stripped down of their normal autocannon, a beefy AC-20, as well as their Short Range Missiles. Their Medium lasers had stayed, and then been added to with a pair of Large lasers.

In short, the mechs had been neutered in the swap out, but the pair of Victors still retained their jump jets, which were rare for an assault mech. So the two hoppers were flanking the Awesomes and making an impressive wall of armor blocking the warlord from the mining colony.

To either side was a heavy Lance, with four Riflemans on the left, and a Lance of two Orions, a Crusader, and a Jagermech on the right. All had non-laser weapons removed and Medium or Large lasers put in…no Smalls. The Company had been designed so it could fire support each other, and even another 50-100 meters of range went a long way in that department.

It was a damn impressive Company. Far more weapon and armor heavy than anything Arne had ever fought with or against in his mercenary career. The question was, what was the Red Baron bringing to bear against them?

They had to wait a while to find out, for the Red Baron's forces didn't immediately come out of their dropships. They waited more than two hours just sitting there, perhaps hoping the mechs would come out to them and they'd get to use the weaponry on their dropships to soften them up. But House Morten wasn't stupid. If the Red Baron wanted this planet, the attackers would have to come to them and fight in range of the defense turrets.

Eventually that's what happened, and all four dropships opened up their ramps at the same time and mechs began pouring out, with Arne immediately starting to take count.

Three, four, five…he counted silently, tagging the heavies he saw and recognized. He knew of 6 that the Red Baron had, but then a mech he didn't recognize came out and he had to do a check on his battle computer. It said it was a 60-ton Quickdraw, which put it at the bottom end of the heavy range.

"Seven," he whispered, seeing the rare Catapult that Mark Denning piloted come walking out along with a huge number of medium mechs and what looked like a clown show as one of the dropships spilled out nothing but Wasps.

When everything was done, the dropships had been fully loaded. 12 mechs each, 48 in total…but some 27 of them were Wasps, and he knew why. The Red Baron's base of operations was a planet bigger than Cholis that he controlled, and on it was a mech factory that produced knockoff Wasps. They didn't have any licensing agreement, nor did they respect intellectual property rights out in the Periphery much. But at some point the designs had gotten out to someone with the money to build them, and the planet of Gregoria had been pumping them out for decades to all kinds of Periphery buyers, as well as some Inner Sphere types that wanted their purchases kept off the books.

And it was one of the major reasons the Red Baron was rich enough to field an army of this size, though it looked like he hadn't brought in any of his associates for this job. Only his own people, and that told Arne exactly what he was here for.

He was here for blood, and he didn't want anyone spilling it except him. This was payback for Cholis, pure and simple, and he wouldn't spoil it by bringing in a coalition of bandits, warlords, or other scum rats out here. This was going to be all him.

But he didn't have anywhere near the firepower to attack Cholis again. So he had apparently discovered Drymo and was throwing everything he had here, 48 mechs against the 14 defenders. And while Wasps weren't very big and weren't very well armed, all the little damage added up, and they could swarm a mech and take it down within 30 seconds if it got isolated out there.

Then last of all, coming down the ramp while the other mechs made a mess of what formations they were trying to get into, was the 100 ton Atlas assault mech. All of them had the Red Baron's symbol painted on them somewhere, but the Atlas had a huge version across the center looking like targeting cross hairs baiting his opponents to shoot him right in the chest…as if he'd just shrug off the damage with all that armor, and in most cases that's probably what would happen.

The Atlas carried autocannons that could knock a small to medium mech over with a single hit, and if his Phoenix Hawk took one of those, he'd either be badly damaged or dead. It was a beast of a war machine, but not very fast or maneuverable, and he knew what he needed to do even before the Company Commander laid it out for them then divvied up the comm channels to each Lance, with Arne having a private one with the other Phoenix Hawk. Commander Innit had them all keep the Company circuit open if he needed to use it, but otherwise he wanted silence so each Lance could talk to each other without having the noise from other people get in their way.

Arne also had options on his comm board to toggle any of the individual mechs out there to talk to them, and he likewise had his board set up so he'd immediately hear from any of them that wanted to talk to him without him having to respond to a blinking light. But unless someone needed to say something specific, it was just going to be him and Flynn…and they both were already headed different directions, as recon mechs should.

