Sven’s Rifleman faltered under the barrage of fire for a few moments, allowing Bjorn and Jake to overtake him and take on the Summoner. Concentrated fire from the rest of Bjorn’s team confused the machine, which started to back up away from the fast approaching lance. The other mechs in the column also began to maneuver in response to the attack, turning towards the rear of the column and firing indiscriminately at the team. After losing it’s right arm carrying the PPC to Jake’s pulse lasers, the Summoner took a head shot from Ariel’s gauss rifle. It managed to pump two shots from the LB-10X Autocannon into Bjorn’s mid section before it’s knees buckled, causing the machine to drop and crash down onto the turf on it’s right side.
“Two down! Concentrate fire on Echo-3!” Bjorn yelled into the microphone.
Bjorn continued the motion of the lance around the end of the column and up the far side. Ariel found herself blocked from firing at Echo-3 by the rest of her team and selected the nearest mech on the opposite side of the column, which was firing at Bjorn in the middle of the lance. Ariel pumped several gauss rifle slugs into the Uziel before it reacted and turned to fire back at her. It fired all four medium pulse lasers into her upper torso, causing a blast of heat to flood the cockpit of her mech out of the environmental system vents and taking her breath away. Her view screen whited out, temporarily blinding her forward vision and preventing her from firing.
“Dang, this is some simulation.” she muttered wiping the perspiration off her forehead.
Tarra could see her faltering and called out, “Keep moving, girlfriend. You’re a dead duck if you keep standing still and fall behind.”
Ariel slammed the pedal down and accelerated forwards and to the right of her team, taking her mech off to the right and partly out of the fight. She had to get her head back on straight so she could get her bearings.
“Three down! Switch to Echo-6 and 7!”
Bjorn and the rest of the lance continued their sweep up the right side of the column taking on two of the three lead mechs next. Dan and Zane were in seventh heaven, firing volley after volley at close range into the legs of the nearest lead mech. The enemy mechs were largely ignoring the two tanks and shooting over the top of them and their own convoy, which was a big mistake. The Stormcrow was already limping severely from the damage, making it easy for Bjorn and Sven to target the weapon mounts on the arms, stripping it of it’s ability to fight back. The team made short work of the Stormcrow and pounded the lead Victor mech on it’s right side, it had turned slightly to the left to maintain it’s target lock on Jake, who had just passed it by.
“Break right!” Bjorn ordered as Jake took an AC-20 shotgun to the back from the Victor. Bjorn wheeled the lance to the right and away from the enemy column. The three remaining enemy mechs had to stop pursuit, since all three were basically blocked by the still advancing column of trucks in the convoy. That gave the team a chance to move further away from the defenders and regroup. Wheeling the lance to the right, Bjorn took his team back down the same side of the column towards the middle.
“Engage the Uziel! Concentrate fire on Echo-5!”
“Gladly.” Ariel grumbled under her breath and began pumping gauss rifle slugs into it’s chest. It had shot Bjorn one too many times and had her a bit angry.
The wheeling maneuver caused the enemy mechs to lose target locks temporarily as their individual targets crisscrossed in front of each other in a confusing mess. One of the enemy mechs switched targets and began firing at Dan in the Demolisher tank, since he and Zane were on the inside of the wheeling maneuver giving him a taste of the simulation. Dan’s tank jerked and rocked, banging his helmet into the targeting scanner.
“Holy @#$%^, that felt like he actually hit me! Am I still in one piece?”
“It’s just the simulation, we’ve all been getting pounded. Focus on dropping Echo-5!”
Sven was taking too much damage from the other two lead mechs and backed off to the rear of the group placing Sven back in the front. Echo-5, the Uziel, finally started to go down after getting hammered repeatedly by the entire lance. He had done some damage to Hai and hit Dan and Zane a few more times before erupting in a column of smoke as the reactor coolant lines ruptured causing a reactor melt down. The Uziel exploded as the reactor went super critical, taking out two convoy vehicles with it, a truck and one of the artillery pieces.
