Dropship Nile, Drop Zone Alpha,

Einstein, Deep Periphery,

2^nd March 3068

 

Inside the sickbay of the Nile, as Frank was talking about his war experiences to his friends, a great deal of his attention was also fixated on the analysis of the soil samples he had collected. After finishing his story, he had spent two hours doing his analysis, using a microscope to check out the bacteria present. The other two mercenaries simply sprawled themselves on the most comfortable spots, the sickbeds.

“Wait a minute, this cannot be right!” Frank exclaimed suddenly, veering back away from the light microscope he had been using.

“The other two mechwarriors, who had been grabbing a quick nap on the comfortable beds in the sickbay, woke up upon his loud comment.

“What happened? Is there an attack? What!” Kily was waving his hands around wildly, frantic at the thought of being stuck on the dropship, away from his mech.

“What’s the matter?” Deserk was noticeably much calmer, shifting around the bed to stand near Frank at the apparatus.

Using organism analysis kits purchased from Outreach, Frank had ran a series of tests on the soil to try to identify any bacteria or viruses that may be detrimental to the health of the mercenaries. He was surprised to find that there was not a single microorganism trying to attack the human cells provided in the kits, which was unheard of, especially on worlds with a ecology as rich as Einstein’s.

“There’s nothing in the soil and the air which is attacking the human cells in the test kits. This is just impossible.” Frank shook his head. “On worlds with already existing life-forms, there are always microorganisms or viruses that enter the human body and try to infect, occupy or attack the body cells. Viruses more or less have some ability to enter cells by protein linking sites on the cells, while bacteria are able to live off the body’s systems and sometimes even attack body cells. Much of the time the effect is minimal, and the body’s natural defenses are able to deal with any foreign intruders. But over here it’s not that the effect is minimal. There’s no effect at all!”

As he waited for that fact to sink in, he plunged onto his findings, ”And there seems to be tiny dots moving around the cells, which cannot be viruses as they are a bit too large, but they do not seem to be bacteria either. The shapes are all wrong, and they are moving around too quickly. There isn’t a stronger microscope here I can use to examine these things, which is a damn shame. I think we may be onto something on this world, after all.”

Kily waved aside Frank’s findings, “Who cares about a bunch of bugs? I would rather we get some hot lostech from here. That’s what the houses will pay good money for, not a bunch of funny looking bugs!”

At that moment, sirens suddenly started going off, along with a tense message over the PA system. “All personnel please report to the mech bays. Repeat, all personnel please report to the mech bays.”

Almost immediately after the message, they could hear the sounds of boots pounding on the deck on the dropship as crew members made their anxious way to the bays.

“We had better go there now.” Frank seemed reluctant to abandon his work, but orders are orders. “Something’s up. And I don’t think it’s good.”

 

Forsen Mandela could not imagine how much more cruel Fate could be for him, but he was finding out. The message from Helene had initially threatened to send him over the edge, when she mentioned the arrival of clanners. It was clear that they are in the system for only one thing, and that was the lostech that could be found on Einstein.

He had wanted to cut his losses and run, all the way back to the Inner Sphere. He had quickly reconsidered, upon realizing that there were still better than 8 regiments of mercenaries on the planet able to oppose the Jade Falcons. There was still a chance to turn a profit, a chance to gain success in this venture.

He had sent the contents of the message to all the other dropships on planet, along with his own message to stand up to the clanners no matter what the cost. They had traveled too far to give up now. It would also take at least three days before the clanners arrived, more than ample time for them to scour the planet for its secret bases, as well as remove any items of value before the clanners arrived. With some luck, they might even find something that could give them an edge over the clans, something that will negate their formidable technological advantage.

But right now, he had to convince the troops he was transporting to stay and fight, if necessary. There was the elite Dragoons company, which almost certainly did not need much convincing to fight the Falcons, considering the bad blood between the two sides that developed on the clan border over the years, even without the Dragoons origins as part of the clans. Then there was Vansen’s Raiders, an average mech company that fought in the Chaos March. They would need a bit of persuasion. Finally, there was the tank company, which by all accounts was geared for city fighting, and totally unsuitable for facing the clans. They would be slaughtered in a fight in the open, and their commander, Captain Omo, would be less than anxious to face the clans. Forsen might even have to resort to threats to get Omo to cooperate.