"I'm going for that Rifleman on the left," Flynn said as he walked his Phoenix Hawk a little further out behind their own Riflemans then stopped, almost hiding behind one of them. "How you doing?"

"I'm fine," he assured him. "I want to kill those bastards more than you do."

"Even though you know them?"

"Especially because I know them. And I know they're here not to take prisoners or cargo. They're here to make a point by killing us all. Probably the workers too since they know they can't keep the mines with reinforcements from Cholis one jump away."

"You really think this is supposed to be a slaughter?"

"I know it is. And I intend to kill as many of them first as I can. They're attacking us, right? That puts us on the moral high ground. They can turn and leave whenever they like."

"Damn straight. Don't step on any cockpits, but other than that, don't hold back."

"I wasn't planning to. Good luck, Flynn."

"Same to you, Arne. Remember, we gotta get in close to make these beepers stick."

"I know. I intend to," he said, walking his Phoenix Hawk off to the right and standing behind one of the Orions as the enemy finally started moving forward together, still kilometers away.

So they waited, standing and watching like statues, until the leading edge of the mediums and heavies got within 1200 meters. The Wasps were further up, but the turret gunners knew not to waste missiles on them at this range, so they waited for better targets then started launching the extra long missiles that had no extra explosives in them, only additional fuel to get the extra range.

Target locks were easy with the flat topography, and scores of missiles from the closest turret shot out, hammering a Centurion so hard it fell over backwards, causing a Shadow Hawk to stumble as it tried to keep from stepping on it.

But after they learned they were already in turret range, all the Red Baron's mechs increased to their maximum speed and charged forward, intent on closing the distance as fast as they could to their own missile range…except the Wasps and a trio of Phoenix Hawks. They didn't want to get out ahead of the others and get wasted, so they tucked it with the heavies while the Atlas got left in the back plodding along.

That was a mistake. They were already getting separated, and to his credit, Commander Innit didn't have the Company start charging towards them or stand still and wait.

He had them start ever so slowly walking backwards as the missiles began to rain down in both directions as the Red Baron mechs closed the gap and began firing their longest ranged weapons out near 800 meters distant.

Two defense turrets were now in range, and soon would be three if they kept backing up. The Awesomes started firing as soon as they could, along with the Victors, and the center Lance retreated the slowest, causing them to draw the leading fire rather than the heavies for a moment, then both heavy Lances stepped forward while the assault lance was still creeping backwards, creating a bowl shape that pinned some six mechs inside…and the 12 defenders all concentrated their fire on those six, ignoring the rest as the Wasp swarms ran through, around, and in between the larger mechs, pecking at them wherever they had an opportunity.

Arne and Flynn were gone by that point, both sprinting away from battle to the sides and trying to get the Wasps to follow…which they did. Arne had four on him, but he was just as fast as them, and he led them in a weaving path that brought them in close to a turret as he took some shots to the back. Missiles from that turret were going out to the bigger mechs, but the lasers and autocannons on it nailed one of the Wasps that was so focused on Arne that he probably didn't even realize the turret had the additional weapons.

The Wasp had its legs cut off at the waist as the autocannon blew through what the lasers had just damaged, and the torso of the Wasp rolled across the sandy ground a few times before coming to a stop.

The other Wasps immediately tried to turn and run, getting outside the turret range, but one more didn't make it, and now Arne was chasing the other two, putting his Large laser to work and popping one in the back as the main melee beyond was a fireworks show he did not want to get in the middle of.

He stuck on the tail of the Wasp until it got too close to that mess, then he turned and ran away again…with no Wasps taking the bait and following him.

But that was the wrong move for them, because he took off running sideways from the battle, then after nearly a kilometer he turned and headed east towards the enemy dropships. He wasn't stupid enough to go out to that death trap, but he was watching closely to see if any Wasps turned back to chase after him.