The lead Victor heavy mech was sidling up to the other remaining combatant, a medium sized Black Hawk, which was having trouble targeting anything due to all of the damage to it’s legs from Dan and Zane’s tanks. It was overheating badly, since a number of it’s heat sinks in the center body were damaged. With all the lasers it carried, heat was it’s biggest vulnerability. It didn’t take long for Bjorn’s lance to finish off the two remaining enemy mechs, not with the odds whittled down to seven on two. The Victor was the most difficult, due to it’s heavy armor.
Once all of the enemy combatants were subdued, the simulation concluded and the computer generated machines vanished. A seriously complicated set of statistics were presented on the displays in each mech, letting each pilot evaluate the efficiency of their run, but the team was more confused than aided by all of the numbers.
“Holy cow, what does all of this crap mean? I thought we did pretty good.” Jake commented.
“Yah, but you wouldn’t know it from all of these numbers. I can’t tell heads or tails from all of this junk.” Dan agreed whole heartedly.
“It’s simple,” Hai added in. “Each performance category is giving you a rating from 1 to 100 percent on each of your piloting skills compared to a baseline of 50. Average would be a rating of 50, excellent would be anything over 60, and 80 or above would be a stellar performance.” Hai explained as a matter of fact. “Areas you need to improve on are ones where you got scored below a 40. I need to improve on my maneuvering, but my shot accuracy is a LOT higher than the norm. Take that, you stinking Clanners!”
“Oh…” Zane commented glumly. “In that case, my defensive maneuvering stinks. I got really high marks on targeting efficiency, though.” he said, brightening up. “It’s hard to miss with a double barreled shotgun at point blank range.” chuckling at the memory of watching the armor shred each time he pumped another twenty round salvo into the enemy mech’s legs and torso. “Seeing that Victor finally go down was sweet! What’s next? Load up another one and let’s get it going, that was Rad! Screw the numbers, we shredded those guys!”
Ariel was silent, calmly looking over the numbers on her screen. Her accuracy was pretty low overall. She liked long distance sniping, not this close range slug fest crap. Her numbers on defensive maneuvering were pretty good, but she knew she hadn’t been as much help in taking out the enemy mechs as any of the rest of the team. Part of it was the low attack rating of her mech, which had only a fraction of the firepower of the larger machines. Even considering that, she wasn’t convinced she would have done much better in a larger machine. A timid pilot just wasn’t that effective in a fist fight. She didn’t have the killer instinct the guys seemed to thrive on. Even Hai seemed to be pretty pumped up after the exercise in comparison.
“I’ve had enough, guys, I’m heading back in. This is a lot more intense than I thought it would be. You guys have fun and I’ll see you later. I think I’d be more help in the Command Center.”
“Roger.” Bjorn answered back. “I wasn’t sure you’d like this either. We’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“Command, I’m switching over to channel two. I don’t want to distract the guys while they work.” She pressed the number two button on the communications console and deselected number one. “Hey girlfriend, got your ears on?”
Ariel turned her mech and headed back through the deep carpet of pampas grass. The green and yellow tipped grasses were swaying lightly in the breeze as she walked the machine back towards the tunnel entrance. The silence was nice, now that she had turned off the riotous noises of the mock battlefield. Sighing, Ari
el reached into her pocket and turned on her zipPhone to listen to some light music. That would calm her nerves.
Tarra finally answered back, “Hey there girlfriend, you look hot and tired. Why don’t you stroll back in and I’ll have a nice cold lemonade ready for you.”
“Oooooh, that sounds good.” Ariel purred. “The air conditioner in this thing stinks. When the weapons cut loose heat pours into this cockpit like crazy. I don’t know how the guys can stand it. This cooling vest is a joke too. All it does is make me WISH I had some cool air in here.”
“Well, you’ll be back home in a few, then we can talk about something fun! This battle talk is too intense. I could barely keep up what was going on out there.”
“Yah, I noticed you were pretty quiet the whole time.”
“So, what did you think of Bjorn? He’s a pretty sharp commander, huh?”