Now waiting in the massive mech bay on a makeshift podium, which is actually a mech repair crane, he tried to gather his thoughts for the coming argument. Most of the mercenaries, and all of his crew have already gathered inside the bay, save those doing sentry duty or manning crucial systems. Forsen was glad that the mercs had moved out their mechs from the bays. He never liked the idea of having ten-meter tall killing machines staring down at him. They reminded him too much of his mortality, too much of death, his death. He would feel and speak a lot easier without those metal monsters around.

Seeing the last few people enter the bay, the doctor, the former clansman, and the young and reckless mercenary mechwarrior, he decided it was time to tell them the reason for the gathering. The crew already knew what he was going to say, but the mercs were still in the dark, and they were getting impatient. Many of them were just about to finish setting up the camp and then go lostech hunting.

“Good evening, people. I’m sorry for calling you away from your duties, but I have an important announcement.” Holding his breath for a while and showing a worried face, making it obvious to everybody, he then dropped the bombshell, “Jade Falcons have just jumped insystem,” gasps could be heard from the audience, “captured most of our jumpships, and are heading for this rock.”

Before he could continue, the mass of people had already burst into heated discussion and some of them were even walking towards the bay doors.

To get their attention again, he yelled, “Everybody listen! There is no need for panic. We still have almost 8 regiments of mercs onplanet. That’s enough to fight off even two clan galaxies!” He knew he was exaggerating, but he needed to calm their fears. “There’s many of us, and if they want a fight, we’ll gladly give them one.”

“Of course you’ll say that,” retorted a woman, “You won’t be the one putting your neck on the line. We are. And were there any naval support  for the Falcons?”

“Umm, yes, there is, but...” He was cut off again by a gaggle of voices, all demanding that he transport them back to the Inner Sphere immediately. “We just do not have enough ships to get everyone off right now! I have only three ships able to jump, which means that 60 percent of the mercs on planet will be left behind. This is unacceptable! If we stay and fight, maybe we could bargain for the return of our jumpships if we won. The Jade Falcons are honourable...”

“NEG! The Falcons are anything but honourable!” Deserk suddenly yelled. “They fight when the odds are on their side, and whimper like preening parrots when they lose. I should know because my former clan fought them many a trial over the years. They will twist the facts to suit their purposes, because that is what Crusaders do! But I say that though we may not get our transport back, we will teach them a lesson in being warriors! I will not run. I will rather stay and fight to the death. For many of you, this is a rare opportunity to make a name for yourselves! Think of the contracts you can pick up if you win, the boasts you can make to your lessers. Yes, many of you will die, but better a good and glorious death on the battlefield than to live in shame for the rest of your lives. I say we stand and fight!”

With that, the entire bay erupted with cheers, jeers, and various profanities as the mercs tried to decide their next course of action., unconvinced by Deserk’s impassioned speech.

“ENOUGH!” Forsen realized that Captain Jadine Sheik of the Wolf Dragoons had heard more than she wanted. “Our path is clear. We cannot just abandon more than half of our number on this planet. They will likely fall to the Falcons. But if we stay together, we will have a better chance. Anyone who really wants to go can do so, but are you prepared to be regarded as the ones who fled when the going got tough? Nobody will want to employ you again, and the Dragoons can make sure of it.” Nobody missed the inherent threat in her last statement.

When there was no reply to that, Forsen took over. “Well, its decided then, for us at least. We stay and fight! The Falcons are about five days away from landing, so let us explore what we can first, as well as set up defenses. I’ll spread the word, but if the Dragoons are staying, so would the rest. Probably.”

The gathered mercs grudgingly murmured their consent to their course of action and left the mech bay to get their own preparations under way. Now instead of just preparing for just looking for lostech, they would have to start preparing to fight clan troops, a distressing thought for all but the most elite mercs.