None of them did. Mechs were going down everywhere, including one of their own Orions. He saw the cockpit ejection just before it exploded in what must have been a reactor overload from damage. He watched as Jennings sailed up over the battle, nearly getting hit by friendly missiles from the turrets, then his shoot popped and he thankfully had the ability to steer with it. Most of the cheaper chutes did not, but House Morten didn't cut corners. He angled towards the edge of battle and hopefully would get clear, but Arne could only watch for so long as he got behind the enemy lines and turned left, running up to a direct position between the enemy mechs and the dropships.

Still nobody noticed him.

"NARC 1 is green," he heard Flynn say to the turret gunners. "Light it up."

Suddenly all the turrets in range…now three because the Morten Mechs were still slowly retreating into the edge of the spaceport…sent missiles to the same location, and nearly all of them hit…with an already damaged enemy Rifleman going down some 15 seconds later.

"My turn," he whispered, running his Phoenix Hawk up to maximum speed directly towards the trailing Atlas that still hadn't managed to get within weapons range yet…all due to its slow speed and the assault Lance's gradual retreat…which was already a tactical win for the defenders. The Red Baron was a warlord, not a strategic genius, and Arne hoped his full attention was on the battle ahead, for if he turned around and hit him, it was a 50/50 chance whether the Phoenix Hawk would survive to get out of weapons range again.

And he needed to get within 100 meters to fire the NARC.

He was running twice as fast as the Atlas, so he was able to close on it fairly quickly, but he had a problem. If he stuck the NARC on the back of the Atlas, all that bulk would shield the signal from getting to the turrets. They wouldn't be able to track it. So he either needed to put it on one of the arms or the front, and doing either would be suicide if the Atlas noticed him.

Then again, there was one more way…

Arne had his eyes glued to the steps of the biggest mech ever made in the Inner Sphere, trying to discern any movement change that might indicate it was going to turn around. It could torso swing only so far, and if it started to go one direction he was going to dance around it to the other side…but it was paying no attention to him whatsoever as it finally got up within firing range of one of the Victors and let loose.

The Victor shook from the massive impact, but it didn't fall…only pieces did, of armor and the front of its right arm, which had already been damaged. The Victor ignored the Atlas, instead continuing to combine fire with his Lance-mates to take out another medium mech…then a few seconds later they hammered another, and another, with the kill count going up fast. If they instead focused on the Atlas, it would soak up so much of the damage that the enemy would eat them up while they were distracted.

Every medium mech that went down meant the total weapons firing back at them decreased. Shoot the Atlas, and those weapons would stay the same number for a long time. Mathematically the Company Commander was doing the right thing, but it had to take some real balls to stand up to the Atlas's hammering and keep ignoring it.

But that let Arne sneak right up behind the Atlas and fire the NARC up at an angle. The Atlas was moving in a straight line towards the Victor, not dodging much, so when Arne got within 50 meters of it, sweating profusely from the strain of being so close to death, he had a fairly easy shot.

He stuck it on the back of the Atlas's head, and to whoever had designed the damn thing, it stuck the first time and held tight.

"NARC 5 is Green," he announced. "When you see it, light it up."

Arne pulled his Phoenix Hawk back to 150 meters behind the Atlas…then started firing into its right leg.

The Red Baron had a choice. Turn around to fight and kill him…which would spare the assault mechs the damage and keep them alive battering the rest of the enemy force even longer…or he could ignore Arne and just let him chip away at the leg.

But when the Red Baron saw the damage warnings from an impetuous little mech daring to get up that close behind him, Arne knew what he'd do.

The Atlas stopped moving forward, coming to a halt, then shuffled its feet as it spun around to the right. Arne immediately started running left, making the turn take longer as three Wasps hit him from the side. He ignored them and took off sprinting as fast as his mechanical legs would go, increasing the range and hoping to get outside the autocannon's effective targeting before he was smoked.

And since the Wasps were there, he decided to run in amongst them.

One of them exploded as the Atlas missed him and shot one of its own…but then all the missiles that had to be held back to avoid friendly fire in the mech melee now had a solid targeting lock on the NARC beacon as the Atlas's head was pointed a different direction. The turrets fired the missiles up rather than out, with a huge parabolic arc to avoid the friendly mechs and not so friendly ones that were not their target.