“Ooooh, boy is he ever! He’s soooo sexy when he’s in charge and giving orders like that. Jake looked pretty good too, huh.”
“You’re not kidding! He looks so confident up on the screen in here. He’s even sexy when he’s all hot and sweaty. I can’t wait until we settle down tonight after dinner for a movie.”
“That sounds good. I’ll see you in a few, then we can go pick out a good movie for tonight.”
“Ok. I’d better check back in on the battle and see how the guys are doing. We’ll talk in a minute.”
“Roger. See you in a few.” Ariel signed off. She was nearing the edge of the grasses and moving onto the sand and rocks where the footing was less sure. The mechs were pretty good at maneuvering, but you could make your ride a lot smoother and less treacherous by avoiding the big rocks. It was pretty hard to tip the machine over, but it was possible if you were careless. Ariel slowed down and paid more attention to where her mech was stepping, as she proceeded in towards the tunnel entrance.
Chapter 17 “Calm Before The Storm” –––––––––––––
Bjorn and his crew were in the middle of another training exercise, an attack run on a lance of mechs cornered in a narrow canyon. It was not going well. Due to the tight quarters the team was not able to gang up on the enemy mechs like they had in the last few exercises. This match was more one on one, and the guys were taking a lot more damage than they were comfortable with. Dan and Zane’s tanks had been taken out early in the skirmish when they dove in too close too soon. They had gone head to head with the much larger mechs and lost. Their machines had shut down near the entrance to the canyon and hadn’t been able to move since.
At the Wayfarer Central Communications Complex, Lieutenant Nelson was back on duty. His technician had called up to his desk with an alert. Reading the message on his screen, “Training exercise underway, Sticks Base. Six units are on maneuvers near the base. Attempting to pull up a visual off the satellite as requested.”
“Hmmm,” Lieutenant Nelson pondered. “I wonder what the units consist of. Hey Chief? Send me a copy of the photograph when you get it off the satellite.”
“Yes Sir, it’s coming in now. Check your inbox.”
“Let’s see… We need to check and make sure the units aren’t the pirates, just for good measure.”
“Sir, I see a Mad Cat II, a Rifleman, and a Vulture. Off to the side I see two Demolisher tanks and what’s that smaller mech?”
“It’s a Chimera. The pirates have a Vulture, but that’s the only one that matches. Judging from the markings which I don’t recognize, I’d say this is a Guard lance. Check on UV and see if there are any marker tags on the top of the mechs.”
“Yes Sir. Running an Ultra Violet scan now.”
“And?”
“Uhhhm. Yes, the machines are tagged… It will take a minute for the computer to analyze the tags and give us ID’s out of the database.”
“The tags are… not Local Guard. The tags are classified, Sir.”
“Classified? As what?”
“I’m not sure. It looks like the same type of classification we got a few years ago when the Lahti Ghost Recon team was on Wayfarer.”
“Shut it down, quick!”
“What?”
“Shut down the query now!”
“Yes Sir. Sorry Sir. It’s shut down.”
“@#%%^$! That’s all we need, Ghost Recon breathing down our necks again. Damn.”
“Put a note in the file so no one does that again, no UV tag scans of Sticks Base. Got it?”
“Yes Sir. Log entry made.”
“I just hope those tags aren’t flagged. Our database query could end up getting us audited, or worse. Last time we scanned their units we had an Admiral in here yelling at us for three days.”
“No wonder they’re out in the middle of nowhere, Sir. They really don’t want to be monitored.”
“Roger that. I’m just glad they’re on our side. Now maybe we’ll get some results, those pirates don’t stand a chance if Ghost Recon is involved. I should have known something was up when they talked to the space station that first time.”
“They aren’t being all that careful, though Sir. I’ve got ID’s on about a half dozen zipPhones they’ve carried into the base.”
“Hmmm. Well, just keep them in the file, they might come in handy. Carry on, Chief.”
“Yes Sir. Should I label the units as Ghost Recon, Sir?” the Chief stated hiding his grin behind his monitor.