As Frank left the bay for the Raider’s area of the camp outside the dropship, he decided not to tell Captain Vansen of his discovery. It would be enough for him, as well as the rest of the camp to know that they are presently safe from the local microbes. He would just have to hope there was a working electron microscope in one of the research bases for him to do further study.

“Hey Frank! Wait up! Captain Vansen wants to talk to you!” Kily interrupted his thoughts with a quick shout as he ran up to Frank. “He’s waiting in his tent. Let’s go.”

Following Kily to the Captain’s tent, Frank quickly assessed his company’s chance against a clan unit, and the numbers he came up with were not encouraging. Walking past the mechs stationed in the Raiders’ part of the camp, he tried to gauge their strengths and weaknesses at the same time, remembering what he had seen while practicing with them in the simulators.

The recon/scout lance consisted of Lieutenant Jenny Ransom’s upgraded Jenner, and three other 3025 technology mechs. Kily’s Commando, Lee Fei Yang’s Spider and Pash Balaji’s Wasp. They would be slaughtered in a straight fight with a clan star, any clan star. To Frank, their best chance of survival would be to commit only when the rest of the Raiders are already engaged with the enemy, drawing the bulk of their attention. With the entire lance attacking one target, they would actually stand a good chance of downing some enemy mechs. However, this tactic relied heavily on the other lances of the company.

Which brought Frank to their medium lance. Also consisting of only one mech with upgraded technology, the medium lance was actually quite dangerous. With an Enforcer III, a Hunchback, a Centurion and a Phoenix Hawk, the medium lance can deal with most opposing lances of the same weight class, or run away from heavier and tougher opponents. Even a clan unit would find them tough opponents. However, the lance leader was Lieutenant Jon Falks, a known drunkard and absolutely useless in a fight. Most of the time he relied on Captain Vansen for his orders and showed an utter lack of initiative. If it had been the Davion Guards, he would have been placed on kitchen patrol duty long ago.

Lieutenant Jenny also had the same problem, except that she is willing to work hard at her position and this made her problem a lot less noticeable. She was above all a steady and reliable leader, not prone to flashes of inspiration, but not utterly incompetent like Falks either.

Thankfully, the members of the medium lance were all dependable warriors. Deris Kaine in the Hunchback was a natural close combat pilot, able to take on, and win over even opponents who outweigh her mech by thirty tons. Gerhard Kahn was a confident Centurion gunner who was always willing to push forward for a victory, while Tim Fowler was a patient fighter who is patient enough to take his time in picking a good shot for his large laser in his Phoenix Hawk.

Lastly, there was the company command lance, which had all the heavy and assault mechs, and provided most of the company’s firepower. Captain John Vansen’s Stalker, Liase Rossovich’s Battlemaster, Qing Hong Liu’s Marauder and Marco Kluivert’s Grasshopper can put the fear of God into most Inner Sphere opponents. According to stories told to Frank by Kily, that was exactly what happened on many of the Raiders’ contracts in the Chaos March. Most of their enemies could not compete with the Raiders, especially the command lance, for sheer power, and they actually often faced more danger from their own employers double-crossing them!

However, Clan mechs were a different proposition, with their higher speeds due to XL engine technology. The command lance had only one upgraded mech, the Stalker, which Frank had studied on extensively when he was training on Outreach, due to his close brush with one during the civil war. The command lance could doubtless still put up a good fight, and would be critical in any fight with clan troops.

Coming to the Captain Vansen’s tent, they saw Jon Falks lounging just outside the tent in a drunken stupor, cradling a bottle of liquor in his arms. He stepped into their path, just as they were about to enter the tent.

“We are going to be dead! Nothing’s going to stop those Falcons from thrashing us! If you’re smart, enjoy life while you can! Why bother to fight?” Evidently, Jon did not rate their chances highly, which Frank privately agreed with. But showing such pessimism in the open was not helping matters any either.

Disgusted at the lieutenant’s attitude, Frank just shoved him to the side and strode into the tent. It was obvious to him that something has to be done about Jon, and soon. At the moment, he was just dead weight to the rest of the Raiders. Unfortunately, only the captain had such authority.