Three towers combined their missile fire and it rained down on the Atlas's head and upper torso, pummeling it so hard the Red Baron forgot about Arne long enough for him to get away.

But the NARC was also destroyed in the blasts and the missiles stopped coming. Arne waited until the Atlas turned its attention back to the Victor it had been working on before…which was when Arne went right back in, ignoring his yellow armor indicators as another Wasp clung to his backside like a tick and chewed away at him.

He went right back up behind the Atlas and put another one on the mech's head, this time daring to do so from the side, but the Victor held the Red Baron's attention too much, and the NARC shot out and stuck like a mechanical ear on the side of the head, giving two of the turrets a signal to track while the third was blocked by the head itself.

"NARC 6 is green, light it up," he said, which was necessary in case he accidentally tagged a friendly mech. He had no way to deactivate the NARC once it was launched, so the communication was necessary to clear the turrets to launch.

Another, smaller wave came in and piled up damage to the top of the Atlas again, but this time the plates didn't hold and some of the missiles got through.

The Atlas stopped firing and ground to a halt. A silent statue for what seemed like forever…then it gradually lost balance as the neurohelmet that had been stabilizing the movements was no longer there, and the big monster toppled over in slow motion and smashed face forward into the sand with such force it kicked up a cloud that held the other mechs.

"Eat that ass hole," Arne said, seeing his back armor turn to red as he pivoted around and took aim at the Wasp glued to his butt. Two good shots into it and it ran off…and good riddance. He wasn't going to chase it. He had two more NARCs to use if he could find something out there to hit…

Half the mechs were down on the ground, and as he heard Flynn call out another NARC on the Catapult, only one missile launcher responded with a few salvos then went silent.

They were out of missiles.

A waypoint lit up from the Commander, indicating that the mechs should fall back around the nearest turret…which still had lasers and autocannons…and make the enemy mechs fight it as well. Arne stayed behind the enemy lines, trying to shoot the remaining heavies in the back enough to get them to turn and chase him…which worked sometimes and he drew them a hundred or so meters away before they gave up and turned back.

Each time he did that he saved his fellow mechs from a few big salvos, but he didn't know if it was going to be enough. One of the Awesomes and the Victor that had been hit by the Atlas were now down, and the other two looked like crap. Arne had to keep bouncing around the perimeter and distracting or adding fire where he could. His remaining NARC's were useless unless the battle got near one of the further turrets that still had missiles.

He waited for that opportunity, knowing the other turrets also had some of the long range missiles in them. He chose a Centurion…identical to his old ride…that strayed a little too far, and tagged it on the right arm with another NARC.

30 seconds later it was on the ground in pieces thanks to a fresh salvo from the new turret.

He never got a chance to use his last one, for the enemy refused to drift any further, and the Wasp hoard decided to take on the single turret the Morten Mechs were gathered around. They chipped away at it like a swarm of termites as it swatted them down one at a time.

Arne could not believe how stupid a move that was. They should have gone after the mechs and ignored the tower, but apparently they couldn't handle such a big, immobile target firing at them…and what were probably a lot of inexperienced mech pilots grabbed from who knows where and shoved into production models sitting at the factory, chose the easy to hit target rather than the important ones.

Arne let them roast the tower slowly, which did eventually go down, as he helped the remaining heavies and one Awesome continue to chew up the mediums that were left. All of the Red Baron's heavies were down, but none of the mechs…aside from a pair of surviving Javelins that had run out of missiles and had to go back to the dropships to rearm…were retreating. They were standing toe to toe and slugging it out with the superior tonnage of the Morten mechs, all of which were damaged at this point, against some mediums that hadn't taken a hit yet.

Arne wished he had more weapons on his Phoenix Hawk, but the NARC had been worth it to take down the Red Baron and the biggest mech threat out here, but things did not look good as he saw Commander Innit use his Victor's jump jets to launch his one-armed mech into the air and come down on top of an undamaged Griffin that, like all the other Red Baron mechs, was out of missiles. Most autocannons were likewise running low or empty, and while the Morten mechs that were still in the fight had lost limbs and some of their weapons, the lasers and PPCs didn't have an ammo limit.