“No! Absolutely not! Forget you ever heard me say that. It’s only speculation anyway, got it?” Lieutenant Nelson glared at the Chief’s eyes over the top of his monitor.
“Yes Sir. I got it.” Then he busted out laughing. Lieutenant Nelson was not amused.
At the end of the exercise the team was pretty beat up. The only ones left standing were Bjorn and Hai. Everyone else had been taken out by the enemy mechs during the exercise. Bjorn closed the exercise and looked at the data on their run.
“Sorry guys, we played that one wrong right from the start.” Bjorn was glum and sweat was running down his brow. Everyone else was silent for the moment.
“That stunk.” Dan interjected after a minute or two.
Sven had an idea. “Maybe we should have driven them into the canyon, then gone up on the ridge and shot down on them instead. That way we could have used the ridge to keep us hull down, no way for them to get a clear shot at us behind the rocks.”
Zane piped in, “Oh yah! I like that! I hate getting pounded. We could leave one or two mechs down at the entrance to keep ‘em bottled up, then the rest of us could hike up the ridge and pop ‘em from up top.”
“Ok, sounds good. We’ll try that next time.” Bjorn closed out the exercise Training Mode and called up Ariel on his comms. “Hey beautiful, what do you think? Should we come in now?”
“Sure! Tarra and I have a movie all picked out, it’s called “Kelly’s Heroes”. It’s an ancient movie about a tank commander on Earth in World War II. We thought you might like an old mech movie just for fun.”
“All Right!” Dan and Zane faked a high five on the comms screens. “Radical!”
“See you in a few.” Bjorn turned his mech around and led the way back out of the box canyon and headed south. The ‘dead’ machines came back to life as the exercise closed, allowing the rest of the team to follow. The light level was dropping as the sun drifted towards the horizon, but Ceazar shone bright in the opposite horizon of the sky overhead. The thin streaked clouds reflected a golden hue as the rays of the sun lit them from below. It would be a beautiful night on Wayfarer, more of an extended ten hour sunset than night time. As the light dimmed, the night vision highlighting crept into the view screens, outlining all of the rocks and tree trunks on the screen. The system was smart enough to tell what was a rock and what was a plant, the rocks were outlined in gray, the solid tree trunks were brown in color. Friendly mechs were outlined in green, the tanks were yellow, and enemy mechs were red. Unknown combatants were orange. The tunnel entrance and bay doors were blue.
Bjorn
lead his team down the ravine along side the stream and past the trees he and Jake had pulled up to allow them to enter the tunnels. Jake noticed the dead trees in a pile, “We need to move that trash out of the way, it looks too much like someone has been in here on purpose.” Putting the foot of his Vulture under a few of the trees, Jake kicked and propelled the dead trees up the hillside. They spread out in the air and landed in a random pattern. A few more kicks and all of the trees were scattered. “There that’s better.” Jake commented, and followed his team down the ravine and into the dark tunnel entrance.
The steps of the mechs echoed in the river tunnel. Every now and then Jake saw bats exiting the tunnel entrance and wondered what the tunnel was like in the opposite direction further to the south. The path looked mostly clear like it did to the north towards the base. “Hey guys, we need to explore some more of the tunnels, especially further south. We’ve never gone down that way. What if there’s more to the base than just the part we’ve found so far?”
“We haven’t explored the geode cave we found with the drone either.” Sven added. “We really need to get that Panther scout mech up and running, it’s the only one that has arms and grippers so we can move rocks and stuff out of the way.”
“That sounds like a fun expedition!” Zane was all for that idea. “Now that we have most of the mechs ready for action maybe we can focus on something else for a change. Did you bring the drone along Sven?”
“Nope, it’s back at the ranch. I’ll try to remember to bring it next time.” He stated as he entered the mech hanger bay.
“What’s for dinner? I’m hungry.” Dan’s stomach was rumbling as he backed his Demolisher tank into the repair bay at the far end of the hanger.
The Styx Strikers Page 20