 

The command tent was quite small, and occupied by a bed, a table, and a weapons rack with a few rifles of various models. There was a map of their landing zone area on the table, and there was a strong stench of sweat and fear, accumulated over what could only be several decades of hard campaigning on a dozen worlds.

Captain John Vansen was forty years old, slightly built, but tall, almost to the point of gauntness. He had been looking over the maps on the table as Frank and Kily entered. Despite what the Dragoons had said about their chances, or rather the lack of such, he was determined to formulate a plan where they would have the best hope of victory and survival. A great deal of his plans depended on the mercs being able to control the terrain. Therefore he planned to fight in the area around the suspected Star League site, where the forest cover was quite thick, and thus able to negate the clans’ advantage in ranged weapons.

But he would have to scout out the area first. And if there truly was a Star League base there, maybe it would have some fixed defensive emplacements that could give the mercs an advantage. He also wanted to scour the base for any useful equipment, but he had heard and seen enough horror stories about people messing around with technology they did not understand to know that he should send in only qualified people.

And Frank was the closest to a scientist the mercs had. He would have to rely greatly on Frank to make sense of the stuff they might find. Nobody else, not even the engineers on the dropships, had received a sufficiently rigorous scientific education. With the Falcons only a few days away, they had scant time to prepare.

He got straight to the point. “Frank, we’re heading out for the base tomorrow. The scout lances of both companies will be accompanying us. The rest of us will go on the AT(all terrain) jeeps. We should get there in at least an hour. I want you to come with us, just in case we need any scientific expertise. I also want you to bring any equipment you think might be useful. There might be some fixed defenses, and they might still be active, so I want you to hang at the rear should there be any hostiles.”

“What sort of weaponry should we be packing?” Frank asked.

“The normal stuff. Slug and laser rifles, some blazers, and some light anti-armour rockets. Should be enough to take out almost anything. If there is something we can’t handle, we leave it to the mechs. If necessary, they can tear apart the base. Too bad none of us have battle-armour. That would have been of great use, even in close quarters in the base. I’m telling you this because we cannot afford a mistake at this point, not with the Falcons coming in. We gonna need every edge we can get, and you are going to get it for us.” He drove home the point by pounding a fist on the table.

 

Ian Dorlacen yawned as he surveyed the makeshift camp before him. He was supposed to be pleased by his scouts’ reports of an abandoned building where the neutrino signature was, but the incoming news from Forsen Mandela had killed his mood.

He dreaded telling his people about the bad news, since he was the one who had brought them all the way from the Inner Sphere to this desolate periphery world in search of hidden treasure. He felt responsible for anything that might happen to them, and the fact that few merc units had managed to fight off the clans gave him a very pessimistic outlook on the coming campaign.

He felt even worse knowing that he had never fought the clans before, having spent his entire career in the hotbed of the Chaos March. Yes, there had been more than one offer for the Lancers to go for the clan border, but Ian had always reminded himself of the lists of dead and destroyed units on the Hiring Hall rolls to convince himself that it was not the best of career moves.

He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t cowardice, but a good business decision. He had never expected to fight the clans, not so soon, not this unprepared, and it now looked like he should had gone for the clan border to try to get some of that clan salvage that units that managed to survive always had in abundance.

Still, even more surprising was that he had been nominated as the person to present a bid for all the mercs on Einstein, by virtue of his status as the commander of the largest merc unit, and the highest ranking officer. It had been the Dragoon Captain who had suggested it, and before he knew it, he had been selected. It also ensured that the Arch Lancers would be hit hard from the start, which he did not look forward to.

There was going to be a huge transmission fest in the night as the various units hashed out a plan for the coming battle. Ian, having participated in multi-merc unit engagements before, was already dreading the conference.

He spun his Awesome around slowly, looking at the approaching mechs of his scout lance as they marched up.

“Scout lance reporting sir!” Ian imagined the prim and proper Lieutenant Hong Guan De snapping to attention within his Raven’s cockpit, if that had been possible. “No bogeys anywhere near here, sir!”

“Good work,” Ian said over his transmitter. “Berth your mechs. I have an announcement to make.”

God knew what his troops would think of him once he told them the Jade Falcons were on the way…