This was by far the longest toe to toe battle Arne had ever been in, and it was beginning to take its toll on the enemy weapons. Even the Wasps were running out of SRMs, having wasted it on the turret that they finally managed to take down without an explosive finale, but as the Victor landed on and crushed the Griffin, its legs broke off and the Commander ejected at the last moment, sailing up into the air as a nearby Centurion tried to shoot him out of the sky as he began parachuting down.

Arne immediately ran over to and engaged that Centurion, making him choose…that's what recon mechs were designed to do a lot of…between the unarmed mechwarrior and the armed Phoenix Hawk. The Centurion did the only sensible thing and turned to fight Arne…who fortunately had most of his forward armor intact. It was his rear armor that was shot to hell.

If he ran by him he'd expose that armor, which meant this time he had to stand and fight it out, but he could still move sideways and torso twist faster than the Centurion could, and that allowed him to dance back and forth, making the other mechwarrior miss shots he normally would have hit, while Arne landed everything as the Centurion just stood in place and pivoted.

Another rookie mistake that he made him pay for with his life a few minutes later.

When he finally finished with the Centurion, he was breathing so hard from both the heat and the stress, that he had to force himself to rotate around and scan the battlefield. He'd taken several shots to the face shield, enough to crack it, and now he could see daylight out his cockpit just above the hanging vid screen in front of him…which still worked, meaning there was at least one camera on the exterior that hadn't been destroyed…but a penetration of that thick armor plate, had it been delivered to the canopy only…would have killed him.

The stupid face shield that made you feel like you were fighting inside a box, had already saved his life.

Chalk another one up to House Morten superior tactics.

He looked around, seeing only a few mechs still on their feet. The rest were strewn across what looked like a carpet of parts with Flynn's Phoenix Hawk engaging 6 of the Wasps alongside a Rifleman that was so full of holes he didn't know how it was still in the fight, but it still had at least one Large laser operating, and when it hit a Wasp and punched through to the reactor, blowing it up and knocking another Wasp out that was beside it, the last four decided they'd had enough and turned to run…one of which was limping so bad it didn't make its getaway, and Flynn ran it down and finished it.

Arne wanted to chase the other three, but he saw in the distance the pair of Javelins coming back again. They were armed only with missiles, but that wasn't a fight he was going to take on alone, so he let them go, staring out across the distance to see what they would do and ready to head towards one of the intact turrets for cover.

But when the three Wasps caught up to them, the five light mechs simply headed back to one of the dropships as the other three vessels immediately took off. The last Wasp was barely up the ramp before it started to close, then that Union launched with such a hurry he knew the crews didn't want to be anywhere near this system when help finally arrived…though it would probably be a month or two before anyone back on Cholis was informed of what had happened here.

Arne sighed, long and heavy, as his heat sinks gradually brought down the mech's internal temperature, including the cockpit, as he sat drenched in sweat far more than any simulator run he'd been doing. He reached down to a small compartment near the floor and pulled out an insulated container with two water bottles in it, finding them hot to the touch but not scalding despite the insulation.

He opened and downed one before he could even think about it, then held off on the second as he walked his mech around the graveyard, knowing that some mechs, while down, were not always out of the fight and could shoot you from a prone position. He had far more experience in actual combat than any of the original Morten guys, and he wasn't going to get sloppy here as he scanned all the carcasses for heat signatures that would indicate an active fusion drive…and did find a few that were still operational…but the mechwarriors piloting them had already split.

And now that those mechwarriors didn't have a ride home, they were walking out into the clear amongst the rubble with their hands raised here and there as he saw some of his own people moving around as well. He studied them closely, knowing that some might be carrying pistols that could kill one of his own pilots, but nobody seemed to be interested in fighting any longer.

"Arne?" Flynn's voice broke through after a long period of silence.

"Still here."

"I just found the Commander's body. He ejected, but he didn't survive the landing."

"Damn," Arne whispered. "I've seen three of our guys out here. We need a vehicle to come pick them up before they dehydrate. Same with the enemy pilots," he said, refusing to call them mechwarriors.

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Not just step on them right now," Flynn said in a tortured voice.

"If House Morten did that, somebody would have stepped on me and I wouldn't be here," he said gravely. "Just push the thought aside and stick with the job at hand."

"There's no more mechs to fight."

"The job now is recovery of our people, and then the enemy. Our guys first. Wes?" he said, hitting another switch on his comm board for the Rifleman.

"His comms out. I already tried. Will you take command?"

"I guess I should then."

"Give me an order before I do something I shouldn't do," Flynn pleaded.

"Get over to the dead turret and see if you can spot anyone that needs peeled out. I hope they're all safely in the tunnel, but check anyway."

"Going now," Flynn said, coming within 5 meters of one of the enemy pilots with his hands raised…and to his credit, he didn't step on him. After that he was beyond any of them and the temptation to do so.

Arne adjusted his comm to the spaceport control center.

"This Arne Keev, acting field commander of the mech Company," he said slowly. "I need someone to get recovery vehicles and breath masks out here immediately for our people, and another set with security to pick up the enemy prisoners."

"Is the battlefield secure?" the person on the line asked.

"It's secure. Hurry before we lose any more of them."

"On it. But we could use some help locating them out there."

"I can direct the vehicles, just get them out here now," he said angrily, knowing how this dry air messed with a person's lungs, and these people were going to be dehydrated anyway from the cockpit heat.

It was only a matter of seconds after he bit out that last word that he saw a hovercraft dart out of one of the spaceport buildings and race towards the battlefield. It took a lot more time for three more to come out, meaning someone in there had been on the ball before he had called, but the rest hadn't been. Arne didn't have a comm channel for that specific vehicle, so he just used a broad comm and made contact, directing them towards their own mechwarriors.

Unfortunately he didn't need more than one vehicle for them. Only 5 were still alive. The other 6 either died in their mechs or didn't survive the ejection process. And two of the living ones were in bad condition, both with broken legs from hard landings.

Nobody had been able to crawl out of the downed mechs, and Arne had went around checking what was left of the cockpits to make sure no one was trapped inside.

He let the search teams do the same for the enemy mechs after the hand raising prisoners were assembled, cuffed, and put into breath masks. After that he walked his Phoenix Hawk back to the mech bay and into its niche, letting the techs get to work on the massive amount of damage it had taken, though it was nothing compared to the Rifleman that had already come back and was standing off to the right, weighing probably half of what it had at the start of the battle.

When Arne climbed out of the cockpit there was a group of techs waiting for him, and all of them took up a cheer. He frowned. How could they cheer when they'd lost so many of their own?

But they didn't stop for a long time. Not until he'd gotten out to them and they'd been able to shake his hand and pat him on the back, with several of them thanking him for saving the colony and their own lives. He didn't feel like a hero, but they were treating him like one. He felt like a survivor after a lost battle, though they had stopped the Red Baron's forces and retained possession of the planet, protected all these people, but the mech Company had been destroyed and half their people were dead.

"Back to work," a voice yelled, and the techs, still all smiles, eagerly got to work on his damaged Phoenix Hawk.

Arne turned to see Wes standing there, already dressed in different clothes with a bandage on his head. He saw him looking at it and glanced upwards appropriately.

"Face shield doesn't provide perfect protection," he noted, far more chipper than Arne felt. "Well done out there. I saw the NARC you stuck on the Atlas. That saved us, I think."

"Half of us are still dead," he argued lightly, but without any anger at Wes.

"7000 of us are alive because of us," he countered. "We're mechwarriors. This is part of the job, and when we're the defenders we don't get to choose the battle. And nobody attacks an opponent with less mechs than they think are necessary to win. I knew this was going to be bad as soon as they came into the system. The most important thing is we won. We just lost some at the same time. Don't focus all your concentration on one of those two things."

"I've never fought beside mechwarriors that I cared about losing before. They were all mostly dicks."

"This was going to happen regardless of whether we fought back or not. Because we did, we minimized it. I think they underestimated the turrets. Probably didn't have good intel on how beefy we made them. Maybe they didn't even realize they were here. But they knew how many mechs we had, I can guarantee that. They thought they had us, but we proved the slightly better. The techs don't understand, so I don't begrudge their victory celebration. Just make sure you don't dwell too much on the reverse."

"If this is what a righteous fight feels like, I'm not so sure I like it. Our guys didn't deserve to die."

"You'll feel differently in a few days once it soaks in."

"Have you been through this before?"

Wes nodded. "I did a couple years in the Neubenn mercenary unit. We were hired out to planets that needed help and expected a fight. This makes my fourth battle, and by far the largest. In my second we lost two guys, and I was in a funk for days afterward, but once it passed I could look at what we'd saved and realize that if we hadn't been there at that time, things far more horrific would have occurred, and the same is true now. Look at them."

Arne turned to glance at the techs.

"If we'd lost, they'd be dead or enslaved. Or would the Red Baron have ignored them?"

"No, he was here for blood," Arne said, feeling the first slivers of what he guessed was righteousness seeping into his mind…though the darkness seemed to have to be pried open to let it through in Wes's words.

"Every one of our fellow Company mates lost is a defeat, but every life that we saved is a victory. We've got 7,000 or so victories here, not even counting all the equipment and material we saved. People think defenders have it easy…we don't, unless people attack stupidly without preparing for it, or unless they have a death wish. Attackers have it far easier. We don't get a lot of action, but when we do, it's the big, heavy fights that we're supposed to lose. Every time we hold it's an upset. This was an upset today."

"We should have lost," Arne agreed. "They fought stupidly."

"If fighting in a mech was easy, everyone could do it. It takes a lot more skill than people think…and those Wasp pilots were as green as you can get. I'm going to let my emotions settle for a few days before speaking with them, but I'm interested in seeing who they are and where they came from."

"The Red Baron has a Wasp factory," Arne said, no longer feeling indebted to secrecy after what had happened…plus the Red Baron was dead. "I'm guessing he just grabbed people and stuffed them in the cockpits for this attack. I think that's every mech he had in his possession."

Wes nodded appreciatively. "So there's nothing left for his subordinates to take over?"

"Just more Wasps coming off the assembly line. Nothing to hit us with again unless other bandits want to join together with them…and they won't. This will scare them off once word spreads. They like to hit soft targets," he said as Flynn was walking over towards them, already changed as well, but with no bandages.

"Commander," he said, looking at Arne, who shrugged at Wes.

"Your comm was down."

"Fine with me," Wes said. "But I don't think we've got anything more to do until a relief Company gets here, and we have to send word back on the next dropship to get that. We'll be lucky if any of those mechs out there are salvageable enough to get back up and running before then, so I think we're mostly going to be lounge lizards until we get back to Cholis."

"You think they'll call us back?"

Wes nodded. "Back to heal, reset, and retool. Standard procedure."

"Even me?"

"Why not?"

"They didn't rotate me out before."

"Well, you're going back regardless. The unit is going back, and you're part of the unit. End of story."

"Technically I'm attached to the Company, not part of it."

"You are after today," Wes said firmly. "Plus Lord Vander is going to want all of us back so he can debrief us. Do you like it here or something?"

"I was getting used to it, but Cholis is a lot nicer."

"They won't leave us here. They know we just took a huge hit and they'll cycle us all back to get reassigned to other units as needed. This mission is over unless the Red Baron's people try anything else."

"They're as good as gone," Arne promised.

"Then you need to get a shower," he said, avoiding wrinkling his nose at what he too must have just smelled like. "Then we'll meet you at the pub with the other guys that survived so we can talk this through and see if we can learn anything from it."

"That's also a tradition," Flynn noted.

"I know," Arne reminded him, for they had the same tradition after Lance exercises in the simulators.

"We'll have coffee waiting for you," Wes said, excusing himself and Flynn.

Arne stood there for a moment, watching the techs working on all three mechs across the very empty bay. A bay that would have been swarming with the Red Baron's people gunning down everyone in sight if they hadn't defeated them.

All these people, all this equipment, he thought to himself as he was kind of able to feel the results of the battle. Not stuff stolen, but stuff saved. People saved.

He glanced around, seeing no one watching him, and just stared out at the cavernous mech bay for several minutes soaking it in…and every minute that passed by he felt more like a victor.

"Righteousness," he finally pronounced. "I could get used to this."